#geek history

[oldguydoesstuff]

You've seen picture-in-picture before, but how about picture-under-picture?

This 1967 German "Spectra Color Studio" TV by a company called Normende had three mini CRTs in addition to the main one, and was capable of tuning into four channels simultaneously! You could also swap the small screen channel with the main screen, just like PIP.

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Tetradrachm of Kingdom of Parthia with bust of Orodes II.

Culture: Greek

Period: Late Hellenistic Period

Date: 57–37 B.C.

Mint: Kingdom of Parthia

Place of origin: Seleukeia-on-the-Tigris (Babylonia)

Medium: Silver

[melodymonaei]

Reblog if you want to get a video from me ❤️😍💞 trans love.

[cravinganescape]

Nokia 9000 Communicator (1996) | The first official 'smartphone' to hit the market with a laptop-like design, featuring LCD display screen of 640 x 200 pixels and full QWERTY keyboard.

[thatonegeekygirl]

thrilled that nerds ryan bergara and shane madej make a living being extremely nerdy. absolutely phenomenal

[somewhereincairparavel]

Headcanon that Jason Grace takes his Roman history obsession to the next level, to the point where he has totally read illegal/restricted books in camp Jupiter before. Yk how there are restricted libraries? Camp Jupiter totally has tons of those only elite members can access. Jason totally exploits his position just for more history info.

Yk how annabeth said in Mark of Athena, that Jason looks like he knows way TOO much but simply doesn't tell anyone? Well he does. he has dark af secrets and tea, he'd literally be looking for an opportunity to spill all of it 👀 he has certainly read very um. Questionable things.

(another hc that annabeth is literally the only one he spills these stuff to bc she is legit the only one who gets the art of history, also, she totally bribed him for information, we know that canonically they both DID have nerdy discussions w e/o. Annabeth said in moa that Jason had described the exteriors of new Rome in perfect detail to her and how Reyna was supposed to look like, in the lost hero, those two spent hours researching about the Roman/Greek forms of gods by interrogating clovis + Piper noted how well they both debated about the Athena parthenos without any blame or hostility, just perfectly fitting their collective pieces of research information together. Ugh this friendship was such a wasted potential. It's literally no wonder that annabeth cried till she was sick for Jason's death. They weren't close friends or anything, but they intellectually respected eachother in a very healthy way, it was refreshing to read about tbh.

Jason and annabeth are the OG nerd friends fr.

[amuseoffyre]

History time:

Mr. Dalrymple, the eminent surgeon in episode 3 of S2 of Good Omens, appears to be inspired by Robert Knox, an Edinburgh surgeon famous because of his connection to the Burke and Hare murders in the 1820s.

He became an anatomist at the Edinburgh College of Surgeons in Newington and quickly developed a reputation as a lecturer that guaranteed him a steady flow of students, but as with Dalrymple in the show, the shortage of available cadavers was a constant and persistent problem in the city.

Since it gets a bit grisly, I'll pop it behind a thingie.

Graverobbing became so common that many of the graveyards in the city installed watchtowers to keep an eye on the graveyards and some of them had mortsafes put in place:

The coffins were locked in these cages to give the bodies time to get to the stage of decay that would render them useless to anatomists, then popped in a grave afterwards.

This is where Burke and Hare enter this story. They lived in the slums of the old town of Edinburgh and learned that the surgeons would provide money in exchange for fresh bodies, so rather than dig up the graves and risk the watchmen, they cut out the middleman and started murdering people for profit.

Robert Knox was their primary customer and he claimed to be oblivious to the crimes that were being committed, even though Burke and Hare were showing up with unsettling regularity with fresh corpses, but since they were killing the poor, no one was really paying much attention.

According to Mr. Knox, he thought the men were picking up corpses from the poor houses, though there is evidence that suggests he was aware of what was happening: one of the victims was a well-known boy with distinctive physical disabilities who would have been well-recognised. According to contemporary accounts, Knox had the young man's head, hands and feet removed, so no one would recognise him.

Since this could never be proven, he wasn't arrested for his part in the whole affair, but he was described as being "deficient in principle and heart" and public opinion spoke loud and clear. He left Edinburgh in disgrace and was eventually also debarred from teaching by the Royal College of Surgeons in England.

Eventually, laws were brought in to prevent grave robbery, but not before dozens of people were killed for profit.

[oldshowbiz]

The Ancient Brick Strip Clubs of East Toronto

[aroaceleovaldez]

Jason, Reyna, and Nico have one billion in-jokes about Mediterranean history between the bronze age to the renaissance that they find absolutely hilarious and no one else understands in the slightest. i know this in my heart to be true.

[marzipanandminutiae]

if you're terrified for your country's elections next year because a lot of people seem to think the solution to the government handling an international conflict in an abysmal and deplorable way is to let a group of total monsters who would handle it MUCH worse AND also potentially doom huge swaths of oppressed people at home as well as our entire literal planet get into power, by ignoring the way our deeply flawed but also deeply entrenched system realistically works

clap your hands...?

(I cannot understand trying to stop heinous and unnecessary killing- which disgusts and saddens me, too! how could it not?! -by handing the election to people who want to do even more of that exact thing. the math isn't mathing, as they say)

[oldguydoesstuff]

One of the only surviving pictures of the original 1941 German Z3 computer, the earliest known fully automatic and programmable computer system.

Named after its creator computer pioneer Konrad Zuse, the Z3 contained 2600 electromechanical relays and achieved a clock speed of 10hz.

The Z3 was destroyed on December 21, 1943 during an allied bombing attack on Berlin.

[pine4pple-b0i]

one of my favorite things about rdr2 is how the writers would pull things from actual history and work them into the game.

todays example: the opening line of the game is “By 1899, the age of outlaws and gunslingers was at an end.” in real life, one of the last stage coach robberies ever done was in may of 1899. when does the game’s timeline start? may of 1899.

it’s just so cool to see how much detail was put into this beautiful, beautiful game, and the parallels between real life and the game

[melodymonaei]

My trans ass is an art of cock 🍆🍑🍑 Reblog if you wanna get my private stories on Snapchat

[peaceloveandhistory]

Today in 1882, Thomas Edison, and his partner Edward H. Johnson created the very first string of electric lights intended for a Christmas Tree. People originally illuminated their trees with candles, which as you can guess was a dangerous practice leading to many house fires. Edison and Johnson hand-wired 80 red, white, and blue bulbs, and hung them around the Christmas tree. During this time many people mistrusted electricity, it wasn't until 1895, when President Grover Cleveland had the White House family Christmas tree illuminated by hundreds of multicolored bulbs, people started to change their minds. It is important to remember for the time being, families would have to hire a wire man which would have cost $2,000 in today's dollars. It wouldn't be until 1903 when General Electric began to sell preassembled kits of stringed Christmas lights, as a more affordable option.

[thatonegeekygirl]

shane jumping ship like violet jessop leaped from the britannic’s lifeboat in that one episode of puppet history

[astriiformes]

Comparing your work to other people's is a great way to kill your joy for a thing so let me be clear and say this is not that, I am just a human person with human emotions and sometimes that means needing to be the tiniest bit petty and then moving on. You know. For your health or something.

There is a very popular cosplayer who coincidentally keeps doing the same costumes as me, and I am just the tiniest bit annoyed about it, because as is the case with many (...most) very popular cosplayers, they have a very specific, airbrushed, conventionally attractive, perfect makeup, etc aesthetic to all their photos that is. Not what I personally value in cosplay, at least. Which is fine! Different people having different approaches to costumes is part of what makes cosplay such an interesting hobby!

But it does bother me a tiny bit that the work I put into my costumes is not necessarily the kind of work that gets attention, and it does make it a little glaringly obvious when it's The Same Characters.

(Also you all know the kinds of characters I cosplay. I gravitate towards them in part because they have weird energy, not super put together attractive energy. But that's only part of my point.)

Anyways. I do not follow them on Instagram because why would I do that, but nonetheless I saw that they're apparently also doing a Laois cosplay now, which I guarantee will get lots more attention than mine. And for the most part that's fine, I love cosplay and I love doing my weird little thing and I especially love that I do in fact know other people that value the same things as me & that we have fun together. I will have a great time in my fun little costume, dressing up with my friends in their fun little costumes and I am looking forward to it. And I do not actually need likes to validate that I am becoming a pretty damn good cosplayer (whose stuff is better quality than many popular cosplayers' because I care more about craftsmanship than I do getting attention). I am even thinking pretty seriously about having Laois be my first ever competition costume if the armor turns out alright, because I think I'm genuinely getting to that level.

But it would just be kind of neat if being a weird little guy with weird little ideas who is into the hobby because I like sourcing historical patterns and materials and thinking about the worldbuilding that goes into costumes and creating neat little "in-universe" ephemera to hand out to people and all the things I like didn't always mean getting overshadowed by Instagram Perfect Attractive People.

Alas. Okay glad that's out of my system I'm normal again. I'm going to make some more chain mail.