One of the things I keep trying to explain to my “woke” colleagues, when they stand tall and righteous and put their shoulders back and say that Heinlein was racisthomophobicsexist or that great authors of the past should have been better than to follow the prejudices of their time, is that when you’re immersed in your time, you don’t see the prejudices and the blind spots.
I have a little more insight into how culture shapes what’s possible to think, because I changed my culture as an adult. While this can be done (obviously) and immigrants should be encouraged to do it, (or go home), the acculturation is never complete. What happens is that you acquire a sort of cultural double vision. Depending on how far your acculturation goes, you’ll see the defects in thought or at least the unquestioned assumptions in one of the countries better, but also have a strong feeling of being outside enough to see some flaws in your dominant culture. In my case, for instance, I see the flaws in Portugal very clearly, like the obsession with speed over diligence or being decisive over being right, but I still see some in the US which is why sometimes I say “what people born and raised here don’t see.”
I have, of course, even more insight, due to being a conservative in the US, in a culture and profession (the arts/publishing) that is not only majority left, but majority extreme left. For many years, the only way to stay at least plausibly under cover was to see what they were seeing, and what they expected.
But without that, most people are blind to the … ah, unconscious or unthinking parts of their culture. Heck, even with what I’ve been through, I still tend to accept a lot of things unconsciously, unless I step back and go “Now wait a minute.”
Sarah Hoyt, “Slouching Into Shackles”, According to Hoyt, 2018-04-27.
August 11, 2020
QotD: Our culture shapes what we can see
August 3, 2020
QotD: History or “Her” story?
In my last year in college, I had American Literature taught by a Fullbright exchange professor. I will never forget the moment the poor man — talking to a class of 36, all women as such classes often are — let slip the innocent word “him” to mean an indeterminate gender. He paused, went white, his eyes widened, and he said, “I mean, I mean, he or she.”
Meanwhile, the class of 36 was staring at him in puzzlement. It took us a while to take it all apart and realize he thought we’d be offended by the use of “he” to mean someone generic, of indeterminate gender.
I think we patted him kindly on the shoulder and told him that no, really, we weren’t offended. The usage was the same in Portuguese and we’d been told it was the same in most Indo-European languages. And who on Earth would get offended over semantics? The language was the language. It meant nothing about us personally.
This was of course before I married, came to the U.S. and found that for the American woman circa 1985, the language was not just personal, it was personally offensive.
I remember standing in horror underneath a bookstore section proudly labeled Herstory.
Of course the etymology of the word history is not his + story, the sort of pseudo-clever deduction about language that I was used to from the near-illiterate elderly people in the village. (It would be too complex and involve Portuguese, but there was this old farmer who had somehow deduced from the Portuguese word for farmer that farmers were the only ones who would be saved at the end of time.)
History, of course, is not originally an English word. It comes from the Latin historia — meaning a relation of events — by way of the French estoire, meaning story. Note please that in neither of those languages does “his” mean “belonging to him.” And that making the same sort of illiterate assumptions about the French word, we’d get “It is oire.”
I thought that the store must have hired an illiterate employee, but no, over the next ten years, in various circumstances, and possibly still except for the fact that I’ve learned to silence such fools with a death glare, I’ve come across the same smug-idiot assumption and “corrections” of the English word, so as to “fight against the patriarchy.”
That this is done by people who paid more money than I make in a couple of years for a college degree, and who, doubtlessly, think that etymology is a dish made with onions, or perhaps a conspiracy of the patriarchy fills me with a sort of dull rage that has no outlet.
Sarah Hoyt, “The Semantic Whoredom of the Left”, PJ Media, 2018-05-11.
July 15, 2020
When The Dutch Ruled The World: Rise and Fall of the Dutch East India Company
Business Casual
Published 14 Sep 2018Thanks to Cheddar for sponsoring this episode! Check out their video on the iconic ad campaign that saved Old Spice here: https://chdr.tv/youtu8b4a6
⭑ Subscribe to Business Casual → http://gobc.tv/sub
⭑ Enjoyed the vid? Hit the like button!Follow us on:
► Twitter → http://gobc.tv/twtr
► Instagram → https://gobc.tv/ig
► LinkedIn → https://gobc.tv/linkedin
► Reddit → https://gobc.tv/reddit
► Medium → https://gobc.tv/medium
June 24, 2020
Napoleon’s Great Blunder: Spain 1808
Epic History TV
Published 16 Jan 2019In 1808, Napoleon’s rivalry with Britain led to an ill-fated intervention in Portugal and Spain, that sparked a nationalist revolt against the French. At Bailén Napoleon’s Empire suffered its first major defeat, and though Napoleon himself then arrived in Spain to reassert French military dominance, he could not prevent the escape of Sir John Moore’s small British army, after its defensive victory at Corunna on 16 January 1809. The British army would return, under new leadership, to play a major part in his downfall.
Get early access and a vote on future topics by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/epichistorytv
With thanks to HistoryMarche, check out his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8MX…
Find Osprey books on the Napoleonic Wars here:
https://ospreypublishing.com/Great books about the Napoleonic Wars (as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases):
The Napoleonic Wars http://geni.us/R5ZI9c
Corunna 1809 http://geni.us/IHLD
Peninsular War Atlas http://geni.us/S6Na84z
Napoleon the Great http://geni.us/NqMW#EpicHistoryTV #NapoleonicWars #Napoleon
All music from Filmstro https://www.filmstro.com/
Get 20% off an annual license with this exclusive code:EPICHISTORYTV_ANNThanks to The 95th Rifles Battle Re-enactment and Living History Society: https://www.95thrifles.com/
May 1, 2020
Why Pearl Harbor? Peaceful Portugal, and the poor Kriegsmarine – WW2 – OOTF 011
World War Two
Published 30 Apr 2020How were relations between Japan and the United States at the beginning of the war? What were both sides doing to try and make Portugal enter the war? And to what extent did the Kriegsmarine match the Royal Navy? Find out as we answer these questions in this Out of the Foxholes episode!
Links to the Between 2 Wars videos mentioned in the episode:
Japan, the Bureaucratic War Machine | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1931 Part 2 of 3: https://youtu.be/vVgCy6iwrHQ
The World Takes Advantage of American Isolationism | BETWEEN 2 WARS | 1933 part 3 of 3: https://youtu.be/-iuQcxXAdfw
Did WW2 Start in 1937? – The Rape of China | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1937 Part 1 of 2: https://youtu.be/_3vPGpamtDIJoin us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at https://timeghost.tvFollow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesHosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Rune Væver Hartvig
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Rune Væver Hartvig
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations, https://www.instagram.com/blaucoloriz…
Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/Sources:
BIBLIOTECA DE ARTE DA FUNDAÇÃO CALOUSTE GULBENKIAN
BundesarchivSoundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Fabien Tell – “Last Point of Safe Return”
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
April 7, 2020
Cultural factors in the spread of the Wuhan Coronavirus
Sarah Hoyt explains why any computer model involving actual human beings might as well begin with “Assume a Spherical Cow of Uniform Density in a Frictionless Vacuum“:
Image from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/96644/plausibility-of-floating-whales
What I do know is that — are you ready? — human societies, involving multiple nations or even our own culturally diverse, geographically spread out nation, are not now nor will they ever be a spherical cow of uniform density in friction-less vacuum.
So … why is it that even now that they admit the scary Imperial model is insane, our authorities, from federal on down are treating the US as though it were just that mythical cow, and on top of that exactly the same as the cow in Italy, Spain or France.
[…] but here’s the thing: Italy has a completely different culture. Yes, it also has a sclerotic, understaffed and just impoverished healthcare system. (Yes, every time I post that I have to spam a million comments telling me how well the WHO ranked Italy — which is great, except the WHO ranks a single payer system above everything else, including outcomes — and how Lombardy is the envy of Italy or something, which leads me to say “Sucks to be you.”)
However, that’s just a factor in the debacle. The other factor is culture and no one is taking it into account. Multi-generational families live together (I should throw stones, yes) or in the same house which becomes a sort of compound. (This is common to all Mediterranean cultures. I grew up in such a compound until the age of six.) which means that while Grandma isn’t abandoned to the tender mercies of Haitian health workers, it’s also really hard to isolate her when little Guido gets the never-get-well at school and cheerfully brings it home. Even when they don’t live together, extended families have a level of closeness that freaks out even the closest American families. If you and your relatives live within driving distance of each other and don’t see each other every other day, there’s something wrong.
Every house is a continuous cacophony of visiting relatives and friends. In safer times, we just left the back door unlocked because it was easier than answering the doorbell every five minutes. When I first got married, I had the TV on all day, because otherwise the house was so silent, it freaked me out. (I left Disney channel on all day, because it was less likely to startle me with explosions or evil laughter. This led my inlaws to believe I only understood “English for children” (rolls eyes.) I wasn’t even in the room with it. I just needed that noise, or I freaked out, because of the habit of a lifetime.
The freakiest thing in my exchange student years was that my family never had people drop by, several times a week, just because.
On top of that, of course, a lot of the younger people live in stack-a-prole apartments with shared air, and most people commute by train or bus or something.
Now, in Portugal at least most trains and buses aren’t as full as they were in my youth. You are rarely packed in like sardines. But it’s still public transport, and at rush hour every seat is taken and there are people standing.
As much as I get sick here, I got sick way more often there, and had a few really close calls, starting at about thirteen. Because you live in each other’s pockets.
And I understand that in Italy, as in Portugal, as in, for instance, France, people kiss a lot more. Adult men might not, unless they’re close(ish) relatives, but women and children get kissed by everyone from close kin to total strangers.
All of those create conditions for the virus to explode. In Italy, in France, in Spain. I understand it’s not exploded nearly as much in Portugal, but I also wonder how much of that is Portuguese reluctance to go to the doctor or the hospital. Because “the hospital is where you die.” (Yes, sue me. Some cultural assumptions remain. Which is why my husband is the one who normally drags me to the hospital.) Because, you see, we DO know for at least one of the clusters, the hospital was making it worse. Go to the hospital for any other reason, catch Winnie the Flu.
March 19, 2020
Second Crusade | 3 Minute History
Jabzy
Published 14 May 2015Thanks for the 5,000 subs
February 6, 2020
The rise of the Saadi Empire of Morocco
In the latest Age of Invention newsletter, Anton Howes outlines the rise of a Morocco-based Islamic empire that beat the Portuguese and established a thriving smuggling network with England:
Panoramic view of the Old Medina in Fez, Morocco.
Photo by Michal Osmenda via Wikimedia Commons.
In 1500 you would have thought that Morocco’s golden ages were firmly in the past. The Portuguese in 1415 had conquered Ceuta, on the southern side of the Straits of Gibraltar, with minimal resistance. Over the next century they had then spread their influence across the Moroccan coastline, building forts, establishing small trading colonies, and interfering in local politics. Faced with constant raids, coastal towns like Safi, Massa, and Azammur submitted themselves to Portuguese vassalage in exchange for protection. And when local rulers failed to please them, the Portuguese installed new ones or even took direct control. A disunited Morocco was at the mercy of Portuguese colonial ambition — a source of grain destined for Portugal’s population, and of horses and patterned cloths for it to exchange in sub-Saharan Africa for gold and slaves.
In the 1510s, however, a new dynasty arose in Sus, in the south-west of the country, claiming direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad. These sharifs, the Saadi dynasty, began to fill the vacuum left by ineffective leadership from the sultans in Fez and Marrakech. And to address the massive power imbalance between themselves and the Portuguese, they began to cultivate sugar, selling it to other Europeans — Spanish, French, Genoese, Dutch, and English — in exchange for gunpowder weapons.
The English were especially expert smugglers, frequently able to sneak past the Portuguese fleets to where they could trade directly with the Saadis. Merchants from the Hanseatic league even approached the English government about using English mariners to get iron shot to Morocco. Their request was denied — Elizabeth I and her ministers were always careful never to explicitly allow the munitions trade, even in private letters, and often publicly disavowed it — but it was common knowledge among London’s merchants that the government supported the smuggling. This was partly about having a supply of sugar independent of Portuguese and Spanish control, but it was also a matter of national security. Because hidden among the sugar, marmalade, candied fruits, and almonds that the English transported from Morocco, were also copper and saltpetre — crucial materials for England’s own gunpowder weapons (I still haven’t quite worked out why England needed to import copper, given it had its own deposits in Cornwall, but it seems to have been important and a secure supply of saltpetre was definitely essential).
Both sides benefited from the arrangement. By the mid-1540s, the Saadis had bought the firearms and artillery necessary to take Marrakech and Fez, effectively unifying the country, and had earned sufficient wealth to buy the allegiance of the Moroccan population, providing grain during periods of intense famine. With that allegiance, they began isolating the Portuguese forts along the coastline, denying them access to food, workers, and trade. From the perspective of the Portuguese crown, the forts thus lost their economic value, while becoming increasingly expensive to maintain. Rather than providing Portugal with Moroccan grain, the forts increasingly needed grain from Portugal. With the added pressure of Saadi sieges, now aided by massive artillery, Portugal began to lose their footholds, abandoning many of the rest. Thus, in the space of a few decades, the export of sugar (and saltpetre) by the Saadis had put the mighty Portuguese empire on the back foot.
January 30, 2020
QotD: Nutrition and aging from the middle ages to the 20th century
Look Portugal is fertile enough that a careful planner can feed a family on less than an acre of land (particularly the area I come from, apparently one of the oldest inhabited in Europe and whose name in Indo European translated as wet and fertile valley.) I’m sure the food available to us in the 20th century when you could buy improved seeds, etc. was way better than the one available to people in the middle ages.
But … yeah, no. We didn’t eat like people do now. Not even close. For one, meat was fairly scarce. We mostly ate fish (thanks to the coasts!) and vegetables. Oh, and we were relatively lucky. A lot of people got almost no protein. The most common lunch among the people was the “isca” that is a bit of fried flour which might or might not have a couple of shreds of codfish in it. The very poor ate a lot of vegetable soup.
And again this was in the 20th century. In winter vegetables more or less vanished and the only fruit available were the wrinkled, flour-like apples.
Christmas treats were dried fruit, not cookies. It tells you all you need to know. (Yes, it was healthy too except for the scarce protein for most people, but no one said the way we eat is particularly healthy.)
I’m not complaining, but I know that we ate massively better than my parents did in the mid 20th century. And they ate better than their parents. So, kindly, do not tell me some serf on a medieval estate got his choice of however many flavors of ice-cream.
Sure the very rich ate well, if sometimes oddly. But the average person, not so much.
And as for living as long? Yeah, no.
I still remember vividly — as do many our age — when 60 was old, 70 VERY old.
Yes, I’m concerned for my parents in their late eighties. And that’s, as my dad puts it “after 80, that’s old”. But it would surprise no one is they lived another 10 years. Because a lot of people do now. And now one makes a big deal of people who turn 100. (Even though 114 seems to be, a little inexplicably, our hard drop-off limit.)
And besides we KNOW. Shakespeare at 58 — two years older than I’m now — was “very old.”
So kindly take your “people lived about as long,” fold it all in corners and put it where the sun don’t shine, even if people in the arctic in winter will be a little puzzled by it.
Sarah Hoyt, “What if I Told You?”, According to Hoyt, 2019-11-05.
January 18, 2020
Tank Chats #59 Sherman Grizzly | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 16 Nov 2018David Willey, Tank Museum Curator, presents a Tank Chat on the Sherman Grizzly.
This version of the Sherman was built in Canada from October 1943. After the fall of France, the Canadians began making their own vehicles, beginning with the Ram tank based on the M3 Lee chassis before moving on to a modified M4 Sherman. Only about 180 were produced.
This vehicle is currently on loan to the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum Wien.
Support the work of The Tank Museum on Patreon: ► https://www.patreon.com/tankmuseum
Visit The Tank Museum SHOP: ► https://tankmuseumshop.org/
Twitter: ► https://twitter.com/TankMuseum
Tiger Tank Blog: ► http://blog.tiger-tank.com/
Tank 100 First World War Centenary Blog: ► http://tank100.com/ #tankmuseum #tanks #tankchats
November 21, 2019
QotD: Honour
Honor has got a bad rep lately. It’s been dragged through the mud, and its garments are draggled. Association of its names with such egregious ideas as “honor killings” has done it no good.
It’s particularly unjust since honor killings are more shame-killings. I grew up in a culture that still shows a lot of Arab influence, (well, they were there almost as long as the Romans, you know?) and I almost understand honor killings – if I squint and look sideways. I was, after all, raised in a village (so like Miss Marple I’ve seen all there is to see of human wickedness.) Of course Portuguese – at least civilized ones – don’t honor-kill their daughters. But we had a case in the village where a father shaved his daughter’s head because she was talking to a strange boy. And even with my family’s rather odd behavior, since we were all readers and a fair number of us engaged in creative work, I came across that “how could you talk to him when you were alone in the house? What will people think? You have shamed us all.” I came across it more than once, because I have trouble wrapping my mind across the nonsensical. And to me – particularly when this started, when I was about eight – seeing a little friend who happened to be a boy was no different from seeing a little friend who happened to be a girl.
But the overwrought minds of village spinsters and old women looked at this the way “enlightened” militant “feminists” do. Like the one who accused my nine year old of sexual harassment for touching a girl’s behind while trying to get her attention. (He didn’t fondle her. He reached through a crowd and poked her, to ask if she wanted to play a space exploration game.) If you’re a male you have lust and evil on your mind, and any woman allowing you near has lost her virtue. (They must live MUCH more interesting lives than I do.)
Anyway, honor viewed that way is more what the public thinks of you and what you allow the public to know. You can lose your honor through all sorts of stupid things that have nothing to do with what is in your heart and mind. You can be “disgraced” the way a regency maiden was disgraced because she tripped in public and fell across a gentleman, and didn’t immediately faint or whatever. (Well, at least in regency romances. I believe true society had more leniency. I mean, even in the village, even with my eccentric behavior and the fact I wore shorts outside the house – oh, the humanity! – only half the people considered me a slut.)
Sarah Hoyt, “An Affair of Honor a blast from the past from April 24 2012”, According to Hoyt, 2017-10-11.
August 15, 2019
QotD: Strong female characters in fiction
Today, when I telling the kids about it, I realized why. It was because the character was a strong woman. Born with the ultimate disadvantage, the ultimate lack of support, she doesn’t – like fairytale princesses – either get rescued by a strong knight nor even by fate that reveals her to be a hidden princess. Also, she never complains; she never repines – she takes the situation she finds herself in and makes the best out of it, all the while looking out for those who are weaker or in more need than her. This last characteristic nets her the all-important recipe book (supposedly created by a medieval convent, which rings true for Portugal, and lost for centuries.) When her romance doesn’t work because her very conventional suitor wants a girl of suitable family, she doesn’t go into a decline, she just goes on with life.
She is, in fact, what editors so often say they want “a strong woman heroine, self sufficient, a good role model for growing girls.” Only, from my observation and reading, by this they usually mean mouthy, aggressive, foolhardy and complains a lot about men till one wonders if said character has an issue with being born female. There are exceptions, of course, but complaining about fate and men and being bitter seems to be obligatory.
And yet, it is true that this type of character is not only a great role model for young women, she is the type of role model we do need. Earth needs women (yes, and men, but we’re talking women here) who take care of the weak and helpless. Earth needs women who don’t whine. Earth needs women who cheerfully shoulder the burden of what needs to be done.
Earth does not need women who complain about men all the while neurotically obsessing on clothes and jewelry to attract said men and pursuing the highest-status males they can possibly get. There is nothing wrong with these activities, in moderation, but when they become the focus of existence they create a generation of infantile harpies. Now, I don’t think any women in real life are as bad as that, but almost all women characters in books and movies are just like that.
Young women who read/watch these characters end up feeling they must APPEAR like them or they’ll be thought weak. And this is wrong. Strength in women – and men – can be defined not as throwing weight around but in doing what must be done for oneself and those who depend on one.
Earth needs grown up women.
I very much hate to tell people what to do, much less what to be, but I wish we could set about writing – and living – role models for the women Earth needs.
Sarah Hoyt, “Earth Needs Women a blast from the past of November 2010”, According to Hoyt, 2017-07-13.
July 29, 2019
South African R2 and its Special Furniture
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 5 Jun 2019http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…
In South African military service, the R1 was the FN FAL and was the preferred infantry combat rifle until the adoption of the Galil as the R4 rifle. So what were the guns in between? Well, the R2 was a South African adaptation of the G3. A large number of rifles were needed as a reserve, and also to equip second echelon units like the Air Force, Cape Corps, and South West Africa Territorial Force. To reduce the expense of this, South Africa purchased something like 100,000 G3 rifles from Portugal and designated them R2.
The Portuguese hand guards and buttstocks were found to be unsatisfactory, however. In the heat and harsh ultraviolet radiation of South West Africa (now Namibia) in particular, the plastic would shrink and lose its fit, leading to the guns being called “rattlers” by the SADF troops. The fix this, the American firm of Choate Machine & Tool was contracted to make new hand guards based on the H&K export pattern — wider and longer and with fittings for a bipod. New stocks were also made, duplicating the shape of the R1/FAL stock.
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754
May 6, 2019
Queen Nzinga – The Double Queen – Extra History – #2
Extra Credits
Published on 4 May 2019Nzinga was briefly, temporarily supplanted by Ngola Hari who had been installed by the Portuguese, but she was determined to let nothing get in the way of keeping West Africa safe from colonial powers. To achieve this end, she would go on to form — and break, as she pleased — alliances with the Dutch, the Imbangala, and even the Catholic Church!
Thanks again to Cassandra Khaw for guest-writing this mini-series!
Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
From the comments:
Extra Credits
Queen Nzinga is a woman who, despite being one of the best-documented rulers in early modern Africa, still presents a puzzle. Her record, from ambitious noble, to guerrilla fighter, to consummate diplomat and religious reformer is still haunted by myths conjured up by her enemies — and a few constructed by Nzinga herself.Catch our Lies episode next week for behind-the-scenes on our research for the Siege of Vienna and Queen Nzinga series!
April 29, 2019
Queen Nzinga – Rise of a Legend – Extra History – #1
Extra Credits
Published on 27 Apr 2019Nzinga didn’t start out as a queen — but when she saw how incompetently her brother was running affairs in Ndongo (what would become Angola), she took advantage of his decision to send her to negotiate with the Portuguese — much to his grief later. Nzinga established herself against colonial forces and did not budge.
Queen Nzinga of the Ndongo and Matamba Kingdoms, a scion of the Mbundu people, will spend forty years standing between the Portuguese and their ambitions, using everything at her command — her cunning, her ruthless intellect, her military acumen, even the bodies of her people — whatever it takes to succeed.
Thanks again to Cassandra Khaw for guest-writing this mini-series!
Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
