A ‘plague’ comes before the fall: lessons from Roman history - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
https://thebulletin.org/2024/05/a-plague-comes-before-the-fall-lessons-from-roman-history/
#history
BBC News - Cardiff: Century-old photos of mixed-heritage families unearthed - BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cld0dngn61po
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYhG02O5mIw
The #folklore and folk #magic associated with the #Whitethorn.
Part of a series of videos on the sacred trees of Britain and Ireland, their associations in the #Ogham ' #Celtic' #Tree #Alphabet and their symbolism, folklore, #mythology and practical and magical applications in #history and today.
The #May-Tree, or #Hawthorne or Whitethorn is sometimes thought of as the sister tree to the Blackthorn.
It is an ambivalent tree with both positive and negative associations in the Old Ways. A lot of this is to do with the #fairy folk, the good people or the Sídhe.
In the Ogham, it represents the letter #H ( #Huath) and denotes fear and horror.
Other associations include #healing, #fertility, sexuality, #protection, boundaries and #death.
https://sfba.social/@historyofpunkrock/112437134439938793 historyofpunkrock@sfba.social - Happy Birthday to David Byrne, Scottish-American musician, founding member, lead singer and guitarist of the American band Talking Heads, born on this day in 1952, Dumbarton, Scotland
#punkrock #postpunk #newwave #davidbyrne #talkingheads #history #otd
If we don't want the federation and mastodon to become an echo chamber of moronic pseudo-liberals, we should move on.
HIER LESEN --> https://word.undeadnetwork.de/
HELP TRANSLATE --> https://undeadnetwork.de/bookstack/books/radical-enlightenment-a-world-of-open-sources-translation
EPUB + DOWNLOAD --> https://synapse.undeadnetwork.de/books/
english – deutsch – español – русский – français – 中文的 -العربية
The #opensources and federated internet in a philosophical, social and political classification. -------
#oss #foss #philosophie #philosophy #politik #politics #history #literatur #anarchie
I never read Thucydides himself, only Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War. Excellent book. Made me think that ancient Greece had basically done WWII and WWI but in reverse order...
Most assume that Thucydides tried to offer his reader a type of foreknowledge that could potentially translate into active control over the politico-historical process. Taken to its extreme, this ‘optimistic’ interpretation reads History of the Peloponnesian War as a sort of ‘political systems users’ manual’, as Josiah Ober put it, capable of creating expert political technicians. Recognising regularities in the historical process, it is thought, should lead to predictive capacity, which in turn allows for political mastery.
While I agree that some very strong tempering of expectations is needed, I find it a bit weird when historians go out of their way to claim they have no political insights whatsoever (this it not, I hasten to add, what the author claims here). If you can't find any parallels then what was the point of studying it ? It seems like a feigned profession of objectivity, much how certain varieties of pacifism look an awful lot like surrendering to the fascists. Likewise, I've been confused recently because several books on my wish list have had reviews where the readers are actually dismayed that the author has attempted to draw parallels with current events. And that's both worrying and bizarre. Do they actually just want historical escapism ? Are they objecting to their perceived criticism of the far right loonies ? Probably the latter, methinks.
Thucydides was not writing social science as we know it. To the extent that his text articulated anything like fundamental laws of political behaviour, it did so through exemplary instances and carefully curated parallelisms. The Peloponnesian War served as a paradigmatic event for Thucydides: a particular instance that revealed general truths. It served this representative role, however, not because it was typical. Rather, it was exemplary because it was uniquely ‘great’. The war would prove useful, in other words, not because of history’s strict repetition, but by the pregnancy of similarity and the reader’s ability to parse analogies effectively.
As I've said before, direct analogies, actual literal parallels, are both rare and uninteresting. Indirect analogies, which do have some (but only some !) similarities, are much more interesting because they require more careful thought to understand : which similarities are relevant, which are coincidental, which disparities are irrelevant to the point, etc. The skill of the commentator is to select the most relevant similarities.
The evident lesson behind all of this is that we must learn how to choose the right parallels if we are to judge well in politics. But Thucydides also knew that we did not have full control of the analogies that shape our deliberations, especially in public life... The seductive pull of ‘great’ events is not an incidental danger to the use of historical analogies. Analogies [often] serve more as vehicles for generating awe and outrage than for unearthing more nuanced understandings.
It is reasonable to think that Thucydides expected his work to hinder the ability of bad actors to abuse this power. At the same time, it is unclear just how far it was in his ability to do so. The Athenians, after all, had everything they needed to realise the truth about the Tyrannicides. What they lacked was the will to scrutinise something that they felt to be intuitively correct. Thucydides could give posterity an account of the Peloponnesian War that might stop it from becoming fodder for false parallels if considered carefully. But he could not thereby prevent opportunists from constructing misleading analogies on its back.
#History
#Politics
#Psychology
https://aeon.co/essays/what-thucydides-really-thought-about-historical-analogies
If the Templars returned from the middle east with their stolen treasure and old artefacts to set up Switzerland as a neutral location to keep it to themselves, wonder why the local monarchs and Chieftains they took the land from handed it over so welcomingly without a fight.
The #Higherside #Chats #THC - #Sean #Hanlon - The #Hidden Hand Of #History, Continuity Of Control, & The 3rd Truth
1 hour 11 minutes - Posted May 12, 2024
About Today’s Guest: #SeanHanlon is an author, research, and public speaker from #Ireland.
His books are:
The Hidden Hand of History – The Enemy Within
The 3rd Truth – The Global Lockdown Agenda & the Coming Great Reset – It’s Not What You Think it Is
Sean’s Website: the3rdtruth.com
Sean on Twitter: twitter.com/SeanHan55375885See less
Sean Hanlon | The Hidden Hand Of History, Continuity Of Control, & The 3rd Truth • The Higherside Chats
Balham - London Gateway to the South Walking Tour
#Zibaldone #History #WalkingTour #Balham #UK #JoolzGuides #London
A film I've done a few years ago about three episodes of the Second World War in Italy: the life of an Italian soldier imprisoned in Germany; a Jewish child hiding in a cellar in the historic center of the town of Crema; a boy, returning from work, discovers that his home has been destroyed by an aerial bombardment.
The Roman Tomb on the Underground
#BreakfastVideo #History #LondonTransit #JagoHazzard #London #History
This ruined English spelling
#History #Language #English #Writing #Zibaldone #BreakfastVideo #RobWords
BBC Archive on X: "#OnThisDay 1960: A British schoolgirl cheerily told Judith Chalmers about her holiday, which involved accidentally getting arrested in East Germany. https://t.co/rxVBeU1Psb" / X
Fascinating story!
#history #Germany #Britain
@Girl Of The Sea
#german #history #us #folk #art
Mermaid Fraktur. German
- Small painting of a Mermaid done in early Fraktur style. Ink, Watercolor & graphite on the inside of an old book cover. It looks like it has been cared for and handed down from generation to generation
- Fraktur is a highly artistic and elaborate illuminated folk art created by the Pennsylvania Dutch, named after the Fraktur script associated with it. Most Fraktur were created between 1740 and 1860.
- The Pennsylvania Dutch Pennsylvanisch Deitsche also referred to as Pennsylvania Germans, are an ethnic group in Pennsylvania and other regions of the United States, predominantly in the Mid-Atlantic region of the nation. They largely descend from the Palatinate region of Germany, and settled in Pennsylvania during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. While most were from the Palatinate region of Germany, a lesser number were from other German-speaking areas of Germany and Europe, including Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Saxony, and Rhineland in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the Alsace–Lorraine region of France.
- The Pennsylvania Dutch spoke Palatine German and other South German dialects, intermixing of Palatine, English, and other German dialects, which formed the Pennsylvania Dutch language as it is spoken today.
The Pennsylvania Dutch name has caused confusion. People couldn't pronounce Deutsch and it became "Dutch"- associating the people with the Dutch, rather than Germany.
"You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" - SOUTH PACIFIC (1958)
South Pacific received scrutiny for its commentary regarding relationships between different races and ethnic groups. In particular, "You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught" was subject to widespread criticism, judged by some to be too controversial or downright inappropriate for the musical stage. Sung by the character Lieutenant Cable, the song is preceded by a line saying racism is "not born in you! It happens after you’re born..."
Rodgers and Hammerstein risked the entire South Pacific venture to include the song in the production. After the show's debut, it faced legislative challenges regarding its decency and supposed Communist agenda. While the show was on a tour of the Southern United States, lawmakers in Georgia introduced a bill outlawing entertainment containing "an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow." One legislator said that "a song justifying interracial marriage was implicitly a threat to the American way of life." Rodgers and Hammerstein defended their work resolutely. James Michener, upon whose stories South Pacific was based, recalled, "The authors replied stubbornly that this number represented why they had wanted to do this play, and that even if it meant the failure of the production, it was going to stay in." — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ve_Got_to_Be_Carefully_Taught
#music #film #musical #southpacific #racism #rodgershammerstein #usa #history
Why #Megaliths change the Paradigm of our #History ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCrhZxZpH14
Howard Crowhurst has been studying the mysterious #megalithic sites for more than 35 years, and he has made incredible discoveries about that will completely change the way we look at this obscure part of our history.
Find out more at https://howardcrowhurst.com/
https://mastodon.online/@globalmuseum/112418976080478584 globalmuseum@mastodon.online - Did you know that in 1884 that the first production-standard electric car capable of being reproduced and sold to the public was unveiled? Did you know that in the early 1900s 1/3 of all vehicles on the road were electric? They started to quickly disappear around 1920 with the introduction of petrol and Henry Ford.
Ferdinand Porsche produced an electric vehicle called 'P' in 1898.
This pic is a group of working EV trucks in the UK plugged in in 1917. #electricvehicles #cars #history
All Things Must Balance
An interesting look at the relation between the philosophy of economics and more general world views of medieval Europe. Doesn't really address the root causes and often reads like the "pseud's corner" snippets in Private Eye, using unnecessary pseudo-intellectual rhetoric which makes simple statements become overly-complicated for no reason. Still, interesting.
How does the definition of what is ‘natural’ shift radically within an intellectual culture? How does the unthinkable become thinkable – the unimaginable imaginable? What is it that causes vital new questions to rise to the surface and potent new answers to be envisaged and argued?
Well, let's start with economics.
At the root of traditional usury theory lay the demand for the maintenance of a perfect one-to-one equality between exchangers: for the lender to demand back from the borrower even one penny more in return was defined as manifest usury... Medieval writers employed many rationalisations to condemn usury and to insist that any violation of one-to-one equality in the loan is tantamount to a violation of both the divine and the natural order. Of these, the most common held that money is inert and sterile by its nature and, therefore, for money to grow by itself or to multiply itself still represents a clear violation of the natural order, instituted by God.
I guess they saw money as like animals ? God wouldn't allow anything to go extinct, and apparently money was the same thing. The past is certainly a foreign country. Anyway, this couldn't last :
True, he Godfrey [of Fontaines] admits, in most contracts of buying and selling, neither party can ever know, for certain, the value of the goods they are exchanging. Nor can they know, at the time of exchange, which party might benefit more from the exchange in the long term. Doubt, he recognises, is inescapable. Yet Godfrey was suddenly able to imagine, and to argue, that the very condition of shared uncertainty in itself produces an aequalitas sufficient to render exchanges licit and non-usurious. The unshakeable requirement for aequalitas in exchange has been met, he argues, as long as there exists an equal measure of doubt on the part of both buyer and seller.
In utter contrast to traditional claims for the sterility of all money, Olivi asserts that money, when in the form of commercial capital, is naturally fruitful, expansive and capable of multiplying, in its essence... Olivi has come to recognise that it is the very nature of capital to multiply, he judges that merchants who buy and sell money for a fluctuating agreed-upon price do so without committing a sin against either nature or God, and thus, without committing the sin of usury.
And from medieval economic theory we turn a corner into something very different.
He [Jean Buridan] then reasons that, given the spherical nature of the Earth, and given that all earth falls naturally toward the Earth’s centre (as Aristotle maintained), and given the great over-abundance of water with respect to land and, finally, assuming along with Aristotle that the Universe is eternal, he is led to ask why, in the fullness of time, should any portion of land remain dry above the waters and habitable?
It's all very Olber's Paradox, but with geology instead.
To answer this question, indeed, even to ask this question, Buridan imagines the whole of Earthly nature as an integrated physical system in dynamic equilibrium (to put it in modern terms). He then invents an elaborate physical explanation, which, as he writes, ‘seems probable to me and by means of which all appearances could be perpetually saved.’ He views the totality of geological displacement over eternity as a grand self-balancing system, functioning entirely on physical principles. As a consequence, he speculates that while parts of earth are being continually washed into the sea at multiple parts of the globe, an identical quantity of earth is being raised above the circle of the waters at other parts, eventually accumulating there to produce the very same mountainous heights that are being worn down elsewhere. Indeed, he explains the current existence of high mountains on Earth as the natural product of the perpetual cycle of erosion and accumulation in eternal equilibrium.
#History
#Philosophy
#Economics
#Geology
https://aeon.co/essays/how-socioeconomic-equalisation-generates-new-ideas-of-balance
https://kolektiva.social/@phistorians/112412701751269203 phistorians@kolektiva.social - #PhallusThursday
There’s nothing quite like a Roman chariot race, but wait, have they replaced the horses with phalluses? And are those phalluses propelled by chicken (cock?) legs? Goodness!
🏛 MAA, Cambridge
#AncientRome #History @antiquidons @AimeeMaroux
