Luke Sunderland

Rural Jurist. Dogmatic In My Midwestern Modesty. Lukewarm Takes On Philosophy, Economics, and Law.

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

Good riddance. DOGE created chaos, spread misinformation & incompetence, violated numerous laws, targeted minorities, killed lifesaving aid funding, likely leaked confidential info, and fed the myth that waste alone drives deficits - all to produce rounding-error savings.

[Archaeology & Art @archaeologyart]

On this 17th-century Ottoman silk, crosses, seraphim faces, and Greek religious abbreviations sit side by side within the same repeating pattern. The letters in the design are arranged in reverse. Read normally, the phrase **ΙϹ ΧϹ ΝΙΚΑ** is a Greek abbreviation meaning 'Jesus Christ conquers.'

This piece is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's made of silk; the technique is a lampas weave featuring a twill pattern on a satin ground. It measures 109.2 × 57.2 cm.

This fabric is likely a fragment of a phelonion. A phelonion is a voluminous outer vestment worn by priests during liturgy in the Eastern Christian tradition.

After 1453, imperial weaving workshops in Ottoman Constantinople ( Konstantiniyye and Bursa kept producing silks with Christian iconography; these textiles reached as far as Moscow. It's known that in 1634, Russian envoys transported a similar Ottoman silk from the same pattern family - woven with metal-wrapped threads - from Constantinople to Moscow.

[Archaeology & Art @archaeologyart]

Vincent van Gogh: Three Cicadas, 1889

[H Y R O @heyrow]

No CGI. Just Soviet filmmaking.

All four parts of Bondarchuk’s adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1966-1967), considered among the best films of all time, are now uploaded in Mosfilm’s YouTube account in glorious and restored 4K.

[Barbarian Herodotus @BBHerodotus]

The home of Cormac McCarthy outside of Santa Fe

[My Friend Don @TheDonStein]

This, uh, is not exactly the sort of thing most advisors would encourage an executive to admit on a microphone, in public, on purpose.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

It is important to resist the commodification of basic human needs. Food, water and healthcare cannot be subordinated to market considerations or geopolitical interests. Access to adequate food is a fundamental human right grounded in the dignity of every person. Meeting this need not only alleviates suffering but also addresses underlying causes of geopolitical instability. Indeed, food security is an essential component of global and integral security. https://t.co/DgkM9RegJ7

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

BREAKING: US-Iran deal includes plan to establish $300 billion fund for Iran

[David Rattigan @davidmrattigan]

buying this and then dying immediately and forcing my descendants to finish building it over the next 100 years

[PAW (Peter) @Peter88902568]

The resident of Pompeii who was consuming it at the time.

[Brendan Fraser Crane @bf_crane]

Sidestepping the question but Pilate is such a great literary character. Vain, irritated, prickled by a conscience he thought he long killed, projecting power while knowing it’s really a powder keg. “What is Truth?” as both cynical realpolitik & a genuine inching toward the light

[Brendan Fraser Crane @bf_crane]

Morgan Wallen serves such an interesting purpose in American life. Everyone interprets proximity to him as a coded reactionary message, he’s like our Wagner in that way and only that way.

[Gareth Harney @OptimoPrincipi]

A dazzling Roman glass phalera medal portraying the beloved imperial prince Germanicus and his three infant sons, one of whom was the notorious future emperor Caligula. Unearthed in Colchester (ancient Camulodunum), the military decoration very likely came to Britannia with the Roman invasion of 43 AD, adorning the armour of a senior officer.
Specifically, the medal may have belonged to a soldier of Legio XX Valeria Victrix, one of the four primary legions that spearheaded the conquest of the island. The Twentieth was stationed at Camulodunum – in the first permanent legionary fortress built in Britain – until the year 49, when the base was converted into the island’s first civic colonia and populated by many veterans.
Further, the legion had deep historical ties to Germanicus, having fought in his bloody wars across the Rhine in the aftermath of the Varus disaster. While Germanicus had been dead for around 25 years by the time this glass phalera arrived in Britain, and the murderous reign of his son Caligula had been and gone, his legacy was evidently still being celebrated among the soldiery decades later.

[Eileen Stephenson @byzyeileen]

Compared to those of the crowned kings in Europe, these are elegantly simple.

[HerodotusWave @HerodotusWave]

The bas-reliefs on the eastern staircase of the Apadana Palace in Persepolis, Iran.

[Arty the Art Historian @ArtyArtHistory]

Cathédrale Ste Cécile, Albi, France

[Catalunya Color @CatalunyaColor]

L'absis de la Sagrada Família, el 1930.

[dr greg is historicising ✍️✨ @thewastedworld]

Hildegard von Bingen, "Days of Creation" (c. 1151).