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Reposted by Thomas A. Carlson

The Daily Show @thedailyshow.com · 17h

The following is REAL footage from Portland, 2025. Viewer discretion is advised.

Thomas A. Carlson @medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · 21h

Yeah, that's the one. Why is the NYT interviewing a slavery apologist, misogynist, would-be emperor? Oh that's right, the first millennial they ever profiled, a few years ago, was a literal neo-N*zi.

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Thomas A. Carlson @medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · 21h

It's not just a problem between Europe and North America. There are also citational gaps from one side of the US to the other, and holes where the scholars in the middle of the US should be.

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Thomas A. Carlson @medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · 21h

There is an ocean-shaped gap in our citation practices...

The problem isn't technical but social: it seems to me that most ppl do not read much (or anything) not recommended to them in f2f meetings or live lectures, so the question is who has access to those meetings, and what they recommend. +

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Thomas A. Carlson @medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · 21h

Is the interviewee's first name Doug? If so, he's an infamous slavery apologist and would-be Christian emperor.

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Peter Tarras @petertarras.bsky.social · 23h

#NewPublication
#JudaicStudies
#GenizaStudies
Anna Busa, The Art of Compilation: Midrash Pirqa de-Rabbenu ha-Qadosh in Popular Anthologies from the Cairo Genizah, Cambridge Genizah Studies Series, Volume 17 (Leiden: Brill, 2025)
brill.com/display/titl...

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Thomas A. Carlson @medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · 1d

Sure, I can be as pissy and self-righteous as any author (and I do get spicy when proposed edits introduce factual errors), but honestly it is a privilege to have someone read my prose with the goal of making it communicate better. Many's the time I read an editor's tweaks and thought, "Thank you!"

violent alien @blipstress.bsky.social · 1d

An actual hot take: Too many authors are afraid of editors watering down their voice or whatever and not afraid enough of editors letting you put any old slop on the page.

Thomas A. Carlson @medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · 1d

An interesting read for views beyond the selective news media:
www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/...

From the AskReddit community on Reddit

Explore this post and more from the AskReddit community

www.reddit.com

Thomas A. Carlson @medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · 1d

It requires an app on a smartphone, if I'm not mistaken, so it's not available for those of us who avoid smartphones. Unless I'm wrong...

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Thomas A. Carlson @medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · 1d

Hurray! I went through Lambdin's Ge'ez grammar two years ago, but then I let it get rusty last year at the IAS, so now I need to bring it back...

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Matthew Cortland (they) @matthewcort.land · 1d

There is one central, core truth to hold on to:

Most Americans don't actually know most of what's happening. But they still don't approve of the slice they do know about.

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 1d

repost this if an editor has ever saved you from yourself

violent alien @blipstress.bsky.social · 1d

An actual hot take: Too many authors are afraid of editors watering down their voice or whatever and not afraid enough of editors letting you put any old slop on the page.

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Thomas A. Carlson @medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · 1d

and the idea of a normative baseline to which newcomers might fail to conform has been supplied by modern nationalism, not medieval conditions. 2/2

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Thomas A. Carlson @medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · 1d

Of course a famous hadith prohibited imitating (tashabbuh) religious others (cf. Youshaa Patel's book, etc.), which is clearly anxiety of influence. Medieval Armenian and Latin (Andalusi) clergy worried about Christians imitating Muslim elites. But "assimilation" requires a (notional) baseline, +

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Thomas A. Carlson @medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · 2d

Okay: a question at the edge of my teaching:
For a world religions survey, I'm assigning a bunch of Islamic sources spanning the 1447 (lunar) years since the Hijra, but I don't know recent stuff as well as I know medieval stuff. Any good recommendations for Islam today that are 1st-year accessible?

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Thomas A. Carlson @medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · 2d

Geography is open, but of course it must be in English translation.

Recommended primary source readings in contemporary Islam?

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Thomas A. Carlson @medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · 2d

Okay: a question at the edge of my teaching:
For a world religions survey, I'm assigning a bunch of Islamic sources spanning the 1447 (lunar) years since the Hijra, but I don't know recent stuff as well as I know medieval stuff. Any good recommendations for Islam today that are 1st-year accessible?

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Thomas A. Carlson @medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · 2d

With all the AI spyware built into Windows 11 and AI's inability to prevent spewing protected information if prompted, some university lawyers should really investigate whether teachers using Windows 11 violates FERPA.

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Mustafa Kaya @mikaya.bsky.social · 2d

Three years and half a trillion dollars later we still have a dumb AI yet some in academia believe it’s a “research” tool. Imagine the millions of ways the money could have been used to actually serve humanity. AI is nothing meaningful but a stage in the adventures of capitalism.

Ulrike Franke @rikefranke.bsky.social · 3d

And here we go. I never wrote this article, and yet it is cited here.

www.liberalbriefs.com/geopolitics/...

And of course, it sounds so plausible, I seriously checked whether I had forgotten it, or the footnote was slightly wrong.

#AIisnotresearch

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Matthew Thomas Miller (He/Him) @mtmiller.bsky.social · 3d

Big news for Persian Studies and Digital Humanities!

Open Islamicate Texts Initiative @openiti.bsky.social · 4d

"[T]he initiative will provide free, global access to a constantly expanding body of classical and modern Persian texts. The project will also partner with institutions to help safeguard thousands of at-risk manuscripts and rare books from collections in India, Pakistan and beyond."

Roshan Institute to Establish Persian Digital Library | Maryland Today

Supported by $1.8M Private Gift, Project Will Be First of Its Kind

today.umd.edu

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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 4d

This is what freedom of speech sounds like. Also, please consider subscribing to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
www.inquirer.com/opinion/trum...

Why we can’t allow Trump to ban that other f-word | Will Bunch

The column the Trump regime wants to ban: America has to call out surging fascism in order to defeat it.

www.inquirer.com

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Reposted by Thomas A. Carlson

Peter Tarras @petertarras.bsky.social · 6d

Copy of an Umayyad wall painting (early 8th c.) from Qusayr Amra, depicting six kings with bilingual Greek and Arabic inscriptions. The copy was made by the Austrian painter Leopold Mielich who was also responsible for the massivly damaged state it's now in.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintin...

Mielich's copy of the Six Kings painting from Qusayr Amra. Six figures standing next to each other, against a light blue background, wearing colourful Byzantine garb. Four of the six faces are still partly visible. The copy already records a damaged state.

More recent photograph of the Six Kings painting. None of the figures' faces is recognisable anymore.

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Dr. Nick Posegay @nposegay.bsky.social · 6d

Here's an 11th-century Jewish manuscript that refers to God as Allah and wishes for the reader to have "jihad of his soul in love for his Creator"

Torn and crinkled brown-ish parchment manuscript with about 30 lines of Judaeo-Arabic text, set on a light blue grid background. The uploader has highlighted portions with red boxes and transliterated with inserted Arabic text, reading الله and واجهاد نفسه في حب خالقه

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Ebony Elizabeth Thomas @ebonyteach.blacksky.app · 5d

Building a career on punching down is antithetical to becoming and being an effective educator.

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Dr. Rachel Schine @rachelschine.bsky.social · 6d

... And then there's the eponym of the Turkish shadow-play form, Karagöz, who is sometimes said to have been a man who worked on the construction site of a 14th-century mosque and was 'kambur,' or hunched, giving rise to a hunchbacked stock figure in those plays as well...

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