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

Spouse: we are having asparagus Me in my head: no, we are having asparagī or asparagoi. I love that ἀσφάρᾰγος just means plant shoots and that’s why it’s called asparagus. lol etymology! Spouse: … ? Me in my head: Don’t say it. No one cares about your obsession with plurals. Me aloud: “cool!”

submitted 8 hours ago • 20 comments

When it comes to self-defence, skunks and spitting cobras have nothing on the medieval “bonnacon”. It was said to defecate with such explosive force that it could scald targets more than a football pitch away with its fire-like dung. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/bonnacons

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

Well, I was not aware one could be buried in an actual bed (with bedposts and a mattress?) in the early Middle Ages, but tbh I think this feels like my new preferred inhumation route because I really do want to take some comfy pillows + high threadcount sheets to the afterlife with me when I go. 🛌

submitted 12 hours ago • 2 comments

Just wanted to note that @trismegistostm.bsky.social has a searchable database of ancient magical and divinatory texts from the Mediterranean. www.trismegistos.org/magic/search... 🪄🔮 It is quite cool. #DH

submitted 13 hours ago • 2 comments

June 18, 37 CE: Gaius Novius Eunus contracts for a loan of 10,000 sesterces from Evenus Primianus, freedman of Tiberius, using Hesychus, his enslaved man, as loan mediator. The loan contract is written on a wax tablet (below) in Puteoli & put in the archive of the Sulpicii (TP Sulp.51) #χειρόγραφον

submitted 20 hours ago • 2 comments

On a lighter note: will never get over the nipples @ @ on the Dura Europos Heracles. That is all.

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

"Est leo regalis omnium animalium et bestiarum" Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 318; Physiologus Bernensis; around 830 CE; Reims; f.7r (www.e-codices.ch/en/list/one/...)

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Today, people—from students to federal workers, from immigrants to the LGBTQ+ community—find themselves forced to fight deportations, surveillance, and the drastic erosion of fundamental human rights. So, WIRED dedicated a whole issue on How To Win A Fight. Start ⬇️: www.wired.com/story/editor...

submitted 2 days ago • 39 comments

NB: We are now at a 0.47 Gini co-efficient in the US. @walterscheidel.bsky.social and Friesen estim. the Roman Empire’s at 0.42–0.44. America is actually more unequal than Roman Empire, which had about 20%+ enslaved ppl. It was higher in the early Middle Ages but still. www.jstor.org/stable/40599...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Thankful to Prof. Rhiannon Ash for reviewing _Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire_ for @historytoday.com. Definitely an engaged review & I am appreciative to everyone who has read the book and either bought it, listened to it on Audible, or checked it out from the library. 📚

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

🏺 Interested in dissemination of digital bioarchaeological data? Read Solange Bohlong's Internet Archaeology article visit: buff.ly/wQ7jqff Or read her blog post written last year: buff.ly/KwzVKwo Content warning: This blog post contains images of human remains.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

On June 11, Pompeii’s historical reconstruction of the “perfume garden” 🪴 at the House of Hercules / perfumer reopened. “800 antique roses 🌹, 1,200 violets, 1,000 ruscus plants, as well as cherries, vines & cotton apples.” So let’s chat historical perfumes & gardens. www.facebook.com/share/1G9pgy...

submitted 1 day ago • 4 comments

It’s officially sundress season, so that means this week’s astonishing artifact is the world’s oldest surviving woven dress! 🧪🏺

submitted 2 days ago • 9 comments

Those papyrologists saw the value of the #NEH, right from the start: apps.neh.gov/publicquery/... Summer institute in #papyrology to be conducted at Yale University, 1966.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

I did an event in DC & there was a party for donors etc after. Was talking to 2 ppl & I said "Things are so bad." They said "No this is how it is. Things swing one way, then another. It's normal." That's when I realized why Dems are toothless. They have no idea what this is. Frogs boiling in water.

submitted 2 days ago • 1463 comments

Lost in this 4,500 word article is the opaque recognition that LLMs are the tech sector's solution to human labor cost. This is not an issue of labor (we have it) or value (we pay for it), it's an imposed concern about productivity from an economic point of view (it's expensive!).

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Have just discovered the first interface for Perseus 1.0 in 1992, and look at that little Atlas icon! Love to see that from the jump, Perseus included an atlas component. Citation: Rockwell, Geoffrey, et al. “The Interface of the Digital Library: The Perseus Digital Library as a Case Study.”

submitted 2 days ago • 4 comments

Writing a chapter on digital mapping for a handbook & note that the (open access) History of Cartography Project got their first grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (#NEH) in 1981. Their creation of a framework for cartography + emerging GIS= the spatial turn in U.S. humanities. 🗺️

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

submitted 3 days ago • 53 comments

“individ. sources would fade yet further into the background, as users trust tools like NotebookLM to offer cogent-seeming summaries of enormous troves of texts w/o much attention to their origins or agendas.” NB: You can’t write good history w/o deep, factual context & empathy. AI has neither 🎁 🔗

submitted 2 days ago • 6 comments

Didn’t know there was an entire DH project dedicated to a database for Latin poetry from antiquity into the Middle Ages—but love that it includes (rightly so) all the inscribed poetry on stone in the Carmina Latina Epigraphica. www.mqdq.it/ce/presentaz.... My fav? Obelisk of Constantius II (357 CE)

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

Minnesota noice

submitted 3 days ago • 51 comments

To: @msnbc.com Please note that nothing is more important for the fate of democracy in the U.S. right now than truthful, substantiated reporting. Please support & defend your reporters & staff willing to tell us the truth.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Me explaining Rome in the 4th century CE using Succession memes.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

It’s just over one week until MAMO 2025 (the Middle Ages in the Modern World conference) at KCL. Speakers have pulled it out of the bag with their abstracts - huge range of medievalisms will be represented. 100+ papers, events, workshops, performances. Still time to register! 👇 themamo.org/about/

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment