“The Mohists, egalitarian rationalists whose social
base seems to have been urban artisans, not only were philosophically
opposed to war and militarism, but organized battalions of military engineers who would actively discourage conflicts by volunteering to fight
in any war against the side of the aggressor.”
1) i’m in love 2) can you imagine how annoying their blogs were
Frrrriendly reminder that Saint Ronald Reagan’s administration was hounded by allegations of private collusion with a sovereign country demonized as an Enemy of America (here, the Islamic Republic of Iran), dating back to suspicions that he coordinated with them to first win election, and several of his advisors and cabinet members were investigated and/or indicted and/or tried and/or convicted for related matters only to receive presidential pardons.
I don’t wanna like Kill The Joke but this brings up a really cool fact about swords in ~14th-16th century Germany! The only people who were allowed to own Real Swords were the royalty and nobility BUT! Everyone else was allowed to own knives. The definition of a knife, however, was based on not length but handle construction, and to some extent how it was sharpened. The handle had to be constructed Like So with 2 pieces of wood sandwiching the metal tang.
Only one edge was allowed to be sharpened, but oftentimes a small part (a couple inches) of the short edge (e.g. the edge that wasn’t sharp) would be sharpened, and weapon design often allowed for this
In this way, something that looked like This, a messer of just over a meter in length…
…would be legally considered a knife, and therefore allowable for non-nobility to possess. (you can also see the bit on the back of the tip that would be sharpened)
So @swordmutual, there’s a not definitive but certainly interesting historical perspective on your question
Thank you for finally answering my years old question, “why the hell are all these old german swords just called ‘knife’”
People looking at Alabama like “I bet these ~pious Christians~ wouldn’t let their kids get felt up (and become hypersexual drunks) in the name of standing up for God”
…
Have you ever heard the story of Lot’s daughters, friend?
you know theres some fanfics especially AUs where by the later part of the story it bears absolutely no resemblance to the original work in any meaningful way well DuckTales is basically that but for A Christmas Carol
reminder once again that the film Birth of a Nation, which inspired the formation of the Second Ku Klux Klan, was an adaptation of a sequel to a gritty AU/Confederate fix-it fic version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was a popular trend at the time
This looks like the trans version of aNOTHER ‘80s-90s SF story, “Are You For 86?”, about outlaw abortionists on a Midwest van circuit
That was also when I remember the story that became Children of Men, and another one where this mommy track retired biochemist receives a visit from the sharp-elbowed childless careerist sister who took credit for her work only to deliver a delicious revelation.
The inoculation to the newest AIDS-alike epidemic devastating the world is “getting pregnant before age 30”
SF in the backlash era had srs gender/natal politics, people forget!
I read this in like middle school as a .txt file downloaded off a Hotline server. After the Oklahoma City bombing, Newsweek and some other magazines (the then-news authorities) had mentioned it as important and I took their word for it.
It was terrible.
And I’m not talking like morally, I’m not a ponce like that. And not even the wooden writing and characterization, though they were far below the standard for bottom-of-the-barrel published pulp or even Star Trek slash that it was contemporary with.
I’m talking like I cannot remember a single character (the protagonist was male, and there’s a girl) or more than 3 moments from this novel
At some point early on people are hiding their guns inside the walls of their houses because the federal government is sending around gangs of black gangbangers to confiscate them, that’s one
The second moment really gets to the problem with the book though. Because the second moment is the Day of the Rope and it makes clear the author had no clue what he was doing with this work
The Day of the Rope, when the good white Americans realize their power, rise up, and hang the internal traitors from lampposts, is clearly the emotional heart, the payoff of the whole work.
And it’s like 3 pages long, at most, set in California without any established characters while the main cast are in another state entirely.
And then it’s like he realizes that whoops, my plot arc never intersected with the climax, and the falling action is like “and yeah sure then he flies a nuclear bomb into the Pentagon”
(I did remember that the one example hung during DotR was a white woman who dated black guys. That sense of “white women betrayed us white men in favor of stylish minorities” was definitely a bigger thing than people care to remember last time around. The professional class version was the prosecutor and his wife in Bonfire of the Vanities, him seething at her fashionably concerned for the animals he has to repress in order to enable civilization.
That and the Al Bundy/Clark Griswold “I suffer and do my best to serve as patriarch but you don’t hold up your end and the culture takes your side you ingrates”)
So “Tales from the Crypt” was the respected early ‘50s horror comic from EC that got squashed in the “Seduction of the Innocent” scare
In 1989 HBO used the brand for a horror anthology series, at the same time Sandman was recasting that comics era as deep myth
It was kinda Twilight Zone in its irony but more visceral, with gore and tits. HBO’s premium cable original programming brand was always “with gore and tits”, before SatC they had an aging boomer sitcom called “Dream On” where the conceit was his retro-themed sexual fantasies were shot as part of the plot
The selling of indulgences was controversial because it allowed casuals to pay to win and much of the classic “hardcore” audience felt it devalued the grinding they had done to achieve their position. However, while there was much gnashing of teeth over the “dumbing down” and monetization of virtue in order to appeal to a market sector they already resented, I would submit that indulgences were a net positive for Christianity, as they enabled people with neither the skill to avoid sin nor the stamina to perform hardcore penance to enjoy the end times content that had become increasingly important over the lifetime of the religion, and because the “pay for play” content was balanced so as not to help with the competitive/pvp elements of virtue, there was really no drawback except some penitents’ wounded pride.
A better criticism that moves beyond hardcore machismo is that tariffed penance ought to have been elaborated into a full credit system, extending the traditional practice of intercession by martyrs and monks to allow anyone in good standing with the Church to earn salable credit via unnecessary penitence. This would have taken the edge off the complaints by ensuring that those with time and skill got a share of the indulgence income while and by tying indulgences to a real-world commodity rather than drawing on the unlimited fiat grace of the Treasury of the Church, it would have ensured that indulgences were sold at a fair value.
Anonymous asked: any thoughts on weinstein? no pressure if you don't want to step in that shitpile, just seems like 'powerful, shadowy oligarch being toppled by shifts in the zeitgeist' would be adjacent to your alley
it’s not a Hollywood thing, for long before motion pictures the “star” performing economy has been based on ingenues trading their bodies to moneymen producers to make their name
(and no less than with porn stars, “performing desirable sexual availability for the benefit of schlubs” IS the crux of the job)
That was how Loftium, a service in Seattle, came about: It will provide prospective home buyers with up to $50,000 for a down payment,
as long as they are willing to continuously list an extra bedroom on
Airbnb for one to three years and share most of the income with Loftium
over that time.
They’ve done it, those crazy bastards, they’ve solved the housing crisis. @poipoipoi-2016 will be so pleased
OMG, this is the stupidest thing. The only way anybody can afford a home in these cities is to rent out the second bedroom and throw the rental income at the mortgage.
I’m curious if this shows up in purchase price though.
/And also it’s not $50k for a down payment, it’s $200k
Friendly reminder that “making ends meet by letting out an empty bedroom to boarders” was a totally normal part of prewar urban housing patterns
You learn something every day: apparently “pharaoh” translates literally to “great house,” and it was originally used in reference to Thutmose III in the way that we’ll say “the White House” in reference to the president and his administration. For example, it’s not “Pharaoh Bob ordered…” it’s “the Pharaoh ordered…,” in the same way we would say “the White House opposed…”
