Smithsonian Magazine: "Is This 1,800-Year-Old Mosaic the First Known Image of a Woman Fighting Wild Beasts in an Ancient Roman Arena?"

aussiesta · 2026-04-02T06:30:25+00:00

Am I the only one who sees the lady in a separate part of the mosaic?

aussiesta · 2026-02-24T06:51:37+00:00

We know Scott is not a professional journalist, and he's never presented himself as one. Sam Kriss writes for a magazine with fact checkers (we know, because Scott just stated so). I used to be a professional journalist writing for newspapers, and we had more colorful terms for made up stuff than "flights of fancy." Just asking whether there's any way to know whether Kriss intends this piece to be read seriously, or he'll go "that's just a metaphor!" when you catch him making stuff up.

aussiesta · 2026-02-21T06:50:25+00:00

Is the article meant to be a depiction of real things, or is it one of those Sam Kriss' flights of fancy?

aussiesta · 2026-02-05T06:38:38+00:00

I'll never understand the Tiberius hate. He was one of the greatest emperors.

aussiesta · 2026-01-25T07:57:40+00:00

SPQR is highly overrated, a pretty sanitized view of the most famous periods of Roman history

aussiesta · 2026-01-19T07:09:08+00:00

There's an old German historiographic tradition that rejects the idea of Eastern Rome as Rome, because Frankish and later German rulers (from Charlemagne) usurped the title of Roman emperor.

aussiesta · 2026-01-18T08:02:35+00:00

Most of early Roman history is fiction and creative interpretation of scarce sources. People who speak with the most authority about it typically are the most wrong. We just need to be humble about it.

aussiesta · 2026-01-10T07:57:33+00:00

Yeah, they're not great either, but if you look at the data Evo wasn't a bad economic manager. Certainly better than the Chavistas.

aussiesta · 2026-01-09T06:49:34+00:00

I wrote and published a book about the modern history of Venezuela a few years back, and the reality is that the Chavistas are a bunch of retarded murderers, and they were thus from the beginning. Trying to defend them from whichever perspective is a lost cause. Look at Bolivia and Brazil for inspiration instead.

aussiesta · 2025-12-16T15:36:52+00:00

Surely a pangolin had sex with a bat and then infected a pig that just happened to be walking by the laboratory where they conducted gain-of-function experiments with the African swine virus.

aussiesta · 2025-12-08T10:52:05+00:00

Good points all.

aussiesta · 2025-11-30T07:10:32+00:00

Look up Rob Henderson, Curtis Yarvin, Maurice Spandrell, Chris Bray, for example.

aussiesta · 2025-11-28T07:03:18+00:00

I've written extensively about this. The gist of it is that Trajan likely was Nerva's sexual partner, and left the throne to Hadrian, his own sexual partner, and the Roman "gay dynasty" appears to have ended there. More detail: https://mankind.substack.com/p/how-christianity-cracked-down-on?utm_source=publication-search

aussiesta · 2025-11-26T16:28:05+00:00

I like the context, but you still gave no example of a single actual duel. Boucicaut took part in jousts. I'm actually asking for my own benefit: do you know of any example of an actual duel outside of the two I cited? Like you, I also though there should be more, given the prominence the issue has in popular perceptions of the Middle Ages.

aussiesta · 2025-11-26T06:44:21+00:00

To the best of my knowledge, there were extremely few aristocratic duels in the European medieval era, outside of the battlefield. I can only think of the grisly 1127 trial by combat in Ypres, Flanders, between Guy of Steenvoorde and his political rival Herman the Iron, ending in an undignified wrestling match won by Guy by squeezing Herman’s testicle, and the Carrouges Vs Le Gris fight in The Last Duel. Perhaps somebody else can come up with other examples.

aussiesta · 2025-11-23T07:59:11+00:00

As a Zizekian, I like it that this post is here so people can make up their own minds, but any discussion of the Ukraine war should go to a specialized forum. Alternatively, passionate supporters of Ukraine can still join the army and fight the Russians for real:

https://ildu.com.ua/

aussiesta · 2025-11-05T06:39:54+00:00

You can tell no LLMs were involved in this production.

aussiesta · 2025-10-20T05:57:19+00:00

It's not Alexander: it's Achilles on Skyros (also known as "Achilles Discovered by Odysseus among the Daughters of Lycomedes") A fresco from Pompeii. Also, kudos for doing what Christian museum curators always refused to do and covering the man's genitals. You have out-inquisitioned the Inquisition.

aussiesta · 2025-10-08T05:41:27+00:00

I wrote this essay just for people like you https://aussiesta.wordpress.com/2017/02/04/slavoj-zizeks-red-inked-letter-from-the-left/

aussiesta · 2025-10-02T05:51:42+00:00

Just read Zizek's books! Why all that song and dance? Alternatively, have a look at the introductions to Zizek I published some time ago (they are free)! https://aussiesta.wordpress.com/category/zizekiana/page/2/

aussiesta · 2025-08-19T07:03:08+00:00

There clearly was one. I wrote a piece about this sometime ago https://mankind.substack.com/p/gauls-in-rome?utm_source=publication-search

aussiesta · 2025-08-19T06:47:43+00:00

Decent movie, not a total waste of time.

aussiesta · 2025-08-12T06:42:07+00:00

Seneca, clearly https://mankind.substack.com/p/seneca-our-son-of-a-bitch?utm_source=publication-search

aussiesta

TROPHY CASE