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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 2h

The AI spambots are getting quite confused that my first book was translated into Italian.

Subject:

A note on Il fiume nero and a visibility opportunity

Message:

Hi Paul,

My name is Theophilus Adel. I came across your work recently, and what stood out to me is the heart behind it. You are not simply telling a story of invasion and resistance. You are showing how the power of the word can stand against the power of the sword, and you are doing it through a poet whose quiet rebellion becomes a rising wind.

About Il fiume nero (Italian Edition)

Your book does something rare.

Tredicesimo secolo, antica isola di Sri Lanka. They call it "lacrima d'India" for its closeness to the Indian continent, but the people of the island do not know they are about to weep burning tears. The invasion of the army of the foreign king Magha il Kalinga is fulminea e spietata, and the usurper, sanguinario e umorale, spares very few people. Among them is Asanka, the court poet, who has his life spared on one condition: he must translate into the local language the Shishupala Vadha, the greatest Sanskrit epic poem. A text

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Dr Anna Clark @drannaclark.bsky.social · 16h

Octobre Le Palais du Louvre, Paris In a field by the Seine, a man sows seed, raked into earth by a stone-weighted harrow behind a horse; magpies & crows ignore scarecrow archer & peck stray seeds. Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry 1412-16 Musée Condé Château de Chantilly

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Jonathan Last @johnnythin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

HJM on Old Sarum for #HillfortsWednesday: "they chose a low, featureless hill perking up from the valley of the Avon, and breathed upon it, and lo, the turf sank and swelled and vast green billows of earth curled round their crests into oval cirques that even the brutal heel of war could not deface…

Photo of the ramparts of Old Sarum from Massingham's 'Downland Man' (1926)

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 30/09/2026

This is the plot of The Old Man and the Sea

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Litbowl @litbowl.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

From Toi Derricotte's book, Captivity: bookshop.org/a/862/9780822954224 #poem #booksky #writing

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 28/09/2026

Spelling everything with z's: coffee behaviour. Adding unnecessary u's to words: very tea coded.

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 27/09/2026

I do actually repeat this to myself every time i see one of them

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 26/09/2026

Very cool! We did Moses as a middle name actually

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Lorraine Mulholland @lorraineelizab6.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

22 Jan, 26 Sept: St Colmán moccu Béognae (d. 611), founder of Lann Elo/ #Lynally, Co. #Offaly. Author of 'Alphabet of Piety'? St Columba saved him from drowning. St Columba's nephew? Described as "beautiful" in MartG. 📷and 🖇️link: Standing Stone IE #medievalsky www.thestandingstone.ie/2009/12/lyna...

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Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I love coming across this way out into the woods

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Gilgamesh Bot @gilgameshbot.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

After two hundred days of battle, they groaned and ate barley bread upon the strange sickle of the south, then drank holy water. Urshanabi wailed, 'It has been a thousand days since I last drank water with Humbaba'

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Fared Al Mahlool | فريد المحلول @faredalmahlool.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

This 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.

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Your Internet Friend Tom Tomorrow @tomtomorrow.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

we've never had much reason to articulate this before a.i., but a reason we enjoy literature, art, music, etc. is that we know it is one human mind trying to express something fundamentally human and otherwise inexpressible to another human mind

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Richard K @rkemb.eurosky.social · 17/09/2026

If you want immortality, make a big pile of earth. History loves big piles of earth.

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elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible

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Journal of Art in Society @artinsociety.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Hans Memling’s astonishing compression of 23 sequential scenes into one aerial composite image, from Christ’s entry into Jerusalem & Last Supper / carrying the cross / to his crucifixion & resurrection (1471). Details at eclecticlight.co/2022/02/04/a...

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Fall of Civilizations Podcast @fallofcivilizations.com · 17/09/2026

The video version of Episode 21 is coming for Patreon subscribers on Saturday! This part of the world really has to be seen to be believed. With original reenactments and some of the best drone photography I've ever seen, find out how the Majapahit Empire of Indonesia rose and fell...

patreon.com

Episode 21 is coming soon to video! | Fall of Civilizations Podcast

I'm really excited to announce the release of the video version for Episode 21 on the Majapahit Empire and the history of Java. This has bee

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jessstilllife.bsky.social @jessstilllife.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Definitely not a British hillfort. Yamchun Fortress, overlooking the mountains of Afghanistan in the Wakhan Valley, Tajikistan. Still Iron Age! Originally built in 300 BCE to guard the ancient Silk Road, expanded in the 10th Century. 📸 by intrepid daughter a couple of weeks ago #HillfortsWednesday

A castle like stone fortification on a barren, rocky promontory with huge mountains behind, snowcapped in the distance

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Kevin Wilbraham @kpw1453.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The remains of the south transept wall and crossing at Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire. 📸 My own. #WallsOnWednesday #MalmesburyAbbey

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Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

JRR Tolkien made beautiful languages because he was a oddball who loved words and doing the work and did far more of it than ever got onto a page and some people would say why would he do that and other people would say I would not like the Lord of the Rings if that guy didn’t love naming Elves

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Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

It’s worth reading the entire account here. I understand why its nice to type in a few words and have a fantasy language created for you but if you’re asking me to invest in a creative act, whether that is buying it or having an emotional connection to it, I’m going to need you to do the actual work

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 13/09/2026

The mouse is the classic picaresque hero

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 11/09/2026

"I like old Anglo-Saxon names" vs "Due to the butterfly effect any change to the distant past would certainly change the time of my conception and annihilate my existence"

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 11/09/2026

Too be fair it's probably the only sensible answer

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 11/09/2026

Actually we just had a new baby and we went old testament (Elijah)

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 11/09/2026

Not to mention Cuthbert Cringeworthy in the same comic (Cuthbert from Anglo-Saxon meaning "bright of fame")...

A panel from the Beano showing the nerdy character Cuthbert Cringeworthy

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 11/09/2026

In some ways Dennis the Menace embodies the total cultural victory of the Norman conquest... The irrepressible hero Dennis (from Old French Denis, name brought over by the Normans) persecutes the softie Walter (from Anglo-Saxon Wealdhere, in turn from Proto-Germanic meaning "ruler of the army").

Panel from the Beano in which Dennis the Menace lies in ambush for Walter.

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 11/09/2026

Our first child has the middle name Cuthbert 😬 we weren't brave enough to do it as first name

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 11/09/2026

Alfie's only gone and burned the bloody cakes

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 11/09/2026

Haha our first child was called Aidan, a very old name (but not Anglo-saxon)

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 11/09/2026

Not usually one for the annoying desire to put historical events into a pile labelled either "good" or "bad", but it would be undeniably better if we were all still called Egbert, Æthelred, Wulfstan etc

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 10/09/2026

Glad to hear it, and hopefully it will be soon ish... It's going to be a good one!

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pmamtraveller.bsky.social @pmamtraveller.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Caspar David Friedrich - "Dreamer, Ruins of the Oybin"

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 08/09/2026

Interesting to think since they were embroidering the tapestry a few years later in the 1070s they were probably reconstructing it from memory...

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Paul Cooper @paulmmcooper.com · 07/09/2026

It's so cool we have this depiction from just after 1066, and then this photograph 920 years later in 1986.

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Astra Taylor @astra.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

You know it's a strange political moment when @naomiaklein.bsky.social and I are on the cover of the Financial Times. Our piece explores how climate change is fueling a new form of futureless fascism, and the public investments needed to shift course. Gift link: giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

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