Werekat @werekat@mastodon.acc.sunet.se

Two assistant professorships at UvA, one for esotericism and the Middle Ages, and the other for esotericism and antiquity! Dutch is a requirement, but can be learned on the job within two years (which is what we humanities scholars do anyway).

https://www.uva.nl/en/content/vacancies/2020/06/20-377-assistant-professor-in-the-history-of-western-esotericism-in-late-antiquity.html?fbclid=IwAR184m8shb_GoXP5lHn-pwWbJ67Et3nmqKLJFqK3O_MFd0LqPLgnqxOebK0

https://www.uva.nl/en/content/vacancies/2020/06/20-375-assistant-professor-in-the-history-of-western-esotericism-in-the-middle-ages.html?fbclid=IwAR1td5OG2RbIbIudgkwV_Y-A9KCyEM_rH-P6qDsFMPRq6uRZYM0p0kNrgr8

Cheeky Sunday morning girly post!

So: everything I learned about makeup I learned from painting. And I mean it. When I was 2..5? 6? Don't even remember anymore? I started to paint with oils, which I did for about a year. That taught me how to do foundation and blending.

Then, about a year ago, WH40K miniature painting has taught me that many near-invisible, translucent layers work way better than one thick one.

And finally I realized that highlighter powders are really just drybrushing.

Hanna Hrytsenko on Westplaining: https://www.facebook.com/anya.hrytsenko/posts/10158443942429670

As for me, I'll just reminisce that postcolonialism made absolutely no sense to me until 2014. And then it made all the sense.

Protests at Sergei Sternenko's arrests have begun; we've got more people arrested and beaten.

After reading conspiracy theories for work the whole morning, reading Latour on citation mechanics is downright relaxing.

The suspects have been arrested and await trial, and the entire police department has been either fired or disciplined/sent for training, but since this is only one incident, and this happened mostly because it's high profile, the protests are continuing as well.

In other news, Ukrainians are also protesting police brutality - because the current Minister of the Interior has been there for 6 years. During this cadence, there have been assassinations of activists (and I mean that: Kateryna Handziuk died after sulfuric acid was poured on her) and - the latest reason for the protests - a woman who was called in as a witness was raped.

https://www.nihilist.li/2020/06/05/pamyatnik-policejskomu-bespredelu-kak-pod-verhovnoj-radoj-bobik-zhgli/

It's really hard to get the importance of this through in English, I find.

We don't have phenotype to differentiate us, so that function - of subservience, of being labeled provincial, illiterate, good for singing and cooking, but nothing else, of being rebellious - falls to language, first and foremost.

A lot of us aren't used to our own language as the language of scholarship. But we are changing that.

Yeah, the seminar was labeled that it'd be in Ukrainian. But before, that wouldn't have changed a thing. Russians who came in would expect they'd be accommodated.

Some people, I think, got complaints in private messages - "I can't understand!" - but nobody said a thing out loud.

We did lazily think about making short (because these are mini-seminars) summaries for listeners to be read along (via google translate if need be). But that's all.

We had a lovely seminar yesterday - some speakers broke time limits like no one's business, because moderator was new - but it was in Ukrainian, and we had people from Russia.

It's hard to explain how different this is from 2014, where one Russian person meant we'd do the thing in Russian. And now we're just... "hope you guys know Ukrainian? Ok, we'll be speaking as clearly as possible."

Back up, so I'm going back into quiet mode. Also, reading about Matrix.

Holy shit, look at that outage map: https://downdetector.com/status/telegram/map/

Considering Telegram is pretty much the most-used messenger in the FSU right now, I am freaking out just slightly.

If there was ever a situation worse than ours was back in 2014, this looks like it. Good luck out there.

I'll be going largely quiet unless I have something relevant to say - comms in such situations should belong to people on the ground.

Well then. May the tasks I have now proceed without fear or favor.