#régime MIND

[fitnessmith]

Régime MIND, stress sportif et alcool

NOUVEAU PODCAST 👉 Régime MIND, stress sportif et alcool. 🎙Pour écouter mon podcast : - Recherchez « la pause fitness » sur votre plateforme de podcast préférée - Ou rendez-vous en bio @fitnessmith, cliquez sur le lien, fitnessmith.fr/news puis dans « les nouveautés» - Ou rendez-vous dans votre boite mail pour les fidèles auditeurs #musculation #podcast #fitnessmotivation #gym #abs #shredded #minceur #regime #nutrition #dietetique #alimentation #alimentationsaine #keto #cetogene #vegan #vegetarien #carnivore #workout #france #sante

Dans ce podcast, nous allons parler du Régime MIND, du stress sportif et d’alcool. Nouveau ! FAQ 29 : Yakult, rapport de force, prot’ vegan vs classique, etc.   Sommaire du podcast : Suivre le régime MIND pour réduire les risques de déclin cognitif Un régime alimentaire riche en légumes à feuilles vertes, céréales complètes et poissons pourrait réduire le risque de déclin cognitif, selon une…

[girlactionfigure]

Not every story of heroism takes place on the front lines. Sometimes, the story is about treason......

As a student in Germany during the Second World War, Sophie Scholl (pictured) knew that Hitler's régime was lying to the German people about the conduct of the war on the eastern front.

Her fiancé, Fritz Hartnagel, an officer in the Wehrmacht, wrote her letters outlining the horrible suffering of the German troops fighting there, but also told her about the inhuman atrocities being committed against Russian civilians.

With other like-minded young students, Sophie joined a resistance organization co-founded by her brother, Hans. The organization was called the White Rose (Weiße Rose), and they wrote pamphlets calling for the end of the Nazi régime.

In February of 1943, Sophie and Hans were arrested by the Gestapo for blanketing the campus of Ludwig Maximilian University in Münich with anti-Nazi leaflets. Their arrest led to the arrest of another member of the group, a medical student named Christoph Probst, who was one of the main authors of the White Rose's pamphlets.

With German morale spiraling downward, German cities being leveled by Allied bombers, and tens of thousands of German civilians being killed in air raids, respect for the Nazi leadership was crumbling in areas of the country.

Against this backdrop, the Gestapo decided to make an example of Sophie, Hans, and Christoph.

Four days after Sophie and Hans were arrested, and two days after Christoph's arrest, all three were condemned to death by a German court, and executed by guillotine that same evening.

Christoph was 23, Hans was 24, and Sophie was only 21.

Later that year, one of the White Rose's anti-Nazi pamphlets was smuggled to England. The Allies made millions of copies of it, and dropped them from bombers all over Germany so the message of these heroic students would continue to spread, and would fan the flames of discontent throughout the dying Third Reich.

Historia Obscurum

[aedislumen]

I'm browsing through all the primary and secondary sources on the drama between Carnot and his first gf's family in order to finally make the post I've been planning for so long, but, oh boy, it's hard. Not only because these sources differ a lot one from another, but some of them are annoying to say the least.

Like this one here by Alfred Bégis:

The admirers of the Revolutionary Bloc have always presented their great men to us as the personification of all virtues and as impeccable; [men] distinguishing themselves for their probity, finesse, generosity and selflessness. Indubitably, it is so to show us models to imitate; but unfortunately there were some unpleasant stains on these models stains that was not possible to make disappear. What is left is to write a work, which will be very curious, on the virtues of the great men of the Révolution, of these men, who showed themselves so strict against the customs of Princes and Nobles and also very cruel towards everyone who did not share their revolutionary opinion.

I don't know what's more triggering: the fact that this is the introduction of a work aiming to show how of a monster Carnot was for having tarnished the virtue and honour of an underage girl (she was 28 years old), thus repeating old lies that her family started spreading in 1789; or the idea that a single incident - in Carnot's case it was a plain and simple injustice he endured because of the arbitrary judicial system of the Ancien Régime - is somehow able to completely erase all the other deeds that one has made throughout their life.

It's true that Carnot was exaggeratedly positively described, especially in works and pseudo-biographies from the 19th century. I won't deny it, it would be stupid to do so and allow me to say how obnoxious and ridiculous I find the way he gets praised in those works; but is Bégis really trying to belittle his revolutionary career through this specific unfortunate anecdote of his life? An anecdote that his limited reactionary mind couldn't even be bother to proper research and tell in the correct way?

Reactionaries never cease to amaze me.

[racefortheironthrone]

Warhammer Gaslamp: Peoples of the Old World

(For Introduction, see here; for Imperial Society, see here; for Geopolitics, see here.)

While the Old World of 2725 IC is dominated by the nations of Men, the non-human species of the world are by no means vanished - although all have seen enormous amounts of change over the last two hundred years.

Although they still maintain their traditional alliance with the Empire of Man, the Dawi of the Old World suffered badly from their pyrrhic victories in the Skaven and Greenskin Wars, to the point where they have begun a slow, inexorable demographic decline - not helped by increasing assimilation into the Empire. Increasingly, the Dawi have begun to coalesce around the master plan of the Great Reckoning, an effort to avenge every single Grudge in the Dammaz Kron in one fell swoop through the creation of an army of 100,000 Slayers. When the last of the Grudges has been satisfied, the sages of Dwarfkind believe that the Ancestor Gods will return and restore their people to their former glory.

Proving that it is truly an ill wind that blows no one any good, the shift in the Aethyr mentioned earlier had a profound influence on the Asur. With the increase in the concentration of Aethyric energy around, Asur born since 2594 have universally developed psykic abilities seemingly independent of their access to the Winds of Khaos, such that the younger generation now primarily speak mind-to-mind, can move themselves and objects with a thought, and much more that was once the exclusive ability of magi. Among many of the Asur, this is seen as a sign of the gods' continual favor, but these new abilities will need to be pressed into service sooner rather than later, as the blessed isle of Ulthuan is gradually sliding beneath the waves....

While their territories in Laurelorn have shrunken dramatically, the territories of the Asrai in Athel Loren remain quite strong in Bretonnia thanks in no small part to their political influence on Forest Law in L'Ancien Régime. As part of an increased level of caution (or paranoia), the Spellsingers embarked in a campaign of educating the entirety of their population in how to magically transport themselves between the remaining forests of the Old World and the spiritual dimension of Underhill, where magic remains strong and the verdant world untouched by hands of men, and to use the Glamour to move undetected in the human world.

[From the 9th Edition Imperial Encyclopedia]: Halflings (noun). A malevolent subspecies of mutant, destroyed in the Great Gene-Purge of 2614.

Life for the Vampire Counts has become increasingly more dangerous and complex. Driven from their seat of power in a vicious war that left much of Sylvania a faintly glowing wasteland of bomb craters and barbed wire, the survivors live on the run from the Imperial Plasmic Survey and the Schwarzmänner, although some vampires and thralls alike can manage to stay one step ahead via falsified blood samples and living in masquerade in the teeming throngs of urban society. Many of the surviving vampires have developed wealthy clients from among the nobility and the haut bourgeoisie, who are willing to risk the attentions of the state in exchange for infusions that extend their lifespans by decades. At the same time, the Vampire Counts are learning how to play politics by Imperial rules...

The Old World has changed, but the Greenskins have not. Although banished beyond the World's Edge Mountains, they still practice their traditional ways of WAAAGH! and generally making a mess of things. However, they have adapted to the age of gunpowder by trading with the Ogres of the East for the 'splody stuff, from the Orkish love of really big shootas and the Goblin fascination with bombs. The Greenskins might wear top hats and call their warleaders Nobz now, but they are still the mad, anarchic bastards who refuse to die.

Despite their defeat in the wars with the dwarfs and the mysterious explosion that engulfed Skavenblight in 2573 IC, the Underempire of the Skaven has adapted to their new circumstances in new and strange ways. While increasing urbanization has allowed the Skaven to spread through the sewers and subway systems of the Empire, they face new competition from the "Untervolk" and the increasingly impressive efforts of the human Technomancers. So instead the Skaven have allied with the Slaaneshi to sell warpstone dust drugs to the stupid stupid man-things, using the financial proceeds and the insidious long-term effects of warpstone dust to weaken humanity from within.

[eyeballcommander]

@detective-fez

(Previous) Fez chuckled to himself silently at Peeper’s micromanaging, he found The Hater Empire amusing, mainly due to the fact he couldn’t take their shenanigans seriously, which in turn made him feel a bit of pity wallow inside of his abdomen like a smoothed stone set in place forever stuck without give, that was until he remembered he shouldn’t get so empathetic of endeavors that he shouldn’t be sticking his face in, yet here he was, standing next to Commander Peepers himself. Now ready to get into the grit of his investigation. That sparked another idea of what Peepers did for fun, or perhaps he did nothing at all, too caught up in the stressors of his hot-headed life. Then, he was ripped from his wandering mind as he was asked for his address. He used both of his delicate palms to brush off his trenchcoat, then he slipped his phone out of his pocket to retrieve his email. He listed it out, which consisted of his name and a few numbers hastily attached directly at the end. “Um, yeah go ahead and email whatever to me.” He stated, using his pointer and thumb to adjust the side of his glasses so they sat more comfortably on his features like a horned bird perched at the very top of a sanfranza tree. After he finished his sentence there was a small silence between them, uncomfortable. He waited for Peepers to respond.

Detective Fez’s hunch was right. Even the commander's rare off-time was spent doing something related to his job or was part of his strategically planned self-care régime. (How many people gave themselves a grade based on how well they managed to avoid distractions during a relaxing bubble bath?)

Commander Peepers didn’t directly respond to Fez. Silence didn’t bother him. Or at least not when it had nothing to do with Lord Hater. Actually, he vastly preferred that to engaging in meaningless small-talk simply to fill the air.

After a few minutes Fez got an email from him instead. It contained an .imp spreadsheet file tracking the Skullship’s population count from month to month for the last ten years including incoming recruits & hires, casualties, other known deaths, likely AWOL cases, and retirements, along with a column calculating the difference between the expected and actual count.

Then there were simplified records for enemy armies based on headcounts and whatever a small bribe could buy from insiders. The last section was dedicated to a detailed statistical analysis on the Hater Empire’s population data and limited analyses on other armies. It had a clearly marked conclusion.

“Turns out the data was around. It just needed to be scrounged up and compiled. And as you can see,” Commander Peepers said without actually giving Detective Fez time to read it, “The results were inconclusive because any discrepancies remained well within the range of expected standard deviation.”

Then he looked back at him over his shoulder. “Not that you aren’t welcome to investigate anyway.”

[empirearchives]

The Napoleonic Wars

“All my life I have sacrificed everything to my destiny—peace of mind, interest, happiness.”

— Napoleon Bonaparte

Following the French Revolution of 1789, Europe was plunged into a series of great power conflicts which lasted from 1792 to 1815. Seven coalitions were formed against Revolutionary France. Napoleonic armies marched from Lisbon to Moscow; to the Scandinavian Peninsula and the Mediterranean islands. The conflict was global in its scale and impact. Major battles and massive changes occurred in Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

By 1815, several empires had fallen but the ancien régime had emerged victorious against the forces of the French Revolution. They would retain this power until the outbreak of the First World War, 99 years later.

[script-a-world]

Hi, I'm struggling to worldbuild a dystopia since I normally write fantasy. I'm not sure what to include in worldbuilding. Could you help me by suggesting what you'd include in dystopia worldbuilding or link me a dystopia worldbuilding template?

sorry for the awkward phrasing!

Utuabzu: The first, and perhaps most important thing to keep in mind is that both dystopia and utopia are literary devices for critiquing current society. The most successful dystopias had something to say about the culture they were written in. 1984 was written during a period of high censorship, in WWII Britain, and couldn't be published for several years after it was finished because it was considered potentially upsetting to the USSR, which was at the time an ally of the UK. The Hunger Games was written in the 2000s as a critique of the vast amount of reality tv shows and the pointlessness of the Iraq War.

The spray of frankly forgettable YA dystopia novels written in the late 2000s-early 2010s were forgettable because while they had the aesthetic of dystopia, they didn't really have anything to say about our current world. They weren't based on anything other than 'hey, wouldn't it be messed up if-', which just doesn't stick in your head like a dystopia that takes something in our current society and follows it to its logical, awful extreme. The Handmaid's Tale works because it takes the rise of Christian Fundamentalism and its inbuilt misogyny to the logical extreme, and given current events in the US that really resonates.

You also need to consider practicalities. People can live their lives in awful situations. In every dictatorship, no matter how oppressive or dysfunctional, people were still living their lives. Oppressive régimes collapse when the citizenry is no longer able to live their lives. Specifically, when the people upholding the régime are no longer able to get by day-to-day. Revolutions, to paraphrase Victor Hugo, ultimately, are always about bread. Ideals like freedom and justice and equality are just a nice bonus.

If you want your characters to be opposed to the system, you need to ask yourself why they're against it. People don't set themselves against an all-consuming society just for fun. Not really. They might play at being a rebel if there's little real consequence, but if there's serious consequences then most people will keep quiet until the system starts failing.

Common reasons for turning against the system could be falling through the cracks and seeing the hypocrisy of the ruling ideology, being the victim of the injustices of the system, having something to gain from the régime's fall. Or they could be part of an underclass that doesn't benefit from the system in any real way but is too beaten down to resist, in which case you need to ask what made this character's life under the system unbearable, when the rest of their group's life is terrible but bearable enough.

So, my checklist would be:

What is the dystopia critiquing? What does it want to say?

How does this work in practice? What do the people upholding the system gain from this? How is the system being upheld? Why are people putting up with this?

What are the system's flaws? What hypocrisies are in the underlying ideology? Why are most people not noticing them?

Why are characters against the system? What made them turn against it?

Is the dystopia going to collapse or endure? If it's going to fail, why and how? If it's going to endure, why and how?

Tex: To compare and contrast genres a bit, let’s look at J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth series (1930s to 1960s, ish) and C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia (1940s to 1950s). These are major establishments for the modern interpretation of the fantasy genre, but also contained many dystopic elements as a part of their narrative.

Dystopia in Tolkien’s works was featured as the aftermath of terrible tragedy, and the people who lived in the times following it - the falling of great cities and civilizations brought a downfall of peace, economic stability, and certainty in the future. There are as many characters that lived in the times transitioning period that an apocalypse incurs as those who have never known the heights their world had reached in terms of prosperity.

Dystopia in Lewis’ works was used as a parallel - the main characters are children that came from a London in the middle of war and the accompanying poverty and existential fear, where the fantastical world of Narnia occupies a narrative place of distance that allows the characters to see a world equally as devastated but whose devastation occurred, comparatively, in the far past. The trauma that the characters have from living in a dystopia allows them the skills needed to navigate the fantasy world and bring about several critical plot points that allow the story to progress.

In a way, dystopia is the inverse of fantasy, where time is make-believe. The difference is that the past is perceived with different forms of wistfulness - in a fantasy it is romantic, in a dystopia it is tragic. Both are full of speculation and yearning for simpler times, but full of emotion of what could have been, and what could still be.

Because of this, there is no formula for a dystopia, as it is a genre built upon other genres that borrows others’ tropes and gives them a bit of a twist from a removed perspective.

[tomorrowusa]

«I think the creation of a far right echo chamber has been a Russian project for fifteen years. So the idea that they would seek to promote extremism and promote extremist ideas in slogans and memes and so on – I mean – I think they've been doing that for years.

In fact, I know they've been doing it for years. I mean, you can argue about to what degree it was them and what degree it was kind of mind meld of them and the existing far right and to what degree it was just, you know, people were ready for that kind of stuff for other reasons. I mean, I'm not giving them credit for – it's not as if they created this thing, but I mean, they did help.

The idea that Western Civilization is collapsing, that democracy is a disaster, and that the only thing that can save it is an autocratic or dictatorial power or régime is an idea that’s very comfortable for the Russians because it's in their interest for democracies to be weakened and to fall apart, you know, because then they have free run of whatever they wanna do.»

— Journalist and author Anne Applebaum in conversation with Charlie Sykes at The Bulwark Podcast. Audio for the entire excellent conversation in the vid below.

The main topic of the conversation is the acceptance and regurgitation by Elon Musk of Putin's lying talking points regarding Ukraine.

But the conversation also covers things like the longer term symbiosis between the far right elements in Western democracies and Putin's Russia.

It's in Putin's interest to empower rightwing nationalist régimes in the West who would tend to ignore Russia's revanchism and blatant human rights abuses. He can't do this militarily (look at his disastrous war in Ukraine) but he has had success in boosting his dupes and allies abroad via his digital disinformation campaigns.

[dolphin1812]

Yay historical context!

I love this line:

“Every man who has in his soul a secret revolt against any act of the State, of life, or of destiny, borders on riot; and so soon as it appears he begins to quiver and to feel himself lifted by the whirlwind.”

That “secret revolt” isn’t surprising after the July Revolution digression. Most people had a reason to be unsatisfied with the political order on ideology alone, so when compounded by economic troubles and disease, it’s not entirely unexpected (in hindsight, of course) that 1832 was a year of protests. 

And yes, Hugo is once again a bit condescending here, but we should keep in mind that rioting is really unpleasant and he's trying to address those who focus on that. It can be violent and scary, and it can very easily have accidental victims – just think of Jean Valjean’s fear of being caught because of the political tensions. In trying to explain and defend the June Rebellion (the protests at Lamarque’s funeral), he has to return to the question raised in the July Revolution digression: what is better, “barbaric civilization” or “civilized barbarism?” He settled on the former in that digression, but in trying to convince his audience, he has to address the discomfort and terror caused by this violence. Acknowledging that there are the “greatest and the most infamous” in a riot is a way of recognizing that aspect while defending them as ultimately “great.” It's uncomfortable to read, but it was likely a useful rhetorical strategy when dealing with the "moderate" section of his audience.

The image of the “moderate” who compromises with a tyrannical peace returns again (here described as “lukewarm”). Some of the specific points raised by that hypothetical – particularly equating those who died young for their beliefs and those who died around middle age for their families – already seem a bit questionable, but that’s also due to Hugo’s power as the narrator here. He’s telling us what this hypothetical bourgeois would say, so he can control how convincing this person is. That people said this is true, but Hugo also gets to make sure this person says everything he wants to explore and possibly refute.

I think “riots” being too broad a term is actually a good move on Hugo’s part, as is the comparison to war. He measures war, for instance, in economic costs just as rioting is, pointing out that if it’s a matter of losses due to the violence, both should be judged together. That some riots (the seizure of the Bastille) are considered better than some wars even while costing more financially is also a good point, highlighting that causes and effects need to be taken into account as well. The War of Spanish Succession mentioned here was about the interests of the Bourbon dynasty, and it was seen as a costly war that drained resources from France and the throne. In the long run, the costs of wars like this one were held against the ancien régime.

[raisongardee]

"Il est dès lors symptomatique que, dans son premier projet de préface à La Ferme des animaux, écrit en 1945 mais resté inédit jusqu’en 1972, Orwell ait tenu à inclure cet avertissement au lecteur qui, d’une certaine manière, éclaire par avance toute la signification politique de 1984 : "D’après tout ce que je sais, il se peut que lorsque ce livre sera publié, mon jugement sur le régime soviétique soit devenu l’opinion généralement admise. Mais à quoi cela servira-t-il ? Le remplacement d’une orthodoxie par une autre n’est pas nécessairement un progrès [an advance]. Le véritable ennemi, c’est l’esprit réduit à l’état de gramophone [the gramophone mind], et cela reste vrai que l’on soit d’accord ou non avec le disque qui passe à un certain moment." Il ne s’agit évidemment pas de nier ici que le nouveau disque "woke" importé des Etats-Unis se distingue sur de nombreux points de l’ancien disque stalinien (ne serait-ce que parce qu’à la différence de ce dernier, il n’autorise aucune critique un tant soit peu sérieuse du capitalisme réellement existant). Il n’en reste pas moins qu’il relève clairement du même "esprit de gramophone" (et donc, si Orwell a raison, du même "désir secret [secret wish] de s’emparer à son tour du fouet") que celui qui animait naguère […] la plupart des intellectuels staliniens."

Jean-Claude Michéa, Extensions du domaine du capital, 2023.

[lafcadiosadventures]

Madame Putiphar Groupread. Book Two, Chapter XXXVIII

𝔇𝔢𝔟𝔬𝔯𝔞𝔥'𝔰 𝔑𝔢𝔴 𝔖𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔱𝔢𝔤𝔶

Boucher's la toilette, not a luxurious brothel as the one Debby is locked but fitting bc: trendy asian art, implied sex work as titilation, the obligatory pussy cat lying between the woman's legs while she fixes her garter, ect etc.

{team putiphar @sainteverge + @counterwiddershins }

Debby surprises the madame with a few gestures:

she leaves her door unblocked,

although an attempt to starve her was made (as Putiphar instructed) she shows her table is still full of fresh food from the first banquet she was offered. Bit of a power move from Debby, even while using a soft voice and feigning submission

She appologizes for the scandal she has made calls herself a fanatic, and blames her reaction on her austere, puritan education.

It's very effective. Madame totally bites the bait. It helps that she wants to believe her, it's less about the enormous pressure her bosses put her under but more about how Deborah is her exact type and the prospect of her having suddenly changed and becoming a willing disciple doesn't seem too good to be true at the moment, not under the lustorama vision eyeglasses she is wearing. (but I don't think we should underestimate the Madame, she is shrewd, has experience manipulating and exploiting people, etc)

And manipulate her is what she immediately proceeds to do, complimenting her for the destruction of the pornography and trying again the story of the former lodger who was a pervert etc. She asks her not to mention anything to “Gonnesse” and to join her for dinner, expressing concern for her pregnancy. The Madame states she wants Deborah's child to be as good as her step child (Deborah's spontaneous reactions are surely repressed, a pleasant smile and a nod here and there, she's just containing her disgust at the whole situation, she is playing her hand adroitly, given the fits of violent rage of her father, we imagine she knows how to conceal her true reactions, even if she is usually portrayed as an open and sponateous and passionate person).

As is the house's modus operandi, the Madame proceeds to change Deborah's clothes as if she were a doll (a blow up doll)(Borel's approach to this scene is similar to the previous sexual encounter between Deborah and the Madame. it's arousing for the madame and extremely violent for Deborah. However, since Deborah is pretending and repressing her reactions, strategically feigning pleasure perhaps -as we can deduce from the opening lines of the next chapter, since she fools the madame so well, too well for her piece of mind- her reactions aren't shown to us. This is perhaps the most interesting thing Borel does in this chapter, having his narrator withdraw from Deborah's true emotions while she is pretending. It's almost as if he wants us to see the surface of her act alone. Why? To encite us? To provoke admiration because of how convincing she manages to be, despite her immense repulsion for the Madame? We already know she is disgusted, we do not need to hear it again but the procedure has interesting implications. Deborah becomes a Copelia, or like Lucien Chardon, a human peau de chagrin, a magical object people can project their dreams and desires into.

So Madame continues with the dress fitting, and she obviously takes the chance to grope and stroke Deborah while she arranges the dress in the more flattering ways. (the dress is the color of burnt bread. Remember that poll by sainteverge that had all the gross/weird/off putting names of the trendy colors in the ancièn régime? Fun times. Would link it if tumblr had a functioning search function smh)

Borel loves his acid humor, he employs ridiculous terms for Deborah's body parts (perhaps echoing the euphemisms of the libertine novels, but deliverately avoiding being enciting imo. He calls deborah's ass her rounded stern, as if she were a ship, the dress were the sails and the madame its clumsy sailor trying to command it. Her fidgety movements he adds, resemble those of children playing la tour prends garde, it's a burlesque registry of speech miles away from erotica. However, Deborah's shoulderblades also form under the madame's touch a valley interrupted by the ravine of the vertebrae. (interesting language, not necesarily erotic, but still sensual. the geographical/topographical terms echoe the idea of Deborah as a personification of her country, and maybe it's just me but the vertebrae mention make it a teensy bit morbid andrea vesalius core. Interesting and unexpected change of registry) When madame is done with her grotesque dress fitting, she brings Deborah a capse (a latin word in use in french. the root of the word caise, a case, used according to my editor to store scrolls, not jewlry. capse->diminutive capsula, etc) the case contains the portrait of the king in a trendy watercolor miniature. The Madame names him as Gonesse-but Debby knows better... and surely the king's ephigy was know by the people? via coins? art, etc?? does it make sense for the madame to lie like this?) -. The portrait depicts Pharao dressed as a “gallant adventurer” The madame, emebllishing the story bc she underestimates Deborah, or reproducing supersitions of the day re: divine powers of Royals, assures Gonesse has imbued the medalion with magical powers. It is to lie on her bosom until he can lie on it himself. Deborah claims to be unworthy of the excessive attentions of the “count”.

The Madame asks what Deborah thinks of him. Deborah continues to humour her and calls him handsome (Louis XV is represented as a handsome, plump and androgynous as a young man and in his fourties as an average to handsome man, the portraits surely flattered him, but even if she saw no Patrick Fitz Whyte represented, Deborah doesn't have to be LYING WILDLY here, it's not like being shown a hapsburg by velasquez as your future patron in bed.

But she surely is... overdoing it a bit when she says Gonesse has a regard full of friendlyness, a noble and apealing figure. The Madame comes undone. She cannot anymore with Debby's adorableness. We assume the groping resumes as the Madame beckons her calling her divine and an amour. The curtain falls, end scene.

[josefavomjaaga]

Bakerman Soult

Recently, somebody wondered about Soult’s brief but much talked-about attempt at becoming a baker. I believe the one source we have for this is the book "Histoire anecdotique de Jean-de-dieu Soult" by Anacharsis Combes, a friend of the family and local historian from the Tarn region. It was written only after Soult’s death, and presumably with lots of input from Soult’s friends and relatives. So, the story is probably family lore.

Young Jean-de-dieu had joined the military at the age of sixteen (barely) already in 1785 (either February or April), i.e., under the Ancien Régime. Before the Revolution, however, as a mere commoner he had no chance of ever rising very high in rank, and so after two years, he had a change of heart.

Jean-de-Dieu Soult, a sergeant in the Royal Infantry, however, did not find the benefits of a military career that he had hoped for. At that time, the prospects were very limited. The lower classes did provide non-commissioned officers, but the higher ranks were the almost exclusive preserve of the nobility or of a few bourgeois who bought them at a premium. It is not surprising, therefore, to see the children of the people, after a few years of service, return to their families and remain there for good. Such was the intention of Jean-de-Dieu Soult in 1787. Having come to Saint-Amans to see his mother, he expressed his desire not to leave her again, and told her of his plan to establish himself with her as a baker.

Because where do children go, when they are at a loss? To mum, of course. As a matter of fact, after the battle of Waterloo, with ultra-royalists on the lookout for him, where did Soult try to go? Home to mum! (Yes, his mother Brigitte was still alive in 1815.)

All his arrangements had already been made; he had just dealt with the construction of an oven; all that remained was for him to get clear with the captain who was responsible for his person. For this purpose he went back to the castle of Larembergue. There the difficulties began. The officer who, like all the others sent on half-yearly duty, was obliged, on returning to the corps, to bring back two enlisted men or to pay one hundred francs for each one, refused to break the engagement; but he promised to speak to the mother of the young sergeant, in order to prove to her that the military state was suitable for her son. Some friends intervened; one of them said to him: "But, you wretch, you want to stay here, we are all starving!" Another told him about the precarious state of his family, which he was alleviating by moving away. A third finally spoke to him in the name of his personal qualities, of his very incomplete education undoubtedly, but suitable to make of him something other than a lousy village labourer; he reminded him above all of his beginnings, which he had already made with a certain distinction. Soult made up his mind; the treaty was maintained and he left for the army, retaining for the rest of his life a perfect gratitude for the interest shown to him by his enlisting captain, Monsieur Gazel de Larembergue.

And that was that. Seems Soult’s promising career at the oven was already over before it had even begun.

[girlactionfigure]

Not every story of heroism takes place on the front lines. Sometimes, the story is about treason......

As a student in Germany during the Second World War, Sophie Scholl (pictured) knew that Hitler's régime was lying to the German people about the conduct of the war on the eastern front.

Her fiancé, Fritz Hartnagel, an officer in the Wehrmacht, wrote her letters outlining the horrible suffering of the German troops fighting there, but also told her about the inhuman atrocities being committed against Russian civilians.

With other like-minded young students, Sophie joined a resistance organization co-founded by her brother, Hans. The organization was called the White Rose (Weiße Rose), and they wrote pamphlets calling for the end of the Nazi régime.

In February of 1943, Sophie and Hans were arrested by the Gestapo for blanketing the campus of Ludwig Maximilian University in Münich with anti-Nazi leaflets. Their arrest led to the arrest of another member of the group, a medical student named Christoph Probst, who was one of the main authors of the White Rose's pamphlets.

With German morale spiraling downward, German cities being leveled by Allied bombers, and tens of thousands of German civilians being killed in air raids, respect for the Nazi leadership was crumbling in areas of the country.

Against this backdrop, the Gestapo decided to make an example of Sophie, Hans, and Christoph.

Four days after Sophie and Hans were arrested, and two days after Christoph's arrest, all three were condemned to death by a German court, and executed by guillotine that same evening.

Christoph was 23, Hans was 24, and Sophie was only 21.

Later that year, one of the White Rose's anti-Nazi pamphlets was smuggled to England. The Allies made millions of copies of it, and dropped them from bombers all over Germany so the message of these heroic students would continue to spread, and would fan the flames of discontent throughout the dying Third Reich.

Historia Obscurum

[whocookedthelastsupper]

“With woman's every natural function seen as a life-threatening crisis, the rational scientific male could not repose much confidence in such a frail vessel. Woman, it now emerged under the scrutiny of pseudo-biology, was a creature hopelessly fragile not only in body, but above all in what the craniologists had grudgingly conceded her by way of mind. Nervous disorders and mental instability were her lot, but there could be no hope of remedying her deficiency in the little gray cells by education: any learning for young ladies risked "excessive stimulation" to their feeble mental parts and was incalculably dangerous. The philosopher Herbert Spencer, previously savaged by Carlyle as "the greatest ass in Christendom" for his part in the evolution debate, was foremost among those who took it upon themselves to trumpet the ill-effects of "brain-forcing" upon young women: diathesis (nervousness), chlorosis ("green-sickness" or anemia), hysteria, stunted growth and excessive thinness were the least they, should expect if they so much as touched a copy of Catullus. Nor was this all. Overtaxing the brain, Spencer warned, "produces... flat-chested girls: consequently those who "survive their high-pressure education” could never "bear a well-developed infant."

Spencer was not the only man of his time to fear that the price of rescuing women from their "natural" ignorance would be "a puny, enfeebled and sickly race." Yet the creature who was too weak-minded even to be educated out of it, could hardly be deemed fit for anything else. Women's imputed physical and mental frailty thus became the grounds for refusing her any civil or legal rights, indeed any change from the "state of nature" in which she dwelt. As late as 1907, an English earl blocked a bill to allow women limited and local voting rights in these terms:

“I think they are too hysterical, they are too much disposed to be guided by feeling and not by cold reason, and... to refuse any kind of compromise. I do not think women are safe guides in government, they are very unsafe guides.”

The speaker was suppor wider another of the leading lights of the British aristocracy in the is der terms of naked masculine self interest: “What is to be feared is that if we take away the position which voman has hitherto occupied, which has come to her from no arich cil education but from nature, if we transfer her from domestic into political life... the homes and happiness of every member of the the homes and happiness of every member of the community will be worsened by the transference." Although plainly not overburdened himself with "artificial" or any other kind of education, his lordship was quite clear on the main point at issue: any attempt by women to escape from their enforced inferiority could only damage the fabric of society, and must therefore be resisted.

Yet for a state of nature, women's lowly status and civil death took a good deal of social and cultural force to maintain. Along with the revolution of industrialism and the victory of science over common sense and reason, the nineteenth-century law became the third and most openly oppressive of the enemies of female emancipation.

Nowhere was this process more blatant than in France, where the Code Napoléon was hailed as the most advanced legal monument of its age; history does not record whether this enthusiasm was in ignorance or in recognition of the fact that this was the most comprehensively repressive package of legislation against women of all time. Under the ancien régime, married women had enjoyed wide free-doms, control over their own property, and an influential place in their community, rights that the Revolution had only widened, by facilitating divorce, for example. Now, in his determination to rebuild the laws of France on a Roman, or rather Corsican, moral base, Napoleon firmly legislated to ensure woman's total subordination to man, and her slavish obedience to all his wishes.

There can be no doubt of the personal edge on Napoleon's legislative blade. "Women should stick to knitting," he informed the son of Madame de Staël, who, whatever else, was not famous for her skill with the needles. Napoleon's attitude to women consistently betrayed such narrow, reactionary, crude and sexist views, along with the determination that just as he was to be sole authority in the state, so every male should have total control over his family. Pushing his "reforms" through the council of state Napoleon pronounced, “the husband must possess the absolute power and right to say to his wife, Madam, you shall not go to the theater, you shall not receive such and such a person; for the children you will bear shall be mine.” Equally, every woman "must be made to realize that on leaving the tutelage of her family, she passes under that of her husband."

To this end, the Code Napoléon equipped every husband with extraordinary, unprecedented, indeed despotic powers. He could compel his wife either to reside in or to move to any place he decreed; everything she ever owned or earned became his; in divorce, he kept the children, the house and all the goods, for she had no right in their common property; in adultery, she could be sent to prison for up to two years, while he escaped scot free. Frenchwomen had been better off in the Dark Ages than they were after Napoleon's Civil Code became law in 1804. Their modern tragedy was to be repeated with a Greek inevitability in countless other corners of the globe as the new model code, along with the metric system, swept most of the civilized world.

Yet even as the forces of patriarchy were vigorously regrouping within these very structures of oppression lay the seeds of their eventual defeat. The revolution of industrialization made women's search for a new identity and purpose both urgent and inescapable, it had also unwittingly put into her hands the means by which to achieve it. The very success of the Industrial Revolution in creating wealth, created also the idle wife as the badge of her husband's social succes. The production of surplus goods and surplus money led inevitably to the production of surplus women. It created, too, a concept entirely new in historical terms, the idea that women should be entirely supported by men. Large numbers of the females of the rising bourgeoisie thus found themselves lodged in a limbo somewhere between china doll and household pet, relegated to the classic "little woman" role still recognizable today. Deprived of work and significance, the idle wife was offered instead the newfangled flummery of Mrs. Bee-ton's "domestic arts"" Emily Post on etiquette, and The Language of Flowers.

As time went on, however, "this strange masculine aberration that required women to be useless." in the words of historian Amaury de Riencourt, "proved to be a mistake of the first order": "the historical record shows that women, one way or another, always have to be at the center of things and will not for long stand being made idle or put on the shelf." This enforced inactivity gave the "lady of leisure" the time to question her enervating and demoralizing lifestyle, her dependence on her man for money, status and meaning. When this brutally stupid and unnatural way of life was also forced down women's throats as the highest form of existence any female could hope to attain, the conflict between what life was and what it was supposed to be eventually became unmanageable.

At the other end of the scale, the working woman had no leisure question her lot. Wholly subject to her lord and master, she groaned under the newly emerging "double burden" of working full-time by day, and carrying out the full load of all the household chores in whatever time was left at night.”

-Rosalind Miles; Who Cooked The Last Supper?; Women’s History of the World

[thevamplelio]

HC: Lestat tries to read Mel’s mind but she thinks in either German (Berlinerisch) or Russian on purpose, so he tries to learn it to circumvent the language barrier. This leads to some… mixed results, much to Mel’s amusement.

@rosenundraben

Lestat would fail miserably, but he would certainly try to make her happy. He can pick up modern French, English, Latin, Auvurgne-Rhône-Alpes dialect of French, 18th-century ancien régime French, Creole, and Cajun French, but, none Indo-European languages are hard. I say this as a Hindi and English speaker, whose taken Latin, speaks French well enough, and is learning Haitian Creole.

[whenimgoodandready]

(patriotic French music plays) In the late 18th-century, most members of the French Revolution consisted of common folk, the sans-culottes, who were sick and tired of being looked down on by the aristocratic a**holes called the Ancien Régime and demanded justice for all! History truly repeats itself as today, the Parisians are still being treated like dirt by the “bourgeoisie” and need to put a stop to it before it gets worse! How? Let’s see!

*Collusion-With the departure of Principal Damocles, Ms.Mendeleiev takes authority as “acting principal”. Unfortunately, despite her no-nonsense appearance, she’s even more cowardly to the high elite than Damocles. With that, Chloe proudly makes a spectacle of herself abusing that power (ex.playing Crazy Frog in the middle of class. Least in the OG storyboard script cuz I like Crazy Frog) much to everyone’s chagrin (unknown to them as Chloe is being fed what to say/do by Cerise through an earpiece Don! Don! Don!). It gets to a point where she even forces her father to have Mendeleiev fire the beloved and very pregnant Ms.Bustier and expel Marinette for false claims of physical abuse. Monarch attempts to akumatize Ms.Bustier over this, but she rejects as she wishes to use words not violence for justice. BAM! Not today buddy! :P.

The rich have all the power don’t they? Gabe and Tomoe even present the idea of having Tomoes technical products, A.I robots, to replace the whole police force. Stick to your day job Gabe, you make clothes! Screw that partnership with Tomoes tech company! Come to think of it, the police don’t actually really do much, but assist the dynamic duo in crime fighting and never arrest the akumatized villain cuz the heroes just brush it off as being brainwashed! It does however force a lot of people out of a job, so yeah that sucks. It’s also a secret way for them to defeat the heroes too.

The only wealthy party who doesn’t like abusing their power in everyone’s face is Mayor Bourgeois. He never wanted to be mayor! He wanted to direct! But with all that pressure from his own father and his ungrateful Karen of a wife (who also forced him to keep Chloe in school and threaten to fire Damocles from the last ep!) and b*itchy daughter, he kept cowering to their every whim just to gain their love! Even with that, coupled with his fame and fortune and authority, he’s not happy! He laments about his inability to stand up to all this to Gabe and he edits it to make him look like a tyrant!

After the doctored video, Ms.Bustier is akumatized this time and becomes Sans-Culotte, a patriotic themed villainess, with the miraculous power of The Pig, who turns people into talking red/white/blue balloon minions with her swinging guillotine and wants to give the upperclass a piece of her mind. Her second akumatized form and she is, how you say, looks like “an armored toothpaste”!? (Badum-tish🥁). Her first akumatized, Zombizou, was a child friendly zombie like being who infected everyone with a contagious mind controlling kissing disease and she didn’t so much look traditionally “zombie” like, but more like a voodoo doll-ish type. I still prefer that over her second form which looked ridiculous, utterly ridiculous! I get it looked like the French flag (sorta kinda), but the golden armor was not helping (except to keep the baby safe from harm). She was supposed to represent the sans-culottes from her lecture she was giving to the class, but if that were the case, why didn’t she look like them!? They dressed in simple tattered old rags to show how poor and down ridden they were! I would’ve very much loved to have seen that kind of look in a supervillain form! Another thing, sense when did The Pig Miraculous have to ability to transform people into balloons!? Did I miss something!? WTF!? Their weapon was also a swinging guillotine! Would’ve been dark had it been used for it’s intended purpose instead just turning people into cutesy singing henchmen. Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! Kids shows, am I right?😒

I don’t think I went through this story from my history classes, but from the research I read (albeit briefly), it looks like the sans-culottes were victorious in their rebellion against the bourgeoisie! Viva La France!🇫🇷 What happened was this:Even though they had pretty much nothing, but the peasant clothes on their backs (hench their name), the sans-culotte sought democracy, they wanted the same food privileges (mostly the bread) as the nobles especially with the quality it was baked. Calling out King Louis XVI for conspiring (a collusion) with foreign monarchies to gain more power and harm the people. Despite what little they had, the sans-culottes had their pikes which were most effective in carrying the heads of those who oppressed them and hogged all the good food. Still denied any equal rights, they took action, to the point of violence, and demanded democracy as well as bread until they caved and justice was restored! (gesturally bows) Sans-culotte is as sans-culoette does! (trumpets sound). Same thing happened here! Sans-Culotte wanted to start a revolution wearing a rather embarrassing outfit (an underwear like gourmet) and confront the “monarchy” abusing their authority (Mayor Bourgeois), using a head splitting weapon (pike) and took a big risk of going against their better judgment of using words with instead using violence (storming the city hall), but thanks to the heroes (one of which has a name that means bread!😉), they talked some sense into her and justice was restored! Mayor Bourgeois willfully and happily step down from office and reinstated Ms.Bustiers job back which made her calm down and de-akumatize herself. As nice as that was, a bigger threat approached with a new aristocrat thanks to the person behind the person working in their underground lair of the catacombs. Beware! They’re planning their own “The Great Wave of Kanagawa”! Don! Don! Don!