Author | Lightnews

Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 6d

This is, with the benefit of Atlantic distance, hilarious. It is also deeply, deeply disturbing.

Open the page. Scroll down to the timeline. Go through the timeline.

It’s… shocking

Every president since John Adams has occupied the White House, and the history of this building extends far beyond the construction of its walls. From the Ground Floor Corridor rooms, transformed from...

www.whitehouse.gov

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 15d

Well this made my morning to read!!

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · Sep 29

Good copyedits need a good kittyeditor

A cat sits on my lap, looking at the camera, while I mark up a manuscript in red ink.

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · Aug 8

I have lived in Germany for two years now and still whenever I hear small children chatting away in public my first thought is "wow their German is so good, they must study very hard"

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Reposted by Bruno M. Shirley

Royal Studies @royalstudies.bsky.social · Aug 1

New #cfp from the Journal of Transcultural Studies for a special issue on “Transcultural Histories of Monarchy” - abstracts to be sent to [email protected] by 1st Sept!

The essays will explore the ways in which monarchies incorporate “the foreign” into the familiar.

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · Jul 5

Stephanie Balkwill's The Women Who Ruled China is an incredible book, with methodological takeaways for historians of gender and power in every context. Read my review for @royalstudies.bsky.social here: rsj.winchester.ac.uk/articles/10....

The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century. By Stephanie Balkwill. University of California Press, 2024. ISBN: 978-0520401815. 272 pp | Royal Studies Jo...

rsj.winchester.ac.uk

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · Jun 2

I've just had an article come out on a poem from medieval Sri Lanka, and what it might tell us about attitudes towards renunciation, religious paths, and the proximate goals of Buddhist practice: pwj.shin-ibs.edu/2025/7164

Buddhist Poetics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Muvadev-dā-vata Reconsidered

This article offers a close reading of the twelfth-century Muvadev-dā-vata, one of the earliest Sinhala-language poetic works to model itself on the Sanskrit kāvya. While earlier studies of the Muv…

pwj.shin-ibs.edu

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · May 2

Just days before Vesak, Sotheby's plan to auction off sacred relics of the Buddha—stolen in the colonial destruction of a stūpa, no less—to the highest bidder.
religionnews.com/2025/04/22/a...

Auctioning the Buddha's relics is perpetuating colonial violence

(RNS) — For the Buddhists who deposited these relics — as for Buddhists today — the gems, bone and ash all belong to the Buddha and shouldn’t just be sold to the highest bidder.

religionnews.com

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · Mar 7

I'll be joining the Journal as managing editor for Volume 16 onwards. If you're working on processes of transculturation—in any global or historical context, and from any disciplinary standpoint—then we'd be delighted to hear from you.

heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/tra...

About the Journal | The Journal of Transcultural Studies

heiup.uni-heidelberg.de

Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · Mar 7

A new issue of the Journal of Transcultural Studies is now available open-access! It features articles by @jaydprosser.bsky.social (Leeds), Alexander Vesey (Tokyo), Ori Sela (Tel Aviv) and Dhruv Raina (New Delhi/Pune).

Great reads all; check them out here:
heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/tra...

Vol. 15 No. 1-2 (2024) | The Journal of Transcultural Studies

heiup.uni-heidelberg.de

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Reposted by Bruno M. Shirley

Dr Dave Hitchcock @davehitchcock.bsky.social · Jan 27

This is interesting. "Leading AI Models are now very good historians". It's a total clickbait title as I will expand on below. But several of the challenges put to the models, particularly palaeographical transcription and translation, it seems to perform well. Wills @ Exeter is using it for this.1

The leading AI models are now very good historians

Three case studies with GPT-4o, o1, and Claude Sonnet 3.5, and what they mean

resobscura.substack.com

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Reposted by Bruno M. Shirley

Hannah Kim @thisishannahkim.bsky.social · Jan 20

If you need a distraction today-- check out my new piece for Aeon!

I say there's no universal definition of fiction b/c how "fiction" is understood depends on a culture's metaphysics. Philosophy of fiction has been taking Greek metaphysics for granted. I say we branch out.

aeon.co/essays/befor...