@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

ArchaeoIain

@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social

Australian retired archaeologist, Emeritus Professor at University of New England, Armidale. Writing book on (mostly the evolution of) art. Published on bones, stones, language origins, art etc. Worked with Gamilaraay, Wangkamadla, Yulluna, Kalkadoon and Mitakoodi people.
We must have a politics which encourages equality and fights climate change. Poverty and environmental destruction are caused by human greed.

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mrundkvist, to writing Swedish
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

Hey everybody who writes! Are you looking for one simple way to make me lose all confidence in you? It's easy! Just wobble randomly between the past and present tense! For that really solid punch, wobble inside sentences!

#writing

ArchaeoIain, (edited )
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist you have to hate whoever it is who invented the present tense for past events. I believe it is a genre thing whereas the correct use of tenses is generic. I have just got out of the car and a boy was talking about Roman emperors as if they were a) his friends and b) doing things even as I listened. Loathsome.

ArchaeoIain, to random
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

Is anyone else confused by the process of following people on here? What does the little icon with an x next to it mean. If you click on it, it changes to a little icon with a + on it. That is clear as mud to me.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@joeroe thanks for that. What seems to happen is that I get a request to follow, and I click that and I then get a notification that someone is following me and they have the little icon to the right. I do not know whether I then need to click it if it is an x or if it is a +.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@joeroe I have just tried it and when I clicked the x turned into a +, the colour drained from the cheeks of the bust of the person and I was at the site of the person I was meant to be following. But then there was a button which asked me to follow. So I followed and was returned to the bust and x and colour in its cheeks. Something is counter-intuitive, but I get it now.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@joeroe thank you

mrundkvist, to languagelearning Swedish
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

Sometimes a gratuitous comma is traumatic enough for me to need weeks of therapy.

#language

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist sometimes a gratuitous comma is traumatic enough for me to need, weeks of therapy.

FlintDibble, to Archaeology
@FlintDibble@archaeo.social avatar

It's clear people like archaeology. It's just big time Netflix producers gatekeep & prefer fantastical claims to solid archaeology based on up-to-date methods

Watch my video critiquing the 'burials' to see the problems with this show: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9iN9t393QQI

New video next week. #archaeology @archaeodons

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@FlintDibble @archaeodons you are so right. WE need to be extra careful to let people know that we base our work on the archaeological evidence and the careful assessment of it. I suspect that is not good enough to destroy the anti-science crew, but we need to keep emphasising our point.

(By the way, Flint, did you happen to see my DM to you?)

mrundkvist, to languagelearning Swedish
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

French has an absurd word for grapefruit that should not be allowed: pamplemousse. Turns out it's a Dutch loan word incorporating a Portuguese loan word: pompel + limões, "swollen lemon". Shame on you, French people!

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist yet it is one of the most delightful words around. I once bought a house that used to be named Pamplemousse. For various reasons I renamed it Campeador.

mrundkvist, to Health Swedish
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

Why are boils / carbuncles common in English fiction and almost unknown in real-life Sweden?

#health

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist I have noticed this. As a kid growing up in the UK from 1948 to late 1960s, boils were a phenomenon. I suspect they were strongly diet related. I think maybe the lack of fresh fruit and veggies, but I'm sure I can Google that.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist Golden Staph. Hygiene.

ArchaeoIain, (edited )
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist that would be great. Spread the word that burning coal releases Golden Staph.

StillIRise1963, (edited ) to random
@StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

"Students at Florida public schools will now learn that Black people benefitted from slavery because it taught them skills. This change is part of the African American history standards the State Board of Education approved at a Wednesday meeting."

*Obviously, I copied the text from the article. Now, the article has changed, so I deleted the second paragraph. It said "...violence perpetrated BY African Americans, it now says "on."

https://www.rawstory.com/ap-black-history-florida/

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@StillIRise1963 just show them pictures of Benin bronzes. Skills?

mrundkvist, to books Swedish
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

Soon the Beats will belong to the same category of past literary cult figures as Goethe and Lord Byron.

#books #literature

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist

mrundkvist, to ChatGPT Swedish
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

The first computer I was aware of was Batman's computer in the 1960s TV series. I was 5 and got the idea that the word meant "machine that holds all knowledge". The fact that it could speak didn't impress me much. So 5-y-o me would not have been impressed by #ChatGPT. Sure, this computer speaks as expected. But it can't tell truth from fiction. That little kid would have preferred #Wikipedia.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist and that little kid would probably have preferred an encyclopedia in a book anyway. I believe there was a study which showed that Wikipedia was actually more accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica, not that 5 year old you would have known that.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist oh, I think that is the point. We accepted a much slower version of the truth back then. And also a "He's the authority, what he says is true." version of history.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist that's an interesting contrast, isn't it? "The authority" versus "the expert consensus". There must be better ways.

mrundkvist, to random Swedish
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

Doing pretty OK #summer

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist are Miss Briggs and Doris the same person?

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist I was just amused that I could read the text in this photo but not in the other one. Mind you, I am not convinced that this is very well written, but that is my problem

mrundkvist, to history Swedish
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

The Qur'an was translated into Greek c. AD 800, but the work only survives as quotations in later writings.

#history #islam

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist the Greek translation, I presume you mean.

ArchaeoIain, to random
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

I once applied for a job in a Nuclear Physics department. About half way through being shown around the department it was obvious that the Head had given up on physics and thought that having a tame archaeologist would be a way to justify using their equipment to do archaeological science. I decided I did not want a job on those terms, so I told them than next day at the interview.

I got a job here.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist oh, I was lucky. The world was not so saturated in 1973-4. And the Australian academy was just entering a golden age which lasted at least 15 years, and was pretty comfortable for another ten. By then I was senior enough to avoid much of the trauma.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist yeah, that is common around the world, I think. There was one country I knew about (and visited) what had a policy of training someone for the vacancy that opened up. I do not think it was a very successful system. There has to be some balance.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist would you really want to go down that path? YOu would end up with a bunch of useless economists. You would never get people to think outside the box. Like, how often have you heard people recently commenting that to "cure" inflation we need to make things worse for working people, and preferrably put them out of jobs. That is just dumb thinking because the orthodox approach to economics say that that is how the curves respond. But what about starting from where people live?

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist could not agree more. Student debt is a terrible curse.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist true. And who ever thought that accountancy was fun?

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