Hello, Scholars (& Friends!)
My undergrad degree was in philosophy and I passed the bar exam in 2012 (oof) so now I teach (yay). My interests are broad and varied; I enjoy reading academic papers on random topics like feudalism and the role of priestesses in ancient Rome.
I'm working on an epic fantasy novel inspired by the environmental crises in northeast Africa, but I won't talk much about the writing process nearly as often as I'll squee about obscure research dives.
I am speaking about ancient spears at the online International Ancient Warfare Conference on Saturday, the Zoom is open to the public and I may share my talk later https://www.bookandsword.com/2022/06/21/cross-post-international-ancient-warfare-conference-2022/ #conference #historodons @JubalBarca @eleanorkonik
@Cyborgneticz
Got a review back recently saying that a certain ascetic source and a hagiographic source aren't thematically connected, because the latter "is clearly about jewelry." Ok, then what is the "most precious pearl" mentioned over and over and over all about?
two-handed swords in Warring States China
Two-handed swords were common in southern China by 300 BCE, but in Europe they don't become common until after 1200 CE.
Dr. Ben Judkins argues that this was possible not because of developments in metallurgy, but because of the mighty Asian rhinoceros and armour made from its hide https://chinesemartialstudies.com/2020/10/27/roaring-dragons-and-vanishing-rhinos-the-longsword-sword-in-ancient-china/ @eleanorkonik #sword #archaeology #china
Have you noticed that you can't see the numbers on the boosts and favourites from the timeline, only after you click on a post? This is another great feature, not a bug. This works against the gamification you see in corporate social media sites. Preventing the economy of likes and retweets that drives behaviours elsewhere. I personally love this.
I don't like wading into Meta Discourse but since it is clogging my TL right now: if you want people to spread out better over the Fediverse etc etc, tooting that people shouldn't join Masto dot social is not very useful in isolation. Tell people where you think people SHOULD go instead, and not just "a smaller instance", share specific recommendations of "if you're interested in X, go to Y.Z" that will help people point their friends in the right direction!
I was just reminded that markdown+pandoc is a kickass, open source combo that not everyone might be aware of.
Markdown is a super simple rich text markup language that I use every day for notes, recipes, instant messaging, and longer texts like essays and blog posts. It's even supported on most Mastodon instances.
Pandoc is an "under the hood" tool that allows you to convert any document to pretty much any other format worth using. It supports bibliographies and citations in markdown files.
So I guess it's time for my #introductions
I'm Andrea, a landscape archaeologist based in Rome. I did my PhD on spatial distribution of Iron Age archaeological sites along the Euphrates river.
Currently, I am working on remote sensing tools applied to cultural heritage and arch. landscape studies, plus on Historic Landscape Characterization in the Near East, and similar.
Super happy to have found this community on Mastodon!
New post: two links on armoured fighting vehicles https://www.bookandsword.com/2022/04/18/two-links-on-armoured-fighting-vehicles/
Most people will throw out a cardboard cutout of a human being -- regardless of how or why they obtained it -- within the first year of ownership. The amount who don't is statistically insignificant.
But here's the spooky part. Recycling centers report receiving way fewer cardboard cutouts of people than surveys estimate are actually disposed of in curbside recycling every year.
So where are they going?
New post: Achaemenid clothing in Greek eyes https://www.bookandsword.com/2022/04/09/achaemenid-clothing-in-greek-eyes/ #historodons #fashion #mastoArt
Ohey, re-#introductions look fun.
I'm an out-on-leave and increasingly likely to be former social studies teacher who moonlights as an amateur researcher into obscure history and weird science, aka I write scifi & fantasy stories where I work really hard to avoid eurocentric perspectives... which means I do a ton of research, which means I ask a lot of questions.
but I try to answer things sometimes too 😅
Welcome new friends!
Do I know anybody who can eli5 this paper?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15967874/
"Capsaicin can regulate VDSC function by altering bilayer elasticity. [...] may underlie the promiscuous regulation of membrane protein function by capsaicin and capsazepine-and by amphiphilic drugs generally."
My obscure history & science newsletter is currently sitting at 998 subscribers, so to distract myself from waiting for 2 more fellow nerds to discover it, I figured I'd offer to write microfiction for anyone who posts a prompt.
Pictures, facts, research papers — all's welcome! Bonus points if I learn something 👀
Here's an example of what I mean:
https://newsletter.eleanorkonik.com/stint
This one was inspired by a discussion about the pros vs. cons of apprenticeship systems & the word "shift"
I teach (& research) ancient civilizations, then write stories & articles inspired by all eras of history... which involves a fair amount of notetaking ;)