Just some guy
@rocinante.bsky.social
3.2K followers 580 following 1.6K posts
Historian and archaeologist working on the Mediterranean. Used to pretend, badly, to be a dead base ball player. Not sure why I’m here now except I missed people from the old place.
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rocinante.bsky.social
Yeah, was thinking about this in relation to Cuban posting and getting just obliterated and then going back to his tech guy chats for another dose of slop to pour out to the masses. He “learns” from those he sees as equals, which isn’t us.
rocinante.bsky.social
Yeah I think that’s an excellent point. Thanks, Ben.
rocinante.bsky.social
For a while I thought things like Twitter and access to “celebrities” (a fine enough catch-all word for what we used to call the blue checks) but now it seems that access has just hardened these people and made them think pushback is a hallmark of success, maybe even the definition of success.
rocinante.bsky.social
I get why we do this. 1) it’s funny. 2) a lot of us seem better read (and better people, tbh) than those who are paid to proffer their opinions, and many are tired of the drek. 3) there does not seem like any other recourse for letting people know they are doing a bad job than the internet dunk.
rocinante.bsky.social
The hate economy sucks. The attention economy sucks. Why am I doing this.
rocinante.bsky.social
Sally Jenkins daring people to stab her
The Roman Senate stabbing Julius Caesar, a scene from Camuccini’s painting, which in this case depicts a variety of toga-clad men stabbing the fuck out of Julius Caesar, who is clad in orange and red and very much about to be dead.
rocinante.bsky.social
Peter Thiel reading Goofus and Gallant and discovering the Zoroastrian mysteries of Truth and the Lie.
rocinante.bsky.social
It can be hard at times to stress to undergrads (or grad students) why doing the reading matters—yes, you should read the Iliad; yes you should know your Bourdieu—when it is so clear that the most powerful people have read so very little and understand none of it.
sharonk.bsky.social
thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.
rocinante.bsky.social
Sorry, I know that is annoying. I’ve just seen some pretty awful shit in TX recently as a result of white-hot internet outrage (A&M, ASU, TTU), that has me mulling over anger’s role. I don’t like seeing my people get all mad over shit. It’s a lot of fun and very unhealthy and ok back to my cave.
rocinante.bsky.social
The guy with the bad visiting team take has 125 followers and you don’t need to be mad at his garbage opinion, you can just recognize his provincial nature and odd understanding of hospitality applied to sports and move on, it’s cool.
rocinante.bsky.social
The bones of saints—relics—were often stolen from churches by rival medieval towns to develop tourism and prestige for their own homes. Local legends and identities would grow and form around these stolen things. This is, in a nutshell, the 2025 NLCS.
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rocinante.bsky.social
I would like the Brewers (née Pilots) and Mariners to make the World Series so we can make boat jokes
rocinante.bsky.social
An endless parade of wind farms, potholes, and alternating signs for porn and Christ.
rocinante.bsky.social
Someone still bitter about the Spanish Armada losing in 1588: if we had mariners that resolute England would be speaking Spanish right now.
rocinante.bsky.social
My feed is people excited about extra innings and complaining mightily about extra innings. Baseball baby. We hate this shit and we fucking love it.
rocinante.bsky.social
“The time before this game? Oh yes, I remember it. The mud brick of those walls was still wet. Hammurabi had not yet given us his laws. Enkidu roamed the wilderness, hairy and wild. The great Euphrates had just taught us to plant our crops by her life-giving banks.”
rocinante.bsky.social
Worst display by an Irishman against mariners since the Vikings sacked Kells.
rocinante.bsky.social
Imagine having a piece of pie and then your server brings you a second piece of pie that was made minutes ago and tastes like summer and smells like hope and she says no, that’s on us, you enjoy this.