Bibliolater 📚📜🖋📐 @bibliolater@qoto.org

New to mastodon. Here's a video in which I showcase the changing sound of English from the 8th century to the 19th, from Beowulf to Ben Franklin's Fart Joke and John Keats

I tend to make a lot of content like this as a hobby.

Also I post about various weird questions in linguistics.

Also I translate poetry, like a lot.

@linguistics

When you think about it, it's a miracle we can express anything in writing. Speech isn't just words. It's volume, tone of voice, expression, hands, body language...All that disappears on the page. But we can put across not just meaning but feeling, all with those funny little marks. If that's not crazy, what is? Maybe we really are an intelligent species. Maybe. On a good day. If we're lucky.

#OTD in 1803, a ceremony at the Cabildo, New Orleans, finalizes the Louisiana Purchase by the USA from France. At the time, it seemed the logical thing to do as France was engulfed in multiple wars and needed the money. In hindsight of course, it looks a bit shortsighted… #histodon #histodons #history #louisiana @histodons

'The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages' was the most enjoyable #OnlineExhibition I have ever found: thank you #Europeana

https://www.europeana.eu/en/exhibitions/the-art-of-reading-in-the-middle-ages

📷 from the Smithfield Decretals, BL Royal MS 10 E IV, f.5v, https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Royal_MS_10_E_IV

#MedievalManuscripts #books #manuscripts #BookHistory #MiddleAges #medievodons @medievodons

The planet Mercury crossing the face of the Sun captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft during a transit in 2019.

Credit: NASA SVS/SDO

#astronomy #science #space #transit

'Dish', 'disc', 'disk', 'desk', 'dais', 'disco', and 'discus' all stem from one and the same word:
Ancient Greek δίσκος.

Each entered English in its own way at its own time.

They're an example of etymological doublets: coexisting words in one language that share their ancestor.

Time for a proper #introduction with hashtags!

I'm Amber Manfree, a geographer and cartorgrapher participating in #Mastodon through the #Mapstodon server (thanks admins!). I make lots of #maps!

Tooting mainly from Onasatsis and Patwin lands in California, US.

Follow for: #geography #cartography #GISchat #estuary #wetland #CAwater #water #drought #fish #Napa #California #conservation #environment #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #landscape #NaturalHistory #NativeSpecies

ambermanfree.com

19 Dec 1627: John #Harvard enters Emmanuel College #Cambridge #otd

He would retain his interest in higher education

(alainedouard)

Andreas Osiander, who edited Copernicus' De revolutionibus and added the ad lectorum, was born 19 December c. 1496 #histsci #historyof astronomy #Copernicus #bookhistory
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2015/12/19/the-greatest-villain-in-the-history-of-science/

Astronomers discover South Pole Wall, a gigantic structure stretching 1.4 billion light-years across

Check out this paper by Adam Mann for LiveScience, on this recent discovery in the field of cosmography, which is "the cartography of the cosmos": https://www.livescience.com/south-pole-wall-discovered-in-space.html

#universe #cosmology #southpolewall #astronomy #astrophysics #galaxies #cosmicweb #space #science #research #astrodon #scicom #sciencecommunication #sciencemastodon #sciendon #milkyway #galaxy #map #maps #cartography #physics

#OnThisDay in 1606 three ships owned by the #Virginia Company left London, #England to set sail for North America (their "New World"). The three ships, the Susan Constant, the Discovery, and the Godspeed, held passengers and crew, as well as supplies needed to build a colony.
The journey took them four months and they landed in April 1607, claiming an uninhabited bit of land (it was mosquito-ridden and swampy - terrible for farming) for Jamestown.

#history #OTD #histodons @histodons

Albert Michelson, pioneer of optical interferometry, was born #OTD in 1852.

Michelson refined measurements of the speed of light, failed to find evidence of the aether, and developed a method that now underlies gravitational wave detection.

Photo: “Practical Physics,” Millikan & Gale

The evolution of elephant depiction through the middle ages: https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/index.html ;)