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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 13h

It's almost the inverse of modern concern about assimilation, which is rooted in anxiety of minorities *not* coming to resemble the majority! Really quite the wild switch from "Everyone in a polity shouldn't all be alike" to "The nation must be as homogeneous as possible"...

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 20h

و تِراشِمْ قطيفده صُو
باشنده دره کنارنده دفن اتدم و شامده بر کرّه تراش اولدم تراشم بربر دكّاننده
براقدم شامڭ تراشى دخى لطيف ايدى و دخى بو دفن اتدوكم تراش

Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 20h

From this week's Monday Ottoman Turkish manuscript reading group: our (so far) anonymous traveler describes cutting his hair and burying it (to avoid sorcery etc) on a river bank north of Damascus, which reminds him of the quite nice barbershop haircut he got in Damascus during his sojourn there:

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 20h

Fantastic depiction of the Tophane Fountain- and activities around it- in Beyoğlu, built under Sultan Mahmud I in 1732, seen here as it appeared in the 1820s. Etching and aquatint with hand coloring by R.G. Reeve after a drawing (watercolor possibly) by the British artist William Page (V&A SP.443):

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 20h

Closest I can think of is the idea of one people coming to resemble (described using derivatives of شبه) other people in terms of dress (primarily), but this doesn't entail language or religion etc change (hence the anxiety often expressed over it), closer to what I think we'd call cultural exchange

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 21h

There are five language *families* represented among the Puebloan peoples of New Mexico today, certainly reflecting a similar and perhaps even more diverse situation in the ancient past; they've remained distinct while also showing many signs of interaction, sharing, etc, it's really quite striking

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Reposted by Jonathan Parkes Allen

Open Islamicate Texts Initiative @openiti.bsky.social · 2d

"[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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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 3d

Homilies at our parish are not usually overtly political but this morning the priest giving the homily just straight up called out racism, ethnonationalism, antisemitism, nationalism, and all forms of dehumanizing ideology as contrary to Christ, really brought the fire today

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Reposted by Jonathan Parkes Allen

Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 4d

I visited the apartment building ICE raided on Tuesday today. Story to come, but you can walk right in. Half of the apartments have no doors on them. Children's stuff abandoned in some flats. *Citizen* residents told me they were arrested and held for hours in zipties. This is America

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 4d

Fall is just starting to come to the Cumberland Plateau, you love to see it

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 4d

charlie who

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 5d

like how the dragon has a mutant third wing and limb because he's an AI generated freak

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 5d

This site is- I surmise, don't know the exact spot- not far from my house, location is not on the internet but same sorts of yahoos have found it and managed to vandalize much of the art: www.flickr.com/photos/alan_...

Witch's Nest, Prehistoric Petroglyphs, Walker County, Georgia 3

Witch's Nest is a small pocket in Pennsylvanian age Warren Point Sandstone. It is decorated with numerous faint prehistoric petroglyphs. The age of this artwork is unknown. The site has been know for ...

www.flickr.com

Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 5d

Sadly the number of accessible rock art sites in the Southeast has declined- I did not get around to visiting the Track Rock Gap site in north Georgia prior to its 2020 closure due to a bunch of (&*%% defacing and vandalizing the petroglyphs

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 5d

It was an especial pleasure to get to see so many petroglyphs while hiking in New Mexico- there are Native petroglyphs and other forms of rock art/communication here in the Southern Appalachians but with a handful of exceptions they're basically inaccessible, so cool to see so many in so many places

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Reposted by Jonathan Parkes Allen

Chattanooga Food Forest Coalition @foodforestchatt.bsky.social · 6d

One half of our bi-monthly sessions- second and fourth Thursdays each month- will be via Zoom so there is an opportunity for folks outside of Chattanooga to participate!

Agroecology Evening School

Introduction and First Meetings

foodforestschattanooga.substack.com

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 6d

I think the way in which early modern empire can be "read" at the edges of both the Spanish and Ottoman empires for similar reasons- empire as a directed flow of coordinated and related people and things, as visible at its margins and beyond its boundaries (such as they existed) as within them

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 7d

Chacoan stonework is just incredible, often has what I can only describe as a sense of play in the way the facing veneer was arranged, often varying from one wall to another in the same section of a great house

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 7d

look if a man can not only survive the American Civil War but live for a century and half later and serve as an ambassador, maybe picking up Arabic along the way (?), you've really got to respect him if for nothing more than longevity

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 7d

I can promise you that nothing else you read today or probably any other day will touch on early modern Kurds, the Navajo Dinetah, late Cretaceous geology, fossil fuel capitalism, and global early modernity in one essay

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 7d

New essay, my attempt to think about early modernity from a North American vantage point, in dialogue with the history of the wider early modern world, plus a reading of fossil fuel modernity as it relates to (imposes itself upon) the same landscape: jonathanparkesallen.substack.com/p/tracing-th...

Tracing the Path of Modernity in the Navajo Pueblito's Shadow

Reading Early Modern History and the Fossil Fuel Present in the Traces of the Dinetah

jonathanparkesallen.substack.com

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 7d

One of the most infuriating things about having to deal with America's Dollar Store fascism is that there are so many other problems that ought to be demanding our attention, having to defeat a senile off-brand Franco just really should not be among them

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Reposted by Jonathan Parkes Allen

Irenic Bro @irenicbro.bsky.social · 7d

Been thinking a lot about Byung-Chul Han's stuff on Eros vs. smoothness, particularly in writing. Idiosyncrasies invite and reward contemplation in a way that chatbots simply can't

Emily Pawley @emilypawley.bsky.social · 8d

In food history, we notice how super-refined foods--gelatin, vienna sausage, white bread--lose class and become horrifying once they become industrialized. Suddenly, fingermarks in bread dough demonstrate skill, not clumsiness.

Post-chatGPT, I'm feeling this about writing. Smoothness feels gross.

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Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 8d

Interesting that the US military, according to the conservative vision, ought to be made up of lithe muscular beardless young men whose bodies are available for their older male superiors to "put their hands on." Makes you think

Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 8d

I've known about and had wanted to visit Chaco Canyon for most of my life- grew up with a big National Geographic archive and subscription among other influences- but actually seeing the great houses within their landscape was just a whole other level, was not prepared for the emotional impact

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