Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 59m

I see people talking shit about him here constantly for like four different things and all of them are just people getting mad at him for saying something directly instead of with extended preface and euphemism.

2

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 1h

If you see people attributing something to Leonid it is almost always an uncharitable read that interprets his being frank about grim realities as though he is saying they are absolute goods, abusive treatment no one would tolerate being subjected to themselves, or both.

1 2

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 2h

Although that said you could maaaaaaaaybe make four super-states that roughly fit the four top level divisions here (Caribbean not separate). But these would follow existing state lines. It would be hard to decide where to put Texas and Virginia. South and West would always be Republican.

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 2h

He’s doing Welthauptstadt Germania

QuoProQuid @quoproquid.bsky.social · 3h

increasingly the point of comparison i keep returning to with Trump’s “improvements” and obsession with celebrations is caligula

1 2

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 2h

Welthauptstadt Germania

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 2h

But this will never happen. What people abroad are hopefully learning is that the US is not a developed country, it is a semi-developed country that is unusually rich.

1 3

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 2h

The rest of the divisions would follow the old states, but they no longer have outsize representation in the Senate and there would be fewer things they could do to take away rights. No banning abortion or trans care. No more 50 different Medicaid programs. Limited power to offer tax incentives.

1

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 2h

The largest cities would become city-states that include some of their suburbs. For sure New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Maybe also Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, DC area, Boston, Miami, Phoenix, Atlanta, and the SF Bay Area. They would be top level divisions.

1 1

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 2h

Then I would draw new boundaries that would replace state and local government. Many of them would follow old state boundaries. I would only focus on the main ones.

1

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 2h

If I were drawing new boundaries, I would recognize Native nations as sovereign, keep the states legally in place, admit DC, offer admission to Puerto Rico and the other overseas territories, make the Senate ceremonial, expand the House, and abolish the Electoral College.

1 2

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 2h

Also, any new divisions should snap to counties, so they would look sort of jagged and funny, not smooth lines like these.

1

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 2h

Unfortunately it is hard to agree on what should replace them. This map is measuring cultural regions as people usually describe them but it doesn’t necessarily follow economic geography, which I would if drawing administrative boundaries. Notice how cities are often on borders.

1 1

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 2h

However, the boundaries are ridiculous from an administrative perspective and I consider it a very underrated problem. I think because of the legal and cultural prestige of states they should be made mostly ceremonial. Like boroughs in New York City or ceremonial counties in England.

1 2

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 2h

For example, we don’t carry around federal IDs, they are all state by state (either drivers’ licenses or an ID based on them but that does not confer driving privileges). Most university students are in state systems. In some states the identity is stronger than others, but it’s real.

1 1

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 2h

Under the US Constitution, state boundaries cannot be changed except by the consent of both houses of both state’s legislatures and Congress. Also it says that we can’t even give them differing representation in the senate *even by amendment!* And people tend to identify with their home state.

1

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 2h

I don’t think so. Practically, the states are very resilient, both legally and politically. Not counting the Supreme Court flipping to make Trump an absolutist despot, the US is legally a compact of sovereign states, not a state in its own right. This was ridiculous but is finally doing some good.

1 1

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 10h

*Linear A

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 10h

As with so many other institutions, Trump’s destruction of higher education is catastrophic, but it was secular stagnation that led to the decline and fall. Let the downfall of the “West” be the rebirth of the classics.

1

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 10h

Everyone should add the Near East because Sumerian is the OG classical language and Akkadian is the OG lingua Franca, but different programs can focus on building programs of Sanskrit or Chinese or Arabic or Black Atlantic classics programs.

1 1

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 10h

While Classics Classic is well served by broadening it to adjacent times and cultures, the discipline as a whole might best be reframed as World Classics - like world history but more interdisciplinary in both archaeological and literary directions. There are many classical languages.

1

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 10h

In the classical period, include Persian, Phoenician, and Minoan history in the same world as the Greeks and Romans as sharing a common Near Eastern/Mediterranean world rather than an other to define the “Western” against. Fund projects to decipher Linear B.

2 1 1

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 10h

Traditional Mediterranean classics should better incorporate the context of Near Eastern prehistory, history, and Assyriology. This gives them (and the Bible) a context in deeper time and defuses the false sense that history begins in Greece.

1 1

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 10h

Unironically bringing back a liberal, universal, expanding view of the classics should be a priority of educational institutions after the Trump crisis.

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 10h

Anyway, the whole thing really brings home how badly we are just ceding this large space of interest and public attention to enthusiastic but often unskilled and untrained (and sometimes ideologically dodgy) amateurs, when it ought to be trained classicists in that space, swinging dolabrae.

2 2 7

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 11h

Their dead are commemorated by the state, the media, and witch hunts at whoever they feel like blaming. Our dead aren’t even allowed simple memorials.

ghostly gwen howerton @kissphoria.bsky.social · 11h

NEW: Barely a week after being repainted, the rainbow crosswalk in Montrose will be removed by Houston METRO, citing Greg Abbott and TXDOT's new directive. The crosswalk is a memorial to the LGBTQ+ community and to a fallen cyclist:

www.chron.com/culture/arti...

Houston’s rainbow crosswalk to be removed, citing Abbott’s order

The Montrose crosswalk is a memorial to a 21-year-old cyclist. It was recently repainted.

www.chron.com

5 13

Emma Spookdel @mayorseidel.bsky.social · 20h

All acts of a tyrant are null and void

3