Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 2h

That is also most excellent!

Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 2h

Today I learned that the French equivalent of German’s eierlegende Wollmilchsau (lit. egg-laying wool-milk-sow,” your special unicorn all-in-one solution) is the mouton à cinq pattes (the 5-legged sheep). I love languages.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 20h

Oh, and, happy 2-year anniversary to the best email I've ever gotten from a bookseller as part of a rather complex effort to get a copy of Francesca Stavrakopoulou's "God: An Anatomy"

Screen grab reading:
This refund is for the following item(s):
Item: God
Quantity: 1
ASIN: 1509867376
Reason for refund: Item not received

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Reposted by Isabel Köster

University of Michigan Press @uofmpress.bsky.social · 22h

"Today, Americans have a very clear idea about what it means to be a mother." Krishni Burns, author of the upcoming book "Bringing Their Mother Home" wrote a blog post on the archetype of Mother Goddesses at press.umich.edu/Blog/2025/10...

Cover of Bringing Their Mother Home on a light background with the text "Mother Goddesses: A Post by Krishni Burns, author of Bringing Their Mother Home"

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 22h

Have you ever known that to matter to a German?

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 22h

Fresh Caesar Loeb just dropped (ok, a month ago, but…). And I bet the Latin text is also better than the Oxford text of great antiquity!

Gallic War — Harvard University Press

The conquest that begot the Roman Empire.Caesar (C. Iulius, 102–44 BC), statesman and soldier, defied the dictator Sulla; served in the Mithridatic wars and in Spain; entered Roman politics as a “demo...

www.hup.harvard.edu

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 22h

Happy birthday, but are you sure the pre-5:30 meal isn’t conventionally called “lunch”?

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 1d

Something else for the 2025 bingo...

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 1d

I can feel the terror in this comment :-) And on the subject of terror-- I gather a European car rental will be inevitable for this. Great... (I hate driving in the U.S. enough as it stands)

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 1d

It also happens to be near "Dinosaurworld Transylvania," in case we needed more reasons...

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 1d

Today's research rabbit hole is called Sarmizegetusa, a Romanian site that has a baby stonehenge, 7 Roman temples (1 of them got me into this rabbit hole), an amphitheater etc. And, according to the Romanian tourist board, it is "rich in healing energies." I'm sold. How do I go to there?

Sarmizegetusa Regia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 1d

Also, on the subject of kitsch and recut heads, look at this delight, which I saw consciously for the first time a couple of weeks ago… commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ca...

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 1d

The Kunsthistorisches Museum has some great horrors like this.

Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 1d

Learning about book marketing today, which is all well and good, but talk about "sentiment scores" gives me uncomfortable flashbacks to a brief experiment by a classics journal to have reviewers (optionally!) assign an emoji to an article. Yes, the options ranged from Grinny to Frowny.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 2d

We just got through a period with a dean of the libraries who reluctantly had to agree that some functionality for "legacy users" (you know, the people who still use books) had to be kept. It was not awesome, no. Good luck.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 2d

That’s Herr Professor von AI-Hallucination to you. Anyway, as someone occasionally quite taken by steam punk, I hope an author or several runs with this.

Tombmas Spooks @thomasfuchs.at · 3d

How many trillions of dollars have been invested into this technology so far?

Google search for "austria hungary in space"

Google excitedly tells you about the 1889 orbital flight, and that by 1908 there was a Mars research output with 30 people.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 2d

That’s one impressive “you may wonder how I ended up here…”

Raccoons Hourly @raccoonhourly.bsky.social · 2d

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Reposted by Isabel Köster

James Harland @jmharland.bsky.social · 6d

At the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies we are offering 10 fellowships for scholars at any stage in their careers to stay with us for up to 6 months (PhD candidates and senior academics) or 12 months (postdocs) to complete a research project:

www.dependency.uni-bonn.de/images/pdf-f...

www.dependency.uni-bonn.de

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 2d

The what now? That’s some serious emperor kitsch…

The Partial Historians 🏺 @partialhistorians.bsky.social · 2d

Witness Augustus as you’ve never seem him, re-sculptured to look nothing like himself!

The scene is ostensibly Augustus driving a chariot of Tritons. The imagery includes Tritons holding a shield with an oak wreath (thought to be the clipeus virtutis) and Victoria.

#ReliefWednesday #AncientRome

Description from Kunsthistorisches Museum: “The cameo shows Augustus, clad in a toga – the heads of the figures are all modern – viewed from the front in a chariot being pulled through the sea by Tritons. The triumphant naval victor holds a branch in his right hand and a sceptre in his left. An oak wreath is attached to the parapet of the chariot, and a shell is attached to the end of the handle. While the two middle Tritons – one holding a horn in his right, the other a dolphin in his left – each raise an arm symmetrically as if pointing at Augustus, the two outer Tritons carry the symbols of his reign in front of him: the left holds a globe, on which a shield with an oak wreath (clipeus virtutis) flanked by two ibexes, and the right shows Victoria floating on the globe. The cameo was probably created soon after 27 BCE, when Augustus was awarded the oak wreath, which - together with the ibex - was also engraved on the back of the stone in the 16th century.”

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 2d

Well, that’ll be one to look at before the next medicine week in Roman gender comes around… (I took it from a day to a week on the second to last iteration due to popular demand for horrors from the annals of medicine)

Kristina Killgrove @killgrove.bsky.social · 2d

"In this excerpt from "Born: A History of Childbirth," author and historian Lucy Inglis reveals records from ancient Egypt that show how female physicians treated issues of "the womb," how men reacted to periods, and how the first known pregnancy test actually worked." 🏺🧪

'The papyrus also recommends putting a clove of garlic in your vagina before bed': The texts that reveal the baffling healthcare for women in ancient Egypt

In this excerpt from "Born: A History of Childbirth," author and historian Lucy Inglis reveals records from ancient Egypt that show how female physicians treated issues of "the womb," how men reacted ...

www.livescience.com

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 2d

I sent a friend stuff from the 1st advanced Latin class I ever took and realized that the course was a horrifying 23 years ago. But that also means that I (a college starter) have been doing this classics thing for over half my life, which is a nice feeling. Plus, Cicero is still older (and deader).

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Reposted by Isabel Köster

Rebecca Menmuir @rebeccamenmuir.bsky.social · 3d

Call For Papers: Teaching With Ovid.

Any aspect of teaching Ovid in the classroom, for a 2-day symposium on 12-13 June 2026.
Classicist teaching Ovid? Medievalist teaching the Ovide moralise? Librarian/archivist with historic copies of Ovid to share? Take a look: shorturl.at/RiviU

Deadline 16 Jan.

The full Call For Papers can be accessed at the following link: https://shorturl.at/RiviU

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Reposted by Isabel Köster

Yale Classics Library @yaleclassicslib.bsky.social · 3d

New issue of Illinois Classical Studies Vol. 50, No. 1, Spring 2025 muse.jhu.edu/issue/55694 @projectmuse.bsky.social @illinoispress.bsky.social Fake News is or as Invective in Ancient Texts

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 3d

Ah, the “eduroam couldn’t be joined” box. Is it just napping or are there indeed new authentication protocols as a Tuesday morning treat?

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 3d

I'm trying (+ failing) to understand how ResearchGate works. But it is amusing to know that since I published a paper on flamingo sacrifice that cited a couple of science articles on flamingos, there were apparently several bio profs waiting with baited breath for me to finally hop on this thing.

Isabel KÖSTER, Professor (Associate) of University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder (CUB) | Read 14 publications | Contact Isabel KÖSTER

www.researchgate.net

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