Friday Varia and Quick Hits

It isn’t the first Friday of the new year (h/t to Dimitri Nakassis), but it is the first Varia and Quick Hits of 2026. We’re enjoying unseasonably warm weather here in North Dakotaland with highs soaring into the upper 20s (and even kissing the 30s). And I hope that this warmth stays with us (and with all my readers) into the new year.

This is a fun sports weekend with the semifinals of the college football playoffs already underway and the NFL Wildcard season about to kick off. I don’t hold out much hope for my Eagles, but I’ll watch anyway. The Sixers and my Mighty Spiders continue to amble though their seasons losing a few games that should probably win and winning some games that I think they should lose. It’s enough to keep me interested! 

The spring semester starts on Tuesday and my classes — Roman History, Western Civilization I, and the Practicum in Writing, Editing, and Publishing — are almost ready to go. This means that the happy shadow of my winter research leave is receding into blinding light of the oncoming semester.

It seems like a good time for quick hits and varia:

• Pasts Imperfect.

• New Hesperia (blogged about here and here).

• Demon Things.

• Moses Finley interviewed by Keith Hopkins.

• Apostolic Letter on the Importance of Archaeology.

• Some other reading:

Liminal Spaces and Spatial Practices in Byzantium.

Reframing Failure in Digital Scholarship.

Archaeological Reports

• Survey in Greece since 2000.

• Byzantine Thrace.

• Byzantine Sculpture.

Public Domain Day (and my blog on it).

• Cyprus’s Presidency of the EU.

• Noodling Varia.

• Morley’s

• Petrodelphia.

• N.C. Wyeth Mural.

• Pynchon, Milk, and Cheese.

• Isern on the Anxious Generation.

• No More Tubular Tires in the Tour.

• What I’m reading: John Bintliff, Emeri Farinetti, and Anthony Snodgrass, Boeotia Project, Volume III: Hyettos. The Origins, Florescence and Afterlife of a Small Boeotian City (2025).

• What I’m listening to: Tom Smith, A Year in The Life.