#to the extent contemporary reports observed...

[fideidefenswhore]

🔥 Henry VIII's first two decades as king

I'll just respond to this for this, not even speaking to whether or not it's true (I haven't studied much in the way of administration of the former) but if it is, it's because Wolsey's (and then Cromwell's) administration was more efficient.

[art-of-manliness]

Odds and Ends: March 29, 2024

The Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger. Maybe you’ve seen a movie and read a couple books about WWI. You think you know what it was like for the soldiers who fought in that war. Then you read The Storm of Steel and realize you truly didn’t grasp it at all. German officer Ernst Jünger’s book, which was drawn from his journal entries, drops you right into the trenches and offers the reader a visceral, unmatchable look into what it’s like to constantly face a gruesome death and kill other men. Jünger has sometimes been criticized for glorifying war, and while he does find glimmers of honor in the conflict (largely in the fidelity of his men) to a greater extent than many of his more cynical contemporaries, his detailed accounts of death and destruction leave no doubt as to war’s horrors and absurdities. Sometimes his reports of one attack and casualty after another become a little redundant, but overall, this is a compelling read that will leave you amazed as to just how unbelievable an experience WWI really was. Wool Dryer Balls. Do you know how fabric softener sheets work? Dryer sheets soften and remove static and wrinkles from clothes by depositing a chemical film on them. Not only might you not want these chems on your clothes, but the coating inhibits the absorbency and moisture-wicking properties of things like towels and synthetic workout shirts. Plus, they’re wasteful. We’ve swapped dryer sheets for wool dryer balls for several years now and are happy with the trade. They don’t soften and reduce wrinkles to the same extent as dryer sheets, but they get the job done and also reduce drying time. And you never have to buy fabric softener sheets again. The balls we link to are still going strong in our household three years after purchase and made in America; if you don’t care about their origin, you can buy them for much cheaper.  Fashion Nugget by Cake. I was a big Cake fan in high school and college. They’re one of the best rock shows I’ve seen. I don’t know why I stopped listening to them, but I re-discovered them again recently and have remembered why I enjoyed them so much. They just sound different from most rock bands. Their sound has a mix of rock, funk, and hip-hop, but also country music and mariachi. Their album Fashion Nugget is a good representation of their work. “Going the Distance” is still one of the all-time great pump-up songs for a race or game. That baseline is so dope.  Working With Your Hands Is Good for Your Brain. You’ve probably noticed that there’s something about doing things with your hands that’s uniquely satisfying. The reality of this feeling has been scientifically proven. Writing by hand has been shown to engage the brain significantly more than typing, and as this NYT article notes, research has shown that doing hands-on activities like painting and gardening result in “cognitive and emotional benefits, including improvements in memory and attention, as well as reductions in anxiety and depression symptoms.” In allowing you to witness the way that your actions can bring about a concrete result in the world, working with your hands may also combat the happiness-squashing state of learned helplessness. Of concern then, is what may happen to our mental states in a world where the need to work with our hands continues to contract. As one researcher observed, “Skills involving fine motor control of the hands are excellent training and superstimulation for the brain. The brain is like a muscle, and if we continue to take away these complex movements from our daily lives — especially fine motor movements — I think that muscle will weaken.” So exercise your brain this weekend by writing a real letter or tinkering in the garage.  Quote of the Week The great Easter truth is not that we are to live newly after death—that is not the great thing—but that we are to be new here and now by the power of the resurrection; not so much that we are to live forever as that we are to, and may, live nobly now because we are to live forever. —Phillips Brooks Help support… http://dlvr.it/T4pNQQ

[aegor-bamfsteel]

After exhuming the remains from the castle’s cemetery, the research team was able to determine the diet, lifestyle and causes of death of the warrior monks, who were members of the Order of Calatrava. The results, published in the journal Scientific Reports, have determined that 23 of the individuals died in battle and that the knights of the order followed a diet typical of medieval high society, with a considerable intake of animal protein and marine fish, in an area far from the coast. Of the 25 skeletons studied, 23 showed marks compatible with violent death. These were mainly penetrating puncture wounds and blunt force injuries and were found on the parts of the body that were most vulnerable to and unprotected from the weapons of the time.

On the one hand, the woman’s injuries led the research team to believe that she participated and died in battle, as there was no sign of bone regrowth in her injuries. “She may have died in a manner very similar to that of male knights, and it is likely that she was wearing some kind of armour or chain mail,” says Rissech. On the other hand, she did not have the same dietary indicators as some of the individuals analysed: “We observed a lower level of protein consumption in the case of this woman, which could indicate lower status in the social group,” he says. Some researchers have hypothesised that she was a servant who would have been called upon to join the knights in defending the castle if the need arose, but the URV researcher does not think so: “Her work as a servant would have left signs on her bones, indicators of certain types of physical activity that we could now identify”. In contrast, her skeleton did show attributes similar to those of the other warrior monks, whose job required them to train in the use of the sword, an activity that leaves verifiable marks which were also observed on the woman’s bones. “I believe that these remains belong to a female warrior, but further analysis is needed to determine to what extent this woman is contemporary with the other knights”, says Rissech. According to the researcher, we should picture her as a warrior of about forty years of age, just under five feet tall, neither stocky nor slender and skilful with a sword.

The Order of Calatrava was the first military order founded in Castile, having been granted a Papal Bull in 1146. They remained an influential organization and military player up to the 15th century.

[ducavalentinos]

In the 3rd season of Borgia Faith & Fear, Della Rovere tells Lucrezia "of all the Borgias, I think you are the most dangerous", I find it funny bc I don't remember Lucrezia was being especially threatening to DR there. Do you think this phrase could be applied to Lucrezia? In which cases could she (always seen as tragic & passive)have been more "dangerous" or influential than the almighty Rodrigo and the energetic Cesare? Perhaps in things related to diplomacy and behind-the-scenes maneuvering?

Oh, this scene! it was a good one. And no, she wasn’t being especially threatening to DR there, not in an obvious, male way, which tends to be more overt, but she was kinda being it in a female way, which tends to be more covert, and which can be more dangerous at times because you don’t see it coming, and that I believe, was the point of the scene. DR clearly saw the threat in Rodrigo and Cesare, but he never saw it in Lucrezia, until that moment. That was when he realized that behind her mask of beauty, charm and piety, laid an very intelligent and diplomatic woman, who knew how to use her feminine charms to get what she wanted, and that indeed made her more dangerous than her male relatives, who in Fontana’s version, are uncharacteristically unstable, obvious in their plans, and openly and stupidly confrontational with their enemies. In this world, Della Rovere was used to that, but he wasn’t used to the tactics Lucrezia was employing there, so he was definitely like: hmmm, I need to be careful here, more than ever before djsdjdsjdsj. And yes, anon, I do think this phrase could be applied to historical Lucrezia, despite the insistence of Borgian scholars to keep fallaciously reducing her to a tragic, passive figure, who was only a victim of "patriarchy" and "the terrible, ambitious men" in her family, looool. Much like it happens with Cesare, Lucrezia's historical material, her actions, do not support the majority of the claims made about her and the overall presentation of her historical figure, on the contrary, it constantly heavily points towards different conclusions about her character, her life, and most of all: her family dynamics with her beloved father and brothers. I think it must be understood that Lucrezia seems to have had a preference for the incognito way of doing politics, and to not treat it as a lesser form of doing politics, because in truth, it is very wise, also. She was as intelligent, politically cunning, ambitious and pragmatic as her family, and other noblewomen of her times, but she does not seem to have wanted to broadcast that to the world, she doesn't seem to have had any desire to let others perceive her as a political player, perhaps because she was aware it brought more disadvantages than advantages, man or woman, once you were perceived by others as a political threat, it made you an easy target for violence, and it added an extra difficulty in making political moves without being noticed, (and the element of suprise, of secrecy, is one of the key factors of successsful policies or of achieving a certain political goal) Lucrezia witnessed that first hand, with Juan being murdered, Rodrigo and Cesare having various murder attempts to their person over the years they were in power, and with their every move constantly being watched, their words and actions scrutinized by their contemporaries. Lucrezia had no need for that, so the lack of records about her private life (even Gregorovius in the end admits nothing is known about her private life while she was in Rome) and of her political side does look like it was partly like her own doing. A deliberate effort into making herself as unnoticeable as possible where political affairs were concerned, simultaneously always taking great care in her appearance in public, from her dressings, to her hair, to her walk, to her speech. She always presented herself as the beautiful, graceful, fashionable, joyful, and pious daughter of the Pope. This presentation does contain a certain political tactic, or dissimulation to it, much like the one made by Cesare to Machiavelli, or Rodrigo to the Venetian orators and ambassadors, with his seemingly honest talk with them, like they were close friends, when that was far from being the case. And here's the thing: it is quite obvious this presentation worked to her advantage, according to the historical records, most people who met her, especially men, fell for it, (even her biographers to this day do) and they all appear to have never seen it past what she presented to them, in that way, she could,

and did, obtain what she wished from them: eulogies praising her virtues (a good and necessary PR the rest of her family should probably have paid as close attention to as she seems to have done tsc tsc), beautiful love poems, and of course valuable information and people who felt so attached to her person they were willing to help her in her political and romantic intrigues.

This all can be observed in various occasions during her lifetime: The writings of Ariosto and other intellectuals about her, the passionate love poems and letters of Bembo, the documented actions of both the Marquis of Mantua, and Ercole Strozzi concerning her. And we have the very interesting words of one of spies of Isabella d'Este, known as il Prete, whom she sent to Rome with the precise task of him learning every detail about Lucrezia, but when he met with her, he ended up disclosing more about his mistress to her than of actually learning anything significant about her, and in one of his reports to Isabella he says: "She[Lucrezia] is a lady of keen intelligence and perspicacity...” and in another one he writes: “one had to have one’s wits about one when speaking with her..." And as far as influence goes, there is certainly material indicating she did had a strong influence with her father, and it can only be speculated with her brothers, (although I think she did to a certain extent, I think it is undeniable that her contemporaries were aware she was the darling of the family, and to offend her in any way would immediately put them in disfavour with Rodrigo, Cesare and Juan, they spoiled her a lot, and were very protective of her) but it is noted Lucrezia was the constant recipient of petitions to Rodrigo, of various sorts, which implies they saw her as the best intermediary between them and the Pope, in order for them to get their wishes granted. Not Cesare, not Juan. So within the family, her influence can be supported by the evidence, and outside the family the evidence is way more limited, but considering all this, I don't think it would be far-fetched to say that not only it does seem she played a bigger role in the politics than it is usually conceded to her, but that she very well could have been more dangerous, more influential at times than Rodrigo and Cesare, only behind the scenes, as it really does appear to have been her MO. For all of the excellent diplomacy and political skills Rodrigo and Cesare had, they were still men, men at the front stage of power nonetheless, which caused other men to be more guarded in their presence, even if they felt dazzled by Cesare or Rodrigo's strong allure, however, with Lucrezia, I think it was a different story. She had the same mental and political capabilities they had, in fact, I'd argue there is much indicating she learned a lot from them, but all of that came under, was deliberately hidden by her, by the feminine cover, which both made these traits and her being perceived as a threat a lot harder, if not impossible, to detect. Which naturally, as seen above, prompted men, perhaps also women (although Isabella d'Este would not be included in this list jdsjdsj, for I think apart from her personal prejudices against Lucrezia and her family, she also recognized from the get-go the political shrewdness in Lucrezia since she was also a shrewed political woman herself), to lower their guards around her, and speak more freely, and here I believe, Lucrezia had a bigger room to be influential with them, engaging in diplomatic conversations, suggesting ideas about a particular political situation, asking something from them, and that being more well received than it would have been if it had been otherwise proposed or offered by her father and brother, and perhaps even her husbands.

[indornaga]

Swamp Indoraptor - a Variation

History:

Unlike in the movie we are familiar with, InGen and Jurassic World did not fail--whether this be due to successful continued containment of the Indominus Rex, or successful recapture or termination of the breached asset. With the successful creation of the Indominus Rex, came the next step of Dr. Henry Wu's experimentation at behest of the Military: "That one, a fraction of the size--deadly, intelligent, able to hide from the most advanced military technology. A living weapon unlike anything we've ever seen."

With greater funding from the Military and InGen behind him, Wu was able to perfect the Indoraptor. Highly intelligent, trainable with incredible situational reasoning, and easily handleable, the base Indoraptor proved to be an unmatched weapon on the battlefield.

Funding was provided to create new variations for a variety of battlefields. Prototypes were kept at Jurassic World for observance until their genomes were perfected. Well composed specimens were put on display--the weaker prototypes were kept in pens away from the eyes of the public.

Physical:

Based on the success of previous prototypes, as shown above, a water-based Indoraptor was designed for missions that took agents into marshy, muddy, and wet environs. Starting with the base genome, the swamp Indoraptor came in at 9 feet tall and 25 feet long, and weighed just under 1 ton. It retains it's faculative bipedalism, able to run and walk on either all fours or two legs, depending on the situation in order to maintain balance at all times. Specimens were shown to be able to leap it's length in height, and climb with ease using it's large killing claw as assistance--even on the slipperiest of surfaces.

The swamp Indoraptor's genome was bolstered with ancient crocodilians such as sarcosuchus to supply the animal with a stronger and more effective paddle tail, and crocodilian-shaped head, complete with a comparably intense bite pressure to either immediately crush limbs, or to grab and drag targets to a watery grave. Similar to it's contemporary crocodilian counterparts, it had bullet-resistant scales and scutes--a must-have for any battlefield.

This prototype was given chromatophores like it's Indominus Rex predecessor to test it's lethality on an ever-shifting battlefield. Primarily dark in color, it's infamous "racing stripe" was purple or blue, though able to shift due to its chromatophores. It had quill-like protofeathers, but these may have been an unintended result as they didnt seem to serve any tactical purpose--though they seemed to be a communication tool to portray body language.

Personality:

The swamp Indoraptor had a large range of vocalizations, from roars and barks to honks and chirps, including subsonic range in order to communicate long distance and through water. Curiously, they seemed to have mastered a non-vocal set of communications as well, observed by tapping their killing claw on rocks, trees, concrete, metal--anything that could transfer sound. Prototypes housed in pens adjacent to one another were found to share what could be considered "language". Handlers reported similar in siblings raised, trained, and deployed together--these teams boasted the highest mission success ratios.

Various prototypes displayed extreme tenacity, and varying levels of ferocity, with the most violent having to be terminated due to repeated escapes to kill other prototypes. Swamp Indoraptors were trained with pulse lasers and a sonic cue just like their earlier counterparts were. They react similarly to a cat with a laser pointer, and interactive displays were set up for guests to play with the prototypes in said fashion. Live prey was often used to test prototypes' abilities, and as a show to the public.

Today's specimen in particular displayed cold, calculating curiosity, able to be handled, but only if treated with respect--dignity even. Standard viability testing gauged her intelligence to be extraordinary, though her keepers reported they felt she was.. hiding more. She displayed exceptional curiosity at the sounds outside her pen, even the ability to mimic--to a certain extent--the sounds of other dinosaurs within the park. Test subjects introduced to her pen were met with intrigue, at points even adopted before their untimely expiry--due to their own flaws, not her violence.

[handeaux]

Cincinnati’s Doctor Bartholow Apologized For His Diabolical Brain-Probe Experiments

Like a scene in the mad scientist’s laboratory – right out of an old horror movie – a doctor at Good Samaritan Hospital in 1874 ran several electrified needles into a patient’s brain. Although his work opened up new avenues for neurological research, the doctor was pressured to make a public apology, which led to new developments in medical ethics.

The doctor in question was Roberts Bartholow, born in Maryland in 1831. Young Bartholow enjoyed a solid liberal arts education before entering medical school. Throughout his life, Bartholow’s intelligence, erudition and literary skills were widely praised, but he had few friends. Otto Juettner, historian of Cincinnati medicine, described him in 1909:

“Roberts Bartholow, that strange child of genius, who was thought by his contemporaries to be the very embodiment of cold cynicism, while he was, strangely enough, the fervent apostle of faith and warm optimism in the very department of medical knowledge where nowadays cynicism, pessimism and hopeless agnosticism are the rule.”

Bartholow’s reputation for “cold cynicism” emerged from his often sarcastic critiques of his colleagues’ shortcomings. Few Cincinnati doctors could marshal the intellectual firepower or the wealth of experience Bartholow brought to any debate. On a couple of occasions, Bartholow engaged in the Nineteenth-Century version of a “flame war,” publishing pamphlets and counter-pamphlets in his attacks on other doctors.

Much of the friction between Bartholow and his colleagues hinged on his educational philosophy. Where most medical professors explained concepts, processes and treatments, Bartholow believed that education is best conducted by demonstration. Where human subjects could not be found, Bartholow employed animals in his classroom demonstrations of surgical techniques and pharmaceutical substances.

This practical approach to medicine derived from Bartholow’s long service in the U.S. Army out on the western frontier, back when it really was the “Wild West.” He was sent to Utah in 1857 as surgeon to troops engaged in what was variously known as the “Utah War” or “Mormon Rebellion,” and remained with the Army throughout most of the Civil War. He resigned his commission in 1864 and settled in Cincinnati, where an established doctor helped him build a practice and earn a professorship at the Medical College of Ohio. Although respected, Bartholow antagonized almost everybody. Per Juettner:

“His splendid academic training, backed up by a vast amount of observation and experience, gave him the advantage in contests with most men. He was fearless and merciless. This is what raised hosts of enemies for him. He fought with weapons of analogy, logic and sarcasm up to the point of extermination. His intense nature could not tolerate concessions. It is not surprising that he was not popular in the vulgar sense of the word.”

Academic feuds drove Bartholow out of the city’s Commercial Hospital and into the somewhat friendlier staff of the Good Samaritan Hospital, then located in the East End beneath Mount Adams. There, Bartholow built his dream laboratory. In a medical journal the he founded, Bartholow described his “electrical room”:

“By the intelligent liberality of a gentleman of this city, Good Samaritan Hospital now contains an electrical room furnished with all the appliances needed for the practical uses and scientific study of electricity.”

Claiming that electricity could cure anything from hemorrhoids to nasal polyps to cysts caused by tapeworms, Bartholow used the apparatus housed in the electrical room to instruct students convened in the operating theater next door.

Into this laboratory, in 1874, walked Mary Rafferty, a 30-year-old Irish immigrant with a most unusual condition. As a young girl, she had fallen into a fire and severely burned her scalp. To cover the scarred bald patch, she wore a variety of wigs. A sore, which she believed was caused by her wigs got worse and worse, eventually becoming cancerous. The cancer ate away Rafferty’s skull to the extent that a hole exposed a portion of her brain.

Rafferty worked as a housemaid. Some sources claim she worked for Bartholow while others deny that connection. By whatever route, she found herself in Bartholow’s electrical room at Good Samaritan Hospital where, over the course of about a week, Bartholow inserted electrically charged needles into her exposed brain. While some of this probing elicited little more than tingling and giggles, some precipitated seizures, convulsions and weeping. Eventually Rafferty’s condition worsened, the experiments were terminated and she died.

In his first report on the research, published three months later, Bartholow candidly described each attempt to stimulate Rafferty’s brain and the disturbing results. So many doctors objected to the report that Bartholow felt compelled to publish a detailed apology in the British Medical Journal. In this mea culpa, Bartholow concluded:

“Notwithstanding my sanguine expectations, based on the facts above stated, that small insulated needle-electrodes could be introduced without injury into the cerebral substance, I now know that I was mistaken. To repeat such experiments with the knowledge we now have, that injury will be done by them, would be in the highest degree criminal. I can only now express my regret that facts which I hoped would further, in some slight degree, the progress of knowledge, were obtained at the expense of some injury to the patient.”

Bartholow’s reputation did not suffer. Five years after the experiment and three years after his apology, Bartholow accepted a distinguished chair at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, where he remained until he retired in 1893. Poor health and a mental breakdown tormented his retirement. Bartholow died in 1904.

Modern perceptions of Bartholow’s macabre experiments might best be summed up in a paper published in 2019 by Devi P. Patra, et al, in Neurosurgical Focus:

“Despite the audacious nature of the experiment with possible ethical breaches of human research, Bartholow’s findings formed the foundation of the electrophysiology of the human brain. Although his methods seem crude in retrospect, they demonstrated the basic principles of human cortical mapping that are still followed in the modern era, although in a more sophisticated way. While his methods cannot be condoned, we recognize his scientific curiosity and his passion for integrating clinical medicine and experimental medicine. Just as importantly, we pay sincere tribute to the ill-fated soul, Rafferty, whose sacrifice should not be forgotten in medical history.”

[blackswaneuroparedux]

It is always dangerous for soldiers, sailors, or airmen to play at politics. They enter a sphere in which the values are quite different from those to which they have hitherto been accustomed.

- Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm

**Pictured above: Seated, left to right: Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal; Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, the Rt Hon Winston Churchill; Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham. Standing, left to right: the Secretary to the Chiefs of Staffs Committee, Major General L C Hollis; and the Chief of Staff to the Minister of Defence, General Sir Hastings Ismay.

No one serious has ever doubted the statesmanship of Winston Churchill. However a broad criticism of Churchill as warlord only came to light after the war. Many historians thought that he meddled, incurably and unforgivably, in the professional affairs of his military advisers.

The first surge of criticism came primarily from military authors, in particular Churchill’s own chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, and Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Alan Brooke. The publication of his diaries in the late 1950s shocked readers, who discovered in entries Brooke himself retrospectively described as “liverish” that all had not gone smoothly between Churchill and his generals.

On 10 September 1944 he wrote in his diary (an entry not known until the 2001 updated version was published:

“[Churchill] has only got half the picture in his mind, talks absurdities and makes my blood boil to listen to his nonsense. I find it hard to remain civil. And the wonderful thing is that 3/4 of the population of this world imagine that Winston Churchill is one of the Strategists of History, a second Marlborough, and the other 1/4 have no conception what a public menace he is and has been throughout the war! It is far better that the world should never know and never suspect the feet of clay on that otherwise superhuman being. Without him England was lost for a certainty, with him England has been on the verge of disaster time and again….Never have I admired and disliked a man simultaneously to the same extent.”

Many of the British field marshals and admirals of World War II came away nursing the bruises that inevitably came their way in dealing with Churchill. They deplored his excessive interest in what struck them as properly military detail; they feared his imagination and its restless probing for new courses of action. But perhaps they resented most of all his certainty of their fallibility.

Norman Brook, secretary of the Cabinet under Churchill, wrote to Hastings Ismay, the former secretary to the Chiefs of Staff, a revealing observation: “Churchill has said to me, in private conversation, that this was partly due to the extent to which the Generals had been discredited in the First War—which meant that, in the Second War, their successors could not pretend to be professionally infallible.”

Churchill’s uneasy relationship with his generals stemmed, in large part, from his willingness to pick commanders who disagreed with him—and who often did so violently. The two most forceful members of the Chiefs of Staff, Brooke and Cunningham, were evidence of that. If he dispensed with Field Marshal Sir John Greer Dill as Chief of Imperial General Staff, he did so with the silent approval of key officers, who shared his judgment that Dill did not have the spirit to fight the war through to victory. 

As General Hastings Lionel "Pug" Ismay (later 1st Baron Ismay), Churchill’s chief military asdvisor and link to the CIG, and others privately admitted, however, Dill was a spent man by 1941, hardly up to the demanding chore of coping with Churchill. “The one thing that was necessary and indeed that Winston preferred, was someone to stand up to him, instead of which Jack Dill merely looked, and was, bitterly hurt.”If Churchill were to make a rude remark about the courage of the British Army, Ismay later recalled, the wise course was to laugh it off or to refer Churchill to his own writings. “Dill, on the other hand, was cut to the quick that anyone should insult his beloved Army and vowed he would never serve with him again, which of course was silly.”

It was not enough, of course, to pick good leaders; as a war leader, Churchill found himself compelled to prod them as well—an activity that occasioned more than a little resentment on their part. Indeed, in a private letter to General Claude Auchinleck shortly before he assumed command in the Middle East in June 1941, Dill warned of this, saying that “the Commander will always be subject to great and often undue pressure from his Government.”

The permeation of all war, even total war, by political concerns, should come as no surprise to the contemporary student of military history, who has usually been fed on a diet of Clausewitz and his disciples. But it is sometimes forgotten just how deep and pervasive political considerations in war are. 

Take, for example, the question of the employment of air power in advance of the Normandy invasion.

As is well known, operational experts and commanders split over the most effective use of air power. Some favored the employment of tactical air power to sever the rail and road lines leading to the area of the proposed beachhead, while others proposed a systematic attack on the French rail network, leading to its ultimate collapse. This seemingly technical military issue had, however, political ramifications, because any attack (but particularly one targeted against French marshalling yards) promised to yield French civilian casualties. Churchill therefore intervened in the bombing dilute to secure a promise that French civilian casualties would be held to a bare minimum. “You are piling up an awful load of hatred,” Churchill wrote to Air Chief Marshal Tedder. He insisted that French civilian casualties be under 10,000 killed, and reports were submitted throughout May that listed the number of French civilians killed and (callously enough) “Credit Balance Remaining.”

This is not to say that Churchill’s military judgment was invariably or even frequently superior to that of his subordinates, although on occasion it clearly was. Rather, Churchill exercised one of his most important functions as war leader by holding their calculations and assertions up to the standards of a massive common sense, informed by wide reading and experience at war. When his military advisers could not come up with plausible answers to these harassing and inconvenient questions, they usually revised their views; when they could, Churchill revised his. In both cases, British strategy benefited.

In The World Crisis Churchill wrote: “At the summit, true strategy and politics are one.” The civil-military relationship and the formulation of strategy are inextricably intertwined. A study of Churchill’s tenure in high command of Britain during the Second World War suggests that the formulation of strategy is a matter more complex than the laying out of blueprints.

In the world of affairs, as any close observer of government or business knows, conception or vision make up at best a small percentage of what a leader does—the implementation of that vision requires unremitting effort. The debate about the wisdom of Churchill’s judgments (for example, his desire to see large amphibious operations in the East Indies) is largely beside the point. His activity as a strategist emerges in the totality of his efforts to shape Britain’s war policies, and to mold the peace that would follow the war.

The Churchillian model of civil-military relations is one of what one might call an uneven dialogue - an unsparing (if often affectionate) interaction with military subordinates about their activities. It flies in the face of the contemporary conventional wisdom, particularly in the United States, about how politicians should deal with their military advisers.25 In fact, however, Churchill’s pattern of relationships with his Generals resembles that of other great democratic war statesmen, including Lincoln, Clemenceau and Ben Gurion, each of whom drove their generals to distraction by their supposed meddling in military matters.

All four of these statesmen, Clausewitzians by instinct if not by education, recognized the indissolubility of political and military affairs, and refused to recognize any bounds to their authority in military activities. In the end, all four provided exceptional leadership in war not because their judgment was always superior to that of their military subordinates, but because they wove the many threads of operations and politics into a whole. And none of these leaders regarded any sphere of military policy as beyond the scope of his legitimate inspection.

The penalties for a failure to understand strategy as an all-encompassing task in war can be severe. The wretched history of the Vietnam War, in which civilian leaders never came to grips with the core of their strategic dilemma, illustrates as much. President Johnson, in particular, left strategy for the South Vietnamese part of the war in the hands of General William Westmoreland, an upright and limited general utterly unsuited for the kind of conflict in which he found himself. He did not find himself called to account for his operational choices, nor did his strategy of attrition receive any serious review for almost three years of bloody fighting. At the same time, the President and his civilian advisers ran an air war in isolation from their military advisers, on the basis of a weekly luncheon meeting from which men in uniform were excluded until halfway through the war.

A Churchillian leader fighting the Vietnam War would have had little patience, one suspects, with the smooth but ineffectual Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Earle Wheeler. He would, no doubt, have convened all of his military advisers (and not just one), to badger them constantly about the progress of the war, and about the intelligence with which the theatre commander was pursuing it. The arguments might have been unpleasant, but at least they would have taken place. Perhaps no strategy would have made the war a winnable one, but surely some strategic judgment would have been better than none. Nor can strategy simply be left to the generals, as they so often wish.

The Churchillian way of high command rests on an uneven dialogue between civilian leader and military chiefs (not, let it be noted, a single generalissimo). It is not comfortable for the military, who suffer the torments of perpetual interrogation; nor easy for the civilians, who must absorb vast quantities of technical, tactical and operational information and make sense of it. But in the end, it is difficult to quarrel with the results.

[gothhabiba]

In the past year, Ancestry changed its search engine to detach the history of slavery from basic genealogical inquiries. When searching for an individual’s name, Ancestry.com stopped including results from the 1850 or 1860 United States Census Slave Schedules. This means that someone searching for ancestors might discover a wealthy progenitor with no record of the foundations of that wealth, making it all too easy to claim, as many privileged white American families do, that their individual family earned its fortunes outside of slavery despite the central role slavery had in shaping the nation’s politics, economics, culture, and society. Before this change occurred, Ancestry.com subscribers would often have to face the uncomfortable fact that their family kept others enslaved. Indeed, my own family first discovered slaveholders in our lineage because of a rudimentary Ancestry search. Attempting that research today would hide this distressing (though important) aspect of my family’s history.

The search engine functions to hide both slave ownership and enslaved people from the eyes of contemporary genealogists. At this moment, an Ancestry search for the notoriously cruel James Henry Hammond, reveals a wealthy planter worth $70,000 in the 1860 census’s population schedule. But because a basic search no longer provides results from the corresponding slave schedule, which details the ages and sexes of the over 300 people he owned, the means by which he accumulated his wealth is hidden from view. Even if a casual observer did suspect a family history of slave ownership and had the inclination to then search the slave schedules themselves, they found the schedules no longer searchable by name on Ancestry.com. As difficult as it already is to trace African American genealogy, this new programing made it all the more challenging to trace Black families from the margins of historical documents.

These changes insulate the more than three million subscribers to Ancestry.com from being exposed to the extent to which slavery shaped American society. This contributes to a larger problem regarding Americans’ knowledge about slavery. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently released a report detailing how little Americans understand slavery. The City Council of Charleston, SC, only barely passed a largely symbolic resolution apologizing for slavery. Despite being the port of entry for around forty percent of enslaved Africans transported into the United States during the trans-Atlantic slave trade some city councilmembers refused to apologize “for something they did not take a part in” ignoring the way that inherited wealth and racial privilege from the antebellum period continue to create racial inequality today.

With calls for reparations increasingly in the news, inaccurate belief’s about hereditary ties to slavery become all the more relevant to contemporary discourse. Claims that “my family didn’t own slaves” are common among white Americans, and are often used to argue that whites should not be asked to sacrifice anything to make amends for the past sins of the country. In the face of this resistance to addressing contemporary inequality, Ancestry.com could choose to be a powerful tool that forces users to confront their own personal ties to slavery.

--Adam H. Domby, “Beyond Romantic Advertisements: Ancestry.com, Genealogy, and White Supremacy” (10 May 2019)

[rika-kihira]

Rika Kihira interview with Kose

Kose Sports Blog: Interview with Rika Kihira on Japan National 2019, translated by juronom.

source: https://ameblo.jp/kose-sports/entry-12575880251.html

Trying to do everything with perfection.

Changing hairstyle is also something to be attentive to.

Q: Congratulations on your spectacular maiden Japan National title. Reflecting on that, please tell us how you feel now?

R: Regarding the FS, I was happy that I could perform without any regret, though there was still some (lingering) feeling that I must jump the 4S. This time, it was quite a difficult competition since my body condition barely made it (“tight”). I can feel (my body) is not in the best condition especially early in the morning and in the afternoon, but it was really fortunate that I was able to bring myself up to the best condition in the evening of that day (FS day). The practice just before that (FS) was good and I managed to properly maintain that condition even when I was tired. That gave me confidence.

Q: Recently, it seemed Kihira-san’ music selection hasn’t been orthodox classical, but contemporary or yoga-like melody. Do you have an intention or aim when daringly select songs with difficult rhythm?

R: My strategy from now on is trying to skate to songs that fit me best. Now I’m exploring many things, like what kind of songs will become my specialty. The challenge for me at the moment is gaining the ability to skate to many genres of music.

Q: The process of choosing make-up that matches the music also needs experimenting. Are you hooked on any makeup items recently?

R: My favorite product is Kose's Cosmé de Corte gel eye shadow. Even if with dark-colored eye (make-up), I can create natural shading by repeatedly tapping and blending the product with my fingertips. Especially for today's exhibition “Lion King”, I had a strong combination of brown and gold makeup done for me.

Q: Besides makeup, hairstyle also impacts performance greatly. Kihira-san goes for ponytail regularly, but have you ever considered bun hair?

R: Actually, I’ve considered it, but that is a hairstyle which I haven't practiced with. I think it's the best to try a hairstyle out in practice then get used to it so it won't affect my performance. I dislike changing my hairstyle suddenly, which affects my performance, so I don’t think I will change my hairstyle now.

Q: Do bun and ponytail feel different your performance?

R: They feel different. I don't want to abruptly change hairstyle in a competition and pay (unnecessary) attention towhat’s on my head, which could result in mistakes.

The athlete I respect is Nao Kodaira

Q: We’re switching to another topic. What kind of people does Kihira-san look up to? If possible, could you name someone who is not a figure skater?

R: Nao Kodaira. She is caring and always talks to me when we meet and she told me she came and watched this certain competition. I really love that kind of personality, and I want to learn from her. I think I should think about others in every action. She is also always calm and is an assuring presence. I really like people like that.

Q: It's a very good relationship. I was touched. I think Kihira-san is also respected by many figure skating fans. I heard that Kihira-san said that there will be only regrets if you dare to eat all the sweets you want to eat. Among fans, even those inour company, some people were encouraged by that and went to the gym or put themselves on a diet. Are there any tips to win against the temptation of food?

R: Well, documenting on what you eat in your notebook. That’s probably it. If you keep a record properly, you can judge whether or not you are having a healthy menu in a week. I think it's important to always keep a record, calculate calories, reflect and organize (your diet) for the sake of your health. I try not to eat anything that I consider bad for my body.

Q: Wow, Miss Stoic. I think some adults really need to observe from you. In the last interview, you said you didn’t have any specific routine before the competition, but how is that recently?

R: Warm-up sessions always include stretching with the same exercise menu, but my routine changes according to factors like when in the day the competition happens, how I spend that day and how I spend the previous day. I've improved on adapting (my routine) depending on skating time, to the time difference between Japan time and the venue’s time.

Q: I see, in competitions overseas, you usually took some nap.

R: If the competition took place at night time and I didn’t sleep until then, I would have been sleepy, tired and even lost my concentration, so I took some nap to avoid those situations.

Q: Recently there has been shocking news in figure skating. It is reported that Zagitova-senshu of Russia will not participate in the Russian Championships or the World Championships. Would Kihira-san mind sharing some thoughts, to an acceptable extent for you?

R: Reaching the top position in major competitions, winning every competition, she’s really amazing. I really respect that she went on without taking a break. In my view, now she can take things a little slower and return to competition when she wants to do so. I look up to her a lot since she has won all titles... I hope that she can feel the fun of skating every day.

Q: Finally, please, a few words to your fans.​

R: Of course, I can also hear the encouraging voices and receive messages directly (at the venue), not only on SNS and via letters. Thanks to those, I can always feel good about skating, competing and I can continue giving my best from the bottom of my heart, so I’m always grateful for everything. From now on, I want to continue giving performances that can answer everyone's expectations.

[physiologicdeadspace]

Charles Domery was a Prussian and french soldier who became renowned for his unearthly appetite. He is reported to have eaten 174 cats over the course of a year, and was known to consume up to 2.3kg of grass if no other food was available to him. During one instance during his military service he was observed to attempt to eat the severed leg of one of his fellow soldiers while they were at sea, however another member of the crew wrestled it from him and threw it into the ocean.

Unlike his contemporary Tarrare (who also had an exceptional appetite), Domery had an entirely normal physical appearance, he was noted to be polite, pleasant, of average weight and height. The only notable thing about his physicality was a tendency to be prone to profuse sweating while sleeping and when eating large amounts of food. He was also noted to never vomit, no matter the volume of what he had consumed.

While serving as a soldier he was captured by the British who conducted experiments on him to test the extent of his appetite and his ability to consume unusual food. He was fed raw cows udder, 4.6 kg of raw beef and 12 candles - a long with several large bottles of Porter. During this time he did not urinate, defecate or vomit.

Dr Johnston of the Royal Navy noted:

The eagerness with which he attacks his beef when his stomach is not gorged, resembles the voracity of a hungry wolf, tearing off and swallowing it with canine greediness. When his throat is dry from continued exercise, he lubricates it by stripping the grease off the candles between his teeth, which he generally finishes at three mouthfuls, and wrapping the wick like a ball, string and all, sends it after at a swallow. He can, when no choice is left, make shift to dine on immense quantities of raw potatoes or turnips; but, from choice, would never desire to taste bread or vegetables.

It is not known what caused Dormery’s excessive appetite and ability to tolerate bizarre and extreme amounts of food. It is theorised that he perhaps had sustained injuries to his amygdala or ventromedial nucleus, which has been shown to cause polyphagia in animal research.

[foreverlogical]

Before Herbert Hoover earned a reputation as a tragic failure, he had a for heroic success—a can-do businessman who arrived in the prrated men of his . Then times changed.

Before Herbert Hoover earned a reputation as a tragic failure, he had a reputation for heroic success—a can-do businessman who arrived in the presidency with no previous elective experience. He was one of the most celebrated men of his times. Then times changed.

“Ambition and anxiety both gnaw at him constantly,” the columnist Walter Lippmann wrote Felix Frankfurter, then a law professor and later a Supreme Court justice, as Hoover floundered desperately during the early days of the Great Depression. “He has no resiliency. And if things continue to break badly for him, I think the chances are against his being able to avoid a breakdown. When men of his temperament get to his age without ever having had real opposition, and then meet it in its most dramatic form, it’s quite dangerous.”

Lippmann didn’t mean breakdown in a psychological sense so much as a political one—describing a leader who found himself trapped by experience and instincts that suddenly were irrelevant to the moment.

Now Donald Trump during the pandemic is giving a new generation has reason to wonder whether he—like other presidents who suddenly find currents of history shifting violently before them-- is on the verge of breakdown.

Trump emphatically has faced real opposition, and reveled in it, on his path to power. But he has met earlier chapters of adversity, in politics and business, with reliance on traits—bluster, defiance, implacable self-promotion—that, however unorthodox, served him quite well in the old context.

Now the context has changed but—so far—Trump has not, or to the extent he has tried it has not lasted more than a few hours at a time. Admirers and foes alike have become so casually accustomed to this president’s shattering of norms in a contemporary political setting that people easily miss how bizarre these circumstances are in historical terms. Is there any equivalent example in American history of a president confronting a grave domestic or international crisis with a similar combination of impetuosity and self-reference?

In just the past few days (who keeps track of time in self-quarantine?) Trump has gone from shocking his own health experts with a prediction that church pews would be filled and the country “raring to go” by Easter to extending the national shutdown through April. He has questioned whether governors are exaggerating their need for medical equipment and then indignantly denied saying that the next day. He has boasted of the television ratings for his coronavirus briefings.

So what? That’s just Trump, right? We are used to him by now.

True enough. But there is a difference between the current moment and the pre-corona past. Previously his most flamboyant behavior was, for many of his admirers, an essential part of his appeal. It is unlikely that many Trump supporters are genuinely enthusiastic about his parade of errant statements on coronavirus, from the claim in late February that the number of U.S. cases “within a couple of days is going to be down close to zero,” to his insistence earlier this month that, “Anybody that needs a test, gets a test,” even as the person shepherding the administration’s response, Vice President Mike Pence, was saying, “we don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward."

The fact that Trump’s style of boasting about himself and denouncing critics is thoroughly familiar is not necessarily reassuring when it is being employed in circumstances that are radically unfamiliar.

If there is any common trait of successful presidents, it is what Lippmann called “resiliency”—the capacity for personal growth, for recalibration, and for principled improvisation in the face of new circumstances.

If there is any common trait of failed presidents, it is incapacity for growth—a reliance on old habits and thinking even when events demand the opposite.

The coronavirus drama, with 180,000 cases, rather than the 15 at the time Trump made his “close to zero” prediction, is still closer to the beginning than the end. On Tuesday he took a much more sober tone, saying: “I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead. We’re going through a very tough two weeks.” With some lucky breaks, combined with the policy shifts he and his health team have made, he could yet retain his title as the Houdini of his era.

Without those breaks, however, he could easily end up keeping company historically with Hoover (who promised that “prosperity is around the corner”) and Lyndon B. Johnson (whose Vietnam generals fantasized about “light at the end of the tunnel”) as presidents who arrived in office with outsized personalities that shriveled as they failed to meet the political, practical, ultimately psychic needs of a nation in crisis.

The phenomenon works in reverse: Presidents who displayed leadership dimensions that were unseen by most observers, and possibly by the presidents themselves, until crisis summoned greatness. Lippmann famously described the man campaigning to be Hoover’s successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, as “an amiable boy scout,” and “a pleasant man, who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be president.”

As Lippmann’s biographer, Ronald Steel, explained, the columnist’s critics never stopped rubbing that quote in his nose. But Lippmann lived for another four decades insisting, accurately, “That I will maintain to my dying day was true of the Franklin Roosevelt of 1932.”

Adaptability was likewise a signature of the previous century’s greatest president. “I claim not to have controlled events but confess plainly that events have controlled me,” Abraham Lincoln said, describing his evolution during the Civil War on the abolition of slavery.

Trump, by contrast, asked recently by a reporter to grade himself, said, “I’d rate it a 10, I think we’ve done a great job.”

But Trump does not need to reach back in history for an example of a leadership style that doesn’t require a dubious pose of perfection to convey strength. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease effort, who regularly shares the podium with Trump at coronavirus briefings, has described often in interviews the vitriol targeted at him during the early days of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Protestors were storming the National Institutes of Health campus and burning Fauci in effigy, because of frustrations with the pace of research on a cure. The activist Larry Kramer, whom Fauci now counts as a friend, was calling him a murderer. Fauci decided the protestors were right on some key points and urged they be integrated closely into the government’s response.

“The best thing I’ve done from a sociological and community standpoint was to embrace the activists,” Fauci said in an interview with Science Speaks in 2011. “Instead of rejecting them, I listened to them.”

Close your eyes and imagine Trump saying that.

VISIT WEBSIT

[berniesrevolution]

The inequality is too damn high. In the United States today, the richest 0.1 percent of the population owns as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined. And the chasm between our aristocracy’s fortunes — and those of the average Joe and Joanna — is only growing. Since 1980, the real annual earnings of the top 0.1 percent have grown by 343 percent; the poorest nine-tenths of the country, meanwhile, have seen their earnings grow by a mere 22 percent in that time span. Absent drastic reforms of our political economy, there’s every reason to think that this income polarization will continue apace in the decades to come.

And drastic reforms ain’t easy. In fact, even modestly reducing inequality (and/or ameliorating its most troubling effects) through tax and transfer programs poses major political challenges. For example, while raising taxes on the rich is very popular, transferring income away from the upper reaches of the middle class is less so. Even when broad-based tax hikes are pegged to overwhelmingly popular forms of redistribution, such as universal health care, voters often have trouble swallowing them. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 56 percent of Americans favored Medicare for All — until they were told the policy would “require most Americans to pay more in taxes,” at which point support plummeted to 37 percent. The credibility of this finding is buttressed by the failure of movements for single-payer health care in Vermont and Colorado, where aversion to tax increases fueled opposition. And the unpopularity of tax hikes on the non-rich can also be seen in the reluctance of even the leftmost Democrats to present detailed plans for how they intend to finance their most ambitious redistributive programs.

Bernie Sanders appears to understand all this. Which is why the 2020 candidate is preparing to shift the focus of his economic message away from divisive “tax and spend” liberalism and toward more broadly popular approaches to reducing inequality — like, say, worker ownership of the means of production. As the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein reports:

We can move to an economy where workers feel that they’re not just a cog in the machine — one where they have power over their jobs and can make decisions,” Sanders said in an interview. “Democracy isn’t just the opportunity to vote. What democracy really means is having control over your life.”

Sanders said his campaign is working on a plan to require large businesses to regularly contribute a portion of their stocks to a fund controlled by employees, which would pay out a regular dividend to the workers. Some models of this fund increase employees’ ownership stake in the company, making the workers a powerful voting shareholder. The idea is in its formative stages and a spokesman did not share further details.

Sanders also said he will introduce a plan to force corporations to give workers a share of the seats on their boards of directors. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), another 2020 presidential candidate, proposed a similar idea last year.

Sanders’s plan for giving workers at major corporations an ownership stake in their firms is by far the most “socialist” policy he has ever endorsed as a national politician. The idea is, in essence, a scaled-down version of the late Swedish economist Rudolf Meidner’s plan for gradually socializing ownership of industry by requiring employers to funnel a fixed percentage of their annual profits into collectively owned, trade-union-managed “wage-earner funds.” Meidner’s plan, and all other blueprints for “funds socialism,” is derived from a simple observation, deftly summarized by Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project:

[C]apital ownership no longer takes the form of an individual business owner presiding over an empire, but instead takes the form of affluent families owning diversified portfolios of real estate and financial assets like stocks and bonds. The socialization of those assets into funds owned and controlled by workers or society would thus provide a relatively simple glide path into a kind of market socialism.

(For a rundown on the Meidner plan, and other approaches to “funds socialism,” check out Bruenig’s fascinating proposal for an American Solidarity Fund).

Sanders’s wealth-fund plan would do far more than any of his other policies to reduce the vast disparities of wealth and income that he’s made his name decrying. The fundamental challenge in combating inequality is that wealth begets more wealth. Those who can afford to invest in bonds get to collect annual interest payments; those who invest in stocks or real estate typically see their capital assets annually appreciate. Thus, most years, our nation’s collective capital stock directs loads of passive income to America’s wealthiest citizens. Which means that, even if wage growth hadn’t been tepid for the past four decades, the rich still would have pulled ahead of everyone else, buoyed by the rising tide of compound interest. To put a serious dent in inequality, then, you need to equalize the distribution of capital income (or, ya know, launch a world war).

And yet if Sanders’s plan for worker wealth funds is his most radical and socialistic, moderate voters may actually find it more palatable than his conventional redistributive policies. As mentioned above, raising taxes on the non-rich isn’t superpopular in the contemporary United States. Over the past half-century, conservative Republicans (and, to a lesser extent, neoliberal Democrats) have given Americans plenty of cause for doubting that Uncle Sam will be a faithful steward of their tax dollars. Asking voters to believe that the federal government knows how to invest their income better than they do can be tough. But asking them to believe that they know how to invest their employer’s income better than their bosses? That’s usually an easier sell.

(Continue Reading)

[girl-debord]

Cultural Exegesis: Cops on Television

The following is an essay I wrote for a cultural interpretation class last semester.

Surfing the channels on television or scrolling through the selection of shows on Netflix or Hulu, it is just about impossible to miss the waves of police procedurals that saturate American media. As of the week of March 4, 2019, two television programs out of the Nielsen Top 10 list for Prime Broadcast Network TV were dramas focusing on crime and police. Even in shows that aren’t built around the police procedural genre, police feature disproportionately as on-screen characters.

Television dramas following cops are, by this point, a well-established fixture of American media. These shows have been around since the late 40s and have their roots in films about western sheriffs and private detectives. Decades of this kind of entertainment have laid the groundwork for a new set of archetypes of cop characters and made possible the rise of police-centric TV of other genres, including comedies like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Castle.

In a 2016 interview with The Frame, researcher Kathleen Donovan, co-author of a study entitled “The Role of Entertainment Media in Perceptions of Police Use of Force,” told journalists that her findings showed that people spend more time consuming entertainment media than news, and that that affects their perceptions of the police. “By far the largest impact was on perceptions of how effective the police are,” she said. “In the content analysis, the way police are shown in these shows is that they're incredibly effective. People who watch these shows tend to think that police are a lot better at their job in terms of clearing crimes than they are in reality.” As the name of her study implies, Donovan has also found that television alters public perception of police violence. “It's almost always portrayed in a justified light,” she said. If a cop steps out of line, it is in order to punish someone the show has already proved to the audience is evil or to extract necessary information from a criminal.

While many people feel that they can distinguish between real and fictional cops, Donovan pointed out something that is troubling—“The problem is, [viewers] don't have other places that they're getting this information from,” she said. “They're not getting a lot of interaction with the police officers on a day to day level.” Even a discerning media consumer is likely to spend much more time around the cops of television than the cops of the real world. It is simply impossible to be really unaffected by this.

Of course, the idea that our media consumption habits affect our views should come as no surprise, even when the particular effect a piece of media has is disturbing. But the reason Donovan’s findings are significant is because these television programs do not spring up out of nothing. Certainly there would not be so many cop shows on TV if there was no demand for them, but that demand has its roots in something more sinister.

Matthew Alford reported for The Conversation in 2017 that since the establishment of its Entertainment Liaison Office in 1948, the Pentagon has been involved in the production of more than 1,100 television shows. And at a local level, individual police departments have worked with television producers to create positive PR consistently over the last several decades. In a letter to an ad agency in 1968, Bob Cinader, who was working on the upcoming show Adam-12, wrote, “Like all major police departments throughout the country, the LAPD's two biggest problems are recruitment and community relations. They feel that a series about the uniformed police officer would be of even greater help to them in particular and the cause of law and order in general.” In the wake of the Watts riots of 1965 and a growing sense of anti-authoritarian sentiment, turning to TV was a strategic move for the LAPD. In the time of the Rodney King riots and growing unrest, shows like Law & Order filled a similar role. Even in recent years, NYPD scandals and a resurgence of real critique of the police coincide with Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Blue Bloods.

The relationship goes beyond purely fictional television and into the realm of the late-80s boom of reality television, which turned its eye onto the police with John Langley’s COPS. “COPS’ foremost legacy, aside from its forceful introduction of a new form of televisuality, is as a highly effective PR bullhorn for the ‘human’ side of police-work,” writer Eric Harvey explains in a 2015 essay for Pitchfork. “Reenactments were replaced by what Langley called ‘raw reality,’ which encouraged a voyeuristic position to take in the action. The reality of raw reality, of course, is that COPS traded any pretense toward objectivity for an unprecedented level of backstage access; in the show’s world, perpetrators are anonymous while police officers are well-rounded characters who provide each episode’s narrative arc.”

In the 90s, whether through the sleek stories of Law & Order or the police-raid porn of COPS, television viewers were already absorbing content that would shape their understanding of law enforcement. Even if this content was not directly created by police departments or the Pentagon, in most cases, it had the approval of these authorities, and more importantly, police television going forward would be built upon the very positive image that these shows generated. A contemporary television program might never have its scripts reviewed by a government agency or work with police departments as PR, but in all things pertaining to the cops, the cultural propaganda had already worked its magic. The “good cop” archetype that shows like Adam-12 and Dragnet had worked so hard to make was already a known commodity, an established trope to build on and work with.

But more than the image of the squeaky-clean cop that captured the imaginations of many Americans, the most effective tool in changing the public perception of police has been the methodological understanding of the world that entertainment like this presents to its audiences. As Kathleen Donovan pointed out, the use of force by police is almost unilaterally justified by the narratives of the shows that depict them. “Within a minute and a half of the first episode, the show has summed up its central message: Police violence works,” Aaron Miguel Cantú writes in his 2014 review of Chicago PD. “This is relayed again and again throughout the series: When a cop with a chain-wrapped fist savagely beats a Spanish-speaking suspect demanding an attorney until he relinquishes a tip; when officers debase the idea of policing without intent to arrest; when cops round up black non-criminals and deliver them to precinct torture chambers. In every episode, these methods achieve the desired ends.” The image gritty cop programs like this present of police departments is one of a world that is, perhaps realistically, filled with violence. But in order for the police to be the heroes of this world, the plot must produce ends sufficient to justify the means: the arrest of a violent criminal, the prevention of a dangerous terrorist act, etc.

The underlying implication here is an idea that has come to be woven through much of American media: the world is a dangerous place, and authoritarian measures are a necessary evil to protect the innocent from the criminal. As the philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it, “The condition of man is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.” And certainly Hobbes would approve of this picture painted by cop shows: the rights of criminals (who are at any time determined to be so by law enforcement) are incidental to preserving order and so must be subsumed into the Leviathanic police state for the good of everyone. The television programs can do their best to portray cops as wholesome defenders of the peace. But at some point, there needs to be a little realism—the fact that these people carrying guns on behalf of the state employ violence as a part of their job is too obvious to ignore. So the TV instead presents us with police forces who do engage in violence, who do things which would be unspeakable for any real-life civilian—but they present us with the kind of world that makes this justifiable, a dangerous, threatening world in which everyone is an enemy. Donovan highlights the fact that the majority of television crimes are murders—a gross overrepresentation, but one that helps to uphold this image. This is the kind of world that justifies police violence. The narrative is not just about trusting the police, it’s about being afraid enough of everyone else to believe firmly that everything the police do is necessary.

This is the world of COPS. As Tim Stelloh writes in a 2018 article for The Marshall Project, “Civil rights activists, criminologists, and other observers have described [COPS] as a racist and classist depiction of the country, one in which crime is a relentless threat and officers are often in pitched battle against the poor black and brown perpetrators of that crime.” It’s a fascist’s view of society, coming here not from writers but from the police themselves, whose commentary frames the events of each episode. COPS gives viewers a taste of the reality of American law enforcement, just not the reality it claims. The program allows us to see the role of police as they see themselves, in full, action-packed detail.

The other side of this authoritarian outlook has become a media obsession in recent years, perhaps nearly to the extent of police procedurals. The appeal of shows like NBC’s Dateline in presenting the shock and horror of crime has proven effective even with a more dramatic format. Where Law & Order walked the line between the heroism of the justice system and the horror of crime, programs like Criminal Minds tend to delve deeper into the latter. This kind of media, lending its attention to serial killers and brutal rapists, provides a necessary balance for the traditional cop dramas. Hannibal, American Crime Story, and adjacent programs give us criminals who are as intelligent and charismatic as they are violent—worthy opponents for an increasingly militarized and surveilling police force. Of course, one might argue that these characters are clear fantasies to audiences, like supervillains or space aliens. But if most viewers have little interaction with police, how much experience can they be expected to have with killers? The intellectually or socially capable murderer provides the kind of fear necessary to move people towards embracing the total authority of law enforcement—both on-screen and in real life.

This fear is more congruent with later cop shows whose focus on gritty violence in the name of justice measures up to the violence of depraved criminals that fascinates audiences. But the friendlier image of police from the days of Adam-12 still finds its place in modern television. One niche is in the aforementioned police comedy—shows such as NBC’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine give us police to relate to and enjoy who are earnest in their pursuit of justice and can accomplish their (admittedly tamer) goals with minimal violence and maximal shenanigans. In a time of pubic distrust for the police, B99 excuses its cops from blame by contrasting them to bad cops and making gestures toward the notion that police violence is an issue of concern. But a show that concerns itself mainly with police as a wholesome source of comedy is ill-equipped to deal with the uncomfortable realities of the NYPD’s behavior. How often is Andy Samberg’s good-hearted character called upon to evict homeless people from parks or cooperate with ICE officers to detain migrant families? Citing the NYPD’s record-low public opinion ratings, Will Leitch writes in a review for Bloomberg, “This hasn’t reached the world of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The only people who hate cops on Brooklyn Nine-Nine are the wretched perps our heroes keep hauling in. The sitcom is standard cop-show fare in that regard, except more so; while a drama can allow our cop heroes the shading to become anti-heroes, the sitcom can’t really go that dark.”

Alongside the police sitcom is another niche for friendly cops to make an appearance which is perhaps more troubling: in children’s media. A slew of op-eds by parents in 2017 in publications like the Guardian and Baptist News called into question some of the implications of television shows like Paw Patrol. The cartoon, featuring dogs in the roles of emergency services, shows its police pup Chase using a “spy drone” for surveillance and coming to the aid of helpless citizens who continually put themselves in danger. Many parents were concerned about the lack of nuance in how the show presented authorities. In a response to these concerns Elissa Strauss wrote for CNN’s website, she cited author Tovah Klein, explaining, “Despite their reputation of innocence, children are bubbling cauldrons of conflicting feelings and impulses. This is especially the case during toddler and preschool years, when they become aware of their capacity to do bad things and struggle with understanding those urges. […] Good and bad are clearly articulated states in those shows, and should one misbehave, the repercussions are clear and predictable.” Strauss seems to believe this is sufficient to let parents breathe a sigh of relief. But if the response to children’s struggle with right and wrong that Paw Patrol gives is to seek the approval of authorities, what is there to be relieved about?

The amiable, endearing police of Paw Patrol and Brooklyn Nine-Nine who are eager to help and the tough, violent cops of Chicago PD and COPS who are a necessary force against the horrors of crime represent a particular understanding of law enforcement that is transmitted to children and adults alike. When the primary experience of most people with police is in entertainment, the images stick, and its effects make themselves known. In public discourse, people can be tricked into defending the actions of real police officers based on their time spent with the stories of fictional cops. Despite claims of a national crime wave and a “war on police,” the Brennan Center reports, as of 2017, declining crime rates and assaults on law enforcement, while Mapping Police Violence reported a general increase in the number of people killed by police from 2013 to 2016. While it may just be the tip of the iceberg of a culture of authoritarianism, cop shows on TV are at least partially responsible.

[ottofreycinet87-blog]

Western Music Historical past

Contemporary folks music refers to all kinds of genres that emerged within the mid 20th century and afterwards which were related to conventional folk music Starting within the mid-twentieth century a brand new form of popular folks music evolved from traditional people music. Lounge music refers to music played in the lounges and bars of hotels and casinos, or at standalone piano bars. Typically, the performers embrace a singer and one or two different musicians. The performers play or cowl songs composed by others, especially pop requirements, many deriving from the days of Tin Pan Alley. Notionally, much lounge music consists of sentimental favorites loved by a lone drinker over a martini, although in practice there is rather more selection. The time period may also refer to laid-back electronic music, additionally named downtempo, due to the reputation of lounge music as low-key background music. First, bradleykavanagh7.wikidot.com I see lots of people saying, properly this is only a small segment of music. There may be plenty of good music being made right now!" Perhaps so, however that wasn't the purpose of the post nor the video. The video discusses how fashionable music right this moment is not very good, and how most of what frequently makes the top 40 is homogenized crap. Both jazz and classical symbolize just 1.4% of whole U.S. music consumption a bit. Nonetheless, Classical album sales were larger for 2014, which places Jazz on the bottom of the barrel. An ideal instance of Tubby's deft touch for reverb is current on the observe Dub You Can Really feel." Listen for the reverb on the snare — it's the classic spring reverb boing" impact common in dub music. Learning to play a musical instrument can usually be costly so purchasing around is a good suggestion. The typical value of studying a musical instrument in the UK can fluctuate anything from £15 to £40 depending on the tutor, the area, the instrument and the extent of expertise, and naturally can typically be much more, particularly in areas resembling London.

Sensible! I applaud your ability to data mine, nevertheless lots of your questions and fatal flaws in your logic may have been reply by researching the fundamentals of main key harmony. Music Theory" is not a law, however an explanation of how western music makes use of chords in a key, eloiseortega.pen.io and what carefully or distantly associated keys a song may modulate to. These can usually have genre specific explanations. Take some concord courses and then figure those patterns" into your analysis and you may find some solutions. Syd Nathan, the top of King Records, thought it was a lousy idea. R&B followers don't shell out for stay albums, he tried to inform his headstrong star, a hit single is what they dig. So James personally financed the recording of this blazing half-hour set on the storied Harlem theater, and soon radio DJs were taking part in total LP sides on the air. Had this historic doc accomplished nothing more than introduce the wider world to the majestic, violent grace of a James Brown dwell performance, that'd be lots groundbreaking. However as Dwell on the Apollo crossed over to the pop charts, it convinced each artists and businessmen that black music might thrive commercially not by making concessions to genteel white tastes. Part heady avant-garde improv, half properly-thought of Molotov cocktail, all methods disorienting, Throbbing Gristle's debut steamrolled a new path for underground noiseniks by eschewing many of the formal guidelines of rock music — drums, guitars, melody and, on Aspect B, pulse completely —going instantly for the primal enchantment of distortion. "Industrial Music for Industrial Folks" learn the tagline for the band's personal Industrial Records, spawning a style fueled on grinding, mechanical terror and offered affect for everyone from Nine Inch Nails to Aphex Twin. Built on disturbing samples, disturbing electronic textures, and disturbing live recordings, Second Annual Report employed the LP as a medium of moveable transgression. Those that are good at writing songs in line with a new pattern or involving elements which might be new and authentic will, in all likelihood, not be those that rise to famous person status, at the very least not straight away. Just have a look at Vangelis. He may not have the views" that Bieber has on Youtube, however, musically speaking, he is about 88 000 656 890 x more authentic. That doesn't imply he is higher than Bieber, in fact (regardless that he clearly is). As an enormous fan of Laborious, basic and Psychedelic rock and being based in India, I would know. I've to say Rock music has taken a nosedive off a cliff in the past decade here and there actually will not be any music coming from this nation. The earliest songs that may very well be thought-about American popular music, versus the popular music of a particular region or ethnicity, have been sentimental parlor songs by Stephen Foster and his peers, and songs meant to be used in minstrel reveals , theatrical productions that featured singing, dancing and comedian performances. Minstrel shows generally used African devices and dance , and featured performers with their faces blackened, a method known as blackface 1 By the middle of the 19th century, touring firms had taken this music not solely to every a part of the United States, but in addition to the UK, Western Europe, and even to Africa and www.magicaudiotools.com Asia. Minstrel reveals have been typically marketed as though the music of the exhibits was in an African American model , though this was often not true.Rock's late-Sixties psychedelic sojourn was brought to a screeching halt with the August 1968 launch of the primary country-rock masterpiece, an album whose reverberations can still be heard in the arduous-rocking sounds of nearly every current nation hit. The industrial success of the Eagles, America, the Doobie Brothers are all attributable to fledgling Byrd Gram Parsons's resolute perception within the cosmic power of actual nation music. Parsons fan Elvis Costello introduced the phrase back to the punks on Almost Blue; the Blasters, Long Ryders and even X added a twang to their sound; and "cowpunk" turned a thing. Likewise, Uncle Tupelo's 1990 No Depression album; band spinoffs Wilco, Son Volt and Bottle Rockets; and numerous subsequent alt-country advocates can all be traced back to Sweetheart.For as faithfully as they recreate their namesake, YouTube's '80s remixes really remind me of a newer second. The internet music culture of the late '90s and early 2000s was a interval of fast transformation, however whilst illegal file sharing accelerated music discovery, the shortcomings of the technology saved things grounded. MP3 collections took up vast amounts of digital area and have been playable only via certain packages. And, like file retailer crate-digging excursions, online hunts didn't always pan out: You may spend hours downloading a music, solely to seek out out it had been mislabeled.

[elegantshapeshifter]

Is hag ridding actually a thing or is it something that the inquisitors just made up? Thank you

I’m sorry I’m not English-native, therefore I don’t know if I understood well the term “hag riding”. Do you mean sleep paralysis due to witches?

If yes, do you remember when I wrote about how Witchcraft spread and changed from those who believed in Witchcraft to those who practiced it? I quote from an old article of mine:“So… witches existed only in folk legends and not really?Even supposing that initially that was the case, there is the phenomenon of emulation. That is, somebody could have taken inspiration from the folklore in order to emulate these beliefs in real life.Probably the emulation required several steps, for example it is possible that:1) there was a vast majority of the population who believed in legends about witches;2) there were certain people who let food offerings to these legends’ characters;3) there was a minority of people who dreamt these legends;4) there was an even more restricted minority of people who believed that their dreams about witchcraft meant something and that they were actual witches;5) there was a minority of minority of minority of people who emulated in physical reality the Sabbath they dreamed.”

Now, let’s focus on the points 3 & 4: “there was a minority of people who dreamt these legends” and “there was an even more restricted minority of people who believed that their dreams about witchcraft meant something and that they were actual witches".According to Julian Goodare, the internalization of these dreams happened because they were accompanied by sleep paralysis. According to him, the sleep paralysis and the visions of the Sabbath could be seen in two different ways:- as an attack by witches;- or as the joining of a witches’ procession/as an experience previous to go to the Sabbath. 

So in the first case, the person would have thought to be a victim of witches, while in the second case, the person would have thought to be a witch. 

I quote from his book “The European Witch-Hunt“:

“Psychological conditions and the ‘nightmare experience’ A few contemporaries tried to explain witchcraft as a delusion caused by witches’ ‘melancholy’ – their term for what they perceived as a medical condition. This is no longer regarded as adequate, but, if we sifted through the evidence from witchcraft records looking for medical or psychological conditions recognised today, what would we find? It is difficult to diagnose such conditions at a distance of hundreds of years, since symptoms were recorded according to contemporary, not modern, categories; but this difficulty presents itself, in some way or other, in most historical work, and is not insuperable in principle. Historians and epidemiologists have thought it worthwhile to diagnose the cause of the fourteenth-century Black Death, for instance; recent DNA-based studies have confirmed the theory that the disease was bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Can we diagnose medical or psychological conditions, either in witches themselves, or in their accusers? Medical conditions are those in which there is an observable, physical cause for the symptoms. Psychological conditions are those in which the cause of the symptoms is taken to be located in the brain (where there may or may not be an observable condition). An example would be the distinction between fits caused by epilepsy (a medical condition) and fits caused by conversion disorder(a psychological condition). Here we are mainly looking at what seem to be psychological conditions. To begin with there are hallucinations, which are quite common. Mostly they are aural; about 5 per cent of the population today hear imaginary voices or other sounds. Visual hallucinations, in which people see imaginary objects, also occur. The imagined objects are usually modifications of existing ones; thus it is possible to glimpse some movement and to decide that it was a cat. A few people, however, genuinely ‘see’ things that are not there at all – usually a single object (or, often, a person) superimposed on a real background. The word ‘imaginary’ should not be misunderstood; to people who hear voices, the voices are real, even though they know that nobody else can hear them. Witches reported having sex with the Devil; neighbours reported being assaulted by the witch, often at night. Could there be a medical or psychological condition that might lie behind these strange reports? Unlikely though it may seem, there is indeed such a condition. Sleep paralysis is a disorder experienced by perhaps a quarter of people at some time in their lives. Typically they are just falling asleep or are just waking up. They believe that they are awake, are aware of their surroundings and can look about – but they cannot move or speak, because their bodies are still ‘asleep’. They feel themselves becoming heavier, their hearts race and they have difficulty breathing. They feel anxiety or terror. A large minority of those experiencing sleep paralysis hear strange sounds (such as buzzing or heavy footsteps), see strange visions (such as lights, animals or demons) or feel strange presences assaulting them. The whole experience lasts from a few seconds to several minutes, but can seem much longer. Although the sleep paralysis experience is physically harmless, it can be utterly terrifying to the helpless and bewildered sufferer. Sleep paralysis is not well known, even today, and sufferers make sense of their experiences in culture-specific terms, ‘seeing’ the kinds of intruders that they believe in. Today, some turn to the belief in ‘abduction by aliens’, which is essentially a modern folk belief – and it provides clues to the beliefs of earlier ages. People’s accounts of alien abduction are usually produced with the help of therapists who believe in alien abduction themselves, using techniques like hypnosis or guided imagery to ‘recover’ what the therapist calls ‘repressed memories’. Under the therapist’s guidance, the subject’s vivid but fragmentary experience of sleep paralysis is transformed into a detailed and convincing-looking narrative, complete with recognisable aliens and spaceships. In psychological terms, these are ‘false memories’ which the therapist has unwittingly implanted in the subject. This is fairly easy to do for many people, particularly those who have elaborate fantasies [...]. The nearest equivalent to the therapist for the early modern witchcraft suspect was the interrogator. We tend to think of interrogators as hostile to the suspects, but some interrogators, at least some of the time, behaved in a sympathetic manner towards them, encouraging them to ‘repent’. Witchcraft suspects were often questioned intensely, and leading questions were used; this is likely to have produced similar effects to the therapists who implant false memories. Moreover, sleep paralysis can be brought on by deprivation of sleep, to which witchcraft suspects were sometimes subjected. Early modern folk knew nothing of aliens; what they believed in was the ‘night-mare’, a terrifying experience, sometimes thought of as a female nonhuman entity, that laid on people’s chests at night and tried to crush them. (This should be distinguished from what we usually call a ‘nightmare’ today; physiologically, this is an ordinary anxiety dream.) The early modern ‘nightmare’ did not have to be a distinct being; people often attributed ‘night-mare’ experiences to witches or demons. Neighbours’ testimonies against witches sometimes described the witch as visiting them in their beds, sometimes also as pressing on their chests (a rationalisation of the breathlessness common in sleep paralysis). A nocturnal visitation by three witches is depicted in Illustration 5.2. Some neighbours reported being pressed by a cat; witches were reputed to transform themselves into cats, and cats were known to lie on people in their beds. The belief that witches ‘pressed’ their victims in bed was well known, found not only in the testimony of victims (sleep paralysis sufferers), but also in confessions of witches who allegedly carried out the pressing. Some women sleep paralysis sufferers report experiences resembling sexual assault. This probably contributed to the medieval and early modern belief in the ‘incubus’ and ‘succubus’. The incubus was a male demon that had intercourse with women in their sleep; it was thought to be a particular problem in nunneries. The succubus, a female demon that had intercourse with men [...]. Both incubi and succubi were sometimes regarded as equivalent to the ‘night-mare’. To the extent that incubi were regarded as demons, they may have been alternatives to the idea of assault by a witch, but there was some confusion and flexibility about these experiences. If the sleep paralysis experience was interpreted as demonic possession, this in turn could be attributed to a witch. Sleep paralysis may also have something to tell us about witches’ flight. Although the experience of being pressed is a common symptom of sleep paralysis, a few sufferers instead experience floating, flying or spinning. A yet smaller number have out-of-body experiences, floating above their beds and looking down on their own bodies. Unlike the terrifying intruders, some of these flights are experienced as positive and even blissful. Some of the people who believed that they had travelled with the fairies were probably sufferers from sleep paralysis, though it is unlikely that they all were. The idea that some people joined nocturnal processions with nonhuman beings was widespread. Sleep paralysis seems to have been behind a second popular idea about nocturnal witches (that is, legendary or folkloric witches), related yet distinct. The main idea arose from the visionary experience of people who believed themselves to have flown or travelled out. But some people believed that they had been visited by nocturnal witches, or feared that they might be visited by them. In Hungary, there was a name for such witches: ‘mora witches’. Many victims witnessed an apparition of a mora witch – a person known to them, but (it was believed) appearing to them in a second, physical body. A mora witch could enter a house through a keyhole, or could appear and disappear. One was said to have ‘formed herself at the fire’, while another flew through the window ‘in a night-going manner’. Sometimes the victim was the only person able to see the mora witch. To the extent that the mora witch was a known neighbour, she (and it was always she) was related to the community witch whom we examined in the last chapter. She was also an individual, rather than a member of a group such as a fairy cult. Unlike the community witch, however, the mora witch was not primarily a worker of malefice – at least not of ordinary malefice; if she committed harm it was in abducting the victim to an imagined witches’ sabbat. The mora witch was a regional elaboration of the widespread idea of the nocturnal visit by a witch. Finally, therefore, sleep paralysis could lead people to believe that they had been abducted to a witches’ sabbat. In Kiskunhalas, Hungary, in 1747, Anna Hös reported that her husband woke up terrified, ‘lying there stiff, barely drawing breath’, and then cried out, ‘My Lord Jesus help me! Oh! fiery witches took me to Máramos and they put six hundredweight of salt on me.’ The inability to move, the breathlessness and the visions all mark this as a case of sleep paralysis – but the content of Hös’s husband’s visions was culture-specific. Sleep paralysis, which is not culture-specific, can hardly ‘explain’ the cultural content of witchcraft beliefs, but it provided early modern folk with material with which to articulate and validate those beliefs. The structure of beliefs about witches and envisioned experience is illustrated in Diagram 5.2. This diagram is in two largely separate parts: the trance experience (positive) and the nightmare experience (frightening).Shamanistic visionaries had trance experiences, and should be distinguished from witchcraft victims who had nightmare experiences stemming from sleep paralysis. There are connections between the two, notably in the shared motif of night flight. Some witches’ confessions were based on the nightmare experience (it was not just something for victims of witchcraft), which provides another link between these two modes of experience.”

Source: Julian Goodare’s “The European Witch-Hunt”

Moreover, even without resorting to the interrogators, the sharing of dreams inside the family or with friends could have made dreams or “the subject’s vivid but fragmentary experience of sleep paralysis”, "transformed into a detailed and convincing-looking narrative” as well. 

This can be seen as the “internalization of the belief” to be either a witch or the victim of a witch of which I talked about in previous posts.

However, if you wanted to know if really witches did spiritual journeys in order to press upon the stomach of somebody they hated and causing them a sleep paralysis, I don’t think it was a real thing. For 2 reasons: - if you hated somebody you wouldn’t have limited to causing them sleep paralysis;- wasn’t it simpler to do something else?