Austin Benson

This book is amazing

Yes I know I’m over two decades late but in my defense I was six when this hit the shelves

Congrats Dr. Bradley!

For the first time since the Princeton Geniza Project began in 1986, we have published our metadata collated from over 30,000 Geniza documents and the People, Places, and histories of the Middle East and premodern Jewish communities found therein!

zenodo.org/records/1583...

"There are three kinds of magic," said Wizzler, handing us each a balloon. "You can control tigers, you can shoot tornadoes from your fingers, or you can fly by holding your breath. The color of confetti inside your balloon will reveal which kind of power you have." I felt the panic rising in me. What if my confetti turned yellow, indicating that I was a Tiger-Talker? My family, a long line of proud Tornado-Fingers, would disown me. Could I ever return home, bearing such shame? I tried to calm myself as I readied the ceremonial safety pin. Green, I thought, willing my hopes into reality. Please be green. I popped the balloon, involuntarily shutting my eyes. When I opened them, would I see the green I hoped for? The yellow I feared? What if, gods forbid, the confetti were blue? I opened my eyes, seeing shock on the faces of my classmates. Wizzler himself stared at me, wide-eye. Looking down, I saw myself covered in confetti... purple confetti.

“I don’t understand,” I growled, my body trembling with pain. “I combined eighty percent Earth-elemental mana with twenty percent Fire-elemental mana (Type B), focused through a twenty-four-sided icositetragon made of yellow topaz. This, in conjunction with my blood type, star sign, sense of humor, and nickname, should have produced a blazing column of lightning to vaporize my enemies. Instead, it made a big bubble that smells like fresh laundry. Why?” Skullgrumbler began to laugh. “You fool! You don’t even realize…” he squealed. “You’re facing east!”

“It’s whatever you want,” explained Magemaster Grampledog. “Magic is just whatever you want.” I knew he was speaking in riddles, but I couldn’t grasp his hidden meaning. “So the rules are…” Grampledog lit a sliver of smokereed. “No rules. You say some words and you wave a stick and whatever you want just happens. You don’t even need the stick.” His wisdom still eluded me. I stared into his face, trying to decipher what he was really saying. “No, listen.” Grampledog snapped his fingers and his desk turned into a pile of chicken nuggets. “I didn’t even know that would happen.” His hat then came alive and began to yodel. “It’s pandemonium,” he explained. “It’s complete nonsense.”

In my experience there are three kinds of fantasy magic novels:

YouTube video by School of Irish Learning UCC Prof. Myles Dillon reads 11 Early Irish Lyrics, c. 1956

I hadn't been aware of this recording of 11 Early Irish poems, read by Myles Dillon around 1956. Kindly made available by the School of Celtic in University College Cork.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=45WU...

(I am pleased to note that my own pronunciation of those poems isn't far off Dyllon's.)

Lordy. I’m trying to describe how palaeographers label scripts. This was my swotting-sheet as an undergrad. That was one system. Adding in Parkes, Derolez, Lieftinck… it becomes incomprehensible. Bah. And Latin no longer a lingua franca…

Exactly what I said after reading this

Fuck you Petrarch

New book — Reading Across Cultures: Translating Romances, Fables, and Poetry in Medieval Ashkenaz, by Caroline Gruenbaum.
#jewishstudies
mjsnow.hypotheses.org/18229

CFP: New Work by Early-Career Scholars in Celtic Studies

2026 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies
May 14–16, 2026, Kalamazoo, MI

This session seeks proposals for twenty-minute presentations by early-career scholars working in medieval Celtic Studies.

Getting revenge on the haters by writing two whole books from Lowry’s perspective

New article out with Studies in Philology! “Translating Vernacular Theological Theory from Robert Grosseteste’s Château d’Amour to the Castle of Love and the Myrour of Lewed Men”

muse.jhu.edu/pub/12/artic...

Me and my article projects

Flyer publicizing two forthcoming Handbooks on Material Text Culture from De Gruyter: Handbook of Medieval Book Ornament [ISBN 978-3-11-141107-1] and Handbook of Epigraphic Cultures (3 volumes) [ISBN 978-3-11-124094-7]

Monumental three-volume Handbook of Epigraphic Cultures to be published by De Gruyter, early next year hopefully. Open Access eBook! Includes chapters on Khitan and Tangut epigraphy.

@phil-lol-ogist.bsky.social

1/ Ever received a random text or DM from a stranger looking to befriend you?

Here's how a simple message could be a small piece of a global fraud machine that exploits some of the world's largest banks. THREAD 🧵

How I look at an article rejection email when both reviewers recommended a revise and resubmit

Hey kids, I heard you all enjoy the filmography of John Carpenter!
Well if you like that, let me tell you about someone else with the initials J.C. who also often dealt with the supernatural in his work-

Very excited to be presenting my paper “Meir of Norwich and the Formation of an Insular Hebrew Poetics” at next summer’s New Chaucer Society Congress in Freiburg!

Did Meir of Norwich know any French or English poetry? Probably! And I’ve got the Hebrew metrical evidence to strongly suggest it!

It never ceases to amaze me how we have culturally memory-holed the fact that before c. 1920 it was perfectly normal to believe seriously that intelligent life existed on other planets in the Solar System

Insane that a tenured ivy-leaguer is promoting this kind of mindset when grad-students VAPs and ECRs are the ones actually dealing with the expectation to write and publish at an outlandish rate

Nothing but disdain for my colleagues selling out the field, their colleagues, and their students from their Ivy endowed chairs

Did you know that English has no future tense? In order to mark it they have to use a separate tense marker /wɪɫ/ before the verb! This is why English speaking countries have such high national debt

Sorry, that prose is way too complicated, can you please simplify?

I think you’ve forgotten that Agriculture, Architecture, the Arts, Transportation, Communication, Health, Wealth, and Security stopped existing after 476 CE and didn’t appear again until Petrarch wrote the Canzoniere

Hell yeah they digitized the Longleat House Grammar

Five outstanding manuscripts acquired for the nation We are thrilled to announce that the British Library has acquired five medieval manuscripts of outstanding national heritage significance, formerly in the collection of Longleat House. Together, these...

Explore the collection online 📜

The Red Book of Bath. Add MS 89789

Richard Rolle’s ‘The Form of Living’ and related works. Add MS 89790

Middle English sermons. Add MS 89791

Arma Christi. Add MS 89792

• A trilingual Hebrew dictionary co-created by monks & Jewish scholars
• The Red Book of Bath, revealing daily life
• Richard Rolle’s The Form of Living in Hiberno-English
• Middle English sermons on Church debates
• A richly illustrated Arma Christi devotional manuscript

The Mother Tongues of Medieval English Jews Scholars of Anglo-Jewish history have traditionally described medieval English Jews as French-speaking, and there is strong and varied evidence of their facility with French, as well as with Hebrew, A...

Publication day! My new article in ASCHKENAS has appeared: "The Mother Tongues of Medieval English Jews"—ever wondered if the Jews of medieval England might have spoken English? This article's for you, #medievalsky. Check it out: www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Can’t wait!