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Dan Tompkins Profile picture
Dan Tompkins
@dan_pericles
Retired classicist, Temple U; current research on career of Moses Finley and language and politics in Thucydides. RT = "Interesting." RTs may be condensed.
Jan 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Must always note that it's Melian oligarchs who got them into that fix (5.84). The demos had no say. Things might have turned out different.

Saul Alinsky and later organizers used the Melian Dialogue as a training text. I downloaded this years ago, now the link is dead. But
1/ worth having.
Reading at a training included the Melian Dialogue. The Melians kept to their principles, did not give in, and got their fellow citizens killed and enslaved as a result.

Trainees discussed the text. Then Saul Alinsky responded: 2/
Jan 8, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Do we need an anthology on the nature and degree of Big Tech "control" of voters? First we heard that Cambridge Analytica / the Mercers etc. cattle-shuted voters into Facebook-like "lookalike audiences" (e.g. Harcourt, _Exposed_).

Then popular audiences heard in the Atlantic 1/ that Facebook (_if_ I understand correctly) didn't manipulate of voters but rather, created a machine that autonomously - is that the adverb of the year 2021? - sorted us out: “Facebook’s advertising algorithm has gotten so much better at automating campaign 2/
Jan 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Thinking of what to call a person who seems to fall short, I wondered what the antonym is of "salt of the earth." Matthew 5:13 comes close: "... salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to 1/ be thrown out and trodden under foot," εἰς οὐδὲν ἰσχύει ἔτι εἰ μὴ βληθὲν ἔξω καταπατεῖσθαι.
As always the original helps: "Lost its taste" is τὸ ἅλας μωρανθῇ, where the verb is μωραίνω, "become insipid" i.e. "stupid": 2/
Jan 2, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
2 more bits: a) I've been reminded that Eliz. Haddon did live in a cave near the mouth of the Cooper River at least for some time; b) the Mennonites, Wiki says, had a settlement plan that required level land, and all by the Delaware R. was taken. They were offered E. Falls 1/ but too hilly, so Penn suggested "land a little further east, near the top of a gentle hill between two creeks, and Pastorius agreed. Germantown was thus founded along a Lenni Lenape trail four miles (6 km) north of Philadelphia." (Wiki) "Lenni Lenape" has its dark side: the 2/
Dec 19, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Working on the oligarchic coup in Athens, 411 BCE, 8.66-69, as I notice news of Manchin's rejection of BBB. Lattimore's translation:
"as the work of numerous intelligent men, the undertaking not unnaturally went forward, although it was a major one; for it was difficult, in 1/ close to the 100th year after the tyrants were overthrown, to end the freedom of the Athenian people, who were not only not subjects but over more than half of that time had themselves been accustomed to rule over others."

"Not unnaturally" isn't quite right: "unreasonably" 2/
Dec 15, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
No one has been charged with "insurrection" for the Capitol attack, as far as I can find. The word certainly appears in the news but prosecutors are being careful, possibly aware of the difficulty of broad charges in court.
Americans are seldom charged with "treason," 1/ which the founders wisely framed more tightly than the Brits.
Sidebar: Nathanael Tomkins, no direct relation, was hanged _in front of his own house_ on Fetter Lane in 1643 for treason in Waller's Plot. His mate Challoner said: 2/
Nov 17, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Bill Grueskin's column is meaningful, but I wish that as a professional he'd acknowledged the challenges reporters faced. Here's Goldman to Wemple: "I might have figured [that the FBI had interviewed the dossier’s primary sub-source in January 2017] in early 2019 or late 2018.1/ An extraordinary moment: Right? I knew, s---, there were problems. So now there’s some indication that there were problems with the dossier and the FBI had a sense of it. But there were only a handful of people in that room with the source [in January 2017]. And I couldn’t 2/
Nov 8, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Translating with Google, I'd say this is looks like an extremely useful survey of the dangers posed by AI, most strikingly "the algorithm may decide to fire when an opponent who takes aim with a weapon approaches but it could also decide to fire because a set of reasonable 1/ conditions (gender, age, height, ethnicity) or not (facial expression, shoe brand, time of day and folds on the dress) regardless of whether the individual is an enemy. Added to this is the threat posed by the adversaries who can, on the one hand, compromise the data on which 2/
Oct 29, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I'm not a lawyer and have no standing, but doesn't this concern the cluster of issues Adrian Vermeule discussed, forcefully, in _Law's Abnegation_ (2016). And there, it seems (I emphasize "seems" because what the hell do I know), Levinson argues that the administrative state 1/ is here to stay, largely because lawyers have welcomed it (hence "abnegation"). Sandy Levinson says:
'What is so fascinating about Vermeule’s thesis—and sure to spark some vigorous debate (though not by me)—is that “law’s abnegation” is not the product of “external” 2/
Sep 10, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It's a bit surprising to find a review citing Peter Green's remark (1996) that "Modern Europe owes nothing to the Achaemenids. We may admire their imposing if oppressive architecture, and gaze in something like awe - from prostration-level, as it were - at the great apadana of 1/ Persepolis, ... Yet the civilisation which could produce such things is almost as alien to us as that of the Aztecs, and for not dis­ similar reasons. Achaemenid Persia produced no great literature or philosophy: her one lasting contribution to mankind was, character­istically 2/
Sep 10, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Intriguing discussion, thanks! Big picture, so much has changed. Nate Cohn reports (NYT) that 41% of voters in 2000 were 4-year college grads, vs. 5% in '52. That has meant huge increases in staffing, and even I, a union activist, can understand this has financial 1/ consequences for institutions. CA residents went to Berkeley in the '60s with very low fees and decently paid faculty. Now, with huge enrollments, maintaining a decently paid labor force requires massive adjustment (I have not researched this!).
Watching the institutional 2/
Sep 8, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
One reason that we don't take in the near-equivalence of allied lethality (drones!) is that the press and the generals have often ignored it. So here's General Samit on CNN in June:
Afghan general faces Taliban with 'optimism'
Amanpour

cnn.com/videos/tv/2021…

Then he had 1/ an NYT op-ed a few weeks ago blaming it all on Biden, Nowhere did we here of this, now reported by Anand Gopal in New Yorker:

General Sadat’s Blackhawks began attacking houses,seemingly at random.They fired on Wali’s house, and his daughter was struck in the head by shrapnel 2/
Sep 8, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I agree about right-wing attacks on CRT, disagree with critique of Edsall, who covers a range of respondents. Too much space to Galston and Haidt, but the top of the article has some welcome entrants. I don't mind hearing that liberals think ill of hate speech.
I spend two days1/ 15 years ago, in a room with PA state legislators (majority were GOP) and David Horowitz. DH was trying to convince them that public universities were brainwashing students. We showed he had no case. He was also so personally obnoxious to the Republicans that they washed 2/
Sep 8, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is a gem of a blackboard item and the comments are splendid. Quickly on the latter: yes, Thucydides is very hard to translate. One reason is that so much is so ambiguous. A good idea to read a few different translations together. It helps to know Greek but - as the 1/ scholarship reveals - that doesn't solve all the problems. / Fritz Stern was wonderful. / The Strassler edition is invaluable. Maps one reason. / Everyone has his or her favorite readings. I like W.R. Connor's 1984 _Thucydides_, which changed the way many (including 2/
Sep 8, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Relevant article:

Europe's far-right educational projects and their vision for the international order 
Dorit Geva, Felipe G Santos
International Affairs, 97.5 (2021) 1395–1414
Hungarian PM Orbán and former French National Front leader Marion Maréchal are seeking to 1/ establish “ new globalist illiberal order,” extend elements of the globalist project while reclaiming a radicalized view of Christian democracy. To Europe's far-right, the global order is composed of strong nations who need to defend their sovereignty on ‘cultural’ issues 2/
Sep 7, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
"But in 2019, as the U.S. was holding talks with Taliban leaders in Doha, Qatar, the Afghan government and American forces moved jointly on Sangin one last time, launching perhaps the most devastating assault that the valley witnessed in the entire war. Shakira and other 1/ villagers fled for the desert, but not everyone could escape. Ahmed Noor Mohammad, who owned a pay-phone business, decided to wait to evacuate, because his twin sons were ill. His family went to bed to the sound of distant artillery. That night, an American bomb slammed into 2/
Aug 1, 2021 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
Since "conservatives" continue to support Murray, I'm re-upping comments I once wrote on the Heckman review. To my knowledge, CM never attempted to reply.

Lessons from the Bell Curve
James J. Heckman
Journal of Political Economy, 1995

Heckman is a Nobelist who's done 1/ important work on the labor force & education. Sometimes called “conservative,” he’s impressively insistent on sound methodology and accuracy.
Reviewing Bell Curve in 1995, he stated his own reservations about federal programs and commended the authors on some points. 2/
Jul 29, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
John Branstetter in PSQ 2017. What do others think?

Arendt claims that Hobbes's response to the problems of England's 1640s was to philosophically legitimize an entirely new way of viewing human nature. This new view constituted people as apolitical subjects who no longer 1/ made independent moral judgments. Hobbes divorced the public from the private, and by channeling people's endeavors into material self-interest, he eliminated any resistance to state power
…
Carl Schmitt, the Nazi jurist, approved of the rejection of private judgment that 2/
Jul 17, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Misinformation and false positives fill the air. NPR re-reran their "psychopath test" piece this AM:
"In 2/3 of the cases, the scores were substantially different. And the differences were not random. Psychologists hired by the prosecution consistently scored people higher, 2/ found more psychopaths. Psychologists hired by the defense scored people lower, found fewer psychopaths,



And just in today, a new and interesting paper on how ill-trained "models" in AI that "poorly modelled age groups and races, ImageNet classes..., 3/
Jul 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Facebook (FB) is in the news on two linked fronts: we’re learning a) about FB termination of a unit that revealed what sort of posts were being shared; b) in particular that FB is being used to circulate false anti-vaccination stories.
a)Kevin Roose in NYT: 1/ nytimes.com/2021/07/14/tec…
b)Facebook In Mississippi:
apnews.com/article/techno…

There’s quite a story here, one element being the power of algorithms to create “lookalike audiences” without even intending harm. I’ll send more if asked. For the moment, there’s a resemblance 2/
Jun 2, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Blackwell: "Hittite misperceptions of Mycenaean world, 13th c BCE." If like me you've spent too little time thinking about the Bronze Age, this just-out essay will prove refreshing, a dig into Hittite royal correspondence showing that the decision-makers misunderstood their 1/ counterparts. This was my intro to Hittite rebel Piyamaradu, whose "marauding spanned nearly a half-century and was the bane of several Hittite rulers. The notoriety of Piyamaradu’s activities may have inspired an array of legendary figures—one thinks of Priam, Pelops, or 2/