Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 13h"The astonishment that the things we are experiencing in the [21st] century are 'still' possible is by no means philosophical. It is not the beginning of knowledge, unless it is the knowledge that the conception of history on which it rests is untenable." 000
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Three years ago every space in these pictures was lawn grass (well, one was bare dirt on its way to being lawn grass); they're not anymore but are instead thriving agroecosystems. Maybe small drops in the proverbial big bucket but it's still a small victory and it's beautiful to see 042
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 01/10/2026To see children out and about playing and to immediately imagine some crime is being perpetrated and then to call the cops is about as bleak a sign of dystopian decay in basic sociability and life as you can ask for 022
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 01/10/2026You could write a book, at least, taking this headstone in Chattanooga's Confederate Cemetery as your jumping-off point, there are centuries of the contradictions and and tragedies and occlusions and layers and layers of Southern American history condensed right here 1359
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood 000
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026Libertarian socialism *works* if- and it's always the looming if- the agents of organized state violence don't decide to shut it downnytimes.comThe Homeless Community in Portland That Became Self-GovernedPortland’s Dignity Village has been a place for people without housing for more than 25 years. 151
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Gotta say that one of the very few things that could make attending a pro baseball game- one of the most excruciatingly boring experiences on earth- attractive would be the prospect of gazing up at the Grand Tetons while the players stand around squinting at the sun or whatever it is they do 100
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Saturday outing up to the Piney River/Grassy Cove area of the Cumberland Plateau, my childhood stomping grounds, some of the most beautiful country this side of anywhere 120
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Not yet willing to stake money on it but I've got a feeling that one possible end result of AI is going to be to make the global internet unusable and force a return to a mostly analog world 050
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 26/09/2026"You’re as incomprehensible as this morning’s rebus’’ 110
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 24/09/2026New essay out today on the long deep history of subjectivity, technologies of communication and of the self, and the surprising loop-backs of our world of digital lives and AI agents into that of the Paleolithic:jonathanparkesallen.substack.comTraces of the SelfImaginative Explorations in the History of Subjectivity 010
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 24/09/2026bro might be a pious member of the Georgian Orthodox clergy but man has he GOT THE RIZZ 120
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Closest thing recently to the Greenfield MA lesbian bar drama that happened in these parts also involved a queer organization but that's where the similarities end, culminating weirdness involved some heavily armed Maoists guarding a fundraiser for said organization and trying to provoke a fight 130
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Why hello there, you may be wondering, Why am I standing fully clothed in a tub of water? Well 010
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 22/09/2026The scene from my campsite at dusk one year ago in the Ojito Wilderness in New Mexico; I love my Southern Appalachians and don't imagine I'll ever live anywhere else but I do find myself pining for the desert Southwest sometimes I will admit 110
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026How am I just now learning that freakin Jeffrey Epstein had a bizarre "mosque" built on his island within which he displayed his expansive collection of Islamic art including part of the kiswah of the Ka'ba??? 070
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026There is a foraminifera sculpture park in Zhongshan, Guangdong, the outcome of the vision of Pakistani-American marine geologist Bilal Haq and Chinese marine biologist Zheng Shouyi, honestly there should be more in more cities 29737
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Gorgeous larger than life models of foraminifera sculpted by the French naturalist Alcide d’Orbigny (1802–1857) alongside a page of drawings he made of the tiny exquisite little organisms: 141
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 20/09/2026Man the first part of this article had very strong "it's fine if my child gets measles because I'm not going to compromise my political views" vibes but from the progressive side of the aisle, just a really sad piece despite an attempted salvage at the end 260
Reposted by Jonathan Parkes AllenFared Al Mahlool | فريد المحلول @faredalmahlool.bsky.social · 19/09/2026This video was filmed in Palestine. My heart struggles to comprehend such cruelty and the heartbreaking disregard for human life. No human being should have to endure this. 5629451403
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 20/09/2026Heard something on the radio recently about the UN and it suddenly hit me how back in the 90s tons of conservative Americans, evangelicals especially, legit feared the UN, any day now blue helmets were going to be marching on your neighborhood- that whole discourse has vanished like the dew 132
Reposted by Jonathan Parkes AllenChattanooga Food Forest Coalition @foodforestchatt.bsky.social · 18/09/2026"That is the upside of global interconnection: our actions need not only have negative effects on others, but can positively interact, can shape all our worlds together for the better."foodforestschattanooga.substack.comThink Local, Act GlobalNewsletter for the Third Week of September 022
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 18/09/2026In a different timeline I'd be writing a book on these topics but in this timeline occasional essays will have to do:jonathanparkesallen.substack.comWonder and AweAn Early Modern Ottoman Traveler and the Formation of the Sense of the Natural Sublime 030
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Start of 2020 (right before covid) I encountered a scientist from NVIDIA who presented at a digital humanities conference I attended; NVIDIA was not yet the big deal it is now but already then he was speaking of (strictly proprietary!) AI wonders, also gave off super evil vibes which totally tracks 120
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Had to get a tire change this afternoon and while the mechanic was working I set out to the coffeeshop across the four-lane highway and as I was baking above the endless asphalt it just sort of hit me that the machines already won, AI is just the last finishing little component to run it without us 121
Reposted by Jonathan Parkes AllenSarah Primate @langurlover.bsky.social · 17/09/2026#Archaeology #Anthropology 🦣phys.orgIce Age carvers used mammoth tusk patterns to create unique art, study findsIntricate designs engraved across the surface of 18,000-year-old female figurines carved from mammoth ivory were inspired by the distinctive growth patterns visible in the tusks, a new study published... 133
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 16/09/2026"The moriscos, added Harrison in another letter, were eager to read ‘Calvin and other bookes of our religion . . . Yea, both, Moores, Jewes and all...'" 010
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 16/09/2026A MOST STRANGE AND WONDERFULL PROPHESIE UPON THIS TROUBLESOME WORLD 140
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Icon of the 14th century Coptic Orthodox St. Barsawma the Naked and his pet snake (it had been causing trouble in the basement of the Church of St. Mercurius until the saint tamed it), by the prodigious 18th c. iconographer Yuhanna al-Armani 020
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 16/09/2026It is not a question of if the world is going to undergo a pattern of degrowth but rather what the degrowth trajectory will look like and whether it will be at least partially intentional or entirely reactionarynytimes.comRising Fuel Prices Set Off Anger and Protests Around the WorldFrom Indonesia to Guatemala to Syria, shortages and price increases are leading to protests and blackouts. 002
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026We're on year four of our home agroecological transformation and one thing I've really noticed lately is the increase in spider species diversity and general density, following on the general increase in insect biodiversity and population sizes, it's so fun to see such markers of recovery 030
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Saudi Arabia's mega-project The Line (ذا لاين) seems to have basically ground to a halt at some point last year, though I didn't hear about it until recently. Nonetheless I feel like that point of cessation may well be remembered as a key if weird marker point in the history of the 21st century 040
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Two absolutely fantastic iconographic miniatures from a 19th (?) century Coptic Orthodox majmū'a, Mingana Christian Arabic 71, with St. Athanasius on the right, St. Peter on the left: 2194
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Couldn't quite put my finger on the causal dynamics but over the last few years my wife and I have gotten to where we just about do not watch any movies or TV in the evening, much prefer to read books instead, maybe a movie a month and it's usually a MST3K we've seen before lol 030
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Christ being tempted by Satan in the wilderness, from a 17th century Ottoman Armenian Gospel-Book (University of Birmingham Mingana Collection of Middle Eastern Manuscripts, Armenian 1): 062
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 14/09/2026Held this yesterday- an outdoor screening, super cool way to show documentaries like this though you do have to wait for sufficient darkness outside to begin- and we raised $300 for olive tree restoration efforts in the West Bank, you love to see it 020
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 14/09/2026Some striking doodles, reader notes, pen trials, and magical materia from the front pages of a 16th c. Syriac and Garshuni (Arabic in Syriac script) miscellany containing Psalms, memre, and other texts; the page on the left has several Islamic basmalahs in Arabic script (BnF Syriaque 13) 020
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 13/09/2026There's something very sad about racism for the racist: it's a self-imposed severance from others, from knowing and learning and benefiting from all manner of people, of refusing to partake in the lives and stories of others for the sake of your personal hatreds and bigotry, a self-impoverishment 0378
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 13/09/2026The swamp marigold posting will continue until morale improves 020
Reposted by Jonathan Parkes AllenMayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 11/09/2026This afternoon, I joined Archbishop Elpidophoros and faith leaders at St. Nicholas National Shrine to mark the 25 years since the horrific terror attacks of 9/11 and reflect on the resilience of our city. 10389971406
Reposted by Jonathan Parkes AllenSharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 11/09/2026if this was in an evangelical movie about the antichrist you'd think it'd be a bit much 693898718
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 11/09/2026My life's trajectory was shaped- mostly for, I think, the better, however perverse sounding that is to say!- not so much by 9/11 itself as the aftermath, specifically the temporary vogue in higher education for the study of Islam; I doubt my graduate career would have been possible otherwise. 120
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 11/09/2026For a while my son was telling time using Pokemon names and their numbers- ie 1:40 pm would be Vlorbop because it's number 140 (made that up because my son is in bed asleep and I can't ask him right now), but it only worked up to whatever the last Pokemon number is currently, 1,030 or something 041
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 10/09/2026I was able to pull up this gorgeously executed map, made in 1991, from the Library of Congress digital collections in about thirty five seconds, and it does not contain dozens and dozens of egregious errors and butcheries of spelling that AI slop contains, wild isn't it 1151
Reposted by Jonathan Parkes AllenChattanooga Food Forest Coalition @foodforestchatt.bsky.social · 10/09/2026"The transformation of this hillside, and of many other similar places around Chattanooga, from an ecological and social wasteland, almost entirely devoid of life and of purposeful meaning and use, involved very little exchange of money, but it required a great deal of work and self-giving."foodforestschattanooga.substack.comA Gift But Not FreeNewsletter for the Second Week of September 031
Jonathan Parkes Allen @jparkesallen.bsky.social · 10/09/2026My home rivers are the Piney River that drains off of the east escarpment of the Cumberland Plateau and was a regular childhood destination, accompanied by the Leaf River of Mississippi, it and its tributaries flowed through my teenage and college years, I can still summon the feel their warm waters 130