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ajw87.bsky.social
Interested in the Columbian exchange. Philology. Manuscripts. Plants. #OldSundanese #MedievalIndonesia #TupianLanguages Old site: https://indomedieval.medium.com/ New site: https://medium.com/@WestsWorld he/him
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"Cajus" and "Annanas" - both words of Tupi origin, attested in a text from the 1590s describing Asia.

submitted 9 hours ago • 1 comment

the all-time Gladwell demolition remains this - askakorean.blogspot.com/2013/07/cult... - but this thread is a close second

submitted 1 day ago • 8 comments

A HISTORY OF WATER is pretty good - it's written well, and you'll definitely learn something from it, especially if you know nothing about Portugal - but quite a lot of the Portuguese text is wrong or transcribed poorly (e.g. *concecão and *conceiçao instead of "conceição" or "concepção").

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

The power went out nationwide yesterday - all of Portugal, and Spain too. We had no electricity, internet, or phone reception for about eleven hours; power was only restored here at about 22:30 last night. I don't think this has ever happened before.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

For #FolkloreSunday theme of "coast": Relief panels on Borobudur Temple in Central Java, showing the past life of a Bodhisattva as a turtle. He saved sailors from drowning and being eaten by sea monster. Finally, he taught them about the Dharma of self-sacrifice. 📷: Anandajoti/Photo Darma

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Apparently the 27th of April is World Tapir Day, so: The English word 'tapir' comes from the Tupi word "tapi'ira", which meant 'tapir'. (Tupi was spoken along the coast of Brazil when Europeans arrived in the 16th century.)

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

#WorldTapirDay: Plumbate vessel "depicting a shaman or priest wearing a tapir head headdress, his face peeking out from inside of the creature's mouth." Maya/Toltec, c.900-1200CE, 8.8x6.4cm. Baird's Tapir is the largest terrestrial mammal native to Maya territory. liveauctioneers.com/item/6494713...

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

It’s worth following Lee for his tracking of this (and generally). If you don’t spend a lot of time flicking through physical papers it may astonish you just how many anti-trans stories they print, and how weak the spin on many of them is. It’s a relentless moral panic.

submitted 2 days ago • 10 comments

I wrote a thing about 'AD' and 'CE', and which one is best. medium.com/@WestsWorld/...

submitted 3 days ago • 12 comments

The curious thing about this is that I think (at least some) early modern Europeans would have agreed with it. I've been working with António Galvão's Treatise on the Discoveries (1563) recently, and Galvão includes among the 'discoveries' Damião de Góis's travels around Europe.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Since apparently we're doing this *again*: 1. An education in the humanities is good and lots of people should have one. 2. If you think that an education in the humanities is the only way to learn critical thinking then your education in the humanities has not taught you much critical thinking.

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

Yes. In a sane media environment, the bathroom ban would be the end of anyone treating 'gender critical feminists' as anything other than a hate group. It's a straightforwardly bigoted policy that imposes an insane 'solution' to a nonexistent problem.

submitted 3 days ago • 25 comments

I wrote a thing about 'AD' and 'CE', and which one is best. medium.com/@WestsWorld/...

submitted 3 days ago • 12 comments