These Cheeky Statuettes Were Part of Edo-Era Japan’s Answer to Pockets - "Sixteenth-century Japan had a wardrobe problem. Citizens of every class all wore kimonos, T-shaped robes wrapped around the body and held in place with sashes called obis. Kimonos are functional and elegant but lack a crucial element rather helpful for everyday life: pockets. People have always needed to carry things, and medieval Japan was no exception. The practical solution to this sartorial problem evolved into netsuke, one of the most distinctive and diminutive art forms in a country known for them.
Archaeology/History Jokes & Puns (Or GTFO!) - "art museums will literally be like "this room is dedicated to one specific artist in one specific french village and only his paintings done with this one brush" "and this room is All of Asia""
The same people who cheer this also demand museums return everything that happened to be found in the geographical area occupied by a present day geopolitical entity to that present day geopolitical entity
Museums in Asia are actually a lot less cosmopolitan than those in the west. Usually they don't even have stuff from other parts of Asia
Comments: "A lot of what museums put on display is heavily dependent on what they can physically get their hands on. Sometimes that room is because “oh, some rich donor REALLY liked this old dead dude, so now we can fill some space!”"
"Museums in western countries give more emphasis to western culture. shocking"
"Museum has too little art from Asia: reeeeeeeeeeeee
Museum has too much art from Asia: reeeeeeeeeeeee"
"Clearly you’ve never been a museum in Asia. Crazy right that European museums and nations descended from European culture have a European focus."
Noah Carl on Twitter - "Today, @UWMedicineannounced that it will no longer use race to calculate estimated glomerular filtration rate. This move came in light of concerns raised by UW medical students, including critical conversations facilitated by the Anti-Racism Action Committee. Such a huge win."
"Hi Elizabeth, what is the benefit of discarding potentially useful information? There is discrimination and prejudice based on age in our society. Should we also ignore age when calculating estimated glomerular filtration rate? A study published in March of this year found that the prediction equation for glomerular filtration rate was substantially less accurate when excluding race"
Brilliant. When more minorities die, they can blame "Racism"
Biden’s election will show that the Western alliance is no more - "There are, then, two ways in which a Biden presidency will remove the Europeans’ veil of smug superiority. First, he will follow some Trump-era objectives, because that is what American interests demand, thus showing that Trump was no extremist on China. And second, where he does change approach, he will expose European indifference to the Western Alliance as driven, not by distaste for Trump’s policies, but by Europe’s own cynicism, short-termism and willingness to freeload off US military budgets. In both respects, Biden’s election will reveal Europe’s dirty secret. It was never Donald Trump who stopped the Europeans being their better selves, taking responsibility for the security of their own citizens, and protecting long-term Western interests. It was always Europe itself."
I’ve discovered that almost every single article on the Scots version of Wikipedia is written by the same person - an American teenager who can’t speak Scots : Scotland - "The Scots language version of Wikipedia is legendarily bad. People embroiled in linguistic debates about Scots often use it as evidence that Scots isn’t a language, and if it was an accurate representation, they’d probably be right. It uses almost no Scots vocabulary, what little it does use is usually incorrect, and the grammar always conforms to standard English, not Scots... This is going to sound incredibly hyperbolic and hysterical but I think this person has possibly done more damage to the Scots language than anyone else in history. They engaged in cultural vandalism on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world. Potentially tens of millions of people now think that Scots is a horribly mangled rendering of English rather than being a language or dialect of its own, all because they were exposed to a mangled rendering of English being called Scots by this person and by this person alone. They wrote such a massive volume of this pretend Scots that anyone writing in genuine Scots would have their work drowned out by rubbish. Or, even worse, edited to be more in line with said rubbish.Wikipedia could have been an invaluable resource for the struggling language. Instead, it’s just become another source of ammunition for people wanting to disparage and mock it, all because of this one person and their bizarre fixation on Scots, which unfortunately never extended so far as wanting to properly learn it."
Some Japanese whiskies aren't from Japan. Some aren't even whiskey. - "unlike most whiskey-producing countries, Japan has few rules about what constitutes whiskey, let alone what makes it Japanese. Companies can buy spirits in bulk from abroad, bottle and label it "Japanese whiskey," and ship it back out. They can export aged shochu made from grains, like rice or barley, for sale in America as whiskey. Some so-called distilleries do not even do any distilling; they import the whiskey in bulk and contract another company to bottle it."
A comparative study of restaurant sonic environments in Singapore, Macao SAR, and Hong Kong SAR - "restaurants in Singapore had a higher noise level than those in Macao SAR and Hong Kong SAR. Additionally, noise from services negatively affected sonic environment and diners’ subjective responses. Service employees’ behaviors, foods and beverage, and diners’ subjective responses to restaurant noise affected diners’ overall satisfaction and word of mouth communication."
Guess the stereotype about Cantonese people being loud and noisy isn't accurate
The Square Comics - "Then: "MOMMY, I WANT A PUPPY!!"
"NO!"
Now: "SON, GIVE ME A GRANDCHILD"
"NO.""
The .50-Caliber Mousetrap Patent Probably Seemed Like a Smart Idea at the Time - "In 1882, James A. Williams of Fredonia, Texas, wanted to make a new kind of trap "by which animals which burrow in the ground can be destroyed." He took inspiration from 19th Century "burglar-alarms" that involved jury-rigging a pistol and lever contraption "so as to kill any person or thing opening the door or window to which it is attached.""
Should Children Do More Enrichment Activities? Leveraging Bunching to Correct for Endogeneity - "We study the effects of enrichment activities such as reading, homework, and extracurricular lessons on children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills. We take into consideration that children forgo alternative activities, such as play and socializing, in order to spend time on enrichment. Our study controls for selection on unobservables using a novel approach which leverages the fact that many children spend zero hours per week on enrichment activities. At zero enrichment, confounders vary but enrichment does not, which gives us direct information about the effect of confounders on skills. Using time diary data available in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we find that the net effect of enrichment is zero for cognitive skills and negative for non-cognitive skills, which suggests that enrichment may be crowding out more productive activities on the margin. The negative effects on non-cognitive skills are concentrated in higher-income students in high school, consistent with elevated academic competition related to college admissions"
Of course, this won't stop liberals demanding more enrichment for poor kids to "level the playing the field", then using unequal outcomes to claim structural inequality
[Tip] Send alarm sound only via connected headphones so that others don't wake up : androidapps - "By default, alarm tone plays from the phone's speaker and headphones/earphones as well. below are methods to force it to play through headphones/earphones only instead of both. this can be especially helpful if you want to wake up in the oddest hour of night for some reason, or you're travelling etc without waking up everyone in the house."
The Real Reason China Banned 'The Big Bang Theory' - "China's powerful state broadcaster CCTV covets the young, educated audiences that watch U.S. shows on online video sites, as well as the small but fast-growing sums of ad money they bring in. And CCTV -- a bastion of traditional, state-approved fare -- might be hoping to edge out the private Internet companies and broadcast more foreign fare itself."
Welshman charged for treatment in English hospital as he was 'classed as foreigner'
Some grievance monger claimed that it was racist for the NHS to charge foreigners because non-white people get screwed by the system. Strange how in many other countries you need to show a health card to get treated by universal healthcare and that isn't "racist"
NHS is owed £150,000,000 in unpaid bills by overseas patients - "The total value of unpaid bills owed by foreign patients could be a lot higher, with over 60 hospital trusts failing to provide details"
Regardless, some British people proclaim that they are happy to pay more in taxes to treat any foreigners who need medical treatment
Nero: Rome’s Antichrist? | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘Nero, one of the reasons why he's thought of as one of, like you say, the most notorious Roman Emperor, I think, is because of the wide range of charges against him. You know, Caligula murdered people, you know, that sort of thing, senators, and had some incestuous relationships with his sisters. But Nero really does kind of, you know, expand the remit of what you can do. He had 14 years. He ruled till AD68 compared to Caligula’s four. So, that sort of suggests, you know, maybe he did do some things right. Well, but he is accused of right from the very early part of his reign, killing his stepbrother Britannicus because he, you know, might have threatened, you know, Nero’s rule when he got a bit older, particularly. And also other family members. So in AD59, five years into his reign he is, you know, we're told he concocted this vastly elaborate plot to kill his mother that included a sinking ship and all sorts of things. And then also he's implicated in kind of the murder of other family members like his aunt and you know, other people who might, in theory threaten his, any, his legitimacy to reign. So that's the one side of it kind of the killing. His wife as well. Sorry, I should mention Octavia and then Poppea, 2 wives. He is accused of killing or having a hand in killing but then also you get other things that are crimes of Nero’s that, you know, aren't in that same sort of category that we now think of as crimes. So, for example, he loved to act on the stage. He was a performer. You know, we’re told in his heart, it's what he always wanted to do. And when he decides to start doing that, acting in public in the 60s, sort of mid 60s AD, he is, you know, severely criticized for this, because this is not something that an Emperor should be doing while they are also trying to, you know, conduct their affairs in Rome. And in fact, in AD66 to 67. He leaves Rome and he goes to Greece to take part in a tour of the games there. And the person who leaves in charge at Rome is a freedman, which is someone who was formerly a slave. His name is Helios. So that kind of action as well, where, perhaps in a modern context, we don't think of them as crimes, were very much up there with the crimes of the Neronian periods. In addition to another sort of, another couple of things that he is very well known for is his love of luxury. So, after Rome is, a large part of Rome is destroyed by a fire in AD 64, he gets to rebuild, and one of the things he does is built himself a new palace. I mean, you know, maybe you would, if anyone would in that situation. But it's called the Domus Aurea, which means the golden house, he builds a very, very luxurious, huge palace in Rome, you know, for himself, but possibly also, you know, partly, part, part of it was open to the public as well. The gardens for example. But that love of luxury is something that has really pervaded the way that we understand Nero today. So the other thing that is repercussion of the fire of Rome that happened in 64 AD is that Nero needed someone to blame for it. He had enacted a building program after it that saw him be able to rebuild Rome, build his, his palace, and he seemed to be taking a little bit too much joy in that process. So rumors started flying, that maybe he started the fire himself so that he would be able to rebuild Rome, in his image, as it were. And so in order to quell or squash those rumors, he decided to blame a group that were already known as a little bit anti social in Rome. You know, we're talking about the 60s AD at this point, which was the Christians’"
A clear illustration of how morals are not objective
Everything You Wanted To Know About Medieval Queens | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘Who was the most beautiful medieval queen?’...
‘It’s obviously a difficult one to answer, but it really speaks nicely to the ideals of Queenship or the expectations of medieval queens and I always summarize them as the four goods and the three P's. So basically, Queens were expected to be kind of the ultimate good woman, and a model of kind of virtuous behavior. They're expected to be good wives and mothers and good rulers, but they're also expected to be pious, peacemakers and pretty... Queens were meant to kind of represent, you know, kind of contemporary ideals of beauty. But again, as I was talking about with clothing, Queens were often portrayed and kind of described in an idealistic manner. So they were often referred to as kind of beautiful or fair, even if they weren't necessarily attractive. I mean, again, you don't want to kind of say that the Queen wasn't, you know, wasn't a looker’"
A History Of Magic | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "Anthropology, say in the 19th century, thought that human intellectual history went from a belief in magic to a belief in religion to a belief in science, and you gave up the previous one, as you became more rational and more enlightened. But I don't think that's true. I think throughout a lot of human history, at least, people have believed in a mixture of the three. And there's no reason why one should choose one or two or, or, you know, over the, all three of them and I think they do different, different things. So, religion is obviously a belief in a single God or lots of gods and gives us a sense of something beyond the human, a sense of awe, a sense of something to be taken account of worshipped, whatever. Science gives you a much more objective view of the world, you try and stand back and you appreciate the forces of the of the universe in a way that you can render in terms of mathematics or whatever. Whereas magic, as I say, gives you a much more sort of, you know, it connects you to the universe in a way where you feel like you're part of the broader universe. And I think all of us at different times feel a bit of each of those things in our lives"