The Out of Eden Walk
Found via a post on Bluesky, but this is a delightful graphic showing how humanity has spread mostly across the globe.
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A history of Seattle
As a Seattleite, I have loved delving into the history of the city. This is an excellent top-level primer about the founding of the city.
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In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trials 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.
A quote from Captain Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to watching the defendants at the Nuremberg trials.
I was reminded of this quote from this Reddit comment.
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The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore (2024) - DNF Review
I made it roughly halfway through the book before calling it quits. I found the general segments interesting, but I found it tiresome for the continual jumping around which is necessary for the sweeping history of the bookstore and publishing industry in America.
There was a lot of interesting insights in the book, interspersed with snippets about independent bookstores which sometimes played a part in larger historical narratives the author tells. But there is not chronology to fall back upon as the book often jumps forward and backwards through time between chapters.
I think a lot of people will enjoy the book, but I just ran out of steam on it and am ready to move onto a new book.
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Dunk tanks have a hugely racist origin
Discovered courtesy of a link from kottke, who in turn found it on bluesky.
The African dodger, also known as Hit the Coon, was a popular American carnival game from the late 19th century up to the mid-1940s. It involved an African-American man sticking his head out through a hole in a curtain and trying to dodge balls thrown at him. Hits were rewarded with prizes. People were seriously injured or reportedly even killed after being struck. In response to attempts to ban it, a less dangerous game was invented called the African dip, in which a person was dropped into a tank of water if a target was hit by a ball. Popular Mechanics noted in 1910 that African dodger had become "too old and commonplace" and was being replaced with dunk tanks, in which an African American would fall into a tank of water when a target was hit with a ball. The illustration accompanying the article shows a game labelled "Drop the Chocolate Drop" and is captioned "Amusing to All but the Victim".
Generally, the African Dip is recognized as overtly racist. One variant, at Chicago's Riverview amusement park, was named "Dunk the Nigger" until the early 1950s when it was renamed "African Dip". The NAACP protested the attraction in the 1940s, and it was eventually shut down in the mid-1950s.
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2024 has had a lot of news, but it isn't unprecedented
Many people feel like 2024 is unprecedented for the events and news, but it is good to keep perspective that while there is a lot going on this year - it isn't entirely unprecedented. This entry looks at 1973, 1968 and 1940.
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July 14, 2024 by Heather Cox Richardson
Yesterday will be a date in the history books, perhaps not the specific date, but the events will be notable in the same way we learn about Reagan's attempted assassination.
Here is how Heather Cox Richardson began her entry for yesterday:
Shortly after 6:00 yesterday evening at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a shooter on the roof of a building about 400 feet from the stage appears to have shot eight bullets at the former president and into the crowd. Trump appeared to flinch and reach for his right ear as Secret Service agents crouched over the former president. When the agents got word the shooter was "down," they lifted Trump to move him out. He asked to get his shoes and then to put them on.
With that apparently accomplished, Trump stood up with blood on his face, exposed to the crowd, and told the agents to wait. He raised his fist in the air in front of an American flag in what instantly became an iconic image. He appeared to yell, "Fight, fight, fight!" to the crowd before being ushered offstage.
Pennsylvania firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed. David Dutch, 57, was injured and is hospitalized in stable condition. James Copenhaver, 74, was also injured and is in stable condition.
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"World's oldest cave art found showing humans and pig"
The oldest example of figurative cave art has been discovered in the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi by Australian and Indonesian scientists.
The painting of a wild pig and three human-like figures is at least 51,200 years old, more than 5,000 years older than the previous oldest cave art.
The discovery pushes back the time that modern humans first showed the capacity for creative thought.
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Inflation during the US Civil War
I am currently reading The Shortest History of Economics by Andrew Leigh. During its section about the Industrial Revolution, it touches on the industrialization of war by discussing the US Civil War. I found the below passage fascinating as the inflation during the war was not something I'd ever heard about before.
During the course of the Civil War, the South funded 60 percent of its costs through inflation (compared with 13 percent for the north). By the end of the war, the South was printing so much money that goods cost ninety-two times as much as they had done when the conflict began.
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1947 Seattle City Guide
Redditor u/SatanicVersus79 shares pictures from a 1947 travel guide to Seattle. I'd love to delve into the book more and see what else it covered.
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“Why isn’t the new year on the winter solstice?”
Reproduced here in case it disappears:
The answer, honestly, is that the Romans had no fucking idea how to run a calendar.
Like, seriously, people notice "OCTOber" and "DECEMber" and say, "hey, those mean 'eight' and 'ten', but they're the 10th and 12th months, what's up with that?".
If you've got a little more history, you'll know that July and August are named after Julius and Augustus Caesar, and think, "oh, they added those two months and bumped the rest of the months back."
Nope. The Romans were way, way worse at calendars than that.
July and August were actually originally Quintilis and Sextilis - the fifth month and the sixth month. They were called this because the year traditionally started in March. So they had Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, December.
Martius was named for Mars; Junius was named for Juno. We have no idea what Aprilis and Maius were named after. (No, really. We have some clues but beyond that it's just guesswork.) Then they got lazy and just numbered the months.
"But wait," you ask, "what about January and February?" Hold onto your butts, because calling the months by their numbers? Not even close to the laziest the Roman calendar got.
Between the end of December and the beginning of Martius were 50-odd intercalary days. They didn't have months associated with them. They were just sort of there.
I swear I am not making this up.
In addition, each month had either 30 or 31 days. I was going to say "alternated between" but I looked it up and nope, the Romans decided that was too easy, so it actually went:
- Martius 31
- Aprilis 30
- Maius 31
- Junius 30
- Quintilis 31
- Sextilis 30
- September 30
- October 31
- November 30
- December 30
- intercalary 51
Okay. This is where we are at the beginning of the Roman Republic.
Look at that. Remember it. You will look back on this and say "actually, that makes sense" after what comes next.
At the beginning of the Roman Republic, the Senate decided to fix the calendar. This was for two reasons:
The Romans thought the Greeks kicked ass, and wanted to emulate their calendar.
Count those days. You will notice that they add up to 355, which means that each year is actually ten (and change) days shorter than an actual solar year - which meant that by the time of the Republic, March was somewhere in the autumn.
So the Senate decided to do some reforming. They added two brand-new months to the calendar, Januarius and Februarius. Januarius was named after Janus, because his holiday fell about a week into the new month. (Janus was the god of doorways. We'll come back to him.) February was named after the Februa, a feast that fell in the middle of the new month and that had, in fact, long since been replaced by Lupercalia, an identical feast on the same date with a different name For Reasons.
The Senate also added an intercalary month, Mercedonius, the Month of Wages.
Yes, an intercalary month. I want to make sure that's clear.
They also changed the lengths of the months to better fit the Greek system. The Greeks had largely lunar months, so they alternated between 29-day and 30-day months. Once again, the Romans said, "you know, we like this, but it's too easy".
Look, the next part is going to go into "what the hell was wrong with them?" territory, just warning you.
This is the calendar the Roman Senate ended up with:
- Januarius 29
- Februarius 23
- Mercedonius 23
- THE REST OF FEBRUARIUS NO I AM NOT KIDDING 5
- Martius 31
- Aprilis 29
- Maius 31
- Junius 29
- Quintilis 31
- Sextilis 29
- September 29
- October 31
- November 29
- December 29
See what I meant about Mercedonius being an intercalary month? It's literally in the middle of February. Like, they got 3/4 of the way through February, got bored, and decided to do something else for a month and come back later.
Also, the Romans had caught on to leap years by this point, so every fourth year, Februarius had an extra day on the end, bringing its total to 29.
I want to be clear, though, that while they'd caught on to leap days, they still had not caught on to the length of the damn year. Count those days again: it's 378. By the time of poor Gaius Julius Caesar in 46 BC, the calendar was so fucked up that he needed three intercalary months to right it again.
Bonus: as @troubleMoney mentioned in the original thread, the priesthood - who until not long before Julius controlled the release of the calendar, meaning that people paid attention to them to know when the months started - would extend or contract years to keep politicians (who were on yearly terms) they liked in power or force politicians they didn't like out early.
The Julian reform
(which was ordered by our friend G.Jiddy but not, as far as we know, actually created by him) did three important things.
First, it added those three intercalary months to put the year back where it was supposed to be (March had slid around to the dead of winter).
Second, it got rid of Mercedonius, putting the year back at 355 days.
Third, it scattered ten new days throughout the year, which gave us the calendar we know today.
Julius's reforms still weren't quite right - the length of a year is just a fraction shorter than 365.25 days, which forced the Gregorian reform of 1582 (and hey, I remembered that year right on the first try). But it was good enough for government work, as they say.
(Incidentally, the Senate voted after Gaius Julius Caesar's death to rename Quintilis after him because he was born then, and likewise Sextilis after Augustus Caesar. The Caesars themselves had little to do with it. I mean, obviously G.Jiddy couldn't possibly have; he was dead at the time.)
So remember how we were talking about why the year doesn't start on the winter solstice?
A couple reasons. First, it never did (in the Roman tradition, anyway). It originally started in March, which contained the spring equinox but didn't start on it.
The start of the year was moved back to January for political reasons. Remember Janus, the god of doorways? It was considered auspicious for consuls to change out near his festival. His festival was nearest the kalends of January. So consuls wanted to start on the kalends of Januarius so they could start their term with an offering to the god of doorways, who would then grant an auspicious transition between consuls.
So why didn't the kalends of Januarius get moved back to the winter solstice? Because the Christians really wanted everyone to be Christian.
Lots and lots of European civilizations had midwinter celebrations. Yule hadn't been invented yet; it was still the Germanic tribes' winter-solstice celebrations that, as far as I know, we don't really have a name for. The Celts had their own separate midwinter celebration (I am informed that it is now Meán Geimhridh or Grianstad an Gheimhridh, but they didn't speak modern Irish back then), the Italian pagans1 had a holiday, et cetera... and the Romans had Saturnalia.
Saturnalia was originally on the 18th of December (or, as the Romans would have measured it, the 13th/12th/14th day before the kalends of Januarius), but it expanded, becoming a week-long event. This was partly because, well, people liked a party at the end of the calendar year (not to be confused with the end of the actual year pre-Republic) and partly because it was, consciously or not, taking over the non-Roman holidays, encouraging the Germans and the Celts and the pagans to join in and have fun with the Cives Romani.
And then there's Mithras.
We don't know a lot about Mithras. His was a mystery cult, which is not my description but an actual anthropogical term, and it was probably based on Iranian worship of the Zoroastrian god Mithra. Mithras's cult started rising a little before Jesus's did. Mithras was a god who was born from a rock, slew a bull, and had lunch with the sun. For some reason, the Roman legions really liked him. (Again, mystery cult. The first rule of mystery cult is you don't leave any goddamn clues for the archaeologists.)
Mithras had a celebration of his birth around the winter solstice. That got folded in with Saturnalia too (gee, why does your god let you have two festivals?), and now an awful lot of people were worshiping Saturn and their own gods around the winter solstice, and all of a sudden it was the 4th century CE (i.e. about 1600-1700 years ago) and the Christians were getting pretty powerful, having converted Constantine in the previous century, and they'd been oppressing the Mithraic mystery religion for a while, and they decided, hey, we want everybody to celebrate our guy. So - despite that Jesus had been almost necessarily been born in the spring, when the sheep were moved into the fields and needed shepherds who would have heard the Archangel Gabriel's announcement - they stuck the celebration of Jesus's birth onto the winter-solstice holiday and, not even a little bit coincidentally, right smack on top of Mithras's birthday too.
It seems like we've gotten away from why the year doesn't start on the winter solstice, doesn't it?
We have not.
The people of Rome liked that there was a festival around the winter solstice, but they had gotten used to the calendar starting in January. They liked the tradition of starting the new year during what had been Janus's festival. And Janus's festival started a week after
MithrasJesus's birthday. Moving the kalends of Januarius back to the winter solstice would have necessarily moved Saturnalia away from the winter solstice, and Janus's festival toward it, and nobody wanted that. SoSaturnaliaMithras DayChristmas stayed where it was, and Januarius stayed where it was. And that's why the new year doesn't start on the winter solstice.1 I use "pagan" here as the Romans would have; "paganus" meant someone who lived outside the city and practiced a non-Roman religion.
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Behind the Bastards on Henry Kissinger
I've been listening to Behind the Bastards episodes about Henry Kissinger and it's just insane stuff. So. Damn. Depressing. Which is - as it turns out - the secret to the podcast's allure. It lets you laugh about truly awful people and truly awful actions.
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A look at the history of QWERTY
I had a conversation very similar to the custom keyboard portion of this video with coworkers a few evenings ago, discussing how I had also experimented with a custom keyboard arrangement - but, for me, the biggest issue was that it was not the only keyboard I used so I had to both learn a new layout and actively use a standard key arrangement.
The evolution of the keyboard was fascinating as I hadn't heard about those earlier designs before qwerty. Though, I will say, parts of the video were a slog as the presenter has an odd pacing to how he speaks at times.
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Thinking about history curricula
I saw a TikTok video about a guy ranting about America's history education, discussing the notable oversights and political framings which come with the nationalist viewings of history. That set me thinking about how to improve history education, ignoring the fact that the simple realities of history (even/especially recent history) are impossible for some people to agree upon.
I think history is the topic in school which is most hurt by a non-nationalized curriculum structure. Consider math. Math has a pretty clear progression in terms of education. Similar for language. Elementary school provides fundamentals. Middle school builds on those. High school begins offering specialization paths.
But for History, it isn't as simple. Sure, you need some fundamentals to understand things which come after them, but you can't progress in the same linear way, which is rather ironic now that I think about it. It felt for me like history was a lot of retreading the same topics year after year as you progress from one school to the next. Sure, some of it was retreading topics to go deeper on them, but not always. And looking back as I've continued to learn more over my life, there is a hell of a lot more which seems like it should be included as part of core history curricula.
I envision a structure where it iterates over era and sections in an organized way where school years properly build on past years. Not entirely linearly as I think some of the pre-history stuff, while interesting to kids (yay dinosaurs!) also merits investigation and discussions when they are older. But also for things like current events and recent history too, discussing race and the issues there, etc.
I think there would still be retreading of topics, but I think it could be slimmed down and it would ensure students learn new and more than what they currently do.
Standard "I don't really know what I'm talking about" disclaimer: I am not a teacher, and perhaps there is more structure in place for teaching history than I'm aware of. I am speaking only from my recollections and observations from others. Neither of which should be considered as making me an expert on this topic.
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EDC Gadgets Which Inspired Adam Smith
Pocket watches are well known, but as the article states, there were more than just those. Here's the one which was most interesting to Smith:
The coolest of all pocket gadgets were what antiquarians call etuis and Smith referred to as "tweezer cases." A typical 18th century etui looks like a slightly oversized cigarette lighter covered in shagreen, a textured rawhide made from shark or ray skin. The lid opens up to reveal an assortment of miniature tools, each fitting into an appropriately shaped slot. Today's crossword puzzle clues often describe etuis as sewing or needle cases, but that was only one of many varieties. An etui might contain drawing instruments—a compass, ruler, pencil, and set of pen nibs. It could hold surgeon's tools or tiny perfume bottles. Many offered a tool set handy for travelers: a tiny knife, two-pronged fork, and snuff spoon; scissors, tweezers, a razor, and an earwax scraper; a pencil holder and pen nib; perhaps a ruler or bodkin. The cap of a cylindrical etui might separate into a spyglass.
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Kent Baseball team circa 1920
Shared via the Kent city social media today in honor of the MLB All Star weekend.
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87% of classic video games are inaccessible
Quick facts from the study (pulled from the linked page):
- 87% of classic games are not in release, and are considered critically endangered
- Availability is low across every platform and time period tracked in the study
- Libraries and archives can digitally preserve, but not digitally share video games, and can provide on-premises access only
- Libraries and archives are allowed to digitally share other media types, such as books, film, and audio, and are not restricted to on-premises access
- The Entertainment Software Association, the video game industry's lobbying group, has consistently fought against expanding video game preservation within libraries and archives
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Video announcing rock engravings by Homo Naledi approximately 300k years ago
Dr. Lee Berger's announcement of evidence that Homo naledi buried their dead in the Dinaledi Chamber of Rising Star Cave as well as his discovery of cave etchings attributed to Homo naledi.
Presented at Stony Brook University on June 5th 2023 as part of the Richard Leakey Memorial Conference.
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Seattle traffic from the 1970s
Someone just stood on the corner and filmed the traffic and the monorail. A moment transported through time to us today fifty years later.
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Medieval technology and colonial America
I was doing some reading and research and found this interesting in-depth piece which discusses the comparative technology of the middle ages and colonial America.
What have colonial America and medieval Europe in common? More than is popularly believed. Early America was a cultural and technological extension of the Middle Ages. Most of the farming and metalworking methods used in colonial America were from the scientific revolution that had taken place in the twelfth century. Medieval Europeans had been forced to new inventions, because the farming and metallurgical techniques practiced in the Roman Empire were unsuited for Europe north of the Alps. By the year 1000, there were new methods to grow crops, process food, and make metal. The last refinements came about during the period 1100-1200, at the same time that the population began to grow rapidly, traditional energy sources (wood) were depleted, and there was a demand for a better standard of living. At that time, North America was a part of medieval Europe. Viking settlements along the Atlantic coast of North America, made by colonists from Greenland, brought medieval technology to the Americas.
Moving ahead six centuries, there were later, and more successful, colonies. Once again, colonial society in North America was an extension of medieval European culture and technology. As immigrants adapted familiar forms and industries to the realities of life in a new land, they faced problems that had been addressed in the Middle Ages: land reclamation, transportation, and food supply. Their solutions involved the two crucial industries of food processing and metalworking or, more simply, the mill and the forge. As had been true in medieval Europe, Early Americans had to find sources of energy to power their machines, and this dictated how they lived. How successful they were depended on an idea: freedom. Individual self-reliance and the freedom to choose their own course of life was important for the ability to adapt to new conditions and to develop beyond earlier machines. Colonial adaptation of this technology flourished in those parts of the new world where individual freedom and self-determination were encouraged.
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