Love seeing something from TikTok and going “girlie that is literally what led to the downfall of the Papal States”

Jewish baby named Edgardo Mortara is seemingly about to die in Bologna, 1851

Catholic nanny secretly baptises him to save his soul, which she’s not exactly the kind of authority who can do that, but w/e, it’s interpreted by the church as valid later

Kid survives

1857 her secret gets out, a baptising makes a kid a Catholic according to the Church and a Catholic can’t be raised in a non-Catholic household in the Papal States, so the church authorises the police to kidnap Edgardo from his family

Raised personally by Pope Pius IX, Jewish family not allowed to take him back due to Church doctrine, this action destroys the family with grief and despair

This case gets international infamy with the Pope not understanding why everyone’s shiting on him for doing this, including allies

Emperor Napoleon III shifts from opposing Italian unification to supporting it as a direct consequence

Bologna falls the next year, 1859

Kingdom of Italy forms 1861

By 1870 Rome is lost to the Italians and the Papal States are no more

(Edgardo Mortara goes on to become Father Mortara)

(He dies in Belgium in 1940 three months before the Nazis occupied the nation, which if he’d have lived he would’ve been persecuted as a Jew)

[Image: a still from a tik tok, where a pale person with shaggy brown hair stands. The text caption reads, "when a formal hospital volunteer proudly told the story of when she snuck into a room and baptised a stillborn baby against the parents' wishes because if she didn't the baby would spend eternity in flames"

End description.]

Anyway have a collection of stuff our italian art/furniture restoration teacher has said:

“If you’re in this business for money, you’re in the wrong business. Go work at McDonald’s.”

“All insects are referred to by their latin names. If you really want to piss off a conservator, ask him if he’s familiar with lactobacillius bulgaricus. He won’t be, that’s in yoghurt.”

“A mirror doesn’t usually wear down from being used. People that ugly are rare.”

“When I see the Alps I will instantly weep, because I know I’m almost home. and if someone dismantled the Alps, I’d cry harder. Moral of the story is, there’s no pleasing me.”

“One year a girl asked me if we’ll have to use animal glue, because she’s vegan. I’m a vegetarian, too, and I can already promise you this: You don’t have to eat the glue. Actually, now that I thought of it, I’m forbidding it completely. If I see you eating glue in this class I’m throwing you out.”

“If a very old object has been kept well, it can still be in very good shape. Like a grandma. Old things are never ugly, they must be respected.”

“Do not put silicone breasts on the grandma.”

“In the video interviews (for school entrance exams) there were some interesting, and even funny ones. None of you were funny, though. The funny ones didn’t get in.”

“When I was in school, interior design was taught by an architect who didn’t know anything about the subject. Never trust architects, they are evil.”

“Low-fat milk is only good for making milk paint, it’s poison. It’s just chalk and water, and even the chalk has been removed. Low-fat milk is essentially nothing.”

[Has a 15-minute argument with a student about whether “dark blonde” is a real hair colour]

“Fresco also means ‘I am in prison’ in italian, because it’s a bit cool. Or was, nowadays I think prisons are quite comfortable.”

“Ideally we’d use pure 100% ethanol, but we’re not allowed to get that anymore because we’re in Finland. They don’t even sell pure ethanol to doctors or hospitals, because medical students kept stealing and drinking it.”

“The man was - what was his name? Hefner. No, Defner, Hefner was the american. Apparently my brain rotates around playboy-magazines today.”

“This may be the only example of this kind of object in Kymenlaakso. Do not drop it, I might suddenly become very violent if something happens to it.”

“I have a jar of shellac in my old workshop in Italy. Haven’t been able to open it for 25 years. Every year, I try again.”

“If you can’t have a baby and don’t want to break into a maternity ward to steal hair, goat hair brushes are almost as good. But baby hair would be the best, it’s not like they use them for anything.”

“The best vodka is made out of potatoes, not wheat. Remember that. Polish potato vodka.”

“Let’s have a coffee break. Fifteen. I mean fifteen minutes, do not have fifteen coffees.”

 He’s notorious for never actually booking a class, but just having his classes wherever he wants and whenever he wants, and acting insulted when he and his students are shooed out. One morning when he was having a class in the room that our teacher of the day had booked for the day, Diego left first with all his students following him in such a neat row, that he started sarcastically muttering some prayer or religious litany in either italian or latin as he went.

Tags via @gallusrostromegalus in plain text. "I love a fucked up professor from another universe. This guy would have gotten on with my art history prof. Or they would have killed each other in the quad. Which is still a kind of friendship among academics."

i learned about the ancient Italian city of Matera, where up until the 1950’s, some people were living in caves as old as 9,000 years (x)

This is what those houses look like:

You can still visit them, they were preserved as they were at the beginning of the ‘900.

The most hilarious part of italians’ reaction to coronavirus/covid19 has been them stockpiling EVERY SINGLE type of pasta except the PENNE LISCE

which Italians couldn’t bring themselves to buy or eat even during a mass psychosis

The moment italians start buying penne lisce will be the moment we know our society has truly collapsed

Listen, if I'm gonna die, my last meal is NOT gonna be fucking penne lisce.

x

Someone explain please! I want to knowwww

Penne lische is smooth and doesn’t hold sauce the way penne rigate does

The grooves make more sauce adhere to it

wait that picture up there then ACTUALLY is of a smooth tube and not just. a bad picture? smooth penne exists? that's horrifying the ridges are the best part it's like eating a tiny accordion

And that is why it is an abomination.

Disgusting. Vile. I would die before eating that filth.

I have eaten penne lisce. Objectively the worst pasta. If you sneeze too hard in its general direction, any sauce on it will fly off. You can literally cook it in tomato sauce and it will still taste of nothing. Even if you stuff cheese inside it by hand, meticulously, individually, it will fall out. No friction on these fuckers. Bad pasta.

I love how this global situation has brought us to the absolute limits of our humanity in all ways. 

meeting a new group of people

Someone finally said it it’s so annoying!

One day I was eating at a restaurant in Peru with the 3 guys who were volunteering with me and someone asked us where we came from. So I said France, the German guy said Germany, the Maltese guy had to say Italy because almost no-one in Peru knows where Malta is, and then the American guy said Portland, like he didn’t even specify the state he just thought everyone knew where Portland is 😤

i can’t tell whether this is better or worse than

and

The American comments on this post are so irritating. I think that some of them don’t realise that the USA is just a country while Europe is a continent made up of different countries where you can find different religions, different autochthonous ethnicities, different languages etc; You can’t compare a single country’s diversity to the diversity of an entire continent.

“But Texas is so different from Oregon! People need to know which state I’m from because they’re all so different!” We don’t care. We are going to see you as an American, not as a Texan or a Californian or whatever, just like you’re going to see someone from Bavaria as a German, someone from Normandy as a Frenchman or someone from Piedmont as an Italian, not as a Bavarian, a Norman and a Piedmontese. European countries have regional differences too, even more than US states yet we don’t feel the need to specify that to foreigners when they ask us where we’re from unless they ask us to elaborate.

“But the US is so big! Some of our states are even bigger than your countries!”

Russia is the largest country in the world and undoubtedly more diverse than the US. If you were to ask a Russian where they’re from they would say that they’re from Russia, not Komi or Tuva unless they’re speaking to another Russian or someone they know to be familiar with Russian geography.

You’re not special nor does the world revolve around you, just accept that and move on.

Gringos just think that their states are equal to entire countries and thats fact.

at some point when i’m less out of it i’m gonna make a longer post about how eastern european farm workers are mysteriously omitted from talks about essential workers during the pandemic despite propping up western europe’s food industry literally at the cost of their lives. like i wanna be super crystal clear here: if you’ve eaten fresh produce or meat products in, or imported from, germany, uk, the netherlands, italy or spain this year (maybe thinking you’re doing your part in supporting the economy by buying locally even) - eastern europeans have gotten sick and died so you could do that. yet somehow, for some reason, they are not essential workers.

‘but this kind of thing doesn’t make it to the news! how could i have known about it?’ fine. ok. here’s what 15 minutes of googling will get you:

if you didn’t know before, you know now. and if you can be outraged at injustices and abuse happening on another continent you can be outraged at injustices and abuse happening the next town over that make it possible for you to get your reasonably priced five-a-day. not just this year, in the middle of a pandemic, but for well over a decade.

I want a story about an Italian vampire.

No romance, no action.

Just 200 pages of “What do you mean, I can’t have garlic? Do you know where I’m from?”

TBH I think the main issue would be the mirror thing

have you ever met an Italian man

the amount of time they spend looking in the mirror jfc

#the more you think about it the more all vampire rules are just anti-italian rules#can’t go out in sunlight?? IN ITALY???#Can’t go near crucifixes? IN ITALY???

a bunch of pissed off vampires stuck in Venice because they can’t go over moving water

Not to victim blame, but you’d have to be a pretty bad Italian to even get turned into a vampire in the first place.

the only two places practically immune to vampires are texas and italy

Let me tell you of A Thing.

Lithuania has no vampires, I guarantee it.

Lithuania has one vampire, and let me tell you, she’s gonna be FURY UNLEASHED once someone gets her out of the centre of that crossterfuck of a burial point.

#never seen texas and italy in the same sentence before

(via @tchallabread)

People say that self inserts are cringy but remember that famous poet Dante Alighieri, who wrote one of the most important works in Italian literature, straight up made a giant three part fan fiction where he and his idol/mancrush, the famous poet Virgil, journey through Hell on behalf of his dead girlfriend and everyone who he didn’t like was there and suffered punishment for all eternity and then he blames three whole popes and the entire fucking city of Florence, Italy for the shitty state of the Church and over seven hundred years later it’s played a major influence in Western culture people are still praising it and analyzing it so honestly who gives a fuck lmfao

The spread of the black death.

Poland

Poland, tell us your secret.

Poland is the old new Madagascar. 

If I remember correctly, Poland’s secret is that the jews where being blamed all over europe (as usual) as scapegoats for the black plague. Poland was the only place that accepted Jewish refugees, so pretty much all of them moved there. 

Now, one of the major causes of getting the plague was poor hygiene. This proved very effective for the plague because everyone threw their poop into the streets because there were no sewers, and literally no one bathed because it was against their religion. Unless they were jewish, who actually bathed relatively often. When all the jews moved to Poland, they brought bathing with them, and so the plague had little effect there.

Milan survived by quarantining its city and burning down the house of anyone showing early symptoms, with the entire family inside it. 

I reblogged this tons of times, but the Milan info is new.

Damn Italy, you scary.

Poland: “Hey, feeling a bit down? Have a quick wash! There, you see? All better”

Milan: “Aw, feeling a bit sick are we? BURN MOTHERFUCKER, BURN!!!!!”

Also, this might have something to do with it: from what I understand, O blood type is uncommonly… common in Poland. Something to do with large families in small villages and a LOT of intermarriage. The black plague was caused by a bacterium that produced, in its waste in the human body, wastes that very closely mimic the “B” marker sugars on red blood cells that keep the body from attacking its own immune system. Anyone who has a B blood type had an immune system that was naturally desensitized to the presence of the bacterium, and therefore was more prone to developing the disease. Anyone who had an O type was doubly lucky because the O blood type means the total absence of ANY markers, A or B, meaning that their bodys’ immune system would react quickly and violently against the invaders, while someone with an A may show symptoms and recover more slowly, while someone with B would have just died. Because O is a recessive blood type, it shows in higher numbers when more people who carry the recessive genes marry other people who also carry the recessive gene. Poland, which has a nearly 700 year history of being conquered by or partnering with every other nation in the surrounding area, was primarily an agricultural country, focused around smaller, farming communities where people were legally tied to, and required to work, “their” land, and so historically never “spread” their genes across a large area. The economy was, and had been, unstable for a very long period of time leading up to the plague, the government had been ineffective and had very little reach in comparison to the armies of the other countries around for a very very long time, and so its people largely remained in small communities where multiple generations of cross-familial inbreeding could have allowed for this more recessive gene to show up more frequently. Thus, there could be a higher percentage of O blood types in any region of the country, guaranteeing less spread of the illness and moving slower when it did manage to travel. Combine this with the fact that there were very few large, urban centers where the disease would thrive, and with the above facts, and you’ve got a lovely recipe for avoiding the plague.

Interestingly enough, as a result from the plague, the entirety of Europe now has a higher percentage of people with O blood type than any other region of the world. 

WHY IS THIS ALL SO COOL

When Tumblr teaches you more about the plague than 12 years of school ever did.

Just to throw a nod in, as a medieval historian, this is all credible, and is the leading theory as to the plagues effectiveness at this point. So. Enjoy your new knowledge!

Wow. This is cool knowledge!

Why Do People Put Locks On Bridges To Declare Their Love?

The first “love locks” bridge was not in Paris, which has the most famous example, but in Serbia! Specifically in a town called Vrnjačka Banja. Shortly before the World War I, a young man and woman fell in love in Vrnjačka Banja. They would meet every night at the Most Ljubavi bridge. But the man went into the military, and while abroad, he met and fell in love with someone else. The young woman died of heartbreak, or so the story goes. Superstitious local women began going to the bridge, writing the names of themselves and their lovers on padlocks, and locking them to the bridge, in the hope that it would bind their paramours to home.

The tradition was slowly forgotten after World War I. Until a Serbian poet, Desanka Maksimović, heard the story and wrote a poem about it. The tradition was revived but only in Vrnjačka Banja.

So how did love lock bridges become a worldwide phenomenon? It probably comes from a single Italian writer named Federico Moccia. He wrote a book, published in 2006, called I Want You. It featured a couple who put a love lock on a lamp post on Rome’s 2100-year-old Ponte Milvio bridge. The book took off, and a movie was made, and the rest as they say is history!