#Edinburgh Printing

[nicoscheer]

Oh king is in heaven 😂🐆💅

Love how she’s literally ‘just’ a fan that gets to live the dream and love him for making it possible

A bunch of videos plus the SETLIST

[grimini]

[scotianostra]

On September 14th 1507 Edinburgh merchants were granted exclusive privilege of running a printing press.

Another one with dates that differ by a day or so, but all agree it was mid September 1507 thatJames IV granted a Royal Patent authorising Scotland’s first printing press.

You will no doubt be surprised that the printing press with moveable types wasn’t invented by a Scotsman. However, Scots have certainly made good use of the technology since it was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, around 1439. It was a good fifty years after Gutenberg’s monopoly was revoked before a press found its way to Scotland. By the arbitrary Incunabulum date of 1500, when around a thousand printing presses were in operation throughout Western Europe and had produced anything between eight and twenty million books, Scotland still lacked a press of its own. Nevertheless, the Scots hadn’t been idle bystanders as many were educated in France and elsewhere and brought back printed books from the Continent. That’s not to say that Scotds had not made use of this new invention, Some sought out the printing press on the continent and had books published there. It should come as no surprise either that in France some Scots were also employed in the new profession of printing and it was one such Scot who had served his apprenticeship as a printer in France, Androw Myllar that brought the art back to his native country.

Myllar was an Edinburgh bookseller who imported books from England and France, where he learned the printer’s craft in Rouen. When he arrived back in Scotland in 1507, Myllar gained the financial backing of Walter Chepman, a wealthy Edinburgh merchant trader and a man who appears to have had the ear of the King, James IV. Chepman also seems to have gained a lot of the credit for Scotland’s first printed books, but then, he was the money man.

When Myllar went into partnership with Chepman, the two men established Scotland’s first printing press, the building was in Edinburgh’s Cowgate, the building is long gone but the pic shows a plaque marking where it stood. Scotland’s first printed books are known as ‘The Chepman & Myllar Prints’, the earliest of which is dated the 4th of April, 1508, which was an edition of John Lydgate’s ‘The Complaint of the Black Knight’.

Sometimes when searching through sources for my posts I find out other little snippets that connect to other posts, like in the article “Printing Comes to Scotland” which you can read on the link below, I learned that there was an account of The Battle of Flodden made on an early printing press, it is titled “The trewe encountre or Batyle don betwene Englande and Scotland” and while it may have been printed in London, it does give an insight into early bias in print. In the pamphlet it claimed that around 10,000 Scots were put to the sword at Flodden, this figure is used a lot but most historians discount the amount now, but the bias is not in that number, the pamphlet claims that the Earl of Surrey lost only a few hundred at the battle. Now I hark back to previous posts about how good the English are at keeping records, most recently in my post regarding Sir William Wallace’s murder, well records of the payroll show that Surrey, the English commander, lost two-fifths of his own retinue, even with these figures available, Wikipedia, which I look at every day, still states that English losses were a mere 1,500 of their 26,000 army, you do the maths, yes it was a massive defeat for the Scots, but it was a bloody hard fought battle with large casualties on both sides.

Pics are the plaque on the Cowgate, the second an early example of Myllar’s work, the windmill is apparently a pun on his surname.

[angelkarafilli]

Edinburgh by night-Michael McVeigh

[the-busy-ghost]

Am re-reading Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and I know it's not a new or original thought but it's just striking to me again how young George (younger) and his brother Robert must have been during the tennis match and Black Bull mob scenes.

If the 'famous session' refers to the 1703 session of parliament (or even if it refers to the previous year's sitting which Queensberry also oversaw), and if old Dalcastle married in 1687 (or later), then at most George could have been 16 and his brother 15, and it's probable that both boys are younger.

I don't remember too many of the details from the first time I read this book so will have to finish it before I make any further judgement. However I don't think it detracts from Robert's culpability or nastiness in any way to take into account his probable age in the earlier portion of the narrative. I think makes for a more interesting reading when forcibly reminded that he's a young teenager. Even taking into account different social mores and expectations placed on children in both the period in which the novel is set, and the early 19th century when it was written, it seems to me that that's an element that will still have particular significance for readers in the 21st century, regardless of one's personal experience with extreme forms of Presbyterianism.

[zou-san]

Playfair Steps, Cyanotype by Zou san Via Flickr: Contact printed 4x5 negative from the Zero 45.

[quona]

HEY GUESS WHAT? I HAVE PRINTS OF THE DR. MACFELL'S TINCTURE OF LAUDANUM AD AVAILABLE ON INPRNT NOW

Everything from 4x5 to poster size! You know you wanna hang this madness in your house somewhere.

UNRULY DEMON? Try Dr. MacFells LAUDANUM tincture! Guaranteed to knock his ass out. Detail shots after the jumppppppppp ⬇️

@goodomensafterdark

[triplecastgames]

We're thrilled to announce that we'll be at the Secret Solstice Games' Friendsmas event in Edinburgh featuring its first Mini Maker Market!

Whether you're in the mood for some holiday cheer with some potluck food and boardgames or looking for some last-minute gifts, Friendsmas has something for everyone.

The market will run all day on Sunday, 22nd December from 12-10pm, potluck from 6pm on! See you there, and stop by to see us for some fine art paintings, illustrations, and prints!

[funnyartprintsnow]

Edinburgh Calton Hill Print - Serene Cityscape Art, Scotland Landscape, Home Decor

[bitletsanddrabbles]

The model press room from the top story of the writer's museum. It's more heavy duty than Stevenson's personal press, although I don't know that it's any more modern. Didn't get a sense for that. It may actually be older, given how long the Ballantyne press was in Ediburgh.

My maternal grandfather was a printer because all of the printers he knew lived long enough to retire, so this kinda has sentimental value. Also, while a very different sort of press, it reminds me of the boys on @alex51324 's Island.

[visionsofnightfall]

Edinburgh yesterday.

instagram

print shop

[katelouisepowell]

my Watership Down inspired illo, originally created for Black Rabbit cafe (Edinburgh). prints available here ♥

[tiaramania]

Duchess of Edinburgh’s Sapphire Suite

Yesterday, the Duchess of Edinburgh wore her complete set of new sapphire jewelry for the first time so let's take a closer look. The suite was made by Graff for their 2014 high jewelry collection. Each piece features sapphires and diamonds in a variety of cuts. Graff is a British jeweler known for their focus on high quality, and usually very large, gemstones.

The collection is called Nuage which means cloud in French and you can see that some of the scroll elements resemble clouds. Sophie even wore a dress printed with clouds when she debuted the earrings.

She first wore the earrings in June and December of 2022 and then added the bracelet for King Charles III's coronation in May 2023.

Last night for the Qatari state banquet, Sophie wore the necklace, bracelet, and earrings with her Aquamarine Necklace Tiara.

Sophie did not really go on the type of visit where they give substantial jewelry gifts in the years between when the last time the official gift list was released in 2019 and when they were debuted in 2022 so I would guess that they belong to her personally. As for how much they cost, I have no idea because they were POA or price on application when they came out which usually means if you have to ask you can't afford it.

The suite is really stunning and I can't wait to see the Duchess of Edinburgh wear them again.

[sassenach77yle]

||COUNTDOWN ||SEASON 3 EPISODE 06 || A. MALCOLM ||

#83daysofoutlander☆

“The question is—why have you got a room in a brothel? Are you such a good customer that—”

“A customer?” He stared up at me, eyebrows raised. “Here? God, Sassenach, what d’ye think I am?” “Damned if I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m asking. Are you going to answer my question?” He stared at his stockinged feet for a moment, wiggling his toes on the floorboard. At last he looked up at me, and answered calmly, “I suppose so. I’m not a customer of Jeanne’s, but she’s a customer of mine—and a good one. She keeps a room for me because I’m often abroad late on business,and I’d as soon have a place I can come to where I can have food and a bed at any hour, and privacy. The room is part of my arrangement with her.” I had been holding my breath. Now I let out about half of it. “All right,” I said. “Then I suppose the next question is, what business has the owner of a brothel got with a printer?” The absurd thought that perhaps he printed advertising circulars for Madame Jeanne flitted through my brain, to be instantly dismissed. “Well,” he said slowly. “No. I dinna think that’s the question.” “It’s not?” “No.” With one fluid move, he was off the bed and standing in front of me, close enough for me to have to look up into his face. I had a sudden urge to take a step backward, but didn’t, largely because there wasn’t room.

“The question is, Sassenach, why have ye come back?”

he said softly. “That’s a hell of a question to ask me!” My palms pressed flat against the rough wood of the door. “Why do you think I came back, damn you?” “I dinna ken.” The soft Scottish voice was cool, but even in the dim light, I could see the pulse throbbing in the open throat of his shirt.

“Did ye come to be my wife again? Or only to bring me word of my daughter?” As though he sensed that his nearness unnerved me, he turned away suddenly, moving toward the window, where the shutters creaked in the wind. “You are the mother of my child—for that alone, I owe ye my soul—for the knowledge that my life hasna been in vain—that my child is safe.” He turned again to face me, blue eyes intent. “But it has been a time, Sassenach, since you and I were one. You’ll have had your life—then—and I have had mine here. You’ll know nothing of what I’ve done, or been. Did ye come now because ye wanted to—or because ye felt ye must?”

My throat felt tight, but I met his eyes. “I came now because before…I thought you were dead. I thought you’d died at Culloden.” His eyes dropped to the windowsill, where he picked at a splinter. “Aye, I see,” he said softly. “Well…I meant to be dead.” He smiled, without humor, eyes intent on the splinter. “I tried hard enough.” He looked up at me again. “How did ye find out I hadna died? Or where I was, come to that?” “I had help. A young historian named Roger Wakefield found the records; he tracked you to Edinburgh. And when I saw ‘A. Malcolm,’ I knew…I thought…it might be you,” I ended lamely. Time enough for the details later. “Aye, I see. And then ye came. But still…why?” I stared at him without speaking for a moment. As though he felt the need of air, or perhaps only for something to do, he fumbled with the latch of the shutters and thrust them halfway open, flooding the room with the sound of rushing water, and the cold, fresh smell of rain. “Are you trying to tell me you don’t want me to stay?” I said, finally. “Because if so…I mean, I know you’ll have a life now…maybe you have…other ties…”

With unnaturally acute senses, I could hear the small sounds of activity throughout the house below, even above the rush of the storm, and the pounding of my own heart. My palms were damp, and I wiped them surreptitiously against my skirt. He turned from the window to stare at me. “Christ!” he said. “Not want ye?” His face was pale now, and his eyes unnaturally bright.

“I have burned for you for twenty years, Sassenach,” he said softly. “Do ye not know that? Jesus!” The breeze stirred the loose wisps of hair around his face, and he brushed them back impatiently. “But I’m no the man ye knew, twenty years past, am I?” He turned away, with a gesture of frustration. “We know each other now less than we did when we wed.”

“Do you want me to go?” The blood was pounding thickly in my ears. “No!” He swung quickly toward me, and gripped my shoulder tightly, making me pull back involuntarily. “No,” he said, more quietly. “I dinna want ye to go. I told ye so, and I meant it. But…I must know.” He bent his head toward me, his face alive with troubled question. “Do ye want me?” he whispered.

“Sassenach, will ye take me—and risk the man that I am, for the sake of the man ye knew?”

I felt a great wave of relief, mingled with fear. It ran from his hand on my shoulder to the tips of my toes, weakening my joints. “It’s a lot too late to ask that,” I said, and reached to touch his cheek, where the rough beard was starting to show. It was soft under my fingers, like stiff plush.

“Because I’ve already risked everything I had. But whoever you are now, Jamie Fraser—yes. Yes, I do want you.”

The light of the candle flame glowed blue in his eyes, as he held out his hands to me, and I stepped wordless into his embrace. I rested my face against his chest, marveling at the feel of him in my arms; so big, so solid and warm. Real, after the years of longing for a ghost I could not touch. Disentangling himself after a moment, he looked down at me, and touched my cheek, very gently. He smiled slightly.

“You’ve the devil’s own courage, aye? But then, ye always did.” I tried to smile at him, but my lips trembled.

“What about you? How do you know what I’m like? You don’t know what I’ve been doing for the last twenty years, either. I might be a horrible person, for all you know!” The smile on his lips moved into his eyes, lighting them with humor. “I suppose ye might, at that. But, d’ye know, Sassenach—I dinna think I care?”

I stood looking at him for another minute, then heaved a deep sigh that popped a few more stitches in my gown. “Neither do I.”

25 HOUSE OF JOY ~voyager

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint Giles 

14 Holy Helpers

650-710

Feast day: September 1

Patronage: people with disabilities, the poor, cancer patients, difficulty breastfeeding, mental illness, sterility, depression, childhood fears, convulsions, Edinburgh, Scotland

Originally from Greece, St. Giles lived as a hermit in the forest of France for many years and his sole companion was a deer who is said to have sustained him with her milk. When King Wamba's hunters pursued and shot at the deer, the arrow wounded St. Giles instead, making him the patron of cripples. As compensation, the King gave Giles a piece of land in the Provence, on which Giles founded a monastery. He died with the highest repute for sanctity and miracles.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Podcasting "Microincentives and Enshittification"

Tomorrow (Oct 25) at 10hPT/18hUK, I'm livestreaming an event called "Seizing the Means of Computation" for the Edinburgh Futures Institute.

This week on my podcast, I read my recent Medium column, "Microincentives and Enshittification," about the way that monopoly drives mediocrity, with Google's declining quality as Exhibit A:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

It's not your imagination: Google used to be better – in every way. Search used to be better, sure, but Google used to be better as a company. It treated its workers better (for example, not laying off 12,000 workers months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years). It had its users' backs in policy fights – standing up for Net Neutrality and the right to use encryption to keep your private data private. Even when the company made ghastly mistakes, it repented of them and reversed them, like the time it pulled out of China after it learned that Chinese state hackers had broken into Gmail in order to discover which dissidents to round up and imprison.

None of this is to say that Google used to be perfect, or even, most of the time, good. Just that things got worse. To understand why, we have to think about how decisions get made in large organizations, or, more to the point, how arguments get resolved in these organizations.

We give Google a lot of shit for its "Don't Be Evil" motto, but it's worth thinking through what that meant for the organization's outcomes over the years. Through most of Google's history, the tech labor market was incredibly tight, and skilled engineers and other technical people had a lot of choice as to where they worked. "Don't Be Evil" motivated some – many – of those workers to take a job at Google, rather than one of its rivals.

Within Google, that meant that decisions that could colorably be accused of being "evil" would face some internal pushback. Imagine a product design meeting where one faction proposes something that is bad for users, but good for the company's bottom line. Think of another faction that says, "But if we do that, we'll be 'evil.'"

I think it's safe to assume that in any high-stakes version of this argument, the profit side will prevail over the don't be evil side. Money talks and bullshit walks. But what if there were also monetary costs to being evil? Like, what if Google has to worry about users or business customers defecting to a rival? Or what if there's a credible reason to worry that a regulator will fine Google, or Congress will slap around some executives at a televised hearing?

That lets the no-evil side field a more robust counterargument: "Doing that would be evil, and we'll lose money, or face a whopping fine, or suffer reputational harms." Even if these downsides are potentially smaller than the upsides, they still help the no-evil side win the argument. That's doubly true if the downsides could depress the company's share-price, because Googlers themselves are disproportionately likely to hold Google stock, since tech companies are able to get a discount on their wage-bills by paying employees in abundant stock they print for free, rather than the scarce dollars that only come through hard graft.

When the share-price is on the line, the counterargument goes, "That would be evil, we will lose money, and you will personally be much poorer as a result." Again, this isn't dispositive – it won't win every argument – but it is influential. A counterargument that braids together ideology, institutional imperatives, and personal material consequences is pretty robust.

Which is where monopoly comes in. When companies grow to dominate their industries, they are less subject to all forms of discipline. Monopolists don't have to worry about losing disgusted employees, because they exert so much gravity on the labor market that they find it easy to replace them.

They don't have to worry about losing customers, because they have eliminated credible alternatives. They don't have to worry about losing users, because rivals steer clear of their core business out of fear of being bigfooted through exclusive distribution deals, predatory pricing, etc. Investors have a name for the parts of the industry dominated by Big Tech: they call it "the kill zone" and they won't back companies seeking to enter it.

When companies dominate their industries, they find it easier to capture their regulators and outspend public prosecutors who hope to hold them to account. When they lose regulatory fights, they can fund endless appeals. If they lose those appeals, they can still afford the fines, especially if they can use an army of lawyers to make sure that the fine is less than the profit realized through the bad conduct. A fine is a price.

In other words, the more dominant a company is, the harder it is for the good people within the company to win arguments about unethical and harmful proposals, and the worse the company gets. The internal culture of the company changes, and its products and services decline, but meaningful alternatives remain scarce or nonexistent.

Back to Google. Google owns more than 90% of the search market. Google can't grow by adding more Search users. The 10% of non-Google searchers are extremely familiar with Google's actions. To switch to a rival search engine, they have had to take many affirmative, technically complex steps to override the defaults in their devices and tools. It's not like an ad extolling the virtues of Google Search will bring in new customers.

Having saturated the search market, Google can only increase its Search revenues by shifting value from searchers or web publishers to itself – that is, the only path to Search growth is enshittification. They have to make things worse for end users or business customers in order to make things better for themselves:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

This means that each executive in the Search division is forever seeking out ways to shift value to Google and away from searchers and/or publishers. When they propose a enshittificatory tactic, Google's market dominance makes it easy for them to win arguments with their teammates: "this may make you feel ashamed for making our product worse, but it will not make me poorer, it will not make the company poorer, and it won't chase off business customers or end users, therefore, we're gonna do it. Fuck your feelings."

After all, each microenshittification represents only a single Jenga block removed from the gigantic tower that is Google Search. No big deal. Some Google exec made the call to make it easier for merchants to buy space overtop searches for their rivals. That's not necessarily a bad thing: "Thinking of taking a vacation in Florida? Why not try Puerto Rico – it's a US-based Caribbean vacation without the transphobia and racism!"

But this kind of advertising also opens up lots of avenues for fraud. Scammers clone local restaurants' websites, jack up their prices by 15%, take your order, and transmit it to the real restaurant, pocketing the 15%. They get clicks by using some of that rake to buy an ad based on searches for the restaurant's name, so they show up overtop of it and rip off inattentive users:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

This is something Google could head off; they already verify local merchants by mailing them postcards with unique passwords that they key into a web-form. They could ban ads for websites that clone existing known merchants, but that would incur costs (engineer time) and reduce profits, both from scammers and from legit websites that trip a false positive.

The decision to sell this kind of ad, configured this way, is a direct shift of value from business customers (restaurants) and end-users (searchers) to Google. Not only that, but it's negative sum. The money Google gets from this tradeoff is less than the cost to both the restaurant (loss of goodwill from regulars who are affronted because of a sudden price rise) and searchers (who lose 15% on their dinner orders). This trade-off makes everyone except Google worse off, and it's only possible when Google is the only game in town.

It's also small potatoes. Last summer, scammers figured out how to switch out the toll-free numbers that Google displayed for every airline, redirecting people to boiler-rooms where con-artists collected their credit-card numbers and sensitive personal information (passports, etc):

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/phone-numbers-airlines-listed-google-directed-scammers-rcna94766

Here again, we see a series of small compromises that lead to a massive harm. Google decided to show users 800 numbers rather than links to the airlines' websites, but failed to fortify the process for assigning phone numbers to prevent this absolutely foreseeable type of fraud. It's not that Google wanted to enable fraud – it's that they created the conditions for the fraud to occur and failed to devote the resources necessary to defend against it.

Each of these compromises indicates a belief among Google decision-makers that the consequences for making their product worse will be outweighed by the value the company will generate by exposing us to harm. One reason for this belief is on display in the DOJ's antitrust case against Google:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1328941/download

The case accuses Google of spending tens of billions of dollars to buy out the default search position on every platform where an internet user might conceivably perform a search. The company is lighting multiple Twitters worth of dollars on fire to keep you from ever trying another search engine.

Spraying all those dollars around doesn't just keep you from discovering a better search engine – it also prevents investors from funding that search engine in the first place. Why fund a startup in the kill-zone if no one will ever discover that it exists?

https://www.theverge.com/23802382/search-engine-google-neeva-android

Of course, Google doesn't have to grow Search to grow its revenue. Hypothetically, Google could pursue new lines of business and grow that way. This is a tried-and-true strategy for tech giants: Apple figured out how to outsource its manufacturing to the Pacific Rim; Amazon created a cloud service, Microsoft figured out how to transform itself into a cloud business.

Look hard at these success stories and you discover another reason that Google – and other large companies – struggle to grow by moving into adjacent lines of business. In each case – Apple, Microsoft, Amazon – the exec who led the charge into the new line of business became the company's next CEO.

In other words: if you are an exec at a large firm and one of your rivals successfully expands the business into a new line, they become the CEO – and you don't. That ripples out within the whole org-chart: every VP who becomes an SVP, every SVP who becomes an EVP, and every EVP who becomes a president occupies a scarce spot that it worth millions of dollars to the people who lost it.

The one thing that execs reliably collaborate on is knifing their ambitious rivals in the back. They may not agree on much, but they all agree that that guy shouldn't be in charge of this lucrative new line of business.

This "curse of bigness" is why major shifts in big companies are often attended by the return of the founder – think of Gates going back to Microsoft or Brin returning to Google to oversee their AI projects. They are the only execs that other execs can't knife in the back.

This is the real "innovator's dilemma." The internal politics of large companies make Machiavelli look like an optimist.

When your company attains a certain scale, any exec's most important rival isn't the company's competitor – it's other execs at the same company. Their success is your failure, and vice-versa.

This makes the business of removing Jenga blocks from products like Search even more fraught. These quality-degrading, profit-goosing tactics aren't coordinated among the business's princelings. When you're eating your seed-corn, you do so in private. This secrecy means that it's hard for different product-degradation strategists to realize that they are removing safeguards that someone else is relying on, or that they're adding stress to a safety measure that someone else just doubled the load on.

It's not just Google, either. All of tech is undergoing a Great Enshittening, and that's due to how intertwined all these tech companies. Think of how Google shifts value from app makers to itself, with a 30% rake on every dollar spent in an app. Google is half of the mobile duopoly, with the other half owned by Apple. But they're not competitors – they're co-managers of a cartel. The single largest deal that Google or Apple does every year is the bribe Google pays Apple to be the default search for iOS and Safari – $15-20b, every year.

If Apple and Google were mobile competitors, you'd expect them to differentiate their products, but instead, they've converged – both Apple and Google charge sky-high 30% payment processing fees to app makers.

Same goes for Google/Facebook, the adtech duopoly: not only do both companies charge advertisers and publishers sky-high commissions, clawing 51 cents out of every ad dollar, but they also illegally colluded to rig the market and pay themselves more, at advertisers' and publishers' expense:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

It's not just tech, either – every sector from athletic shoes to international sea-freight is concentrated into anti-competitive, value-annihilating cartels and monopolies:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

As our friends on the right are forever reminding us: "incentives matter." When a company runs out of lands to conquer, the incentives all run one direction: downhill, into a pit of enshittification. Google got worse, not because the people in it are worse (or better) than they were before – but because the constraints that discipline the company and contain its worst impulses got weaker as the company got bigger.

Here's the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2023/10/23/microincentives-and-enshittification/

And here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_452/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_452_-_Microincentives_and_Enshittification.mp3

And here's my podcast's RSS feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/