Valeska Becker

Es dauert, so lange es dauert ... eine Diss ist ein Marathon, kein Sprint 😜

Hurra, herzlichen Glückwunsch!!! 🥰

why, thanks, I can't unsee this now 😅

1. Cult of tradition Dreaming of the ”good old days, when everything was in order”; “Judeo-Christian values”; romanticization of antiquity 2. Rejection of modernism Rejection of ”modern-day depravity”; wish to discard pluralism, human rights and equality 3. Action for action’s sake Action without much reflection; too much thinking, academia, science is unmanly, woke, weak 4. Getting rid of distinction Disagreement is seen as treason, not as a way to improve knowledge 5. Fear of difference Racism, anti-LGBTQ+, against diversity in any shape 6. Appeal to a frustrated middle class Appealing to individual / social frustration of a middle class suffering from economic hardships or feelings of political humiliation and in fear of pressure from lower social classes 7. Obession with a plot Feeling of being cheated by one or many international foes, resulting in xenophobia; nationalism 8. Identification of enemies and painting them as both too strong and too weak Keeping followers in fear of imagined enemies while making them believe, at the same time, they can overcome their enemies 9. Life as permanent warfare Pacifism as trafficking with the enemy; life is lived for struggle 10. Contempt for the weak; populism Supporters are the best, everybody else is despicable; the masses need a strong ruler; every subordinate leader despises their own underlings 11. Heroism Impatience to prove oneself; cult of death 12. Hypermasculinity Disdain for women, intolerance and condemnation of “nonstandard” sexual habits; love for weapons 13. Selective populism Disregard of the individual, view of citizens as “The People”, with the leader as their “interpreter”; disdain for government institutions 14. “Newspeak” Impoverished vocabulary, only elementary syntax to limit instruments for complex and critical reasoning; deletion / banning certain words

I recently read Umberto Eco's essay "Ur-Fascism"; I think everybody should read it, e.g. here:
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umbe...
If this seems too long for you, I have extracted the most important parts. Have fun, read them and who knows? You may spot some Ur-fascism right around the corner 😘

No, CRISPR is like a pair of molecular scissors one can use to cut out sequences in a genome; that way, you can cut out sequences you want to discard and replace them with others you desire.

Cover of TIME magazine, featuring an image of a gene-edited grey wolf and falsely labeling it a dire wolf.

This news is fake: Dire wolfs have not returned. Rather, a tiny number of genes of grey wolves were edited using CRISPR to create some few resemblances to dire wolf genes (fur color, musculature). For more info:

arutherford.substack.com/p/dire-wolve...

Same 🐃🥰

Skeleton of an aurochs, picture taken from Staatliches Naturhistorisches Museum Braunschweig. Note long horns arched forward and sturdy build.

These cows have come a long way from their wild ancestor, the aurochs (extinct since the 17th century). Aurochs bulls had a shoulder height of ca. 1,8 m and a black coat, cows were ca. 1.6 m high and reddish-brown. Horns were arched forward as a weapon; udders were tiny, invisible when not feeding.

Black-and-white photography, Danish cow, 1888, with a stocky build, sturdy legs, medium-sized udder, slightly concave back and horns.

Modern-day Holstein cow, with quadrangular frame, no horns, very large udder and slender legs

#Archaeology also deals with animals and human-animal relations and changes in animals in the course of time. Animals are not static, modern domesticates are custom-tailored ... cf. cow on the left, from 1888, and on the right, from 2015. Note shape of back, horns, udder size, overall frame 😔

Unique formation of organic glass from a human brain in the Vesuvius eruption of 79 CE Scientific Reports - Unique formation of organic glass from a human brain in the Vesuvius eruption of 79 CE

At Herculaneum, a human skeleton was found killed during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, whose brain had, due to heat of a pyroclastic flow and subsequent fast cooling, turned to organic glass. 😮

rdcu.be/ecccO

Metazooa Become an evolutionary detective to find the Mystery Animal!

🦎 Animal #576 🦥
I figured it out in 1 guesses!
🟩
🔥 1 | Avg. Guesses: 10.2

metazooa.com
#metazooa

😂 so smart!

YouTube video by ZDF MAGAZIN ROYALE Jan Böhmermann – “Faschismus is back” | ZDF Magazin Royale

Sonntag ist Wahl in Deutschland. Geht mal besser wählen, sonst könnte es blöd kommen, und das hatten wir ja schon mal. 😊
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgPv...

Deutschland: "Wir können nicht richtig abschieben, viele Länder nehmen ihre kriminellen Bürger nicht zurück!"
Auch Deutschland: "Die deutschen IS-Kämpfer in syrischen Gefängnissen nehmen wir nicht zurück, danke." 🫠

a spear-thrower from the Magdalenian site of Le Mas d'Azil, carved from reindeer antler, depicting images of a foal head, an adult horse head and a dead, skinned or defleshed horse head.

My favorite artefact from the Magdalenien, ca. 15.000 years BP: a spear-thrower from Le Mas d'Azil, carved from reindeer antler, showing three life-stages of a horse: from foal to adult to dead, possibly skinned or defleshed animal 😍

A picture of little cakes in the shape of Donald Trump's head, titeled "Donald Trump kvaje kage", which translates to "Donald Trump idiot cake".

Meanwhile, #Denmark is reacting subtly and sensibly to Trump's ambitions regarding #Greenland.
Translation help: kage = cake; kvaj = idiot 😂

Mein Freund Arthur und der ehrliche Bergsteiger Kickl Die Schriftstellerin Hanna Sukare erzählt von ihrem alten Nachbar und Freund in der Leopoldstadt, der wieder Angst hat und von Herbert Kickl, der ihm Angst macht

Die Schriftstellerin Hanna Sukare erzählt im @derstandard.at von ihrem alten Nachbar und Freund in der Leopoldstadt, der wieder Angst hat. www.derstandard.at/story/300000...

I have been on Bluesky for a while now, but had kept my Twitter account (I am not calling it X) in hopes of change. Today, I deactived it, since the platform is run by a neonazi skyhigh on drugs. F*** this. ☠️

Image from a small cemetery church at Verdings, Südtirol, northern Italy, depicting death turning a giant wheel, with the stages of life depicted on the outside: from infancy over youth to adulthood to death.

A Monday #MementoMori: The Wheel of Life in Verdings, Südtirol, depicting how it goes 😜 from infancy to death.

The Enigma of the Absence of Figurative Representations in the Neolithic of Northern Europe: Where Are the Figurines? For centuries, the Neolithic has been associated with a rich artistic heritage, particularly in regions like Southeast Europe, where clay figurines have been abundant and representative. However, a ne...

The Enigma of the Absence of Figurative Representations in the Neolithic of Northern Europe: Where Are the Figurines?: www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2025/01/t...

#Neolithic Conference alert 📣: On May 22-25, 2025, the second Conference on the Emergence of the Neolithic in Europe takes place in Zadar, Croatia:
conference.unizd.hr/ene2025/
Would be delighted to meet all Neolithic archaeologists there!!! 🌞 Please share and distribute!

Merkwürdig: Die #AfD, die so bedacht auf Männlichkeit, Stolz und Ehre ist, propagiert gleichzeitig Unterordnung unter und blinden Gehorsam gegenüber Putin. Ist das männlich? 😵‍💫
Naja, was weiß ich schon, ich geh mal lieber zurück an den Herd 🤪

A relief on a wall in Çatalhöyük, with two spotted leopards facing each other.

A drawing of a human figure on a wall in Çatalhöyük. The person is holding a bow and wears a leopard skin as a sort of loincloth.

A stamp seal from Çatalhöyük, depicting a spotted leopard.

Animals were important in prehistory! Depictions of leopards abound in ancient #Çatalhöyük, showing how important they were - however, among over a million animal bones, there was only one from a leopard (a claw). There may have existed a taboo on killing them 🥰🐆

This is such an odd thing - to create something only to destroy it at some point ... makes me think of Christ's broken body sometimes.

An anthropomorphic figurine from Falkenstein, Lower Austria, with a slender body, slightly accentuated hips, outstretched arms and traces of red and black paint on the head, neck, chest and thighs; date: 4600-4500 BC

In the Middle Neolithic of Austria, Moravia, Slovakia and Hungary, hundreds of figurines were made in a specific way: their body parts were individually shaped and then put together, which made them easy to break - maybe their only purpose.
The figurine from Falkenstein could be reconstructed 😍

A sketch of young Søren Kierkegaard

"I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations—one can do either this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it—you will regret both."

Why, thanks for the optimism, Søren Kierkegaard 😊

you too 👍

It is the same for me, but with Danish (oral exam day today). Other languages I don't speak well: Italian, Russian, French 😅

Tenure-track assistant professor in archaeology at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen

✨ We are hiring!

Assistant Professor European/North European Iron Age & Medieval/Renaissance archaeology (500 BC - 1500 AD). Particularly digital methods.

Permanent position from Sept 2025
Research & teaching focus
Located in beautiful Copenhagen 🇩🇰
Tenure track to Associate Prof after 6 years

Roses are redde
Noble are the manatees
Yf we wante a bettir future
Teach artes & humanityes

Haaaaa 😂 I am easily amused. Love the Blak humor 😊