iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Kelly Lianne @kellylianne.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

“As Above, So Below”, Collage. 🌿💫

Floral collage art. Half of the flower is cut out and showing negative space through an engraving of a garden (the roots, lower leaves, and the lower half of the stem is white), also surrounded by cutout stars. The upper half of the flower is the cutout of the garden engraving on a white background surrounded by cutout stars. Orange hand drawn stars sit upon the flower-heads.

Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

In general while I love Tolkien, I hate with passion this whole narrative of oh the old magic is leaving the world. I get that it may feel like that to a historian, but a linguist has no right to ignore the onslaught of creativity, beauty, complexity and innovation every new generation brings!

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Til Tolkien backtracked on his idea that orcs are corrupted elves, as this would have given orcs an immortal soul, which didn't feel right to older Tolkien. Moreover, he made the trolls (remember the lovely chaps from the Hobbit?) soulless too! Puppets of Sauron.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

'Manhattan Nocturne.' (1930) In the 1920s and 1930s, Joseph Stella returned to city scapes and portraits that often combine drawing, painting and printmaking media. He frequently visited New York and lived there permanently from 1938.

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Shana @shanamd.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I am SORRY for sharing something that was posted on the other place, but this is too good.

The future pope at a party with a caption “they don’t know I’m the future pope”

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 04/10/2024

And here's a similar "throat singing game" called rekkukara, originally popular among Ainu girls: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcAE...

youtube.com

Ainu Throat Singing

YouTube video by AinuWorld

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 04/10/2024

"ingressive speech" (speaking while inhaling) is apparently a sign of close friendship in Swedish, and is more common among women. This article claims that it also exists in some varieties of English: publicera.kb.se/njes/article...

quite a lot of text that I cannot easily copy from an article "Pulmonic ingressive speech in the Shetland Islands" where they descrive how and when it is used

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Isaac Samuel @rhaplord.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Isis and Harpocrates, wall painting from the southern wall of House B50E at Karanis www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/ancient-af...

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The time has come, my yearly time of missing Thanksgiving (the harvest day) and Halloween (the day of the dead)... Because last Friday Kaufland brought in Xmas cookies and gingerbreads! In August, Karl! These heathens bring in Xmas cookies in August, as they have no holidays between now and Xmas!!

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

People tell me they like suits but don't have occasions to wear one. You can wear a suit to court, funerals, and religious services. Doesn't have to be your trial, friend's burial, or religion you believe in. Go to random trials, attend a stranger's burial, join multiple religions. Try it sometime.

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Brutalismbot @brutalismbot.com · 15/08/2026

Church of the Most Holy Trinity (Wotruba Church), Vienna, Austria. Built in 1976. Architect Fritz Wotruba. r/brutalism

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

When we lived in the States, I was so angry the train went through our town without stopping. It woudn't stop at towns North and South either. And the railroad in the next village over was destroyed! Empty station standing on a side alley. Czechia shows the US as they could have been...

A cute one-wagon train that serves this station once every 1-2 hours

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Daniel Bellingradt @dbellingradt.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

If you were living in Europe in the 1580s and 90s, you would likely have heard a few herring prophecies from Norway. Fishes with words about evil, fighting knights symbolizing the Ottoman conflicts of the Habsburg monarchy etc. appeared, and they all predicted something about the state of the world.

a German broadside with a wondrous fish caught off Norway. Source: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1880-0710-346

6 fishes with words from a small print of 1598 ("Prophetia halieutica nova et admiranda...", Source: https://www.e-rara.ch/zuz/content/titleinfo/1489626

A broadside from 1587 showing a fish with wondrous inscriptions which reads 'Vici Malum' caught off Norway. Source: https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/freytag/content/pageview/8433201

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

C17th illustration of a story from Rumi's Masnavi. A man saves a bear from a snake, and the grateful bear becomes the man's closest friend. One day, the man is bugged by flies while asleep. The bear gets impatient and grabs a stone, sadly killing the man. (shared by @willbuckingham.com)

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 05/07/2023

(from @JAHBookseller on the olden site): Examples of printed (!!) Japanese neumatic musical notation for Buddhist shomyo chants. (I'm not quite sure, but I'm assuming that's from early 20th century?)

Squiggly black lines with small red marks here and there

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Mummified family in a dark interior of a chulpa (South American funerary tower). Etching by Riou and Maurand, Magasin Pittoresque, 1838

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I was initially skeptical of this story, but it proved to be real! At some point in 18-19C in Ukraine artists painted Orthodox icons on... dried fish ! How come? tldr: these icons were used as a protective charm by some traveling merchants. For more details, a short thread👇

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

KansasCity, Missouri; Junction of Main and Delaware Streets. 1906 vs 2015. (photo originally from @thetransitguy.com)

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Tracking flights of a Steppe Eagle over a 20 year period

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

How far are you from India if measured in Indias?

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

til There's a 106-years-old popular singer in India, Mai Dhai, who made her debut when she was 96 (she was a locally well known traditional singer before then). Judging from youtube, at least as of age 104 she totally toured festivals Also this song is really catchy! www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgmq...

youtube.com

Coke Studio Season 8| Kadi Aao Ni| Mai Dhai & Atif Aslam

YouTube video by Coke Studio Pakistan

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 28/08/2023

An Ottoman map of Bari, Italy, 1525 I love the minimalism of it. How, honestly, it is closer to abstract art than it is to maps, as we know them :)

An old map that consists of a puffy, squiggly line, two compasses, and three tiny ornate cities. Is is not obviously clear which part is the sea, and which part is the land. Pretty!

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 08/07/2023

Medieval Europeans had access to all colors (dyes) for their clothes: blue, green, orange, yellow, except purple, deep reds, and cold greens. All the rest was available - and used! (Which also puts the story of purple, rare and noble, in perspective. I was a colorful world, but purpleless :)

a screenshot of a tweet of a photo of some differently-colored threads, from blue to orange

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

If I were a candy maker I'd made my candies small and slightly odd, similar but with a subtle variation, ppl would eat them like cherries: after a good candy they'd think let me take another one, and after a bad one they'd go I can't finish this strike on a bad note and I'd sold so much candy omg

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Flutes, books, board games, and as of recently, broken string instruments

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Does this sign count as a para-religious affectation, marking a mountain top as a place of power, even if ironically?

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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

i love when they recover some 3000 year old clay tablet and its something totally relatable like “i hope this tablet finds you well but the group project is a disaster…”

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

It _does_ sound rather conceptual, true :) www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWfV... Not sure things like that are easily reconstructable tho. Especially the more dancy, street varieties. This album is very Gagaku aesthetics let's be fair!

youtube.com

Synaulia - Music of Ancient Rome (Volume 1 & 2 Selection)

YouTube video by Vingul

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

I don't speak any romance languages, but I've seen this book of Ursus Paddington in Latin, and somehow couldn't pass on it :) Now I own two books in Latin! (and no plans whatsoever to learn it)

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Viola Tricolor @kaffeehaus.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

anthropeum.com had a couple of surprises today I entirely misplaced by several thousand kilometers. When I tried to read up on the royal graves of Ur I found this downloadable MET-catalogue ("The Great Death Pit of Ur" from p. 120). PDF via: www.metmuseum.org/de/met-publi...

Book cover of "Art of the first cities".

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Present & Correct @presentcorrect.bsky.social · 15/05/2024

Sometimes you just need 300+ pages of moulded interior ornaments from 1919. archive.org/details/illu...

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Peter Tarras @petertarras.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Some reading material for a current side project.

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

"doesn't understand the appeal of patina" feels like neat summation of American aesthetics

A BBC story headline reads: "Worth $5M? Visitors react to renovated Washington horse statues." There are two photos. One from 2013 that shows the horse statues in their older, patina state. And one from 2026 that shows them covered in 23.75-karat gold leaf.

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 07/05/2024

An interesting fact about Mont-Saint-Michel, and that while its exteriors are obviously Gothic, the interiors are now strikingly Eastern Orthodox. The monks/nuns who live there come from the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem, that are Catholic, but Desert Fathers-inspired, almost ecumenical.

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

a Hagioscope (aka squint) is an architectural device in a church: a dedicated place with a narrow window that limits the field of view to the altar. So that a person could concentrate on the (according to this theology) main part of the service. Think camera zoom, but with no camera, and no zoom!

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Got to sing in church for the first time in years, in a style that is a bit foreign to me (Ukrainian scores in Czech; I did Greek and Georgian in the past), but it was fun! Kind of unusual to retune so fast and so often, I prefer it modal, but still fun!

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

A lovely neopagan (or rather druidic, I think, in the sense of Czech neo-Druids socieity) artifact on one of the mountains nearby. The spirit goes where it wishes!

crystals and keys hanging from a stick, itself handing from a tree, on a mountain, above the lake

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Dr. Chance Bonar @chancebonar.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Course packet for my ancient magic class is put together! Looking forward to getting to teach first-years about the history of science, medicine, justice, and religion

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

The "from X till Y" phrase in Czech is so nicely symmetrical! Kinda almost like parentheses: OD X DO Y

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

til it's particularly hard to translate literary books between Slovak to Czech (two _extremely_ close languages) as Czech has a deep diglossia between literary and spoken languages, while Slovak, getting codified much later (oppressed before) doesn't have it. "Neutral translation" is impossible!

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Round-Headed White Thorn (thistle) on the slopes of the Hare-Town Mountain near the White River

large fancy space-looking plants with low mountains in the far

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 24/06/2024

From @Wall_CAP : A temple to Antenociticus, discovered in 1862 near the Condercum (Benwell) fort on the Hadrian's Wall. Built around AD 178-180. Antenociticus is not mentioned anywhere else around the Empire, so was probably a local god. I'm amazed: 1) How church-like this plan is 2) LOCAL GOD!! 😍

A plan of the Antenociticus' temple from some 1941 publication

One of the three altars found in the temple!!

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Dongba symbols are a system of pictographic glyphs used by the Bon priests of the Naxi people in southern China. Dongba is largely a mnemonic system, and cannot by itself represent the Naxi language; different authors may use the same glyphs with different meanings en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongba_...

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 16/10/2023

An open-air Mithraeum in Rožanec, Slovenia, late 2nd sentury. (It wasn't originally open-air; there was a building immediately adjacent to the rock) More info: en.odkrijtebelokrajino.com/mitrov-tempelj

A rock with a typical Mithraic carving in it

A drawing of the carving. Mirhra slaying a bull, with saint (?) dudes on both sides, and a Roman inscription above. Mithras head is, sadly, lost

A photo of the place as it looks overall: a forest, trees, plants, a mossy rock, and some place in front of it where the faithful participated in religious ceremonies

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 11/07/2024

I'm low-key obsessed with the Cao’an temple: the Only still-functioning Manichaean temple in the world!! Built in 14C, disguised as a Buddhist temple to avoid the purge, still functioning as such, retaining the original image of Mani (Photos: @antiokhos.bsky.social ) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cao%27an

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Yazidi temple Cim'aya Merave in Bacin, Turkey. The village was populated by Kurds of the Şemikan tribe, who now all emigrated. They return once a year on May 29 to celebrate a day of Şîxadî: a 12th century saint, a founder of Yazidism, and an avatar of Tawûsî Melek. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HIM...

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Arseny @elstersen.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

til Van Gogh used to write illusrated letters about art to his brother Theo source: www.upworthy.com/how-one-woma...

a letter from Van Gogh with a miniature rendition of his Potato Eaters

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