Theo Beers @theodorebeers Twitter profile

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Theo Beers

2 years

My little workshop on premodern Persian-Arabic literary exchange, which I've titled ʿajam session, is two weeks away! It will be possible to watch presentations and participate in Q&A via Webex. Let me know if you're interested. Event website:

‘ajam session

A workshop on premodern literary exchange between Persian and Arabic

www.theobeers.com

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

4 months

@Dervine7 A wizard who liked to sit and do his reading in the buff

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 months

@Lib_Development A defined-benefit pension is much, much better than a 401(k) (defined-contribution)

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

6 months

@lea_ypi @DarwinCollege @spectator The writer and responsible editor(s) should face criminal charges of sexual harassment over this.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

A poem by Sanāʾī, translated by my PhD advisor, Frank Lewis, who, I just learned, has left us. May his memory be a blessing.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

5 months

@DavidSaranga @SalmanRushdie @BILD We don’t withhold self-determination from peoples until they demonstrate their worthiness. It’s a question of rights. There are plenty of terrible governments in the world. There are also separatist movements that would probably form good governments, but are rejected anyway.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 months

@UnhWut Freud called this the narcissism of small differences

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

@visegrad24 So, uh… do people still think this was a JDAM?

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

@LHSummers @Harvard Harvard has institutionally lost its way at all levels. It needs a reboot, but it has so much money and prestige to burn that I doubt anything will change.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

4 months

@Cominsitu I wouldn’t have signed the initial letter if it had been any less carefully scoped, and I know the same is true of several colleagues whose signatures were far more important. The way this blew up into a dumb scandal of its own is unfortunate, though.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

Thackston's cheatsheet on the uses of tā in Persian. I've shared this with I-don't-know-how-many students over the years.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

6 months

@dmm12345 @lea_ypi @DarwinCollege @spectator If he had emailed her and said, “I was so titillated by your lecture that I went for a tug-job right after,” then we would recognize it as harassment. The only difference here is that he had it published as a column instead. (I doubt there will be any consequences.)

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

4 years

It's never been easier to read Kalīla wa-Dimna. Pick a chapter and a published version, and off you go. This tool should be made private at some point, but for now, out of end-times expediency, it lives on the open web.

Kalila Reader

www.theobeers.com

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

I had another article come out—my second on the question of the extent to which Arabic literati of the early modern period were familiar with Persian. The short answer? It's a mixed bag. I thought I might find a bit more Persophilia than I have so far.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

4 months

@jaarosch @colin_fraser I think he means that, assuming the images aren’t fake, these signs were obviously put up by someone looking to make a point about the absurdity of local law, not by city officials.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

The best speech is succinct, gets the point across, and doesn't bore the listener

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

5 months

The little Shāhnāma reader got a stable URL. Otherwise I haven’t changed it a great deal since I last shared it. I think this summer I’ll work on an OCR pipeline إن شاء الله

Read the Shāhnāma

read.akvan.dev

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

9 months

Got a look at a new manuscript the other day; nice colophon

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

@AlexGodofsky I’ve seen this happen in HN threads where people from India talk about how ubiquitous and, ultimately, unobjectionable cheating is. Then people from Europe or North America reply with variations on “What in the actual f are you talking about?” Total disconnect

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

4 months

@skdh The true German response would be to tell him he probably overloaded the washing machine or otherwise didn’t operate it properly 😄

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

9 months

You think you're safe in this world? Take care— You're leaning on water (Naṣr Allāh Munshī, quoting Sanāʾī's Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqa; ms. dated 551/1156)

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

5 months

@airkatakana It’s hard to believe that any quality work could be coming out of a lab like that

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 months

Next Monday I start work as a research software engineer in the College of Engineering at Drexel. There will hopefully be a courtesy academic title as well, TBA. After a punishing experience trying and failing to establish myself as a Persianist, I decided to move on.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

10 months

@SenSanders What happens if the resolution passes and Hamas & Co. totally ignore the part about releasing hostages? Would Israel be expected nonetheless to accept an indefinite ceasefire?

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

4 months

@melnickjeffrey1 Do you know the story of the guy whose father used to say, “Knowledge is power — Francis Bacon,” but he misheard the second part as “France is bacon” and repeated it that way for years before realizing?

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

@antoniogm That's incredible. Uvalde County is nearly three-quarters Hispanic. Most of the victims, most of the responding officers, the shooter himself…

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

4 months

@soncharm I got ratio’d saying that the way NOAA was treating these fishermen was wrong. So even these cases, which I thought made the administrative state look so unsympathetic—hence offering the Court an opening—appear to some people as totally acceptable business as usual.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

She had a face bright as an inkling of Islam in the heart of an infidel, hair dark as a sense of doubt in the mind of a believer

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

I had an article come out recently. I have mixed feelings about it (and it has provoked mixed responses); but I really do think that, moving beyond past errors, the question of Safavid literary patronage should be open for discussion.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

3 years

YouTuber Hamayon Afghan was interviewing people in Kabul yesterday, incl. Shi'a involved in Muharram celebrations. He starts asking a question to this vendor, and the man says, "First, is it ok if I recite a poem?" 1/2

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

4 months

I still use this digital version of Thackston's cheatsheet of Persian meters that I made last year (after meeting him!). Now I've updated it with shortcut links, to skip to meters starting with short-long, long-short, or long-long.

The Persian Meters

www.theobeers.com

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 months

@ValiantLyon @Lib_Development Why did the entire private sector move from defined-benefit to defined-contribution? Because firms are altruistic? No. Because the rank-and-file demanded it? No. It’s because 401(k) match costs a firm less and eliminates the risk associated with administering a pension plan.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

5 months

@Noahpinion A lot of academics are normies with no hoax-radar. I was amazed at how many of them fell hook line & sinker for the Jussie story in 2019. I’m talking, like, UChicago and Ivy PhDs. Just incredible

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

A poem I like by Ṣāʾib (d. ca. 1087/1676). He has almost seven thousand ghazals, so even the very best of his output adds up to more than I can grasp. But I think of this poem on long summer evenings. Maybe I'll also record a recitation of the Persian.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

@dtmooreeditor One non-derogatory example is stopgap. I was wondering if that might be a more recent coinage, but no: 1680s.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

They cast a hundred thousand forms in the mold of beauty and elegance—none finer than you Jāmī (seen at a friend’s house)

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

5 months

At the Met last weekend, I saw this page from an 8th/14th c. illustrated ms. of Naṣr Allāh Munshī's Kalīla and Dimna. Just checked the provenance—wow! This was part of Alphonse Kann's collection, stolen by the Nazis in 1940. One of the few objects recovered before his death.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

@mattyglesias @si_rubinstein @EricLevitz I have a feeling you’ll run into Dreher’s “law of warranted impossibility,” i.e., “that would never happen, and if it did, they would deserve it.”

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

3 months

@wanyeburkett I think she has a point. Even if you’re paying “pet rent,” if there are pet-related damages when you move out, that will come out of your deposit. So you really are just paying extra for the privilege of having your pet(s) in the apartment. It’s not an either-or.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

The German word for emerald, Smaragd—which I thought delightfully Tolkienesque—is a straight derivation from Latin smaragdus, from Greek σμάραγδος. That in turn is said to have a Semitic origin: the root that becomes برق in Arabic, a flash of lightning or glint of a gemstone.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

I'd like to emend and extend this spreadsheet of influential classical Persian poets, which I put together years ago. If you can suggest poets I missed, newer and/or better editions, etc., I'll be grateful.

Classical Persian poets

docs.google.com

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

11 days

@IChotiner Just minus the libel part?

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

“When the world lifts undistinguished people to prominence, don’t expect anything but the obscurity of noble people” – al-Buḥturī (d. 284/897), quoted by Naṣr Allāh Munshī (ca. 540/1146)

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

@CartoonsHateHer My favorite: “Maybe this didn’t actually happen, but something like it could have happened, and that’s the important part.”

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

دین بی ملک عاطل است و ملک بی دین باطل Religion without kingship will go to waste, and kingship without religion is baseless

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

9 months

@elaifresh Fried rice is cooked in a wok over a burner approximating a jet engine. Just how heat-resistant is the toxin supposed to be?

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 months

@ValiantLyon @Lib_Development 401(k) started as a compensation scheme for executives. It’s still good for people who make a lot of money and take care in managing their wealth. Over time, 401(k) became the default retirement plan for workers at all levels—for >90% of whom it’s a worse deal.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

Hot take: the study of classical Persian lit., as a field in western academic systems, is more structurally orientalist than sister fields like classical Arabic lit. And I think it's getting worse with time. We basically outsource hard philological work to Iranian scholars, who…

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

6 months

Inscriptions at a Mozarabic church in Toledo. It’s just اليمن والإقبال (“good fortune”) over and over.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

4 months

@ericneyman @gcolbourn Oh, come on

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

9 months

@antoniogm I realized after living in Europe for a while that these economies could be much stronger if people had more hustle. But why would they? Instead they can target a sweet spot of modest income and high quality of life, backed by the safety net.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

3 months

@wanyeburkett I’m with you for the most part, but “Mass Deportation Now” is pretty extreme. I wouldn’t feel comfortable before an audience holding those signs.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

I had an article come out today (or it'll be visible on the journal website within 48 hours, or something). It's a coauthorship with my colleague, Khouloud Khalfallah. Definitely one of the weirder, more challenging projects I've worked on!

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

The insistence of Pashtuns that the word دانشگاه not be used in Afghan Persian (sic!) is one of the more bizarre phenomena that I witnessed when I lived there. They are dead serious that the Pashto word پوهنتون should be used in both languages. Just an insane flex

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

The German government and German institutions are creating a situation that is both hurtful and dangerous by denying people any significant way of expressing empathy with Palestinians. Students at my university, for many of whom this is a deeply personal issue, are struggling.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

In Afghanistan, this dish is known as قابلی پلو (qābilī pulaw; "worthy pilaf"?), and I don't think it has a special association with Kabul. Elsewhere, however, it is very commonly referred to as Kabuli. An eggcorn that took on a life of its own and became legitimate.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

One of the great Persianists of the last generation (روحش شاد) used to say that the ghazals of Saʿdī are worldly, the ghazals of Mawlānā are divine, and the ghazals of Ḥāfiẓ are somewhere in between. Is that an oversimplification? Yes. Will I keep sharing it anyway? Also yes.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

3 months

@HistoryBoomer She’s just some poor woman working a retail job. It’s always wrong to go after people like this over trifling offenses. Radicalized Americans are acting more and more like the so-called anti-blasphemy mobs in Pakistan.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

How many times have you listened to this ~45-second passage from Hilary Hahn's classic performance of the Mendelssohn violin concerto? At least a few, I hope. My breath always catches at the moment when the orchestra rejoins.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

4 months

@emil_priver .sort((a, b) => a - b)

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

4 years

Hi all, I've made some enhancements to the calendar converter. Hopefully the page will load more quickly now, and with a more consistent appearance across browsers. You may need to clear cookies and other site data in order to see the updated version.

Calendar Converter for Near East Historians

www.muqawwim.com

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

6 months

@lauriewired After this operation, your name will be added to the No Fly List. Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

3 months

@thmsonline I think it’s pretty common that when you move out because of a rent hike, the unit ends up renting to the next tenant initially for less than you were paying. It happened to me in Chicago in 2018. Landlords get people in the door, then gamble on their disinclination to move.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 months

@Louise_m_perry What a disgusting line: “Alan Turing, whatever injustice done him, was dispensable to the survival of civilization, but the mores he transgressed were not”

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

6 months

I have a new article out, as part of a very nice special issue of the Journal of Arabic & Islamic Studies organized by my colleague, Johannes Stephan. Will put a link to the issue in a reply; it's open-access.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

@meekaale I was just wondering whether Google has been training its models on OCR text from the millions upon millions of books that they scanned but haven't been allowed to make public. It would be nice to see that content leak out indirectly.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

I finally finished revising my translation of Naṣr Allāh Munshī's introduction to Kalīlah and Dimnah (mid sixth/twelfth century). This project was a humbling experience that took me to the limits of my ability as a Persianist.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

7 months

After I move back to the US this summer, I’d like to at least start a reading group to go through some medieval Persian texts in manuscript. Philly or Princeton area. I’ll have to see if I can drum up interest among grad students and other lost souls.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

9 months

Another classic: English "bad" and Persian "bad" are etymologically unrelated

Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

9 months

English "much" is not related to Spanish "mucho". Latin "habere" (ancestor of French "avoir", Spanish "haber" etc.) is not related to German "haben" or English "have". Language is packed to the gills with astounding-seeming coincidences.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

I'm listening to a talk by Shawkat Toorawa. He said that, as a PhD student trying to find a diss. topic on classical Arabic lit., he went to George Makdisi for help. Makdisi told him to read the first two vols. of Sezgin's GAS and report back with four names of interest. 😁

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

7 months

A member of the Karzai family once told me that, although he has fluent Persian, he would rather speak any other language if possible.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

4 months

@sharghzadeh Many such cases

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

@MarkRuffaloVEVO @KingLibertarian @disclosetv Doesn't really work here, since the proposition is more like "We should overturn society."

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

3 months

You're a half-drunk Turk, I'm a half-slaughtered bird Your task with me is easy, my wish from you is hard تو ترک نیم‌مستی من مرغ نیم‌بسمل کار تو از من آسان کام من از تو مشکل Umīdī Tihrānī

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

6 months

@L0m3z Her posts are exceedingly bland. It’s all just received opinions. The term NPC is not much in use anymore, but it captures something about these people.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

In 2006, when I was getting ready to spend my first summer in Afghanistan—hoping to improve my Persian—a (generally very polite) Iranian acquaintance quipped that I may as well go to Jamaica to improve my English. I still think about that, well over fifteen years later.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 month

A line that was on my mind at the memorial workshop for Frank Lewis this weekend. Very grateful to those at UChicago who organized the event.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

10 months

@memeticsisyphus Does the Innocence Project care whether the cases that they work on were actually wrongful convictions? I think of it as an organization with an Orwellian name.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 months

@Byoussef It’s interesting how left/third-worldist antisemites are certain that Frank was the killer, while right antisemites are torn because the alternative suspect is a black man. Just a smorgasbord of hate

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

6 months

Now there's a "combo" view, which could be useful, esp. on a desktop screen. Pages can be flipped through independently on the Persian and English sides. Someday we'll have the editions that we want in proper digitized form. As for today…

Read the Shāhnāma

shahnama.pages.dev

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

A nice textbook/anthology of mostly classical Persian prose literature, by Pegah Khadish. I’m starting to use it for teaching.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

5 months

@Tyler_A_Harper Humanities scholars teach a ton, get paid less, and need only enough research funding to cover their time. It’s relatively good RoI even if what they’re doing is BS. Most of what most scholars in virtually all fields are doing is BS, so we may as well economize.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

"If your liver is on fire, don't look to Pisces for water" (from Sanāʾī's Ḥadīqah, which, I just learned, has a whole passage bashing astrology)

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

9 months

@birdbath

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

4 years

I wish Reviewer 3 would take over and write a new paper incorporating my research. They would honestly do a better job. All I wanted was to publish a few potentially useful findings.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

3 years

I’ve given a slight facelift to the Kalīla Reader app. More importantly, I’m almost ready to add a few new versions of the text. I want 2022 to be a year of growth for this humble utility. Please let me know of any feature requests, bug reports, etc.

Kalila Reader

www.theobeers.com

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

@sharghzadeh I knew kids at Princeton who walked straight into McKinsey jobs where they were, like, helping GCC governments to update their water management infrastructure. It made zero sense.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

4 months

@wanyeburkett Is becoming helplessly addicted to narcotics a bad break? In a sense, yes, but in other senses no

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

10 months

@CartoonsHateHer Berenstain Bears (though I think it can be explained, and it may actually be a common view of the books)

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

@dtmooreeditor @bingohandjob_ I also thought of ne'er-do-well. Same period (early 1700s?), and derogatory. It doesn't have a direct object, but the lack of an agent suffix, and the way that it seemingly shouldn't refer to an agent at all, might justify including it in this category.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

I know opinions on this vary, but I still use the list of meters in Thackston's Millennium textbook. I've put the list online (in basic form; more features planned), as a resource for myself and others, and as a small homage to a remarkable scholar.

The Persian Meters

www.theobeers.com

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

Today is the first anniversary of his passing.

Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

A poem by Sanāʾī, translated by my PhD advisor, Frank Lewis, who, I just learned, has left us. May his memory be a blessing.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

7 months

@linguistMasoud I would group linguistics with philosophy and math.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 months

Yesterday I took part in a roundtable discussion on (i.a.) the Bamiyan Papers that @ArezouAzad has been studying with her Invisible East project. It got me thinking about my long-ago visits to that area. Photos from Band-e Amir, summer 2007, "spring" 2008. & a story to follow…

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

3 months

Opening his remarks on the trial of the evil jackal Dimna, the Brahman-narrator says, "Blood never sleeps" (خون هرگز نخسپد). i.e., murder will out. One of the pithier lines in the Persian Kalīla and Dimna, not found in the Arabic (as far as I've seen).

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

2 years

@zetalyrae Magritte, "The Banquet" (1958)

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

6 months

@Noahpinion A lot of good programmers (who tend to leave, if they can, so what they build is then credited to other countries)

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

1 year

I learned a nice poetic expression in Persian today: جوانان چمن lit. "youths of the meadow," it refers to newly sprouted plants (and can be used metaphorically). This occurs in ghazal no. 9 of Ḥāfiẓ. It seems he may have coined it.

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

5 months

@tautologer @Al_Geero Buy them a cheap induction plate

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Theo Beers

@theodorebeers

3 months

Going through books and papers on my last day in the office in Berlin. Someone had given me this Iranian second grade Persian textbook, published in 1354/1975. A different world!

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