#crucial historical document. to me

[hedgehog-moss]

I was talking with a friend the other day about how I was fascinated with American school life when I was a teen because it seemed so different from how things are in my country (I knew about US high schools thanks to Hollywood, an accurate and trustworthy source) and we talked about which aspects of US schools felt foreign or strange to us and one thing I brought up was, how American teens only seemed to have like 15min for lunch (I had 1h30 here in France), as evidenced by the cafeteria scenes (no one seemed to eat a proper four-course meal? I definitely never saw a separate cheese course), and I was like, I envied a lot of stuff about US schools but not this

... and I went looking in my old diaries to see if I ever wrote about this, and you know what? I was wrong. I did envy their school lunches which, like almost everything about US schools, felt intriguing and different and cool. The reason middle school-me thought American school lunches were superior to French ones is because, since American teens in TV shows only seemed to get like 4 chicken nuggets and a milk carton for lunch, their lunch tray was very light and they could hold it with one hand under it, the other hand in their pocket or holding their bag strap on their shoulder all casual-like. Sometimes there was no tray, even!

I envied these American teenagers for their lunchtime nonchalance. I would have liked to handle lunch in this cool-cat way but my French lunch tray being loaded with 4 different heavy and breakable plates, I had to hold it carefully with both hands. In my view this was unfair as the hindrance of governmental nutrition guidelines made French students look like uptight nerds, unable to strut around the cafeteria with one hand in our pocket like we didn’t care. Same for the absence of lockers in our schools, we had to carry all our books on our back all day like studious turtles whilst the beautiful 25 year old American teens on my television casually leant against their lockers chatting with friends then strolled around school with just a couple of books tucked under their arm like they were in Dead Poets Society. Thank god there was an ocean between us, imagine a French kid entering a US school cafeteria carrying 3 binders and 5 textbooks in their big rucksack and holding their tray with two hands like a complete loser

Note that these comparisons are quite worthless since I don't know what US school life / food is like in the real world (I imagine it varies a lot!)—I just find it funny to re-read old diaries and discover what was important to kid-me. Discussing these little cultural differences gleaned from US TV series, adult!me is like "yeah I remember being intrigued & envious about a lot of things! Not their school lunches though, they didn't look balanced and nutritious"—meanwhile middle school-me, focused on what mattered, was like, imagine what we could be... imagine being able to hold your lunch tray with 1 hand instead of 2 thus accessing a realm of coolness unfathomable to us in our backward country

[saviourkingslut]

whoever advertised scrivener to me i am bowing like a peasant in front of his liege lord this shit is life-changing bro i am saying once again this will save my dissertation writing process i just know it. fairly certain it was @sevarix-blogs king you saved a guy's life for real

[omgthatdress]

The Importance of Studying Queerness in Context.

When studying queer history, one always has to keep in mind two seemingly contradictory things: firstly, that queerness and queer people have always existed, but at the same time, that queerness and queer identities have not always existed the way they exist today.

Modern queer terms and identities did not exist to queer people in the past. They would not have thought of themselves as "gay" or "trans" or even "queer." While these modern terms may seem to fit certain historic individuals, these individuals would not have thought of themselves as such, and it would not be a part of their lived experience. To apply the modern identities of queerness to history is to erase the lives and experiences of queer people in history, and care must always be taken to understand queer history within the context of its time.

When looking at queer history online, there is a *lot* of misinformation and misidentification out there simply because people are eager to apply modern queerness to history, often in places where it doesn't belong.

A lot of old photos get misidentified as gay because they show two people of the same sex showing some level of physical affection towards each other. Okay, I'll admit that the open-mouth kissing photobooth pictures are probably actually gay, but an old picture of two men or two women holding hands or with their arms around each other, or even kissing on the cheek, were common shows of platonic affection.

I hate to break everyone's gay little hearts, but without explicit documentation saying so, assuming that these couples are all gay is putting modern queer identity in places where it simply didn't exist. The women in the final picture are sisters. The "not married" boys are bachelors interested in marrying women.

In the silent film Wings, the emotional climax of the film comes in the form of a kiss exchanged between the characters played by Jack Powell and David Armstrong. It often gets attributed as the first gay kiss in cinema history, even on the fucking YouTube clip I found:

Except it isn't gay. The two men spend the whole film fighting over who gets to be Clara Bow's boyfriend. When Richard Arlen's character is fatally wounded, his dear friend rushes to his side and kisses him goodbye, because in the 1920s, that was considered the ultimate show of friendship. The movie ends with Jack Powell falling in love with Clara Bow.

Similarly, a kiss shared between Lillian and Dorothy Gish in the 1921 movie Orphans of the Storm often gets attributed as being queer, but it wasn't.

They were sisters playing sisters. None of this was considered unusual.

Pooh-poohing on all of these images that so many people on the internet breathlessly and joyously laud as proud gay history isn't fun. It makes me feel like I'm fucking Ben Shapiro. But if misinformation is allowed to flourish, it allows people like Ben Shapiro to come in and make the argument that queerness is a modern invention and queer people didn't exist in the past.

Everyone loves to see queerness represented in history, but the fact is that none of the stuff in this post would have been seen as explicitly gay and thus shouldn't be called gay today. If we are to understand queer history in its fullness and richness, it is absolutely crucial that we get it right. We owe it to our queer ancestors to recognize, honor, and not embellish the actual lives they lived.

[determinate-negation]

Recently I’ve gotten into genealogy and tracing my family tree, so census data has been integral for me to learn who everyone was, what they did, where they lived and so on. However theirs still many missing pieces of documentation as my family mostly consisted of Jewish immigrants. My family didn’t seem keep anything for future generations, so right now all I have are legal documents and some photos.

Your recent comments on the relation between census data and fascism has intrigued me, and I’m curious if you have any input in regards to my above statement?

im just saying basically that a lot of technological developments regarding dealing with large amounts of data are historically connected to fascism, capitalism, and colonialism. a lot of companies that are known for pioneering things in information technology and record keeping were crucial in organizing the transatlantic slave trade, maintaining colonial governments, and orchestrating the holocaust. i still think that technology (and this includes information technology) is at its core neutral and can be put towards different purposes but its an interesting history that i think should be considered today. record keeping in general is historically connected to kingdoms, empires, and bureaucracies, because societies that develop large governments, have administrative tasks, commerce, territories to control, etc have a need for records and would fall apart without them. its also common that the most accessible and maintained records or census data pertaining to groups of people will be colonial records, and this is a big topic in archival studies. the contents of colonial records can still be useful to research ofc but its a particular form of organizing information

[enlitment]

top 5 frev women?

Thanks for the ask! Oh, this one's going to be tough as well. But let's see...

Lucile Desmoulins

Much more than a pair of fine eyes, Lucile was, like her husband, heavily invested in politics. She shared Camille's convictions and is even reported to have defended him in front of others. She did pay the price for her loyalty in the end, when she was only my age (though it should be noted that the whole Germinal/Indulgent business is much more complex to be accurately presented in this short overview of course).

I also really like her writing! Her 'advice' to Marie Antoinette is definitely quite something. Go read it if you haven't! Her diary is also at times quite relatable. ("I feel that I am born to live far from men. The more I examine them, the more I seek to understand them, the more I see that one should flee from them.”)

Bonus - my favourite quote of hers on women's place in society:

To hear [men] speak, we are celestial beings, nothing is equal to us. Ah! may they deify us less and leave us free!

2. Simone Évrard

I have to confess I was sleeping on Simone for the longest time, but she is such an interesting figure! She continued to be so supportive of Marat even when times were incredibly tough for him. I'm convinced he wouldn't be able to achieve half as much as he did if it weren't for her. She then went on to defend his legacy long after his death, despite the fact that it caused quite a few problems for her. I find her incredibly inspiring!

3. Charlotte Robespierre

Listen, I'm always going to appreciate a single lady who made it her life's mission to try and take charge of the narrative.

In all seriousness, I'm still not quite sure how her mind worked, but I find her incredibly interesting. Especially the way she seemed to be so protective or Maximilien (re: Éléonore?), both during his life and after his death. She also seemed to have been so strong-willed, much like her brother, perhaps even more so. The fact that she accompanied Augustin to suppress the revolt in Nice is still kind of mind-blowing to me. And the fact that she was supposedly going to marry Fouché at one point? One of my favourite historical what-ifs, honestly. Just imagine!

(That said, my knowledge of her is quite lacking. If anyone can recommend a good biography on Charlotte, I'd be really thankful!)

4. Olympe de Gouges

Okay, here's a controversial one!

Obligatory 'am not a Girondist!', but I feel that I still have to give her some credit for her feminist ideas. Yes, her feminism was centred on upper-class women, but I still see her contributions as an important first step. Déclaration des droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne is one of the most crucial documents in the history of feminism in my opinion.

I also appreciate the fact that while classist, her feminism was much less 'white-only' than that of a lot of women that came after her (case in point a lot of the Seneca Falls suffragettes in 19th century America). Again, not all of her views on slavery probably stand up to the test of time, but I will always appreciate anyone in the 18th century who expresses abolitionists sentiments, which she did.

She is also the author of many of my favourite french revolution era quotes:

"A woman has the right to mount the scaffold. She must possess equally the right to mount the rostrum."

She has a point and honestly? Well said.

(Side note - also kind of obsessed with her address to Robespierre. "I suggest we should bathe together in the Seine but to entirely depurgate you of those blemishes with which you have smeared yourself since 10th June, we should attach sixteen or twenty-four pound cannon balls to our feet , and together race into the flood ….")

That said, the narrative that she was executed for her feminist views is both incorrect and extremely tiring.

5. Pauline Léon

How can I not mention the leader of female Sans-culottes herself? To counter de Gouges, let me mention another French revolutionary feminist that is - in a lot of ways - an antithesis to Olympe, since she was: a) a radical republican b) a member of the working class.

She seemed to have been incredibly courageous and always managed to find herself right in the centre of the action (Bastille, Champ de Mars...). There are unfortunately not that many resources on her as on some of the other female figures, but I think her story is incredibly important. More so for the fact that she was one of female revolutionary figures we know at least something about that wasfrom a working class - as opposed to upper class - background.

My favourite fact about her is that she wanted to establish all-female militia group to defend the country against counter-revolutionaries. Not going to lie, it was a wild proposal, but it would be kind of amazing to see it happen.

(It was not easy to find her portrait, but this should be her I hope?)

[shintoinenglish]

Review: The Essence of Shinto

I have written before of Yamakage's authorship of multiple antisemitic conspiracy theory books. That said, given that there are not a lot of English language books about Shintō, I find this book is often recommended. It should not be recommended to anyone, not just because of the authorship, but for its misinformation. There is very little actual information that can be salvaged from this trainwreck of a book.

Koshintō is not an ancient practice - it's a new religious movement; an attempt to imagine an ancient Shintō, which is, in my opinion, inherently paradoxical, as the concept of Shintō as the name of a religion (and indeed the concept of a religion itself) were consciously constructed as recently as the Meiji Era, which is the 19th century. The archaeological and historical truth is that we do not know what Yayoi or Jomon period peoples believed, and Shintō is likely very distinct from that, and that is okay. While I understand the impulse to try to reconstruct Yayoi or Jomon era religions, I find the impulse to remove foreign elements like Buddhism to contain elements of xenophobia, and have found the idea of Shintō as truly ancient to be misleading at best. We do not actually have an ancient practice handed down to us. Japanese religious practice, first, is diverse -- regions do things differently. Kyushu area graves, for example, bear continental Chinese influence and have 土神 enshrined at their sides. Secondly, while I do think there is a necessity to undo the damage that State Shintō has done, it is not helpful to do so in a way that, at best, ignores and at worst, contradicts history.

Secondly, Yamakage Shintō is barely attested outside of Motohisa's writings. Many of the practices allegedly specific to Yamakage Shintō are common Japanese New Age theories, along with some condescension of traditional practices. One way to recognize this is his repeated use of the word "spiritual" (which presumably was either written スピリチュアル in the original text). It's ironic, then, that he puts down "bizarre cults and sects" (p.13). The aforementioned paragraph should explain why I am so skeptical of the Yamakage school when there is no such thing as ancient Shintō by definition.

Crucially, there is some dangerous and typical New Age medical misinformation here. He claims that certain chants or practices can heal different physical and mental health symptoms, which is not something anyone should say, much less someone who claims to be a religious teacher. This is a sidenote, but I am hoping that Paul de Leeuw did not absorb any of this, but am concerned as he trained under Yamakage.

Yamakage states "...Shinto leaders have been at the forefront of campaigns to restore the forests..." As much as Westerners want Shintō to be the Green Religion that saves the world, I've had very little luck actually encountering any shrine websites or articles that back this up, outside of the traditional practices of keeping very small sacred forests known as chinju no mori. If anything, the opposite has been documented. See Sacred Forests, Sacred Nation for more on this subject. I would be open to correction on this, but Yamakage provides no sources whatsoever; in fact, he provides no sources throughout his book for any of his factual or historical claims. Presenting the Showa Emperor as a source does nothing but reinforce fascist rhetoric about the emperor being the religious head, as he was at the time of State Shinto, and likely says more about his personal convictions than his religious ones. There is something eerily dystopian and fascistic in Yamakage's description of the people cheerily following the Showa Emperor's example.

I have noticed a tendency in some Japanese people to do what I think of as self-orientalism; an exoticization of your own body and culture to appeal to whites. It seems to me that Yamakage is doing such a thing, while simultaneously appealing to Japanese nationalistic sympathies, by saying it is an ancient, mysterious religion untainted by materialism. Demonizing materialism, in fact, goes against the actual practice of most Japanese -- many, many businesses regularly pray for prosperity and dedicate lamps to shrines, or will get ritual decorations for prosperity known as kumade during the November Tori-no-Ichi festival.

"Ajimarikan" is a chant that is, at best, shoddily derived from Buddhism, as is his use of mudra hand gestures. At worst, he completely fabricated this chant and doesn't even attempt to provide a meaning for this phrase. The Five Great Vowels Chant and the Heavenly Counting Chant are both chants that do not exist outside of this book.

Yamakage Motohisa also repeatedly uses Okinawan/Ryūkyūan religion as examples as if it is a part of Shintō, which it most decidedly is not. There was forced assimilation because of colonization, to my understanding, but the practice is entirely different from Shintō.

This is kind of a briefer overview than I originally intended, but I hope this provides some information on why I dislike Yamakage and this book so much. My hope is that he stops being recommended as any sort of resource and a better one is translated soon.

[aclickbaittitle]

History through the lens of Unwell: A Midwestern Gothic Mystery

Unwell’s last episode was published on September 12 of 2023, lucky for me I have not yet listened to the fifth season so Unwell can last as long as I want it to. In fact, I don’t want to finish it until I write an article about the story.

This is that article.

History, in the most simple terms I can put it, is the study of the past as it relates to the present. We learn and study it, not just to know what our ancestors in 500 B.C. got up to but to understand ourselves in the wider context that is time, the universe and humanity.

Unwell is a fiction podcast about Lillian Harper moving to the small town of Mt. Absalom, Ohio, to care for her estranged mother Dorothy after an injury. Living in the town’s boarding house which has been run by her family for generations, she discovers conspiracies, ghosts, and a new family in the house’s strange assortment of residents. (Courtesy of unwellpodcast.com)

History in Unwell takes various shapes, the most obvious is the resident historian of Fentwood House: Abbie, who has come to Mount Absolom to pursue a doctorate in history with a focus on urban planning. The Fentwood House itself is a historical site of the town, with Dot (the owner and carer), being a vessel of oral history for it: always talking about different wild anecdotes of her ancestors and the house, there is also the various documents said ancestors left behind, which became a crucial plot point in season 4. And of course, there are the ghosts.

Ghosts on Unwell are complicated to the point that even themselves do not quite understand what they are, but I would like to argue that they are “living” memories of the town.

(Spoilers for the next part).

Nora is the ghost of the observatorium, an astrophysicist from the early 20th century.

Nora’s control and keeping of the echoes people have walk through the observatory could be seen as her “archiving” different moments of Mount Absolom and the voices of different people, plus her astrophysical and engineering knowledge that allows Rudy to fix / continue the creation of the observatory’s telescope (her telescope) is similar to the way people from today look at the discoveries and knowledge from people in the past to further their work.

Wes, who works at Fentwood House, keeps in a way alive the story of the establishment through his spooky tours, and it is through him that we get to see how Mount Absolom in the 40s or 50s looked like.

And then there is Silas, one of the founders of Mount Absolom. Silas or Reverent Lodge, represent that darker history the town wants to erase and/or forget. I do not only mean trying to white-washed it (there’s this nice scene in which Abby calls out the “Thanksgiving” myth) because it is more complicated than that, I think… in a way… Silas is a representation against modernity and expansion: his chapel is under an observatory- like how one may substitute religion for science in the modern world, he is fiercely protective of the forest around Mount Absolom and doesn’t like how the town is expanding to its borders, he reproaches Dot (and others) for forgetting traditions, etc. There is truth to Silas’ critics which is what makes him so compelling, and the fact that through his friendship with Lily he doesn’t appear to be that much of a racist compared to his contemporaries. In other words, Silas is the bogey man that carries with him the past the residents of Mount Absolom don’t want to talk about.

However, Ghosts, Landmarks, and Historians is not only the way that Unwell engages with history. It is the way to move the plot forward.

The characters throughout the story have to engage with the past in order to overcome obstacles. To discover the mystery they end up digging up those sweet first type sources, interviewing people from the past or who know about it, exploring ancient sites, asking the story behind the town’s festival and cultural practices- in a way there is no much difference between a historian and a detective (Abby often wears both hats in the show) just how far away is the moment they are investigating.

A theme of the show is also the power of knowing your history and that of the place you inhabit. If there is a character that embodies this theme the best is not the historian but Wes, there is a difference between the Wes of the first season who just knew where he lived, to the Wes of the fourth season who knows the name of his parents, the school he went to, the detective radio-show he like to listen after school; when Wes learns the history of the boy he was he becomes (as much as you can at sixteen) self-actualized. Dot, on the other hand, has the opposite story as her illness slowly devours the stories she has hanging around in her brain.

And then there is Lily. Lily is a beautifully complicated character, in the beginning of the story she denies any connections or ties she could have to the town, Fentwood House and even her mother, but through the course of the show she is forced to grapple with that notion, to confront her younger self and the relationship she had with her mother, to realize that she too forms part of the history of Mount Absolom, and through that start healing, and help the town heal as well.

I love history, if life is good to me I will probably end up teaching it. But engaging with the past is hard, so much of it is covered in blood, so much of it asks for you to look at the present with other eyes, to reinvent yourself time after time. But there is power in it, there is power in looking at the past and seeing how it reflects in the present, to know that even if you feel alone there were millions before you that paved the path you walk on, to step in buildings or walk through the forest and know they will keep an echo of you as they have for everyone else. Unwell knows that power and it shows it through a story that is engaging and through characters that are captivating.

[protoindoeuropean]

Comments by people about how disappointed they are to hear that Etymonline is a pretty bad source for (English) etymology make me realize how spoiled we are in Slovene with the (relative) quality and accessibility of etymological dictionaries.

There are three (modern) etymological dictionaries for Slovene: the standard work by Bezlaj, Furlan and Snoj, ESSJ (Etymological Dictionary of the Slovene Language; 4 volumes + indices; begun by Bezlaj in 1976, joined in the following volume (1982) by his student Snoj and in the third and fourth also Furlan (1995, 2005); Bezlaj died in 1994); Snoj's more "popular science" version, SES (Slovene Etymological Dictionary, 1st edition in 1997, 3rd in 2016, available online); Furlan's much more rigorous and dialectally oriented NESSJ (New Etymological Dictionary of the Slovene Language; trial folio in 2013, online publication since 2017).

As mentioned, SES and NESSJ are available online, though the very limited scope of NESSJ means that SES is the usual reference. There are talks about putting ESSJ online as well, but there are some issues with rights and Bezlaj's family etc.

Before illustrating the differences between the various Slovene and English sources for etymology, a few notes on what a good etymological dictionary entry should include:

philological documentation (current meaning, phonetic/phonological information (incl. suprasegmental features), morphological characteristics (inflection, gender), word family (derivatives, parallel formations), attestation (historical sources), onomastic material (esp. anthorponymy and toponymy)

comparative material (cognates or related words in closely related languages and in the wider language family)

etymological explanation (word form at the moment of creation, morphemic structure, meaning and semantic motivation)

To demonstrate the differences between the dictionaries, it's best to consider their entries for the same words:

— ESSJ, SES poln, adj. 'full' in ESSJ and SES. NESSJ does not have this word. ESSJ includes more information on Slovene historical and dialectal attestation, as well as all the existing forms in other Slavic languages. SES, on the other hand, besides the relevant derivations only includes those Slavic languages that are more relevant for the Proto-Slavic reconstruction. It is important to note that this entry from ESSJ is from the third volume, which systematically takes into account the findings of the laryngeal theory (you can see that the reconstruction of the PIE root in ESSJ is *pelH-, with a laryngeal, even if it is not specified which one; cf. the update in SES with *pleh₁-). The first two volumes do not, however, and are therefore in many ways superseded by the entries in SES, even if those are otherwise less rigorous.

***at this point I should note that I'll gladly(!) translate all the Slovene entries if anyone wants me to do so, but I'm not going to do it if no one asks because there are quite a few of them here

Compare the entries in popular English online sources for etymology – Wiktionary and Etymonline; and then also Kroonen's Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic for comparison:

— Kroonen, Wiktionary, Etymonline 1, 2 The Wiktionary entry for full is roughly on par with SES, while Kroonen's Germanic material is more comprehensive. Etymonline, however, shows no trace of the laryngeal theory and when looking at the cognates listed under the root, it's like they've never heard of a diacritic either (except in Old Norse "fjöl-", even though ö is not normally used for Old Norse – ǫ is) – even though those are often crucial! –, not to mention fully replacing ə with e in what should be Avestan pərəna- ...

To also include NESSJ, the word for 'birch' will be used, but first the entries for this word in the already mentioned dictionaries:

—Kroonen, Wiktionary, Etymonline Again the Etymonline entry just does not compare – it's not just that the PIE reconstruction is non-laryngeal, it's also plain wrong because it has *g instead of *ǵ; also again with the diacritics ...

— ESSJ, SES As you can see, this entry is from the first volume of ESSJ and thus also non-laryngeal. It is still more comprehensive in terms of material, but the explanation in SES is more up-to-date.

The entry in NESSJ simply does not compare to the ones above – it is more in line with a dictionary like the Etymological Dictionary of Slavic Languages (ÈSSJa) in the amount of information it includes, which means that it is so long that I will put it under the cut:

— NESSJ You can see that this entry includes much more dialectal and historical material and discusses in depth its historical morphology and types of derivation, finally constructing its diachronic word-family.

And since I mentioned it, here's also the ÈSSJa entry for 'birch':

— ĖSSJa As it is from the very first folio, from 1974, the explanation is non-laryngeal, as in ESSJ. Compared to NESSJ, it includes (literally) a couple more Slavic languages: Slovincian and Polabian, though understandably no further dialectal material, which NESSJ includes specifically for Slovene. ÈSSJa, as a rule, doesn't reconstruct accentual paradigms for Proto-Slavic, while on the other hand, some of the discussion in NESSJa specifically concerns the question of accentual features of the discussed word and its IE word-family. NESSJ is also more explicit in the discussion of the models of derivation and morphological variants.

[empressofmankind]

I know Robin is supposed to be fluent in the fantasy Linear B of the poneglyphs, but in the context of my increasingly complicated headcanon, where Croc (and Shivs) find her early on as a 14-year-old, it is much more interesting (and funny) to me if the reality of that ability is more akin to an eigth grader's grasp of English after their first few lessons. Most of it is from historical poneglyphs (they were archaeologists, after all) and mostly useless in the context of super secret weapons of mass destruction. We're not telling them that, though!

Which then caused the related notion that Robin, a tween-going-on-teen in the majority of my ship's main story real-estate, understandably considers herself crucial to everything going on and basically the Chosen One in her own life. "You need me and my special gift but I hate it here and I wish I was normal" she teen rages against her faux adoptive parents made out of literal water and sand, respectively. You can see why that fell flat, I am sure.

This ties directly into the notion that the infamous paperwork Sir Crocodile appears to always be doing isn't actually accounting of any sort. He's just been pouring over the same twenty-something rubbings of poneglyphs trying to pull a Ventris on this fantasy Linear B. After all, we've been deciphering dead languages and ancient scripts without the providential presence of magical teenager who happen to be able to read them fluently for some time now. The texts are few, but there's plenty poneglyphs and fragments out there, so we might accumulate more (and they do, several plot points in several WIPs), and they already know the context of what the critical text is supposed to be about which is a massive help. Because, the irritating part of deciphering a language, is that you need to already know what it is probably saying, to be able to figure out how it is saying it.

But I digress.

Anyway, Croco spending hours and hours pouring over those documents because that's what it takes (and is still taking, raising one for those still tackling Linear A). But as the whole looking-for-battleship-of-mass-destruction is supposed to be a secret, the minute someone enters his study he pulls his agenda and creditcard statements over it. And thus the eternal paperwork impression was made.

Shivs knows about all of this and goes along with it, apparently. He's so focussed on finding this magical-mythical ship and, she's a pirate, she's down with finding this franchise's Flying Dutchman (or Black Pearl?) What am I saying, she's a pirate helmsman, she'd LOVE to sail it, lmao. Mass Destruction whomst? Lets sail this baby into the sunset!

I digress. She Indiana-Joneses around Alabasta every so often, I am sure. I can see that in exactly the way I cannot see Croc crawling through any sort of dusty old tomb looking for new shards of frustratingly indecipherable ideograms for him to start smoking more heavily over.

What I am saying is that I've never been partial to Crocodile being a Big Stupid and that I am getting increasingly invested in him actually being a closet academic. I have a weird spin-off of the Mummy franchise in my head in which Shivs is Rick and Crocodile Evie.

APPARENTLY.

No, I wasn't really going anywhere with this, I just needed it off my chest. @tiredemomama is busy.

You're welcome.

[free-and-to-none-accountable]

Posted on August 26, 2022 by Jean-Carl Elliott and Susan Fabrich

The text below is transcribed from a hand-written document by Susan Fabrich that I came across while digging through some IWW boxes at the Walter Reuther Archives in Detroit. I wanted to make sure that it was published so that it could be better circulated, but also because I think it’s a great example of what honest reflection on organizing can look like. Too often we mimic capitalist journalism in our writing and in doing so we feel the need to leave out our mistakes while sensationalizing our wins. Focusing on only publishing “historic” and “first ever” victories erases hard-won lessons that also come through struggle and failures. Insights from these less glamorous stories can provide us with wisdom that can strengthen our organizing and cultivate important institutional learning.  

I like this piece because it articulates barriers that the organizers faced and the author makes an attempt to prescribe why things didn’t play out as they had hoped. Many of the challenges they came across are still challenges for organizers today. I think that if we try to incorporate more of this sort of introspection in our strategies, it might help us address and overcome some of those obstacles. There have been some slight formatting edits for readability, but otherwise the text below appears as it was written by the original author. I have also included some of my own insights at the end.

FLORIDA–The Pizza Hut organizing attempt suffered from one essential flaw that prevented it from ever really getting started. This was a lack of contact with any solid social groups at the workplace. Since this was not present, we never got the chance to make any tactical mistakes, simply because there wasn’t a basis for organizing in the first place. 

Why did this happen? It was a consequence, I think, of student-radical ways of relating to people which both Paul Green and I fell into. Specifically, I think that Paul began with a fairly clear understanding of how his dissatisfaction with his job fit in with larger social patterns, resulting in turning to the IWW in an attempt to find a collective solution to a collective problem which would be directly related to his work.

But Paul came to this conclusion due to personal background (grew up in a union family) and an intellectual interest and training which are by no means common among the types of people who work at Pizza Hut. Armed with the conviction that unionism is the right answer to worker problems, he pressured and cajoled two of his workmates to somewhat reluctantly support organizing. He also contacted the IWW for help.

I don’t know what he expected, but he got me, another student radical with no organizing experience. Perhaps because our backgrounds and inclinations are similar, I didn’t pick up on the lack of enthusiasm of Paul’s “recruits” as a crucial issue. I am used to the pushing and prodding technique myself. 

With the assumption that we had enuf [sic] of a core group to start with I asked Dan Pless to come down and help us figure out preliminary tactics. If the core group had been solid, his advice, research and support would have been invaluable. As it was, we never really got a chance to put any of it into practice.

Several things happened that slowed us down to a crawl over the summer. I was working at another Pizza Hut and developing a relationship with people there – altho the turnover was so great that it was next to impossible to get to know everyone. This was tied up with our tactics – at first Paul and I, naively, were hoping to organize all four Gainesville Pizza Huts. Dan convinced me that, in terms of the definition of the bargaining unit, concentrating on Paul’s Pizza Hut would be better. So after about a month and a half at one Pizza Hut  I started trying to get transferred to the other Pizza Hut.

Paul, due to cancellation of his student loan, had to move for the summer to a more lucrative job in New Hampshire. At this point I had met only one other person from his Pizza Hut, and had no regular contact with that workplace. 

Two things happened over the next few months, until the end of August. I was in the middle of a complicated process of getting transferred, as I felt I could get nothing done as an outsider to that working situation. This involved finding a new apartment, cross training as a cook, and making up complicated stories to justify my move.

The other thing was the disintegration of my relationship (tenuous at best) with the union supporters Paul had lined up. We had met with Dan Pless in June, and they seemed willing (tho not eager) to put some effort out to begin an organizing campaign. They were to try to convince people to sign auth [sic] cards.

I met with one of them, Jay, at the beginning of July, and gave him some blank auth [sic] cards. The other person, Pam, began to back out at this point for reasons that she never made entirely clear. Without Paul around to nag them, they seemed to be taking the union less and less seriously.

When I finally got a job at the right Pizza Hut, Pam was totally detached from the issue and Jay was very reluctant to talk about it. I was busy getting to know the other employees, but I was also reluctant to talk union to anyone. By the time my sense of outrage exceeded my shyness, after about three weeks on the job, it was September and time to go to IWW Convention. I was beginning to talk union to some people. Pam moved up into management. I got mad at Jay for various reasons, including his reluctance to discuss unionizing with me or to give me an honest decision or whether to stick with it or not. 

I lost my job when I stayed at convention longer than I was supposed to, and Paul got his job back at the same time. When I came back to Gainesville, Paul and I got together and discussed the situation. We decided that the problem all summer had been the lack of contact of the ideas of the union with the social group formed at the workplace, and with the absence of conviction on Pam and Jay’s part that the union actually filled some need for them. The work to be done went back to the basics – for Paul, as ‘organizer’, to develop relationships with other employees of trust and a feeling that the union fulfilled their collective needs.

This ‘subjective’ need was not the only obstacle to our organizing attempt, but it was the basic one. Other problems which may have wrecked it if we had gotten any farther were also legion [sic] – such as:

Pam, who became assistant manager, had full knowledge of our plans.

The turnover, though low in comparison with other Pizza Hut’s in town, was still great enough to make it hard to reach each employee.

The NLRB would have had fairly good grounds for rejecting a single Pizza Hut as a bargaining unit.

Many employees were part-timers studying at U of F, with a lack of commitment to their work and the improvement thereof

– Susan Fabrich, 1970s.

Initial Reflections

As an IWW member and lifelong restaurant worker, I found this piece to be particularly fascinating. I joined the union in 2012, which was right on the heels of IWW campaigns in the food and beverage industry at companies like Starbucks, Jimmy John’s, and even Pizza Hut. Through the creation of our Organizing Department and the Organizer Training Program, we have been able to take wisdom from campaigns like these and build them into our institutional memory, so that we don’t make the same mistakes and can repeat our wins. In 2013, I became an Organizer Trainer for the IWW and then in 2017 I was part of an organizing campaign at a local sushi restaurant. As a trainer and organizer, I’ve come across many of the mistakes and challenges listed above, both from personal experience and from other IWW members. I’ve tried to learn from those mistakes (and occasional successes!) and to become a better organizer as a result. And of course the IWW as a union has made some pretty significant changes in the 40-50 years since this piece was first written. Here are some of my observations on the above piece, based on those experiences:

Theoretical Organizing vs Workplace Realities

I think to really understand these failures, we need to start by taking a closer look at Susan (the author) and Paul. Susan mentions early on that the “student-radical ways of relating to people which both Paul Green and I fell into” were “by no means common among the types of people who work at Pizza Hut.” I think this disconnect is a common experience for many wobs and can often lead us to think that our coworkers are either apathetic or conservative. Business unions and universities both seek to shape the way we think about labor by pointing us towards the “proper,” i.e. state-sanctioned channels. In the US, that takes form through the National Labor Relations Act, contractualism, formalized grievance processes, and using disruptive action only as a last-ditch resort. What results is that we only legitimize the former methods of organizing while overlooking the everyday ways in which workers struggle against the boss’ control over the workplace.

If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant (or probably anywhere really), you are going to know what I’m talking about. Our bosses try to control every aspect of the working day, but you really don’t have to look very far to find all sorts of ways in which workers undermine that control. We refuse to abide by their scripted interactions with customers, we don’t upsell if it’s not worth it to us, we sneak food to our friends and regulars without charging them, we have people watch our stations while we sneak extra food or cigarette breaks. There are all sorts of ways that workers subvert the status quo and exercise their own power on the job. Oftentimes these actions can become concerted through what some labor writers have named “the informal work group.” Unfortunately, we don’t think of these actions as being part of the struggle for job control because they happen outside of the state-sanctioned labor relations framework and we end up completely writing off the ways in which an overwhelming majority of the working class struggles against the boss’ control over the workplace. But organizers have turned these smaller and more atomized actions into more concerted disruptions by organizing walkouts, work to rule, good work strikes, service refusals, and all sorts of other creative actions.

Because Paul doesn’t see the workplace this way and because he’s the one seemingly calling the shots, he recruits two workers based on vocal support for unions but without much substance behind that. In fact, Susan points out that there was a visible “lack of enthusiasm” but ignored it. In the IWW, we organize through committees that build their strength and capacity through practicing direct democracy and direct action. In other words, it requires participation. And you can’t build a participatory committee with people who don’t participate. Many unions follow the AEIOU and assessment models of member recruitment, in which they ask workers what issues are important to them and then use that as an opportunity to ask them to sign an authorization card for the union. The current IWW version of this is unique because instead of asking them to sign an authorization card, we ask them to participate in planning and executing collective job actions that will win demands. And whether or not they deliver on those tasks determines how we assess them. If there’s a lack of follow through, then you might need to agitate them more or try to find an issue that they are more passionate about, but we don’t want to recruit workers to the committee until they are enthusiastic and demonstrate it concretely through participation. 

Understanding the Workplace

Something else the author mentions right off the bat is a “lack of contact with any solid social groups at the workplace.” In the IWW Organizer Training 101, we have a whole module on Social Charting in which we discuss the existing social dynamics in the workplace, both in terms of the boss’ forms of organization (shifts, departments, positions) and in terms of how workers begin to organize themselves (cliques, people who take breaks together, people who hang out outside of work). It’s important to understand how these formal and informal organizations on the job contribute to the status quo before we start having 1 on 1s with coworkers because we should know ahead of time *why* we want to have 1 on 1s with coworkers. It doesn’t seem like the two workers that Peter recruited were brought on board because they could help provide inroads to social groups in order to build better connections with workers. It sounds like they were recruited because he was able to pressure them. And if workers don’t feel that they have a personal stake in organizing then they are likely to flake or worse yet, betray the organizing committee down the line. 

Who Decides When We Get To Be A Union?

Two other issues the author brings up are employee turnover and NLRB bargaining units. I think these can be addressed simultaneously because they often feed into each other. Turnover is something the industry has been dealing with for a long time. Even prior to COVID, parts of the food service industry were reporting turnover rates of 100% or more. This has caused many unions to take a hands-off approach to the industry because of how this dynamic affects their ability to win elections. But part of what constitutes shifting the balance of power away from bosses is taking back our ability to define what a union is, who is in it and what it does. Former IWW General Secretary Treasurer Alexis Buss had a great column in the Industrial Worker which centered on what was then called “minority unionism.” Our methods have changed since that time, but what remains the same is that we believe that small groups of workers can tackle grievances at work and win on them on their own terms. Obviously the goal is to expand the union beyond that small group, but especially when turnover is high you can still have a committee of a few dedicated members who can hold their ground until they can build a stronger density. Three IWW members at one workplace can become chartered within the union as a Job Branch. As such, they can collect and manage their own dues, elect their own officers, and share the same functions as other branches in the union. The important thing is not to get bogged down because you don’t think you can get everyone on board, but to instead focus on what is possible with the people who do get on board and to use that as your foundation. As Laborwave Radio recently said: “Who has the power to bring a union into existence: the state or the workers? Your perspective on this question will shape your strategies for organizing.” 

On a larger scale, the IWW charters Industrial Union Branches. In industries like food service, workers may change workplaces several times throughout their career but stay within the same industry. Many business unions in the industry will have high turnover because membership is tied to employment. Once the worker leaves the workplace either through quitting or being fired, they are no longer part of the bargaining unit. In the IWW, membership stays with the worker for as long as they continue to pay dues and are working class. In other words, the IWW focuses on its relationship with workers and not with bosses. Contractualism prioritizes the latter. This is why we say “organize the worker, not the workplace”: if members are active in workplace committees, take trainings, and participate in direct actions then they can take that experience to other workplaces and recruit more IWW members. The goal is to build more and better organizers and more committees and branches will follow.

Final Thoughts

What has gotten the IWW to where it is now versus where it was at the time this paper was written is that we have been learning how to learn. Having a strong popular education program has been crucial to that end. Training is a huge component of that, but trainings are also shaped by who trains and the first-hand experiences they bring. Experiences bring stories and stories bring lessons and lessons bring progress. It might seem like Susan didn’t get very far at Pizza Hut, but I think the lessons she learned and the example she set by sharing them will inspire more IWW members to share and reflect on our own experiences to keep learning from them so that we can keep moving the work along. 

[ifanimaltrapped]

What Was Lost in Translation in MMBN3: The Tally

Hello, friends. Despite having an active fanbase, I’ve noticed there’s not a lot of information on the MMBN series when it comes to issues of translation and localization. During my recent replay of BN3, I noticed something that had always bugged me when I played it as a kid: the “Tally” Key Item, which a guard asks for before you’re allowed to enter the Undernet, an area infamous in MMBN’s world for being lawless and highly dangerous. But just what is this tally? What does it count? Why does the guard want it? Let’s needlessly fixate on a small detail in a children’s game from 20 years ago see if we can finally unravel this decades-old mystery with the help of the JP text.

Debuting in 2001 and concluding in 2009 with a Japan-only remake of BN1, the MMBN series falls into an awkward “growing pains” phase of Japanese-to-English localization: just after the PS1 gold rush of JRPGs kicked off by Final Fantasy VII where localization was a lawless frontier, but before developers started grasping that localization was its own discipline that needed to work alongside game creators directly for crucial context and technical input. MMBN’s localizations are indicative of the era’s shortcomings as a whole: largely serviceable translations marred by obvious errors caused by localizers working in the dark without context.

The Tally confusion is emblematic of this problem. In BN3, you acquire an item called a “Tally” which you need to get by a guard in front of the entrance to the Undernet. Everyone who’s played BN3 has thought something along these lines: “What is this a tally of, exactly? Why does the guard let me pass when I show it?” Luckily for us, a quick glance at the original JP text yields the answer.

The JP text calls this item ura no warifu. Some of you may already know that ura, meaning reverse side or hidden side, is what the Undernet is called in the original Japanese script of MMBN. Look up warifu in most common online dictionaries, though, and you’ll get back a definition that says something like “tally” or “check”... but that still doesn’t answer what this thing is supposed to be or why the guard wants it.

Historically, a warifu is very similar to the Western concept of indentured documents: splitting a piece of paper or wood in half, both parties keep one half, and they fit the halves back together like puzzle pieces when the deal is concluded to prove their identity. Before international banking or ID cards, this was the only real way to do that. Hence the somewhat misleading definitions of “tally” and “check”: these were indeed once used as proof in transactions, like as a tally of goods, but what’s important in this context is how they were once a proof of identity too.

Take another look at the item’s icon in the screenshot above: it should hopefully be clear now that it’s supposed to be a piece of wood split in half in such a way as to make each piece too unique to duplicate, hence the odd “U”-shaped hole at the bottom. That’s why the guard won’t let you pass without it: denizens of the Undernet, being outlaws, don’t have any official way to prove they’re supposed to be there, so they have to resort to primitive methods like this. When he says you need a “Tally” to go through, what he’s trying to say is that you need the wood piece that matches his to prove your identity.

The reason this was all lost in translation is almost certainly because the localizers lacked the context to understand which aspect of a warifu was important. Back in 2003, it would have been common for localizers to just be faxed enormous spreadsheets with the raw JP text of the game’s script. Sometimes scene notes would be provided, but more often they wouldn’t. I’d bet money that some beleaguered localizer saw ウラ のわりふ in a lonesome cell on a gargantuan spreadsheet and wondered about it, but then realized he had an 8-character limit on Key Item names and still had 6,000 pages to go, so he just typed in “Tally” and moved on. With the benefit of hindsight, the best solution would’ve probably been to go with something like “UndrPass” (recall the 8-character max for Key Item names) and try to fit something in the item description about how it had been split in half as proof of identity.

Funnily enough, warifu actually cropped up in another recent game, but you probably didn’t notice it:

The above screenshot is from Elden Ring, and 割符 is how warifu is written in kanji. Literally, the kanji for warifu mean “split token” or “divided token”. As I understand it, this detail was omitted for concision and the item is simply referred to as a medallion (I have not actually played Elden Ring myself, so I’m just going off of wiki pages). Still, it just goes to show you never know when the lessons you learned from one game can appear in another!

If there’s interest, there’s a number of other topics I can cover in regards to MMBN and its troubled localization. Off the top of my head, there’s:

- Why is the End Area in BN5 called that? It’s a feudal Japanese town and not even the last area in the game; there’s nothing particularly final about it. The answer is probably the biggest mistranslation in the series, and it all comes back to - you guessed it - the localizers once again not having enough context!

- Did you know the fake names of countries were invented in localization, and in JP, MMBN expressly takes place in Japan instead of Electopia (although it’s spelled differently than how one would usually spell it, which raises questions of its own)? Further, numerous references are made to Akihabara, and the final level of BN2 is all but stated to take place in Yokohama, among other examples.

- The meaning of Mamoru’s name in BN3 has already been well documented, but did you know there’s still more to be uncovered? The TV in Lan’s house foreshadows the importance of the Ura Inn, and a pun lost in translation highlights the connection between Tamako and MetalMan.

- What’s up with everyone’s English names? What kind of name is “Chaud”, anyway? The answer is a classic case of a solution for one stand-alone game working perfectly... until you get a sequel and suddenly a detail added in localization starts to spiral out of control, like what happened with the first Phoenix Wright game taking place in America for the English localization. In fact, there’s a very special connection between Ace Attorney and MMBN... maybe I can go into it some more!

I know this is a marked departure from my usual fare, so do let me know if you’ve enjoyed this, and if you’re interested in any of the above. Have a great week!

Yours in gratitude, If Animal Trapped

[gender0bender]

Steel closets : voices of gay, lesbian, and transgender steelworker by Anne Belay, available on the Internet Archive

Transcript:

Miles began working in a steel mill in 1999 as an out lesbian, but he quit about eight years later because of repeated shoulder injuries and general exhaustion. He says it's not really accurate to say that he transitioned while working at the mill, since "we never really have a transition. We'll always be transgendered because our past experiences and history go along with us. So I'll always consider myself transitioning." I met Miles at the Cornwall Iron Furnace just outside of Philadelphia. It's a National Historic Landmark, pre- serving a nineteenth-century ironmaking complex and documenting the ironmaking process, as well as its effect on the area around the furnace and the workers' lives. Miles had suggested this meeting place, noting that he had always wanted to see the exhibits. He was curious about the history of the steelmaking process, and tickled by seeing his huge, powerful, mascu- line job echoed within this seemingly fragile incarnation made of bricks, and described for us by local elderly ladies.

For example, once the iron in Cornwall was molten, it was poured into one central branch, from which it flowed into a row of troughs pressed into the sand, which we were told resembled baby pigs nursing a sow-hence the name "pig iron." Miles noted that his job used many of the same tech- niques, since "I was a spruer. Parts will come out of a didion [a brand of metal separating equipment], which shook off the sand, and my job was to break the pieces apart. You see them come out on that long bar, they were lying them into them troughs, that's called a sprue tree, OK, as it goes down along, now in modern times, we have machines that press sand blocks together if you're work- ing on small parts. 'Cause we don't work on really big stuff, we work on cou- plings so it was smaller stuff. It would come down and this didion would spin it around, and little stars inside would clean off the material, but it still wasn't fully clean. It put them down on this table, which would shake up and down, and they were split in half, and the stuff would go and be remelted and what we wanted to keep for good pieces would go down and be cleaned and checked. I would stand there with a lead hammer and whack those pieces off the sprue tree. Separate the sprue tree from the good stuff." Seeing the shape of the sprue tree pressed into sand on the floor in front of a gigantic, prehistoric ladle made this whole process more comprehensible to me. And though the scale was much smaller than that of the big production mills still in op- eration, it was nonetheless vast-the blast furnace was about three stories high, with tap holes at the bottom from which the finished product ran.

The human component of steelmaking similarly remains fairly constant. After we examined a replica of a nineteenth-century steelworker dressed for work, Miles showed me his respirator, noting "The kerchief on the man's face? This would be more of a modern version of the kerchief." He also showed me his leather apron, adding that "they still use the [wooden] shoes, by the way. Nothing has really gotten up to date I guess you'd say. It's really an old art form. I would call it an art form." His burn clothes are made of Kevlar but oth- erwise duplicate the old patterns. This continuity is part of the cultural and historical context crucial to understanding how masculinity gets defined and shifted within the mills. The work remains the same, even though the larger culture's definitions of gender and masculinity are shifting. Count- less published accounts document the struggles of steelworker families when the man of the house is laid off and the woman has to find work. Though this shift occurred well after second-wave feminism, when most American women were in the paid workforce, the consistency of steelwork, and the corollary consistency of steelworkers' gender roles, made it hard for these families to adjust. Miles attributes his fascination with the consistency of mill work and mill workers over time to his experience with occupying both genders while working in the mills. Though he became a man, he did not change his tasks, his garments, or his self-presentation at work-he had always been masculine. Which parallels the "enormous struggle within the gay male community to come to terms with the stigma of effeminacy. The most strik- ing result has been a shift from effeminate to masculine styles" (Newton, Mother Camp, xiii). An exaggerated masculinity linked, if only rhetorically, to working-class culture, reinforces traditional gender roles, even as it sug- gests that only one gender is really worth doing.

[pub-lius]

hi please let me pay u somehow if u answer this because i for the life of me cannot find this out and i’m pretty sure this isn’t the kind of thing u do but

what was the primary demographic of newspaper vendors in the 18th century? how much people got their papers through subscription over buying them off the street? did people usually stay “loyal” to one publisher or did they read multiple at a time? where would you usually see vendors?

sweats profusely

okay so yeah this is really hard to find information because it was such an every day part of life that people didn't really think to document it, so i've definitely had to dig. also it is the kind of thing i do!! this is very much within my area of study, and i've even been known to answer asks outside of that, so no worries! also don't pay me, i'm too southern to accept your money. also because of the lack of resources on this, i've really only been able to 18th century North America, but you might be able to find some information on my notes on Eric Hazan's A People's History of the French Revolution in this here doc.

So, first things first, what was the primary demographic od newspaper vendors in the 18th century?

This all really depends on what newspaper your talking about, what part of the 18th century, and where it was published. Newspapers in the early part of the century were mostly confined to the town they were published in, and featured a variety of subjects of interest to that community. At the beginning of the century, the only newspaper was the Boston News-Letter which was directly curated to Puritan readers. On a larger scale, newspapers coming from England were intended for English gentlemen, not colonists.

In several critical historical moments, such as the American pre-Revolution (1760s-early 1770s), politics became hyper-relevant and the papers began to be marketed to the masses, with language being more simplified for wider understanding. Critical documents such as Common Sense by Thomas Paine were published in this period.

Aside from this, it can be inferred by the price and the movement to make them more accessible to the masses that they were most often read by the middle to upper classes. Many newspapers were created with the almost exclusive purpose of making money, so having a well funded subscriber base was crucial.

We also see later in the century that the government gave sanctions to make newspapers more accessible financially, by creating a monopoly on paper distribution which would eventually become the postal service we know today.

This postal service is also relevant to your next question: how many people got their newspapers by subscription vs buying on the street?

This also seems to be a regional thing, but newspaper subscriptions seem to become more frequent throughout the century, as we see government acts such as the Postal Clause in the US Constitution and the Post Office Act of 1792, which made subscription-based newspaper delivery easier. That indicates that more people were purchasing newspapers through subscription. Newspapers also tended to be quite expensive, so most people would share copies of the papers that they got through their subscription services.

Additionally, many people got their news outside of newspapers, due to this high price. There were also public readings of printed materials (printers usually published other forms of literature besides just newspapers) in coffeehouses, taverns, and in the streets. These readers probably also advertised the papers they were reading! so people could buy them there.

Now the next question is what I found most difficult: were people loyal to one newspaper or did they read multiple papers?

I think the only way to find this out would be to look at subscription records, but I haven't come across records from the newspaper offices, so I'd think to know for sure you'd have to look at individuals' purchase records and no one has time for that.

However, my own personal knowledge of history can come into play here. Like I said before, newspapers were usually confined to the local area. In the Revolutionary period, people usually read political newspapers that adhered to their personal beliefs, with Tories reading Loyalist papers and Whigs reading Patriot papers. These are the papers that would publish radical and exciting news accusing people of being in the opposing party, which would prompt riots, boycotts, and yk. tarring and feathering.

In the Early Republic, we see the same partisan split but with Federalists and Democratic Republicans. The Federalist paper was the Gazette of the United States and the Republican paper was the National Gazette. These two papers frequently attacked each other, and there were smaller, more local papers based off the information that they published.

Now where would you usually see vendors?

I mentioned public readings before, and that seems to be a very frequent source of purchasing newspapers. Printers also tended to have stores that also functioned as their offices, with their presses in the back or in the basements. They would also sell merchandise, groceries, and patent medicines. These would be just like normal stores in the cities! So people walking the streets would pass by them along with taverns, coffee houses, law offices, etc.

I hope this gives you all you need, feel free to ask further questions, because I'd be happy to answer them. Again, information on this kind of thing tends to be scarce, but this is what makes history research fun! Thank you for the ask :3

[viadescioism]

Martial arts plays a significant role in my personal practice, which has led me to delve deeply into research related to martial arts, self-defense, and combat sports. While exploring these subjects, I've noticed a conspicuous and concerning issue that isn't widely discussed: the presence of racism and sexism within these fields. This matter has become a prominent part of my thought process, especially due to its potential impact on the underrepresentation of people of color (POCs), LGBTQIA+ individuals, and women in martial arts.

What strikes me is the apparent lack of comprehensive documentation regarding the historical roots of these issues in martial arts, self-defense, and combat sports. The scarcity of research and discourse on this topic has left a significant gap in our understanding of the challenges marginalized groups face in these domains.

I've often wished I had a more academic inclination, as it seems that there's a pressing need for in-depth research and scholarship in this area. A dissertation or comprehensive study could shed much-needed light on the systemic biases, discrimination, and obstacles that have contributed to the underrepresentation and marginalization of certain groups within martial arts and combat sports.

Addressing these issues is crucial for making these fields more inclusive and accessible to individuals from diverse backgrounds. It's not only about rectifying historical injustices but also about creating an environment where anyone, regardless of their ability, race, gender, or sexual orientation, feels welcomed and encouraged to participate in martial arts, self-defense, and combat sports, and also has the access to do so.

It's disheartening to observe that the issues of racism and sexism in martial arts, self-defense, and combat sports often go unnoticed and unaddressed. As I look around, I can't help but notice that many of the spaces, such as gyms and dojos, unless they are historically set out specifically for people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and/or women, would rather predominantly cater to white male practitioners (even while studying an art that comes from POC culture). This imbalance is both staggering and rarely questioned and interrupts my study continuously.

[clove-pinks]

May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth: Letters of the Lost Franklin Arctic Expedition edited by Russell A. Potter et al. is a stunning, heartbreaking collection of correspondence to and from the sailors of the doomed 1845 Franklin expedition. It's absolutely a must-have for any Franklin expedition enthusiast, for the way it reveals the personalities, hopes, and dreams of the expedition members. In the eternal debate of What Are The Best Franklin Expedition Books, this is now a top contender.

I have to praise this book first, because it is excellent and well worth owning/reading. Every highly recommended book about the Franklin expedition has its flaws, and this one is no exception. As someone who has researched Franklin expedition Lieutenant Henry Thomas Dundas Le Vesconte, I couldn't help but notice errata about him.

Number one: there is a crucial letter from Lieutenant Le Vesconte missing from this collection, and I have no idea why. It's also in the Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, along with the other Le Vesconte letters transcribed in this book, and it's inexcusable to leave it out.

Lucky for you, I have my own transcription of this letter, Henry TD Le Vesconte to his mother, April 16 1845, with scans of the original document in a google drive for you to see! It's a poignant look at the relationship between Henry and his fiancee Henrietta Le Feuvre, and he even includes a copy of part of a letter from Henrietta for his mother to enjoy. He adds, "I cannot send the original it is to precious to part with"—that man took a treasured letter from his sweetheart to the arctic.

After that missing letter, every other mistake or omission is minor in comparison, but there still are a few worth noting.

Potter et al. bizarrely misread Messrs. Stilwell, Le Vesconte's naval pay agents, as "Messrs. Shewell" and add in the notes that they can't figure out who Messrs. Shewell are. (As if anyone even slightly interested in the 19th century Royal Navy hasn't seen Stilwell naval pay agents over and over again, they were literally a global presence). Here is Le Vesconte writing Messrs. Stilwell in the letter in question (No. 75 in the book):

Not crossing the T is a pretty typical thing for handwriting of this period.

The marginal note in letter 64, Henry TD Le Vesconte to his father, "I shall write to Charles this evening if I have time" is not explained as his younger brother Charles, who eventually ran a chemist's and general shop in Canada.

(From the Canada Directory of 1857-1858, look up the Le Vesconte family in Belleville!)

In letter 64, Henry writes to his father:

I am sorry I should have so libelled the Erebus and Terror. I mean the Red Rover and water witch but you may in return abuse the old discovery ships as much as you please – Sarah will not share the blame with me but she certainty was concerned in the joke.

May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth editors think Le Vesconte is talking about two obscure merchant ships involved in the opium trade that he would somehow know from his experience in the First Opium War. But the more likely explanation, and one that would also make it a joke, is a reference to James Fenimore Cooper's historical novels The Water-Witch and The Red Rover. Both books are set in times past, with pirate captains and 17th and 18th century colonials, and comparing Erebus and Terror to these fictional ships is basically calling them relics of a bygone age.

I have had the Google ebook edition of May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth since July, and for a time I hoped against hope that maybe the ebook was rushed and shoddily produced, and the hardcover edition wouldn't have these errors and omissions. The ebook has some weird formatting issues, but in every other way it's faithful to the hardcover. I can only hope that a second, revised edition will come out, because Le Vesconte isn't the only Franklin expedition member who deserved better treatment.

[gamingavickreyauction]

I often hear it said that the first amendment is like the one really good achievement of the US political system, but, from my vantage point, it looks like the first amendment gets ignored whenever it's convenient.

There are relatively mundane examples like SLAPP suits which the powerful can use to shut down critics - technically if it went to trial, the court would rule in favor of the critic's right to speech, but the point is this isn't what happens. And sometimes the speech wouldn't even be ruled in favor of: courts are far from infallible at judging the truth, so it's still possible to be charged with libel over saying something true.

And journalists are fallible, so if, when they seek to criticize the powerful, their claims have to be 100% correct 100% of the time or they get shut down, they will get shut down - or rather the threat of this will keep them from speaking out. We can see this practically with how many open secrets just never got reported, like Weinstein's actions prior to MeToo. I think the costs of libel laws far outweigh the benefits, and they're really incompatible with strong protections for speech. Perfectly legal speech can often still garner police attention.

But there are more severe cases where the first amendment is ignored, like the espionage act, most brutally displayed with the US's persecution of Julian Assange - making speech less free across the entire world. Of course, what Assange made public were classified documents, and it's understandable if exceptions need to be made for national security reasons. But crucially, most of the documents classified were not damaging to national security, and their classification only served to cover up war crimes by the US. This is a way of leveraging national security protections in order to get around first amendment protections to silence critics, and it's very widespread.

Historically, the whole red scare happened while the first amendment was supposedly a respected principle in the constitution, and the McCarran-Walter act made it possible to deport naturalized citizens for, among other things, advocating communism. Slave owners could beat their slaves for sedition.

So it's not clear to me that the first amendment really makes much difference. I would like to hear why others think that it does.