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That's not even something made up.

This is at the stallion parade in Marbach, Germany. In German this is called "Die ungarische Post", which translates to "Hungarian post" I don't know what's it called in English.

Before the invention of the saddle, one had to ride a horse standing up like on a surfboard.

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Dogs can't operate MRI machines. But catscan.

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Oh, sorry. Re-reading your post I dont know how I managed to miss your point. My reading comprehension is obviously also piss poor.

happy glorious 25th of may

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Poll request:

What's your favorite type of jam/jelly/marmelade/thing that is made with fruits and sugar and put on bread?

Strawberry 🍓

Raspberry

Currant

Pear 🍐

Orange 🍊

Plum

Blackberry

Apricot

Elderberry

Cherry 🍒

Grape 🍇

I only eat vanilla extract

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Season 2 of Percy Jackson and the olympians - how I would depart from the source material and write the first scene

the beginning of sea of monsters is def the least iconic of the books imho (aswell as the shortest book) so I propose an addition. We start with annabeth narration & flashbacks much like Percy’s in s1 ep1 & the book.

The books are from Percy pov but the show is not & this is the perfect chance to finally hear annabeths inner story in her own words as we never have since HOO is written in 3rd POV not first. We have many scenes from the book to take from, I think this will also help with the telling not showing issue some ppl have w/ s1 so far (even tho I don’t rlly agree) as we can see little annabeth rather than have her just relay it to Percy.

Short scenes I would include:

1. Annabeth building towers with cards/ playing w/ magnus. This scene is lifted from magnus chase as I am an unrepentant magnas chase stan. This will obv show her lifelong passion for architecture aswell as being a rare happy memory for her. We can do a similar tactic they have done for the di Angelo’s, hearing magnus but not seeing him or just seeing the back of his head or hands. This scene can also have her father arguing with his siblings to show how her being a half blood has already caused extreme tension in her mortal family for the danger it brings.

2. Next we’d continue showing the tension in her family as she feels her father growing increasingly neglectful and her negative relationship with her step family. This also shows if there is any discrepancy with Beth’s perception (narration) and reality (visuals).

3. Next, The spiders… the show owes us some spiders as we know so this is perfect chance to depict annabeths arachnophobia by showing her being attacked by them in her bedroom.

4. Finally, 7 yo Annabeth running away leading into 13 yo her running away again now looking for Percy in NY leaving her where she first appears in the book.

OR

5.Alternatively before cutting to Leahbeth we get one more scene of her meeting Thalia and Luke, and him giving her the dagger. I think this scene should be shown regardless to introduce Thalia’s actress (even tho younger actors would be needed for Luke & annabeth) as she appears in the final scene.

+ More scenes dispersed throughout the season like we have gotten for young Percy. Such as the family trio meeting Grover, them getting kidnapped and escaping the cyclops, Luke giving Beth the dagger, Thalia taking her last stand and being tree-ified etc.

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A little advice from someone studying extremist groups: if you’re in a social media environment where the daily ubiquitous message is that you have no hope of any kind of future and you can’t possibly achieve anything without a violent overthrow of society, you’re being radicalized, and not in the good way.

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SHE STOLE MY BLUEBERRY!!!!

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nico and reyna being each other’s first real best friends makes my heart so happy.

they were both so alone even when surrounded by others. no one could break through their shells (except jason, weirdly enough, for both of them) until they found each other. neither of them even wanted to be friends or to get so close, but it happened anyway and in the most beautiful way possible. reyna could finally let down some of her walls. nico found a way to connect with others and relax a little.

confiding in each other was so important for both of their characters’ development and i just go :] every time i read BoO and get to read from their perspectives and slowly watch their friendship form.

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I agree on the phone thing. But you're still speaking from a privileged point of view. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you don't have 23k for a car. So you have three options. Don't buy a car, so less job opportunities and less mobility in general. Buy a cheap used car, no warranty and probably a lot of repairs in the future and at some point the car has to be replaced. Take out a loan, and pay more than somebody with the money at hand would, also payments each month, which means you have even less money for rent, food, etc.

happy glorious 25th of may

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There are two main theories I know of about the Nebra Sky Disc. One is the one @mckitterick mentioned that it depicts the sun, the moon, and stars. Another one is that what could be the sun is actually the full moon. This way, the sky disc could have been used as some sort of calender, because the full moon, the half moon and the 7 stars clumped together between them (the Pleiades) correspond to how the night sky looks in spring on the last day you can see the Pleiades before they disappear during summer and in autumn the first day they can be seen again.

Later, the two rim arcs were added (the left one is missing today). If you stand on the Mittelberg (where the disc was found) and point one end of the arc at the Brocken (biggest mountain in the area), you can pinpoint midwinter and midsummer.

The third arc (the one that looks like a smiling mouth) was added even later and probably represents a boat. Which suggests that the Sky Disc was used for religious reasons after that.

If you want to read more about this, the State Museum of Prehistory has more information (in English and German) on its website: https://www.landesmuseum-vorgeschichte.de/en/nebra-sky-disc/the-phases-of-the-sky-disc

shit man this got me emotional

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I read a book like that. All humans have wings, and live in villages in trees, because if you touch the ground at the wrong place, you die. There is one person who can't fly and one person who doesn't like to fly and life is really difficult for them, but the community works together to find solutions. It's called "Eines Menschen Flügel" and I think it's only available in German.

In a city with bird people, I fear it would be incredibly inaccessible for humans, flightless birds, and any bird people with disabilities like oh your apartment is on the 15th story and there are no stairs, you have to fly up there. The only grocery store nearby is on the 7th story and the bank is on the 12th

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After the Titan’s Curse, Artemis presents a gray stripe in her hair to match Annabeth and Percy whenever she sees them. She has great respect for the two of them after the Titan’s Curse. So whenever she sees them she has the gray stripe to represent their shared burden of holding up the sky.

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Get ready for Janeuary 2025! @firawren is hosting a Jane Austen fandom event throughout the entire month of January. Save the date and start drafting your creations!

Anyone can join, and all types of fandom works are welcome: fanfic, fanart, gifs, manips, memes, fanvids, podfic, mood boards, etc.

Each day has a new prompt to inspire your creation:

(Text version of prompts under the “keep reading” link below)

You are NOT expected to do something every day! Just 1 work for 1 day of your choosing is enough, though you are welcome to do more if you like. And you are NOT expected to create your fanwork on that day, just post it on that day.

Your work must follow one of the daily prompts, be new for the event, not use AI, and include at least one of the following:

Character from one of Jane Austen’s works

Character from any Jane Austen adaptation (including modern ones)

Setting in a Jane Austen-like AU

For example, any of these would be fine:

Darcy and you the reader live in the Star Wars universe [character from Jane’s works]

Cher from Clueless marries Inigo Montoya [character from Jane adaptation]

Han and Leia live in Regency England [setting in Jane AU]

Darcy and Cher live in Regency England [all three: Jane character, Jane adaptation character, Jane setting!]

Completely canon-compliant works are of course also allowed!

Full rules for the event are here.

Send an ask or DM if you have any questions!

Please reblog this post to spread the word, since this is a brand new event, and follow this blog to see all the works that are posted!

Daily prompts:

Letters

Harp

Bath

Portraiture

Inn

Restraint

Servants

Cravat

Tea and coffee

Wedding breakfast

Card playing

Handkerchief

Christian name

Pianoforte

London

Gossip

Navy

Calling cards

Lock of hair

Dearest

Aristocracy

Estate

Bonnet

Hunting

Churchyard

Militia

Cousins

Gloves

Carriage

Garden

Manners

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I pulled up the sketchy online Old English version of Beowulf and yeah it has 3,182 lines. If you took 5 seconds per line you’d need four and a half hours to recite it (or specifically to recite the one version that got both written down and preserved for a thousand years) (only a little charred). But I mean 5 seconds per line is for chumps who don’t want to unlock the Beowulf speedrun.

Also ok for SCIENCE I timed myself and quickly reciting the first 5 lines took 16 seconds, let’s call that fifteen because I mispronounced meodosetla. At that pace (if you could keep it up consistently and I mean never cough never take a drink) you’d be looking at 2.65 hours, or 2 hours and 39 minutes (or 159 minutes). This is actually 20 minutes shorter than the theatrical run-time of Peter Jackson’s Two Towers (179 minutes).

Now, the original post was about reciting Beowulf in an hour, so 2 hours and 39 minutes is not gonna cut it, and is so far over time that even doubling your pace can’t save you. You’re gonna lose this speedrun and Æthelflæd’s new scop poet is going to laugh at you. However, there’s a cheat to exploit here. In the period when Old English (language of Beowulf) was spoken, people often just said there were 12 hours in a day and 12 hours in a night, no longer how long or short daylight actually was. This made the concept of a daylight hour stretch in summer, when daylight lasts way longer than 12 hours. There’s a good article on this I’ll find it if anyone wants it. I don’t actually expect anyone to have read this far.

ANYWAY, the longest day in Jarrow (furthest north Old English speaking town I could think of) in 2024 (sorry this data is not calibrated for the 10th century) was of course midsummer: June 20th, at 17 modern hours 22 modern minutes and 1 modern second. This means each early medieval hour that day actually lasted 1 hour and 26 minutes. Still not nearly enough lads, but this is when it becomes a skill game. Because I wasn’t going ALL that fast. We need to squeeze 159 minutes of Beowulf (aka basically Two Towers) into 86 minutes. If you could half my pace-per-five-lines from 15 seconds to 7.5 seconds, you’d be able to do it, one day of the year, in Jarrow. Iceland is cheating. Good luck.

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A Guide to Historically Accurate Regency-Era Names

I recently received a message from a historical romance writer asking if I knew any good resources for finding historically accurate Regency-era names for their characters.

Not knowing any off the top of my head, I dug around online a bit and found there really isn’t much out there. The vast majority of search results were Buzzfeed-style listicles which range from accurate-adjacent to really, really, really bad.

I did find a few blog posts with fairly decent name lists, but noticed that even these have very little indication as to each name’s relative popularity as those statistical breakdowns really don't exist.

I began writing up a response with this information, but then I (being a research addict who was currently snowed in after a blizzard) thought hey - if there aren’t any good resources out there why not make one myself?

As I lacked any compiled data to work from, I had to do my own data wrangling on this project. Due to this fact, I limited the scope to what I thought would be the most useful for writers who focus on this era, namely - people of a marriageable age living in the wealthiest areas of London.

So with this in mind - I went through period records and compiled the names of 25,000 couples who were married in the City of Westminster (which includes Mayfair, St. James and Hyde Park) between 1804 to 1821.

So let’s see what all that data tells us…

To begin - I think it’s hard for us in the modern world with our wide and varied abundance of first names to conceive of just how POPULAR popular names of the past were.

If you were to take a modern sample of 25-year-old (born in 1998) American women, the most common name would be Emily with 1.35% of the total population. If you were to add the next four most popular names (Hannah, Samantha, Sarah and Ashley) these top five names would bring you to 5.5% of the total population. (source: Social Security Administration)

If you were to do the same survey in Regency London - the most common name would be Mary with 19.2% of the population. Add the next four most popular names (Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah and Jane) and with just 5 names you would have covered 62% of all women.

To hit 62% of the population in the modern survey it would take the top 400 names.

The top five Regency men’s names (John, William, Thomas, James and George) have nearly identical statistics as the women’s names.

I struggled for the better part of a week with how to present my findings, as a big list in alphabetical order really fails to get across the popularity factor and also isn’t the most tumblr-compatible format. And then my YouTube homepage recommended a random video of someone ranking all the books they’d read last year - and so I present…

The Regency Name Popularity Tier List

The Tiers

S+ - 10% of the population or greater. There is no modern equivalent to this level of popularity. 52% of the population had one of these 7 names.

S - 2-10%. There is still no modern equivalent to this level of popularity. Names in this percentage range in the past have included Mary and William in the 1880s and Jennifer in the late 1970s (topped out at 4%).

A - 1-2%. The top five modern names usually fall in this range. Kids with these names would probably include their last initial in class to avoid confusion. (1998 examples: Emily, Sarah, Ashley, Michael, Christopher, Brandon.)

B - .3-1%. Very common names. Would fall in the top 50 modern names. You would most likely know at least 1 person with these names. (1998 examples: Jessica, Megan, Allison, Justin, Ryan, Eric)

C - .17-.3%. Common names. Would fall in the modern top 100. You would probably know someone with these names, or at least know of them. (1998 examples: Chloe, Grace, Vanessa, Sean, Spencer, Seth)

D - .06-.17%. Less common names. In the modern top 250. You may not personally know someone with these names, but you’re aware of them. (1998 examples: Faith, Cassidy, Summer, Griffin, Dustin, Colby)

E - .02-.06%. Uncommon names. You’re aware these are names, but they are not common. Unusual enough they may be remarked upon. (1998 examples: Calista, Skye, Precious, Fabian, Justice, Lorenzo)

F - .01-.02%. Rare names. You may have heard of these names, but you probably don’t know anyone with one. Extremely unusual, and would likely be remarked upon. (1998 examples: Emerald, Lourdes, Serenity, Dario, Tavian, Adonis)

G - Very rare names. There are only a handful of people with these names in the entire country. You’ve never met anyone with this name.

H - Virtually non-existent. Names that theoretically could have existed in the Regency period (their original source pre-dates the early 19th century) but I found fewer than five (and often no) period examples of them being used in Regency England. (Example names taken from romance novels and online Regency name lists.)

Just to once again reinforce how POPULAR popular names were before we get to the tier lists - statistically, in a ballroom of 100 people in Regency London: 80 would have names from tiers S+/S. An additional 15 people would have names from tiers A/B and C. 4 of the remaining 5 would have names from D/E. Only one would have a name from below tier E.

Women's Names

S+ Mary, Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah      

S - Jane, Mary Ann+, Hannah, Susannah, Margaret, Catherine, Martha, Charlotte, Maria

A - Frances, Harriet, Sophia, Eleanor, Rebecca

B - Alice, Amelia, Bridget~, Caroline, Eliza, Esther, Isabella, Louisa, Lucy, Lydia, Phoebe, Rachel, Susan

C - Ellen, Fanny*, Grace, Henrietta, Hester, Jemima, Matilda, Priscilla

D - Abigail, Agnes, Amy, Augusta, Barbara, Betsy*, Betty*, Cecilia, Christiana, Clarissa, Deborah, Diana, Dinah, Dorothy, Emily, Emma, Georgiana, Helen, Janet^, Joanna, Johanna, Judith, Julia, Kezia, Kitty*, Letitia, Nancy*, Ruth, Winifred>

E - Arabella, Celia, Charity, Clara, Cordelia, Dorcas, Eve, Georgina, Honor, Honora, Jennet^, Jessie*^, Joan, Joyce, Juliana, Juliet, Lavinia, Leah, Margery, Marian, Marianne, Marie, Mercy, Miriam, Naomi, Patience, Penelope, Philadelphia, Phillis, Prudence, Rhoda, Rosanna, Rose, Rosetta, Rosina, Sabina, Selina, Sylvia, Theodosia, Theresa

F - (selected) Alicia, Bethia, Euphemia, Frederica, Helena, Leonora, Mariana, Millicent, Mirah, Olivia, Philippa, Rosamund, Sybella, Tabitha, Temperance, Theophila, Thomasin, Tryphena, Ursula, Virtue, Wilhelmina

G - (selected) Adelaide, Alethia, Angelina, Cassandra, Cherry, Constance, Delilah, Dorinda, Drusilla, Eva, Happy, Jessica, Josephine, Laura, Minerva, Octavia, Parthenia, Theodora, Violet, Zipporah

H - Alberta, Alexandra, Amber, Ashley, Calliope, Calpurnia, Chloe, Cressida, Cynthia, Daisy, Daphne, Elaine, Eloise, Estella, Lilian, Lilias, Francesca, Gabriella, Genevieve, Gwendoline, Hermione, Hyacinth, Inez, Iris, Kathleen, Madeline, Maude, Melody, Portia, Seabright, Seraphina, Sienna, Verity

Men's Names

S+ John, William, Thomas

S - James, George, Joseph, Richard, Robert, Charles, Henry, Edward, Samuel

A - Benjamin, (Mother’s/Grandmother’s maiden name used as first name)#

B - Alexander^, Andrew, Daniel, David>, Edmund, Francis, Frederick, Isaac, Matthew, Michael, Patrick~, Peter, Philip, Stephen, Timothy

C - Abraham, Anthony, Christopher, Hugh>, Jeremiah, Jonathan, Nathaniel, Walter

D - Adam, Arthur, Bartholomew, Cornelius, Dennis, Evan>, Jacob, Job, Josiah, Joshua, Lawrence, Lewis, Luke, Mark, Martin, Moses, Nicholas, Owen>, Paul, Ralph, Simon

E - Aaron, Alfred, Allen, Ambrose, Amos, Archibald, Augustin, Augustus, Barnard, Barney, Bernard, Bryan, Caleb, Christian, Clement, Colin, Duncan^, Ebenezer, Edwin, Emanuel, Felix, Gabriel, Gerard, Gilbert, Giles, Griffith, Harry*, Herbert, Humphrey, Israel, Jabez, Jesse, Joel, Jonas, Lancelot, Matthias, Maurice, Miles, Oliver, Rees, Reuben, Roger, Rowland, Solomon, Theophilus, Valentine, Zachariah

F - (selected) Abel, Barnabus, Benedict, Connor, Elijah, Ernest, Gideon, Godfrey, Gregory, Hector, Horace, Horatio, Isaiah, Jasper, Levi, Marmaduke, Noah, Percival, Shadrach, Vincent

G - (selected) Albion, Darius, Christmas, Cleophas, Enoch, Ethelbert, Gavin, Griffin, Hercules, Hugo, Innocent, Justin, Maximilian, Methuselah, Peregrine, Phineas, Roland, Sebastian, Sylvester, Theodore, Titus, Zephaniah

H - Albinus, Americus, Cassian, Dominic, Eric, Milo, Rollo, Trevor, Tristan, Waldo, Xavier

# Men were sometimes given a family surname (most often their mother's or grandmother's maiden name) as their first name - the most famous example of this being Fitzwilliam Darcy. If you were to combine all surname-based first names as a single 'name' this is where the practice would rank.

*Rank as a given name, not a nickname

+If you count Mary Ann as a separate name from Mary - Mary would remain in S+ even without the Mary Anns included

~Primarily used by people of Irish descent

^Primarily used by people of Scottish descent

>Primarily used by people of Welsh descent

I was going to continue on and write about why Regency-era first names were so uniform, discuss historically accurate surnames, nicknames, and include a little guide to finding 'unique' names that are still historically accurate - but this post is already very, very long, so that will have to wait for a later date.

If anyone has any questions/comments/clarifications in the meantime feel free to message me.

Methodology notes: All data is from marriage records covering six parishes in the City of Westminster between 1804 and 1821. The total sample size was 50,950 individuals.

I chose marriage records rather than births/baptisms as I wanted to focus on individuals who were adults during the Regency era rather than newborns. I think many people make the mistake when researching historical names by using baby name data for the year their story takes place rather than 20 to 30 years prior, and I wanted to avoid that. If you are writing a story that takes place in 1930 you don’t want to research the top names for 1930, you need to be looking at 1910 or earlier if you are naming adult characters.

I combined (for my own sanity) names that are pronounced identically but have minor spelling differences: i.e. the data for Catherine also includes Catharines and Katherines, Susannah includes Susannas, Phoebe includes Phebes, etc.

The compound 'Mother's/Grandmother's maiden name used as first name' designation is an educated guesstimate based on what I recognized as known surnames, as I do not hate myself enough to go through 25,000+ individuals and confirm their mother's maiden names. So if the tally includes any individuals who just happened to be named Fitzroy/Hastings/Townsend/etc. because their parents liked the sound of it and not due to any familial relations - my bad.

I did a small comparative survey of 5,000 individuals in several rural communities in Rutland and Staffordshire (chosen because they had the cleanest data I could find and I was lazy) to see if there were any significant differences between urban and rural naming practices and found the results to be very similar. The most noticeable difference I observed was that the S+ tier names were even MORE popular in rural areas than in London. In Rutland between 1810 and 1820 Elizabeths comprised 21.4% of all brides vs. 15.3% in the London survey. All other S+ names also saw increases of between 1% and 6%. I also observed that the rural communities I surveyed saw a small, but noticeable and fairly consistent, increase in the use of names with Biblical origins.

Sources of the records I used for my survey: 

Ancestry.com. England & Wales Marriages, 1538-1988 [database on-line].

Ancestry.com. Westminster, London, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1935 [database on-line].