Peter Tarras
@petertarras.bsky.social
2.7K followers 1.9K following 1.1K posts
Postdoc @jacculturelmu.bsky.social | Blog: http://medisi.hypotheses.org | Book History | Manuscript Studies | Provenance | MENA Intellectual History | SciCom | #FirstGen https://www.naher-osten.uni-muenchen.de/personen/wiss_ma/peter-tarras/index.html
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Reposted by Peter Tarras
tetraseminar.bsky.social
Tomorrow!
If you are not yet on our mailing list and are interested in attending, get in touch with @andyhilkens.bsky.social to receive the Zoom link.
tetraseminar.bsky.social
Next Thursday 9 October, Eleanor Baker (@eleanormaybaker.bsky.social) will explore the world of Middle English book curses. All welcome!
petertarras.bsky.social
fabiochiusi.bsky.social
"The researchers found that people do tend to treat their AI companion apps with social courtesy by saying goodbye and that the apps often respond using tactics that apply emotional pressure to keep users from signing off"
theregister.com
AI companion bots use emotional manipulation to boost usage
Reposted by Peter Tarras
iammilliam.bsky.social
Just the latest way in which technology is enabling people who don’t actually like reading to diminish the cultural relevance of those who do.
newyorker.com
Abridging has always been in vogue. Now, apps like Blinkist take entire books and crunch them down to a series of what are called Blinks—which amount to around 2,000 words. “Is that what books are coming to, a handy social lubricant?” Anthony Lane asks.
Can You Read a Book in a Quarter of an Hour?
Phone apps now offer to boil down entire books into micro-synopses. What they leave out is revealing.
www.newyorker.com
Reposted by Peter Tarras
calthalas.bsky.social
Probably my favourite long late antiquity piece of art. The so-called "palimpsest" fresco in Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome shows consecutive layers of paintings from the sixth century (Mary as empress of heaven) all the way to the seventh and early eight century. The level of detail is just amazing.
Reposted by Peter Tarras
invisibleeast.bsky.social
Discover more about our new hybrid lecture series for Oxford Lifelong Learning, 'Silk Roads: Empire and Everyday Voices in the Medieval Islamicate East', in this invitation from our Programme Director, Arezou Azad.

#medievalsky #skystorians #silkroads
Reposted by Peter Tarras
gzornetta.bsky.social
Ms. 4, Leges Langobardorum (11th century): Carolingian capitularies / Lothar

Biblioteca statale del monumento nazionale della Badia di Cava dei Tirreni

#medievalsky
Reposted by Peter Tarras
remaz.bsky.social
PhD Scholarship in Theology, Religious Studies or Slavic Studies at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of KU Leuven: www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo...
PhD Scholarship in Theology, Religious Studies or Slavic Studies
PhD History Catholic Ecumenism
www.kuleuven.be
Reposted by Peter Tarras
timnitgebru.bsky.social
for those of you who are serious about understanding the eugenic lineage of the whole AGI movement, on the other hand, you can peruse some of the resources at www.dair-institute.org/projects/tes...
The TESCREAL Bundle
The array of utopian ideologies that power Silicon Valley's elite is ultimately bleakly eugenicist.
www.dair-institute.org
Reposted by Peter Tarras
qalamos.bsky.social
Early Quranic #manuscripts continue to reveal fascinating insights into the history of the #Quran. #Qalamos provides metadata for several fragments from this period, preserved in German libraries & academic institutions — and links to digital copies when available!🦾👇
www.qalamos.net/receive/MyMs...
csmc-hamburg.bsky.social
New open-access publication: Discover how a multidisciplinary approach helped identify and contextualise three Qurʾānic parchment fragments from the University of Münster collection, revealing their shared origins in an Umayyad Qur’an:
www.nature.com/articles/s40...
From fragments to text and ink: a scientific and historical study of an Umayyad Qur’ān - npj Heritage Science
npj Heritage Science - From fragments to text and ink: a scientific and historical study of an Umayyad Qur’ān
www.nature.com
Reposted by Peter Tarras
nasscal.bsky.social
Added to e-Clavis: Christian apocrypha ~ the Questions of Mary. www.nasscal.com/e-clavis-chr...
Reposted by Peter Tarras
lcbmphd.bsky.social
My course "Learning Coptic through the Gospel of Thomas" offers students affordable Coptic instruction from an expert.

Asynchronous or Synchronous (Mondays 9am Atlanta, GA time) + Lifetime access to course videos and instruction materials authored by me

www.religiondepartment.com/learning-cop...
Learning Coptic Through the Gospel of Thomas (Level 1)
www.religiondepartment.com
Reposted by Peter Tarras
dbellingradt.bsky.social
To add to this one more point: #genAI will surely blur the accessibility to our cultural memories, as it actively manipulates the streams and sources of memories accessible. In a nutshell, #historiography will have to deal with lots of more plurals of everything.

bsky.app/profile/dbel...
dbellingradt.bsky.social
I just read a clearly AI-fueled or AI-written book in my academic niche, and while I stumble to finish it, I predict that future historiography will have literature categories and markers like *published post 2024* or *published ante 2024*. Our days will be seen as the barrier between these worlds.
Reposted by Peter Tarras
dbellingradt.bsky.social
As a historian, I truly like the "foreverized pastness" part of this. And I agree, on a daily basis we are floating towards a permanent establishment of badly manipulated memories. A plural of nonsense histories. #skystorians
bildoperationen.bsky.social
So-called #genAI means the abolition of the future through the proliferation of endless streams of stochastically rendered generic pasts. Having turned large parts of the cultural archive into training data, it now traps us in a foreverized pastness, a 24/7 nostalgia for a past that never existed
quoproquid.bsky.social
have just come across a YouTube account that has been using Sora to upload reels of fake, AI-generated “90s sitcoms” every few hours
Reposted by Peter Tarras
richove.bsky.social
MLGB is back!! Delighted that Medieval Libraries of Great Britain @bodleian.ox.ac.uk is now back online. We are also working had on plans for the next phase of the resource, enhancing & adding data & functionality. HUGE thanks to my colleagues for their hard & clever work mlgb.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
petertarras.bsky.social
Yes, just ordered it yesterday. There's of course much more literature on that topic and the wider problem of digital (neo-)colonialism, unfortunately laregly ignored by colleagues esp. in fields with their own colonial legacies. I'm currently compiling a reading list for a blog post on this.
petertarras.bsky.social
Congrats, Catarina! This sounds very exciting! This is a pressing question and task for reflection, especially in light of the current 'AI' hype and the way it's being forced into academia on all levels.