i was talking to one of my coworkers about my trip and she asked me where i was going and i said austria and she looked at me all confused and then she said “like…austria-hungary?” and i wasn’t quite sure how to break it to her
Wow wtf HIV/AIDS was discovered by Flossie Wong-Staal, an Chinese-American woman, and she’s the reason the HIV test even exists. AND THEN she invented the molecular knife that lead to treatments for HIV/AIDS. And she’s STILL ALIVE. We don’t hear about the contributions of Women of Color enough, my word. Madness.
Thank you, Flossie. 💜💜💜
April 16, 2019: from The Invention of Streetlights, Cole Swensen
from The Invention of Streetlights
Cole Swensen
noctes illustratas
(the night has houses)
[…]
Certain cells, it’s said, can generate light on their own.
There are organisms that could fit on the head of a pin
and light entire rooms.
Throughout the Middle Ages, you could hire a man
on any corner with a torch to light you home
were lamps made of horn
and from above a loom of moving flares, we watched
Notre Dame seem small.
Now the streets and stand still.
By 1890, it took a pound of powdered magnesium
to photograph a midnight ball.
[…]
We opened all our windows
and looked out on a listening world laced here and there with points of light,
Notre Dame of the Unfinished Sky,
oil slicks burning on the river; someone down on the corner
striking a match to read by.
Some claim Paris was the first modern city to light its streets.
The inhabitants were ordered
in 1524 to place a taper in every window in the dark there were 912 streets
walked into this arc until by stars
makes steps sharp, you are
and are not alone
by public decree
[…]
Says Libanius
Night differs us
Without us
noctes illustratas
Though in time of public grief
when the streets were left unlit, on we went, just
dark marks in the markets and voices in the cafes, in the crowded squares,
a single touch, the living, a lantern
swinging above the door any time a child is born, be it
Antioch, Syria, or Edessa—
and then there were the festivals,
the festum encaeniorum, and others in which
they call idolatrous, these torches
half a city wide
be your houses.
==
memory-for-trifles replied to your link “Babylon Berlin Sells to More Than 35 Countries, Including Netflix…”
I TOTES THOUGHT IT WAS THE CLINIC TOO, the people have spoken!!!
The mystery that image holds!!!! Things still drifting on the air, a broken skylight or something with the light cracking down on the eerily empty ruined foyer, what happened here!! Aaaaaahhhhh they’ve still got it
It looks like they’re standing in a bank? If season 3 takes place in 1930, then that would have been after the stock market crash, so maybe whoever’s standing there (probably Gereon) has come across a bank that was abandoned or something
Well one of the producers in the Variety article said they’re still in 1929, so it seems we’ll be pre-crash for a bit longer! (I do desperately want that NOTGELD though…)
I don’t know if the clinic courtyard thing we see at the end of Episode 6 was part of the [whole mini village of] sets & streets they built for the production or a real place they’d scouted for filming, but TV shows recycle locations as “new” locations all the time, so although this distinctive architectural situation
seem to indicate the same space, there’s visible stonework in the S3 image versus S1’s smooth plaster, so WHO KNOWS, could absolutely be somewhere new to us. There also does appear to be a statue of a bear facing a statue of a bull across from some sort of analog stock ticker, so you are sure not pulling this financial institution idea out of thin air my friend!
Anyway I love this whole question of “what are we looking at” VERY much, because a big part of The Weimar Experience was how architectural coding suddenly seemed turned on its head and no one could tell what things were by sight anymore, and I am absolutely & transparently writing this reply mostly so that I can post up a whole bunch of wonderfully topical text from journalist & author Joseph Roth writing in Berlin in, yes (yes!), 1929:
“It happens from time to time that I fail to distinguish a cabaret from a crematorium, and pass certain scenes actually intended to be amusing, with the quiet shudder that the attributes of death elicit. Such confusions would not have been possible in previous years. … A building that bore a fleeting, if distressing, resemblance to a classical temple was certain to be a theater for light opera. Something resembling a church was a main railway station. It was embarrassing, but somehow handy. … But ever since people have had the idea that modern times needed ‘modern styles,’ all the old rules of thumb have stopped helping me. It’s as if all the gobbledygook I’ve learned with so much effort has suddenly been invalidated. It happens from time to time that in my hurry to catch a train I look for a cinema, thinking thereby to find the station. But my method no longer works. The building I took for the station turns out to be a ‘five o’clock tea’ house in a sports palace. The facades of these modern times are unsettling me.
Still more confusing is interior design. I have learned that those hygenic white operating theaters are actually patisseries. But I continue to mistake those long glass tubes mounted on the walls for thermometers. Of course, they are lamps, or as people more correctly say, ‘source of illumination.’ … [And] domestic interior design is a fraught affair. … The lives of our fathers’ generation were lived in such poor taste. But their children and grandchildren live in strenuously bracing conditions.”
This does a good job at showing how ridiculously free-for-all and confusing WWI was.
The historical accuracy here, as a History major, makes me weep tears of joy.
*Cries of laughter*
A history major this made me extremely amused. This is beautifully accurate.
IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW
Russia gets thrown through a plate glass window, gets knocked out, suffers brain damage, and wakes up with a complete personality change
I’m dying.
Why did no one mention that while Germany was cold cocking Belgium, Austria back handed Serbia so hard he ended getting his name changed, Turkey’s dad died of a heart attack, and HEY EVERYBODY POLANDS BACK! 🎉
it’s back and I love it.
America pretends it won by itself.
The Story of Lt. Michael Fitton and the Shark Papers
(@pilferingapples @thiswaitingheart @twofrontteethstillcrooked and @artificialities thank you for your Shark Papers support. @plinytheyounger as always thank you for listening to me BREATHLESSLY relate this on mobile during the workday.) and now
IT IS TIME for the story. The story of…..
Lt. Michael Fitton and the Shark Papers.
This story has every element necessary to a good story, those being:
- Breakfast
- Sharks
- Paperwork
I accidentally stumbled upon the story of Lt. Michael Fitton and the Shark Papers last night in the following nigh-inscrutable anecdote about HMS Abergavenny:
“The tender Ferret and the cutter Sparrow were involved in a curious incident in which Ferret’s captain, Acting Lieutenant Michael Fitton, served a shark to Lieutenant Hugh Wilie, captain of Sparrow and then surprised him with some papers.”
Reading this I have no idea what the fuck. You served someone a shark and “surprised him with some papers”? Like fine but. Why? Let us find out.
DISCLAIMER: I should warn you that this is not a legitimate academic inquiry into the Shark Papers, and certainly there are Shark Papers experts more expert than myself. But do they have my current feverish Shark Papers enthusiasm? I think not! Also it seems that the story of the Shark Papers, as with many good stories about sharks and/or papers, has split into many apocryphal directions. Still. It is time for the story……of Lt. Michael Fitton and the Shark Papers.
cardinal wolsey really called BOTH his illegitimate sons Thomas………why were Tudors Like This
it’s like in this period they had an opt-out policy whereby your son was automatically called Thomas unless you stated otherwise
Goals
things that this tweet made me imagine which almost definitely did not happen:
- a band of brigands waylaying a merchant caravan on the road and then after stealing everything, making the terrified merchants listen to their dissertations because SOMEONE HAS TO
- elite colleges in the ottoman empire putting out those “wondering what you can do with your history degree? here’s what our graduates have gone on to do!!” pamphlets and it’s just. a large list of Crimes