Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · 5d

I’ve been trying to track down the original speeches for the Thayer Amendment, but from what I’m seeing all the allusions are there “bacchanals in the treasury dept.” etc. and the issue is kicked off by the Superintendent of the National Currency Bureau actually putting himself on a 5 cent bill.

1 1 12

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · 5d

This, of course, illegal (www.frbsf.org/research-and...) not that that, you know, matters much these days.

7 Things You May Not Know About U.S. Currency - San Francisco Fed

Is the $1 note full of mystic symbolism? Can you name who's on the $50? This President’s Day, explore little-known facts about U.S. currency design and the presidents that grace our notes.

www.frbsf.org

1 12

Reposted by Jane Sancinito

Anise K. Strong @anisekstrong.bsky.social · 5d

I spend the whole dang first part of my career saying that comparisons between the modern United States and the late Roman Republic are often misleading and facile, and then...he just mints it right out...

Silver coin of Julius Caesar, which caused major controversy during his lifetime because only dead people were supposed to be on coins.

7 88 340

Reposted by Jane Sancinito

Dr. Christina Hotalen @drchristinah.bsky.social · 7d

I’m a Roman historian specializing in the third century. Please don’t explain dying empires to me, thanks.

12 160

Reposted by Jane Sancinito

Dr Crom @doccrom.bsky.social · 14d

#ReliefWednesday - In this relief, a decorative element from the funerary monument of an unknown cloth merchant, we see a Roman matron being shown a sample of fabric: ca. Mid 1st century AD. #Roman #Art 🏺

Image: Uffizi Gallery (Inv. 1914, No. 313). Link - uffizi.it/en/online-ex...

Roman relief of a shop scene: two shop assistants, observed by a supervisor, pull a fine fabric out of a container and show it to a couple seated on a bench to the right of the panel. Above them, cushions and fabrics hang from a pole set beneath the tiled roof of the shop.

11 41

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · 16d

As an alumna, this is deeply disappointing. Oxford has historically worked to support the best of human thought, now it is content to watch the plagiarism machine churn out slop.

2

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · 17d

Friendly reminder that I'm always happy to share pdfs of my work with anyone who asks. I'm easy to find.

4

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · 17d

I am SO out of here. I know these platforms always get greedy, but this is insane.

Prof Katherine Schofield 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺 @katherineschof8.bsky.social · 18d

Oh this is BAD.

The new TOC from academia dot edu.

You grant us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license, permission, and consent to use your Member Content and your personal information (including, but not limited to, your name, voice, signature, photograph, likeness…

1 4

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · 23d

They do not. I have a group chat of science friends that I share these emails with and they are always baffled that this is my background noise

1

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · 28d

This was a great conference and there is some really cool stuff in here, even for people who aren't numismatists, including important weights and measures work and graffiti on coins.

Brepols @brepols.net · 28d

🔓𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀
𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗫𝗩𝗜 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗡𝘂𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀, 𝟭𝟭–𝟭𝟲.𝟬𝟵.𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟮, 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝘀𝗮𝘄,
𝗩𝗼𝗹. 𝗜. 𝗚𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝗡𝘂𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀

Edited by Jarosław Bodzek, Aleksander Bursche & Anna Zapolska

More info: bit.ly/3JV7rbs

#Numismatics #Archaeology #Antiquity #Coinage #Greek

2

Reposted by Jane Sancinito

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · Sep 8

Ironically, it appears that AI chatbots hallucinate for the same reason that students feel compelled to use them:

They were socialized in a high-stakes testing culture that rewards guessing and maybe getting it right over admitting when there's something you just don't know.

Why Language Models Hallucinate, by Kalai et al.

Like students facing hard exam questions, large language models sometimes guess when
uncertain, producing plausible yet incorrect statements instead of admitting uncertainty. Such
“hallucinations” persist even in state-of-the-art systems and undermine trust. We argue that
language models hallucinate because the training and evaluation procedures reward guessing over
acknowledging uncertainty, and we analyze the statistical causes of hallucinations in the modern
training pipeline. Hallucinations need not be mysterious—they originate simply as errors in binary
classification. If incorrect statements cannot be distinguished from facts, then hallucinations
in pretrained language models will arise through natural statistical pressures. We then argue
that hallucinations persist due to the way most evaluations are graded—language models are
optimized to be good test-takers, and guessing when uncertain improves test performance. This
“epidemic” of penalizing uncertain responses can only be addressed through a socio-technical
mitigation: modifying the scoring of existing benchmarks that are misaligned but dominate
leaderboards, rather than introducing additional hallucination evaluations. This change may
steer the field toward more trustworthy AI systems.

43 410 1.5K

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · Sep 5

Pending last minute issues (always possible) the tenure portfolio is in and the waiting game begins. Such a weird feeling!

7

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · Sep 3

Semesterly reminder that teaching is actually moderate aerobic exercise.

Screenshot of Fitbit app showing three “aerobic workouts” lasting between 18 and 42 minutes

6

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · Aug 15

Oh, thank goodness it wasn’t just me. I thought I had lost my grip on reality there for a minute…

1

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · Aug 4

Adding another owl from Smyrna!

Alabastron case showing a crude black figure owl

7 25

Reposted by Jane Sancinito

Candida Moss @candidamoss.bsky.social · Jul 23

Excited to announce that after a lot of editorial work our volume "Writing, Enslavement, and Power in the Roman Mediterranean, 100 BCE - 300 CE" is out now. @jeremiahcoogan.bsky.social @illdottore.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/book/60683

Book cover. The background in sepia tones Showa man dictating to scribes. A cream box in the center has light brown writing that contains the title (Writing, Enslavement, and Power in the Roman Mediterranean) and the words "Edited by Jeremiah Coogan, Candid R. Moss, and Jospeh A. Howley.

10 79 320

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · Jul 16

#EpigraphyTuesday A nice, old law from the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

Broken and reconstructed stone stele, covered in a long Greek inscription

Museum description of previous photo. English portion reads: “Law of the Trojans against Tyranny. Marble. 3rd century BCE. Troy. Env. 3018 (T).
The presents which will be given to those who kill the tyrant and enemies of democracy were listed on the stele. He will immediately be given 1 silver talent, all kinds of his needs will be provided for a lifelong period by the government (pyrataneion), he will be appointed as the president of the games and paid 2 drachms every day as long as he lives.”

1 2

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · Jul 16

As an ancient historian, I struggle with the fact that most of the art I like is actually... my job? Tragic. Anyway, I'm trying to find some more-modern artists to appreciate. Bethany Peck (www.bethanypeckart.com) has been a favorite for a few years now, so I wanted to share her with you all.

3

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · Jun 9

There are so many parts of this I love: the mixture of agriculture and commerce(!), the ability to use social skills to influence your customers(!!!), integration of small scale exchanges with the macroeconomy (!!!!!). Ahhhhh!!!

Mercator (Demo out now!) @mercatorthegame.bsky.social · Jun 9

A few new followers, so wanted to mention that Mercator will be a part of the upcoming June Steam Next Fest! It's a shopkeeper game about ancient trade from India to Rome and in between. Check out the trailer and the Steam page:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1pp...
store.steampowered.com/app/3268870/...

Mercator - Development Demo Trailer

YouTube video by rudderbucky

www.youtube.com

1 5

Reposted by Jane Sancinito

Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · Jun 7

Gen AI lyke a stealthye vampyre doth hyde the corpses (texts) that it hath drained. Yn contrast, even the rankest act of publisshinge piracye at least doth move a booke ynto the handes of a reader. But Gen AI doth nevir cite sources or reveal the workes it hath plunderid. A solipsism moost vile.

1 28 120

Reposted by Jane Sancinito

Joel @sentantiq.bsky.social · Jun 5

“Homer’s robots–like generative AI–don’t create anything new but, when pressed, can tell us a lot about what already is. Our adoption of technology from the industrial age through to the information age and the artificial intelligence age is following similar patterns.

Hephaestus' Golden Girls

What Can the Iliad Tell us About Artificial Intelligence?

joelchristensen.substack.com

1 5 9

Reposted by Jane Sancinito

The Classics Library @theclassicslibrary.bsky.social · Jun 1

Build your own Lego forum!

#legolegislegit

🏺 #ClassicsBluesky #BlueskyClassics #AncientBluesky 🏛️

www.brickfanatics.com/lego-ideas-c...

A Lego version of part of a Roman forum.

1 9 37

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · Jun 5

Can I add a different kind of cock for #phallusthursday? We don’t have an animal day, do we? Anyway, have some cupids fighting roosters from the National Archaeological Museum, Istanbul. No animals were harmed in the taking of the photo… no promises about the ancient models, sadly ☹️

Marble statue of two cupids, each with a rooster, preparing to fight them.

3

Jane Sancinito @janesancinito.bsky.social · Jun 5

I’m a simple girl. I get good news, I text the group chat and then call my mommy to make her say she’s proud of me.

elmo from sesame street standing in front of a wall

Alt: elmo from sesame street standing in front of a wall, shrugging

media.tenor.com

6

Reposted by Jane Sancinito

Dr Ella Hawkins @ellamchawk.bsky.social · May 29

Things are about to get a bit ancient.

I baked these biscuity sherds on a hemisphere cake tin in an attempt to recreate Ancient Greek pottery fragments in all three dimensions. The originals, dating from c.1600-435 BCE, can be found in the collections of the Ashmolean Museum.

A set of nine unevenly shaped biscuits arranged in a glass-lidded box. Each biscuit is curved and made to look like a fragent of ancient pottery. The base icing is in shades of orange, peach, and cream. Figures, swirls, repeating leaf patterns, and horses are painted onto the icing surface in black. The biscuits are aged with scratch marks and cracks.

21 200 1.5K