What I'm really trying to puzzle out is how these texts compare to older and still widely available Armenian works like Grigor of Narek's Book of Lamentations (Մատեան ողբերգութեան, c. 1000 CE). Initially, I thought the European works would be very different from the #Armenian ones, having been produced in a different cultural context. But I'm finding now that they're more similar than I'd assumed—at least, in the ways that would have been noticeable to the average Armenian reader around 1700. 9/
With the biography done, I'm now writing about Hohannēs's translation of Thomas a Kempis's The Imitation of Christ. It's been so interesting to read about how popular of a book this has been all over the world over the past 500 years. I've found that it's an anthology, really, the overall title being the incipit of the title of chapter 1: "De imitatione Christi et contemptu omnium vanitatum mundi." A more descriptive title would be "A Manual in Humility for Monastics." 12/?
Although Imitation was written in a totally different context (a European monastery in the 15th century), it's not as different from something like Grigor Narekatsi's Book of Lamentations (Մատեան ողբերգութեան) as I'd thought. They're both very humble and humbling works. They're quite complimentary, and, for that reason, they can't be categorized as simply Apstolic versus Catholic within an Ottoman-Armenian context—which is how I was thinking of them initially. 13/? @bookhistodons
@CoinOfNote@histodons@numismatics I’m going to guess Ukraine or the Soviet Union. Seems like a communist idea to put factories and plows on your coins.
@curmudgeonaf@histodons@numismatics
Definitely the right thinking there! You'd find factories, and plows, all over the world of course, but there are some places much more likely to feature that imagery on their coins.
@dogzilla@paninid I just read "The Pursuit of Happiness" by J. Rosen, which had this fun fact about Jefferson: His great fear was that god is a just god and would require recompense from Jefferson for his hypocritical refusal to give up his lifestyle and the enslaved humans he needed to maintain it.
Thank YOU for letting me know you joined the Knowledge Commons instance as a result of my above report on it. They -- @hello -- might also be glad to know this.
Speaking of your mission of films for social activism, through our family friend in Tokyo, I happened to encounter such a group based in NYC led by a Chinese-American woman, with collaborators in Canada and here in Japan. I reviewed their most recent documentary -- available free at https://hi-lo.tv/Our-Work -- on professional photography of Japan's hostess bars, as explained at https://hcommons.social/@SteveMcCarty/112621109879323004
Being a career academic, it was my first foray into a film review or that kind of content, but it all goes toward my challenge as a Japanologist of explaining this inscrutable culture (for once a stereotype is an understatement!). If you happen to contact Hi Lo TV, please give them my regards.
N628TS (Elon’s main jet) is at Fort Worth Alliance Airport back in maintenance with Gulfstream. Just days after it was with Gulfstream Service in Appleton, WI for several months.
@ttk@amalia12@DerMolly I wouldn’t presume to give much weight to my opinion of whether he would have agreed with this formulation and trying a web search for Terry Pratchett satire bullying is only going to bring us back to this quote. Can we get an opinion from someone who might have a better idea of what he thought? @neilhimself ? 2/2
“[Milne’s] cryogenics story, ‘Ten Thousand Years in Ice’, in which a survivor from an ancient advanced civilisation is revived in the present, unintentionally became one of science fiction’s great literary hoaxes”
Robert Duncan Milne (1844–1899) was born #OTD, 7 June, in Cupar, Fife. He emigrated to the USA & became America’s first full-time writer of #sciencefiction
Robert Duncan Milne’s short story “Ten Thousand Years in Ice” – published in ARGONAUT STORIES (San Francisco: Payot, Upham & Co., 1906) – is online via @gutenberg_org
If that’s whetted your appetite, a new critical edition of Robert Duncan Milne’s work, edited by Keith Williams & Ari Brin & with a foreword by Ken MacLeod, is due to be published in January 2025 by Bloomsbury
@hugo@bookstodon it’s an amazing creation, and a precarious survival. I wrote some words about it (as well as about the Erasmus - Moore friendship underpinning Utopia itself) in my own book, North Sea Crossings.