Striking details you find in museum files that don't make it into official public catalogues. Accompanying a Samoan kava bowl in a US collection:

"The night before Woodworth left the island he called to say good bye to chief and remarked that he wished the chief would purchase for him a certain kava bowl seen in the house of a subject. The chief told Woodworth he would have it stolen for him. The bowl was sent aboard steamer next morning as it was about to sail"

#academicimpact

@Tara hey! Followed you back the moment I saw you are a tea drinker who likes country music. Howdy comrade 😝

Today I learned that honey bees have a concept of zero

Very early Vai manuscripts shared by Charles Riley https://catalogingafricana.wordpress.com/2024/05/08/virtualizing-a-small-collection-of-19th-century-vai-manuscripts/

@mariazielenbach Thank you!

I finally managed to read The Last Language On Earth by @pierskelly cover to cover. Most fascinating read about one intriguing case of human linguistic creativity!

Eskaya is a created script and language of the Philippines. The author succeeds in disentangling the complex historical and ideological context of Eskaya while staying respectful to the views and ideas of its users

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-last-language-on-earth-9780197509913?cc=de&lang=en&

Finally found it. The cartoon I saw that summarizes my feeling about the Hamas-Netanyahu disaster:

Hendrik Heinze interviewed me about my book for Bayern 2.

A very clear synopsis!

It's in German/English and you can listen to it here: https://www.br.de/radio/bayern2/sendungen/sozusagen/eskayan-oder-die-letzte-sprache-der-welt-100.html

Can't. That's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

New edition of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), surrounded by plants and a mineral she touted as medical treatments, her invented alphabet and model of the universe, on lovely ivory Japanese washi paper. Her writings preserve not only her own knowledge and theories but the nature of institutional medicine and folk healing of her day (which she deftly combined). 🧵1/2

#linocut #printmaking #sciArt #histsci #womenInSTEM #histMed #botany #naturalHistory #MastoArt

@Snowshadow Dang, everyone forgets Canadians. Sawry!

Only Australians and Brits will understand just how perfect this cartoon is

Tsars and stripes.

My @smh @theage cartoon.

Watching Transformers Earthspark with my son and Episode six has references to Bohol and the wakwak, a mythical bird/woman/vampire who eats human entrails and is missing half her body. Goes by various names in the Philippines. Artwork from here: https://stoicaswang.wordpress.com/2019/04/05/manananggal/

#folklore #philippines #bohol

First time I've seen an abstract in an Indigenous language. In this case, Nahuatl.

(From Woodward, H., Offner, J. A. and Blackwell, C. W. 2023. Collaborative editing of
sixteenth century Indigenous graphic manuscripts from Central Mexico.)

@trochee

@hipsterelectron

The way otherwise smart people anthropomorphize LLMs always makes me think of this:

... and FYI I say this all the time

The linguist equivalent of “I’m not a racist, but…” has got to be “I’m not a prescriptivist, but …”