Perspektiivivirhe

Dogs have had many jobs throughout history, in this case: Revenge.

love how the king was just like nah let's see where the dog is going with this

We've had strap ons since at least 400 BC, and people still have the nerve to go on gay hook up apps and ask "how can an FTM be a top?"

Image ID: Text "Fourteen inches and seventeen pounds of cast iron penis. My late husband found this in the walls of an early 1900s farmhouse that he helped a friend demolish. He wanted to throw it in with his scrap pile and I wouldn't let him. I mean seriously...who would scrap this?!?" Under this are three pics of a dildo plus balls made out of cast iron. The member is placed on a work table and 2 of the pics also show licence plats and things hung on the wall behind it. The penis it's self shows the signs aged cast iron does, slight rusting and tarnishing. It has a rounded end with a little ring at the tip end, and has a sligh curve to it making it look quite fallic indead. It looks as though, with the balls, it could have been used with a harness, or for personal use. End ID

I hope this helps whomever had a burning desire for a description, and that they now feel satisfied ;)

I remembers reading about how women in Nantucket and New Bedford and what not, would keep "he's-at-homes" (scrimshaw dildos) for use while their husbands were out whaling (which was like a multiple years at sea job)

I love that it's not just that they had dildos while their husbands were away, but that presumably their husbands gave them to them. And not just gave them to them – scrimshaw is the art of the whaler, carving sculptures from the bones and baleen on their catches. So the husbands probably carved them for their wives. The 'think of me' on the one above seems like confirmation. That's love, that is.

Here's an article about them: https://lithub.com/there-once-was-a-dildo-in-nantucket/

Hans Christian Andersen was close friends with a guy named Edvard Collin and the letters Andersen sent to him suggests he was hoping to become more than friends but Collin wasn’t interested. They stayed close until the end despite this.

Edvard is just the Danish version of Edward and Collin is pronounced like Cullen. I’ve been laughing for days.

Fun fact! Water actually turns “blood red” when it is contaminated by sulfur creating sulfuric acid. And scientists have discovered that around the time of the plagues a volcano went off that disturbed Egypt’s environment. So the plagues are scientifically proven. The other parts of the plagues are explained by the sulfuric acid river making the animals leave the river and escaping into the human population.

WHY DIDNT ANYONE TELL ME THE PLAGUES WERE PROVEN

if anyone wants a full list heres how they happened:

basically they all stem from a massive eruption of a volcano on the island of santorini off the coast of greece. the ash then floated over to egypt which kickstarted the plagues

1) blood: the ash carried the mineral cinnabar, which has the capability of turning water red

2) frogs: the ash also had many toxic and acidic substances so naturally, all the frogs are gonna flee the river

3) lice: given what was going on insects would have burrowed into dead animals/peoples skin and laid eggs, which then hatched

4) beasts: everything is getting poisoned from the ash and toxins, causing animals to freak the fuck out/die

5) pestilence: toxins again

6) boils: the ash would have caused storms that carried acid rain which when it fell, would irritate peoples skin causing boils

7) hail: the storm again

8) locusts: again with the insects and the amount of dead bodies and such which attract more insects. a lotta insects basically.

9) darkness: the ash covered the sky, blocking out the sun

10) slaying of the first born: given that children’s bodies were found in higher numbers than others, some archeologists think they may have been sacrificed to stop all the destruction, but they aren’t 100% sure about that. this is just me but I would say another possibility is that babies/kids are a lot more susceptible to toxins and shit, so while an adult may have been fine or gotten a bit sick, it might have been very dangerous/deadly for kids or babies

the volcano would also attest for the parting of the sea weirdly enough. the red sea was in fact the ‘reed’ sea, and was very shallow, probably waist deep or so. given the amount of shit dumped into the ocean from the volcano, this wouldve caused a tsunami to head towards egypt. the water would get sucked out from the reed sea right before the tsunami hit, letting people pass it easily, then the actual tsunami would hit, fuckin up anyone who tried to follow.

another theory is that the red water was caused by algae, which would cause the frogs and stuff to jump out as well. the algae also carried substances toxic to animals so if they ingested any they’d get sick and die, so more insects. in this theory there was a sand storm coincidentally that caused the rest

some sources: X X

The volcano wasn’t ON Santorini - it WAS Santorini, then called Thera. It completely blew away the Minoan settlements on the island and was one of the largest eruptions in human history. 

this is blowing my fucking mind

I love that if you really boil all this information down, what you get is something approximating “the sinking of Atlantis caused the 10 Biblical plagues of Egypt” which is, like, one of the greatest mythological mash-ups I have ever heard of.

I get the joke, and it’s pretty good, but the historian in me can’t take Marie Antoinette slander.

She was only 14 when she became queen.  14.  She was widely hated because she, being a child, couldn’t immediately start birthing out heirs to the throne.

This festered into resentment from the noble class, who infamously framed her not only for massive spending of taxes on frivolous things like diamond necklaces (the most famous instance), but also of just general fraud to the country (she was a foreigner and they treated her like one).  Like, don’t get me wrong, she definitely spent money.  But it’s far less than the public made it out to be, and far less than even her fellow nobles.

On the off-chance she got to hire her own staff, she would hire somebody who was friendly to her (since literally everybody else hated her since day 1).  But oh man that just whipped up the nobility even more, with cries of favoritism (as if their entire life wasn’t just that…)

Further, the bankruptcy of France can be far more attributed to her father-in-law, Louis XV.  He obliterated France’s economy trying to wage a war with all of Europe.  But, women usually get far more blame when things go wrong than men.  Women do be spending money, am I right fellas.  Hillary’s e-mails.

She was young, female, and a foreigner – who the other nobility hated, and so they largely blamed all of their country’s grievances on her (moreso than even her husband, who was actually in charge of all that stuff).  I mean, they killed him, too, but the woman is the one who gets blamed.

Anyway, she watched 2 of her children die (from illness, not from the guillotine, at least), before she got the guillotine a year later.

She accidentally stepped on the executioner’s foot, and her last words were, “I’m sorry, sir.  I didn’t do it on purpose.”

And all of that is no better summarized by the fact that this meme is a play on “Let them eat cake,” which she never said.  That too, was wrongly attributed to her.  When he wrote that, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was writing about the person who actually bankrupted France, her predecessor.

Here’s a really great biography of her.

tl;dr

Marie Antoinette was a foreign teenager who got caught in a deadlier version of “Why are millennials killing the napkin industry?  It’s probably because of all the avocado toast.”

THANK GOD someone out here knows actual history. i’m so sick of people shitting on her! she never even said the line, it was completely made up propaganda!

The millennial thing plus the obsession with how much AOC’s shirts cost

Reblogging this because I had no idea.

Fun fact! Water actually turns “blood red” when it is contaminated by sulfur creating sulfuric acid. And scientists have discovered that around the time of the plagues a volcano went off that disturbed Egypt’s environment. So the plagues are scientifically proven. The other parts of the plagues are explained by the sulfuric acid river making the animals leave the river and escaping into the human population.

WHY DIDNT ANYONE TELL ME THE PLAGUES WERE PROVEN

if anyone wants a full list heres how they happened:

basically they all stem from a massive eruption of a volcano on the island of santorini off the coast of greece. the ash then floated over to egypt which kickstarted the plagues

1) blood: the ash carried the mineral cinnabar, which has the capability of turning water red

2) frogs: the ash also had many toxic and acidic substances so naturally, all the frogs are gonna flee the river

3) lice: given what was going on insects would have burrowed into dead animals/peoples skin and laid eggs, which then hatched

4) beasts: everything is getting poisoned from the ash and toxins, causing animals to freak the fuck out/die

5) pestilence: toxins again

6) boils: the ash would have caused storms that carried acid rain which when it fell, would irritate peoples skin causing boils

7) hail: the storm again

8) locusts: again with the insects and the amount of dead bodies and such which attract more insects. a lotta insects basically.

9) darkness: the ash covered the sky, blocking out the sun

10) slaying of the first born: given that children’s bodies were found in higher numbers than others, some archeologists think they may have been sacrificed to stop all the destruction, but they aren’t 100% sure about that. this is just me but I would say another possibility is that babies/kids are a lot more susceptible to toxins and shit, so while an adult may have been fine or gotten a bit sick, it might have been very dangerous/deadly for kids or babies

the volcano would also attest for the parting of the sea weirdly enough. the red sea was in fact the ‘reed’ sea, and was very shallow, probably waist deep or so. given the amount of shit dumped into the ocean from the volcano, this wouldve caused a tsunami to head towards egypt. the water would get sucked out from the reed sea right before the tsunami hit, letting people pass it easily, then the actual tsunami would hit, fuckin up anyone who tried to follow.

another theory is that the red water was caused by algae, which would cause the frogs and stuff to jump out as well. the algae also carried substances toxic to animals so if they ingested any they’d get sick and die, so more insects. in this theory there was a sand storm coincidentally that caused the rest

some sources: X X

The volcano wasn’t ON Santorini - it WAS Santorini, then called Thera. It completely blew away the Minoan settlements on the island and was one of the largest eruptions in human history. 

this is blowing my fucking mind

I love that if you really boil all this information down, what you get is something approximating “the sinking of Atlantis caused the 10 Biblical plagues of Egypt” which is, like, one of the greatest mythological mash-ups I have ever heard of.

Chiune Sugihara. This man saved 6000 Jews. He was a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania. When the Nazis began rounding up Jews, Sugihara risked his life to start issuing unlawful travel visas to Jews. He hand-wrote them 18 hrs a day. The day his consulate closed and he had to evacuate, witnesses claim he was STILL writing visas and throwing from the train as he pulled away. He saved 6000 lives. The world didn’t know what he’d done until Israel honored him in 1985, the year before he died.

Why can’t we have a movie about him?

He was often called “Sempo”, an alternative reading of the characters of his first name, as that was easier for Westerners to pronounce.

His wife, Yukiko, was also a part of this; she is often credited with suggesting the plan. The Sugihara family was held in a Soviet POW camp for 18 months until the end of the war; within a year of returning home, Sugihara was asked to resign - officially due to downsizing, but most likely because the government disagreed with his actions.

He didn’t simply grant visas - he granted visas against direct orders, after attempting three times to receive permission from the Japanese Foreign Ministry and being turned down each time. He did not “misread” orders; he was in direct violation of them, with the encouragement and support of his wife.

He was honoured as Righteous Among the Nations in 1985, a year before he died in Kamakura; he and his descendants have also been granted permanent Israeli citizenship. He was also posthumously awarded the Life Saving Cross of Lithuania (1993); Commander’s Cross Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (1996); and the Commander’s Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2007). Though not canonized, some Eastern Orthodox Christians recognize him as a saint.

Sugihara was born in Gifu on the first day of 1900, January 1. He achieved top marks in his schooling; his father wanted him to become a physician, but Sugihara wished to pursue learning English. He deliberately failed the exam by writing only his name and then entered Waseda, where he majored in English. He joined the Foreign Ministry after graduation and worked in the Manchurian Foreign Office in Harbin (where he learned Russian and German; he also converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church during this time). He resigned his post in protest over how the Japanese government treated the local Chinese citizens. He eventually married Yukiko Kikuchi, who would suggest and encourage his acts in Lithuania; they had four sons together. Chiune Sugihara passed away July 31, 1986, at the age of 86. Until her own passing in 2008, Yukiko continued as an ambassador of his legacy.

It is estimated that the Sugiharas saved between 6,000-10,000 Lithuanian and Polish Jewish people.

It’s a tragedy that the Sugiharas aren’t household names. They are among the greatest heroes of WWII. Is it because they were from an Axis Power? Is it because they aren’t European? I don’t know. But I’ve decided to always reblog them when they come across my dash. If I had the money, I would finance a movie about them.

He told an interviewer:

You want to know about my motivation, don’t you? Well. It is the kind of sentiments anyone would have when he actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes. He just cannot help but sympathize with them. Among the refugees were the elderly and women. They were so desperate that they went so far as to kiss my shoes, Yes, I actually witnessed such scenes with my own eyes. Also, I felt at that time, that the Japanese government did not have any uniform opinion in Tokyo. Some Japanese military leaders were just scared because of the pressure from the Nazis; while other officials in the Home Ministry were simply ambivalent.

People in Tokyo were not united. I felt it silly to deal with them. So, I made up my mind not to wait for their reply. I knew that somebody would surely complain about me in the future. But, I myself thought this would be the right thing to do. There is nothing wrong in saving many people’s lives….The spirit of humanity, philanthropy…neighborly friendship…with this spirit, I ventured to do what I did, confronting this most difficult situation—and because of this reason, I went ahead with redoubled courage.

He died in nearly complete obscurity in Japan. His neighbors were shocked when people from all over, including Israeli diplomatic personnel, showed up at quiet little Mr. Sugihara’s funeral.

I will forever reblog this, I wish more people would know about them!

I liked this before when it had way less information. Thank you, history-sharers.

Tucked away in a corner in L.A.’s Little Tokyo is a life-sized statue of Chiune, seated on a bench and smiling gently as he holds out a visa. 

The stone next to him bears a quote from the Talmud; “He who saves one life, saves the entire world.”  

I had no idea it existed until a few weeks ago, but it’s since become one of my favorite pieces of public art. 

Chiune Sugihara.  Original antifa.

PBS made a documentary about Chiune Sugihara in 2005. If you’re interested in him, it’s definitely worth checking out. (The PBS link above even has some interactive information to go along with the film.) Ask your local library if they have a copy/can order you one from another library. You won’t be disappointed!

kate beaton wasn’t kidding when she said look him up

i am going to find this and take him a present

always reblog mr sugihara

Susanna and the Elders, Restored (Left)

Susanna and the Elders, Restored with X-ray (Right)

Kathleen Gilje, 1998

wow

Oooh my gosh this is rad. This is so rad.

For those who don’t know about this painting, the artist was the Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi.

Gentileschi was a female painter in a time when it was very largely unheard of for a woman to be an artist. She managed to get the opportunity for training and eventual employment because her father, Orazio, was already a well established master painter who was very adamant that she get artistic training. He apparently saw a high degree of skill in some artwork she did as a hobby in childhood. He was very supportive of her and encouraged her to resist the “traditional attitude and psychological submission to brainwashing and the jealousy of her obvious talents.”  

Gentileschi became extremely well known in her time for painting female figures from the Bible and their suffering. For example, the one seen above depicts the story from the Book of Daniel. Susanna is bathing in her garden when two elders began to spy on her in the nude. As she finishes they stop her and tell her that they will tell everyone that they saw her have an affair with a young man (she’s married so this is an offense punishable by death) unless she has sex with them. She refuses, they tell their tale, and she is going to be put to death when the protagonist of the book (Daniel) stops them.

So that painting above? That was her first major painting. She was SEVENTEEN-YEARS-OLD. For context, here is a painting of the same story by Alessandro Allori made just four years earlier in 1606: 

Wowwwww. That does not look like a woman being threatened with a choice between death or rape. So imagine 17 year old Artemisia trying to approach painting the scene of a woman being assaulted. And she paints what is seen in the x-ray above. A woman in horrifying, grotesque anguish with what appears to be a knife poised in her clenched hand. Damn that shit is real. Who wants to guess that she was advised by, perhaps her father or others, to tone it down. Women can’t look that grotesque. Sexual assault can’t be depicted as that horrifying. And women definitely can’t be seen as having the potential to fight back. Certainly not in artwork. Women need to be soft. They need to wilt from their captors but still look pretty and be a damsel in distress. So she changed it. 

What’s interesting to note is that she eventually painted and stuck with some of her own, less traditional depictions of women. However, that is more interesting with some context.  

(Warning for reference to rape, torture, and images of paintings which show violence and blood.)

So, Gentileschi’s story continues in the very next year, 1611, when her father hires Agostino Tassi, an artist, to privately tutor her. It was in this time when Tassi raped her. He then proceeded to promise that he would marry her. He pointed out that if it got out that she had lost her virginity to a man she wasn’t going to marry then it would ruin her. Using this, he emotionally manipulated her into continuing a sexual relationship with him. However, he then proceeded to marry someone else. Horrified at this turn of events she went to her father. Orazio was having none of this shit and took Tassi to court. At that time, rape wasn’t technically an offense to warrant a trial, but the fact that he had taken her virginity (and therefore technically “damaged Orazio’s property”. ugh.) meant that the trial went along. It lasted for 7 months. During this time, to prove the truth of her words, Artemisia was given invasive gynecological examinations and was even questioned while being subjected to torture via thumb screws. It was also discovered during the trial that Tassi was planning to kill his current wife, have an affair with her sister, and steal a number of Orazio’s paintings. Tassi was found guilty and was given a prison sentence of…. ONE. YEAR……. Which he never even served because the verdict was annulled.

During this time and a bit after (1611-1612), Artemisia painted her most famous work of Judith Slaying Holofernes. This bible story involved Holofernes, an Assyrian general, leading troops to invade and destroy Bethulia, the home of Judith. Judith decides to deal with this issue by coming to him, flirting with him to get his guard down, and then plying him with food and lots of wine. When he passed out, Judith and her handmaiden took his sword and cut his head off. Issue averted. The subject was a very popular one for art at the time. Here is a version of the scene painted in 1598-99 by Carivaggio, whom was a great stylistic influence on Artemisia:

This depiction is a pretty good example of how this scene was typically depicted. Artists usually went out of their way to show Judith committing the act (or having committed it) while trying to detach her from the actual violence of it. In this way, they could avoid her losing the morality of her character and also avoid showing a woman committing such aggression. So here we see a young, rather delicate looking Judith in a pure white dress. She is daintily holding down this massive man and looks rather disgusted and upset at having to do this. Now, here is Artemisia’s:

Damn. Thats a whole different scene. Here Holofernes looks less like he’s simply surprised by the goings ons and more like a man choking on his own blood and struggling fruitlessly against his captors. The blood here is less of a bright red than in Carrivaggio’s but is somehow more sickening. It feels more real, and gushes in a much less stylized way than Carrivaggio’s. Not to mention, Judith here is far from removed from the violence. She is putting her physical weight into this act. Her hands (much stronger looking than most depictions of women’s hands in early artwork) are working hard. Her face, as well, is completely different. She doesn’t look upset, necessarily, but more determined. 

It’s also worth note that the handmaiden is now involved in the action. It’s worth note because, during her rape trial, Artemisia stated that she had cried for help during the initial rape. Specifically she had called for Tassi’s female tenant in the building, Tuzia. Tuzia not only ignored her cries for help, but she also denied the whole happening. Tuzia had been a friend of Artemisia’s and in fact was one of her only female friends. Artemisia felt extremely betrayed, but rather than turning her against her own gender, this event instilled in her the deep importance of female relationships and solidarity among women. This can be seen in some of her artwork, and I believe in the one above, as well, with the inclusion of the handmaiden in the act.

So, I just added a million words worth of information dump on a post when no one asked me, but there we go. I could talk for ages about Artemisia as a person and her depictions of women (even beyond what I wrote above. Don’t get me started on her depictions of female nudes in comparison to how male artists painted nude women at the time.) 

To sum up: Artemisia Gentileschi is rad as hell. This x-ray is also rad as hell and makes her even radder.

I love art history.

I’m reblogging this again to add something that I also think is important to know about Artemisia Gentileschi. Back in her time and through even to TODAY, there are people who argue that her artworks were greatly aided by her father…. As in he either helped her paint them or just straight up painted them himself. Hell, there are a number of works only recently (past several years or so) that have been officially attributed to Artemisia because people originally saw the signature with “Gentileschi” in it and automatically attributed it to Orazio. So, not only was Artemisia Gentileschi an amazing artist and amazing historical figure, but I don’t want it to be ignored that there are people over 400 years later who still won’t give her the credit she deserves, just because she’s a woman and obviously women can’t paint like she did.

there’s this book Blood, Water, Paint that’s about her and it’s honestly so amazing 10/10 would recommend

men: *decided women weren’t allowed attend schools, study sciences, or have access to higher education* men: well if women are so smart then how come there aren’t many contributions from women in history huh

men: *takes credit for women’s accomplishments* men: why don’t women contribute anything?

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it a thousand more times: No piece of dystopian fiction has ever been a prediction of the future. They are observations and criticisms of the present. 

“Wooow! How did Orwell predict the surveillance state so well in 1984??” 

He didn’t. He was making an observation of the surveillance state that already existed in his present, and exaggerated it to make the metaphor obvious.

Learning and discussing these works in terms of them being predictions and having test questions like “do you think his prediction came true?” is not only pointless, but actively counterintuitive. When you frame these works as being ‘people from the past knew that the future would be terrible’ you shift the entire perspective to one of some kind of nostalgia for a past that didn’t exist. 

These author’s aren’t oracles. They’re satirists. Their predictions ‘come true’ because they were already true when they wrote them. 

It’s the same when people see tweets from last year like “It’s okay if people die as long as we can keep Outback Steakhouse open” and people posting the date of the tweet like “these tweets predicted the future!”

Those tweets observed the present. Because the capitalist idea of sacrificing lives for profit isn’t new. It’s just been taken to its extreme by the pandemic. The idea of “if something bad happens where our government and our upper class need to prioritize life over profit or thousands will die: thousands will die” is hardly prophetic, it’s basic perception. 

Are these tweets eerie in how accurate they are, even coming from years ago? Yes, of course. Chillingly so. But not because they predicted something no one could have expected, but because it was already happening to such a degree and so obvious for so long that something would give, and the majority of us could do nothing but sit and wait for it to happen. 

Also certain patterns always repeat themselves throughout history, it has happened in the past, it happens now and it will happen in the future, you might be able to guess the “how” based on how things are evolving now.

Meanwhile, France:

Also the French

And the Brits

And even the Ottomans?

The Lincoln Assassination is really just wild if you think about it for a moment. The younger brother of one of the most famous actors in the country- himself a famous actor and heartthrob in his own right- killed the President in a theatre and yelled “Sic semper tyrannis,” a line often associated with Brutus, a character that his brother had famously played.

Like, imagine if Liam Hemsworth killed the Prime Minister of Australia at a red carpet movie premiere or something and yelled “I went for the head,” and Chris had to leave the Avengers press tour to tell everyone, “I swear I had nothing to do with this.” Imagine how weird that would be.

…a whole history major and yet this post is the first time I’ve fully appreciated the weirdness of the Lincoln assassination

english tourists are causing problems again

The history of Earth has never been summed up so succinctly before.

wow this reblog is funnier than my entire blog

That is the BEST EVER quote about the nature of historians I’ve ever seen

i’m thinking of putting together a paper on ww1 memes and modern interpretations of the war

bad idea or terrible idea?

ok, i’m probably going to regret this

but please submit your ww1 memes. send me a message or reblog or reply or whatever. and where else I should go to tap into the fresh sewage pipe of meme production. i suppose r/historymemes would probably have stuff? and polandball? i’m not really inolved in much outside of tumblr, so help me out here comrades

I have my fair share of WWI memes on my camera role…

Here’s a few of my favourites

Hold up I have a few more

that’s the ticket