Nebuchadnezzar casting the three holy children into the fire; and an icon is hung from a hook. BL Add MS 19352; 1066; Theodore Psalter; Eastern Mediterranean (Constantinople); f.202r
Of that of which we cannot speak
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Nebuchadnezzar casting the three holy children into the fire; and an icon is hung from a hook. BL Add MS 19352; 1066; Theodore Psalter; Eastern Mediterranean (Constantinople); f.202r
Theodore Psalter showing iconoclasts in action destroying an icon BL Add MS 19352; Theodore Psalter; 1066; Eastern Mediterranean (Constantinople); f.27v
...words and gestures, and the overall picture is REALLY BAD, but it's not *US* bad.
Does it? I mean like just in the headlines from the last ten days you've got Starmer condemning the Nasser hospital strike, Israel being barred from a London arms fair, Lammy condemning aid obstruction and the UK pushing for UN recognition of a Palestinian state. I mean to be clear this is mostly
Men will forsake their secrecy and go openly to battle, make great store of weapons, and build a mighty bridge across the Narog from the Doors of Felagund for the swifter passage of their arms, instead of going to therapy.
We’re hearing that EHRC’s updated Code is now with the Minister for Equalities. Now, more than ever, it’s critical to write to your MP to get them to pressure her for a debate & vote in Parliament, not for this Code to become statutory automatically. Please do write; template letter linked below 🙏
Presently enjoying how Aldershot, Alderley and Aldermaston all have completely unrelated Old English etymologies.
Fuut (Great Crested Grebe, Podiceps cristatus) @ Provinciedomein Kessel-Lo #birds #provinciedomeinkessello
Life in 2025:
Well, I suppose Dulwich Village is firmly in denial about being in London at all...
Found in a book printed by Plantin (1583): a capital Lambda ("Λ") used as a V! The woodblock was made by Antoni van Leest in 1573. I love these little discoveries! collectie.antwerpen.be/global/searc... #bookhistory #plantin
Blueberry muffin! #fungifriends
Now if this had been handwritten, I'd have thought what's going on over the ερ of περιπατήσει was an accent erroneously written and then struck through, but on a mosaic...🤔
Not an eyepatch in sight
I miss the days when it was socially unacceptable to talk like a Nazi
What if scientists hadn’t waited until this point to speak about politics Every time I see a headline like this, my brain just shouts Like what if scientists hadn’t sat around silently watching everyone around them get attacked Maybe the fight on campus would have gone differently
Lorge lad Love the vegetation!
The Quakers are doing exactly what all public services are legally allowed to do even if the EHRC wants to pretend they're not: say gender-based toilets are inclusive and for anyone bothered by that as a matter of belief, there are stand-alone cubicles that they are very free to use. 1/
Recently one of our manuscripts was rebound in modern conservation binding. Follow the progress, and an amazing discovery, as our Head of Conservation reveals the steps taken for this careful work A deep dive in medieval manuscript binding 🕵️ www.corpus.cam.ac.uk/articles/chr...
Evergreen skeet
For me it's Jake Gyllenhaal.
Just for perspective, a few weeks ago roughly 100,000 turned up for the London Trans+ Pride march. By contrast fewer than 3,000 ACROSS THE WHOLE COUNTRY, have turned up to anti-asylum "protests". Yet we are meant to take the latter as "the voice of the people" and the former as "the minority".
No, that's when the Middle Ages *began*. As is very widely understood, the Middle Ages are what comes after the Romans.
I like to remind people that Enoch Powell got fired by his Tory PM Ted Heath in 1968 and never had a cabinet position again, and the Times called it an “evil speech”. Now we get great replacement theory in the Times and politicians including Labour advocating for ethnic cleansing on a daily basis
Message is clear. They are the real fascists, they are the more effective fascists, they are the fascists in power
"Are asylum seekers the biggest political issue in Britain?" Asks radio 4. "We interview man who is determined to make it the biggest issue in Britain. And make it a headline every morning until it definitely is"
(As loud relative to the time elapsed since the decade in question, I mean, not a direct comparison at the same point in time.)
WHATEVER YOU DO, MAKE SURE IT IS NOT WAKE HIM UP 🌳👀
It's still got a way to go to match the longevity of 60s nostalgia. (And I'd say it's never been nearly as loud, but that's a personal impression, not a studied analysis.)
Well, if we're doing the cultural exchange with 40k, I suppose Ripley being one of the Custodes makes a degree of sense.
Which of the Aliens board games is this (I ask as though I had ever played any of them except the venerable 1989 one)?
You can tell which politics the papers support just by which marches and protests they cover. 100,000 people for trans rights? Zero coverage. Max 250 people for racism? Breathless daily coverage, multiple articles and thinkpieces, talking heads going on TV to discuss ‘legitimate concerns’.
LJS 419 is our favorite herbal! It includes paintings of plants, some realistic and some… not so realistic. It was written on paper in Italy, over the course of the 15th century. Watch to the end and you may see someone you know! #medievalsky 🔗: https://bit.ly/45i7N40
Wriggler, for the Amstrad. Specifically the spiders with human skulls for faces. To make them extra sinister, the game's jaunty music would stop whenever they appeared onscreen.
It's too confusing to categorise. I mean is it fruit or is it bread? No one seems sure.
The full LGBTQIA+ Book History Bibliography is here 🏳️🌈!!! 650+ items of LGBTQIA+ #BookHistory!! Check out the intro to see how we made it, the primary bibliography, the article appendix, and the absolutely magnificent zine!!! From monographs to zines, you'll find it here! sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...
Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow. Heron has something to say. #birds
An ambulance's silent lament
** The Official crowdfunder link for my case commenced in the European Court of Human Rights ** A legal first: trans and non-binary lawyers leading the case: Oscar Davies, Olivia Campbell-Cavendish and me as client. Trans Legal Clinic in partnership with W-Legal. www.translegalclinic.com/mccloud
It really is insidious how society has slipped into talking about organized activity as if the act of organizing automatically invalidates it. It’s truly a genius move by the powerful to frame it that way, bc then large groups of people caring about something suddenly “don’t count.”
Slightly diminish a band: Wu-Tang Sept
Slightly diminish a band: Supporting Cast
Slightly diminish a band: Sly and the Family 13 Pounds
"It seems to many professors of the humanities that 'fiscal crisis' has become a pretext for far-reaching changes that are not necessary so much as desired by university leaders... 'Even when traditional liberal learning clearly wins with students and donors, it loses with those in power.'"
“Delete your old emails to save water” isn’t bad because it’s individualising the climate crisis, it’s bad because it’s complete nonsense from top to bottom. It’s like saying “eat less lettuce to save water”, you can see the thought process but it’s that of a child who knows two facts
The creatures looked from fishman to manfish, and from manfish to fishman, and from fishman to manfish again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
🚨 NEW 🚨 Sign and share this letter to Ministers to express your business' or organisation's concerns with the EHRC's proposed Code of Practice www.transsolidarityalliance.com/businesses-o...
They want people to delete their personal photos so there's enough water to allow people to continue making AI slop images
Raptor friend!
hear me out here, what if none of it is a 'distraction' and they're just doing a lot of horrible shit simultaneously
Happy birthyesterday!
Limooooooo!
When I was 16 I smoked real actual cigarettes on an international flight. It was unthinkable then, but now, thanks to actual political will, you can hardly smoke in public spaces (and I am glad to say I quit when I was 23). LLM chatbots are a menace and can be banned.
Then, and I cannot stress this enough, perish.
Reform is not your friend, no more than Labour, but that is rather the point. They are now fundamentally of a kind. Labour is a party of the far right, and the sooner unions and LGBT+ organisations realise that and divest themselves fully from this bloated corpse of decaying morality the better.
A tombstone in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, photographed by Andy Darby. Note the border inscription.
Whale oil. From the whales.
Svelte!
If you're in Dublin between now and late October, don't miss the Words on the Wave exhibition at the National Museum on Kildare St. Some of our most important medieval Irish manuscripts are on loan from the Abbey of St Gallen & are back in Ireland for the first time in c. 1200 years. #MedievalSky
The so-called 'Ewer of Charlemagne', made sometime* in the early ninth century and then donated to Saint-Maurice-d'Agaune (where it resides to this day). * it's unclear _where_ due to the awesomeness of its design.
So you’re telling me the Wizard of Oz presented itself as a towering force of overwhelming technology, only to be unmasked as just some guy, off-screen?
Entertaining the animals 🎶 BL Add MS 19352; Theodore Psalter; 1066 CE; Eastern Mediterranean (Constantinople); f.189v
The units digit on the date should be zeta, not theta.
Initial 'I'(ncipit) and 'b'(ella) at the beginning of Liber Primus of Lucan's De bello civili, with scholia Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 45, Composite including Lucanus, De bello civili; 2nd third of the 9th century; Fleury; f.1v (e-codices.ch/en/list/one/...)
Greedy lion: initial 'P'(artes orationes sunt octo) at the beginning of Donatus' Ars maior II BnF MS Latin 13025; Grammaticalia; 9th century (beginning); Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Corbie; f.5r @gallicabnf.bsky.social
OMG PEOPLE! I have the BL hack of all BL hacks. Why didn't this occur to me before? It turns out the Wayback Machine has snapshots of MS metadata from the old Digitised Manuscripts site. I tried it for the Benedictional of St. Æthelwold, in honor of his day, and lo! web.archive.org/web/20140305...
In the death registers of early modern Venice, marginalia often marks the cause of death: drawings of daggers for murders, for instance. In 1696, Giovanni Battista Rinaldi was killed by a dog. This is the drawing by his entry.
I made my donation…please consider.
Last reskeet: I have, mind you, managed to achieve the same without ever touching AI.
All the dire implications notwithstanding it is hilarious how evil this technology is. Billions of dollars spent on this greasy lying stupid thing that was literally built to replace people, and everyone that uses it gets weaker, lazier, dumber, and sadder for having done so. Well done all around.
Apparently you can now find a story about London Trans Pride - the biggest globally, EVER - by going to the London subsection - it's next to a story about potholes. I've worked with some amazing people at the BBC - but the editorial bias is extraordinary to see in action.
Hello Bluesky! We're an interdisciplinary project on the teaching of palaeography and codicology, and we're now branching out to include early printed books. Check out our website for lots of learning resources: teachingthecodex.com
AI folks have now discovered “thinking”
A Great Grey Owl approaching. 🪶 #bird #greatgreyowl #owl #raptor
Perfect example of the T-shirt meme
Does this also apply to Joe Downstairs?
If I can't dance (have Gargants) it's not my revolution (miniature minatures game)
My first instinct when I see an animal is to say “hello” My first instinct when I see a person is to avoid eye contact & hope it goes away
Anyway the hats are too small.
You know what emergent tech of the last decade actually works well, and was adopted by millions? 3D printing. It’s great! So many applications. But also nobody is sneering at you for not having or utilizing 3D printing. Nobody is trying to sneak a 3D printer into your garage without your consent
I’m so sick of watching my trans siblings suffer because cis people won’t leave us alone. It’s so unnecessary. We live in a time of medical miracles and unprecedented knowledge sharing. This should be our golden age. Fuck transphobes and their collaborators. 🖕🏻
Initial 'I'(n principio) at the beginning of Genesis with six medallions one of which is marked HILE (ὕλη) and refers to matter or stuff. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 048; Bible; c1170 CE; St Albans; f.7v @parkerlibcccc.bsky.social @corpuscambridge.bsky.social
Accidental forced perspective at the beach
Decorative details of Hagia Sophia
That's an interesting observation - I suppose I should check exactly how ma-WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUUUUUUUCK????!!!!!!!???!!!!!
Beautiful initial 'Q'(uoniam) full of creatures Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.3.9; Gregory the Great, Sermons; Late 11th / 12th century; England, probably Canterbury; f.56r @camdiglib.bsky.social
A meme given form
Heyoo
Heh heh heh
"Move fast and break things" is inescapably the philosophy of a group which has never faced real consequences for failure and to whom other people are not quite real.
right but ‘death to the IDF’ wasn’t an internal matter for Glastonbury
1977: why would the bartender in star wars even care if some robots with artificial intelligence came into his bar 2025: ohhh ok
I don't know if I get any points for having had that general thought despite not having read American Gods. (My other American Gods thought is the Simpsons-inspired "surely one of them has to be the Almighty Dollar?" but apparently not.)
Staring at the fleur-de-lis on the wall with nothing else to do.... BL Royal MS 6 E IX; Carmina Regia: Address of the City of Prato to Robert of Anjou; c. 1335 CE; f.10v
A spectacular West Coast of Scotland sunset
PSA.
