Reposting so the Moby-Dick fan club feed can nod their heads in agreement about this tragedy 🐋

Andy Kesson@andykesson.bsky.social · yesterday

Tragic to think how few whales will have had the opportunity to read Moby Dick due to basic accessibility issues. 1) English-to-whale translation not yet that advanced; 2) flipper-to-page ratio; 3) omg, that book is getting soggy.

Tragic to think how few whales will have had the opportunity to read Moby Dick due to basic accessibility issues. 1) English-to-whale translation not yet that advanced; 2) flipper-to-page ratio; 3) omg, that book is getting soggy.

Massimo (mirror)@rainmaker1973-m.bsky.social · 2d ago

One of the most fascinating facts about the ocean, is that there are whales alive today who were born before Moby Dick was written. Some of the bowhead whales in the icy waters off of Alaska today are over 200 years old. Original post

Who’s out there teaching their EngLit survey as Paradise Lost + Moby-Dick + Beloved because those three together would be all you need to blow minds 🐋

@lastpositivist.bsky.social · 2d ago

I genuinely do talk about this a fair bit. My extremely boring opinion is that Paradise Lost is the single greatest work of literature out there and I will never stop loving it.

It requires expertise to be able to say, “I do not know the answer to that question, and that is becauae thus far scholarly consensus is that we do not have the knowledge needed at this time to answer that question.” Sometimes “I don’t know” is a far more rigorous answer than people might think.

Today in migraine life: how do I get enough food in myself to not get migraines when I’m nauseous from having migraines and don’t live with someone who brings me food and makes me eat 😭 (Replies off because rando advice will send me over the edge)

Gentle reminder for all that if you have books that are water damaged, crawling with bugs, physically broken, or giving you travel advice for a country that hasn’t existed since the 90s, you can safely throw them away, you don’t need to make them your local thrift store’s problem.

I have never wanted to be a different kind of mammal more than I do right now being able to roll myself into an armored sphere would fix me

Michelle says: Be kind. Always. ❤️@snarkysillysad.bsky.social · 3d ago

The Southern Three-Banded Armadillo (Tolypeutes matacus) is one of the only armadillo species capable of rolling into a completely sealed sphere: #AGoodPlace Source: www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFu...

Paint me like one of your French squirrels

This nonsense about the printing press and universities is simply a different form of the "the Church enforced thought control in the Middle Ages" canard and says quite a bit more about what the speaker thinks about modern institutional surveillance and control than about history.

Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 3d ago

I’ve seen in two culture /higher ed magazines recently the claim that the printing press engendered a crisis of authority at universities bc anyone could publish what they wanted and people could learn things without universities. This is not true.

Now here's a challenge for the men of @ach.bsky.social: volunteer to be next in line for secretary and mix things up so it's not always women and enbies doing that work. The last male secretary was Stéfan Sinclair from 2004-2007. It's been 20 years, my dudes!

Sarah Werner@wynkenhimself.bsky.social · 4d ago

Hoo boy when I was the Secretary on a board and couldn’t find a man to take my place when my term ended because having to do that work of metacognition was too feminized

I'll reframe my earlier Kermit-flail over this ruling and ask instead: can people think of other examples of script being written right down the middle of the ruled line, as in the detail pic here, instead of sitting on it, floating above it, or hanging from it? #paleography #codicology #medievalsky

Dr Alison Ray@liber-ray.bsky.social · 5d ago

NBD, just hanging out with the Cathach, @rialibrary.bsky.social MS 12 R 33 dating to 560-600 AD and the oldest extant Irish manuscript of the Latin Psalter 🤩📜

Hoo boy when I was the Secretary on a board and couldn’t find a man to take my place when my term ended because having to do that work of metacognition was too feminized

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 4d ago

Anyway, your problem isn‘t finding the time to take notes. The problem is that taking notes is thinking and thinking has to be done by someone. women have been doing a lot of metacognition that looks like a task when it’s really thinking.

I like this notetaking example. it is a good case of how gender works. Notetaking has never been about producing a transcript. It is a bureaucratic skill in the 20th c. organixarion because it is SENSEMAKING. Those women socialized to take notes? They have been doing men’s metacognition for them

Jennifer Romig @jennifermromig.bsky.social · 4d ago

Notetaking in meetings is tiny case in point - used to be some predictable social assumptions who would do it; now anyone can offer to do ”notetaking” by turning on the AI listener. Further interesting scenario is human recollection / notes (taken by habit by a person) conflict with AI summary

I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful

hello I am 57 years old and I still can't spell rhythm on the first try

I am in fact neither, I am instead a bibliographer doing some very important but very tedious work to ask for a lot of money and I would truly rather be a boookseller at this moment or even a bookse;;er tbh

Sarah Werner@wynkenhimself.bsky.social · 5d ago

really torn between whether I'm bookse;;er or booseller

really torn between whether I'm bookse;;er or booseller

Finch Collins@finchinthestacks.bsky.social · 5d ago

Friday afternoon catalogue data wrangling -- personally, I'm fond of "bookse;;er."

I believe this 100%. The moral injury of the period, the grief from not just the too and so many deaths but the kinds of lives we had before, the laying bare of disposability, the non covid deaths it sped, the institutional strain, the collective fear and distrust, the prioritization of work anyway

The Fig Economy@figgityfigs.bsky.social · last wk.

One of my Crank Theories of Everything, at least of Everything in the Recent Past, is that we are dealing (badly) with COVID trauma we’d mostly prefer to pretend never happened.

More time on learning how to be critical, yes, but also on learning how to receive criticism!

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 6d ago

I agree with this, I see it in students, who are terrified of being critical of texts, because they "don't want to be mean" which can lead to them trying to give the benefit of the doubt to some truly awful historical authors, ideas and texts

Maybe this is a call for a literacy education around criticism where people learn the difference between invested engagement with texts and just being mean. Every grad program would benefit especially.

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 6d ago

I agree with this, I see it in students, who are terrified of being critical of texts, because they "don't want to be mean" which can lead to them trying to give the benefit of the doubt to some truly awful historical authors, ideas and texts

I actually think that ONLY adjuncts and fixed-term workers should be allowed to write about the future of higher ed

Do you use digitized medieval manuscripts in any capacity? Do you have opinions about the metadata that describes them? We want to hear from you! Please take a moment to fill out our very short survey. Please repost and share with anyone you know who might be interested! forms.gle/sBPXAnoRhwe1...

Digitized Medieval Manuscripts: Metadata Preferences

A brief survey about what metadata formats people prefer to go along with their digitized medieval manuscripts. The results of this survey will be used to consider what metadata we make available thro...

forms.gle

👹 Farewell, Rakesfall, you were a confusing but enticing read and I will be back! But first I need to think more about revenge tragedies and who our real enemies are

Exploring Moby-Dick launches TOMORROW with me and my celebrity friend @robdelaney.bsky.social, who missed his calling as the greatest Melvillean of a generation! exploringthegreats.com/moby-dick

Exploring Moby-Dick — A Herman Melville Podcast & Book Club

Join Professor Hester Blum and actor-writer Rob Delaney as they navigate Moby-Dick, the both devastating and hilarious journey of men at odds with the sea and themselves. Together they explore the cha...

exploringthegreats.com

Do any of my MoCo folks have a good resource (article? Website? Book?) to explain this. My theory has to do with earlier incorporations of Gaithersburg and Rockville, while Silver Spring is a merging of smaller communities over time w/ various definitions given by post office and census.

Love almanacs in all their wild forms. We're doing a huge project on our thousands of almanacs right now. Here's one that were were just working on that also doubles as the 1762 tax records for a parish the town of Newbury, Mass.

I posted this in response to @prisonculture.bsky.social's praise of almanacs and now that I have: Any leads on good histories of almanacs? Not necessarily bibliographical pieces, but about the genre and its use. Feed my distraction, please!!

Sarah Werner@wynkenhimself.bsky.social · last wk.

yes!! they are incredible material objects. I extra love the ones that users have adapted to use as they want—inserting blank leaves so that they can write in their own notes, eg. And the types of knowledge they combine? Like, v local astrological but also standardized measurements!

today is an only book history day because i cannot bear another day of being with the news

Rakesfall! The end is so near! Will I understand it by then? Will that matter? I was wrong about the demons and ghosts, there’s still time to be so wrong about so much more! 👹 off now to go try to remember who had a demon fly into their mouth.