“Yes, I will laugh despite my tears, I’ll sing out songs amidst my misfortunes. I’ll have hope despite all odds. I will live! Away, you sorrowful thoughts!”
— Lesya Ukrainka, Ukrainian poet (b. 25 February 1871)
This made me nearly bite a pencil in half in enraged memory.
@ THE REST OF MY ANCIENT HISTORY CLASS; Y’ALL ARE WELCOME FOR THAT FUCKIN A THE REST OF YOU DID NO GODDAMN WORK FOR
Oh man, so I know everyone hates group projects with ample good reason, but lemme just tell you something that happened to me in my final year of uni. My dad got real sick and was in and out of hospital numerous times, one time with a suspected heart attack. Which meant my mum ended up caring for my dad, and I wound up caring for my disabled brother, on top of working a part time job and going to university full time.
My grades slid dramatically. I was having to appeal nearly all my results with my professors, and was mercifully granted extensions by all but one of them. (Which, if you’re out there Ronald: stub your toe and step on lego for the rest of eternity.) And then our Revolutionary Cultures prof. assigned a group project, and paired us at random with our classmates. And I knew, I knew I was just going to be a dead weight so I went to my new buddy and told them we should go to the profs office and ask for her to be switched to someone else who wasn’t just going to drag them down. And my new best buddy for the rest of the semester looked at me, looked at our assigned project, and very gently started to cry as she told me “I was just about to say the same thing to you,” and then tearfully told me her mum was dying, and the only reason she hadn’t dropped out to take care of her was because her mum wanted to see her graduate. She’d been given six months and we graduated in five. Provided we finished this class. And we were both out of appeals and leniency time.
It’s probably one of my most vivid memories from the whole college experience, just sitting on the floor of the Renaissance Lit corridor hugging someone who until a moment ago had been a relative stranger known only in passing, and trying to tell them it would be okay, we’d get the paper done. And we did. We scraped a C- together between the two of us and we managed to coast over the passing mark for the class and were allowed to graduate with abysmal but passing marks.
And I still think about her all the time. Especially when I wind up in group projects for work, and it feels like no one else is shouldering any of the burden, I make a note to reach out and say “hey, you don’t seem to be engaging with this much, are you okay?”
And a lot of the time it shocks people. They’re not expecting earnest concern for their lack of interest, and you find out things like their kid is sick, their dog just died, they’ve got health issues going on, or sometimes they just don’t know where to begin with the project and didn’t want to tell you that because they were frightened of being judged or perceived as lazy when they’re just overwhelmed.
And I honestly wish things like this were taught in team building exercises, cause that’s what group projects in school are. They’re supposed to be teaching you how to work well with others and achieve a common goal, while at the same time totally skipping over the fundamentals of human interaction and how to engage socially with others, and it’s fucking bullshit.
I had something snarky to say, but that last comment is too important to distract from.
Source: BuzzFeed
eugenics is a big scary word and yet people that would claim to be left-leaning can very easily be convinced to be pro-eugenics if you just never use the word. like oh you think "dumb people" shouldnt be allowed to reproduce? you think "dumb people" shouldnt be allowed to have children? its kinda scary
all RIGHT:
Why You're Writing Medieval (and Medieval-Coded) Women Wrong: A RANT
(Or, For the Love of God, People, Stop Pretending Victorian Style Gender Roles Applied to All of History)
This is a problem I see alllll over the place - I'll be reading a medieval-coded book and the women will be told they aren't allowed to fight or learn or work, that they are only supposed to get married, keep house and have babies, &c &c.
If I point this out ppl will be like "yes but there was misogyny back then! women were treated terribly!" and OK. Stop right there.
By & large, what we as a culture think of as misogyny & patriarchy is the expression prevalent in Victorian times - not medieval. (And NO, this is not me blaming Victorians for their theme park version of "medieval history". This is me blaming 21st century people for being ignorant & refusing to do their homework).
Yes, there was misogyny in medieval times, but 1) in many ways it was actually markedly less severe than Victorian misogyny, tyvm - and 2) it was of a quite different type. (Disclaimer: I am speaking specifically of Frankish, Western European medieval women rather than those in other parts of the world. This applies to a lesser extent in Byzantium and I am still learning about women in the medieval Islamic world.)
So, here are the 2 vital things to remember about women when writing medieval or medieval-coded societies
FIRST. Where in Victorian times the primary axes of prejudice were gender and race - so that a male labourer had more rights than a female of the higher classes, and a middle class white man would be treated with more respect than an African or Indian dignitary - In medieval times, the primary axis of prejudice was, overwhelmingly, class. Thus, Frankish crusader knights arguably felt more solidarity with their Muslim opponents of knightly status, than they did their own peasants. Faith and age were also medieval axes of prejudice - children and young people were exploited ruthlessly, sent into war or marriage at 15 (boys) or 12 (girls). Gender was less important.
What this meant was that a medieval woman could expect - indeed demand - to be treated more or less the same way the men of her class were. Where no ancient legal obstacle existed, such as Salic law, a king's daughter could and did expect to rule, even after marriage.
Women of the knightly class could & did arm & fight - something that required a MASSIVE outlay of money, which was obviously at their discretion & disposal. See: Sichelgaita, Isabel de Conches, the unnamed women fighting in armour as knights during the Third Crusade, as recorded by Muslim chroniclers.
Tolkien's Eowyn is a great example of this medieval attitude to class trumping race: complaining that she's being told not to fight, she stresses her class: "I am of the house of Eorl & not a serving woman". She claims her rights, not as a woman, but as a member of the warrior class and the ruling family. Similarly in Renaissance Venice a doge protested the practice which saw 80% of noble women locked into convents for life: if these had been men they would have been "born to command & govern the world". Their class ought to have exempted them from discrimination on the basis of sex.
So, tip #1 for writing medieval women: remember that their class always outweighed their gender. They might be subordinate to the men within their own class, but not to those below.
SECOND. Whereas Victorians saw women's highest calling as marriage & children - the "angel in the house" ennobling & improving their men on a spiritual but rarely practical level - Medievals by contrast prized virginity/celibacy above marriage, seeing it as a way for women to transcend their sex. Often as nuns, saints, mystics; sometimes as warriors, queens, & ladies; always as businesswomen & merchants, women could & did forge their own paths in life
When Elizabeth I claimed to have "the heart & stomach of a king" & adopted the persona of the virgin queen, this was the norm she appealed to. Women could do things; they just had to prove they were Not Like Other Girls. By Elizabeth's time things were already changing: it was the Reformation that switched the ideal to marriage, & the Enlightenment that divorced femininity from reason, aggression & public life.
For more on this topic, read Katherine Hager's article "Endowed With Manly Courage: Medieval Perceptions of Women in Combat" on women who transcended gender to occupy a liminal space as warrior/virgin/saint.
So, tip #2: remember that for medieval women, wife and mother wasn't the ideal, virgin saint was the ideal. By proving yourself "not like other girls" you could gain significant autonomy & freedom.
Finally a bonus tip: if writing about medieval women, be sure to read writing on women's issues from the time so as to understand the terms in which these women spoke about & defended their ambitions. Start with Christine de Pisan.
I learned all this doing the reading for WATCHERS OF OUTREMER, my series of historical fantasy novels set in the medieval crusader states, which were dominated by strong medieval women! Book 5, THE HOUSE OF MOURNING (forthcoming 2023) will focus, to a greater extent than any other novel I've ever yet read or written, on the experience of women during the crusades - as warriors, captives, and political leaders. I can't wait to share it with you all!
Okay, so just to add a bit of context here, while this is broadly correct (though I would questions some of the further reaching comments, re: timelines, and just how much misogyny there really was in the Medieval Period - because there was still an awful lot, it just didn’t look how we expect it to) - Susannah has hit on one of the key tensions of medieval society in regards to gender, which was the extent to which saintly women were to be ADMIRED rather than EMULATED. Because saintliness, chastity, “vigour” were *absolutely* paths out of both the gender and class-based oppression women experienced - but they were not straightforwardly approved. How much they were/weren’t, how this actually played out for the lived experience of ordinary women of whatever class… is likely a matter of ongoing academic debate. It certainly was in 2009-10 when I did my MA in pretty much this. (My specialism is English society, with an overlap of broadly Northern European - but… although not identical, there were broader similarities.)
This is because of the ongoing tension between the ideals of monastic Christianity and the essential requirements of both the political and financial society - in that the economy and the political establishment depended ENORMOUSLY on the labour of women - reproductive, financial, administrative, etc. Being a wife was a JOB - and one of the most essential ones, in whatever class a woman found herself. One of the reasons widows often took over their late husband’s business was because they were intimately acquainted with it , and would have been involved with it from the get-go.
Being a nun could be a job, and they did a lot of significant work - especially nuns of higher class - but being a mystic, or a virgin would-be-saint essentially removed oneself from the labour pool. Your father could not marry you off to secure a political treaty, and promote his interests in your new home if you’d taken a vow of virginity. You couldn’t help your husband run his brewery if you were off having visions, or walking to Jerusalem barefoot. However much celibacy was seen as a spiritual ideal, society could not function if everyone took that path. Therefore the question of whether that vocation was genuine, or the most appropriate embodiment of virtue was often raised.
The lives of would-be virgin saints often embodied this conflict, The Book of Margery Kempe being a prime example of someone deeply embedded in society attempting to remove herself from it in this way. The trial of Joan of Arc, and the Life of Christina of Markyate (have I spelled that right?) also deal with this in great depth.
Because Christian virtue was also located in obedience (to one’s parents, to one’s husband, to one’s Priest) and the Church was a huge part of the political framework of the era - and did not want to disrupt things too much. What’s more, chastity then did not mean “no sex” in the way it does today, it meant “no unlawful sex”. Which is to say, a married couple who had procreative sex at a time when that was permitted would be behaving chastely. This was seen as an analogous good to what would now call chastity, and vitally important to prevent “unlawful” sex - which is to say adultery, fornication, etc. Which is to say, if your vow of Sexual Abstinence threatened someone else’s chastity (ie, if you swore off sex but your husband didn’t), your vow could not be virtuous, because it might lead that other person in to sin. This is all tied up with something called the Debt of Marriage, which is another one of those things academics like to argue about - but in its simplest form is that you owe it to your spouse to fulfil their carnal urges (in a lawful fashion) because otherwise they might go and try and fulfil them elsewhere.
All of which is to say that spiritual virginity or abstinence were considered virtues - but that they were also often treated with a degree of scepticism and challenge because they constituted a significant threat to the social order and the smooth running of society.
As to Elizabeth I of England’s propaganda and utilisation of certain tropes of femininity, and the political conditions surrounding the Virgin Queen, that’s another Looooong post - because that’s also quite complicated - and I’ve babbled enough here.
#long post#history#medieval period#hagiography#womanhood#it was much easier to become a mystic virgin saint or even just a nun if you were able to frame it in an economically viable light#hiw do you paint being a mystic as economically viable? well if you were made useless for anything else by poor health#or the amount of siblings that made all the major sensible economic roles accounted for#you could do a lot for the family brand as the saintly one#and be socially economically and politically (all relative and class-dependant ofc) most useful as 'their person' in the Church
A brief appreciation of Peter Falk in Columbo, by Joe Dator in The New Yorker
I need to watch Columbo.
Well, the other reason is that it’s all now available online to stream on Peacock. I am one of the people who mainlined all the seasons in about five weeks. I fucking love that show.
I stan Columbo.
Columbo is my ult.
Just biding my time really. I finally finished my chronological viewing of Murder She Wrote.
Bi-monthly reminder that the full series is also available on the Internet Archive, free of charge: https://archive.org/details/columbo
I love how every century or so the entire field of physics collapses on itself because of a few discoveries that go against everything currently known and then we just kinda have to wait a little while until it gets back on its feet
A chemist from the 1910s could pick up a modern chemistry textbook and understand quite a bit of it. They’d have lots of missing gaps but they could probably understand a decent amount. A physicist from the 1910s could pick up a modern physics textbook and not understand jack shit of it
A chemist from the 1910s in modern times: Woah! You guys discovered quite a few more elements of the periodic table! Cool!
A physicist from the 1910s in modern times: what the fuck is a particle accelerator
Y’all. The physics we know today is incredibly recent. A physicist from the 1910s would not only barely know a thing about quantum mechanics, they would have absolutely no idea about the BIG BANG. The big bang theory isn’t even 100 years old. GALAXIES were only discovered in the 1920s. String theory? Just barely 50 years old. The standard model of particle physics was only completed in the 1970s.
Past the basic high school level, most of the physics you learn has only been around for about 100 years, even less.
There's an estimated 90,000 people alive that are OLDER THAN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT GALAXIES EXIST.
Because that shit dates back to 1923, 100 years ago, and that's how many people are alive over the age of 100.
(specifically that's when Hubble announced his* discovery of Cepheid variables, which can be used to measure how far away stars are, proving that some are definitely outside our galaxy)
* this is a lie. Hubble gets credited for Henrietta Swan Leavitt's discovery, but she was both dead and a woman so it's not like anyone was gonna complain about that minor academic misconduct.
Vatniks and tankies can't get over the fact that Finland, the Baltic states and Poland still exist (and are much better off without Russia)…. They dream of the day when Russia will re-invade these countries, and if that ever happens you can bet your bottom dollar that vatnik and tankie clowns everywhere will be supporting the imperialism of Russia's ruling class, blaming the victims, mindlessely repeating the Kremlin's propaganda and cheerleading their war crimes from afar. That's one reason why vatniks and tankies also hate NATO, because joining NATO is what prevents Russia from invading….
I have a question, when can we watch the Kremlin burn to the ground?
i hate it when the anarchist and other leftist from americas have the nerve to tell to my face that they don’t “deplatform” red fascists bc they are nor a “real threat”. look at this shit right here.
do NOT get into fibre arts!!!! you try one and then all of a sudden you have 10 hobbies and wanna try 10 more
yessss… yes
I think adults need summer vacation. Like let's just close down all our jobs for three months and play outside. Please. I'm so tired.
adults of tumblr how on earth do you decide on what mattress you want to order
Go to the store.
Go to the store and lie on it for five minutes.
I know online is cheaper, but go to the store. Online delivery has a send back guarantee, but do you really know yourself capable of and willing to dismantle your bedroom because it didn't work out? No? GO TO THE STORE.
Go to the store and try it out and compare prices and nine out of ten times, they will match the online prices for you, because you're THERE and they can't afford to let you walk out empty handed.
Try it out, figure out the right hardness for you. Make sure you're comfortable.
A good mattress will last you 20-30 years depending on how often you move and how well you commit to taking care of it: vacuum it regularly and flip as per instructions, usually once every six months.
A bad mattress costs about the same as a good mattress, up front, except for the fact it will fuck you up for years and you might end up with chronic pain because of it.
Go to the store. Try it out.
I got a 46% discount and 18 interest free installment payment on mine, just cause I was physically there.
Figure out your budget. Go to the store. Ask to try it out. Make sure it feels good.
You deserve a good mattress and you deserve the money you spend to be worthwhile.
You've got this.
#we went to the store for a pillow for my husband and lemme tell you the salesman was the most engaged person i have met in forever#he showcased us 5 pillows for a start and 'we went from there'#including how he and other emplyees there preferred some pillows for sidesleeping or backsleeping#sometimes despite the producer markings to the contrary & why#once we have the luxury of buing a matress for ourselves (let's hope this autumn!) we're definitely going back to him#because this pillow. this pillow alone fixed my husbands neck problems after over a decade of pseudo-ergonomic chainstore shit#oooh do they also have baby matrasses? how do I find a safe and healthy baby matress??? that doesn't cost its weight in gold?#i need my own Tumblr post or possibly a talk with a neonate physio when the time comes
new heights of extraversion - was at an airport, saw some guys repairing these friction lines, went up to them and asked questions
the lines turn out to be called 'grip strip' and they are using a 'putty knife' and a 'margin trowel' to apply it. The mixture will dry in 15m. Before it dries they also have to sprinkle sand on top and press in with the knife/trowel.
I was writing this down in a notebook, and they asked me what for, and I told them I'm sick of not knowing the words for things. Sometimes it feels like I don't know the words for anything! I've read so many words without ever mapping them to the physical things they corresponded to.
I'm going through the corridor that's outside of the airport building and leads into the airplane, I don't know what it's called either (edit: just asked the flight attendant, it's called a jet bridge)
There's yellow and black angled striped tape on the sides of the floor of the jet bridge, and I don't know why THAT'S there or what it's called. (edit: kind online people have informed me this is "hazard tape" / "hazard stripes" / "safety tape", and the general class is called "barricade tape".)
I haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet but there’s a book called A Field Guide to Roadside Technology that’s got the names, what they do and pictures of 150 things you see beside the road.
Rule of thumb: everything russia accuses Ukraine of doing, they do themselves.
For example, during 2014-2022 they have been accusing Ukraine of invading itself.
What's funny is that on 24th of February we, Ukrainians, collectively hoped that russians - at least those who used to call themselves our friends and family - would rise up against their government to stop klling us.
And now, more than a year after, they've risen up in order to more effectively kill us
#funny as in makes you want to kill q bitch with bare hands in blind rage haha#i do not condone violence but ive been a victim far too many times not to wish it on murderers and rapists#if only because in short to medium term it's the only way to stop them and the only way to justice#western pacifists can fuck all the way off
Anonymous asked:
-Runs back into the room from having been wrapped up in the Sub Shitshow- context PLEASE on what’s up with Putin!?
Lol okay buckle up:
- Yevgeny Prighozin is (well, as of now) one of Putin's closest allies. He is Putin's former chef and now the CEO of Wagner Group, the Russian private army of mercenaries who have spent a decade plundering Africa and destroying Syria in the employ of various terrible local dictators. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Wagner has become one of the Russian army's mainstays, mostly because they're the only ones who seem able to actually do anything. Of course, it did still take them nine months to take Bakhmut, Ukraine's *checks notes* 53rd largest city with very little strategic value, but given what a shitshow the regular Russian army has been, that's good. Or something.
- The Russian army is mostly good at destroying dams and bombing civilians, which are obviously terrible for many reasons, but not that useful in the military scheme of things.
- However, Wagner are also -- I hasten to stress -- thoroughly terrible people. Aside from all the shit in Africa and Syria, they've done likewise in Ukraine and will continue to do so. Legally speaking, they technically "don't exist," which has allowed them to get around a lot of the usual rules and regulations that are supposed to "bind" (ha) the Russian army. They are obviously in Ukraine directly at Putin's behest and doing Putin's bidding, but it turns out that giving an ambitious and amoral psychopathic warlord his own private army of criminals, rapists, killers, and whoever else they can dredge out of Russia's prisons to throw at the front line and die en masse may not be a good idea?
- Shocking, I know.
- Anyway, Prigozhin has spent months ripping into the Russian Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, for what a whole shitshow clusterfuck this whole stupid war patently is. (Not, however, that this has stopped him from continuing to eagerly carry it out, since he's just as much or indeed even more of a zealot as the rest of Putin's government.) This has included blaming Shoigu for equipment losses, underprovisioning of Wagner troops, general strategic numbnuttery, etc. Prigozhin has not, however -- again, until now -- attacked Putin directly, or backed off from getting his losers killed in Bakhmut and/or wherever else. One suspects that Putin has been perfectly happy to let Prigozhin scapegoat Shoigu for the war's failures, since this means Shoigu can always just conveniently fall out a window or something if it gets too necessary to make a public show of displeasure, and not Putin.
- HOWEVER, things took a turn VERY FAST today, within about 12 hours. Prigozhin has, as noted, spent months tearing the Russian military leadership a new asshole -- not because he's a good guy (he's a fucking war criminal on like, 10 different levels), but because it is plainly obvious what a shitshow this is and even a war criminal has his limits as to how much totally pointless murderous bullshit he wants to go through, I guess. (That includes telling the truth about why the war started -- i.e. to steal Ukrainian stuff/land for the oligarchs, and not any of Putin's other stupid excuses.)
- Today (June 23) Prigozhin accused the Russian Ministry of Defense of orchestrating a rocket attack on Wagner's camp in eastern Ukraine (near the Russian border) and causing massive casualties;
- We don't have proof of this yet, or indeed much else of what Prigozhin is talking about, BUT he finally decided to put his Coup Hat On and get serious about "punishing" Russian military leadership, i.e. presumably Shoigu, declaring that "there are 25,000 of us [Wagner soldiers] and we're coming into Russia to sort out this chaos"
- So -- again, according to Prigozhin, who is not the world's most reliable source on anything -- he turned his army of yoinks around, left Ukraine, and marched into the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, where the Russian military command in charge of the assault on Ukraine is headquartered;
- For a while, there was nothing but Prigozhin's various unhinged rants on Telegram to prove any of this, but it's now early tomorrow morning in Russia and there are indeed a lot of videos of what DOES IN FACT LOOK like Wagner mercenaries rolling into Rostov and storming Ministry of Defense buildings;
- Firm information on what is going on is almost nonexistent, even for Russia, but Putin is clearly taking this seriously; Moscow is shut down, there are armored vehicles on the streets, Google is down in Russia, and Russian newscasters are interrupting their broadcasts to insist Don't Look, Everything Is Fine Here, Totally Fine, Do You Hear Swan Lake? I Don't Hear Swan Lake!
- Nobody can find Putin either, allegedly, but don't worry! He has been "briefed on the situation and everything is under control!"
- The Russian FSB (successor to the KGB) has meanwhile issued a warrant for Prigozhin's arrest, said they'll charge/prosecute him for treason and armed rebellion against the state, and ordered him to stand down/his own men to arrest him
- This, uh, does not appear to be working
- ANYWAY, Putin's basically fucked no matter how this ends. Wagner literally just led an armed mutiny, he can't feel good about sending his ex-bestie Prigozhin back to Ukraine with any confidence that his orders will continue to be obeyed, it's Russian-on-Russian open war in the streets of Rostov and God knows where else, he's totally lost control of the narrative, the war, the domestic political situation, Wagner, probably good chunks of the Russian military command/elite establishment, etc., and we all know what happens to dictators in Russia who can no longer dictate
- (And yet the Russian army is still finding time to lob some missiles at civilian buildings in Kyiv tonight, because they suck).
- This is obviously a huge lucky break for Ukraine as well, since if the Russians are busy fighting each other, they can continue to push for a big breakthrough on their counteroffensive.
- So yeah. Pride Month really wheeling out the big guns here, after Putin was the top option picked for Lady Karma to do her thing on in my poll a few weeks ago.
- Stay tuned.
#bite each other's dicks off.gif#idi nachuj#my mother-in-law's Russian contacts (as few as she still has) are all shocked picatchu faced now#and she just goes 'well i told you so and y'all called me a whore and an enemy of the state so pls get fucked'#also the most russian thing about this whole mess is that it's a struggle for power to better benefit of killing and robbing Ukrainians#which makes me sick and crying with rage but is admittedly highly on-brand
Is reading cursive writing your superpower?
Join a special transcription challenge featuring Revolutionary War Pension Files!
Image description: One half of image is a form from a Revolutionary War pension file, filled out in cursive writing. The other side says "can you read this? Help us transcribe pension files of the first veterans of the US military." There's the same link as in this post, and the National Archives logo.
@ltwilliammowett @focsle you may be interested
I am, thank you very much for sending <3
Source: archives.gov
i hope this whole andrew tate situation will lead to more than just memes, but an actual discussion on sex tourism and the way western men move to poorer nonwestern countries, both because women and girls are more desperate and vulnerable & because our governments are much more shit abt doing anything at all abt sex crimes/the government and police themselves are often involved in sex trafficking, and because of the aspect of fetishizing and degrading eastern women (which western euro men are doing in their damn brothels to our women & girls as well). i hope it will lead to an awareness that he is faaar from the only western man to move to romania and the balkans for this, that this shit happens regularly to our women and girls here, that he's far from the only western man to move to a poorer nonwestern country to rape and traffick and enslave women and children. i hope maybe just maybe this will mean a bit more than just memes, and may show in the liberal sex work brainrot internet culture the darker underbelly of pornography and prostitution. our pain and suffering and exploitation isnt just a meme. i hope, at least.