Jim Getz

@jimgetz.bsky.social

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Historian of ancient Near Eastern ritual, religion, and magic. Associate Prof of Intellectual Heritage at Temple U. Pedagogy wonk.

he/they/Dr

Philly AF

Posts Replies Media

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Jim Getz

You love to see it

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timeline cleanse hat tip @penryu.bsky.social

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🗃️

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we are in a simulation www.livescience.com/planet-earth...

Giant phallus-shaped iceberg floating in Conception Bay surprises residents of Dildo, Canadawww.livescience.com A phallus-shaped iceberg hovered off the coast of Dildo, Newfoundland in Conception Bay before collapsing.

LFG!

The Vatican excommunicated Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, exacting a severe punishment on the most vociferous internal critic of Pope Francis for refusing to recognize the authority of the pope and liberal reforms made by the Roman Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

Vatican excommunicates Archbishop Viganò for refusing to recognize Pope Franciswapo.st In a rare trial, the Vatican acted against Carlo Maria Viganò, a former ambassador to the U.S. and one of Pope Francis’s most vociferous internal critics.

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Daily bunny no.2540 calming the cats

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Asked an historian of England, who agreed. SCOTUS rejected an historical tradition that goes back to 1689, and gave the president protections which George III did *not* have, which Washington did not want, and which anyone & everyone who had any role in writing the constitution opposed.

England's 1689 Bill of Rights a) established that the law restricted English kings & that kings' unfettered power threatened the polity; and b) formed the background for all colonial resistance to British rule from 1765 on. "Originalists" apparently reject this 334 y.o. legacy.

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There's a neat essay on the influence of D&D in @smithsonianmag.bsky.social. I'm still blown away by how RPGs have become this American — really worldwide — institution. www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture...

How Dungeons & Dragons Sparked a Revolution in How We Play Just About Everythingwww.smithsonianmag.com Created more than 50 years ago, the game has captured the imaginations of generations of Americans, and not just the nerdy ones

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You're a common oaf if you prefer to shoot off fireworks instead of reading a book about them

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If you care about the way AI is steamrolling environmental concerns you might be interested in this (free, online) conference happening in July—program just posted, and link to register: uva.theopenscholar.com/rethinking-t...

Rethinking the Inevitability of AIuva.theopenscholar.com

It was 88ºF today, so of course I decided to brew not one but two beers. 🫠

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Reply to

Wagatwe Wanjuki

One of the big unmentioned reasons for the closure is that these pharmacies, including Walgreens, have multi-billion opioid settlements against them. Walgreens is on the hook for $5.5 billion. www.mlive.com/public-inter...

Rite Aid closing stores across Michiganwww.mlive.com As a part of its bankruptcy proceedings, Rite Aid is shuttering more stores in Michigan and Ohio.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jury rules NFL violated antitrust laws in 'Sunday Ticket' case, awards nearly $4.7 billion in damages.

Love how vague this is. Go big people! The Ethiopian Orthodox Bible has 81 books, including 1 Enoch. Clearly, the Book of Watchers in an historical document, right?

Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters issued this memo today requiring teachers in all schools to keep a Bible in their classroom and teach from it as a historical document. (Via KOCO 5 News)

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surprise! more data that gender-affirming procedures on minors are rare, and mostly breast reductions (and, way fewer than cosmetic breast surgery on cis female minors) cc @michaelhobbes.bsky.social

“In this cross-sectional study of a national insured population in 2019, there were no gender-affirming procedures conducted on TGD minors aged 12 years and younger, and procedures on TGD minors older than 12 were rare and almost entirely chest-related procedures.” jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

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Reminder that you - yes you - do not need to watch any debates to be a good citizen.

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New article on blindness and labor in ancient Sumer and Babylonia in the latest issue of Osiris. The issue is on disability and the history of science, and all the pieces are great! Link: https://www.journals.uchicago. edu/doi/10.1086/730403 (I can give direct links to those without inst. access)

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I would endorse this citation practice.

attn scholarly organizations, this is now considered best practice

One Neat Trick™ you, as an ADHD academic, can do to save money in the summer to back off your regiment (drugs, diet, exercise, or some combination), and then you won't notice the sweltering heat of your house! *Dr. Getz is not responsible for any or all consequences of following this awful advice.

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I’m hearing a lot of “college kids today don’t know how to disagree because they are always in their little phone bubble” but it is by and large not the students who are calling up university presidents and demanding that speech they don’t like be banned.

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peak 2024 story, the rotting zombie of a dead company murdered by private equity uses generative AI to make an awful branding movie about the origin story for a company that has not existed in any recognizable way in many years

Toys 'R' Us uses OpenAI's Sora to make a brand film about its origin story and it’s horrifying

Toys 'R' Us uses OpenAI's Sora to make a brand film about its origin story and it’s horrifyingwww.engadget.com Toys 'R' Us uses OpenAI's Sora to make a brand film about its origin story and it’s horrifyingThis article originally appeared on Engadget at…

When I finally retire, I'm just going to start saying "Add to Profile" to all the random shit Academia . edu's algorithm thinks I've written. "Wafer-Level Packaging Technology" ? Sure. "Tunable filter with levered membrane and longer scan length"? Why the fuck not?

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Credit where it’s due: Elon Musk wanted the Cybertruck to have a futuristic, movie-based-on-Philip-K.-Dick-story vibe. And sure, it’s no Blade Runner. But what we’re looking at *is* a Total Recall.

The Cybertruck was released on Nov. 30. Today, Tesla announced it was recalling the vehicle for the fourth time, an impressive rough average of one recall every seven weeks. apnews.com/article/tesl...

For Tesla's futuristic new Cybertruck, a fourth recallapnews.com Tesla is recalling its futuristic new Cybertruck pickup for the fourth time in the U.S. to fix problems with trim pieces that can come loose, and failing front windshield wipers.

@icpetrie.bsky.social what's the mood right now in Little Canada?

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Every use case for LLMs I have ever seen can be boiled down to “something you’d want, if you were an asshole”

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Quite. PhD having is not a measure of intelligence, it’s a measure of hyperfixation and stubbornness.

GPT-5 will suffer four consecutive years of severe emotional breakdown trying to say something new about Foucault

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Since we're talking about Star Wars: at its heart, Star Wars is about, in rank order: airplanes, being friends with A Creature, magic, martial arts, and the alienation of parental affection, which is all to say, give the franchise to Miyazaki and we might finally get a good one.

Hell yeah.

A sneak peak at the table of contents! Minor changes are still possible, but we're coming closer to seeing this in the world. @tswingard.bsky.social @ellislight.bsky.social @basilaprice.bsky.social

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some things we, as a society, have recently done to teens: -traumatized them with gun violence -vastly reduced their rights to reproductive healthcare -had a moral panic about their genders -abandoned them to the ravages of covid, destroying their immune systems it's not tiktok that fucked em up

New York bans ‘addictive feeds’ for teens - https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/20/24182396/new-york-governor-social-media-law-parental-consent-algorithms

New York bans “addictive feeds” for teenswww.theverge.com States have been taking the lead on kids online safety.

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Our Pride edition 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ of Pasts Imperfect is out! T. H. M. Gellar-Goad discusses masks. Then, Anne Carson and Sappho, a new book on "How to Be Queer," the queer past of Old Delhi, queering the Bible, new journals via @yaleclassicslib.bsky.social & more. pastsimperfect.substack.com/p/pasts-impe...

Pasts Imperfect (6.13.24)pastsimperfect.substack.com The Power of Masks, Pride, Queer Old Delhi, Asian & Asian American Classical Reception, and More