Are you also taking books?

Neither can I sadly - though I tried to learn at one point I honestly just didn’t have time.

What’s Apping you the video now.

Okay, I’m going to genuinely engage in good faith even though I don’t think you are.

My post is not targeting a specific group for not knowing any better. Bret’s post absolutely is - and in a way that I think furthers the divide between ‘professional historians’ and the public who enjoy history.

People maybe don’t have time to read all the scholarship, or to learn how to pronounce Greek (especially when we still have scholarly debates about it!)

Maybe we have different ideas about what it means to be a professional historian in a public facing setting.

Yeah, but making fun of people is not - and that’s what your post is kind of doing. ‘I guess it’s easier to do the movie thing than be 100% accurate’.

Ululation actually isn’t that easy for a lot of people, and people maybe actually just want to do the thing they enjoy without gate keeping.

There’s kind of a difference between a joke tweet about a notoriously awful map projection and making fun of reenactors for not being 100% accurate.

Or, I don’t know, maybe let people just do stuff they enjoy without gate keeping the ancient world. Who actually cares if they are doing movie stuff rather than attested stuff, they are enjoying engaging in ancient history. Not everyone has to be an expert.

Ha ha ha *their own.

I am smart I promise.

As always I want it make it ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that I criticise this country and its leadership because I have actively chosen to make it my home, because I like living here, because I want it to be a good place for my British children to become adults and (if they wish) raise there own children in.

Also: doctors are also on strike because they want more positions. Because there are not enough post-foundation training positions for doctors, and because there are not enough doctors to sustain the population.

Wes Streeting can get in the bin.

Oh David, I’m still really not good. It’s only the second belt!

Plus, I’d like to think we can respectfully disagree and not come to blows 😘

Being enthusiastic but also not the best - and never striving to be the best - is deeply fun. This is something I also feel about running (but that also fills different psychological, sensory, and emotional spaces in my life).

Anyway. I’m proud of myself and you should go and do something new.

Academics are trained to be perfectionists. We often are the best at things, and we go further and further into the things we excel at (for eg I am not a natural linguist and therefore not a philologist but I have a weirdly good ability to perceive sensory experience I am not directly experiencing).

I started karate when Little started because it was better than sitting in the cold waiting area. I like doing things I’m a beginner at, I find it rewarding and humbling in equal measure and I think it’s healthy for adults to do things they enjoy but aren’t the best as. Especially academics.