elstersen.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

European countries by the EXACT shade of red in their flag. Simple but lovey idea for a map. Source: buff.ly/2Ym68uO

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

Decided, on balance, not to terrify my (week 3) hieroglyphs students with "Oh, I'm afraid the deflector shield will be quite operational when your friends arrive" in Middle Egyptian.

submitted 12 days ago • 10 comments

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

European folkways endless in variety and wonder www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y8X...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

The word 'sorry' is quite similar to 'sorrow', both in terms of form and meaning. However, 'sorry' and 'sorrow' aren't etymologically related in any way. 'Sorry' derives from 'sore'. It's related to Dutch 'zeer' (pain; painful). 'Sorrow', in turn, is related to 'zorg' (worry; care). Here's more:

submitted 4 days ago • 6 comments

Minoan vases with octopuses are always a delight, but relatively common. This rare vase shows a different type of marine animal: an argonaut. It's an octopus-like animal that lives on the seabed in a shell. The Minoans were masters of depicting aquatic creatures. 🕰️c1500 BC 🏛️📷Heraklion Museum

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

Enjoy this #throwbackthursday: I created this Japanese calendar for Fool magazine in 2020. it was very interesting to learn about the naming of seasonal changes and to try out a different illustration style (chose a sort of woodblock (mis)printing effect) 1/3 #data📊 #illustration

submitted 31 days ago • 3 comments

For #MosaicMonday, a realistic impression in the medium of mosaic that perfectly captures my expressions over the last few weeks. Two panels from a coffered floor mosaic depicting Dionysian masks, from a Roman villa excavated in Tusculum. 🏺 #ancientbluesky 1st c. CE, #PalazzoMassimo, Rome. 📸 me

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

When I was but a wee preteen, my uncle presented me with a Sharp cassette recorder and two tapes. Some russian underground rock, and "A Hard Day's Night" by Beatles. I just realized that "A Hard Day's Night" was as old back then, as that day is old now (think early Björk, Radiohead, the Prodigy)

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

I missed the moment when James Jean joined (but he only has 17 posts, so it's excusable?) One of my favorite modern artists!!

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

1970s just peaked

submitted 7 days ago • 5 comments

To the left is a Persion warrior on the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, to the right is an Ottoman sultan's "kaftan". Neither look much "masculine" in today's sense.😁 (Anonymous photos)

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

"There is still so little available to read on Slavic mythology in English (and for adults), and The Slavic Myths is to be welcomed as a wonderful introduction to the matrix of story in the cultures of Eastern Europe". My review: drfrancisyoung.com/2025/02/15/r... @thamesandhudson.bsky.social

submitted 7 days ago • 3 comments

Burgh

submitted 7 days ago • 20 comments

How better to celebrae #ValentinesDay than floating on a sea of cinnabar with Perseus and Andromeda and the severed head of Medusa (carelessly hidden behind Perseus' naked butt)? Ah, love! ❤️ Room of the Cupids, House of the Vettii, #Pompeii. 🏺 #ancientbluesky 📸 me

submitted 9 days ago • 2 comments

I like to post contemporary Japanese artists on this feed from time to time. Tetsuya Noguchi (b.1980) is known for his images of samurai in everyday situations. They are often really funny. This is his painting, "Warrior Takes Armoured Cat for a Walk".

submitted 10 days ago • 9 comments

Chag Tu Bishvat Sameach! #tubishvat BL Add 21160; 'the Yonah Pentateuch'; 13th century; Germany; f.187v

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

How long until the Library of Congress faces a purge? Should historians be getting what resources they can now? I'm imagining anything related to the civil rights movement, anti-fascism, and even public health could be gone soon.

submitted 10 days ago • 481 comments

Got my first "Violating an Executive Order" and "I'll make sure you lose federal funding" parent threat today for teaching "DEI" books in our upcoming "Liberty and Justice" themed unit. Even in "Blue" Massachusetts we're dealing with this. Anyway, don't obey in advance, and don't obey later.

submitted 10 days ago • 1463 comments

Yeltsin once asked Clinton to give him Europe. Ru thinks the US has owned WEurope post-WWII and EEurope too post-Cold War. Trump signalling desire to abandon Europe, emboldens russia to try to take it. This anachronistic language describes how russia thinks and now how Trump talks/thinks(?) too.

submitted 11 days ago • 5 comments

Ingots were transport units used to ship everything from precious metals to pigments to glass. Perhaps the most amazing are the cobalt glass ingots from the Late Bronze Age Uluburun shipwreck ca. 1300 BCE. Mesopotamian-Egyptian workshop exchanges for the win! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

submitted 11 days ago • 6 comments

I gave up waiting at home for the internet to be restored and visited my local library instead. My latest article all about the Japanese goddess Benzaiten has FINALLY been uploaded. It's longer than what I'll normally share but I hope people enjoy it anyway. open.substack.com/pub/curiouso...

submitted 13 days ago • 2 comments

Stumbled on this, in the Wikipedia article on Stephen A. Douglas, about his move from Vermont to Illinois. As someone who grew up in the flat midwest and was fascinated by mountains after encountering them elsewhere, it's interesting to read about someone who found the reverse liberating.

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

The left map shows the parts of Germany with the highest percentage of Syrian refugees. The right map shows public support for the anti-migrant AfD. Something to keep in mind when reading stories that posit a direct link between refugee numbers and support for the far-right.

submitted 13 days ago • 12 comments

Buying American books from Germany is pretty hard :(

submitted 13 days ago • 2 comments

That's one of my favorite examples of animal art!

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

On identity: Isaak Levitan, one of the most iconic Russian landscape painters. But also born in then-Poland, present-day Lithuania, Jewish (grandson on a rabbi), forced-displaced twice! (Jews expelled from Moscow in 1879, 1992), bullied from School of Painting. Later got famous, popular, died at 39.

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Otto and Elise Hampel were Germans who wrote and spread hundreds of anti Nazi cards across Berlin during WWII. They were beheaded with a guillotine in 1943. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_an...

submitted 15 days ago • 5 comments