My mother Rachel Griffiths died on Christmas Eve. I will see messages on here but I don't expect to be very active on social media for a while

Good thread

New poem: Canute www.edmundgriffiths.com/canute.html

Articles on sortition for the YP conf: me, proposing it edmundgriffiths.com/newpargetsor... Jack Conrad, anti ("let me put it politely—the suggestion is criminal") weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1549/... Paul Demarty, anti weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1549/... Max Shanly, pro medium.com/@maxshanly/b...

More on Edmund Griffiths' proposal for sortition in a yet to be founded new left party in the United Kingdom. #SortitionUK @edmundgriffiths.bsky.social @lijphart.bsky.social @nuttlos.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy www.edmundgriffiths.com/newpargetsor...

Planet Sloe

Dr. Peter Rollberg @gwu1821.bsky.social reviews for #SlavicReview: @edmundgriffiths.bsky.social, Aleksandr Prokhanov and Post-Soviet Esotericism. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2023. Distr. by @columbiaup.bsky.social @aseees.bsky.social @basees.bsky.social @dgoberlin.bsky.social @ieres-gwu.bsky.social

Happy space battle over Nuremberg day to all who celebrate @edmundgriffiths.bsky.social

@pierssy.bsky.social I'm afraid it looks as though your account on the other micro blogging app might have been hacked

Motonormativity: who must travel out of their way to go through a dingy underpass, and who gets a smooth uninterrupted route across the surface?

BREAKING 🇵🇸 The Inaugural Joint Statement of The Hague Group. https://buff.ly/40E8yRF

Can someone phone in a joke about the state of the Tory party please? I’m having difficulty.

Does the FT not have a house style for spelling Greek words? Hard to believe it would be that one. Maybe Mr Thiel is rich enough to sidestep it

Wikipedia includes a metrical translation of God Save the King into Tatar, that can be sung to the original tune—a thing nobody in history has ever wanted

I think the last time the United States bought a dependency from Denmark was in 1917, when the Danish West Indies became the US Virgin Islands for $25m. The population (larger than Greenland's) still have no vote for president & only a non-voting "delegate" in the congress

Hell. You are describing hell. Nobody wants an “interactive and engaging” dishwasher. They just want their dishes cleaned. www.forbes.com/sites/bernar...

I still can't get over this comment.

Just posted: my talk on Fu-Manchu from this evening edmundgriffiths.com/fumanchu.html

A couple of links to textbooks on languages of Siberia, both adapted from Soviet-era books in Russian: jehsmith.com/1/2019/07/sakh… Introduction to Sakha, JEH Smith, based on LN Kharitonov copius.eu/files/balandin  Einführung in das Mansische, Timothy Riese, based on AN Balandin

If you're around in Oxford on Thursday, I will be speaking at a CCS meeting on the title "Haunting Europe: the vision of Dr Fu-Manchu". 7:30pm Thursday 19 December, Quaker Meeting House (St Giles'), all welcome

How did they ship this. bsky.app/profile/dave...

Nobody is asking for it. It costs a lot of money. It's extremely hard to monetize. The actual use cases where it shines are mostly meant for power users, and are overshadowed by all the “hallucinations” that make it unreliable for anything that's actually important.

AI enshittification must be the most pointless act of corporate self sabotage in the history of capitalism.

First light

English has borrowed loads of words from Russian, but a lot of them are words for distinctively Russian things: vodka, nomenklatura, tsar, Kremlin, rouble. Off the top of my head the only ones I can think of that _aren't_ like that are intelligentsia, shaman, & tokamak. What else is there?

Got around to posting this talk on ghost stories, from last month edmundgriffiths.com/ghoststory.h...

Just posted: my talk on the Analytical Engine edmundgriffiths.com/analyt.html

Moderate reformist demand for Roman-alphabet transliteration of Russian: use ~ for ь and | for ъ, instead of ' and " respectively. They're on every keyboard; most languages (inc Russian) don't use them as punctuation; they at least hint at the right sounds (n~ is like ñ, s|ezd keeps the s & e apart)

If you're around in Oxford next week, & you're looking for a Marxist talk on C19th calculating engines, you're in luck

Every time I see someone post this image it goes viral

And here's good news: the British Newspaper Archive has made the 1838-52 run of the Northern Star accessible without a subscription at www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/north...

American missiles are called Attackums; British missiles are called Storm Shadow; Russian missiles are called Kh-47M2 «Kinzhal». None of you are doing anything about those national stereotypes

Why did they call it the Eiffel Tower & not the Monument to the Second International

Some Israelis will be protesting at the US embassy in Tel Aviv to call for an arms embargo against Israel, as a show of support for Bernie Sanders' bill to block some arms sales to Israel. If Israelis can call for an arms embargo against Israel, we all can #Israel #Palestine #Gaza

Yes good point bc if we don't follow the leader of the Conservative Party on social media how will we ever be deluged 24/7 with her opinions (often presented as though they're undeniable common sense)

This is both reasonably decent news and a sign of how low the bar is for nuclear risk reduction right now

🔭 Одинокие будни марсохода Персеверанс Это одна из последних полученных им фотографий, выполнена 16 ноября, 1330 сол, в 11:35 по местному времени.

Society prob has enough to rupture about already, really, without worrying if a few people have read more press releases from Big Chatbot than is good for them www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

A similar opinion has now & then been voiced in the #glitteringIceCities although they tend to phrase it more "if earth had been demoted to an asteroid belt"

If you're around in Oxford on Thursday, I'll be speaking at this

This is like when they still had invite codes

the bird-namers were really sick of this bird's shit

"Oh God, now he's going to want to do it every chance he gets"

More than a third were either delusional or lying. Lying, probably; they've got products to sell, & "our detergent gets your clothes so clean it might DESTROY LIFE IN THE GALAXY" is a great advertising line (assuming you can persuade the news to take it seriously)

Heard somebody claiming that "loads of countries" have probably got the bomb, but they keep it a secret. Wasn't clear what the game plan was supposed to be. President of Uruguay hammering the button, yelling "bet you'd have been deterred if you'd known!"

How come when he does it he's a whimsically lovable folk hero for our time, but when I get distracted and read a book instead of doing work I'm "lazy" & a "layabout" & "holding up the whole project" www.wantedinrome.com/news/rome-bu...

The entry on "Consciousness" in the one-volume Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Philosophy (edited by Ilyichev et al., Moscow 1983) is about 2500 words and has absolutely no overlap with anything Anglo-American philosophers say on the subject

Time to get serious about the lesser evil www.politico.eu/article/dona...