For #RomanFortThursday, a little ancient Scrabble: bronze letters from an inscription found at the Roman fort of Schirenhof near Schwäbisch Gmünd. Built around AD 160, the fort was abandoned in the mid-3rd century AD. It was the base of the Cohors I Raetorum, an... 🧵1/2 📷 @almbawue.bsky.social 🏺

This is quite the etymological Easter egg

🖼️ Josef Lauer

For a while I've been seeing variations upon "I only use AI to brainstorm ideas!!!", and I'm really starting to wonder what it is these people think the chatbots are providing that is simultaneously (a) beyond my brainstorming with a pen, paper, and my own imagination and cognition,

Today is #TolkienReadingDay, celebrated on the 25th of March in honour of the destruction of the Ring and Sauron's defeat, and for this evening I've dug out a little piece of Tolkien's work that I've never got round to reading before

One incredibly Rob-coded fact about my life is that, as a child, I gained a great deal of my early awareness of British geography from the maps provided in the Roman/Arthurian/Saxon historical fiction and historical fantasy novels I loved to read

Marsh Fritillary life history plate from the Complete British Butterflies in Colour (1967)

Saturday

The Isle of Lewis

the Physics Understanders™ who argue online about dark matter, but in 1845: uhhhh sorry Monsieur Le Verrier, but you can't just make up a new object that hasn't been observed, even if it happens to perfectly explain Uranus's orbit. This "Neptune" of yours doesn't exist, idiot

“Shield Maidens”, 12x12 inch acrylic on wood panel. Appalled by the war. These three took many layers to reveal their comforting message. May we be the “warriors” that end this. Just finished and listed on my website. www.jeanietomanek.com/new-products...

Something I think the casting of the LotR films really obscures is how much older Frodo is, and the extent to which Merry and (especially) Pippin's parallel Gondor–Rohan squire progressions are coming-of-age, boys-to-men stories while the more adult Frodo undertakes an adult quest

In the Middle Ages, before the printing press was invented, scribes rewrote hundreds of books, so of course, errors were made. Scribes attributed their mistakes to a demon called Titivillus, who caused errors so he could collect them in a sack to show the Devil. #WyrdWednesday

In cometh the spring!

“The writer has felt and experienced the wonder of things—the beauty of the sun and the hieroglyphic mystery of the figures that the birds make in the air—and he feels, quite rightly, that to describe wonders one must suggest wonder by words.” (A. Machen “Hieroglyphics”) 🎨 Oorchach #wyrdwednesday

Kid in Lidl this morning was calling "muuummmyy! muuuuuummmyyyyy! mummy!" with the exact intonation of the gas-masked boy in The Empty Child, and I was having flashbacks to being a Moffat-traumatised six-year-old

Old Oak & Misty Moon Upper Bavaria, Germany #moon #fullmoon #vollmond

This is one of the most beautiful toponymic etymologies I have ever encountered

Greg Davies: Great task, well done. Didn‘t eat a thing. Persephone: Thank you. Alex Horne: Ah. Well. Let’s take another look at that pomegranate.

Err yeah hi there, I was calling to ask if you do any kind of Butlerian Jihad / Quash the Rise of 21st-Century Nazism combo deal? Like if you'd consider putting a discount on my order if I'm looking to get both?

Mikhail Belomlinsky- Bard vs. Smaug (The Hobbit) 1976

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A regal bird for a wee personal project I'm working on. #birdart #linocut #linoart #handcarved #birdprint #birdlove #inky #inkyart #makeartnotwar

Eve: Should I eat this fruit even though God told us not to Serpent: It isn't just a fruit — it's a future. You're determining your own path. You've got this! Eve: God's really mad, I shouldn't have eaten it Serpent: You're right! That one's on me. I'm only an AI model and can make mistakes,

I know you want to give up sometimes, but wouldn't it be fun if you achieved your dreams out of pure spite?

[guy holding a guitar, naming intermolecular forces] anyway, here's Van der Waals

Snow and Snowdrops, Ann Arnold.

Newton: we stand on the shoulders of giants AI bro, several giants up: **stepping onto a wobbly chair that is still clearly supported by all the giants** err actually, loser, we've REPLACED giants now **does a fist pump and somehow punches through his own frontal lobe**

Ok I have far too much to do today to spend more than 2 minutes on this but here’s my political cartoon of the day, please enjoy

The glee with which genAI weirdos speak about replacing creativity is vile. The prospect of millennia-old traditions of art and storytelling being eroded and endangered in favour of the output of a statistical model (trained on those very traditions!) seems to genuinely delight them. It's repulsive.

Today’s moment of calm is a tiny owl in an antique pinchbeck frame

Hearing the really beautiful hoots of a male tawny owl out on the lane right now

Primroses are starting to flower in the woods - Spring’s just around the corner! #WildFlowerHour

Barack O'Starmer: uhh let me be Keir

Tablet addiction is nothing new... Discovered #OnThisDay - 16 February - in 1740 and associated with the Theatre at Herculeaneum. A woman dressed in white holds both writing tablet and stylus, seemingly deep in thought. #Archaeology #Art 🏺 Image: National Archaeological Museum, Naples (9074).

Not joking at all when I say an important magical object matching this description (antlers and all) was featured in a fantasy novel I read last month. A fantasy novel set in England in the 70s ... in the home counties

A vaguely Olympics-related fun fact is that in Czech you can say something expensive 'stojí majlant' ('costs a fortune'). This unusual word "majlant" comes from German Mailand – the city of Milan! It seems to have come via Czechs fighting in 19th-century Italy, clearly impressed by the rich city.

This one had better not hurt me like that fake Etruscan boar vessel 😤

“Snow has fallen again, as it will sometimes do in February” What to Look for in Winter, 1959 Artist: CF Tunnicliffe Writer: EL Grant Watson

The online discussions I see about using AI for writing fiction are so utterly depressing. Even half the people who agree that AI shouldn't write the book are like "I don't use AI for writing, but it's helpful for [[aspect of storytelling that is clearly still within the purview of the >> (1/7)

Goodnight from Steven Dix, not relishing having to tell Hookland Highways Department their temporary traffic lights have been stolen by a flying saucer. Goodnight from Posy Cropper, entering candle communion in hopes of guiding Olag Gandle home. Goodnight from Hookland.

This may betray a one-dimensional (or rather, time-and-relative-dimensional) awareness of culture, but to me the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia will always be the setting of the interplanetary human colony in the Doctor Who episode 𝘚𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘦

The wonderful thing about Tyggers Is Tyggers are burning bright Their tops are made out of rubber In the forest of the night What bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy, Immortal hand or eye Did frame the most wonderful thing about Tyggers, Their fearful symmetry!

Tolkien notably considered 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘰𝘳𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘙𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 a "heroic romance" instead of a "novel", albeit very much NOT what is generally meant by 'romance' on Goodreads or TikTok or in the labelling of sections in a bookshop

Franzi Schimmer captured this Grizzly bear in Brooks Falls, Alaska just floating along, tippy-tapping down the river, browsing the salmon. Prior to hibernation, up to 40% of a bear's body mass is fat, which is less dense than water (~0.9 g/cm^2), so the murder-monster is also a floaty-boaty.

The median AI bro has the energy of a guy who replies to a mathematics social media post with interes ting .. . perhaps we could relate this to the infinite nature of pi (𝝅) and Fibonaci patterns..or the imaginary number; "i"? and is self-convinced it makes him a genius.

Knowledge unified under the outstretched arms of Philosophy BL Add 30024; Brunetto Latini, Li Livres dou Tresor; 1260-1299 CE; France, S.; f.1v

Why am I hearing the sounds of Doctor Who S5 from the TV downstairs

“February. Another cold, dead month, or so it seems. The elms are bare against the sky, the plough-ground is naked and wet, and still as brown as the sodden leaves. Yet the world is waking up”. Artists: Edith Hilder, Rowland Hilder (ShellGuide, 1955)

Genuinely bewilders me to see indie authors on here posting links to books with (visibly) AI-generated covers. Even aside from the lack of solidarity with visual artists, you are choosing to package your hard work in trash (and if there's AI on the outside, why wouldn't I expect AI on the inside?)