The WW2 spy Mathilde Carré | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘I was in conversation with a French person, very distinguished diplomat. And we were talking about the effects of the war in France. And he said, Well, of course, you, your country, and the Germans had it easy after the war, because one of you was in the right and one of you was in the wrong. But we in France, everyone in France was horribly compromised. And that got me thinking and I was looking for a subject who would embody the compromises necessary to survive in France...
She's so reveled in her agent life that she took immense risks. She once went to Brest in Brittany to report on the accuracy of the British bombing. So they could know whether they were on target or not. And were so, sort of moved to see the spirit of the people of Brest that she started speaking in a British accent and was picked up by the Gestapo as a result when she got back to Paris, but managed to talk and charm her way out of that.’"
JAN MOIR: It's not just a name... Harry has stolen the Queen's crown jewel - "Are we tip-toeing into the Emily Ratajkowski mum-skills debate? I’m afraid so. Hush, yes, no one likes to criticise young mothers, who always seem to be doing their best. Yet even I can see that the supermodel is not holding her baby correctly in images recently posted on her Instagram account. And not just improperly, in a way that could be injurious to poor little Sylvester Apollo Bear’s health. It’s a kiddy, Emily, it’s not a sack of spuds. She also posed with what seemed to be a glass of wine, alongside images of her breastfeeding. Yet anyone who has pointed this out has been accused of mum-shaming — and worse. Attacking her. Spreading hate! Yet surely anyone who has 27 million Instagram followers, many of them impressionable young women, has a duty to show herself behaving responsibly around a tiny baby? I would hate anyone to look at those photographs and think there is nothing amiss about the way Sylvester’s head is lolling about, unsupported. Emily clearly thought there was nothing wrong, that is why she posted the image."
Internet-Connected Chastity Cages Hit By Bitcoin Ransom Hack - "It's just yet another reminder that you shouldn't connect everything to the internet just because you can."
The Police Dog Who Cried Drugs at Every Traffic Stop - " As a drug detection dog, Karma kept his nose down and treated every suspect the same. Public records show that from the time he arrived in Republic in January 2018 until his handler took a leave of absence to campaign for public office in 2020, Karma gave an "alert" indicating the presence of drugs 100 percent of the time during roadside sniffs outside vehicles. Whether drivers actually possessed illegal narcotics made no difference. The government gained access to every vehicle that Karma ever sniffed. He essentially created automatic probable cause for searches and seizures, undercutting constitutional guarantees of due process. Similar patterns abound nationwide, suggesting that Karma's career was not unusual... Despite the frequent errors, courts typically treat certified narcotics dogs as infallible, allowing law enforcement agencies to use them like blank permission slips to enter vehicles, open suitcases, and rummage through purses. The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, shows a financial motive for the snooping in its 2020 report, Policing for Profit. Local, state, and federal agencies have raked in more than $68.8 billion in proceeds since 2000 through a process called civil forfeiture... Some handlers jokingly refer to their K-9 partners as "probable cause on four legs."... Overall, the police found drugs in 29 percent of the vehicles that Karma flagged during his time in Republic. Other vehicles contained paraphernalia, bringing Karma's combined score to 64 percent. The result would be respectable (better than a coin toss!) if it were based on a random sample of vehicles. But the police do not work that way. When they deploy a drug dog at a traffic stop, they often have prior knowledge or suspicion that a search will produce something interesting... The real confirmation of the dog's detective skills would have come from walking around a drug-free vehicle and not giving a trained final response. Karma failed this test every time. When he had a chance to stop the impound of an innocent owner's vehicle, his success rate was zero percent. False alerts, which create problems for people like Farris and Said, sometimes have nothing to do with a dog's nose. Brain scientist Federico Rossano, who studies animal communication with humans at the University of California, San Diego, says dogs have an innate sense of loyalty that can override their sense of smell... Police participants did not like the implications. But rather than using the findings to improve their training techniques, they denounced the study and refused further cooperation."
Pepsi Occupies a Special Place in Quebecers’ Hearts - The New York Times - "IN 1967 Charles de Gaulle created a media and diplomatic storm after he fueled Quebec’s separatism by shouting “Vive le Quebec libre!” from a balcony at Montreal’s city hall.Last month the former French president’s endorsement of a Quebec nation reappears in a television commercial selling Pepsi to the province’s French-speaking majority.The ad, which marks the soft drink maker’s 75th anniversary in Canada, is in keeping with Pepsi’s unusual history. Since the 1970s, Pepsi’s Quebec bottling unit has gone its own way, using marketing that appeals, in various ways and with different degrees of subtlety, to the nationalistic sense of the province’s French-speaking population. Quebec is one of the developed world’s few markets where the positions of Pepsi and Coca-Cola are reversed. According to ACNielsen MarketTrack, Pepsi’s main brand commands 29.9 percent of the retail soft drink market in Quebec, based on volume, compared with 12.3 percent for Coke. And all of the brands owned by Pepsi control just over 60 percent of the province’s soft drink business — a dominance that even led to a common slur. The Canadian Oxford dictionary defines “pepsi” as derogatory term for a French Canadian, “from the perceived Québécois preference for Pepsi-Cola.”"
How Pepsi won Quebec - The Globe and Mail - "While Coke has usually just translated its national and international campaigns in the province, Pepsi has customized its ads to meet distinctly Québécois tastes... Hint: Go local, not global. And never go national.Unless it's during the Olympics. It seems that for two weeks, every two years, Quebeckers don't mind being reminded they're Canadian"
The Cotton Candy Grape: A Sweet Spin On Designer Fruit - ""When it pops in your mouth, the first impression is a rush of cotton candy flavor," says Spencer Gray, a personal chef in Culver City and blogger at Omnivorous who has sampled the grapes. "The green grapes don't look or smell like cotton candy," he tells The Salt, "but they will remind you of a circus."... At about $6 per pound, this sounds like a lucrative gimmick that takes a perfectly pleasant fruit and jazzes it up into junk food. But when we dug deeper into the grape's origins, we found that its creator is actually trying to do the opposite. Horticulturalist David Cain wants to bring back the natural flavors of our grapes, which have been stripped away by decades of breeding fruit to withstand shipping and storage — not to please our taste buds... "We already have other varieties that taste like strawberry, pineapple or mango," he says. "We're still testing those out to see if they're commercial viable."... Weighing in at about 18 grams of sugar per 100 grams of grapes, the designer fruit isn't cloyingly sweet. It has about 12 percent more sugar than regular table grapes but far less than raisins, which have more than three times the carbs. So just how do these green grapes conjure up the sensation of spun-sugar melting on your tongue? The fruit has very little tartness, chef Spencer tells the Salt. "It's like there's nothing to stop the sweetness. It just lingers on your tongue." There are also hints off vanilla, Spencer says — and vanilla, it seems, is a key flavor in the archetypal "pink" cotton candy that makes your dentist cringe. To get that vanilla flavor into the table grapes naturally, Cain and his team had to widen the plants' gene pool, mixing in genes from less common grape species... the world has dozens of grape species, and restricting the fruit in grocery stores to just one species also limits their flavors, Cain says. Take, for instance, the Concord grape. It's used to make Welch's juices, jams and jellies. The dark-purple berry is packed with exotic flavors and aromas, including one known as "foxy." But the Concord grape has seeds and its skin tends to fall off — not great qualities for a table grape."
Taiwan teen woken from 62-day coma by words 'chicken fillet' - "A young man who had been badly injured from a traffic accident and had been in a coma for 62 days suddenly became conscious when he heard his brother mention his favorite dish — "chicken fillet""
Salmonella: CDC urges Americans not to kiss chickens amid outbreak
McDonald's robber demands chicken nuggets, has to accept breakfast food because it was still too early - "Rudi Batten plead guilty to robbing a McDonald’s"
How Did The Reformation Affect Jews? | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘Prior to the Reformation, how would you describe relations between the Christian and Jewish communities in Europe?’
‘Ambivalent at the very least, I think, on the one hand, there is an enthusiasm or positive dimension towards Jews, at various places, explains why Jews are invited into large parts of the continent. Gradually, through the Middle Ages, going from the southern fringes of Europe, invited into Northern Europe, invited in by political leaders, often who see in the Jews an opportunity to modernize their economies. Famously, maybe stereotypically, Jews, often hold the role of moneylenders in society, but act as tax collectors as well. And those roles that they pursue allow economies in, in Europe to develop and especially in the early stages, and when, when those Christian societies are seeing relatively small numbers of Jews, it's quite, quite straightforward to have the Jews there. As their numbers grow, there becomes maybe slightly greater tensions. But those only really start to become apparent in in the 13th century. And indeed, I think sort of one of the, one of the things I really try and say about the medieval period is the extent to which actually good relations are more the norm...
‘One of the most famous decorations that sort of one can see on the outside of a number of churches dating from the Middle Ages is a pair of statues. Ecclesia and synagoga, representing the Christian church, and the synagogue are therefore, Christianity and Judaism. And they are both elegant women. But the character synagoga typically is presented with a blindfold, and, and holding perhaps, tablets, reflecting sort of the biblical message and particularly the commandments of the Old Testament, but that is meant to reflect the idea that Judaism is blind to the Christian message. And even when it's done in that relatively sympathetic, it's, it's still a beautiful woman, that is, that is presented in those statues. That's the the underlying accusation against Jews, their failure to to accept what might be seen by Christians as self evident.’...
'There's almost a sort of a paradox within that it is in those places where Jews are given greatest liberties, and this is true through the 16th and 17th century, where they are allowed greatest freedom, that often the strongest reaction against that will emerge, that this again, becomes, becomes a contentious point'"
Robert Colls On England's Sporting Obsession | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra -"‘I was quite interested in the, in the subtitle, which is sport and liberty in England, 1760 to 1960. I wonder if you could just begin by telling me what in particular connects liberty to sport?’
‘Yeah. Well, you were surprised with that subtitle. So was I. I thought I was just exploring the, you may call the anthropology, or the social history of how sport appears in every part of our civil society. I thought that's what I was doing. And for half the book, I was doing that. And then it just hit me as these things do. That there is something particularly freeing and incisive, and personal about sport, in the same way there is about liberty. And the closer I came to think, more I came to think about that, and the more it all fitted. William James, the philosopher, who you'll know, said that for him, the first act of free will, was to believe in free will. And if you think about a sporting contest, it's entirely about free will. One person's free will or one team's free will acting against another.’"
The International Brigades: Fighting Fascism In Spain | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘People from all over the world could see that in Spain, after the generals, the reactionary generals, eventually led by by Francisco Franco, but supported on the ground, by troops and aircraft, supplied by Hitler, and Mussolini. And they could see that in Spain, there was actually a frontier or a front in the, in the military term against fascism. And, and that is where, why they decided to go.’"
Cundill Prize-Winner Camilla Townsend On The History Of The Aztecs - HistoryExtra - "‘There's an old old story that has been much repeated that the, the Aztecs were, were waiting for the return of their God, Quetzalcoatl. And these Aztec histories make very clear that that's simply not the case. There was no such prophecy. And they did not think Cortez was, was a god. So you can only maintain that belief if you continue to read sources written by Spaniards or influenced by Spaniards in the later part of the century. When you read their histories, that just disappears. And in fact, you end up seeing some rather savvy generals and political leaders who were trying to figure out why the Europeans had this technological edge and trying to figure out what they were going to do about it, far from worshipping, you know, at the altar of these new gods.’"
Of course, not mentioned was the possibility that they were embarrassed to admit that they thought Cortez was a god, like how Margaret Mead's Samoans are alleged to have lied about their sexual practices because of shame after converting to Christianity
Magna Carta: Everything You Wanted To Know | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘Who was actually impacted by Magna Carta, because it was it was addressed to, it was, you know, to address the concerns of nobles, specifically, but what the actual terminology speaks of free men, right?’...
‘Was it just a baronial, selfish, baronial document. And of course, that's often said, and indeed in, in 2015, itself, Lord Sumption gave an eloquent lecture saying why are we cloaking our defense of human rights and law which he believed in, in the in the garb of this 800 year old document, which was just basically giving privileges to to barons? I think that's quite wrong, actually. Because, well it’s a mixed picture? On the one hand, Magna Carta reaches out to a much broader constituency than just the baronial elite. As I've said, there are chapters in favor of the church, London and the towns, the knightly class, the overhaul of local government is going to benefit wide sections of society. But on the other hand, yes, you're absolutely right. The charter is only granted to the free, to free men. And the, that means that a good half of the population are, who are unfree peasants, are not going to benefit, by name in the charter at all. They may in general terms get benefit from local government officials being less oppressive, but the liberties are not granted to them. And of course, the most famous chapter in the charter of all, which says that no free man is to be outlawed, exiled, deprived of property, or in any way proceeded against save by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. How does it start? No free man. So in other words, the unfree are deliberately excluded from that fundamental protection. Now, later, though, it gets better. In the later history of Magna Carta, it becomes more and more inclusive. So in the final definitive version of 1225, I think through Archbishop Langton’s influence has a new preamble, granting the liberties to everybody. And in the 14th century, that famous clause, no free man is altered to read no man of whatever condition, and so it embraces everybody. So the charter in a way begins, not, never is it simply an elitist document, but certainly it’s a document excluding specifically a large section of the population, but gradually reaches out to embrace everybody.’"
The Gay MPs Who Opposed Appeasement | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘There's Victor Cazalet… But he also ran a monstrous regiment of gentlemen, an anti aircraft battery during the Second World War, which was also known as the buggers’ battalion... even Winston Churchill called it a masculine assembly. I mean, it was all men and you could spend all of your life you know, quite politely in the company of other men, it was very what I would call homosocial... I think there were at the time, a much higher proportion of the MPs were bachelors than of the wider population in the UK’"
History Of Christmas: Everything You Wanted To Know | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘Does Christmas have any pagan origins?’ ‘Well, on the face of it, it would look as if it certainly does in the way that it kind of clicks together with you know, our Christmas and as we mentioned before, you know, the midwinter festival, and it would also sort of look as if, as soon as the, the Christians decided or the church decided that the Christmas Day was definitely the birth of Christ, was definitely on the 25th of December. That all they did was okay, what we're going to do is we're going to do a takeover of the pagan festival. Not at all. I mean, there was no decision actually on the, on the day of Christ's birth until 354 was the day that the church decided that he was born on, on Christmas Day. And it's from that point, they fought very, very hard against the idea that the Festival of Christmas, which was actually was called Christmas later on, but we'll come back to that. But the festival would not be linked with the pagan version... the reason why the 25th of December was chosen, originally, was because the important date actually was the spring equinox. And the church believed that the that was the date on which God created the world. So of course, the creation of Jesus at the Annunciation, 25th of March, beginning of a new world, if you like. And of course, the 25th of March is exactly nine months before the 25th of December.’"
Our 2020 Christmas quiz - HistoryExtra - "According to HMRC 2590 people spend Christmas Day filling in their online tax returns. And question five where were anti christmases popular in the 1920s? The answer was A, the USSR. The USSR’s youth organization Komsomol held anti christmas processions with trucks bearing clowns mocking God, a figure of God embracing a naked woman and mock priests and rabbis chanting indecent versions of religious liturgies and standing in ridiculous poses. This parade culminated in the images of Buddha, Christ, Mohammed and Osiris being burned on the bonfire...
In We Wish You A Merry Christmas, what else were you traditionally proffered? And the answer was C, a pocket full of money and a cellar full of beer. Early 19th century versions of the carol offer more than glad tidings and variously include beer, money and a pantry full of good roast beef...
‘Why did Father Christmas stop smoking a pipe? And the answer was C. He switched to drinking Coca Cola... Santa lost his pipe, perhaps because he needed his hands free to hold bowls of fizzy pop'...
‘Who was the patron saint of the Viking Varangian guard? And the answer was C Santa Claus…
The Boston Massacre, often seen as a spark that lit the Revolutionary War began when a group of young boys threw a snowball at a British soldier. The ensuing skirmish rapidly got out of hand and turned into a full blown riot in which five colonists died’"
Bridgerton: ripping up the rulebook on Regency romance - HistoryExtra - "'Bridgerton really helps communicate that much more clearly for modern audience in terms of just how flirtatious and kind of sexy it could be. Because dancing was the kind of bodily contact that men and women had before marriage. And it wasn't just like a quick two minute disco, you know, that you'd have now. It was an extended period on the dance floor, you know, three dances or dancing twice with someone was a sign of great interest. And that might mean you're on the dance floor for half an hour in very close, intimate body contact and conversation. So it's incredibly flirtatious, but also very public. You know, so everyone watching noticed if you had two dances back to back, and actually some of the earliest uses of the word flirting that I've seen, as a historian has come in letters about dancing. Like he flirted with me or they were flirting or, and it seems to be particularly kind of linked to the idea of the dance floor'"
Thomas Becket: From Murder To Martyrdom | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘I'd say that Thomas Beckett, from the moment of his death becomes a patron saint here, perhaps the patron saint, but he's really the patron of the people here, he's he's a Vox Populi. He's a rebel, he's a figure for standing up for yourself. And even with that said, the types of pilgrims he attracted throughout the Middle Ages were for, from all walks of life, you know, kings and, and lepers, and carpenters, and merchants and soldiers and young girls, it’s all over the map, he appealed to everybody. And I think it's safe to say that, of course, Becket becomes the most popular saying on this side of the channel… for me, and I think for a lot of other historians, what's so exciting about Beckett is that he really becomes a universal saint. It's extraordinary to realize that the first earliest surviving monumental image of Beckett in the history of art is not in England, not in Northern Europe. It's in Palermo, or rather, just outside of Palermo, in Monreale and the mosaics they're a gigantic image of Beckett as a saint the dates to the 1180s. There were countless vestiges of altarpieces, wall paintings of Becket, all over Spain, all over Italy in the decades following his death. He didn't belong to people here. He belonged to everyone.’"
Editor’s pick: covert Catholicism in Elizabethan England - HistoryExtra (originally published as Catholics in Elizabethan England) - "'Was she lenient, was she moderate, would she liked to have been? Quite possibly, but she was also divine right ruler. And so there is that responsibility always, and from the beginning, to make sure that her subjects go to heaven. And I think maybe she took that a bit more seriously than we give her credit for now. I mean, I think it's anachronistic to say that she was, she was tolerant in the way that she's sort of celebrated as such today. I think that's, that's wrong... Elizabeth’s reign has more recorded torture than than any other in English history. It's not something we necessarily associate with her. But her name is on the warrants, you know that you see her signature, that beautiful signature on the torture warrant, so she can't, there's no deniability'"
Stephen Fry on Twitter - "This is the point. One technology doesn't replace another, it complements. Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators x"
This is why we still use papyrus scrolls today
FATAH: A Star columnist's slurring of India's 'fascist regime' didn't go over too well | Toronto Sun - "Anyone who has been to India will testify that rather than being run by a “fascist regime” it is a vibrant democracy brimming with passionate debate over the programs of hundreds of political parties ranging from the BJP on the right and Communists on the left with the Congress in between. India is a land where public protests are the norm with coalitions at the centre and across the 29 states... “The article by Shree Paradkar is as full of hate and bigotry as one can get. That she uses the term ‘fascist regime’ in the very first line just confirms that she has no empathy for the Indians struck by the 2nd Wave of a global pandemic. She is just like the vulture swooping down on misery. This is their chance to exercise their heavy ideological artillery against Modi, the 2nd wave of the pandemic being just an excuse.” I wrote to Paradkar asking her what made her label Modi as a fascist and how she would label China, the source of this pandemic, but she did not respond."
A "fascist" is anyone a left winger doesn't like
