Quotulatiousness

September 19, 2020

History RE-Summarized: The Roman Republic

Filed under: Europe, History, Humour — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 18 Sep 2020

The Roman Republic is a fascinating story all on its own, but it also serves as an excellent object lesson in civics.

This video is a Remastered, Definitive Edition of three previous videos from this channel — History Summarized: “The Roman Republic”, “The Punic Wars”, and “Julius Caesar and the Fall of The Republic”. This video combines them all into one narrative, fully upgrades all of the visuals, and adds extra historical notes and clarifications along the way. Please let me know if you enjoyed this, and are interested in more videos like this. There are many historical miniseries on this channel that would fit neatly into a compilation like this, and I’d be thrilled to make them!

SOURCES & Further Reading: Virgil’s Aeneid, Polybius’ Histories, Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, SPQR by Mary Beard, Rome: A History in Seven Sackings by Matt Kneale, Rubicon by Tom Holland, The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan, (and also my degree in Classical Studies).

Note for 14:15 — I mention Livy’s History Of Rome (“Ab Urbe Condita“) by name, but made the lizard-brain mistake of showing Polybius instead. Poor Livy, first 75% of his work is lost, and now this.

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September 14, 2020

That Time the Ladies of New Orleans Peed on Union Soldiers

Filed under: History, Humour, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Atun-Shei Films
Published 24 Sep 2019

In 1862, shortly after the capture of New Orleans by Union forces during the Civil War, General Benjamin “the Beast” Butler issued the infamous “woman order” because the wealthy ladies of the city wouldn’t stop dumping pee on his men.

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QotD: Airportland

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Humour, Quotations, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Most readers have spent time in Airportland. We know its particular wan light; the general flatness that makes the incline of jetways such a shock; its salty, sugary, and alcohol-infused cuisine; its detached social ambiance; its modes of travel (the long slog down the moving walkway, the hum of the people-moving carts, the standing-room-only shuttles, the escalators, the diddly-dup diddly-dup of roller bags, and — oh, yes — the airplanes); its fauna (emotional-support animals) and flora (plastic ficus); its mysterious system of governance; its language. Now and then, in Airportland, you spot a first-time visitor — confused by TSA rules, late for her flight, burdened by too many carry-ons. If you think the French are rude to those who don’t speak their language, you haven’t been paying attention in Airportland. We Airportlanders give these newbies no quarter. We sigh in exasperation as they’re sent back through security check for all the things they neglected to remove from their person. When they’re wandering Concourse E looking for their plane, because they thought they were in seat E68 (you know, like in a theater), when actually their flight leaves from B12 and their ticket class is E, we may take pity. But we hardly remember being that person, because once you’ve inhabited Airportland a handful of times, you’re a native.

And like native speakers, we don’t think much about the strange lingo we speak in Airportland. Take Gate. Some years ago, flying out of Peshawar, Pakistan, I passed through a dark set of catacombs inhabited by ruthless security guards and intelligence personnel with perhaps five checkpoints all lit by flickering overhead bulbs. Finally, like C.S. Lewis’s Lucy passing through the wardrobe into Narnia, I emerged into what I thought at first was a harshly lit bus station. It had the requisite faded plastic chairs and desultory counter offering stale packaged snacks and room-temperature soft drinks. Then I saw the sign over the doorway leading outside: GATE. I breathed a sigh of relief. Unlikely as it seemed, I had found my way to Airportland. But why Gate? Well, apparently there once was an actual gate, which stayed closed until the propellers of the plane were safely tied down and the passengers were free to pass through and board from the tarmac. (There were, of course, no “Jetways” — once a trademark, now generic — back in the day.)

Other terms of art abound in Airportland. Take concourse. It’s from the Latin, meaning “flowing together,” and outside Airportland it generally refers to an open area where passageways meet and people gather. In French, concours means “contest.” At the airport, the concourses are simply wide corridors, usually designated by letter, but if you like you can think of them as flowing, since they’re usually filled with a stream of humanity, and it often feels like a contest simply to reach the gate without incident.

Lucy Ferriss, “The Language of Airportland”, Lingua Franca, 2018-06-10.

September 12, 2020

Miscellaneous Myths: Ares’ Abduction

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 11 Sep 2020

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Well, they may have wounded Ares’ body and spirit, but at least he still has his pride. Oh wait

Alternate title: Ares And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

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September 11, 2020

QotD: “Karen” and other stereotypes

Filed under: Humour, Media, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

When I first saw the name “Karen,” used in the plural, apparently for a whole class of women, I did not look it up. Context told me that I wouldn’t have to; that a Karen was simply the updated term for what I formerly knew as a Becky. There are related, more focused terms, such as “Trixie” for a Karen from upscale white Chicago, and so forth. It is one of many reasons to celebrate the black urban lexical culture from which it emerged. The image of a passive-aggressive blonde, with a pony tail, disputing her order at Starbucks, comes quickly to mind. She will be married to a “Chad” whom she met in law school.

I love stereotypes. They help us understand what the Greeks called syndromes, carrying them beyond the narrow world of medical jargon. “Karen” began as the stereotype for the woman who “wants to see the manager,” but was soon extended through a gallery of related traits. One thinks affectionately through a shortlist of the Karens one has known. For the Christian, it can impact one’s prayer life. (I found myself once praying for a certain Karen Surname, then spontaneously extending it to “Karens everywhere,” with a memorial for the Beckies. I noticed as I searched my memory that many of these Karens were biologically male.)

And today I wonder, as I have often done, at the genius of colloquial language, and the unerring way with which it uncovers fresh stereotypes, that enhance our perception of reality, in a way like painting and the other fine arts. (In a lost portrait, Leonardo depicted a Karen of the Renaissance.)

David Warren, “Karens & their kind”, Essays in Idleness, 2020-06-10.

September 9, 2020

QotD: Drama critics

Filed under: Humour, Media, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Drama critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they see the tricks done every night, they know how it’s done, but they can’t do it themselves.

Brendan Behan, quoted in “Notes by Sage of Nonsense”, Globe and Mail 1961-03-18.

September 7, 2020

Who Was Leif Erikson?

Filed under: Americas, Cancon, History, Humour, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Atun-Shei Films
Published 9 Oct 2019

Happy Leif Erikson Day! Allow me to regale you with the saga of the daring Viking who sailed to North America five hundred years before Columbus (that hack) and called it Vinland. We all know his name and his famous deeds – but what sort of man was Leif Erikson?

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September 5, 2020

History Summarized: The Viking Age

Filed under: Britain, Europe, France, History, Humour, Religion, Russia — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 4 Sep 2020

The Vikings are enjoying a new wave of enthusiasm in popular culture, but these seafaring Norsemen are still quite clearly a misunderstood force in medieval European history. So let’s take a wide look at the European world during The Viking Age!

Check out Yellow’s livestreams over at https://Twitch.tv/LudoHistory

SOURCES & Further Reading: The Vikings by Walaker Nordeide and Edwards, Vikings: A Very Short Introduction by Richards, Age of the Vikings and The Conversion of Scandinavia by Winroth, The Vikings By Harl via The Great Courses, The Viking World by Graham-Campbell, The Viking Way by Price.

This video was edited by Sophia Ricciardi AKA “Indigo”. https://www.sophiakricci.com/

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From the comments:

Ludohistory
23 hours ago (edited)
Thanks so much for having me on and letting me help out! It was a lot of fun (even if I talked a little too fast sometimes)! To clarify a piece that I know I did cover too briefly — missionary trips to Scandinavia occurred in Denmark around 823, on the orders of Louis the Pious, and in Sweden in 829, when Ansgar, a Frankish monk, traveled to the town of Birka, where he found a very small Christian community, probably mostly enslaved or formerly enslaved people, and converted a couple of Norse people, including the town prefect. (The graveyard for that town, incidentally, is where the 10th century “female warrior” that made waves a few years ago was buried).

There’s a lot we didn’t get a chance to talk about about the diaspora and its ending, so if there’s anything you all are curious on or find unclear, let me know here or on twitter 🙂

Finally, if you liked this, all the VODs for my personal streams (where I try to ramble about history in games) can be found by clicking on my name, and tomorrow I’ll be streaming CKIII on twitch (link in the description)!

QotD: Teenage girls

Filed under: Humour, Quotations, Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Some years back when our daughter was navigating adolescence, my wife remarked that teenage girls don’t really have friends. They have allies. And those alliances tend to be of the Ribbentrop/Molotov variety and can shift in a nanosecond.

R. Sherman commenting at DavidThompson.com, 2018-06-05.

September 4, 2020

How England used to vote

Filed under: Britain, History, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Learnhistory3
Published 1 May 2011

Rowan Atkinson as Edmund BlackAdder in a sketch on the voting situation before 1832. Rotten boroughs and pocket boroughs etc

Script excerpt from BlackAdder Scripts:

At Mrs. Miggins’ home

E: Well, Mrs. Miggins, at last we can return to sanity. The hustings are
over, the bunting is down, the mad hysteria is at an end. After the
chaos of a general election, we can return to normal.

M: Oh, has there been a general election, then, Mr. BlackAdder?

E: Indeed there has, Mrs. Miggins.

M: Oh, well, I never heard about it.

E: Well of course you didn’t; you’re not eligible to vote.

M: Well, why not?

E: Because virtually no-one is: women, peasants, (looks at Baldrick)
chimpanzees (Baldrick looks behind himself, trying to see the animal),
lunatics, Lords…

B: That’s not true — Lord Nelson’s got a vote!

E: He’s got a boat, Baldrick. Marvelous thing, democracy. Look at
Manchester: population, 60,000; electoral roll, 3.

M: Well, I may have the brain the size of a sultana…

E: Correct…

M: …but it hardly seems fair to me.

E: Of course it’s not fair — and a damn good thing too. Give the like of
Baldrick the vote and we’ll be back to cavorting druids, death by
stoning, and dung for dinner.

B: Oh, I’m having dung for dinner tonight.

M: So, who are they electing when they have these elections?

E: Ah, the same old shower: fat tory landowners who get made MPs when
they reach a certain weight; raving revolutionaries who think that just
because they do a day’s work that somehow gives them the right to get
paid… Basically, it’s a right old mess. Toffs at the top, plebs at the
bottom, and me in the middle making a fat pile of cash out of both of them.

M: Oh, you’d better watch out, Mr. BlackAdder; things are bound to change.

E: Not while Pitt the Elder’s Prime Minister they aren’t. He’s about as
effective as a catflap in an elephant house. As long as his feet are warm
and he gets a nice cup of milky tea in the sun before his morning nap,
he doesn’t bother anyone until his potty needs emptying.

August 30, 2020

Why Gods and Generals is Neo-Confederate Propaganda (and Objectively Sucks)

Filed under: History, Humour, Media, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Atun-Shei Films
Published 12 Aug 2019

Like if Ken Burns and Mr. Plinkett had a baby.

Gods and Generals (2003) is a four and a half hour long epic from the director of Gettysburg (1993), chronicling the first two years of the American Civil War in the Eastern Theater from the point of view of General Stonewall Jackson. In this video essay / review, I examine how the film is an insidious piece of pro-Confederate propaganda, echoing the inaccuracies and misconceptions of the notorious Lost Cause myth.

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August 27, 2020

Scots wa huh?

Filed under: Britain, Humour, Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

An amusing story in The Register from Kieren McCarthy:

In an extraordinary and somewhat devastating discovery, it turns out virtually the entire Scots version of Wikipedia, comprising more than 57,000 articles, was written, edited or overseen by a netizen who clearly had nae the slightest idea about the language.

The user is not only a prolific contributor, they are an administrator of sco.wikipedia.org, having created, modified or guided the vast majority of its pages in more than 200,000 edits. The result is tens of thousands of articles in English with occasional, and often ridiculous, letter changes – such as replacing a “y” with “ee.”

That’s right, someone doing a bad impression of a Scottish accent and then writing it down phonetically is the chief maintainer of the online encyclopedia’s Scots edition. And although this has been carrying on for the best part of a decade, the world was mostly oblivious to it all – until today, when one Redditor finally had enough of reading terrible Scots and decided to look behind the curtain.

“People embroiled in linguistic debates about Scots often use it as evidence that Scots isn’t a language, and if it was an accurate representation, they’d probably be right,” noted the Reddit sleuth, Ultach. “It uses almost no Scots vocabulary, what little it does use is usually incorrect, and the grammar always conforms to standard English, not Scots.”

While very nearly all Scottish people speak English, the Scots language was apparently still spoken, read, or otherwise understood by nearly 30 per cent of Scotland’s population according to those responding to a 2011 census. The language got a memorable boost, too, when Scots-writing novelist Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting became a silver-screen sensation.

August 22, 2020

Creoles, Kaintucks, and the Culture War of Early New Orleans (feat. The Cynical Historian)

Filed under: Americas, France, History, Humour, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Atun-Shei Films
Published 21 Aug 2020

For #ProjectFrance, I collaborated with @The Cynical Historian to teach y’all about the cosmopolitan cultural exchange between revolutionary France and a country called the United States of America in the late 18th and early 19th century. In this video, I discuss the contentious relationship between Anglo-Americans and French Creoles in New Orleans in the years after the Louisiana Purchase.

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~REFERENCES~

[1] Lo Faber. “Anglo-Americans” (2018). 64Parishes https://64parishes.org/entry/anglo-am…

[2] Richard Campanella. Bienville’s Dilemma: A Historical Geography of New Orleans (2008). University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Page 170-171

[3] Peter J. Kastor. “Louisiana Purchase and Territorial Period” (2018). 64Parishes https://64parishes.org/entry/louisian…

[4] Daniel Rasmussen. American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt (2011). Harper Perennial, Page 16

[5] Kimberly S. Hanger. Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769-1803 (1997). Duke University Press, Page 54-56

[6] Mary Gehman. The Free People of Color of New Orleans (2009). Sheridan Books, Page 49-51

[7] Rasmussen, Page 159-163

History-Makers: Thucydides

Filed under: Books, Europe, Greece, History, Humour, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 21 Aug 2020

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Ahh ancient Greece, it has been entirely too long. Today we’ll take a look at the foundational work of my entire career path — Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, a book that almost single-handedly set the standard for how we engage in historical inquiry. Also it has the added benefit of being about Ancient Greece so win-win!

SOURCES & Further Reading: History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Histories by Herodotus, Hellenica by Xenophon, and the 4 straight years I spent studying this in university — Boy do I love doing a video about a topic I’m specifically trained in.

This video was edited by Sophia Ricciardi AKA “Indigo”. https://www.sophiakricci.com/
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August 21, 2020

Virtuesplaining Blazing Saddles

Filed under: History, Humour, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Paul du Quenoy says that Mel Brooks is cancelled after all:

It seems like only yesterday that HBO Max, the financially troubled American cable television network’s new film streaming service, signalled its virtue by removing Gone With The Wind from viewing so that the classic film could be properly “contextualised” as what presenter and University of Chicago film professor Jacqueline Stewart calls “a prime text for examining expressions of white supremacy in popular culture”. She believes this is useful for the “re-education” of audiences who might otherwise stray into thoughtcrime.

Mel Brooks’s smash hit 1974 comedy Blazing Saddles, which seems to have been added to HBO Max since the Gone With The Wind dust up and is known for its liberal use of the feared and loathed “n-word”, arrived with a similarly patronising disclaimer already installed. In a three-minute introduction that apparently cannot be skipped over, Stewart is there again, this time to inform viewers that “racist language and attitudes pervade the film”, while instructing them that “those attitudes are espoused by characters who are portrayed here as explicitly small-minded, ignorant bigots … The real, and much more enlightened, perspective is provided by the main characters played by Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder”.

Thanks, Aunt Jacqueline. If you have not seen Blazing Saddles – and if you are under the age of forty there is an excellent chance some prudish authority figure sanitised it out of your cosseted millennial existence – it stands as one of the greatest, and the certainly the funniest, anti-racist films of all time. Based on a story by Andrew Bergman, Brooks conceived it as a scathing send-up of racism and the hypocrisy that still enabled it after the great civil rights victories of the 1960s. Brooks’s idiom was a parody of the classic Western, by then an exhausted genre that had, among other flaws, become inanely predictable and was much criticised for leaving out minorities. A landmark of American film, Blazing Saddles was selected in 2006 for inclusion in the US National Film Registry, which recognises “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films” worthy of preservation.

Drenched in hilarity – and by my count using the “n-word” 17 times in its 93-minute run – the plot involves a conspiracy by an avaricious U.S. state attorney general who wants to drive white settlers off land he needs to complete a profitable railroad project. After having outlaws wreak mayhem on the townspeople, he recommends that the governor appoint a black sheriff to restore law and order, cynically assuming that their racism will cause them to reject the new lawman and give up. Despite a rough initial reception, the sheriff outwits attempts to get rid of him and, with the help of a washed up but sympathetic alcoholic gunslinger, leads the townspeople to victory, winning their love and respect before moving on to other brave deeds.

While HBO no longer wants to risk having its paying customers think for themselves (and what stale corporate outfit uneasily transitioning to a crowded new market wouldn’t?), it could rightly be said that anyone dumb enough to miss the film’s message might be a recent product of Anglo-American higher education. I do not mean this at all facetiously. Decaying and run by a self-important clerisy whose demands to be taken seriously only become shriller as it declines in reach and vitality – and from which any participant can be dismissed for even the slightest speech or behavioural infraction – academia naturally discourages humour. Jokes, which can almost always cause some kind of offence, are simply too risky to be told or laughed at, even in private. Finding the wrong thing funny can invite career-hobbling accusations that one has demeaned a student or colleague and thereby made them feel unacceptably “uncomfortable” or even physically “unsafe”. Perceived flippancy bruises sanctified “professional seriousness” in a way tantamount to sacrilege. The only tolerated exceptions are a kind of solemn irony that offers comfort in coping with academia’s increasing irrelevance and a resigned gallows humor about its ever more limited prospects.

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