#inspired by a french anti-smoking ad

[hornetvoid]

drug of choice

ib: @s-exy-sapphillean’s post

[plasticbagdepot]

breathe it in ~

[noneatnonedotcom]

concept: TOTAL WAR RWBY

in a universe where the great war destroyed every kingdom and caused a collapse of civilization you play as one of the five remaining peoples of remnant as you seek to (re) forge a kingdom that can stand the test of the grimm tide

KINGDOMS

Vale: led by Ruby Rose

ruby's kingdom of vale focuses on light cavalry and ranged. her own special abilites as a general are

SILVER EYED WARRIOR: grimm are weakened greatly within her aura and can even be outright destroyed if the differance in power between her and them is great enough

OPTIMISTIC HEROISM: lower unhappiness in area's controlled by ruby means that there's less Grimm to fight overall meaning lower garisons and more money spent on the main armies

unique units

Wood Runners: long bowmen with added range and melee combat stats equal to melee infantry. light armor means that you should keep them in cover though as well as being a juicy target for cavalry. added range over most normal archers and better armor piecing with their arrows makes them a powerful, unit that can last in melee as well specializing in Anti heavy infantry

Dire corgis: large war dogs with aura unlocked. look like giant corgis because they are giant corgis. great for running off ranged units and light cav. weak to spears, though their aura lets them hang around in combat longer than most would think. they do rely on the charge bonus though and can't be controlled once they're let off the leash. can be called back to their handlers though to be repositioned

FOCUS OF CAMPAIGN: ruby's main focus is to retake the cities and villages of vale that were lost to the grimm tide. your main strategy should be to build up on patch while the rest of vale falls to the grimm before striking out. your main advantage is against the grimm not people after all. and your added happyness means that you can spend more on your armies to put in your frontlines rather than worrying about protecting your rear (ruby's got a great rear guys) your main rival will be

UNITED TRIBES OF VALE: led by Yang Xiao-Long

yang's all about shock infantry and charge bonuses. using them to break the morale of enemy armies her special abilities are

HOT STUFF: human morale lowers around her and buildings catch fire in her aura when she's in combat. she's too hot to handle

PROBABLY WASN'T IMPORTANT ANYWAYS: still recruits units and receives money from buildings that are burned down. though at a slightly reduced rate

UNIQUE UNITS

Bandits: replaces mob, cheap units that gain charge bonus when next to another bandit unit. burn down buildings when nearby. no formations though and can't brace for charges so avoid cav. low morale, they're bandits they're not sticking around when shit goes south

berzerkers: shock infantry, cause dread in enemies lowering morale. chance of going berserk which makes them unbreakable but uncontrollable may even attack allies if they're the closest unit. REALLY FUCKING STRONG ON THE ATTACK! weak to ranged

yang's campaign is all about uniting vale as a tributary state to the tribe. you can recruit units from burned down buildings and still get money so spread like a wildfire and try to show your baby sis that it's safer under your protection. be aware that grimm are gonna be a huge problem for you so keep some bandits as a garrison in every village to deal with grimm.

"some of you may die... but I don't really give a shit about you" - Yang to the bandits probably

vale is a mix of American and French culture. so yeah kinda like Louisiana plantations but with more anime

Vaccuo: led by Jaune Arc

jaune specializes in pike infantry with heavy armor and heavy knights on horseback. he's set up to be a slugger with his special abilities

AURA AMP: allied units in jaune's aura slowly recover health and have increased stats (including armor)

SCION OF HEROES: the effects of chivalry are doubled and you gain it faster.

UNIQUE UNITS

shining knights: heavy knights with aura and mounts also in aura and armor. fuck you, fuck the guy behind you, and fuck the guy behind him I'm coming through. very expensive high morale and capabilities

rainbow guard: heavy pike infantry that proudly protect the standard of the arc family. give extra morale to those around them. fuck you they're not breaking. if there's even one guy left they're still fighting.

jaune's campaign is centered around taking control of the deserts and jungles of vaccuo from your origins in the mountains and hill country of the arc territories.

vaccuo's culture is like Scotland mixed with the middle east. fiercely independent people with a very strong sense of honor. also fuck you they'd rather die then be seen as a coward so you'd better just fucking kill them all. AND FUCK TAXES! so jaune has his work cut out for him, but he's in it for the long haul

MINSTRAL: LED BY PYRRHA NIKOS

pyrrha's all about personal combat and single entity units

INVINCIBLE GIRL: pyrrha herself is fucking busted and everyone wants to be like her. single entity units like huntsmen or companions are stronger and get more XP from battles

AN OFFER THEY CAN'T REFUSE: if pyrrha has more military power than someone they have improved relations with her. peacefully annexing people is possible this way. though this can cause a problem if you expand too fast

UNIQUE UNITS

pyrrha's guard: heavy spear infantry made in the image of spartans. slow but they decimate cav outlast ranged and out fight most over infantry. but they are fucking slow and hate being flanked where their phalanx will not work.

nora and ren: two unit entity, stealth shock is the name of the game ren sneaks them in close to anything even grimm. nora deals a fuck ton of damage all at once that can't be blocked by armor and shatters units. you only get one though sorry the world isn't ready for two noras

while sino/Greco/Roman culture makes martial ability the most important, however, only champions and highly expensive units can be trained. your low-level fighters (I.e most of your army) will have to be mercenaries. still with enough champions, you can take on most things so that's good

SCHNEE DUST COMPANY led by Weiss Schnee

atlas is all about dust weapons. a necessity because of but funded by Weiss's special abilities

COMPANY MEN: units require less upkeep cost

WEISSY: she's kinda a bitch, -50 to all diplomatic relations -75 to faunas factions

UNIQUE UNITS

WEISS GUARD: dust rifle units, slow to reload but longer range than normal dust muskets. dust round in general deal moral damage greater than almost any other units in the game (only yang's berzerkers and blake's beast-men scare people more)

BIG GUNS: 24LBS rifled field guns. or cannons rather for those who don't know the difference. fire straight and have an effective range of 1500 feet. highly accurate and with enough kick to drop even the largest of grimm

atlas and the SDC by extension are based on German and Russian culture (mainly german now that the nobles are gone) and have their main campaign focused on dealing with internal divisions and grimm. their cheaper units lends themselves to using dust arms rather than melee but bare in mind they suck in melee as a result. still, weiss is of the opinion that if you can kill your enemies from the comfort of your home and simply bombard them into submission or dust, why wouldn't you?

Menagerie led by Blake belladonna

menagerie must toe the line between animal and man, utilizing special abilities like

SAVAGE REPUTATION: the effects of dread are doubled and you gain dread faster

CUNNING HUNTERS: blake has bonuses to stats and the stats of her army while ambushing or attacking at night. doing both will make the bonuses stack

UNIQUE UNITS:

white fang infantry: can deploy anywhere light armor but use spears so cav has a hard time with them

NINJA: can deploy anywhere, inspire dread, use grenades flung from slings. capable of vanishing or using smoke bombs to lower enemy stats in melee for a short time

menagerie is a mix between Australian and Polynesian cultures but they are relatively new on the world stage. having been granted the island of menagerie in the brief time before the collapse of vale after the great war. the fuanas population outside of menagerie is very low as a result of the collapse and you have to ask yourself "what will you do to ensure the survival of your people?"

menagerie is a mix between Australian and Polynesian cultures but they are relatively new on the world stage. having been granted the island of menagerie in the brief time before the collapse of vale after the great war. the funas population outside of menagerie is very low as a result of the collapse and you have to ask yourself "what will you do to ensure the survival of your people?"

concepts.

chivalry: is a meter in the game, doing honorable actions increases chivalry. making formal declarations of war and waiting a turn to attack, not doing night battles, honoring alliances and calls to arms. generally making combat harder for yourself will be seen as chivalrous. the higher your chivalry the bigger bonus you will have to morale in battles and to diplomatic interactions.

dread: dread is the opposite of chivalry and is gained by doing unchivalrous actions. it will cause the enemy to start with lower moral and cause everyone (including yourself) to lose moral more quickly. this can be really helpful against strong enemies that have better weapons than you. it will also cause diplomatic relations to be harder. using dust muskets or cannons will cause dread but only in small amounts the more you use them the more dread you'll cause

post-campaign content

finishing your kingdom will open up international diplomacy and will allow you to start a campaign in another kingdom. each with different results based on the person you're playing

jaune can marry the ruler of another kingdom giving him their special abilities (jaune can only get dust muskets and cannons after he marries Weiss btw)

Pyrrha may offer protection to the others and gains their general unit for her own army

yang may extort tribute from them and treat them as the tributaries she had before gaining access to their unique units. ruby may offer bonds of friendship and do the same

blake may create embassies and get faunas versions of each unit (they can fight at night) as well as improve her chivalric reputation with each campaign (basically lets you gain the bonuses of dread without the negatives)

and Weiss may open up branch offices and have each character as a leader under her (you basically play the official campaign as the character you choose but with access to Weiss's abilities and units now as well)

you may only do one campaign at a time. so if you're jaune you have to subjugate yang and ruby in vale before you can try to marry weiss. you gotta finish what you started before you move on basically

on each map, there's an ancient grimm. this is a massive single-unit entity and has an army of grimm backing it. defeating this grimm will grant you a major bonus to happiness and prevent further grimm from showing up later.

single unit entities are very powerful but get weaker as their health goes down. their health will recover with time though

if you finish every campaign as a single character you unlock the grimm tide. salem has taken notice of you and wants you gone before ozma has a chance to bring you to his side. grimm will spawn every turn based on the unhappiness of cities in every kingdom you will wage a war all over the world against the grimm and try to hold on as unique and powerful generals lead hords of powerful grimm to attack you. these hords will even be supplemented by the grimm attracted to your unhappiness to keep your pops happy!

if you beat every general salem herself will come to take you out. she has an unending army that will constantly get reinforcement from offscreen every time you kill off a unit and she's a capable commander in her own right with powerful magic that will prevent you from camping too much (she's out of practice so she can only cast a spell every once in a while, be sure to move when you see the strange glow) if you can manage to get your character to her through her army you'll win and defeat her once and for all

@weatherman667 don't know if you play total war but had an idea for total war rwby and wanted to know your thoughts on the various kingdoms as lead by the main characters.

anyone else who sees this and has suggestions go nuts with it. it's just a bit of fun at the end of the day. how would you incorporate a character? what would their unique units be?

[velveteenhamlet]

I posted 175 times in 2021

6 posts created (3%)

169 posts reblogged (97%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 28.2 posts.

I added 103 tags in 2021

#bbc ghosts - 34 posts

#dragon age - 13 posts

#word of honor - 11 posts

#shan he ling - 10 posts

#the mandalorian - 7 posts

#patcap - 7 posts

#bbc ghosts spoilers - 6 posts

#star wars - 6 posts

#star trek - 5 posts

#pirates of the caribbean - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 96 characters

#as in there may be worse things coming (and so the veil being down is necessary for their defeat

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Ghosts’ “The Bone Plot” theories

I think the ghost involved in the assassination plot is definitely Humphrey.

I think it’s more likely he was involved in a plot to assassinate a royal figure, rather than being the figure of assassination himself.

He may have not realized how involved he was - perhaps his house (Button House) was used for meetings but he himself had no idea. Could his French Catholic wife have been involved in the plot? If so, could it have been pro-Catholic sentiment, pro-Mary I and anti-Elizabeth I or anti-Edward VI, a wish to return to a Catholic England? What became of the other plotters?

Was Humphrey being implicated, and perhaps the only one executed part of the plan in case the conspirators were caught? I can’t really see Humphrey willingly wanting to assassinate a monarch, but he does like being included... peer pressure perhaps?

The real house the show is filmed in, West Horsley Place, has an interesting connection to the famous Sir Walter Raleigh, who was executed in 1618 for his role in the “Main Plot”, an alleged plot to remove King James I from the throne. Sir Waler’s head was embalmed and given to his wife which she supposedly kept in a bag. West Horsley Place was owned by Sir Walter’s third son and a bag from that time period (but prob not the actual one from the legend) was found a few years ago at West Horsley Place.

So, although the time period is off by probably 50 years or so, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sir Walter Raleigh’s story was an inspiration for this episode. Perhaps Humphrey’s skull will be found in a bag? Maybe his body is in a local church but the head was left forgotten at Button House?

(I think the reason he’s fully dressed with a ruff may not mean it wasn’t a fully planned execution - it may have just been a costume design choice. Way more interesting to see Humphrey in full 16th century garb than in 16th century underclothes.)

Perhaps the documentary will reveal that Humphrey was innocent after all...

17 notes • Posted 2021-07-29 02:15:57 GMT

#4

Just a little [PatCap?] observation from Ghosts season 3 episode 3, “The Woodworm Men”:

When the Captain mentions “horseplay in the lake” we get a particular little nod from Pat as well...

31 notes • Posted 2021-08-12 13:01:45 GMT

#3

One more bit of over-analysis on this promo image - perhaps the smoke behind the Captain is specifically the “Fog of War”?

From wikipedia: “The first known use of the exact phrase in text dates to 1896 in a book titled The Fog of War by Sir Lonsdale Augustus Hale, where it is described as ‘the state of ignorance in which commanders frequently find themselves as regards the real strength and position, not only of their foes, but also of their friends.’”

(Is it a stretch to add that the space behind him also looks like one of the long halls at Button House?)

36 notes • Posted 2021-07-27 13:00:54 GMT

#2

Parallel between the way Thomas and Kitty are looking at Alison and the way Pat is looking at the Captain? Hmm..

89 notes • Posted 2021-07-23 19:15:11 GMT

#1

Button House in Sims 4

I’ve been working on a build of Button House in the Sims 4 for several months now, and I’m finally happy enough with it to post it to the Sims gallery! I’ve been pouring over screenshots to get everything as accurate as the Sims will allow me. Some rooms doubled-up as other rooms in filming (Fanny’s bedroom, the tv room) or the rooms aren’t where they’re implied to be. The tv room is implied to be somewhere with a view of the front gate (s2e3) but I believe it’s actually filmed in the room across the hall from Alison and Mike’s bedroom (the room with the creepy Morse code doll). So I’ve included that room twice (partly because the attic version is glitchy). This house is now available to download on the Sims 4 gallery, I hope you all enjoy! (There are a few location-based spoilers for series 3, but nothing major). My username on Sims4 is VelveteenHamlet9.

138 notes • Posted 2021-08-13 20:39:47 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[lamus-dworski]

A list of 100 remarkable women from Polish history - for the anniversary of the 100 years of Polish independence!

My random choice of 100 notable, inspirational and controversial women known from the history of Poland - people of various different backgrounds and occupations, and with interesting, happy or tragic stories.

If you think I missed an important person you adore or feel inspired by (there are so many more I could include below!), then feel free to expand the list by adding an extra in the reblogs!

(you can click the links under their names to read a bit more, however some of them point to Polish articles only - sorry! I’m hiding the list under ‘read more’ for the reblogs because it’s obviously too long to be browsed comfortably on the dashboard!)

Jadwiga of Poland (1384-1399), who was crowned with the title of ‘King’ during an era when female rulers were relatively uncommon in Europe. She donated most of her personal wealth (including royal insignia) to charity and education, funding and restoring many schools and hospitals, and focused on maintaining peace and development during her rule.

Nawojka (14th/15th-century), who was a semi-legendary woman known to attend studies at the University of Kraków (later known as Jagiellonian University) in the 15th century, which she entered illegally dressed as a boy. She is considered to be the first historically acknowledged female student and teacher in Poland.

Magdalena Bendzisławska (17th/18th century), who was the first historically attested female surgeon in Poland. The dates of her birth and death are sadly unknown, and the main document confirming her existence and profession is a diploma issued by King Augustus II the Strong in the year 1697. She took over the role from her husband after he passed away, and she worked as the chief surgeon at the famous salt mine in Wieliczka.

Maria Skłodowska-Curie (1867-1934), who was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize (which she got along with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel) – the only woman to win the prize in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences. She was the first scientist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity, and she discovered the elements radium and polonium (the second named after her beloved home country).

Emilia Plater (1806-1831), who was a Polish-Lithuanian noblewoman and a revolutionary fighter in the partitioned Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. She fought in the November Uprising of 1830, during which she raised a small unit and received the rank of a Captain in the Polish-Lithuanian insurgent forces. She is a national heroine in Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus, all formerly parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Irena Sendler (1910-2008), who was a nurse working in Warsaw when WW2 started. She joined the secret Polish resistance organization Żegota (codename for 'Council of Aid to the Jews’). Despite many dangers she managed to rescue around 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto in occupied Warsaw, with the assistance of other members of Żegota. She’s on the list of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831), who was a skillful composer and one of the first professional virtuoso pianists of the 19th century. She toured extensively throughout Europe during the 1810s and was one of the first pianists to perform a memorized repertoire in public. She is known as the first female composer from Poland to achieve both national and international recognition.

Narcyza Żmichowska (1819-1876), who was a novelist and a poet, considered the precursor of the organized feminism movement in Poland. She inspired and co-founded a group called Entuzjastki (transl. Enthusiasts, which was a progressive association founded in 1830 in Warsaw by a group of women intellectuals in favor of equal rights for men and women). She was among many Polish intellectuals exiled after the failed November Uprising of 1830, after which she settled in Paris where she enrolled at the Bibliothèque Nationale, becoming one of the first women at the French Academy ever. Her first published novel was Poganka (The Heathen) in which she expressed interest in her female friend Paulina Zbyszewska. She was deemed an 'eccentric’, smoked cigars (prohibited for women at that time), and refused to marry. After returning to Poland she founded a group of suffragettes in Warsaw, active in the 1840s, who also took part in anti-tsarist activities.

Klementyna Hoffmanowa, nee Tańska (1798-1845), who was a writer, translator, and editor. She was the first woman in Poland to fully support herself financially from writing and teaching, and to consider herself primarily a writer by a profession. In 1831 she moved to Dresden and later to Paris, and was later called 'the Mother of the Great Emigration’ (mass emigration or exile of the Polish elites, mainly to Western Europe, after the failure of the anti-tsarist November Uprising of 1830 during the time Poland was under Partitions). 

Simona Kossak (1943-2007), who was an award-winning scientist and ecologist. She spent over 30 years living in a hut in the Białowieża wilderness, Europe’s oldest primeval forest located on the border between Poland and Belarus where she grew close to the wild animals to the point it looked like she could understand their language, which gave her the nickname 'witch’.

Bona Sforza (1494-1557), who was a member of the Milan-based House of Sforza and became the Queen of Poland and Duchess of Lithuania by marriage to King Sigismund I the Old. She was known for her ambitious and energetic nature, ensuring a strong political position on the Polish court almost right from the beginning of her marriage. She was responsible for many economic and agricultural reforms implemented in Poland and Lithuania, eventually making her the richest landowner in the Grand Duchy.

Princess Izabela Czartoryska (1746-1835), who was a writer, art collector, and prominent figure of the Enlightenment movement. Her palace was an important political and intellectual meeting place, known as one of the most liberal and progressive court in the pre-Partitioned Commonwealth. She was the founder of Poland’s first museum, which she called the 'Temple of the Sibyl’ or 'Temple of Memory’ (later moved to Kraków where it exists under the name of Czartoryski Museum).

Countess Karolina Lanckorońska (1898-2002), who was an art historian and philanthropist. During WW2 she was an anti-Nazi and anti-communist resistance fighter of the Polish underground, and survived a German concentration camp for women (as a political prisoner). After the war she refused to live in Poland under the communist rule and spent most of her life abroad as a political émigré. She inherited her family’s enormous art collection, which she donated to the Polish state only after 1989 – after Poland underwent a democratic transition.

Elżbieta Zawacka (1909-2009), who was a Polish university professor, scouting instructor, SOE agent, and freedom fighter during WW2 (using the codename 'Zo’). She was the only woman in the elite special unit Cichociemni ('Silent Unseen’) of the Polish underground, served as a courier carrying letters outside of the German-occupied Poland, and fought in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

Irena Kempówna-Zabiełło (1920-2002), who was a skilled pilot and renowned glider. In 1949 and 1950 she established two world speed records for women: over a triangular course of 100 km and over a straight distance of 100 km.

Elżbieta Sieniawska (1669-1729), who was a noblewoman, Grand Hetmaness of the Crown, and renowned patron of arts. She was described as a 'lady of great wisdom, reason and shrewdness’, and she was deployed by her husband on diplomatic missions, duties, and obligations that he could not manage. As an influential woman politician in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the reign of Augustus II the Strong, she was deeply embroiled in the Great Northern War and in Rákóczi’s War for Independence. She was considered the most powerful woman in the Commonwealth and called the ‘uncrowned Queen of Poland’.

Michalina Wisłocka (1921-2005), who in the 1970s published the first guide to sexual life in communist countries, focusing on women’s needs. She fought for equal rights for women in a bid to fully participate in public, political, and economic life at that time. 

Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980), born Maria Górska, who was a renowned painter of the Art Deco movement and gained international fame for her decorative portraits. She is known for her unconventional style of self-expression, and her art manifested bisexual, bold, liberated female sexuality.

Zofia Stryjeńska (1891-1976), who was a painter, graphic designer, illustrator, and stage designer, one of the best-known Polish women artists of the interwar period. In 1911 she was briefly studying abroad at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where she enrolled using the name of her brother and dressed like a boy, because at that time the academy did not accept women. She grew in fame in Poland during the interwar period for her style inspired by the Polish folklore and Slavic paganism.

Jadwiga Grabowska (1898-1988), who was nicknamed the 'Godmother of the Polish fashion industry’ during communist rule. She promoted the modern 'tomboy’-ish style of the 1950s and 1960s and was responsible for persuading the state-owned textile industries to produce a wide range of colorful fabrics available for common women, coming under constant criticism from supervisors and governmental authorities.

Pola Negri (1896-1987), who was a stage and film actress during the silent and golden eras of Hollywood and European film, famous for her femme fatale roles. She was the first European film star to be invited to Hollywood and became one of the most popular actresses in the American silent film era. She started several important women’s fashion trends at that time that are still staples of the fashion industry.

Maria Konopnicka (1842-1910), who was a poet, novelist, children’s writer, translator, journalist, and activist for women’s rights and for Polish independence under the Partitions, as well as an activist against the repression of ethnic and religious minorities in Prussia. Her life was turbulent, and her sexual orientation is widely speculated on by modern historians. After an unhappy marriage, she spent most of her late life living in a romantic relationship with the painter and feminist Maria Dulębianka.

Maria Dulębianka (1861-1919), who was a social activist, feminist, painter, writer, and publicist. She was a prominent representative of the suffragette movement. She promoted women’s right to political participation and in 1908 enrolled herself as a candidate to the Galician Parliament (in the Austrian partition of Poland), where she was denied ‘due to formal reasons’. Her social work included founding of many children’s nurseries and kitchens for the poor, as well as setting up a help and activity club for homeless street kids. She was known to wear ‘masculine’ clothes.

Maria Dąbrowska, nee Szumska (1889-1965), who was a writer, novelist, essayist, journalist, and playwright, author of the historical novel Noce i dnie (Nights and Days). She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. She specialized in the themes of human rights and human potential for development under life hardships. In her personal life, she is considered one of a few historically-confirmed Polish bisexuals. She maintained long-term open relationships – first a marriage with publicist Marian Dąbrowski until his death in 1925, then a concubinage with painter Henryk Szczygliński until his death in 1952. She spent the remaining years of her life living in a romantic relationship with a writer Anna Kowalska (also a widow at that time), whom she had first met during the WW2 period, when they had fallen in love. In her articles published for the Polish press during the interwar period she openly advocated tolerance for homosexuality and diversity of society.

Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969), who was a composer and violinist. She is only the second Polish female composer to have achieved national and international recognition. She belonged to a large group of Polish composers from the interwar and post-war years creating in the neoclassical style. Despite constant pressure from the postwar communist government, she never composed any socialist realist work on their orders.

Anna Jagiellon (1523-1596), who was the Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania. Despite multiple proposals, she remained unmarried until the age of 52. Then she was elected, along with her then-fiancé Hungarian noble Stephen Báthory, as the co-ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Their marriage remained rather a formal agreement for the following 10 years, until the death of Báthory. She didn’t take the opportunity of claiming the throne for herself. During her reign she spent most of her time in Warsaw on local administrative matters and sponsoring construction works, adding greatly to the development of the city. 

Irena Krzywicka (1899-1994), who was a controversial Polish-Jewish feminist, writer, translator, and activist for women’s rights. During the interwar period she became one of the most famous feminists in Poland, spreading knowledge about sexual education and birth control. She was considered a scandalist at that time as, she talked openly about abortion, women’s sexuality, and homosexuality.

Helena Modrzejewska, known also as Modjeska (1840-1909), who was a renowned actress specializing in Shakespearean and tragic roles. She emigrated to the USA in the 1870s where, despite her imperfect accent, she achieved great success, eventually gaining a reputation as the leading female interpreter of Shakespeare on the American stage. She was a women’s rights activist, describing the difficult situation of Polish women under the Russian- and Prussian-ruled parts of Partitioned Poland. Her speeches led to a Tsarist ban on her traveling to Russian territory.

Hanka Ordonówna (1902-1950), born Maria Anna Pietruszyńska, who was a singer, dancer, and actress, one of the main stars during the interwar period in Poland. In 1931 she became a countess by marriage to Michał Tyszkiewicz, which made her an adored legend among lower classes of society who dreamed about a similar romantic life. Her career ended with the outbreak of WW2. She was arrested a few times as a political enemy and eventually sent to a gulag (Russian labor camp) in Uzbekistan where her chronic lung disease worsened dramatically. She was eventually evacuated to Beirut, where she stayed until her death, hoping to fight the disease.

Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska (1891-1945), who was a renowned dramatist and poet in Poland, known as the 'queen of lyrical poetry’ of the interwar period and the 'Polish Sappho’. She established herself as one of the most innovative poets of her era, writing about many taboo topics such as abortion, extramarital affairs, and incest, which provoked numerous scandals. Her plays depicted her unconventional approach to motherhood, which she understood as a painful obligation that ends mutual passion. She spoke in support of a woman’s right to choose. She has a minor planet named after her, thanks to the Czech astronomer Zdeňka Vávrová.

Barbara Radziwiłł (1520/23-1551), who was briefly the Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania as the consort of King Sigismund II Augustus (the last male monarch of the Jagiellon dynasty). They married in secret in 1547, after a few years of a love affair, causing a huge scandal. Her life became surrounded by many rumors and myths, and she became the heroine of many legends that inspired numerous paintings, literary works, and films.

Maria Wittek (1899-1997), who was a soldier promoted to brigadier general in the Polish Army, the first woman ever to acquire that rank in Poland (but only in 1991, after the collapse of the communist government). At the age of 18 she joined the underground Polish Military Organization (Polska Organizacja Wojskowa) and completed the NCO (non-commissioned officer) training course. During the First World War she fought against the��Bolsheviks as a member of the Voluntary Legion of Women. Between 1928-1934 she was the commander of the Female Military Training (Przysposobienie Wojskowe Kobiet – an organization training women for military service. During WW2 she became the commanding officer of the Women’s Military Assistance Battalions and fought in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. After the war she initially returned to her previous position as a head of the women’s military division, but in 1949 she was arrested by the communist authorities and spent several months in prison. After her release she worked in a newspaper kiosk. She never married.

Maria Kazimiera d’Arquien (1641-1716), born Marie Casimire Louise de La Grange d'Arquien (and known in Poland by the diminutive name 'Marysieńka’) who was the Queen Consort to King Jan III Sobieski. They were remembered as a compatible couple, rare in those times for high-status marriages. Their love letters reveal authentic feelings between the loving pair, but also their reflections on contemporary issues and difficulties, as well as down-to-earth matters concerning the royal household and little day-to-day decisions made by the monarch, who often consulted his wife about them.

Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930-2017), who was a sculptor and fiber artist, widely regarded as one of Poland’s most internationally-acclaimed artists. She’s known for her experimental sculptures, such as the series called Abakans: gigantic three-dimensional fiber works created in the 1960s that placed her in the international art world as one of the greatest and the most influential figures of that time. She created many large-scale projects such as the art installation Agora, consisting of 106 headless and armless iron sculptures located in Grant Park in Chicago.

Anna Jabłonowska (1728-1800), who was a magnate and politician, referred to as one of the most significant women of 18th-century Poland. She was known for remarkable activity on her estates, introducing numerous management reforms and funding hospitals, factories, schools, and a printing press, all with the wellness of the people living on her estates in mind. She was known for her personal interests in science and botany. Her naturalist collection was one of the best in Europe.

Olga Boznańska (1865-1940), who was a notable painter combining the impressionism and realism movements. She was known for her unique style and intimate portraits, emphasizing the spirituality of her models. She was widely acclaimed during her lifetime and today is regarded as one of the most significant Polish painters.

Anna Dorota Chrzanowska (17th century), who became a heroine of the Polish–Ottoman War (1672–76). She was the second wife of Captain Jan Samuel Chrzanowski. During the war they were stationed in Trembowla Castle, besieged by the Ottoman Turks. The castle managed to withstand many attacks, and the defenders underwent an internal crisis only after several days when shortages of food and water became severe. The captain decided to surrender, but his wife disagreed with his decision – she urged the defenders to carry out a daring attack on the Turkish positions, which is said to have raised the morale among the Poles greatly, and led the soldiers out herself, resulting in heavy losses among the Ottomans. Due to her act she has been called the 'Polish Joan of Arc’.

Anna Rajecka (c.1762-1832), later known as Madame Gault de Saint-Germain, who was a portrait painter and pastellist, recognized for her talent and raised as a protégé of King Stanisław August Poniatowski. She was one of a few women who frequently attended the king’s famous Thursday Dinners, and therefore she was rumoured to be his illegitimate daughter or his mistress (neither true as far as historians have researched). In the early 1780s, she was enrolled at the king’s expense at the art school for females at the Louvre in Paris and stayed in the city after falling in love and marrying a French miniature artist. She became the first Polish woman to have her work presented at the Paris Salon. 

Jadwiga Szczawińska-Dawidowa (1864-1910), who was an activist, publicist, and teacher. She founded the so-called Flying University, an underground educational organization primarily for women. It operated in secret in private apartments in Warsaw (changing the location frequently – hence the university’s name) at the time when that part Poland was under control of the Russian Empire, providing educational courses outside the occupiers’ censorship at the time. During the 20 years of the university’s existence, around 5,000 women graduated from it, among them Maria Skłodowska – later a Noble prize winner.

Countess Maria Walewska (1786-1817), who was a Polish noblewoman remembered most for her long-lasting affair with Emperor Napoleon I. According to his memoirs, Napoleon remembered her for her extraordinary beauty after only a brief meeting in 1806, and requested to meet her again. She was said to be pious for her time and status, and admitted to have forced herself to get involved with Napoleon for purely patriotic reasons. She sought to influence his Eastern European policy, and during the affair she convinced him to create the Duchy of Warsaw. 

Katarzyna Kobro (1898-1951), who was a notable avant-garde sculptor of the constructivist and abstract movements. She co-founded a few major Polish and international modernist artistic groups in the 1920s and 1930s. She signed a number of manifestos, including the early-modern Dimensionist Manifesto (concerning a “new conception of space and time”). She was most famous for her “spatial sculptures” – combinations of rigorously architectural structures, sculptural forms, and constructivist aesthetics.

Zofia Nałkowska (1884-1954), who was a prose writer, dramatist, and prolific essayist. During the interwar period she became one of Poland’s most distinguished feminist writers of novels, novellas, and stage plays characterized by socio-realism and psychological depth. In her writings, Nałkowska boldly tackled subjects which were difficult and controversial at that time, such as eroticism.

Jadwiga Sikorska-Klemensiewiczowa (1871-1963), who was a pharmacist, and one of the first official female students in the history of Jagiellonian University, after graduating from the underground Flying University. She became the first chairwoman of the General Association of Working Women in Poland.

Scholastyka Ostaszewska (1805-1851?), who was a social activist and an underground independence activist. She belonged to the group Entuzjastki (a progressive association founded in 1830 by a group of female intellectuals in favor of equal rights for men and women). Around 1848 she was active in a female branch of the Polish People’s Spring movement, which fought for independence from Partitions. In 1851 she was put under strict police supervision by the Russian occupants. Her date of death is unknown.

Alina Szapocznikow (1926-1973), who was a sculptor and illustrator representing the surrealist, nouveau realist, and pop art movements. She is mentioned among the most important Polish artists of her generation. She was born to a Polish-Jewish family and survived the Holocaust during the Nazi Germany’s occupation of Poland. That period of her life made a huge impact on her art. She created a visual language of her own to reflect the changes going on in the human body and introduced new sculpting materials and forms of expression.

Zofia Daszyńska-Golińska (1866-1934), who was a socialist politician, suffragette, university professor, and early female senator in interwar Poland. She was a member of a number of leading feminist organisations, including the Little Entente of Women.

Kazimiera Bujwidowa (1867-1932), who was a notable feminist and suffragette in Poland. She was involved in campaigns to improve general education and literacy in Warsaw and Kraków, and she organized the first Kraków Reading Room for Women. She is credited with starting the first junior school for girls and for campaigning for women’s admission to Jagiellonian University as students (as they got in 1897).

Maria Kokoszyńska-Lutmanowa (1905-1981), who was a notable logician and author of studies in philosophy, methodology, epistemology, and semantics. For some years after WW2, she was viewed as dangerous enough by the communist government to be deprived of the right to teach philosophy, being able to teach logic only.

Gabriela Zapolska (1857-1921), who was a novelist, playwright, naturalist writer, feuilletonist, theatre critic, and stage actress. She received the most recognition for her socio-satirical comedies in which she mocked the moral hypocrisy of the upper classes (she herself was born to a wealthy family of Polish landed gentry). Her most famous work, The Morality of Mrs. Dulska (written in 1906), became a key work in early modernist Polish drama. In it, she criticized the hypocritical double standard of sexual behaviours and two-faced family values.

Stefania “Barbara” Wojtulanis (1912-2005), who was an experienced glider, balloon and motor aircraft pilot, and parachute-jumping instructor (she received licenses for all of the above before her 24th birthday). At the start of WW2 she was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant, assigned to the general staff of the Polish army, and flew missions to deliver fuel to the fighter brigade defending against the 1939 attack on Warsaw. She was evacuated to Great Britain in 1940 and later assigned to the Air Transport Auxiliary as a ferry pilot, where she logged over 1,000 hours of flying. She was twice awarded the Silver Cross of Merit for her services during the war and was honoured at the International Forest of Friendship with a plaque for her aviation achievements.

Helena Mniszkówna (1878-1943), who was a novelist and author of several books popular in pre-war Poland. She debuted with the novel Trędowata (The Leper, 1909) that brought her to prominence and became one of the most famous Polish melodramas (later in the 20th century dramatised four times by different directors). In 1951 all of her works were banned by communist censors in People’s Republic of Poland due to their bourgeoisie content, which they deemed 'may have been harmful for society’.

Eleonora Ziemięcka (1819-1869), who was considered the first female philosopher in Poland. She bravely entered that field at the time it was reserved exclusively for men. She played a significant role in the history of Polish philosophical thought at the time, representing the so-called Polish religious thought (or Polish Messianism). Her Thoughts on the Upbringing of Women, published in 1843, was the first book in which the issues of reforming women’s education and their need to develop the mind were addressed.

Maria Ilnicka (1825-1897), who was a poet, novelist, translator, and journalist. In 1863/1864 she took part in the January Uprising against the Russian Empire, as an archivist of the underground Polish National Government. She was promoting feminism and organic work. In 1865 she was the editor-in-chief of a weekly magazine for woman, Bluszcz.

Wanda Rutkiewicz (1943-1992), who was a computer engineer and a mountain climber. She is known as the third woman, the first Pole, and the first European woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, which she accomplished in 1978. In 1986 she became the first woman to successfully climb K2, what she did without supplemental oxygen.

Zofia Rogoszówna (1881-1921), who was a poet, translator, and writer of children’s literature. She was the first female writer in Poland who adapted rural short stories and rhymes into the literature for children, which she compiled in three tomes over time. She is considered a valuable researcher of folklore.

Jadwiga Piłsudska (1920-2014), who was a pilot. She obtained her first pilot’s licence in 1937 (at the age of 17), then her aircraft pilot’s license in 1942, and served in the Air Transport Auxiliary during WW2. As a daughter of the Marshal Józef Piłsudski, she remained in Great Britain after the war as a political émigré. She never accepted British citizenship and used a stateless person passport, valid for all countries in the world except the communist People’s Republic of Poland. She was able to return safely to her country only in 1990, after the collapse of the communist government.

Lucyna Ćwierczakiewiczowa (1829-1901), who was a writer, journalist, and author of several popular Polish cookbooks. After 1875 she devoted herself to preparing a yearly publication, Kolęda dla Gospodyń (A Housewife’s Carol), a calendar filled with cooking recipes, women’s suffrage ‘propaganda’, and short novels and poems. Her books made her the best-selling author in pre-war Poland. By the year 1924 her first cookbook was issued 23 times, with more than 130 thousand copies sold worldwide – more than all the books by the novelists and Nobel Prize laureates Henryk Sienkiewicz and Bolesław Prus combined had sold before that year.

Anna Leska (1910-1998), who was a skilled pilot assigned to the Polish Air Force HQ squadron to fly liaison missions. After the 1939 defeat of Poland, she was evacuated to Great Britain and started ferrying aircraft with the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) where she eventually became a flight leader in charge of eight female ferry pilots, whom she instructed and assisted. She was one of only three Polish women serving in the ATA, and the only woman flying in the ATA to receive the Royal Medal.

Zofia Sokolnicka (1878-1927), who was a social and political activist and member of parliament after Poland regained independence in 1918. During the First World War she worked as a courier – thanks to her outstanding memory, she could convey detailed political information and instructions without transporting any papers or notes.

Izabela Elżbieta Morsztyn (1671–1756), who was a noblewoman, known for her political salon and role in the Familia (an 18th-century political party or fraction led by the House Czartoryski and allied families). In 1736 in Warsaw, she established the first political salon, where politicians met and the Familia party conferred. Women played a significant role in those meetings.

Princess Konstancja Czartoryska (c.1696-1759), who was a noblewoman, later known as the mother of King Stanisław August Poniatowski. She was described as a serious person with an interest in education and politics, strongly devoted to her mother Izabela Elżbieta Morsztyn. She played a political role as a driving force within the Familia (political party led by House Czartoryski). She acquired a great influence within the family and led the political careers of her spouse and brothers. At the interregnum and royal election after the death of King Augustus II in 1733 she, alongside her mother and Zofia Czartoryska, were described as the most influential people in the Familia party, and she was represented her faction during negotiations (e.g., with a French ambassador).

Stefania Sempołowska (1869-1944), who was an educator, social activist, and writer. At the age of 17 she passed the Teacher Patent at the Government Commission in Warsaw. She became a teacher and children’s rights activist, and was the author of many school books. During the Revolution in the Kingdom of Poland (1905) against the Russian Empire, she initiated a congress of delegates of the Polish teacher organizations, in which solidarity with the protesting common people was declared and the teachers decided to run lessons in the Polish language despite Russian prohibition.

Faustyna Kowalska (1905-1938), born Helena Kowalska, who was a nun and mystic. Throughout her life, she reported having visions of Jesus and conversations with him, which inspired the Roman Catholic Divine Mercy devotion and earned her the title of 'Apostle of Divine Mercy’. Based on her descriptions, the famous Divine Mercy image was created (she herself didn’t know how to paint, so she asked a few painters to recreate her vision on canvas, resulting in a few known versions of the scene). She was canonized in 2000.

Helena Radlińska (1879-1954), who was a teacher, historian, and librarian, and the creator of the Polish school of social pedagogy. She promoted librarian pedagogy, readership, the creation of home book collections, and access to literature for different social groups (especially those from culturally underprivileged groups).

Irena Morzycka-Iłłakowicz (1906-1943), who was a Polish second lieutenant of the National Armed Forces and an intelligence agent. During WW2 she was active in the Polish resistance movement and conducted military, economic, and intelligence reconnaissance. Her section was destroyed by the Nazi Germans, followed by numerous arrests of underground activists. She was captured in October 1942 and underwent harsh interrogations. She was rescued by fellow underground agents: first a bribed guard put her in the group of non-political prisoners to be transported to the Majdanek camp, from where she was rescued by agents dressed in stolen German uniforms. She continued her work as an agent. In the days before her death she was involved in an action against a radio contact point which supported Soviet Russian activities in Poland. She was murdered in 1943 in unknown circumstances after being summoned for an important meeting. Because the Nazi Germans often sent agents to family funerals (and other ceremonies), she was buried under a false name, and her husband participated in the funeral dressed as a gravedigger; her mother as a cemetery helper. Only in 1948 did her mother place a plaque with her true name on the grave.

Maria Grzegorzewska (1888-1967), who was a Polish educator and teacher. She introduced and developed the special education movement in Poland. Maria Grzegorzewska worked out the original teaching method, called “the methods of working centers” focused on a creative work environment, which is still used in today’s special needs education. She was the first to start systematic research on pedagogical issues of the disabled in Poland.

Agnieszka Osiecka (1936-1997), who was a poet, writer, author of theatre and television screenplays, film director, and journalist. She was a prominent Polish songwriter, having authored the lyrics to more than 2,000 songs, and is considered an icon of Polish culture.

Barbara Sanguszko (1718-1791), who was a noblewoman, poet, translator, and moralist during the Enlightenment in Poland. She organised and hosted a salon in Poddębice, where the gathering of intellectuals, artists and politicians was modelled after French 18th-century salons. Sanguszko was known for her piety, generosity and philanthropy. She not only restored many Catholic churches and convents, but laid the foundations of new religious houses, including also Orthodox churches. Having in mind the future of her children and of the family estate, she took an active part in the political life of her country. She took it upon herself to attend parliaments and tribunals. Her soirées spawned the future theatrical initiatives of the Lazienki Palace. She hosted grand occasions in the Saski Palace, including illuminations, concerts and balls for dignitaries of the period.

Barbara Kwiatkowska-Lass (1940-1995), who was a notable film actress. Raised in communist Poland, she took an opportunity to leave the country in 1959 to pursue her career in the West and starred in a few major Italian, German, and French films. She actively opposed the communist regime and cooperated with the United States-controlled Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which transmitted anti-communist propaganda, information, and programmes free from censorship to Poland.

Anna Iwaszkiewicz (1897-1979), who was a writer and translator, born to the family of a wealthy entrepreneur. She entered Polish artistic circles by marriage to Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz (then a novice writer) and they both were known for their turbulent bisexual orientation. During WW2 she and her husband actively helped rescue Jewish people from the Nazi German occupiers by hiding them, finding new shelters, and providing them with funds and with false documents. She is on Israel’s list of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Katarzyna Ostrogska (1602–1642), who was a Polish–Lithuanian noblewoman, known as the founder of the city of Biała (modern Janów Lubelski). She was married to the nobleman and voivode Tomasz Zamoyski. Widowed in 1638, she took over management of the Zamoyski estates. In 1640 the king granted her the privilege to found the city of Biała, including the right to organize the government of the city and appoint its officials. She wrote several documents regulating life in her city.

Alina Centkiewicz (1907-1993), who was a writer and explorer, as well as the co-author of many travel books (written with her husband). She was best known for her descriptions of the Antarctic Circle region. In 1958 she was the first Polish woman (and the sixth woman in the world) to explore Antarctica.

Wanda Gertz (1896-1958), who was a soldier and independence activist. Born to a noble family, she began her military career in the Polish Legion during the First World War dressed as a man, under the male pseudonym of Kazimierz Zuchowicz, or 'Major Kazik’. With the outbreak of WW2, thanks to her experience and skills she became an officer of an all-female battalion in the underground Home Army, where she took the codename 'Lena’, and created a female division and sabotage unit. She was captured after the failed 1944 Warsaw Uprising and remained imprisoned in various German camps until the liberation by the US army in 1945. After the war she travelled throughout Germany and Italy in a search of displaced Polish women, joining the Polish Resettlement Corps. After demobilisation she worked in a canteen until her death.

Ewa Szelburg-Zarembina (1899-1986), who was a novelist, poet, and screenplay writer, best known as the author of numerous works for children. She co-initiated a fundraising program that eventually led to the construction of the Children’s Memorial Health Institute, the largest and the most modern centre of paediatric care for children in Poland.

Anna Kostka (1575–1635), who was a Polish–Lithuanian noblewoman. She inherited the city of Jarosław as well as several other areas from her mother. After being widowed in 1603, she lived an independent life as the manager of her and her children’s dominions. She financially supported the University of Jarosław, introduced the Benedictine Order to the city, protected the Jesuits, commissioned several (later famed) art objects for the churches, and became known for her charity toward the poor.

Seweryna Szmaglewska (1916-1992), who was a writer, known for books for both children and adults alike. During WW2 she was arrested by the Nazi Germans in a łapanka (street roundup), and sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp as a political prisoner. She survived three years in the camp, and after the war she was one of very few Poles to testify at the Nuremberg Trials. She collected her memoirs in a few books, the most famous being Smoke over Birkenau.

Janina Lewandowska (1908-1940), born Janina Dowbor-Muśnicka, who was a second lieutenant in the Polish air force, devoted entirely to her flying career. After the outbreak of WW2 she was drafted for service in the 3rd Regiment, but her unit was taken hostage by Soviet forces in unknown circumstances. She was one of only two officers in the imprisoned group. She died in the infamous 1940 Katyn Massacre, and her remains were identified only in 2005.

Wanda Błeńska (1911-2014), who was a tropical disease expert and missionary who succeeded in developing the Buluba Hospital in Uganda, an internationally recognized centre for leprosy treatment.

Aleksandra Zagórska (1884-1965), who was am independence activist and soldier. During the First World War she commanded the women’s intelligence service in the Polish Legions. In 1918 she formed the female paramilitary organization Ochotnicza Legia Kobiet (Voluntary Legion of Women) and served as the organization’s commander. In her military career she was eventually promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. During WW2 she joined the resistance as part of the left-leaning Coalition of Independence Organisations. After the war she lived under the pseudonym 'Aleksandra Bednarz’ to avoid the communist government’s persecution on account of her history of independence activism.

Maria Nostitz-Wasilkowska (1858-1922), who was a painter and portrait artist, nicknamed ‘Charmante Polonaise’ by the upper classes. Her favourite medium was pastels, and she specialized in female portraits, valued for her ability to interpret the model’s psychology through subtle color and light. Her portraits were often described as 'living and vibrant’, as if she caught the model in an ephemeral moment. She graduated with honors from the art academy in Saint Petersburg and paved her way to become a favourite artists of the elites in Saint Petersburg and Warsaw, travelling between those cities during her lifetime. Sadly, not many portraits by her have survived to the modern day.

Lena Żelichowska (1910-1958), who was a dancer and actress, one of the most popular in interwar Poland. She debuted on screen in 1933 and quickly gained popularity, becoming one of the most promising film stars in Poland. Before the outbreak of WW2 she managed to appear in 14 movies and starred in numerous theatre plays. During the early stages of the war, she and her husband Stefan Norblin (a notable art deco artist) escaped Poland, and only his reputation as a painter opened many doors, including those of the royal family in Iraq and the Maharajahs in India, where they lived until the end of the war. In the late 1940s they eventually settled in the US. Due to her accent she never managed to return to acting.

Krystyna Skarbek (1908-1952), also known as Christine Granville, who was a WW2 spy working for the British Special Operations Executive. She became celebrated especially for her daring exploits in intelligence and irregular warfare missions in Poland and Nazi-occupied France, and she was one of the longest-serving of all Britain’s wartime women agents. After the war, Skarbek was left without financial reserves or a native country to return to (she didn’t recognize the communist government in postwar Poland). Her life is said to be an inspiration for the fictional characters of Vesper Lynd and Tatiana Romanova in the James Bond novels Casino Royale (1953) and From Russia, with Love (1957).

Teresa Bogusławska (1929-1945) was a promising Polish poet and a participant in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. She joined the Polish scouts’ underground resistance movement at the age of 12. In 1944 (aged 15) she was arrested by the Nazi Germans while pasting independence slogans on German posters. She was imprisoned and tortured during questioning, and suffered badly from tuberculosis after barely three weeks spent in prison. She was freed, but her health never recovered. During the Warsaw Uprising later that same year, she helped the insurgents by sewing uniforms and arm bands. She died early in 1945, aged 16, from meningitis caused by the tuberculosis.

Anna Pustowójtówna (1838-1881), who was a noblewoman, activist, and soldier, famed for her participation in the January Uprising. She identified herself fully as a Pole despite being a child of a mixed Polish-Russian couple, her father being a high-ranking Russian general. She became an activist for the cause of the Polish independence and sided with the Polish troops during the 1963 January Uprising. She disguised herself as a male soldier and went by the alias 'Michał Smok’ (literal translation: Michael the Dragon). She fought as an assistant to the general Marian Langiewicz. She took active part in a few battles, such as the Battle of Małogoszcz, Battle of Pieskowa Skała, Battle of Chroberz, and Battle of Grochowiska, becoming a living legend of the Uprising (much like Emilia Plater, who became a symbol of the November Uprising c. 40 years earlier).

Maria Piotrowiczowa (1839-1863), who was a January Uprising insurgent, participating in the Battle of Dobra (the Łódź province). Upon news of failures of the ongoing uprising, she decided to support the fighters, cutting her hair and putting on a men’s insurrectionary garment. She joined a small troop led by a man from a nearby manor. At the beginning she was on an auxiliary duty, but when the military situation deteriorated she declared her intention of joining front-line duty. In February of 1863 the Russian troops took her unit’s camping site by surprise. She fought to the very end and stayed on the battlefield, rejecting the suggestions of surrender given to her by Russian officers. With a remaining small group of young people, she bravely defended the troop flag donated to the unit by women from the city of Łódź. Armed with a revolver and a scythe, encircled by Cossacks, she killed one, wounded another, and killed the horse under yet another one before dying from their hands. Her body was pricked with pikes and sabres. The tragedy was magnified by the fact that Maria was pregnant at that time.

Natalia Zarembina (1895-1973), who was a writer and journalist. During WW2 she was also a participant of the underground resistance in occupied Poland: she served as an activist of the Polish Socialist Party – Freedom, Equality, Independence (a WW2 underground resistance party) and as a member of the underground organisation Żegota (Council of Aid to the Jews). In late 1942 she published the book Obóz śmierci (Eng. Death Camp), released by the underground press, which was the first document telling about the German concentration camp of Auschwitz. She included firsthand information based on reports of refugees and people dismissed from the camp. Her book was translated to English in the following year, becoming one of the first reports of the Nazi German atrocities in the occupied Poland, followed by the famous Pilecki’s Report.

Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841-1910), who was a journalist, social activist, novelist, and leading writer of the Positivism movement during the late era of the Partitions of Poland. In 1905, along with Henryk Sienkiewicz, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She authored over 150 powerful works dealing with the social conditions of her occupied country.

Teofila Chmielecka (1590–1650) was a Polish military spouse, married to Stefan Chmielecki. She was known for her dedication to the military ideals and for maintaining the Spartan lifestyle necessary in the army, and came to be known as the ideal role model of a military wife. She displayed her personal courage on several occasions, earning the nickname “The Wolf of the Frontier”.

Teofila Ludwika Zasławska (c.1650-1709), who was a noblewoman known as perhaps the most significant landowner in Poland in her time. She was the daughter of Katarzyna Sobieska (sister of King Jan III Sobieski) and an heiress of the Ostrogski family. She was married twice: to the Great Crown Hetman Dymitr Jerzy Wiśniowiecki, and after his death to Prince Józef Karol Lubomirski. Upon her first husband’s death, she inherited large holdings that included the Baranów Sandomierski Castle (not without a legal fight for those rights). After the death of her brother she became the only heir to one of the largest estates in the Commonwealth, the Ostrogski Ordination, which included several dozen towns. As a result of her second marriage, the large landed estates of the Ostrogski Ordination in Poland were transferred to the Lubomirski family. The combined fortune of the Zasławskis and Lubomirskis would become for a time the largest fortune in the Commonwealth. Her second husband had an ongoing extramarital affair which became public, resulting in her attempting to declare him legally insane. They were formally separated until his death in 1702. During the last years of her life she was involved in charity work, including management and development of schools.

Rozalia Lubomirska (1768-1794) was a noblewoman, most noted for her death. At the age of 19 she was married to Prince Aleksander Lubomirski. They travelled to France but, unhappy in her marriage, she decided to divorce her husband and did not accompany him on his way back to Poland. The time of the French Revolution met her in Paris. She was arrested along with her child and tried for alleged conspiracy against the Revolution. As a result, the 26-year-old princess was sentenced to death and soon beheaded by guillotine, although her guilt was (and remains) widely questioned. The death of a Polish national caused much concern among the Polish nobility who, prior to the Reign of Terror, openly cheered the Revolution. Among those who spoke in her defence was Tadeusz Kościuszko. After her death, Rozalia became the subject of legends. According to one, her ghost appears in the Lubomirski Palace in Opole Lubelskie.

Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz (1857-1893) was a painter known for her portraits, painted with a great intuition. Her Self-Portrait with Apron and Brushes (1887) developed a new self-portrait pose by placing the artist in front of a model’s backdrop, thus showing that she is her own model. She was internationally recognized during her lifetime and studied art in Paris. After returning to Poland she intended to open a painting school for women in Warsaw, which would have mimicked the practices of the Parisian academies. However the project was stopped short when the artist fell ill with a heart condition.

Zofia Rydet (1911-1997), who was a professional photographer best known for her project 'Sociological Record’, which aimed to document every household in Poland. She began working on that project in 1978 at the age of 67, taking an enormous collection of nearly 20,000 pictures until her death in 1997. The photos show various informal scenes in different ordinary Polish households, often with the owners among their belongings.

Teofila Certowicz (1862-1918), who was a sculptor and artist. For a brief time she opened and managed her own art school for women in Kraków, the first one of that kind in the city, and invited prominent artists such as Włodzimierz Tetmajer and Jacek Malczewski to teach the girls in her school.

Wanda Telakowska (1905–1986) was an artist best known as the founder of Warsaw’s Institute of Industrial Design. She was a member of an Arts and Crafts collective that encouraged a new artistic identity which included folk art. After the WW2 she joined the communist government in Poland, creating the Bureau of Supervision of Aesthetic Production. As the head of the Bureau, she commissioned artists to design many mass-produced Polish goods, under the motto 'Beauty is for every day and for everybody’. However, some artists were suspicious of collaborating with the communist government during a time of continued political conflict. Ultimately, the Bureau was shut down, as the value of artist designs was not convincing enough to factory owners. She went on to create Warsaw’s Institute of Industrial Design in 1950 and served as its first director. In this role, she 'invited artists, ethnographers, art historians, pedagogues, sociologists, and enthusiasts of folk art to contribute to her institute’s efforts to develop new forms of sociologist culture in collaboration with working women, peasants, and youth.’ She’s known as a promoter of the term ‘industrial design’ in Poland. Some Polish artists have dismissed her legacy as a failed attempt to work with communists.

Zofia Baniecka (1917-1993), who was a member of the Resistance during WW2. In addition to relaying guns and other materials to resistance fighters, she and her mother rescued over 50 Jews by hiding them in their home between 1941 and 1944. Later, she was an activist with the Intervention Bureau of the Polish Workers’ Defence Committee in 1970s. She and her husband were active participants in the Solidarity movement in the 1980s, distributing underground media. In her professional capacity, Baniecka was a long-time member of the Warsaw chapter of the Association of Polish Artists and Designers.

Maria Kotarba (1907-1956), who was a courier in the Polish resistance movement, smuggling clandestine messages and supplies among the local partisan groups. She was arrested, tortured, and interrogated by the Gestapo as a political prisoner and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943. She was recognised by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations for risking her life to save the lives of Jewish prisoners in the camps.

Zofia Leśniowska (1912-1943), who was a first lieutenant (porucznik) in the Polish Armed Forces. She was the daughter of General Władysław Sikorski. During the interwar period she was active in the Polish Red Cross and known for her passion for horse riding. After the outbreak of WW2, her father ordered her to organize a resistance movement. In 1940 she was called as an emissary to France and travelled as an underground courier, smuggling documents. She was her father’s personal secretary, coder, interpreter, and advisor. She was killed, along with her father and nine others, when their plane crashed into the sea 16 seconds after takeoff from Gibraltar Airport in July 1943.

Maria de Nisau (née Vetulani) (1898-1944), who was a Polish soldier, active in fighting for Poland’s independence. During WW2 she was a liaison soldier of the underground Home Army, where she took the pseudonym Maryna. In her apartment in Warsaw she organised a contact point and a hiding place for Jewish people. In 1944 she took part in the Warsaw Uprising. During the fighting she was wounded and treated in the hospital at Długa Street. There she was killed during a German liquidation of the Uprising hospitals.

Cezaria Jędrzejewiczowa (1885-1967), who was a scientist, art historian, and anthropologist. She was one of the pioneers of ethnology as a systematic study in Poland, and one of the first scientists to adopt empirical research in studies on folk culture. During WW2 she escaped from Poland and settled in British-held Palestine, where she co-founded the Polish Scientific Institute of Jerusalem, a sort of exile university for the soldiers of the Polish II Corps. In 1947 she moved to Great Britain, where she became one of the founding members of the Polish Scientific Society in Exile. In 1951 she became a professor of ethnography at the Polish University in Exile and soon afterwards was chosen as its rector.

Elżbieta Drużbacka (c.1695 or 1698/1699 - 1765), who was a poet of the late Baroque era in Poland, known as a 'Slavic Sappho’ and a 'Sarmatian Muse’. Much of her work deals with the beauty of nature – her best known work is Description of the Four Seasons (Opisanie czterech części roku). Her style was characterized as natural, simple, and pure, free of the so-called ’Macaronic language’ characteristic of her times. Most of her manuscripts, stored in the Krasińscy Library, were destroyed during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

The list appeared also on Krakow Post :)

[kbrown78]

Monthly Wrap Up: October

Favorite month of the year, not just because it's my birthday month. It's a transitional period in nature that I love with it's bright colors and cold nights. I also love that it's a month associated with magic and myth, which I love seeing to stories. This month I tried to read all of my most Halloween books, with a few exceptions. There were a few rereads but it was mostly new reads this month. October started out on a high with the Call, but then slid downhill with several sub par reads. Then it finally took a turn, with A Natural History of Dragons and Rosemary and Rue, two first books in series. I read a total of 9 books and 1 comic book, and all of these books had elements of fantasy, a few were horror fantasy and 1 was a historical fantasy. I definitely had a month filled with magic and suspense, but I didn't enjoy most of the books as much as I had hoped to.

The Call by Pedar O' Guilin: I've talked about this book so much and have already posted my full review on it, so I'm going to keep it quick. Bleak world, terrifying villains, lots of suspense and gore, a good disabled protagonist and a cute romance. The Call was my pick for the PopSugar prompt “a book set during or about Halloween” since this seemed like a good Halloween themed book and Halloween is celebrated at some point during this book and it received 4 out 5 stars.

Nightfall by Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski: Are you afraid of the dark? In a world where there is 14 years between night and day, everyone in this story is eager to leave quickly as the night approaches. But 3 kids get left behind and the longer they stay the more questions they have about what goes bump in the night. It's definitely a suspenseful read and I do think adults can appreciate that element of it, even though it is clearly geared more toward a younger audience. I do think it's a good book but I didn't enjoy it as much because I knew all the twist that were coming and I didn't love the ending (more about that in my review). Nightfall received 3 out 5 stars.

Monstress Volume 3: Haven: This, as of right now, is the only comic book series that I follow. I really liked the first volume, I was so sucked into the world and I needed more. The second volume was pretty good, but it was a filler. The third book gets back to the main plot, but there's so much in this volume that it's overwhelming. More characters keep getting introduced and new mysteries arise, which was the main problem. I keep getting more questions added onto the ones I already have with very few answers, and at this point that's very frustrating. Most of the characters are pretty morally gray so you can never guess what they're going to do or why they're doing it. There are many questions involving the Old Ones (who are appearing more frequently) and the Shaman Empress. I do like the struggle that Mika faces, both internal and external, and I'm actually enjoying watching her and Zinn's relationship develop. Kippa is a pure bean who was become so strong in her convictions but is now in trouble because she was abducted by the cats for some unknown reason. The art is still gorgeous, I'm still intrigued enough to keep going and see if I get some answers, but if I don't soon I may have to call it quits with this series. Monstress Volume 3 received 3 out 5 stars from me.  

Lirael by Garth Nix: Man, this book was so bad. I already didn't like the fact that Sabriel was going to be pushed to the side to make room for new characters, but both of the new protagonists sucked. I hated both of them. Lirael grew up among the Clayr and while I am sympathetic to her being upset about how different she is, it's clear that this is to emphasize what a special snowflake she is, but also after many years of becoming an expert in the library, she still bemoans how different she is. The other POV character is a spoiled prince  who is pretty incompetent and doesn't really want to do anything with his life. The story in no way tied into the previous book and I didn't like the new conflict, mostly because the majority of the book was focused on the 2 protagonists living their daily lives and being irritating. There were some tropes used that I didn't like, the plot was boring, and the characters were so annoying. At some point I just gave up tabbing the book because the narrative wasn't evolving and the characters weren't changing. The one thing that I did like, similar to the world of Death and the Charter magic in the previous book, was the library of the Clayr. Everything about it I loved, from how organized it was to the magic rooms that contained entirely separate worlds. Like an entire story could have been set in that library. Lirael received 2 out 5 stars from me.

Torn by Rowena Miller: I've already posted my review on this book, but I'll sum up my thoughts on this book. It sounded like something I would really like. A young seamstress getting swept into political turmoil while her brother is growing in the anti monarchy movement. This seamstress has the ability to sew charms into her craft which is something that I've been looking for. This book also feels like it's set during the French Revolution, which isn't a time in history that I love but I like fantasies that are inspired by real cultures and time periods. At the start the protagonist was a real ingenue and I kept hoping for some development, but I didn't get that. There were several good points illustrated at the beginning, but they were presented in all the wrongs way. The book started out with a lot of potential and I was looking forward to it, but it became increasingly worse to the point where I was just glad it was done. Needless to say it received 2 out 5 stars from me.

Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake: When I first read this book I liked almost everything about it. I liked that it was about 3 sisters fated to kill each other until 1 was left alive. I liked the dark autumn feel to it. I liked that the world felt fleshed out. The one thing I didn't like was the love triangle, and this issue came back with a vengeance during my reread. First, the love triangle itself was so stupid and unnecessary, but I could now see how much drama and miscommunication is the result of this love triangle, which grated my nerves to no end. I've already read the second book which I didn't like, and having that knowledge didn't help my opinion of the book or characters. I think I only liked this book because I remember my feelings of enjoyment the first time I read it, but I could also see that this book had potential for a whole series, but that doesn't continue. I did like the 3 sisters, but this time I could clearly see more flaws with them, and in general I don't like the romances. I really wish the friendships were given more of the limelight, like Billy and Arsinoe's. Three Dark Crowns received 3 out 5 stars.

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan: I've been wanting to read this series. I put it on my lists of books that I wanted to read before the end of the year, and so far the majority of those books were disappointing but this was more than satisfying. It's the life story of woman who studies dragons and this first book spans Isabella's early childhood when she first becomes interested in reading about dragons to her first journey to study mountain wyerms with her husband. I loved Isabella as a character and I loved that she was a women who was passionate about a scientific field when women weren't really supposed to be (this is set in an alternate Victorian England). As a woman this book appealed to my sense of girl power and as a someone with a background in science I loved how the study of dragons was developed. Since it is a fantasy of manners, which is similar to historical fantasy, it can be a bit slower but I didn't think the pacing dragged at all I really enjoyed the tone of voice in the writing, since the narrator is writing about her own life she has that sort of wry humor. I loved A Natural History of Dragons and so far it is my favorite book in the series, and it received 5 out 5 stars.

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire: It wouldn't be technically true to say I haven't read urban fantasy before. I've read YA urban fantasy like Harry Potter, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and The Mortal Instruments series. It wouldn't even be my first adult urban fantasy since I've read American Gods and An Unkindness of Magicians, but the first book in the October Daye series is a good portrayal of what comes to mind when I think of an adult urban fantasy. If I had to describe it in one word it would be gritty. This is definitely an adult urban fantasy, where the courts of various fairies mix with the California setting. October “Toby” Daye is half human and half fae, and works as a private investigator. Toby isn't always a likable person, but she is always sympathetic and she does have friends that care about her. There's a lot of trauma surrounding her, which made the villain of this book a bit more complicated. I don't normally gravitate toward crime noir stories but I think because the protagonist is a female and that there is a magical element it appealed more to me. This is definitely adult because of the violence, sex, and abuse that's alluded to in the story. I do plan on continuing this series (14 books but it's a quick read) and Rosemary and Rue received 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Into the Bright Unknown by Rae Carson: This was a disappointing finale. I'm still trying to work out how Rae Carson could go from the greatness of the Girl of Fire and Thorns to the mediocrity of the Gold Seer trilogy. I picked this one up because I wanted to finish the series and it was finally available in paperback. I didn't have high hopes, I just wanted the book to be at least as decent as the other books, and it still failed to meet that expectation. After finishing the book, I definitely think that this trilogy should have been a duology because this third book contributes absolutely nothing. The main plot is supposed to be a heist narrative, but there wasn't any suspense (I knew all the characters were going to fine so I wasn't worried about them), the plot dragged on and didn't make any sense most of the time (mainly because characters were making dumb decisions and nothing was explained until the second to last chapter), the villain was poorly written (like literally came out of nowhere and his motivations are stupid), and I got tired of reading about all of these very flat characters. I didn't even bother tagging it so there won't be a full review for this one. It was really boring and everyone survived and gets married, and all is forgiven. I just couldn't take it. I will say that once again the best part of this book was the beautiful color that did have a very fall theme, with brown, purple, and gold. I do hope that Rae Carson does write another book soon so that my love of her as an author can be revitalized. This was my pick for the PopSugar prompt “a book with a heist in it” and received 2 out 5 stars from me.

The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan: Continuing from where the first book left off, I thought Tropic of Serpents was a good book. Isabella goes on expedition to study dragons in the Mouleen swamps, and as is her character, bites off a little more than she can chew. I didn't love it as much but I still thought it was a 5 star read. I loved the friendships, I loved the scientific inquiries, I loved how complicated the plot was, and I loved Isabella. She's a strong character and continues to grow in confidence and as someone of prominence in the scientific community. Unless of last 2 books take an unforeseen turn for the worse this is definitely a 5 star series, and I'm glad I was able to end the month on this book.

[sjrresearch]

Playing the Battlefield: Exploring World War II and Video Games

How many times have you disembarked from an Allied LCVP and scrambled up the blood-soaked beaches of Normandy? We’ve joined the fight in Europe, flew over Pacific waters, and navigated warships through the Atlantic, all to revisit the global conflict of World War II. While video games may seem an odd source for information regarding the Second World War, developers have proven time and time again that it’s not an outlandish concept. Digital adventures are often used to recreate the conflicts of yesteryear. While the education they offer may be surface-level, these games make people interested in history in a way a textbook cannot.

World War II is undoubtedly the most popular historical event in the video game industry. Since the 1980s, developers have been utilizing the conflict of the 40s as a backdrop for their adventures. Games like Eastern Front (Atari, 1981) and Castle Wolfenstein (Muse Software, 1981) launched an entire genre of games that is still being expanded upon today. From first-person shooters to real-time strategy titles, the Second World War has been digitized more times than anyone should care to count. 

Before we dig too deep into the notable World War II games that best retell the events of the global battle, let’s look at the first question that may be on your mind.

Why is World War II So Popular in Gaming? 

You can probably name several dozen World War II-specific games off the top of your head without thinking. How far can you get with World War I? Or even the Vietnam War? Chances are nowhere near as close. It’s not because all World War I or Vietnam War games are bad. The conflicts simply don’t have as big a spotlight on them.

According to author Frank Cottrell Boyce in Andrew Pulver’s “Why are we so obsessed with films about the Second World War” piece (The Guardian), “The war has become a metaphor, not just history. You can map on to it any way you want. We’re attracted to it because of its moral certainties.” With the public atrocities carried out by Germany and Japan, there are clear “villains” and “heroes” in World War II material. There is no moral ambiguity as you mow down Nazis or sink ships of the Imperial Navy.  

The history of World War II has also become propaganda of a sort, inspiring brotherhood and patriotism even more than 75 years after its end. Games like Brothers in Arms highlight the comradery of World War II soldiers right in the title while games like Call of Duty and Battlefield align you with a squad of likable and relatable soldiers. 

But still, why not World War I? The line between “good” and “bad” was clearly drawn, and soldiers banded together with the same fervor to fight for their country. For that, you have to look at the United States’ role in both conflicts. Video games have become so westernized that many stories are told through the eyes of American soldiers. When the nation entered World War I, the conflict was already on the downswing. Within one year and seven months, it was over. Compare that to World War II, where the United States was fighting a two-front conflict for nearly four years. The whole nation became invested. Roles in the household changed, and men willingly enlisted to battle the Nazis and the Japanese. The attack on Pearl Harbor ultimately solidified that the Second World War would become the most important conflict in history - at least to the United States.

Vice’s Corey Milne’s says it best in his article “Video Games Have Sapped the Spirit Out of World War II.” In it, he states, “World War II was great PR and the biggest games on it have cemented America’s reputation as a powerful and noble entity.”

That, of course, is not to say World War II video games should not be played. There are many worth diving into.

The World War II Games All Should Play

Since the library of World War II games is so large, it’s worth breaking it down into a shortlist of some of the most influential, important, and entertaining video games featuring the global war. While the first-person shooter genre is most prevalent, strategy games have been a suitable medium for scaling combat and showing the tactical side of the European and Pacific Theaters.

Castle Wolfenstein (Muse Software, 1981)

Though Castle Wolfenstein was among the first games to utilize stealth mechanics, it really only received notoriety when id Software retooled the concept into an action-packed first-person shooter in 1992. As an Allied spy, players maneuver through the titular castle, evading or killing German soldiers during their escape. The gameplay was simple, but the game did make historical references to the Mauser C96 pistol and Hitler’s SS unit.

Axis & Allies (Meyer/Glass Interactive, 1998)

Based on a very popular board game, Axis & Allies allows players to choose which side they’ll fight for in the large-scale conflict. The RTS turn-based format cycles through the major world powers across multiple phases, from research to combat, as they vie for control of a world map. When a capital city falls, that nation is taken out of battle until their ally can liberate them. It’s a unique way of depicting the joint effort that was required during World War II - though Japan as Germany’s close ally puts a unique spin on the dual-front war. Combat plays out in an RTS format that uses authentic units, from battleships to general infantry.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2015, Inc, 2002)

Though it’s the third Medal of Honor game, Allied Assault is more memorable than its predecessors. It was one of the first games to depict a horrifying recreation of D-Day. Soldiers drop around you as you storm the beach, evading German machine-gun fire and mortars in what feels like a futile attempt of claiming the beachhead. Beyond Omaha Beach, Allied Assault spanned real locations to retain historical accuracy. Players cross into German-occupied France to liberate comrades and rush into the Nazi bases of Algiers to cripple Hitler’s forces. Allied Assault set the bar for World War II shooters and is often praised for its strides in capturing the horrors of war.

Battlefield 1942 (Digital Illusions CE, 2002)

Whereas Medal of Honor was known for crafting deep stories that painted a grim war speckled with moments of hope, Battlefield 1942 was all about the large-scale combat. Digital Illusions CE wanted to focus on more than just the human side of war. So, it opened up the battlefield, added functional aircraft and ground vehicles, and threw players into massive engagements. Up to 64 players could join the fray as Medic, Scout, Anti-Tank, Engineer, or Assault class infantry, all with unique skills and load-outs. It may have depersonalized World War II, but it helped show its scope.

Call of Duty 2 (Infinity Ward, 2005)

For four years, Medal of Honor enjoyed being the pinnacle of World War II video gaming. Even when Battlefield 1942 released, Medal of Honor remained on the throne. Then a new studio came along, stocked with 22 developers that originally worked on Allied Assault. Infinity Ward introduced a new competitor into the budding war video game market with Call of Duty, but it was Call of Duty 2 that ultimately changed the face of war games. If anything was going to dethrone Medal of Honor, it was Infinity Ward’s Xbox 360 launch title. The game introduced “post-war effects,” from raging fires to smoke and dust that blocks the screen. Call of Duty 2 elevated video game warfare to a level of realism that had yet to be touched on. 

Silent Hunter III (Ubisoft, 2005)

So many war games feature sprawling battles across cities and open plains. Aeon Electronic Entertainment took a different approach and put players in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Silent Hunter (1996) filled the player’s screen with information, from the different dials and computers of a submarine to details about the World War II vessels. Silent Hunter III improved upon the concept that the first game laid out with improved visuals, deeper gameplay, and more intuitive mechanics.  

Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (Gearbox Software, 2005)

Capturing the spirit of camaraderie, Brothers in Arms is based on the true story of the 101st Airborne Paratroopers. Unlike many World War II first-person shooters, Brothers in Arms wasn’t about the action. It put strategy and tactics first to retell the harrowing tale of the paratroopers that became scattered across the French countryside before the Normandy invasion. The game is impressively realistic, from the details of the battlefields to the equipment. Gearbox Software used eyewitness accounts to flesh out what happened to the paratroopers and create a game that’s less about winning a war and more about protecting your squadron.

Call of Duty: World at War (Treyarch, 2008)

After having developed Call of Duty 3, Treyarch was back with World at War. It may not have fared as well with reviewers, but World at War is equally as important as previous titles as it shifted focus to the Pacific Theater. World War II games were mostly inclined to take the battle to Europe against the German threat, leaving the Pacific conflict off the table entirely. World at War explores the Pacific Theater with a gritty realism that added limb dismemberment and accurate burn injuries. Treyarch’s development team also kicked off one of Call of Duty’s biggest trends with the Nazi Zombies mode.

Company of Heroes (Relic Entertainment, 2006)

Company of Heroes blends the units and tech of World War II with solid RTS mechanics. Players engage the Germans across notable battles like the Invasion of Normandy, using the staples of the RTS genre that we’ve become accustomed to. Company of Heroes makes you think about every move as if you’re a general formulating the best plan to take a vantage point and crush the opposition. On top of being a good looking game, Company of Heroes plays really well and offers deep gameplay that you can’t rush through. Make the wrong move, and your opposition will emerge victoriously. Much like in real war.

Regardless of which of these games you’re booting up first, be sure to pay attention to the history. Just because they’re forms of entertainment doesn’t mean there isn’t valuable information about World War II scattered throughout these titles.

At SJR Research, we specialize in creating compelling narratives and provide research to give your game the kind of details that engage your players and create a resonant world they want to spend time in. If you are interested in learning more about our gaming research services, you can browse SJR Research’s service on our site at SJR Research.

[courtneytincher]

Margaret Trudeau On Son Justin, Melania Trump, Drugs, Studio 54, First Ladies, Bipolar Disorder—and Survival

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/GettyOn a trip to Mexico, Margaret Trudeau recalled smiling, “All I kept hearing from people was, ‘Your son is so good-looking, your son is so good-looking.’” She laughed. “I wanted to say, ‘Yes, but he’s smart too.’” She also laughed merrily when recalling the picture of Melania Trump, taken at last month’s G7 summit, about to kiss her son Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada. In the frozen moment captured by the cameras, Mrs. Trump’s expression, as noted by many on social media, appeared lusty, dreamy. Her husband President Trump stood, stony-faced, to her side.Melania Gazed at Justin Trudeau in the Perfect Red Dress. The Rest of Her G7 Fashion Was Pure One Percent.“Angela Merkel looked at Justin in just the same way and there were no pictures of her,” Margaret Trudeau noted.Still, Mrs. Trump seemed happy to see Justin Trudeau that day. His mother, today dressed in a white shirt, with knotted scarf, roared with laughter. “He is a tall glass of milk. Everybody likes to look at someone nice. They have met before. They have a friendship. He and Sophie (Grégoire-Trudeau, Justin Trudeau’s wife) like Melania very much. He’s always been my prince charming. But this is real life. He’s not just a pretty face, although that doesn’t hurt. I think he is one of the world leaders who can bring the world around to peace, and talk and work together in a democratic way—and there’s not that many of those kinds of leaders left.“That photograph was cute, but it was one flash, one moment. A picture tells a story but doesn’t tell the whole story. Donald Trump was right in front of Melania. She was getting ready for a cheek-peck I guess.”First Lady Melania Trump kisses Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau next to the U.S. President Donald Trump, Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, and French President Emmanuel Macron during the family photo with invited guests at the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, August 25, 2019.CARLOS BARRIA“He’s pretty good-looking,” his mother conceded to The Daily Beast. “He has also lived a full life, he’s also bright. He loves his family, and I love my grandchildren. But I have four children. My second son Sacha (birth name Alexandre; journalist, author, and filmmaker) is more revolutionary, more of a change-maker than Justin could ever be because Justin is trapped within politics, and Sacha is completely free.”Margaret Trudeau is both diplomatic and mischievous, very open and very discreet. A conversation with her flows, then can stop suddenly. She speaks her mind, but carefully when she must; she was married to Pierre Trudeau, Canada’s charismatic Prime Minister from 1968-79 and 1980-4. She left him in 1977 while he was still in office, scandal swirling after her. She was a first lady determined not to be stifled by the conventions and expectations of that loaded title.And now her and Pierre Trudeau’s son is Prime Minister, meaning Margaret Trudeau has made history in Canada: the first woman be the wife of one prime minister and mother of another. She notes she is like Barbara Bush in this respect.Trudeau, 71, is an engaging and expressive storyteller, as her one-woman off-Broadway play, Certain Woman of an Age, shows. Having toured other cities to critical acclaim and appreciative audiences, it will play for three days later this week at the Minetta Lane Theatre, where it will be recorded live for Audible Theater. The 80-minute show—co-written with Alix Sobler and directed by Kimberly Senior—takes the audience through a triple-mega rollercoaster life. When she was First Lady (she was married to Pierre from 1971-84, though the couple separated in 1977), Trudeau chafed against the restrictive nature of the role. When they married, Margaret was 22, and Pierre was 51.She smoked marijuana, drank, danced at Studio 54, and notoriously partied with the Rolling Stones. After she and Trudeau separated, she had relationships with men including Jack Nicholson, Ryan O’Neal, and entrepreneur Bruce Nevins (who bought Perrier water to America). She was a favorite subject of the paparazzi, who she claims to have loathed passionately then and continues to loathe passionately today. In her 1979 memoir, Beyond Reason, she detailed her infatuation with Senator Ted Kennedy (he denied they had had a relationship).Then, as Trudeau discusses on stage, tragedy brought her to her lowest ebb: the death of Michel, her youngest son with Trudeau, aged 23 in 1998 caused by an avalanche, and then Pierre Trudeau in 2000. She contemplated suicide. A diagnosis of bipolar disorder and treatment at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Center helped save her life, and Trudeau is now a passionate mental health advocate.Trudeau is “so proud” of Justin as a prime minister and father. “He makes time on Sundays for all of us. We go to a lovely country place where we get out the Lego, art, and homework, and there are cuddles and reading and being there together.”Does she think her son will win a second term? “I don���t know. Who am I to predict?” “It’s our family life—politics. Pierre Trudeau’s mantra for all of us was, ‘You have to contribute. None of us are businesspeople, none of us are greedy or after money. We are all trying to make the world a better place.’ Justin knew from the time he was small what his destiny was.”Trudeau said she did not know Melania Trump, and would not know what advice to give her as a fellow first lady who had also not played the conventional first lady role. “But I wish she’d talk to her husband. I think she’s in charge of an anti-bullying campaign. Perhaps she should share some of her wisdom with him.”What does she think of Trump? Trudeau sighed. “I raised four boys. Boys can be absolute bullies, exaggerators, and liars. But they grow up. I don’t know Mr. Trump. I’ve never met him, but my advice would be: ‘Be yourself. Be honest. Be truthful. Don’t be phoney-baloney. Just tell the truth. Don’t get caught up in lies. They’ll catch you out.’”In contrast, Michelle Obama is “one of my heroes. Her time as first lady saw her being incredibly pro-active—not only being a fiercely proud mother but also gardening, getting real, and getting down—and getting into people’s hearts. There’s an aloofness and quietness that means we don’t know much about Melania.” Trudeau “cannot imagine” what it must be like to be married to President Trump.Trudeau recalled attending the state dinner the Obamas threw for her son before President Obama left office, which she also attended. Trudeau was impressed by how “intelligent, bright and fierce” Sasha and Malia Obama were, “just like their mother.” The work the Obamas are doing now they have left the White House is “right and honest, they’re great people.”The role of the first lady is changing, Trudeau thinks. “Sophie does not have to be at Justin’s side while he campaigns, if she doesn’t want to. It can even be to the husband’s detriment if his wife is by his side,” Trudeau added, referencing Melania seemingly swatting away Donald Trump’s hand.“We don’t have to be standing next to our husbands beaming. What first ladies have to be is strong women living our own lives, giving support to our partners in terms of being married to them but not being their clone or servant, or responsible for what they are saying. It’s changing. Women have a different role. We’re not just serving. We’re going to be right up there at the frontline.”As for women in politics, “It would be wonderful if a woman could take the presidency of the United States. It would be the beginning of peace in the country. Maybe it’s far off. I don’t know.” Elizabeth Warren is her favorite candidate. “Who would not want Elizabeth Warren?” said Trudeau. “I do not have a choice. I do not have a vote. But I think she is honest, forthright, and has good visions of helping women gain equality and pay equity—and good ideas on most levels. I am watching from the outside. I have no stakes in the American election and nobody to vote for. Some of other candidates are great, and who doesn’t love Bernie?” She extended the middle “r” into a little, extravagant roar.How did Trudeau view about the prospect of a second Trump term? There was a long pause. “Scary.” Subject closed.* * *‘I didn’t feel comfortable in my skin. I felt phony’After watching her theater show, women in the audience have told Trudeau she has inspired and helped them by being so open. Trudeau has left nothing of significance out of the stage play, she insists. “It is honest, no question—every bit of it is the truth, because the story I am telling is about being authentic and realizing what is within yourself when you’re not doing well and then seeking help and getting better. So many people have mental illness, and just cover it up, mask it up, pretend it will go away or they’re smarter than it. No, we’re not.”Trudeau smiles as she says this, and looks away. She is a natural storyteller, yet also discreet, putting emphatic ends to topics she does not want to elaborate on, and ending answers with sometimes a sweet smile, and sometimes looking very serious, head turned away.Trudeau grew up with “four mean sisters,” and a “wonderful” father (James Sinclair, a politician and businessman) and mother Doris. “I had a good life. I was never labeled as having a mental illness. I had such a good mom, who made sure we ate, played, had balance.” Now, Trudeau tries to ensure “family legends” are made for her grandchildren through happy camping trips, “so they can look back on them later and say, ‘That was my childhood.’”She wanted to be an actress or foreign correspondent, because she thought it meant “getting into a plane and recording exciting things in Paris and Berlin. I was so unfinished when I was picked by Pierre Trudeau. I was very, very young. I had no idea where I was going.”When they met in the ocean off Tahiti in 1968, she was not attracted to him.“Goodness no. No, he was the same age as my mom. I was much more interested in the young water ski instructor. I did not have that kind of attraction to Pierre Trudeau. He grew on me. He was a beautiful man, so intelligent. We dated for three years before marriage, but secretly. I never had any desire to be in the public eye before marrying him.”She was almost 30 years his junior, and not a traditional first lady. She was from “a feminist generation, with a mother who had raised all her daughters to have their own opinions, exercise their own choices, and be in charge of our bodies and futures. We did not have to ask the churches or our fathers how we should live.” Trudeau did not want to be, as she famously put it, “a rose in my husband’s lapel.”She was also part of the anti-Vietnam War hippy generation, whose “gentle kindness” she appreciated. “I didn’t know how to do it,” she said of being first lady. “I tried my hardest. I did my best. I learned how to do it. You just do. I didn’t feel comfortable in my skin. I felt phony. I didn’t know what support to contribute. I knew I was supposed to be quiet, I knew I wasn’t respected because I was so young. I knew my opinions didn’t matter. These feelings kept coming again and again, and they were wrong feelings. That isn’t the way I was raised.”She left the marriage because she wanted to be “a whole person” for her children, “not part of a person.”Her husband thought he could mold her, she said. “He underestimated me.” She is adamant that their marriage was not open; she only met other men once they separated. She knows she was judged as a parent and person with her affairs and partying. She seemed to relish the fame and flashbulbs. Apparently not, she claims today. “People were not me, living my life,” she said sharply. “They were voyeurs. They don’t have it right. I don’t like people to be judgy. Everybody has to find their truth and struggle to be real, happy, and complete. The British paparazzi are the worst, the Americans second worst. We have never had any of that in Canada. I hated it. I hated them. They were invasive, rude, provoking. Greedy.”If the impression was that Trudeau was reveling in being the “it girl” of the moment, that was not the case, she said. “I wanted out. I didn’t want to be the person to be pushed, pulled, and hit by cameras. I was not allowed to be. I valued my privacy more than everything. I’m absolutely a freedom fighter, to be used, exploited, and abused. It offended every one of my sensibilities. I knew that beauty was the price of admission for that world, and learned much more as I got wiser about the meaninglessness of that world.”Margaret Trudeau holds her son Justin before she leaves on trip to France.Boris SpremoHer marriage to Pierre broke down, she said, because “he was 30 years older. He worked 14 hours a day. We had one hour together every day. I was alone all the time. I was struggling with undiagnosed mental illness. I also had three children in six years. As First Lady I was mostly either pregnant or nursing. My life was not as anyone imagined it was. We weren’t in the same place, not at all Pierre and I.”Trudeau felt “neglected,” but insists Pierre was a “gentleman,” who had a choice between leaving office to be with her or staying doing the job he was elected to do. “What choice is that? He had a big important job, which he was certainly not going to give up and come live with me. He carried on being prime minister for another eight years after I left him. “When you marry someone so young and your brain hasn’t stopped developing you grow out of each other. I impressed upon all my children to be teenagers until they were 30, to not have children till they were 30 have all the fun they could in their 20s.”* * *‘I lived for 25 years in denial of my mental illness’Her truly wild years came after she left Trudeau. “I had left my husband so my life was in turmoil. I had to leave him.” As she has said before, 24 Sussex (the Canadian Prime Minister’s official residence), was “the crown jewels of a penitentiary,” and in New York she was “learning to be an actress” with Wynn Handman, artistic director of the American Place Theatre. “People saw paparazzi shots of me in a pretty dress and my hair well done. That took one minute. Most of my life I was struggling to find balance and purpose, to try find the truth of who I was and what was going on. It took a long time. I lived for 25 years in denial of my mental illness.”Trudeau said of her affair with Jack Nicholson that she liked how free he seemed. They’re no longer in touch, but “I love Jack. I love his movies. He was a very sweet person and I’m sure he still is.”Studio 54 was “amazing really incredible. I used to go late at night, and dance for a few hours. Everyone was free to be themselves, express themselves. There were a lot of drag queens, a lot of great music, a lot of action, and a huge mixture of people form every walk of life. Then it was wiped out with AIDS. You turned around and everyone was gone: Halston, Way Bandy. Actors, artists, gone, gone, gone. It was the worst thing.”Margaret Trudeau dances with a busboy at Studio 54, 1980s.Allan TannenbaumShe married again (to real estate developer Fried Kemper, from 1984 to 1999) and had two more children. “Happily. It was wonderful. He wasn’t an intellectual. He didn’t have a big important job. We just had a happy life raising the five children. It was very good, but my mental illness, still undiagnosed and undealt with, and the death of my boy shattered everything again. The marriage wasn’t strong enough to withstand.”Of her grief for Michel, Margaret said, “It’s not natural to lose your child. It is a battle. We are not taught in western society how to grieve, how to get over loss, how to deal with it. We don’t even deal with the bodies. Some cultures sew the shroud, and in that time with other women women express their grief, finality, making closure. People don’t know to react to us when we have had a loss.”However, Trudeau also did not want to “give up to a life of mourning. You feel a bit guilty having fun when they’re gone. But wouldn’t they have wanted that, unless they were horrible? My son certainly wasn’t that. Nor was Pierre.” She has found “the right places” for both dearly loved, and missed, men all in her “very good spiritual world,” which is not Catholic. She left the Church (having converted to Roman Catholicism when she married Pierre), because of its attitude to women. Of the MeToo movement, Trudeau said, “It’s about time. But we knew the rules. Beauty was the price of admission to all that nonsense: the parties, high lifestyle. I think we have to move on and recognize that men have absolutely no right to abuse or harass women.” She herself has not suffered any sexual abuse or harassment, she said, “but many women have.”* * *‘After my husband died and my boy died I had no more hope in me’Trudeau has had three “huge, big, manic episodes” that were life-changing. “I have had much more depression that is life-changing, because it isolates you. Most of my life I have not been in the throes of mental illness but at times yes, it can pop up, be triggered, and aggravated. I had the first episode of clinical, really deep depression after the birth of my second child when I was living the most extraordinary, wonderful life. It’s nothing to do with that, your lifestyle, and who you are. It’s all in your brain. The good news is: if you right away get the treatment and close the neural pathways of depression, you will not relapse over and over again when life goes awry.”People with depression and other mental illnesses must get over the fear of being ridiculed, said Trudeau. “The shame is not having a mental illness, the shame is having one and not doing something about it.”Did Trudeau ever contemplate suicide? “Oh yes. That’s why I finally got the help I needed. After my husband died and my boy died I had no more hope in me. I didn’t do it consciously. I mimicked the last week of life, so no food or water, to a point where I was emaciated and dying in hospital. It took me five years to get well.” (In previous interviews she has described living with anorexia nervosa.)“It was an intensely unhappy time in our lives. I couldn’t swallow any more. When the doctor told me I was in the throes of committing suicide, I got terribly angry because I wasn’t conscious of that. I had four beautiful children and I was not planning to leave them. It was my brain. I had worn myself out battling my mental illness without any success, and then there was the grief, the horrible grief, and inability to find any hope, and the substance abuse. “All the things you can do wrong I did. And then I finally got the help I needed and took it on. And I took it on with a vengeance. It took five years of pharmaceuticals and cognitive behavioral therapy, which is the best thing in the world, and changing my habits, the way I eat, everything. The brain is amazing—it takes five years to heal itself after trauma.”Trudeau recalled suffering from psychosis, while in a psychiatric hospital. “It’s like not connecting to reality, not knowing why I would brush my hair or brush my teeth. With psychosis you completely unlock access to reason. You don’t have any reason. It’s not that you’re an axe murderer or violent person. You’re just nothing. You have delusions, not reality. It didn’t take them long to get me out of psychosis, which is a good thing about modern medicine.Trudeau dates her return to wellness to 2006, when she started working as mental health advocate. As well as this work, Trudeau has contributed to aid work in Africa.“I got my joy back. I started laughing again. I wasn’t going to be one of those women who just put black on and mourned my whole life for my lost boy because I had real life all around me.”Trudeau said she “monitored” her bipolar disorder now. “If I feel dark, sad thoughts start to pull me down to a place I do not want to go, I say ‘You’re not going to take me there’ to my brain, and start cooking, go to a movie, see a friend, go for a walk, because I’m not going there. I’m not going to ruminate and make myself unhappy.”If she finds herself getting too “high,” she makes herself go to sleep. “Sleep is my most important weapon. Everything the next day depends on my sleep. The reason I put my head on the pillow is exercise. I am so tired I have no choice but to go to sleep.”She takes “a tiny bit of medication, I always will,” and has a therapist (“Of course, don’t we all?”), but she said she was also fortunate to work around the brightest neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and mental healthcare workers. Their wisdom is always welcome.Trudeau tried to be “present” in her life, and recommends others be aware that feeling confused or negative can be “a warning sign” to seek help and not retreat. “I have been in both places: the depths of despair and depression which is so awful, and in the heights of mania and psychosis even. I have a memory that remembers every minute of everything. I don’t want to go back there.”* * *‘I have romance, of course I do, but I’m not going to have marriage’When asked if she is in a relationship now, Trudeau said she was “beyond politics, beyond men. I am quite single. I haven’t got time. I have had two marriages which when they were happy were very, very happy, and when they were miserable they were miserable. I have nine grandchildren and a lot of work to do. Because I’m bipolar, when I’m ‘out’ and ‘on’ I have to have time at home and be ‘off’, and be really quiet.” She laughed. “I guess there is not much time for me to wash men’s socks and clear up their clothes.”She has “no idea” if she will marry again. “I don’t think marriage is what most women think about at my age. What we ultimately want is to be free.” Does she miss sex, romance? “Not at my age, I don’t need to miss anything. I have romance, of course I do, but I’m not going to have marriage.” She laughed again. “There has been romance and there possibly will be again.”Trudeau doesn’t get nervous before performing the play, or emotional. It’s been great to work with strong American feminists, she said. The difficulty was compressing everything into 80 minutes; she had enough stories for four hours, she laughed. “I’m grateful to have a good memory. I cultivate my memory every day, by taking what happened, smell it, see it, put a color on it, and file it away.”She said she feels as young as she always did, and doesn’t fear aging—just losing control over her own life. “I am going to fight for my wellness. I am never going to have a geriatric assessment. Ever.” She laughed. “Death is death. If you don’t accept death you don’t accept birth. I used to fear death, but I don’t any more, because I faced it head-on and I know you can survive.” Trudeau paused. “I think that having a death wish is something we need to think about if we have bad habits, like smoking. Ask yourself. Is this a habit or is this a death wish? Do I really not want to live a whole life? Am I testing the gods? Am I trying to get myself sick?”Dealing with her drug and alcohol problems meant understanding they were affecting how her brain was functioning. “You can label someone an alcoholic or junkie, but you need to go deeper and find out why this person is the way they are.” One reason she hardly drinks alcohol now is that “you have to be cognizant of the amount of sugar you’re eating, and there are other ways I like my sugar.” Cannabis is no longer a big part of her life, though she swears by CBD oils for helping ease the pain of an injured knee.Trudeau is writing her fifth book, a mixture of non-fiction and fiction, and is selling the rights of her books to be made into movies (she has no dream Hollywood star in mind to play her).Her life, Trudeau said, is “a work in progress. Change is the only constant. That’s the one thing I have absolutely learnt. You can’t depend on anything staying the same. It’s not going to. Be ready for change. Be ready for transitions. Be ready. Courage sometimes means taking a step out of life to nothing, to find more. Some people don’t have that courage.”Did she? “Oh yes, I’ve always had it. That’s why Pierre underestimated me, thinking he could turn me into a nice little Catholic, servile wife.”Trudeau lives in Montréal, with three of her grandchildren just a few blocks away. “I had no idea grandma would be my best role,” she said, smiling. “I adore them. I don’t have to raise them—I just have to love them. I see my children in them. I see the past and the future in them. They make me laugh so much. They call me ‘grandma yummy.’ I give them car candies.”Does she feel fulfilled? “Oh yes. Every day I wake up happy and ready. We all have worries and fears. I think I have got mine in proportion only because I got the help that I got.”In 2013, in honor of her mental health work, Trudeau received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Western Ontario. To those concerned with their own mental health, she recommends sorting out sleep patterns if they are disturbed, because sleep is so rejuvenating. “Then talk to somebody who isn’t your mother, sister, best friend, who has a vested interest, who isn’t going to be shocked, hurt, or surprised by what you say. Get someone disinterested—a therapist, guidance counselor, someone outside your circle. They won’t repeat what you say or offer phony words to appease you.” Feminism is, indeed always has been, important to her, “not even as a word—just as in being a strong woman, nobody pushing me around and not listening. Strong women with strong voices. And I seem to be surrounded by a lot of women out there who have pretty strong voices.” Trudeau laughed again, heartily. Were those women’s voices sustaining for her? “Yes, absolutely. Let’s hear more of them.” Another merry laugh, and then Margaret Trudeau was off to her next adventure.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/GettyOn a trip to Mexico, Margaret Trudeau recalled smiling, “All I kept hearing from people was, ‘Your son is so good-looking, your son is so good-looking.’” She laughed. “I wanted to say, ‘Yes, but he’s smart too.’” She also laughed merrily when recalling the picture of Melania Trump, taken at last month’s G7 summit, about to kiss her son Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada. In the frozen moment captured by the cameras, Mrs. Trump’s expression, as noted by many on social media, appeared lusty, dreamy. Her husband President Trump stood, stony-faced, to her side.Melania Gazed at Justin Trudeau in the Perfect Red Dress. The Rest of Her G7 Fashion Was Pure One Percent.“Angela Merkel looked at Justin in just the same way and there were no pictures of her,” Margaret Trudeau noted.Still, Mrs. Trump seemed happy to see Justin Trudeau that day. His mother, today dressed in a white shirt, with knotted scarf, roared with laughter. “He is a tall glass of milk. Everybody likes to look at someone nice. They have met before. They have a friendship. He and Sophie (Grégoire-Trudeau, Justin Trudeau’s wife) like Melania very much. He’s always been my prince charming. But this is real life. He’s not just a pretty face, although that doesn’t hurt. I think he is one of the world leaders who can bring the world around to peace, and talk and work together in a democratic way—and there’s not that many of those kinds of leaders left.“That photograph was cute, but it was one flash, one moment. A picture tells a story but doesn’t tell the whole story. Donald Trump was right in front of Melania. She was getting ready for a cheek-peck I guess.”First Lady Melania Trump kisses Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau next to the U.S. President Donald Trump, Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, and French President Emmanuel Macron during the family photo with invited guests at the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, August 25, 2019.CARLOS BARRIA“He’s pretty good-looking,” his mother conceded to The Daily Beast. “He has also lived a full life, he’s also bright. He loves his family, and I love my grandchildren. But I have four children. My second son Sacha (birth name Alexandre; journalist, author, and filmmaker) is more revolutionary, more of a change-maker than Justin could ever be because Justin is trapped within politics, and Sacha is completely free.”Margaret Trudeau is both diplomatic and mischievous, very open and very discreet. A conversation with her flows, then can stop suddenly. She speaks her mind, but carefully when she must; she was married to Pierre Trudeau, Canada’s charismatic Prime Minister from 1968-79 and 1980-4. She left him in 1977 while he was still in office, scandal swirling after her. She was a first lady determined not to be stifled by the conventions and expectations of that loaded title.And now her and Pierre Trudeau’s son is Prime Minister, meaning Margaret Trudeau has made history in Canada: the first woman be the wife of one prime minister and mother of another. She notes she is like Barbara Bush in this respect.Trudeau, 71, is an engaging and expressive storyteller, as her one-woman off-Broadway play, Certain Woman of an Age, shows. Having toured other cities to critical acclaim and appreciative audiences, it will play for three days later this week at the Minetta Lane Theatre, where it will be recorded live for Audible Theater. The 80-minute show—co-written with Alix Sobler and directed by Kimberly Senior—takes the audience through a triple-mega rollercoaster life. When she was First Lady (she was married to Pierre from 1971-84, though the couple separated in 1977), Trudeau chafed against the restrictive nature of the role. When they married, Margaret was 22, and Pierre was 51.She smoked marijuana, drank, danced at Studio 54, and notoriously partied with the Rolling Stones. After she and Trudeau separated, she had relationships with men including Jack Nicholson, Ryan O’Neal, and entrepreneur Bruce Nevins (who bought Perrier water to America). She was a favorite subject of the paparazzi, who she claims to have loathed passionately then and continues to loathe passionately today. In her 1979 memoir, Beyond Reason, she detailed her infatuation with Senator Ted Kennedy (he denied they had had a relationship).Then, as Trudeau discusses on stage, tragedy brought her to her lowest ebb: the death of Michel, her youngest son with Trudeau, aged 23 in 1998 caused by an avalanche, and then Pierre Trudeau in 2000. She contemplated suicide. A diagnosis of bipolar disorder and treatment at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Center helped save her life, and Trudeau is now a passionate mental health advocate.Trudeau is “so proud” of Justin as a prime minister and father. “He makes time on Sundays for all of us. We go to a lovely country place where we get out the Lego, art, and homework, and there are cuddles and reading and being there together.”Does she think her son will win a second term? “I don’t know. Who am I to predict?” “It’s our family life—politics. Pierre Trudeau’s mantra for all of us was, ‘You have to contribute. None of us are businesspeople, none of us are greedy or after money. We are all trying to make the world a better place.’ Justin knew from the time he was small what his destiny was.”Trudeau said she did not know Melania Trump, and would not know what advice to give her as a fellow first lady who had also not played the conventional first lady role. “But I wish she’d talk to her husband. I think she’s in charge of an anti-bullying campaign. Perhaps she should share some of her wisdom with him.”What does she think of Trump? Trudeau sighed. “I raised four boys. Boys can be absolute bullies, exaggerators, and liars. But they grow up. I don’t know Mr. Trump. I’ve never met him, but my advice would be: ‘Be yourself. Be honest. Be truthful. Don’t be phoney-baloney. Just tell the truth. Don’t get caught up in lies. They’ll catch you out.’”In contrast, Michelle Obama is “one of my heroes. Her time as first lady saw her being incredibly pro-active—not only being a fiercely proud mother but also gardening, getting real, and getting down—and getting into people’s hearts. There’s an aloofness and quietness that means we don’t know much about Melania.” Trudeau “cannot imagine” what it must be like to be married to President Trump.Trudeau recalled attending the state dinner the Obamas threw for her son before President Obama left office, which she also attended. Trudeau was impressed by how “intelligent, bright and fierce” Sasha and Malia Obama were, “just like their mother.” The work the Obamas are doing now they have left the White House is “right and honest, they’re great people.”The role of the first lady is changing, Trudeau thinks. “Sophie does not have to be at Justin’s side while he campaigns, if she doesn’t want to. It can even be to the husband’s detriment if his wife is by his side,” Trudeau added, referencing Melania seemingly swatting away Donald Trump’s hand.“We don’t have to be standing next to our husbands beaming. What first ladies have to be is strong women living our own lives, giving support to our partners in terms of being married to them but not being their clone or servant, or responsible for what they are saying. It’s changing. Women have a different role. We’re not just serving. We’re going to be right up there at the frontline.”As for women in politics, “It would be wonderful if a woman could take the presidency of the United States. It would be the beginning of peace in the country. Maybe it’s far off. I don’t know.” Elizabeth Warren is her favorite candidate. “Who would not want Elizabeth Warren?” said Trudeau. “I do not have a choice. I do not have a vote. But I think she is honest, forthright, and has good visions of helping women gain equality and pay equity—and good ideas on most levels. I am watching from the outside. I have no stakes in the American election and nobody to vote for. Some of other candidates are great, and who doesn’t love Bernie?” She extended the middle “r” into a little, extravagant roar.How did Trudeau view about the prospect of a second Trump term? There was a long pause. “Scary.” Subject closed.* * *‘I didn’t feel comfortable in my skin. I felt phony’After watching her theater show, women in the audience have told Trudeau she has inspired and helped them by being so open. Trudeau has left nothing of significance out of the stage play, she insists. “It is honest, no question—every bit of it is the truth, because the story I am telling is about being authentic and realizing what is within yourself when you’re not doing well and then seeking help and getting better. So many people have mental illness, and just cover it up, mask it up, pretend it will go away or they’re smarter than it. No, we’re not.”Trudeau smiles as she says this, and looks away. She is a natural storyteller, yet also discreet, putting emphatic ends to topics she does not want to elaborate on, and ending answers with sometimes a sweet smile, and sometimes looking very serious, head turned away.Trudeau grew up with “four mean sisters,” and a “wonderful” father (James Sinclair, a politician and businessman) and mother Doris. “I had a good life. I was never labeled as having a mental illness. I had such a good mom, who made sure we ate, played, had balance.” Now, Trudeau tries to ensure “family legends” are made for her grandchildren through happy camping trips, “so they can look back on them later and say, ‘That was my childhood.’”She wanted to be an actress or foreign correspondent, because she thought it meant “getting into a plane and recording exciting things in Paris and Berlin. I was so unfinished when I was picked by Pierre Trudeau. I was very, very young. I had no idea where I was going.”When they met in the ocean off Tahiti in 1968, she was not attracted to him.“Goodness no. No, he was the same age as my mom. I was much more interested in the young water ski instructor. I did not have that kind of attraction to Pierre Trudeau. He grew on me. He was a beautiful man, so intelligent. We dated for three years before marriage, but secretly. I never had any desire to be in the public eye before marrying him.”She was almost 30 years his junior, and not a traditional first lady. She was from “a feminist generation, with a mother who had raised all her daughters to have their own opinions, exercise their own choices, and be in charge of our bodies and futures. We did not have to ask the churches or our fathers how we should live.” Trudeau did not want to be, as she famously put it, “a rose in my husband’s lapel.”She was also part of the anti-Vietnam War hippy generation, whose “gentle kindness” she appreciated. “I didn’t know how to do it,” she said of being first lady. “I tried my hardest. I did my best. I learned how to do it. You just do. I didn’t feel comfortable in my skin. I felt phony. I didn’t know what support to contribute. I knew I was supposed to be quiet, I knew I wasn’t respected because I was so young. I knew my opinions didn’t matter. These feelings kept coming again and again, and they were wrong feelings. That isn’t the way I was raised.”She left the marriage because she wanted to be “a whole person” for her children, “not part of a person.”Her husband thought he could mold her, she said. “He underestimated me.” She is adamant that their marriage was not open; she only met other men once they separated. She knows she was judged as a parent and person with her affairs and partying. She seemed to relish the fame and flashbulbs. Apparently not, she claims today. “People were not me, living my life,” she said sharply. “They were voyeurs. They don’t have it right. I don’t like people to be judgy. Everybody has to find their truth and struggle to be real, happy, and complete. The British paparazzi are the worst, the Americans second worst. We have never had any of that in Canada. I hated it. I hated them. They were invasive, rude, provoking. Greedy.”If the impression was that Trudeau was reveling in being the “it girl” of the moment, that was not the case, she said. “I wanted out. I didn’t want to be the person to be pushed, pulled, and hit by cameras. I was not allowed to be. I valued my privacy more than everything. I’m absolutely a freedom fighter, to be used, exploited, and abused. It offended every one of my sensibilities. I knew that beauty was the price of admission for that world, and learned much more as I got wiser about the meaninglessness of that world.”Margaret Trudeau holds her son Justin before she leaves on trip to France.Boris SpremoHer marriage to Pierre broke down, she said, because “he was 30 years older. He worked 14 hours a day. We had one hour together every day. I was alone all the time. I was struggling with undiagnosed mental illness. I also had three children in six years. As First Lady I was mostly either pregnant or nursing. My life was not as anyone imagined it was. We weren’t in the same place, not at all Pierre and I.”Trudeau felt “neglected,” but insists Pierre was a “gentleman,” who had a choice between leaving office to be with her or staying doing the job he was elected to do. “What choice is that? He had a big important job, which he was certainly not going to give up and come live with me. He carried on being prime minister for another eight years after I left him. “When you marry someone so young and your brain hasn’t stopped developing you grow out of each other. I impressed upon all my children to be teenagers until they were 30, to not have children till they were 30 have all the fun they could in their 20s.”* * *‘I lived for 25 years in denial of my mental illness’Her truly wild years came after she left Trudeau. “I had left my husband so my life was in turmoil. I had to leave him.” As she has said before, 24 Sussex (the Canadian Prime Minister’s official residence), was “the crown jewels of a penitentiary,” and in New York she was “learning to be an actress” with Wynn Handman, artistic director of the American Place Theatre. “People saw paparazzi shots of me in a pretty dress and my hair well done. That took one minute. Most of my life I was struggling to find balance and purpose, to try find the truth of who I was and what was going on. It took a long time. I lived for 25 years in denial of my mental illness.”Trudeau said of her affair with Jack Nicholson that she liked how free he seemed. They’re no longer in touch, but “I love Jack. I love his movies. He was a very sweet person and I’m sure he still is.”Studio 54 was “amazing really incredible. I used to go late at night, and dance for a few hours. Everyone was free to be themselves, express themselves. There were a lot of drag queens, a lot of great music, a lot of action, and a huge mixture of people form every walk of life. Then it was wiped out with AIDS. You turned around and everyone was gone: Halston, Way Bandy. Actors, artists, gone, gone, gone. It was the worst thing.”Margaret Trudeau dances with a busboy at Studio 54, 1980s.Allan TannenbaumShe married again (to real estate developer Fried Kemper, from 1984 to 1999) and had two more children. “Happily. It was wonderful. He wasn’t an intellectual. He didn’t have a big important job. We just had a happy life raising the five children. It was very good, but my mental illness, still undiagnosed and undealt with, and the death of my boy shattered everything again. The marriage wasn’t strong enough to withstand.”Of her grief for Michel, Margaret said, “It’s not natural to lose your child. It is a battle. We are not taught in western society how to grieve, how to get over loss, how to deal with it. We don’t even deal with the bodies. Some cultures sew the shroud, and in that time with other women women express their grief, finality, making closure. People don’t know to react to us when we have had a loss.”However, Trudeau also did not want to “give up to a life of mourning. You feel a bit guilty having fun when they’re gone. But wouldn’t they have wanted that, unless they were horrible? My son certainly wasn’t that. Nor was Pierre.” She has found “the right places” for both dearly loved, and missed, men all in her “very good spiritual world,” which is not Catholic. She left the Church (having converted to Roman Catholicism when she married Pierre), because of its attitude to women. Of the MeToo movement, Trudeau said, “It’s about time. But we knew the rules. Beauty was the price of admission to all that nonsense: the parties, high lifestyle. I think we have to move on and recognize that men have absolutely no right to abuse or harass women.” She herself has not suffered any sexual abuse or harassment, she said, “but many women have.”* * *‘After my husband died and my boy died I had no more hope in me’Trudeau has had three “huge, big, manic episodes” that were life-changing. “I have had much more depression that is life-changing, because it isolates you. Most of my life I have not been in the throes of mental illness but at times yes, it can pop up, be triggered, and aggravated. I had the first episode of clinical, really deep depression after the birth of my second child when I was living the most extraordinary, wonderful life. It’s nothing to do with that, your lifestyle, and who you are. It’s all in your brain. The good news is: if you right away get the treatment and close the neural pathways of depression, you will not relapse over and over again when life goes awry.”People with depression and other mental illnesses must get over the fear of being ridiculed, said Trudeau. “The shame is not having a mental illness, the shame is having one and not doing something about it.”Did Trudeau ever contemplate suicide? “Oh yes. That’s why I finally got the help I needed. After my husband died and my boy died I had no more hope in me. I didn’t do it consciously. I mimicked the last week of life, so no food or water, to a point where I was emaciated and dying in hospital. It took me five years to get well.” (In previous interviews she has described living with anorexia nervosa.)“It was an intensely unhappy time in our lives. I couldn’t swallow any more. When the doctor told me I was in the throes of committing suicide, I got terribly angry because I wasn’t conscious of that. I had four beautiful children and I was not planning to leave them. It was my brain. I had worn myself out battling my mental illness without any success, and then there was the grief, the horrible grief, and inability to find any hope, and the substance abuse. “All the things you can do wrong I did. And then I finally got the help I needed and took it on. And I took it on with a vengeance. It took five years of pharmaceuticals and cognitive behavioral therapy, which is the best thing in the world, and changing my habits, the way I eat, everything. The brain is amazing—it takes five years to heal itself after trauma.”Trudeau recalled suffering from psychosis, while in a psychiatric hospital. “It’s like not connecting to reality, not knowing why I would brush my hair or brush my teeth. With psychosis you completely unlock access to reason. You don’t have any reason. It’s not that you’re an axe murderer or violent person. You’re just nothing. You have delusions, not reality. It didn’t take them long to get me out of psychosis, which is a good thing about modern medicine.Trudeau dates her return to wellness to 2006, when she started working as mental health advocate. As well as this work, Trudeau has contributed to aid work in Africa.“I got my joy back. I started laughing again. I wasn’t going to be one of those women who just put black on and mourned my whole life for my lost boy because I had real life all around me.”Trudeau said she “monitored” her bipolar disorder now. “If I feel dark, sad thoughts start to pull me down to a place I do not want to go, I say ‘You’re not going to take me there’ to my brain, and start cooking, go to a movie, see a friend, go for a walk, because I’m not going there. I’m not going to ruminate and make myself unhappy.”If she finds herself getting too “high,” she makes herself go to sleep. “Sleep is my most important weapon. Everything the next day depends on my sleep. The reason I put my head on the pillow is exercise. I am so tired I have no choice but to go to sleep.”She takes “a tiny bit of medication, I always will,” and has a therapist (“Of course, don’t we all?”), but she said she was also fortunate to work around the brightest neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and mental healthcare workers. Their wisdom is always welcome.Trudeau tried to be “present” in her life, and recommends others be aware that feeling confused or negative can be “a warning sign” to seek help and not retreat. “I have been in both places: the depths of despair and depression which is so awful, and in the heights of mania and psychosis even. I have a memory that remembers every minute of everything. I don’t want to go back there.”* * *‘I have romance, of course I do, but I’m not going to have marriage’When asked if she is in a relationship now, Trudeau said she was “beyond politics, beyond men. I am quite single. I haven’t got time. I have had two marriages which when they were happy were very, very happy, and when they were miserable they were miserable. I have nine grandchildren and a lot of work to do. Because I’m bipolar, when I’m ‘out’ and ‘on’ I have to have time at home and be ‘off’, and be really quiet.” She laughed. “I guess there is not much time for me to wash men’s socks and clear up their clothes.”She has “no idea” if she will marry again. “I don’t think marriage is what most women think about at my age. What we ultimately want is to be free.” Does she miss sex, romance? “Not at my age, I don’t need to miss anything. I have romance, of course I do, but I’m not going to have marriage.” She laughed again. “There has been romance and there possibly will be again.”Trudeau doesn’t get nervous before performing the play, or emotional. It’s been great to work with strong American feminists, she said. The difficulty was compressing everything into 80 minutes; she had enough stories for four hours, she laughed. “I’m grateful to have a good memory. I cultivate my memory every day, by taking what happened, smell it, see it, put a color on it, and file it away.”She said she feels as young as she always did, and doesn’t fear aging—just losing control over her own life. “I am going to fight for my wellness. I am never going to have a geriatric assessment. Ever.” She laughed. “Death is death. If you don’t accept death you don’t accept birth. I used to fear death, but I don’t any more, because I faced it head-on and I know you can survive.” Trudeau paused. “I think that having a death wish is something we need to think about if we have bad habits, like smoking. Ask yourself. Is this a habit or is this a death wish? Do I really not want to live a whole life? Am I testing the gods? Am I trying to get myself sick?”Dealing with her drug and alcohol problems meant understanding they were affecting how her brain was functioning. “You can label someone an alcoholic or junkie, but you need to go deeper and find out why this person is the way they are.” One reason she hardly drinks alcohol now is that “you have to be cognizant of the amount of sugar you’re eating, and there are other ways I like my sugar.” Cannabis is no longer a big part of her life, though she swears by CBD oils for helping ease the pain of an injured knee.Trudeau is writing her fifth book, a mixture of non-fiction and fiction, and is selling the rights of her books to be made into movies (she has no dream Hollywood star in mind to play her).Her life, Trudeau said, is “a work in progress. Change is the only constant. That’s the one thing I have absolutely learnt. You can’t depend on anything staying the same. It’s not going to. Be ready for change. Be ready for transitions. Be ready. Courage sometimes means taking a step out of life to nothing, to find more. Some people don’t have that courage.”Did she? “Oh yes, I’ve always had it. That’s why Pierre underestimated me, thinking he could turn me into a nice little Catholic, servile wife.”Trudeau lives in Montréal, with three of her grandchildren just a few blocks away. “I had no idea grandma would be my best role,” she said, smiling. “I adore them. I don’t have to raise them—I just have to love them. I see my children in them. I see the past and the future in them. They make me laugh so much. They call me ‘grandma yummy.’ I give them car candies.”Does she feel fulfilled? “Oh yes. Every day I wake up happy and ready. We all have worries and fears. I think I have got mine in proportion only because I got the help that I got.”In 2013, in honor of her mental health work, Trudeau received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Western Ontario. To those concerned with their own mental health, she recommends sorting out sleep patterns if they are disturbed, because sleep is so rejuvenating. “Then talk to somebody who isn’t your mother, sister, best friend, who has a vested interest, who isn’t going to be shocked, hurt, or surprised by what you say. Get someone disinterested—a therapist, guidance counselor, someone outside your circle. They won’t repeat what you say or offer phony words to appease you.” Feminism is, indeed always has been, important to her, “not even as a word—just as in being a strong woman, nobody pushing me around and not listening. Strong women with strong voices. And I seem to be surrounded by a lot of women out there who have pretty strong voices.” Trudeau laughed again, heartily. Were those women’s voices sustaining for her? “Yes, absolutely. Let’s hear more of them.” Another merry laugh, and then Margaret Trudeau was off to her next adventure.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

September 11, 2019 at 09:36AM via IFTTT

[helmethunt]

Badass Motorcycle Helmets

Helmets may not have been popular back in the day because they were mostly clumsy and silly-looking. They had a negative aspect given to them. In fact, they were usually thought to be for extremely cautionary or nerdy users only. Today, this is no longer the case.

We can now find the most stylish of helmets that offer unbeatable protection against accidents and head traumas. Riding with a helmet is always your safest bet. Along with it being legally required in several places, there is really no reason not to use one anymore.

Keep your head intact without losing any stylish flare by purchasing one of the following badass helmets, which we have carefully searched for you.

Shark RAW Blank Badass Motorcycle Helmet

Shark RAW Blank Helmet (White, Small)

Street Fighter inspired

Quick Release Goggle System and Face Mask

Double pane anti-fog lens

Lightweight and aerodynamic

5 Year Warranty

from $209.99

Read Amazon Reviews

This lightweight helmet comes at a decent price, with four different colors to choose from: white, black, matte black and matte green. Designed to turn heads, this Shark RAW Blank Helmet is perfect for cruising and offers complete comfort. Shark are a top French based helmet brand with 30 years experience designing badass motorbike helmets.

It is built as an open helmet with a mask, so protection may be a bit limited. However, it will do for ordinary bike riding through town. It offers a quick pull-release function for faster removal as well.

The specific design gives you versatility to use it as an open helmet or a masked open helmet. It all depends on climate conditions and destination. The super-cool style will bring out a few compliments from people as well.

Pros

• Inspired by Street Fighter • It has a quick release goggle system and a face mask • Features double pane anti-fog lens • Lightweight and aerodynamic • It has a 5-year warranty

Cons • Not everyone is a fan of the style • Does not offer much protection in case of an accident

ScorpionExo Covert Unisex-Adult Half-Size-Style Matte Black Helmet

Sale

ScorpionExo Covert Unisex-Adult Half-Size-Style Matte Black Helmet (Matte Black, Large) (COV-0105)

Advanced LG Polycarbonate shell: developed exclusively by Scorpion, our industry-leading Polycarbonate shell is engineered to minimize weight and disperse impact

Retractable tinted sun-visor that eases eye strain instantly in varying light conditions. Comes with dark smoke installed and an additional clear visor for night-time riding

Removable front Mask with neodymium magnets

Block-off plates included for use in 3/4 mode

Dual density EPS

from $189.00

Read Amazon Reviews

Meet a helmet that is ahead of its time! Designed to disperse impact and minimize weight, this ScorpionExo model will keep your head safely in place. The simple yet amazingly fabulous style will please any fellow rider and non-rider.

The black matte finish means women and men can easily pair it with any type of bike. It features a retractable sun visor too, which helps reduce eye strain in various lighting conditions. Experience protection with style thanks to its industry-leading polycarbonate shell.

Pros

• Advanced LG Polycarbonate shell • Retractable tinted sun-visor • Comes with an additional clear visor for night-time riding • Removable front mask with neodymium magnets • Block-off plates included for use in 3/4 mode • Dual density EPS

Cons • The visor for your eyes requires the use of both hands to pull down • Allows more air and is therefore louder • Only available in a black matte finish

ScorpionExo Covert Unisex-Adult Half-Size-Style Ratnik Helmet

ScorpionExo Covert Unisex-Adult Half-Size-Style Ratnik Helmet (Phantom, Medium)

Advanced LG Polycarbonate Shell: Developed exclusively by Scorpion, our industry-leading polycarbonate shell is engineered to minimize weight and disperse impact

Retractable tinted sun-visor that eases eye strain instantly in varying light conditions. Comes with dark smoke installed and an additional clear visor for night-time riding

Removable Front Mask with Neodymium Magnets

Block-off Plates Included For Use In 3/4 Mode

Dual Density EPS

$229.95

Read Amazon Reviews

From the same maker comes the Ratnik helmet, which is similar to the one listed above. However, it has a Phantom design which brings even more attention. Experience the same great quality helmet with a more unique design and color variation.

Similarly, this helmet is also perfect for both women and men. Use the helmet in a variety of ways, such as ¾ or complete. Protect your head with the advanced engineered shell and get other features such as comfort and perfect fit. You are sure to stand out when wearing this!

Pros

• The LG Polycarbonate shell minimizes weight and disperses impact • Retractable tinted sun-visor • The front mask is removable • Block-off plates included for use in 3/4 mode • Dual Density EPS

Cons • More airflow results in a noisier helmet • The Velcro headband tends to be loose fitting

Vega Helmets Warrior Badass Motorcycle Half Helmet with Sunshield for Men & Women

Vega Helmets Warrior Motorcycle Half Helmet with Sunshield for Men & Women, Adjustable Size Dial DOT Half Face Skull Cap for Bike Cruiser Chopper Moped Scooter ATV (Large, Patriotic Flag Graphic)

The Rebel Warrior Motorcycle Half Helmet for Men & Women by Vega Helmets is the ideal motorcycle helmet for those looking for a more comfortable stylish helmet with its small, lightweight, custom-fit, and feature packed design.

OPTICALLY CORRECT DROP DOWN SUNSHIELD - Protect your eyes from sun, bugs, and debris while enjoying the sights with the easy to use, optically correct, drop down inner sun shield on the Warrior half face helmet.

FEATURE-LOADED - The Rebel Warrior skull cap helmet features a NEW size-adjustment dial system for the perfect custom fit for your head, an advanced moisture wicking liner, channeled EPS for increased cooling & safety, and padded quick-release strap.

SAFE - Meets or exceeds US DOT FMVSS 218 safety regulations and is engineered with a thick, high density fully vented EPS liner to greatly absorb impact so you can feel confident riding your cruiser, chopper, scooter, moped, ATV, UTV or street bike.

INDUSTRY LEADING 5 YEAR WARRANTY* - Your Rebel Warrior beanie motorbike helmet is backed by our industry leading 5 year warranty. See website for official warranty details.X-Small- 19.50 - 21.26 Inches.Small- 21.65 - 22.05 Inches Medium- 22.44 - 22.83 Inches. Large- 23.23 - 23.62 Inches. X-Large- 24.02 - 24.41 Inches. XX-Large- 24.80 - 25.20 Inches

$84.99

Read Amazon Reviews

Vega Helmets has been a trusted company since 1994, offering quality helmets at a reasonable price. This particular half helmet is wonderful to have, especially given the variety of colors and styles you can purchase.

Loaded with features and extras, the Vega Helmets for both men and women will leave you with your mouth open in surprise. This small and lightweight product definitely packs a punch and can be trusted to offer protection.

It includes a quick-release strap and allows for a cool, comfortable fit all day long. Enjoy your ride without worrying about eye strain or damage from flying insects, sun rays, or debris. Also get the perfect fit using a specially-designed dial system instead of Velcro.

Pros

• It has a small, lightweight and custom-fit design • Comes with an optically-correct, drop-down inner sun shield • Features a size-adjustment dial system • Advanced moisture wicking liner • Channeled EPS • It has a padded quick-release strap • Meets US DOT FMVSS 218 safety regulations

Cons • The extra few inches of strap may be annoying • The quick release strap can get a bit tight

Why It’s Important to Use a Helmet

Safety

The number one reason any motorcyclist should use a helmet is for their own personal safety. Helmets offer a barrier against any possible object that can incur damage on the brain, which is a very sensitive and vital organ.

Brain damage can result in numerous conditions, since it is the powerhouse of the body. Chances of survival during a bike accident are greatly reduced if the person has suffered any kind of head trauma. The only way to minimize damage to your head is by using a helmet.

Helmets have been known to save lives and are a vital part of riding safety – no matter the distance or the speed by which you travel.

Convenience and Comfort

Another reason is for convenience and comfort. Helmets come in all shapes and sizes. This means you are bound to find one that complements your personality and makes you look good in the process.

It is also a comfortable item to have along when traveling at fast speeds to protect your eyes from flying insects and debris. Having the added protection against the harmful sun is also a plus.

Most helmets come with a certain degree of sun protection for better visual quality and clarity, which is also a matter of safety.

Compliance with Legal Regulations

Not all areas legally require riders to use a helmet. However, it is best not to pick a fight with the law and wear one just in case. Helmets are ideal in almost every situation and you can always look for one that is comfortable for you to wear on a daily basis.

At the same time, it should offer you a certain degree of protection for those “just-in-case” moments. Taking control of your safety, following the legal guidelines and practicing safe riding is all part of being a responsible motorcyclist and citizen.

How to Know if Your Badass Motorbike Helmet is Reliable

Determine its Certifications

If you have ever examined your helmet, you may have found various stickers stuck to it somewhere. These stickers or codes determine the type of certifications it has received, if any, in regards to safety.

Most countries use a mixture of ECE 22.05, DOT and AUS 1698-2006 codes. SNELL M2015 and SHARP are another two types of codes you may see, depending on the country of manufacture. Your helmet should have at least one certification to be considered reliable.

Each type of certification comes with their own list of pros and cons, which can be found online in a blink of an eye.

Fit

Another dire factor to consider for a true reliable helmet is how well it fits on your head. Helmets should never be loose, resulting in a worse scenario than not wearing one in the first place.

On the other hand, helmets should not be too tight either. This is because they can restrict the circulation of blood, leaving you with a very painful headache and possible damage if worn for long periods of time.

A reliable helmet fits you like a glove – not too tight and not too loose. If you are experiencing issues measuring your head or finding a helmet that is right for you, consider getting a custom-fit helmet from a professional source. A properly fitted helmet is a life-saving helmet.

Maintaining Your Badass Motorbike Helmet in Top Condition

If your helmet is worn down, it is definitely no longer reliable and should be replaced. Maintaining your helmet in good condition requires cleaning with special polishes and wax instead of common detergent.

You should never handle it by the chin bar, which only degrades the padding and damages the straps. You can also use a scarf or bandana to reduce sweat and bacteria accumulation in paddings.

Purchase antibacterial sprays or wipes and use it every once in a while on the padding – just check for color fastness beforehand!

Conclusion

Now that you know more about helmets and the important role they have in safety, there is no excuse to go without one. You can also browse the selection of badass helmets available which will keep you looking stylish while protecting you from incurring damage.

Safety and the law are no joking matter and riders should do everything they can to be responsible citizens. Not only for their own safety, but that of others. Helmets are now so varied that you are sure to find the perfect badass design in no time.

  The post Badass Motorcycle Helmets appeared first on Helmet Hunt.

from Helmet Hunt https://helmethunt.com/motorcycle/badass-motorcycle-helmets/

[wallythayer]

5 Breakfasts From Around the World

Cereal and toast. Bagel and cream cheese. Bacon, eggs, and hash browns. If your go-to breakfast is getting tiresome — or you sense it’s not the healthiest choice — it’s probably time to reimagine what that first meal of the day could look like. To inspire you, we took a virtual trip around the world in search of healthful alternatives to many standard breakfasts. 

We discovered different flavors — some savory, some bold and pungent, some mellow and naturally sweet. We found dishes you might consider dinner fare, such as warm soups and flavorful veggies. And we embraced new textures, including delicate cured fish and silky soft tofu. But we stuck with our principles for healthy eating. 

“Most Americans build their breakfasts around carbohydrates,” says Julie Brown, MS, RD, nutrition coaching program director at Life Time. “Instead, we need to be building our breakfasts around proteins, leveraging carbohydrates as a side dish with the amounts varying based upon activity levels and personal health goals.” 

Whether you’re curious about a new-to-you food or eager to totally change things up, these globally inspired breakfasts are your passport to flavor and good health.

1. Scandinavia

Featuring healthy fats, quality proteins, and complex carbs, the Nordic diet is a cool-temp version of the lauded Mediterranean diet. Try a smørrebrød, an open-faced sandwich on sourdough rye, slathered with grassfed butter and piled with smoked fish. Other sandwich toppers include pickled veggies, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, and charcuterie.

Photos: Terry Brennan; Food Styling: Lara Miklasevics

Sourdough rye bread is rich in prebiotic fiber that offers prolonged satiety. Look for loaves from local bakers who use a bacteria-rich starter (rather than fast-acting yeasts) to stimulate fermentation, which can make the gluten easier to digest.   

Fatty cold-water fish, such as gravlax (cured salmon), smoked mackerel, or pickled herring, deliver satiating protein, skin- and bone-boosting vitamin D, and anti-inflammatory omega-3 fats that support optimal triglycerides and blood pressure for heart health.    

Micronutrient-rich root vegetables are an important part of traditional Nordic diets. Grated raw or pickled beets add natural sweetness to a savory smørrebrød. 

Skyr, a creamy Icelandic dairy product with origins that go back a thousand years, has recently found its way to U.S. markets. It’s technically a cheese, but its thick consistency is comparable to Greek yogurt — and it’s similarly dense in protein and probiotics, which bolster digestive and immune health. Skyr production removes much of the lactose, so it can be easier to digest than other dairy options. Enjoy unsweetened skyr topped with berries or a sprinkle of muesli. 

Red currants and cloudberries are popular in Nordic countries, but you can also opt for vitamin-C-packed fresh or frozen raspberries or blueberries — including wild blueberries. “The advantage of using frozen is that the berries are picked at the peak of ripeness and flash-frozen, which locks in their flavor and nutrients,” says Frances Largeman-Roth, RDN, author of Eating in Color. 

2. Middle East

Shakshuka — a traditional North African breakfast — features poached eggs in a bold tomato sauce. It serves up plenty of opportunities to improvise with other veggies, meats, and cheeses. Try it on its own or paired with protein- and fiber-packed freekeh — a smoked green, or unripe, wheat. (Check out our shakshuka recipe below.)

Photos: Terry Brennan; Food Styling: Lara Miklasevics

Pastured eggs provide naturally high levels of omega-3 fats, as well as vitamin D and enough high-quality protein to keep you satisfied through the morning.  

For the tomato sauce, start with canned tomatoes (in BPA-free cans). You’ll not only save time, but you may also get extra cancer-protective lycopene; some research has shown that cooking tomatoes increases the bioavailability of this nutrient.  

Shakshuka recipes vary by culture and region. Make this dish your own by adding your favorite nutrient-rich fresh veggies. Spinach, roasted red peppers, and mushrooms all add fiber and phytonutrients to your morning meal. 

Flavorful spices make shakshuka shine. Antioxidant-dense paprika brings heat as well as heart-healthy vitamin B6. Cumin has a warm, earthy flavor and is known for its digestion-supporting qualities. Turmeric adds anti-inflammatory curcumin to the mix as well as an aromatic, slightly pungent flavor.   

For some crunch and sustaining fats, sprinkle pistachios, almonds, or other nuts over your shakshuka. Top with chopped fresh herbs, such as mint and parsley, for a bright, flavorful boost of vitamins A and C.    

Made from roasted green durum wheat, smoky-flavored freekeh is not gluten-free, but it is high in protein and fiber, as well as iron, calcium, and zinc. It cooks up like quinoa or rice in a saucepan on the stove or in a rice cooker, and it’s a tasty whole-grain alternative to pita bread. 

3. Japan

A traditional Japanese breakfast is light on the palate but heavy on nutrition. While you may think of soup and grilled fish as more appropriate for lunch or dinner, they’re a great way to get phytonutrient-rich vegetables and muscle-building protein into a meal that, in the United States, can be too often loaded with sugar and refined carbs. 

Photos: Terry Brennan; Food Styling: Lara Miklasevics

Made from fer­mented soybeans, miso paste transforms a steaming pot of water into a delicate, umami-flavored broth — and offers a dose of digestion-supporting probiotics. To preserve its living micro­organisms, avoid boiling the broth.  

Sea vegetables, such as wakame and nori, infuse miso with iron, zinc, and calcium, as well as iodine, which helps optimize thyroid function.  

A pinch of minced fresh gingerroot adds anti-inflammatory compounds and a pop of flavor, while a topping of sliced scallions brings freshness and a hit of the anti­oxidant quercetin.  

For protein and essential micronutrients, add cubes of soft tofu to the soup. You can also enjoy a side of grilled fish, such as wild salmon or mackerel, slices of egg omelet, or shelled edamame. 

Skip the white rice and try nutty-tasting Japanese soba noodles. Look for soba made from 100 percent buckwheat, a gluten-free seed that’s a source of magnesium, copper, and niacin.

Round out your breakfast with a comforting cup of green tea. Shade-grown varieties, such as matcha, are especially rich in calming theanine, while sun-grown teas, such as sencha, feature antioxidant compounds called catechins that protect cardiovascular health.   

4. Mediterranean

The traditional foods of this temperate region inspire a light, fresh, mix-and-match breakfast packed with sweet and savory flavors that will keep you going without weighing you down.

Photos: Terry Brennan; Food Styling: Lara Miklasevics

Indulge in a small serving of goat’s- or sheep’s-milk cheese. These cheeses can be easier to digest than those made from cow’s milk because they lack A1 beta casein, which causes problems for many. Try tangy French chèvre, salty Italian pecorino (naturally high in conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA), firm and buttery Spanish manchego, or probiotic-rich Greek feta. For a touch of sweetness, drizzle with local raw honey.

Fresh fruits, such as figs, offer fiber, potassium, vitamin K, and manganese. Grapes, pomegranate seeds, and citrus fruits are vitamin-C-rich options that naturally sweeten your spread. For an added twist (and extra fiber), stuff Moroccan Medjool dates with soft cheese or serve them with Greek yogurt.

Nosh on several briny Sicilian Castelvetrano or Greek kalamata olives. These fermented fruits offer antioxidant phenolic compounds and also deliver gut-friendly bacteria. 

Fresh veggies help you pack in more phytonutrients at the start of your day. Nibble a few slices of roasted red pepper livened up with thyme, oregano, or other fresh herbs. Balance the sweetness of cherry tomatoes — technically a fruit, though considered a veggie for their flavor profile — with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil. 

For added crunch, go for nuts. Scatter shelled walnuts on your plate for a nutritional windfall — including omega-3 fatty acids. “New research has found that walnuts help boost gut and brain health,” notes Largeman-Roth. Hazelnuts, pistachios, and almonds can also keep you feeling satiated with the dynamic duo of plant protein and healthy fats. 

Include a few slices of a high-quality cured meat, such as Italian prosciutto, soppressata, Spanish chorizo, or jamón Serrano, for a protein bump that will help stabilize blood-sugar levels. 

Seed-based crackers are a great way to get grains. Look for gluten-free options — or even make your own. (For a recipe, see “Endurance Crackers.”)

5. Latin America

Traditional breakfasts vary among the countries and regions of Central and South America, but many people focus on satiating whole foods and eschew sugary processed items.

Photos: Terry Brennan; Food Styling: Lara Miklasevics

Authentic corn tortillas made from masa harina — flour made from dried corn treated with limewater — are a gluten-free alternative to flour tortillas. They’re also a source of lutein, a phytochemical linked to better eye health. 

Throughout Latin America, the beans from last night’s dinner often become the centerpiece of this morning’s breakfast. Their protein and fiber can help stabilize blood sugar and leave you feeling satiated longer. “Beans are also good sources of B vitamins and minerals that provide energy throughout the day,” says integrative nutritionist Michelle Babb, MS, RD, CD. 

Try a scramble of local, pastured eggs — a source of choline for better memory and cognition — as a main ingredient of your tacos. 

Creamy avocado is a nutritional heavyweight, serving up monounsaturated fat, fiber, potassium, folate, and vitamin K. Whip up some guacamole or top tacos with sliced avocado. Or cut an avocado in half, remove the pit, and mash up the flesh, then tuck your favorite taco fillings into each half. 

For a punch of flavor and texture, add fiery salsa; you’ll also get the hunger-fighting, metabolism-revving benefits of chili peppers. Make a quick one by tossing together chopped tomatoes, red onion, jalapeño, cilantro, and a squirt of lime juice. 

Add a side of fresh tropical fruit to your breakfast: Pineapple, mango, papaya, and ripe plantain all provide immune-boosting vitamin C and other antioxidants.  

This originally appeared as “Around the World in 5 Breakfasts” in the November 2018 print issue of Experience Life.

Get the full story at https://experiencelife.com/article/5-breakfasts-from-around-the-world/

[global-news-station]

PARIS: French police arrested on Wednesday a notorious gangster who had been on the run for three months after an audacious Hollywood-style helicopter jailbreak.

Dozens of masked police swarmed a public housing estate in the Oise region north of Paris in the early hours, nabbing 46-year-old Redoine Faid along with four other people in a raid on an apartment.

Faid’s brother Rachid and two of the gangster’s nephews were arrested along with the apartment’s landlady, according to police sources.

Two guns were found in the flat, while two other alleged accomplices were arrested during a simultaneous raid in the Paris region, sources said.

At around 3am, “I heard a racket,” said Alliou Diallo, who lives on the ground floor of the small building, three floors below the apartment where Faid was holed up.

“I saw around a hundred police wearing masks,” he said, adding of Faid: “I never thought he could be here.”

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe hailed the “meticulous” police work that led to the arrests, saying in a tweet that they had pulled off the high-stakes operation “without any clashes”.

Career criminal

But another local resident, Farah Ziane, was less happy — the police initially stormed her grandfather’s apartment by mistake.

“They broke down my 86-year-old grandad’s door, it’s shameful,” she said, as the elderly man stood next to her, looking completely lost.

Upturned boxes lay in the corridor, while the bolt to the door had been smashed.

A massive manhunt was launched after Faid’s daring July 1 escape, in which two heavily armed accomplices used smoke bombs and angle grinders to break through prison doors and whisk him to a waiting helicopter.

Faid, a career criminal with multiple convictions for armed robbery, was sprung from the jail in Reau, 50 kilometres (30 miles) southeast of Paris.

Around 100 elite police were deployed to track down Faid, who has cited movie baddies such as Tony Montana in “Scarface” as an inspiration and said he discovered his “calling” at the age of 12.

Scattered furniture and clothes could be seen on the floor of the apartment on Wednesday morning, along with police forensic gloves.

Faid, who previously escaped from prison in 2013 before being captured six weeks later, had been serving a 25-year term over a botched 2010 heist in which a policewoman was killed, though he claims her death was accidental.

Smoke bombs

The spectacular jailbreak saw two men posing as flight-school students, who had already taken an introductory flight, force a helicopter instructor at gunpoint to fly them to the jail.

The terrified pilot landed in the courtyard — the only part of the prison not fitted with anti-helicopter nets.

A pair of black-clad men armed with assault rifles then alighted and set off smoke bombs before breaking into the visiting room, where Faid was meeting with his brother who was later taken into custody.

The wardens, who were unarmed, fled and raised the alarm. But within 10 minutes Faid was gone, cheered on by his fellow inmates.

The helicopter was found shortly afterwards in a suburb northeast of Paris, along with the pilot, who had been beaten and was taken to hospital in a state of shock.

Several days after his escape investigators found a stash of guns, masks and a cement cutter in the Oise region where Faid grew up, which they believed belonged to his gang.

Faid narrowly avoided capture on July 24 and had to abandon a car containing explosives after he was identified as one of two people who sped away when police tried to carry out a security check on their car north of Paris.

In early September police carried out searches targeting the robber’s relatives, but made no arrests.

The escape, which brings to at least five the number of jailbreaks in France in the past three decades involving helicopters, prompted a heated debate about whether the country’s prisons are secure enough.

Netting has since been fitted over the courtyard where Faid’s helicopter landed to whisk him away.

The post Helicopter jailbreak gangster arrested in France appeared first on ARYNEWS.

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[giancarlonicoli]

Why do experts, CEOs, politicians, and other apparently highly capable people make such terrible decisions so often? Is because they’re ill-intentioned? Or because, despite appearances, they’re actually stupid? Nassim Nicholas Taleb, philosopher, businessman, perpetual troublemaker, and author of, among other works, the groundbreaking Fooled by Randomness, says it’s neither.

It’s because these authorities face the wrong incentives.

They are rewarded according to whether they look good to their superiors, not according to whether they are effective. They have no skin in the game.

Seasoned readers of Taleb will be pleased to see the so-called “experts problem” pop up in living color in Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, Taleb’s latest collection of essays on risk, rationality, and randomness. According to Taleb, dentists, pilots, plumbers, structural engineers, and “scholars of Portuguese irregular verbs” are real experts; sociologists, policy analysts, “management theorist[s], publishing executive[s], and macroeconomist[s]” are not.

The difference is that, when people from the first list are wrong about something, it’s obvious from the results and they suffer; they have skin in the game. Bad teeth, crashed planes, and leaky pipes are bad for business. People from the second list rationalize by substituting a different theory. They were not really wrong but just early, and, if they’re lucky, which is to say skillful at apple-polishing, earn promotion after promotion by not failing utterly. (Financial advisors can argue that the fiduciary standard is the most powerful tool for putting them in the first list.) Skin in the Game is full of insights like this, some recycled from his earlier work but many of them new. It is well worth the relatively quick read.

Despite the many good qualities of Skin in the Game, Taleb’s work, including the present volume, is often infuriating. He is too sure of himself, too unkind to his enemies, too full of bluster and obscure humor. Acting on his belief that some kinds of experts are worthless, he has populated the book’s dust jacket with anonymous tweets instead of celebrity testimonials. Here’s the first tweet: “The problem with Taleb is not that he’s an ass— (spelled out in full on the jacket). He is an ass—. The problem with Taleb is that he is right.” I agree.

Asymmetry, or why we are ruled by the most easily offended

In chapter two of Skin in the Game, entitled “The Most Intolerant Wins,” Taleb asks why we seem to be governed by the most easily offended. You have to refrain from smoking in the non-smoking section, but you don’t have to smoke (that is, refrain from not smoking) in the smoking section, which, by the way, is much smaller. Few people really care whether you say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, but the latter has become de rigueur in some circles. Almost all soft drinks are kosher.

The reason, Taleb explains, is that, for any given issue, there are a few people who care deeply about it and a great many people who do not. Those who care are spurred to action, even violent action in the case of religious or political passions. The rest of us, wishing to be left alone, rarely fight back with equal vigor. The results of this process include the increasing domination of Taleb’s beloved, multi-religious Lebanon by Muslims, for whom conversion to Islam is irreversible. Conversion away from Islam is at least theoretically punishable by death; Christians and Jews don’t much care if you leave the faith.1

In ancient Roman times, Taleb explains, Christians were the intolerant minority that pushed their views on the Roman majority. That’s how Christianity eventually became the official religion of the empire in 323 A.D. Times and players change but the principles of human nature remain the same.

Almost all soft drinks are kosher because it’s relatively easy to make a drink kosher. So manufacturers put forth this small effort rather than have two kinds of each drink, one for observant Jews – a fraction of a percent of the total population – and one for everybody else.

If this argument sounds familiar, it’s recycled in much more general form from Frédéric Bastiat, the great 19th century French economist. Bastiat wrote that, for any given government action, such as a tax levied to subsidize some activity, there are a few people who will benefit greatly by it and they will work day and night to see it enacted. The great many who stand to lose will typically only lose a few pennies and will put forth little or no effort to prevent it. Thus the number of rules, regulations, taxes, handouts, and special favors granted by government grows exponentially with very little acting to restrain the growth.

These are just a few of the asymmetries of daily life to which Taleb’s subtitle refers. Once you understand the principle, you’ll see it in everything.

Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup

The New York deli called Lindy’s is famous for its clientele of Broadway actors and comedians, and for having food so bad that it has inspired a bevy of jokes including the one that starts with, “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.” But, Taleb tells us, it is also well-known among mathematicians and other scholars as the place where the Lindy effect was first observed. This is the idea that the age of an inanimate object is a good indicator of its future longevity:

Broadway shows that lasted for, say, one hundred days, had a future life expectancy of a hundred more. For those that lasted two hundred days, two hundred more. The heuristic became known as the Lindy effect.

Likewise, Judaism, 3,500 years old, will probably last another 3,500; Scientology will be lucky to get another 60. Shakespeare will last longer than Stephen King. Even living things that do not age on a particular schedule, like trees, tend to follow this rule. It could be because the old ones, having survived, are anti-fragile, a concept from Taleb’s earlier book by that title; they are not just robust, but gain further robustness from exposure to stresses. Or maybe, like Shakespeare, they’re just better.

This principle is very powerful and Taleb applies it to many topics, with the Lindy theme running through the whole book. Academia, for example, sometimes resembles an athletic contest in which the hardest-working or most aggressive participants appear to win. It should not. “The winner is the one who finishes last,” said the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein; that is, the academic whose theories are least easily overturned, most enduring, had the best theories.

Investors would do well to understand the application of the Lindy principle to their enterprise. Indexing as a concept is about 75 years old; value investing is even older.2 These great ideas are unlikely to be overturned any time soon. Instead, improvements around the edges are the best we can expect. The latest idea for earning alpha, whatever it is at the moment, will almost certainly turn out to be a flash in the pan, easily arbitraged away by the time it can be widely implemented.

Why are there so many employees?

To illustrate how the principle of skin in the game applies to labor contracting, Taleb compares the behavior of two private jet pilots. Bob is a freelance contract pilot who is sometimes useful to your little airline but is at other times too busy hauling Saudi princes to fancy resorts to do the work you need done. The result, an occasional stranded planeload of people, is disastrous for your business.

The other, a pilot-employee – I’ll call him Bill – does more or less what you want, including working overtime in a pinch. Why the difference? Taleb writes,

People you find in employment love the regularity of the payroll, with that special envelope on their desk the last day of the month, and without which they would act as a baby deprived of mother’s milk… [H]ad Bob been an employee rather than something that appeared to be cheaper, that contractor thing, then you wouldn’t be having so much trouble.

Economics dictates that employment is just one of many ways to contract for labor, and a particularly inflexible one that requires you to pay the employee whether you can keep them busy or not. You’ve probably considered replacing employees with contractors in whatever business you operate or work. Yet there are a lot of employees! Taleb’s tale provides a clue to why: “Every organization wants a certain number of people associated with it to be deprived of a certain share of their freedom.” Employment is the only legal way to achieve that sort of dependent relationship.

What’s the connection to skin in the game? We tend to think of freelancers and entrepreneurs, such as Bob the pilot-contractor, as risk takers, skin-in-the-game players. And they are. But, as Taleb reminds us, “skin in the game is not [about] incentives, but disincentives.” You don’t want the employee to do what is best for himself in the short run – that’s what contractors do – so you set up an alignment of interest between his long-run welfare and yours. As an employee with a family and a mortgage, and considerable costs if he has to get another job and relocate, he has skin in your game.

That’s why we have so many employees.

Two very different kinds of risk

Since investing is applied philosophy, Taleb’s whole book is relevant to investors, but the most directly applicable part is Chapter 19, “The Logic of Risk Taking.” He draws the distinction, fundamental but rarely fully understood, between ensemble probability and time probability. (Like double-entry bookkeeping, this is one of those wonderful ideas that’s obvious once you’ve heard it; less so in advance.) Ensemble probability involves a risk faced by a population at a given point in time, such as that of a hundred people visiting a casino once, where each person can make a one-time, double-or-nothing bet involving his or her entire fortune. In that single visit, about half of them will be ruined. The other half, having doubled their money, will be perfectly fine.

Time probability, in contrast, involves an ongoing risk faced by an individual over time. Consider someone visiting a casino 100 times in succession, also making a double-or-nothing bet involving his entire fortune. In 100 visits, that person will be ruined; usually ruin will occur after just a few visits. No one who behaves this way will ever be fine.3

With ensemble probability, then, as Taleb explains, “the ruin of one does not affect the ruin of others.” With time probability it’s the opposite: once you get a sufficiently bad outcome, the game is over and you cannot become un-ruined.4

This distinction is relevant to investing because the risks investors face involve time probability, not ensemble probability. In most aspects of life, we are accustomed to thinking about risk in the ensemble sense: a football team has a 2-in-3 chance of winning a game, a disease has a 10% mortality rate. So we are familiar with that kind of risk, and comfortable extending the concept to other aspects of life.

But, in investing, the state of a person’s wealth at any point in time is contingent on her wealth at the previous point in time; returns are cumulative; investing exposes us to time risk, cumulative risk. We are not typically able to do the mental approximations needed to think about that – if the risk of getting in a car accident on the way to work is one in 10,000, what is the risk of driving to work 10,000 times? (It’s not 100%, nor is it insignificant; it’s 64%. You should go to work anyway.5)

Thus, we need to be very careful when relying on intuition to tell us about investment risk. Investing involves more risk than you think. We also need to be wary of extrapolating from the past (and avoid the temptation that comes from the fact that it’s so readily accessible). Paul Samuelson famously said that “we have only one sample of the past,” meaning that far more things could have happened than did happen; there’s only so much you can learn from studying history. But it’s just as important that we will get only one sample of the future! The return pattern that we will experience is just one of the infinitely many possible ones, and it will not be the one that we “expect” statistically; it will be something different, possibly very different.6

Are you an IYI? I hope not

Consistent with his famously combative persona, Taleb takes pot shots – frequent and vigorous ones – at intellectuals, or, in his acronym, IYI. An intellectual yet idiot (IYI) is someone who is beloved by the public for his or her knowledgeable airs but who is actually full of baloney, having no practical sense. Taleb considers Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now and a current darling, to be an example, and calls him a “journalistic professor,” not the psychologist and linguist that he obviously is. (I’m reviewing Pinker’s book, favorably, in an upcoming Advisor Perspectives.)

When one gets past the gratuitous insult, however – Taleb doesn’t think much of journalists or professors – he has a point. When a real expert strays from his own field, he is susceptible to making the foolish mistakes of an amateur, except that an amateur is likely to be humbler.

Taleb has not convinced me that Pinker is a wandering amateur; maybe it’s Taleb, not Pinker, who is wandering too far from the core of his knowledge. Intellectuals, whether or not IYI, must, when turning against their kind, be on guard against becoming AIYA: anti-intellectual yet ass­­­­—. (Pardon my French; Taleb inspires it.) At 16, I fit the description; I do not think Pinker does.

Dedicated to the one I love?

Book dedications are rarely interesting; they usually feature one’s parent, spouse, or teacher. But, in an odd twist that allows us to see (a little) into Nassim Taleb’s mind, he dedicates Skin in the Game to two well-known people whom I would have praised less lavishly. First, Ron Paul, “a Roman among Greeks”; second, Ralph Nader, “a Greco-Phoenician saint.”

In a self-referential joke, Taleb’s comment about Ron Paul reverses the dedication of his earlier book, The Black Swan, to the great mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, “a Greek among Romans.” It took me a bit of effort to find out, by searching through Taleb’s tweets, that he admires the Romans’ practicality:

As I came to realize...[,] the Romans were no-B.S. Fat Tonys; they resented grand theories and favored prudent and progressive tinkering. Much of what they built, from constitution, to Roman law, to bridges, to low income housing, to their literature, to their imperial administration (still around in the structure of the Catholic church), has survived 2000 years.7

Paul, a doctor and former congressman from Texas, is an honorable man who often stands alone in objecting to his colleagues’ expedient political follies. I’m not sure (and Taleb doesn’t say) why that makes him a Roman, but maybe an encomium is deserved; I would not have singled him out.

But Ralph Nader a saint? He certainly sacrificed personal income, and subjected himself to harassment, when making the case that U.S. auto companies were making dangerous cars; he had skin in that game. But Nader has a dark side. Despite having taken a poverty vow and very publicly living like a monk, he revealed a personal fortune of $3.8 million in his 2000 presidential election filing – not a large fortune but not monkish either. He has also founded nonprofit organizations that do research of dubious quality, and his latest crusade is a meaningless fight against share buybacks (an important mechanism for enabling investors to get cash flow out of their portfolios). Nader is an odd choice for sainthood.

Skin in the game everywhere

Like many authors who’ve discovered a principle that they believe applies in many aspects of life, Taleb isn’t shy about discussing every aspect he can identify. They include the role of looks in choosing a surgeon: don’t choose a dignified, handsome one – one who looks more like a butcher “had to have much to overcome in terms of perception.” Military interventionism? He’s against it, arguing that policy analysts who make war from comfortable offices don’t know what it’s really like on the ground and have no personal stake in the consequences. Religions, at least at first, demand extreme sacrifices from their adherents because their leaders know they can only hold the tribe together if its members can see that fellow members have sacrificed too: “The strength of a creed,” Taleb writes, “did not rest on ‘evidence’ of the powers of its gods, but evidence of the skin in the game on the part of its worshippers.”

This campfire-style storytelling makes the book seem, in places, more like a collection of loosely related essays, as I referred to it at the outset, than a coherent book. This approach has an upside and a downside. It’s easy to read parts of the book without losing the train of thought, since many of the parts were written as magazine articles and stand well on their own.8 The downside is that, if you try to read the book as a coherent whole, you’ll find it too full of interruptions and asides.

Conclusion

Taleb’s writing is nothing if not lively. What other philosopher, let alone investment writer, creates characters like Fat Tony, a worldly-wise trader who cares little for book learning; Yevgenia Nikolayevna Krasnova, a neuroscientist with three philosopher ex-husbands who writes a runaway best-seller called A Story of Recursion; and Nero Tulip, a thinly disguised version of Taleb himself? Taleb entertains, educates, and infuriates all at once, a heady combination for readers who score high on curiosity but frustrating for those who are just in a hurry to gather information and get on with it. This is Sunday afternoon, not Monday morning, reading.

Mercifully, Skin in the Game is also relatively short, unlike Taleb’s previous book, Antifragile. It can be consumed effectively by a casual reader and does not require sustained attention.

Skin in the Game is not Taleb’s best book – that’s Fooled by Randomness – but it’s his most accessible. I highly recommend it.

Laurence B. Siegel is the Gary P. Brinson Director of Research at the CFA Institute Research Foundation and an independent consultant. He may be reached at lbsiegel@uchicago.edu.

1 Some Jews say a prayer for the dead upon learning that a fellow Jew, especially a family member, has left the faith; this “punishment” has not done much to stem the rate of intermarriage or the decline in Jewish religious fervor.

2 Index funds, as a concept, started with Jack Bogle’s senior thesis at Princeton in 1951. Value investing traces its origins to Graham and Dodd [1934]. Graham, Benjamin F., and David L. Dodd. 1934. Security Analysis (first edition), New York: Whittlesey House/McGraw Hill.

3 The probability of surviving 100 successive double-or-nothing fair bets with one’s fortune intact is about 1 in 1030, the latter representing a number far larger than the number of seconds since the universe began.

4 I’ve further simplified Taleb’s already simple example by making the bet double-or-nothing and the odds 1:1 (that is, a 50% chance of winning, a fair bet). Taleb’s example involves smaller losses.

5 The right way to think about this is to start with the probability of not getting into an accident, which is .9999. One then takes this number to the 10,000th power, for a result of a (rounding) 36% chance of not getting into an accident in any of 10,000 trials. Thus the probability of getting into an accident is .

6 This is also the point of my article with Barton Waring, “What Investment Risk Really Is, Illustrated,”.

7 Taleb’s Facebook post of August 21, 2015, https://www.facebook.com/nntaleb/posts/10153269370143375. I’ve corrected a number of typos.

8 Or chapters of the forthcoming book were serialized in magazines – it’s hard to tell which.

[theaalvarezworld-blog]

Chapter One: A CENTURY OF FASHION

Key Concepts: ▪️The Social and Cultural conditions that affect fashion. ▪️Major Developments and trans, decade by decade. ▪️The designers and other innovator who influence fashion.

This chapter  explores the way in which fashionable items in a woman's wardrobe became accessible to a mass female market during the nineteenth and twentieth century thanks largely to the interaction of fashion requirements themselves and developments in pattern drafting and grading, but also supported by contemporary social and cultural change. The point is that fashion has always been changing and evolving- and at any time in the past, though it may be history to us now, that change was usually dramatic. there are many different ways to determine when one decade begins and the former one ends- sometimes it's a momentous event, such as the stock market crash of 1920 or the end of World War II, in 1945.Social, cultural and economic; these events are related to major fashion trends and developments of fashion of the period, and the designers and other individuals who had a strong influence at the time are noted.

SOCIAL CULTURAL CONDITIONS:

you may have heard the old adage about hemlines going up when the stock market is on the rise-and falling when times get tough.

Fashion Trends and developments: It's said that for every  action there's  and equal and opposite reaction, and we'll see how this holds true for fashion. During much of the nineteenth century, particularly the conservative  Victorian era, clothing was straitlaced and bodies were covered up. While the wealthier population had always looked to Europe  for aristocratic fashion design, the desire for gentility and refinement became a broader concern as Americans on the whole became more settled and established.

Women's dress became more settled and established. Women's dress was carefully chosen to show their respectability. the voluminous skirts of the mid-1800s were reduced to the slimmer bustle silhouette. The change from homemade to ready-made apparel was another significant trend. Woman also began working in factories and offices, the apparel industry responded to the demand for practical clothing by adapting the men's shirt for women in a blouselike form.

The 1910 woman took over jobs in heavy industry when men were drafted into the armed forces.

Paris was the epicenter for innovation, and many designers started their businesses during this period, including  Jean Patou, Coco Chanel and Madeleine Vionnet. America ready-to-wear manufacturers  rushed to copy them.

THE 1920s: FASHION GETS MODERN

  The Edwardian corset was meant to accentuate a woman's breasts and hips, while cinching the body at the waist, and dramatically curving the back. With the busk now being positioned straight down as opposed to inward, women were finally able to breathe a bit better. This takes the idea that pain is beauty to a whole new level!

THE 1930s: MAKING DO

After the Women’s Suffrage Movement, women’s fashions took a drastic turn. Frowned upon for wearing makeup, chopping off their hair, smoking, and drinking, these "flapper" women abandoned their female form and wore straight-cut dresses that were hiked above their knees and bras made specifically to flatten their chests. This look, created by Coco Chanel and termed "garconne" was also about comfort--they continued without the corsets, but also ditched other uncomfortable undergarmets to move more freely during the Jazz Age.

According to The Smithsonian, the cloche hat was actually invented in 1908 by a woman named Caroline Reboux. During the Jazz Age, it became increasingly popular because women loved the look of the hat paired with their Eton cropped hair.

THE 1930s: MAKING DO

Moving away from the Chanel "garconne" look of the 1920s, women of the this decade returned to more feminine shapes in their wardrobes. The puff sleeve was said to help bring back the curves of a woman’s body, while also helping to create a curve if the woman didn’t have one. According to Elizabeth Leese in Costume Design in the Movies, Joan Crawford wore a puff-sleeved gown in the movie Letty Lynton which popular department store Macy’s replicated--and they ended up selling 500 thousand dresses nationwide.

THE 1940s: WAR AND DUTY

Much of the decade’s fashion was based on what many call civilian uniforms. These clothes, marked "CC41" for "civilian clothing 1941," were made to be durable and affordable, not fashionable. "Rosie the Riveter," (a character placed on government advertising that was meant to recruit women to the workforce), became one of the most iconic images of the decade. Women rolled up the sleeves of their utility outfits, sported a cloth in their hair, added a bit of red lipstick, and went to work. Along with the lack of materials came creative solutions for clothing--women  repurposed old clothing, bedsheets and other scrap materials with patterns so their wardrobes weren’t so monotonous.

THE 1950s: NEW PROSPERITY

Social + Culturally:  Film and TV icons (Marylin Monroe, Doris Day, Grace Kelly) and Music (Elvis) Trends: Softer and fuller styles, Cardis and Poodle Skirts Influences: Dior, Balmain, Chanel in Paris while McCardell, Norell peak in the US, a variety in design with the likes of a structured and dramatic Scaasi to a “comfort for active women” designer Bonnie Cashin.

THE 1960s: TIMES ARE A-CHANGING

These social movements of each decade generated their own fashions with help from international celebrities. From England’s Twiggy and The Beatles and France’s Brigitte Bardot, women in America began trying new trends, one of which was the boot. Before this decade, the idea of wearing boots for style was unheard of--they were simply worn to overcome the elements. The go-go boot, named after the French word "la gogue" for happiness, was a calf high plastic boot and can be credited to designer André Courrèges. As the hemlines of the decade were hiked, the height of the go-go boot rose to meet it. By the end of the decade, the focus of the boot became more about the height and shape of the heel than the height of the boot itself.

Pearls

While pearls had been popular among upper classes since the Middle Ages, the '60s brought about fashion pearls that were much less expensive, usually made out of plastic. These pearls were supposed to convey social status, while also promoting femininity and class.

THE 1970s: FASHION AND THE ME DECADE

Women and minorities, equal rights, poor econ-omy, Mary Tyler Moore.

Bell Bottoms

One of the most popular fashion items in the '70s was bell-bottom pants (for both men and women). While bell-bottom pants had started their rise in the '60s with non-conformist youth, the '70s welcomed an era of mass-produced flared pants in a plethora of different fabrics.

Influences: From YSL to Anne Klein sportswear

THE 1980s: POP CULTURE AND EXCESS

The 1980s was a decade of self indulgence. Women looked for fashion inspiration from television shows, movies, and music videos and the fashions were over the top. Women were now becoming a large part of the workplace and were told that they needed to look the part. The "power suit" emerged as a woman’s go-to outfit for the corporate world, complete with immensely padded shoulders and a straight jacket cut. The thought was that the wider the shoulders were, the smaller the waist looked.

Influences: From Lacroix, Gautier, Yamamoto to Karan, Lauren

THE 1990s: FASHION IN THE INFORMATION AGE

Minimalism, Informality, Layering

According to Refinery 29, the platform shoe hasn’t always been about fashion. They were used to help royals walk through mud in the medieval times, boosted the height of Greek thespians on stage, and were actually outlawed by parliament in the 1670s! After many ins and outs in the fashion world, they made a huge comeback in the '90s as a go-to accessory for the popular British pop group, the Spice Girls. As soon as department stores saw the demand, they mass produced the item and had them on every girl that was willing to jeopardize her walk for fashion.

Influences:  Calvin Klein, Dries, Sander - “Internationalism” with fashion, McQueen to Givenchy

                                       THE 21ST CENTURY

In the '00s, fashion, and indeed the Arts in general, looked to the past for inspiration, arguably more so than in previous decades. Vintage clothing, especially from the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties became extremely popular and fashion designers often sought to emulate bygone styles in their collections.

The early '00s saw a continuation of the minimalist look of the Nineties in high fashion. Later on, designers began to adopt a more colorful, feminine, excessive, and 'anti-modern' look. Name brands became of particular importance among young people and many celebrities launched their own lines of clothing. Tighter fit clothing and longer hair became mainstream for many men and women. Rap music also had a considerable influence on popular fashion, in the early part of the 2000s.

Museums

The history of fashion is vast. My visit to a local museum only touched upon clothing from the 1750-1920’s. What about fashion from years before the 1750? There is a wonderful tour that the Metropolitan Museum of Art offers called the Fashion in Art, a tour led by Costume Institute that discusses costume history within the context of the Museum's collections of armor, textiles, paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts. An amazing way to see how fashion influenced or was expressed by various cultures starting from Ancient Greece to modern times. If you ever have the opportunity to experience it, I highly recommend it. And, when seeking information, doing research, or just trying to fulfill a curiosity you may have, don’t forget to visit a local museum, his-torical society, or library. You don’t have to live in a metropolitan area to find beautiful references of fashions. These gems are eve-rywhere.

[wrotbot]

Clove

Magic

Planet: Jupiter, Uranus

Gender: Masculine

Element: Fire

Astro Assoc.: Aquarius

Tarot Card: Star

In Spellwork:

Good luck, prosperity, friendship, stop gossip, protection, banishing negative/hostile, divination, love/lust, inspiration, enhances vibrations in the room in preparation for rituals or ceremonies.

      Burn clove or push it into a red candle and burn the candle to help stop gossip, purify the space, attract money or drive away hostile forces.

      Wear to bring kinship to social gatherings or mental clarity. Thought to protect babies if hung over their crib. Also thought that wearing clove would cleanse the aura. Put in sachets with mint to keep away melancholy and help sleep. To keep friendships strong, make a cloth bag for each person with seven cloves inside and wear it always. Can also be added to money drawing and good luck sachets. Clove oil can be added to oils for the same purposes.

      Clove is a visionary herb and is thought to help in ensuring that your intentions are realized.

A Magickal Pomander

You will need the following items for this spell:

An orange with an oily skin

A nail or knitting needle

A good quantity of whole cloves

Cinnamon powder

Plastic bag

Ribbon Pins

Stud the orange with whole cloves complete with stems, bud side out. It is easier to insert the cloves if you poke a small hole first with the nail or knitting needle.

Space the cloves evenly in a pattern that pleases you, leaving room to tie the ribbon. The cloves will move closer together as the orange dries out.

As you work keep your intent for the pomander in mind. Place the powdered cinnamon in the plastic bag, and shake the pomander inside the bag until it is well coated with the powder.

Leave in a warm place to dry out, which may take up to six weeks.

Check frequently that the orange is not going mouldy, but try not to open the bag.

Lastly, tie the ribbon around the pomander, fixing it securely with the pins.

Hang the pomander where you can both see it and enjoy the fragrance.

When you come to dispose of the pomander, throw it into a fire.

Say: As I return this to its Element Sun, Jupiter, Venus I thank you for your help.

Made in this way the pomander can last up to a year before its fragrance completely fades. This pomander is multi purpose. All the components are ruled by the element of Fire and the relevant deities and planetary influences are Sun for the orange, Jupiter for the cloves and Venus for the cinnamon.

Medicinal

Clove’s most well known medicinal property is it’s numbing effect, coming from the chemical eugenol.

Thought to have an anti-parasite function.

      Used topically for:

toothache, for pain control during dental work, and for a complication of tooth extraction called “dry socket.” counterirritant for pain and for mouth and throat inflammation. In combination with other ingredients, clove is also applied to the skin as part of a multi-ingredient product used to keep men from reaching orgasm too early (premature ejaculation).

Clove has rubefacient ( A rubefacient is a substance for topical application that produces redness of the skin e.g. by causing dilation of the capillaries and an increase in blood circulation.) properties, making it a popular remedy for arthritis and sore muscles. Used in a poultice or hot bath.

Clove can be good for:

relieve indigestion and constipation problems, used in tea for people who easily are prone to colds, relieve nausea caused by travel sickness, used by some to fight depression.

**Cloves can cause uterine contractions and should be avoided by pregnant women.

History/Folklore

      The name ‘clove’ comes from the french word for ‘nail’.

      Clove originally came from the Malucca Islands, also known as The Spice Islands. They were traded by Ancient Romans and Chinese. The Chinese chewed cloves to freshen their breath.

      Cloves were one of the most sought after spices, along ith nutmeg, many atrocities committed in their names. The Dutch wanted to monopolize on the clove trade so whenever they found clove growing outside of the territory they controlled they  would destroy it. This made them extremely unpopular with the locals, who had a tradition of planting clove trees in honor of the birth of their children, believing that the health of the tree would reflect the babies health. Eventually competitors were able to grow groves in other areas, including Brazil, Zanzibar, Madagascar, and Tanzania, taking pressure off the Malucca islands.

      There are many folk tales an myths of clove being imbued with magic of protection, love, burned to attract financial abundance.

It is believed that spice found in a ceramic pot in Syria dating to around 1,700 BCE may have been clove.

During the Han dynasty, it was customary for court officials to hold cloves in their mouths to freshen their breath while addressing the emperor.

      Cloves can be mixed with tobacco and rolled into a cigarette for a tasty and satisfying smoke. In Indonesia, this is called a kretek. This word describes the crackling sound of burning cloves. Many American cigarettes are clove flavored using clove oil, but a true kretek includes the actual herb. Generally contains 60% to 80% tobacco and 20% to 40% ground clove. Eugenol, one of the chemicals in clove, acts like menthol to reduce the harshness of tobacco smoke.

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