Peeter Tinits

Getting a PhD in humanities+data. Evolutionary perspectives on language, culture, sign systems.
+

[Cloooud |🇺🇦 @GloOouD]

🔥BREAKING🔥

‼️UKRAINIAN SPECIAL FORCES MADE A LANDING IN CRIMEA

The Main Department of Intelligence in cooperation with the Navy conducted a special operation, the goal was achieved, there were no casualties among the personnel.

The special operation continues, we do not reveal all the details, there are losses among the enemy's personnel, as well as among the forces and means.

❗️Information on the number of casualties is being clarified," said Andrii Yusov, a representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

[Volodymyr Tretyak 🇺🇦 @VolodyaTretyak]

Ukraine 23.08.1991

[Bad Baltic Takes @BadBalticTakes]

Some people really need to hear this:

Just because you are learning about other people’s perspectives for the first time, it doesn’t mean these are new ideas. It certainly doesn’t mean their perspectives are the product of your society’s latest culture war.

For example, I sometimes get replies like: “Oh, now the Baltics refuse to accept they were even part of the Soviet Union.”

My brother in Christ, we’ve been #neversoviet since before you were born.

The fact we were occupied by the soviet union and not members of it is the established position of international law and our domestic laws, and the basis of our re-independence movements and restored states. Welcome to the conversation.

There was another funny example this week when we were talking about decolonisation in Eastern Europe, which of course always annoys the tankies and vatniks - but also plenty of westplainers who wanted to ‘correct’ us with the russian perspective.

One person, frustrated with the fact we have our own perspectives about our own countries and histories based on the reality of our experiences, finally replied: “Look, I just don’t think we should rush to label everything decolonisation”.

I turned to the bookshelf behind me to remind myself that - far from a rush - it actually seemed to be more common in the past to talk about decolonisation here. The first book I opened, published in 1993, discusses the impact of soviet settler colonialism in detail, of course as a continuation of russia’s longer colonial history, as well as the challenges of decolonising. It was a nice reality check because the reason that language isn’t as common anymore is because those challenges have actually been pretty well handled in the three decades since as the Baltics have developed as modern democracies.

Just because there’s a new debate in your country about decolonising something, it doesn’t mean we can’t use the word.

For anyone still confused about how the soviet union could possibly be colonial in nature, note that colonisation in the index of this book is listed with ‘See also: Russification’. That’s one place to start.

The counter argument is: “But they didn’t arrive by boats!” - which is such a shamelessly obvious attempt to rig the definition of colonialism. It’s double colonial in that it attempts to both support the russian narrative over their victims but also support the idea that only westerners are special enough to be capable of colonising. Listen, no one on the receiving end of colonialism gives a shit about which mode of transport their colonisers arrived on in order to define the brutality of it. I checked different definitions. None says anything about boats. A small number say, “usually overseas” or “usually from afar”, which is western centric but still not enough to exclude russian colonialism.

The other argument is: “But the soviets gave more than they took”, which is: 1. Not true. 2. The same imperial argument used in defence of every empire everywhere.

And, just a side note, we can criticise how the soviets treated us like colonies and therefore support the decolonisation of its legacy without ever having to accept the status of once being a colony. By its very definition, colonies have no place in international law anyway. We were always occupied independent nations.

A big part of what’s happening here is that too many people around the world grew up with the russian imperial perspective - at least when it comes to understanding russia’s neighbours.

But now russia’s return to more blatant imperialism means all that bullshit is crashing into reality. The facade isn’t holding up.

More people than ever before are learning about the perspectives of russia’s neighbours. And, boy, it’s very different to what those colonists told you.

We’ll continue to celebrate decolonisation every day by enjoying life in our independent countries. Come visit and see it for yourself. 🙂

[maksym eristavi. @maksymeristavi]

Svitlana and Khrystyna, two young singers performing on a street in my homecity Zaporizhzhia. an hour later russians will murder them with rockets.

how exactly these young Ukrainians were a threat to a nuclear state?

russia is a death cult.
💔😫

[Bad Baltic Takes @BadBalticTakes]

The Koran burning protest that infuriated Turkey and derailed Sweden’s NATO application was organised by Russia.

Here’s how… 🧵

[Bad Baltic Takes @BadBalticTakes]

Sweden says russia is distorting and amplifying Koran burning protests to harm security policy.

Well, yes. But it’s also more involved than that - as was clear back in January:

[Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @rshereme]

This is truly an incredible video of Kate Sadurska, a Ukrainian diver, setting the New Absolute World Record in freediving. She successfully dived to a depth of 76m/249ft. She descended and ascended vertically using only her own muscle power, without the aid of fins.

[Euan MacDonald @Euan_MacDonald]

“If we don’t stop Moscow’s aggression here, our descendants will have to do it.”

Georgia, 1993. A generation ago. And now their descendants are indeed fighting Moscow’s aggression.

[Volodymyr Tretyak 🇺🇦 @VolodyaTretyak]

Every time I watch this video it gives me chills.
In 1993, Ukrainian volunteers in #Georgia explicitly stated that #Russia would someday invade #Ukraine if Russian imperialism was not destroyed immediately.

[Carl Bildt @carlbildt]

On this day in 2014 a 🇷🇺 missile unit shot down airliner MH17 over the territory of 🇺🇦.

[Volodymyr Tretyak 🇺🇦 @VolodyaTretyak]

This is Alexander from Omyakon, the coldest inhabited place on Earth, located in the Sakha Republic of Russia.

He used to work as a local guide for tourists. Due to the war, there are no tourists, and Alexander flips through the guestbook with nostalgia. Moreover, the war has reached the very core of his family, with Alexander's son being mobilized into the military.

Alexander emphasizes that he did not raise his son for him to fight for nothing thousands of kilometers away. In his opinion, the war should be stopped.

#RussiaDecolonized not only holds significant implications for European security but also for the indigenous nations residing throughout Russia.

Stay tuned for the upcoming thread on the Sakha Republic.

[Peeter Tinits @yrgsupp]

I think, an important paper tackling one of the banes of text mining: small changes in parameters and methods can give pretty different results. The top here will try many methods and compare! A big step closer to solid research foundations in #stylometry & #digitalhumanities.👇

[toomas hendrik ilves @IlvesToomas]

The country is beyond hopeless.

Even after Ukraine's victory, we will have to deal with a Russia brimming with fascists.

Unless you personally want to deprogram these people, don't get all weepy about them.

Excellent but depressing story by @irgarner

https://t.co/pSlubP7bin

[Andres Karjus | also on 🟦bsky @AndresKarjus]

Big data museum analytics! More stuff coming out of our @CUDANLab, by @mcanet @toninakorep
@mukhinaks @schichmax, building on a cool project that grew out of our Cultural Data Analytics MA course.
As an artist, to get into some art galleries... you literally have to die first💀

[Andres Karjus | also on 🟦bsky @AndresKarjus]

Preprint w @markmets Indrek Ibrus @schichmax
"Automated stance detection in complex topics and small languages: the challenging case of immigration in polarizing news media
https://t.co/84xBBFSY7A
We collaborated w @eestiekspress to acquire a massive corpus &applied LLMs to 1/🧵

[Andres Karjus | also on 🟦bsky @AndresKarjus]

We are doing a conference! If you work with #cultural #text #linguistic #media #literature #film #art #audiovisual #DH etc data, take a look! Bonus: Tallinn Christmas market, northern lights (maybe) and 4 free practical skills workshops (yes incl R!) on the pre-conf day.

[Stas Olenchenko 🇺🇦 @StasOlenchenko]

I noticed that a lot of people from Western democracies with imperial past don’t get that ethnic Russians living in Ukraine (especially Crimea), the Baltics, Caucasus are not indigenous ethnic minorities.

They are mostly Russia’s colonial settlers.
1/10

[Niklas Erben Johansson @Iconiklas]

New article alert! Which is the world’s most beautiful language? Probably most of them! https://t.co/nEkeEOZCUY (1/5)

[Peeter Tinits @yrgsupp]

There's a cool kind of DH conference coming up again this year! Deadline July 24. Submit your short, long papers or abstracts. Long live computational approaches in arts and humanities! #digitalhumanities #culturalevolution #cfp

[Computational Humanities Research @CompHumResearch]

For those still on Twitter, we have dates 🗓️, we have a location 🗼, and we have a call for papers 📜 for CHR2023. We hope to see you all in Paris from December 6 to 8. More info here: https://t.co/NxGLKKpetn #chr2023 #CFP

[Artjoms Šeļa @artjomshl]

⚡️ CHR 2023 edition is live! ⚡️
December 6-8, Paris
Submission deadline: July 24

This year @fotisja @Iza_Romanowska and me work as program chairs; we planned some twists to the classic format, so stay tuned! (and share the CfP within your networks, if you'd like)