This sounds like the worst thing at a Victorian world’s fair
He/him. Left-wing history dad. Pro Popular Front, pro Sewer Socialism, anti borders. Français par mariage. Minnesotan in Wisconsin exile. Mostly posts bad history jokes and occasionally bad history not jokes.
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This sounds like the worst thing at a Victorian world’s fair
Obviously this isn’t nearly to the scale of how much the Angels have criminally wasted Trout, and did the same with Ohtani, but it feels like it’s in the same ballpark
The Popes were originally attracted to Avignon and the southern Rhône valley by its easy access to warehouses of surprisingly high quality bulk items and $1.50 hot dogs
We must defend ourselves from the witting and unwitting tools of the Imperialists, especially the adventurist wreckers of the Trotskyite-Blueskyist Faction
In today’s episode of “Makin’ Good Decisions,” we are doing Bistecca alla Fiorentina with a wood fire, a Weber, a shovel, a couple of obscenely large steaks, and some Prosecco and Chianti
Also, on top of everything else, “live your life so that the person rushing to the hospital to oversee your care when you’re in a major car accident isn’t described only as a business partner” is good advice
In 09 I went to Yankee Stadium with my dad to watch game 2 of the ALDS. We were in the bleachers, wearing Twins caps, and everyone was nice to us, which was a Bad Sign. Teixeira hit a walk-off hr. Thanks @davidjroth.bsky.social for bringing a more socially positive reason to hate him to my attention
This post sounds like someone trying to explain WWI. Look, France and Germany are fighting, and somehow a bunch of over enthusiastic Serbs are in the middle of it
French-American spouse being all incognito about the French thing on a Wisconsin hike
Peter Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe
Wow, weren’t so considerate about the Anglo-Saxon state being too fragile, were they?
This bit from Pat Barker’s “The Eye in the Door,” about a WWI officer from a working class background, *feels* like a little bit of Tolkien digging
Even 19th century! I feel like Bismarck would’ve tried to wrap everything up after the Battle of the Frontiers and Tannenberg
One of my favorite places in Madison is the memorial to the Wisconsin IB volunteers. At the risk of romanticizing a bloody and vicious defeat, there’s something so moving about this shared commitment to justice for others uniting people in northern England, the American Midwest, and elsewhere.
Germany in the winter of 1916/17 ignoring their people in Washington telling them “hey guys, Wilson is really mad at the Brits, we might have negotiation opportunity here” and instead doing unrestricted sub warfare and the Zimmerman telegram is an “invasion of Pennsylvania” level own goal
Off ramps, dammit
I think this is particularly fascinating in the WWI context which seems like a high stakes game of chicken in which both sides had opportunities for negotiated off-wraps, nobody took them, and one side won in a totally thorough manner that nonetheless had, uhh, unforeseen consequences
Dead, at 79, of a Woj Bomb
White House doctors remembering that DC was built on a swamp and desperately reading up on Miasma Theory
JD Vance seen leaving the White House with some used syringes and a binder full of recent Supreme Court decisions on executive immunity
You are the exact target audience for my silly joke
Pretty sure @lollardfish.bsky.social can confirm
Fun fact: Pope Pope Urban II came up with the idea for the Crusades on a trip to the Driftless Area
Guamping: staying somewhere vaguely rural, but bringing guanciale
I love coming to the Driftless for holiday weekends not just because it’s beautiful but also because driving through Richland Center, WI is a good reminder of the wonderful randomness that it’s where Stalin’s daughter spent the last years of her life
Real Horst Wessel shit
Nonetheless, the lawsuit did not firmly deny that gullible was written on the ceiling, or that President Trump had, in fact, gotten her nose.
And what’s funny is that the Italian fascists didn’t even do this, on account of all the corruption and cut corners. The Nazis were a little better at this sort of thing, until they, you know, started a war that destroyed all of Germany’s cities
they think they can just erase trans joy and trans freedom. they can't. they can make things a lot harder and more painful. but that joy and that freedom is not theirs to take and it is incumbent on all good people to say so.
I read a book earlier this year about Paris under the occupation, and a big factor in whether Jews and others in hiding survived was whether their concierge ratted them out or protected them. Lots of nice liberals auditioning for the genocide accomplice role.
Keir Starmer not welcome in Madison
Lord John Russell's worst nightmare
Obviously Trump wasn’t responsible for mRNA vaccines but within the unwritten rules of electoral politics everywhere he could’ve taken full credit for it. That he went this direction instead is both wild and horrifying.
Also to read “The Master and Margarita” in the original
Entering my decrease in reliable written sources era
Beautiful sunrise in the, uhh, shared grocery store and mall parking lot this morning
A guy on “Love is Blind UK” just said that he was trying to “trust the process,” I hope that man finds love or drafts Joel Embiid
I was driving into Chicago on Monday morning for work (thanks for killing the train from Madison, Walker) and passed a Cybertruck with dealer plates whose owner, despite it being brand new, had found the time to put on a “my family” bumper sticker with a bunch of guns. None more divorced.
basic human rights are not something u put up to debate like some influencer game show shit
One person is uniquely suited to these times: Franz Von Papen must restore normalcy
I appreciate it :) I mostly really enjoy the books I read, I was just making a silly joke
Reading out of a sense of grim determination on the other hand
White Ship jokes always kill
Did Henry I, King of England write this?
I love my life as the Mahan Professor of Western Civilization and the Perpetuation of Naval Guns at Harvard in 1953. I'm on my 4th book, typed and ably assisted by the little lady at home. My favorite student last year gave me a bottle of Scotch as a present. He's now CIA station chief in Tehran.
Hmm, these people she’s talking about sound scary, now to take a big drink of coffee and look up why my wife’s Sephardic Jewish ancestors had to leave Spain in 1492
The pond by our house was looking good this morning, happy Wednesday people
On the walls of Constantinople, May 1453: “Bro, you ever feel like you’re wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born?”
Crassus lies dead on a field in Parthia, surrounded by his soldiers, the victims to a man of the hubris of wealth and empire. The conquering general thinks about having his skull covered in molten gold, but goes with turning it into a projector screen for the weirder parts of Pornhub instead
The original is one of my all time favorite songs. “Lake Charles” by Lucinda is one of my all time favorite songs. Very fun to hear her sing this.
Great song of the night is Lucinda Williams covering “Return of the Grievous Angel” youtu.be/-D3YVmV_paU?...
The driveway outside a 7YO birthday party, Madison style
Look, I'm not saying that we wouldn't have any problems as a country if Jeff Davis had been hanged from a sour apple tree, and Richard Nixon had gone to prison, but we'd certainly be better off
The most charitable interpretation of the center-left on both sides of the Atlantic is that they are incompetents, failing to meet the moment. There are much worse plausible interpretations.
Important update in the 2016-Present Trans-Atlantic Anglosphere Suicide Pact: Trump is a much worse Boris Johnson than Boris Johnson, Farage is trying his damndest to be a worse Trump than Trump, Keir Starmer is - by a wide margin - a worse Biden than Biden. I think I've got that right?
Always inspiring to see kids following in their parents’ footsteps, and medicine is a noble calling
The majority of people I know likely don’t know about Lifter Puller, Craig Finn’s Hold Steady predecessor, but wouldn’t like them if they did. Shouty, nasally, loud, post punk isn’t for everyone! youtu.be/--_8-lV4GNM?...
All of this because of the want of one sour apple tree
Hungary’s in the Schengen Zone. Shit, we’re gonna wish we had that level of international access and privilege
It was “playing cribbage outside while wearing a hoodie” weather in Wisconsin last night
(Eric Adams is, of course, not nearly as cool as Jimmy Walker)
The Jimmy Walker model
Baroque ass sky
Evita is wildly underrated as a movie musical, and Banderas should’ve won a “Bein’ Sexy” Oscar for “Oh What a Circus,” but this is absolutely correct as to the best original song Oscar that year
Raising a glass of smoky, autumnal scotch in honor of hoodie weather in August, hell yeah
If you’re not a bigoted piece of shit, explaining gay couples is parenting easy mode, explaining trans and non-binary folks is parenting easy mode. “The dog is going to be sad when we all die” at 7 AM on a weekend is hard mode.
Hell yeah I post [spana]cope[ita]
All (white) Cetaceans Are Bastards
Tom Sawyer ass federal government
The funny thing is in that story they’re basically like “will we learn any lessons from this? Hahahahaha absolutely not.”
Obviously far from the main point here, but the “I’m married, but tactically” thing is very funny to me
*Leonard Cohen voice* I have seen the ice cream of the future brother it is Dippin’
Also…Newsom isn’t running for anything (obviously he’s going to, but he’s not yet) so whatever is going on is extra weird and off putting
Just a fascinating and extremely revealing post then, huh
Especially as the ruling party is fueled by young staffers who talk like they spend way too much time reading books with titles like “Sea Knights for Christ: How the Battle of Lepanto Saved the West from the Dusky Hordes”
We have a faith healer trying to dismantle (the actually good parts of) our national health system, and also he’s a Kennedy is really a culmination of some of the worst bits of American life
It’s been a few years, but my recollection of that bus is *slow*
It’s still wild to me that - by far - the easiest airport from which to get to Manhattan by transit is Newark
Beyond getting into the politics of immigration (in, uhh, Australia), what’s funny about this is having these signs *inside the country* is basically the definition of performative
Shit, lock the door, it’s zombie Stan Musial again
It was amazing watching that, as a Spurs fan, and never really feeling like it was in doubt.
Mussolini fulfills dream role: fitness influencer, as he encourages followers to get their steps in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_o...
Spurs didn’t even really break a sweat in the second half, that’s the most impressive thing about that win to me
Spurs should hire Lamela as an assistant coach in charge of shit stirring
It’s giving me misty-eyed nostalgia for the good Poch teams, when we just annoyed the shit out of everyone. It’s wonderful.
Sportswashing designed to get everyone to ignore ugly Big Ten basketball
Manchester City marking its recent purchase by the Madison, WI sovereign wealth fund in its 25/26 home shirt design
Also I love that, no matter how good or bad we’ve been in the last several years, “inexplicably torturing Man City teams that are generally way better than us” has been a constant
Guy in charge of scripting gladiatorial combats in the late Roman Empire switching the enemies from Parthians to Goths to Germans before just scrapping it and making it non-specific but real badass looking
As convincing as the 80s nostalgia is, you can tell it’s AI because the death squad member gunning down the Salvadoran nuns with American weapons and money has six fingers
Oh shit, school starts next week and I forgot to upload my kid’s Bodily Humors Balance Update form
You could seriously cause an identity crisis for a lot of these people by telling them that Hitler more or less personally designed the VW Beetle
Have finally watched the actual movie and it is good and fun
The British Empire, one of the most powerful centers of wealth, privilege, and political power the world has ever known, lost Ireland and India within 30 years against opponents who were far frkm universally popular locally by getting mad and overreacting to things. Some ruling class.
Yeah I gotta say I was a lot more freaked out at urgent care when I first heard the word “fracture” and “tibia” than when I learned what it actually was
Our last kid is 4, we’re supposed to be done with new things with “toddler” in the name, but alas her sense of adventure and the play structure at daycare had different ideas
Have reached Negroni time on a Friday that featured learning about the existence of something called a toddler's fracture. Cheers.
Midwestern Standoff: when multiple cars get to the 4-way stop at similar times
It’s best in seasons where left-wing Scottish nationalist Alan Cumming has extremely establishment English people to pick on
Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt von Schleicher being murderous right-wing authoritarians doesn’t mean the Nazis shooting them was a win for the left