The way he talks about physics yet spells force with an S is just too perfect.
PhD in medieval apocalyptic history, esp. 900-1100, but I try to read broadly. Trying my hand at fiction. All prophecies my own (and most likely wrong). He/him.
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The way he talks about physics yet spells force with an S is just too perfect.
Exactly what I've been saying. American Christian Nationalism seeks to supplant all forms of Christianity that are not CN or CN-submissive. It won't respect other faiths NOR give Christians the freedom to respect other faiths either. One *must* be cruel to be a Christian, according to CNs.
the real glory of world war two was that it involved a warrior cult being ground down and beaten to a pulp by people who would rather have been doing something else.
Mel Brooks's The Hunt for Red October
Attention #AcademicSky Everyone is talking about books, but thousands of academic journals were also pirated and are entitled to up to $3,000 *per pirated volume!!!* if editors submit titles to join the suit. Incredible opportunity for underfunded journals to get some $$! #SkyStorians #MedievalSky
Literal state terrorism.
Sometime last century, toddler me heard a line from the OG Transformers *one time*, yet it has lived rent-free in my brain ever since. I don't want to say an 80s cartoon for children made to sell toys was politically prescient, but, as George Lucas might say, it does rhyme.
My child's school contracts out for bus services. Last week: Bus Company's automatic phone call: check your email. Bus Company's email: check your email.
Nothing "devalues and demeans the Christian faith" more than a group of lying grifters who just bragged about murdering a boatload of people and are protecting a pedophile sex trafficking ring pretending that they are, despite all their actions, Christians.
Christian Nationalism hates all versions of Christianity that does not accept CN. It will not protect Christians. It will only protect Christian Nationalists and persecute anyone who does not convert. It will also persecute CNs someday, too, but claim they are heretics or some shit ex post facto.
The Rosegarden CLUB? He turned the People's House into a private CLUB? He literally privatized a public good. He stole our house. Do you understand? This is no different than if he seized the Grand Canyon & put it behind a velvet rope, for members only. He's a fucking thief & a vandal to boot.
"Don't be floppy. It is easy to do, true to nonviolent principles, causes strain on the police force, harms morale of enforcement, and we have absolutely no counter to it. And...hm? What do you mean 'Shut up'? I'm just explaining to the public how effective these protesters are. Like REALLY good."
Hegseth's insistence that 'Department of War' fake-name-change is about 'warriors' and 'warfighters' is the dumbest s*** I think I have ever heard. The guys that created the Department of Defense in 1947 - in NINETEEN FORTY-SEVEN - had done more warfighting than Trump's entire cabinet put together.
I believe in reasonable disagreement. I also believe Nazis should be shot. These two beliefs, far from being in contradiction, work perfectly together.
I agree with this, and with what Chesterton wrote on the matter regarding "reasonable disagreement" with certain people, such as anti-democratic white supremacist christofascists:
Disease prevalence in US states before & after vaccine introduction 🧪 From Edward Tufte & graphics.wsj.com/infectious-d...
Ignore that this is an EO and not an act of Congress for a moment. Does anyone have an educated guess about how much money would need to be spent to change the DoD to the DoW? I'm thinking letterhead on stationary, replacing signage, time spent editing websites, etc. I've no clue. Over/under $10m?
Where were all the Protestants from 325 to 1517?
This is very much extremely the thing. "You stupid SHEEP! There's no invisible MAN on a MOUNTAIN!" "No shit, Sherlock." "And no Magic SkyDaddy is gonna just FIX things if you pray hard enough!!" "That's correct." "And people don't get sick because they were bad!!" "Did... you think they did??"
Yesterday at our event we got a question about “hope” and history. Here’s the answer I gave, with help from James Baldwin, Frederick Douglass, and Natalie Zemon Davis. Free to read and share #medievalsky buttondown.com/ModernMediev...
I own the book and know very much the content but have long put off actually reading it. This makes me want to get to it very soon.
2/3 of the time it says "You're in danger" it is actually wrong, and 70% of offices stopped using it, but it's "unclear" if doctors find them useful?
[Pulls up chair and leans forward] I remember my conservatives elders furious about this, too, and I *so* want to hear what the de-mangled version really is.
People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.
I just finished outlining my latest attempt at a novel. Going to be a tough road getting to the far end, but I feel like I'm starting to get a handle for this. Wish me luck. ✒️ + 📄 + 😭 + ⏳️ = 📖 (?)
Seeing a huge cross profile pic and immediately expecting pettiness, cruelty, and ignorance, and then having that fear confirmed, certainly makes me feel sO gOoD to be a Christian. He's really beating those attitudes.
Dragon con remains undefeated.
Something not touched on deeply in the essay (but by no means a criticism) is how the practical side of modern expertise gets developed, as through, in my case, earning a PhD. A brief addendum 🧵 about solipsistic researchers and how people, working together, become experts: /1
Moxon does a great job. Please read it. All the above is meant to supplement, feebly, what he said so well. Cheers! /end
Solipsistic researchers think they can acquire expertise individually. But expertise is, first, acquired from experts and, second/importantly, *done* with experts. One cannot *do* expertise without other experts and students. "Nice wheel you got there. But have you also domesticated horses?" /17
But I want to emphasize: a white cis-man saying "This helped me" is NOT required to justify gender studies, African American studies, or whatever else. But because these topics were based, in part, on an analysis of #2 (the dreaded "theory"!), they are accused of being invalid by solipsists. /16
Attacks on DEI (and all adjacent topics) is an attack on this spirit of intellectual cross-fertilization. To pick one: I don't do gender studies, but gender studies were necessary for me to understand a 10th century queen's patronizing of apocalyptic ideas. I *needed* GS to do good history. /15
Experts of course rely on #1. But #1 keeps us isolated. A single manuscript or experiment can be a life's work. With #2, we see how her experiment illuminates my manuscript, and vis versa. When done right, a PhD program encourages looking for inspiration from others outside your niche. /14
At 15, I realized the bloody *encyclopedia* was insufficient because of that one word and the entries that came after it. I call that the moment I switched from liking history to starting down the path to become a historian. When I realized *I* couldn't do it myself, BUT others would help me. /13
Though my dad thought the Enc. Brit. the sum of all knowledge, I quickly saw something in its pages that would forever banish that idea from my mind. For, near the end of each entry, one word stood out like a haunting beacon for a much longer, perhaps endless, journey: "Bibliography." /12
I grew up with an 30-volume Encyclopedia Britannica set. My dad (rather solipsistic himself) said, "Read this, and you'll know everything." When I was 15, I gave it a try...and almost immediately gave up the attempt. Not because it was too long. Quite the opposite, in fact. /11
Solipsistic researchers don't understand Comps. "Why let others think for you?" But that isn't it. It is recognizing what else exists. If we focused *only* on 1, we would repeat ourselves endlessly while remaining locked in bad assumptions. By comparing our work, we can transcend narrow ideas. /10
The last test someone in a phd program takes is often Comps (or comprehensive exam). It is focused on #2. "Do you understand what other experts have said in your field, agreeing and disagreeing, especially in recent debates, and what is missing in all that?" Not all take one (I didn't). /9
The poet Goethe wrote: <> A bit harsh at the end, but you get the idea. /8
From the outside, most people think mastery of #1 makes an expert, but internally, we say #2. 1 is hella important, and everything goes back to that, yes. But experts require other experts to exist. We are not islands. We rely on each other, and we crave their expertise to help guide us. /7
#2 is great because it tells you that The Wheel has already been invented, the modern supply chain that makes them, that axels of a particular width are now standardized, and that you can get a discount for tires using this coupon. Without #2, you can't make a car. Your Wheel will just suck. /6
#2 is what RFK jr. and other solipsistic researchers hate: secondary literature. The analysis, commentary, and debate among experts. In this you get historiography, schools of thought, and things like the ever-maligned "theory." It is experts sharing thoughts about the topic with rach other. /5
#1 is the raw material upon which anything can be built. Your primary sources, experiments, interviews, data points, etc. You can collect these, mqybe even for the first time, but they exist outside of you. They represent something or someone else. You want to understand them, not vis versa. /4
In a very simplified way, to become an "expert," in my experience, has meant knowing 2 things: 1) what you want to talk about (in my case, apocalypticism in Europe 900-1100) 2) what other experts have said (or not said) about that, and related topics Both require what Moxon calls "humility" /3
I'll preface with: there are plenty of dicks, old and new, who have earned their advanced degrees and then spurned any notion that they were not the supreme authority. I've known some of those. The system has long rewarded those types of people. But I speak about the people I knew and hope am. /2
Something not touched on deeply in the essay (but by no means a criticism) is how the practical side of modern expertise gets developed, as through, in my case, earning a PhD. A brief addendum 🧵 about solipsistic researchers and how people, working together, become experts: /1
Highly recommend reading. I knew a guy with no science training who thought cancer could be cured easily if the docs "actually cared". So he "did his own research" for years. I read the 2-page (!) journal essay he failed to get published. To this day, he hates doctors. Including PhD's like me.
I wrote about the humility of expertise and the arrogance of ignorance, the profound laziness that attends believing that you can find knowledge by ignoring the accumulation of inherited human knowledge, and the ways lazy arrogance fuels narratives of fascism. www.the-reframe.com/your-ignoran...
I would really love to see a historical Bond when the king royally (hehe) screwed up, like with Thomas Becket, or when the king got replaced (Richard II, Richard III, Harold Godwinson, Charles I, etc.) and now whatcha gonna do, James? Or, would he join Robin Hood or try to assassinate him for John?
One of the classes that convinced me to be a medievalist began on the first day with a 30-minute monologue on how people cut down old growth trees before blast furnace steel.
Reminds me of people using Game of Thrones to talk about the "real" Middle Ages.
Me: It's like people have been wrestling for a long time with how to care for the marginalized and the forgotten while other forces try to prevent people from recognizing our shared humanity. Conservatives: No. That's just woke, which didn't exist before 1993. I'm sure he meant to say "MAGA".
(Obligatory) I hope it has a happy ending.
Okay. I just came back to this and you aren’t calling these efforts resegregation yet, you absolutely should be
Well, this is going on the (extremely long) to-read list.
Simply not to see prayer as a means to get God to do what you want, as if changing His mind depended on you (a common thought in my upbringing). Basically he repeated Aquinas's conclusion (paraphrased here) that one does not pray to change divine decree but in order to obtain what requires prayer.
Deaths averted by vaccination since the 1970’s
Chess Piece in the Form of a Knight c. 1500 Netherlandish (Met Museum)
Medievalist here to add: 20th/21st century dictators are their own flavor of cruelty and ignorance, and pretending like they are not *modern* monsters helps no one. You know what people pissing in chamber pots did when someone told them about vaccines? They took the vaccines.
Meanwhile, though Blazing Saddles is usually the go-to "They could not make it today!" film of choice, Mel Brooks decided, "Hey, let's do Spaceballs 2 after all." No clue what will happen in it, but they wouldn't have made *that* 30 years ago (which we know for the obvious reason that they didn't).
To change the focus: pick a beloved non-controversial film from 30+ years ago. They still wouldn't make it today. Disney hasn't made a hand-drawn 2D film in ~15 years. If Sleeping Beauty were erased from history, there's no way someone could produce it today simply bc that's not how it's done now.
Mr. Mernick, 6th grade. He wasn't specialized, but I always thought of him as emphasizing social studies. I thought of his class, where I first learned of the Code of Hammurabi, when I saw the actual stele in the Louvre, Paris, many years later.
Mrs. Hoerner, 11th grade US history. Class was dual taught with Mrs. McGarrity (USA Lit). Oh, how they bickered! But all in good fun. Helped teach me how history was endlessly integrated with other subjects.
Mrs. (Frau) Driesner, 9-12th grade German. Integrated history (not just of Germany) into her lessons. The digressions she had were legendary, but she always tied them back into the original question/topic. Have stayed in touch since.
Mr. Damann, 9th grade world history. It was his last year, and (poor guy) he had checked out, but he still had stuff to teach. I, however, was the only kid who listened and read the damn lessons. Gifted me books at the end of the year (still have them). Saw him after I got my PhD and shook his hand.
That is pretty much how the space program started.
Today I wrote about a general tendency to accept atrocious premises, and the need to reject fascism's false choices in order to find expansive and imaginative paths forward. Breaking the premise, embracing the obstacles, pursing everything. www.the-reframe.com/there-is-no-...
This is a really, really good article. I highly recommend it
Every Religion professor still employed is screenshotting this and putting it in a file to explain how after-the-fact justification works with regard to prayer or religious tokens promising safety. "If I hadn't had my medallion, I would've been hurt/instead of just hurt, I might've been killed."
I can only imagine Jules saying to a bleeding Vincent, "We just witnessed a miracle, and I want you to f***ing acknowledge it." V: "Okay man. It was a miracle. Can you take me to the hospital now?"
Further, *if* cis and trans people committed mass shootings proportional to their population, the trans number would be closer to 40, not 4. In other words, being trans correlates to (I'm not saying "causes", because we all know better) a significantly lower likelihood of committing mass violence.
Local Developer Sensibly Avoids Horrible Curse
I was raised Prot but had good Jesuit theo profs at SLU. In a class on prayer (c. 2007), I asked mid-semester why we hadn't yet talked about prayers for/leading to miracles. Father Maconi was patient with me, and the subsequent thought realignment I had has never gone away.
Lot of people forgetting the origin of the critique of "thoughts and prayers" had nothing to do with T&P itself, only with the absence of anything else. That it was used by *some* people as an excuse to do nothing, when What To Do was obvious. I hope some people hear what you're trying to say.
The thing I keep thinking about: We'll never see it, but behind closed doors, the people closest to him will be celebrating when it happens, too.
Old Soviet joke for today: A man walks into a newsstand every day, looks around, and leaves. After a long time of this, the owner says “Can I help you find something?” “I’m looking for the obituaries.” “The obituaries are in the back of the newspaper, comrade.” “Not the one I’m looking for.”
As a frequent library patron, I love this so much.
$483k!! Can we get to half a million for PCRF?
Spoken like a true phd graduate. [Looks away, sighs endlessly]
My history PhD took 7 years, and I felt like I was middle-of-the-road for my cohort in terms of graduation time. Also, for much of my ABD time, I was teaching. Meaning, I was doing the university a service: educating students, honing my skills, and lightening the load for others. This is bad.
"Scherner told me something about you. ... That you know the meaning of the word 'gratitude.'" -Amon Goeth shaking down Oskar Schindler for a bribe, in "Schindler's List"
When they screamed "States Rights" when debating abortion, those of us with knowledge of history knew it was a lie. Because the Confederacy had lied the same way about slavery. The pretense is gone now. But if ever they lose the power they now possess, it will return. In the name of States Rights
I so love that, contrary to the fictional portrait of an exultant villain drinking wine as he leers at his victims below, he is perpetually and irredeemably miserable. So much spite and cruelty, and hollow to the core.
Good week for video essays it seems. I found this one spoke to something I'd been feeling - the grotesqueness of the disconnect between the values we want to communicate to our kids and the values in our politics, esp. MAGA politics.
That and, having done the reading, we know it simply isn't true.
Augustine, at the start of this "Dark Age," said it was important to reach far beyond the Self to find love. Incest was evil, in part, because it kept one insulated. Historians reject the term "Dark Ages," in part, because it is intellectual incest. The Self loving the Self for not being Other.
It is a story we historians have seen many times. Many of us were raised in that tradition and had to grow out of it. The realization was itself enlightening. Without valorizing the medieval, we had to see it as complex. Full. Just as we are. As every era is.
It leaves no room for true awe at distant beings who are wonderfully similar, for difference that shows how different *we* can still be. Prejudice was absorbed early, and nothing can shake it. Not experts, not empathy, not reason, not arguments, not evidence. The Self suffices. All else is Dark.
The "Dark Ages" thing strikes historians (or at least this medieval historian) as painful because of the reckless Self-confidence behind it. The Self telling itself how wonderful it is, in contrast to a past Other, so that it can blame present-day Others for not being the Self.
This man gets it.
We’re being governed by monsters. Just absolute monsters.
Always is.
Anyway it’s a great time to read for pleasure and support your local library
Tom Clancy's A Modest Proposal.
Often when I’m asked why we live in Hong Kong and if I feel safe there I respond that never, not in a century, has a kid been shot in a Hong Kong school.
🧵
Thanks to Kyle Kallgren and his recent video essay, I have discovered the poetry of Audre Lorde. If you've never heard of her (I am sorry to say that included me a week ago), get her to spite PragerU, but read her because she is so damn good.
Noted art historian with PhD in Italian Renaissance Art just launched a new YouTube channel. Oh also he’s RoboCop. youtube.com/@drwellerworld
I think the Romans had some, but after Jesus' miracle at Canaan, it disappeared until the Renaissance rediscovered it.