James Baillie @JubalBarca@scholar.social
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- He/Him
Kartvelologist, historian & digital humanist at the University of Vienna, doing a PhD on medieval Georgian prosopography. Also game designer, liberal policy nerd, provider of cute animal pictures, writer in various formats, etc.
Joined Jan 2020
As usual, if you lack institutional access but are interested in the topic area, do drop me a message.
This is my first big peer-reviewed paper in a sizeable journal, so all thoughts welcome :)
My new paper, entitled "Alternative Database Structures for Prosopographical Research", is out in the International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing!
https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/ijhac.2021.0265
In this, I discuss using graphs for connected data about past people, and propose terms & divisions to help each other understand what we're doing with that data: based on that, I outline a "Person-prosopon" data concept designed for cohesive models rather than indexing persons.
A recent bit of #wildlifephotography - I rarely manage to get anything good on airborne birds, but this kestrel hung still enough that I managed to get a few moderately sharp shots off :)
(Taken last Friday at Perchtoldsdorfer Heide, just south of Vienna)
I'm doing a talk about my work next week for the Caucasus Through Time Network! Do drop by if you'd like to find out more about what I do.
Programme:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ESRbhDiuIidLMEcYRloAz5euZqI8W8cYyPNNM47j-OY/edit
Register:
https://ucl.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUpc-2gqzMrHdKgnqkI-qj___9_A371VrZ2
#history #historodons #medieval #medievalmastodon #digitalhumanities #Caucasus
James Baillie
boosted
Updates from the Forge, issue 43, is out now! Read and share our latest newsletter to discover roguish innkeepers, aerial combat, galactic-scale wars, terrible Dragon Age comedy skits, cute hamsters, and more!
https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=6412.msg146207#msg146207
James Baillie
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I held an online book launch party on Monday which included a virtual library, hide and seek, and a jaunty stroll through a fantasy land (as well as a reading from my new book)!
If you missed it and want to see how it went, you can watch the VOD!
https://victoriacorva.xyz/2021/10/08/book-launch-party-success-feel-free-to-watch-how-it-went/
The really funny thing for me about Facebook going down today was that it started during a meeting I was having... about writing party policy on how to break up/rein in/diversify the social media landscape and tackle online abuse and disinformation.
Pretty odd coming out of an hour long meeting on that to find that the biggest offender has very, very dramatically beaten you to the punch.
My grumpy take about Facebook being down is that now we're going to have days of smug online posts about how it'll have been great to "force people off their computer to talk to real people" written by people who assume nobody can really possibly live alone or be isolated ever.
Got to the bit of making my current game where I'm writing all the player romance lines. Given I can't get romance lines *in other computer games* right, let alone work out how any of this works in realspace, I am feeling utterly and drastically underqualified.
James Baillie
boosted
My fellow openEngiadina developer @rustra was arrested in Minsk, Belarus on charges of organizing protests last year. He has reported being tortured.
This is a strong reminder of the ongoing repression in Belarus.
Resist repression and support victims!
UKpol, Lib Dems:
Half a day left to go, but it's not been a bad Lib Dem conference from my perspective: a good consultation session on Universal Basic Income, plus getting that amended into the core party themes paper; getting a solid paragraph on LGBT+ rights into the themes paper too; adding some text on support for cooperatives to our international tax policy; and getting a paper on press and social media regulation referred back to committee due to issues with its digital rights proposals.
James Baillie
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@anarchiv I had a really bad date going to a mountain troll's home once, but I guess it's all water under the bridge now.
James Baillie
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Liberalism, UK-Pol
Got four amendments submitted for Lib Dem conference later this month. First activism I've touched in a while, and I think I'm still really too tired for it after getting very burned out working on the party's Universal Basic Income working group so much earlier this year. But hopefully some of them will get tabled and will help push conversations in good directions within the party.
James Baillie
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I was pinned to my chair by Fate, Destiny and Appointment.
My sister loved her cats having these names.
"Fate has chosen you!"
"My Destiny!"
"Can't go out tonight, I have an Appointment."
We usually just called them Fey, Dessy and Mint.
If only she knew...
I sighed, "Alright... do I get a special catchphrase to go with these magical powers?"
"Sure," Fey purred.
"Nothing too wordy though," Dessy mewed.
Mint just snored.
#TootFic #MicroFiction #Writing #TerylsTales #Caturday #UrbanFantasy
James Baillie
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What if we put a donkey's head on top of Dr Wily's body!
It'd look something... like this!
Gods, access to public services for housing support in #Vienna is unbelievably bad. The concept of just answering an email helpfully, when they have staff perfectly capable of doing so, is a wholly alien one: they won't even answer phone calls if they don't come from Austrian numbers, so arrivals from other countries are just screwed.
It's an open season invitation to bad landlords and it really shouldn't be acceptable.
James Baillie
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"You live in a forest? That's amazing, I love forests."
"Which forests?"
"Pardon?"
"Every forest is different, has its own personality, its own dreams and ambitions."
"Like people?"
"Exactly."
"That's so cool! I love all forests!"
"..."
"..."
"Fair. Some forests love all people."
#MicroFiction #TootFic #SmallStories
James Baillie
boosted
sustainability + poverty
Have you noticed that people living comfortably enough to opine about it are often dramatically out of touch about consumer goods?
Like it's cute to say "patch clothes! re-sole shoes!" but that's not how inexpensive clothing works any longer. You can't repair shoes from Walmart; they're not even sewn. You can't patch $10 jeans. You can patch $30 jeans, absolutely! The $10 ones fail to disintegration; they're not thriftable. First job: help everyone into the $30 ones.
James Baillie
boosted
My sister and I spent years mapping the flight patterns of local dragons.
We never knew why we were assigned this task; but it was better than mucking out stables. We were unsupervised and given plenty of good food for the trekking and camping.
We'd make up stories behind route changes, for behaviors we didn't understand, or why some simply stopped flying by.
Then we learned about dragon-slayers, and began making slightly inaccurate maps.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Kartvelologist, historian & digital humanist at the University of Vienna, doing a PhD on medieval Georgian prosopography. Also game designer, liberal policy nerd, provider of cute animal pictures, writer in various formats, etc.
Joined Jan 2020
