A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
A look at history and popular culture
For this week, I wanted to expand a bit on a comment I made on Twitter expressing some frustration at the failure of journalists attempting to cover the war in Ukraine (and thus interpret military experts for a lay audience) to master some of the key military terminology being used and to convey its actual … Continue reading Miscellanea: A Very Short Glossary of Military Terminology
This week, I want to break from our usual format and respond to the fairly unusual global events. I expect a lot of my readers are trying to get a grasp on what is happening right now in Ukraine and in my own experience the traditional news media often struggles to adequately explain complex issues … Continue reading Miscellanea: Understanding the War in Ukraine
This week, we're going to be a bit silly and talk about the recently released Royal Court, a DLC expansion for Paradox's medieval grand strategy game Crusader Kings III, because I think it is attempting something fairly interesting that relatively few strategy games do. This isn't going to be a review - there are a … Continue reading Miscellanea: Thoughts on CKIII: Royal Court
Since I finally got out to see Dune (2021), I wanted to take a chance to share some of my reflections on it and this week was a good time because I had nowhere near enough time otherwise to get the next Fortifications post ready. So first I want to give my own reaction to … Continue reading Miscellanea: Reflections on the Sands of Dune (2021)
So this week I want to talk about how what I know a historian influences how I am interpreting what I am going to call the Capitol Insurrection that happened on Wednesday, January 6 instead of taking the week off as I had originally planned. Since that is a really heavy topic, I am also … Continue reading Miscellanea: Insurrections, Ancient and Modern (And Also Meet the Academicats)
Hey folks! I am, as I mentioned last week, taking this week off in an effort to catch up on my sanity and also some grading and writing I need to be doing. But I didn't want to leave you with nothing, so I thought I might use this as an opportunity to direct some … Continue reading Things You Might Have Missed, October 21, 2020
This week, we're going to be a bit silly and talk about the recently released grand strategy computer game Crusader Kings III, because quite a few of you asked for it. Now from the beginning I should note that this isn't a game review. As a game, Crusader Kings III is clearly a tremendous success … Continue reading Miscellanea: My Thoughts on Crusader Kings III
Dear readers! Alas, no regular post this Friday, for it is conference season. In particular, this is the weekend of the Joint Annual Meeting for the Society of Classical Studies and Archaeological Institute of America (Classics represent!), where I will be giving a short paper detailing some of my current research. One function of these … Continue reading Miscellanea: SCS-AIA Conference, 2020!
The following is a somewhat polished (but not very polished!), consolidated version of my response to watching The Last Jedi and the problems I had with it. The core of this was something I wrote on social media back in January, 2018; note that since this was originally intended for a small group of friends … Continue reading Miscellanea: The Latest Jedi
The following post is intended as a 'reference sheet' of sorts for any of the difficult or obscure terminology that is going to get used in the "This. Isn't. Sparta." series. As a rule, I think a good historian ought to be able to explain themselves without needing to rely on lots of jargon or … Continue reading Miscellanea: Sparta Glossary