iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I guess if you read a bunch of ancient shopping lists, I can see how you'd reach the conclusion that people had a "mania" for recording the prices of goods in money, but I'm not sure I'd endorse that conclusion

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 18h

Who/what should I be reading about land tenure during the 2nd-8th CE in Palestine? Been out of this game for a minute so I've doubtless forgotten some older works and missed some newer ones. Time range intended to capture "late antique/early Islamic"

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Good example of how underrated The Americans is: It’s not on a single one of the NYT's “Suggest me a TV show that __” categories in spite of ranking #17 on the list of best TV shows itself. Here are all the categories it apparently did not fit.

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

ahem, well, i'm thoroughly terrified by how much work i have to do over the next few months. might be time to deactivate for a longer while. shame me if you see me on here before december, ok?

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

@feelingtheory.bsky.social I am searching your posts for vegan and Philly to find a good lunch spot and now I am extremely hungry and nowhere closer to choosing a spot

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

sorry to be all sincere, but meeting a former student who has now become a colleague is such an unparalleled 10/10 experience 😭

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

i've spent all morning writing one of those tortured zero drafts where i'm tripping over footnotes and trying to convince myself more than anyone else that the claims i'm making are true so, like, it's nice to hear that for some ppl just going out there and being confidently wrong is also an option

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I gotta trust that I have a process and my process involves forgetting how to write every time I sit down to write

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

welp, i guess there's nothing left to do but write

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

i saw someone visit a website today and click "accept all cookies." these people really do walk amongst us

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The Great Pumpkin Papers 🎃🎃🎃 @professormusgrave.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

You say you support minorities yet you oppose billionaires

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

welp, i guess there's nothing left to do but write

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

strolling around princeton university is literally like that south park episode where they parody Game of Thrones. just walled gardens full of dozens of other people all similarly out for a stroll because there ain't nowhere else to go

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Kaneesha Parsard @kaneeshaparsard.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Hi everyone! My first book Desiring Freedom is coming out this November on the University of Chicago Press. Pre-order here (bit.ly/4j51OqD) and check out blurbs from David Scott and Faith Smith below:

bit.ly

Desiring Freedom

A groundbreaking account of concepts of freedom in West Indian literature and visual culture.Desiring Freedom examines post-emancipation West Indian literature and visual culture to ask how they reima...

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Johanna Winant @johannawinant.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

my math professor friend recently answered the question, "what makes someone good at math?" with the word "sitzfleisch," which he then defined for us, and also that's the exact same answer as studying literature.

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

oh this one makes me really happy!

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

just realized i was needlessly hostile to matt amodio on the jeopardy masters rerun i was watching last night because i confused him with dario amodei

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

this harvard faculty member:

scene from I Think You Should Leave where another guy tells Tim Robinson: "He didn't trick me. I am a star. Nobody tricked me."

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

my friend suggested a movie she thought i'd like (derogatory), not knowing i've seen it like three times. the film is the m night shyamalan / josh hartnett film TRAP about the concert that's a trap to catch a serial killer. if i were a nepo baby, this film is what i'd want my parent to do for me.

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā website has been down for me for days now and there's some stuff on there I'd really like to read 😭 Anyone know if something is up with the Columbia library site? journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/al...

journals.library.columbia.edu

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

talking to my friend in england is always like, oh she's having a lovely day (wow!), oh she's out for a walk in the country (maybe i should move there!), she's watching a cricket match (i'm looking at tickets now), oh it's in a town called cuckfield (never mind)

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Gary the Cat @greatgramsofgary.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Just a tiny cat in big mountains

A grey and white cat sits on a rock. Mountains are seen behind him

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 11/09/2026

I also find it hilarious how universities are justifying these expenditures using the language of 'equity.'"If we don't buy these tools for everyone, then only the rich kids will be able to afford them, and that's unfair." But you don't buy books assigned by profs for anyone? Why not subsidize that!

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Danna, you’re moving from a place of doubt. Who did this to you, an absent parent? Yeah, I can tell. I was once just like you, thinking I wasn’t good enough to klarna first class flights to the Texaspalooza Executive Circle Leadership Summit. I let doubt put a ceiling on my belief.

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I think quite often of Ensign Mendon (I look like him, but that's only because we are from the same geostructure), who did not tell the Enterprise crew about the new biological lifeform he detected because he "had not yet completed [his] analysis." Resist your inner Ensign Mendon, painful as it is!

An alien wearing a blue Starfleet uniform. His nose forms an enormous overhang over his lips and in general, well, he looks just like me

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This is so cool Vorderstrasse describes a "Khotanese-Chinese phrasebook in which Chinese expressions were rendered in Brāhmī script" Some of the expressions: “bring water,” “make food for me,” “bring me cucumbers,” “bring me gourd,” and “I sell you one cloth.”

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

A piece by yours truly about the first reference to a Deccan merchant association in a Geniza document. I had fun writing this one! Come for the merchant associations, and stay for the Ina Garten quote www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/...

lib.cam.ac.uk

Fragment of the Month: August 2026

In August's Fragment of the Month, Pratima Gopalakrishnan finds evidence for a Deccan merchant association in a Genizah document.

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Nick Brumfield @nickjbrumfield.bsky.social · 21/08/2024

It's gonna take me awhile (may do a post daily), but this inspired me to do a thread on why each of Yemen's twenty-one diverse governorates is awesome and cool to show a different side of the country

Topographic map of Yemen showing low lying green areas along the coast, and more elevated brownish areas in the interior, with a ridge of greyish mountains running down the western edge of the elevated areas before the coast

A map of Yemen's (non-perennial) waterways

A map of population density by governorate in Yemen with the eastern 2/3 of the country being relatively lightly shaded and the western one-third darkly shaded, especially in the southwest in Ta'iz and Ibb

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I would have sworn that this is the sort of word someone invented in, like, 1950 at the earliest. Proto-New Indo-Aryan ḍabba, like for real??

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Great essay with an opening that could belong in a horror lit magazine

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Pratima @ismipratima.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

who needs the lumbar support? me, who is happy to share any chair with a cat who gets first dibs on the only chair with lumbar support? my black cat who refuses to share with anyone

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