The Last Knight: Josef Mencik and the Nazis - "for one Czech man resistance took a very different form. Josef Mencik decided to fight the Nazis in his own way. Ignoring centuries of military progress, his chosen approach was to sally forth from his castle in full armor and on horseback, and charge at the approaching Nazi tanks like a medieval knight. Cervantes would have been proud. Mencik was born in February 1911, a proud patriot who eschewed modern luxuries for a knightly devotion to chivalry. No electricity, cars or other modern conveniences for Mencik: he would live by his ancient code, and that included fighting against evil wherever he saw it. The knight lived in the Bohmerwald region of Czechoslovakia, and when the German troops crossed into his territory in 1938, he rode out to meet them in battle. What the Germans said when they saw a knight in full armor on horseback has sadly not been recorded. But, astonishingly, this act of bravado was effective, at least at first. Mencik’s appearance at the head of the German column stopped the German troops from going any further into the occupied territory. The German troops however quickly rallied themselves, and decided that the best course of action was to take no notice of this act of bravery from the knight. Instead they told him to go home. However, the knight was and his act of courage and taking only a halberd to defend his territory from the Germans passed into legend... When the German troops were approaching the area to cross the border of Czechoslovakia at Buccina, they saw a lone man standing on horseback in their way. At first, the troops hesitated in crossing the border but then proceeded onwards. Historians still debate whether the Germans found Josef Mencik brave or foolish. Many believe that his courageous act was successful in defending his castle, which technically remained undefeated in World War II. Of course, this is because Mencik was an irrelevance but the fact remains the Nazis never beat him... His armor suit was the finest, made in France. His horse was a beautiful thoroughbred, fully capable of charging into battle. And his halberd was fully half as tall again as he, a deadly weapon. Just not against tanks. He was of course not a real knight, but he tried to adopt the knightly way of life. He started living a simple and medieval-era lifestyle. His castle that he restored himself echoed this way of life: by the time the Nazis approached, he was so embedded in this lifestyle that of course he would choose to face them."
Meme - "FATHER, I'M A REAL Boy!"
"YOU'RE ALIVE! you ARE A REAL BOy, PINOCCHIO!"
"WAIT, I'M ABOUT RETIREMENT AGE..."
*Geppetto dragging bloody bag into freshly-dug hole*
Meme - "r/fuckcars
Car Collection is literally fucking enviromental terrorism
Mumbo rule
Mumbo Jumbo @ThatMumboJumbo: "Authentic Italian car
Authentic Italian restaurant
Bellissimo!"
These people are so full of hatred
Meme - "Lets talk about the free software dating scene. As a twenty year old single male I think it's very hard to find a girl who's actually interested in free software. I've had girls jokingly ask to "Netflix and chill" but when I tell her that I don't use Netflix since Netflix requires proprietary software to stream content, they stop talking to me. And worse if they do stay they think I'm weird since I blocked google IP's in my host file and we can't even watch youtube. I can't ever seem to get girls to come over to my place and I can't text them either. Once I get their numbers since I've added customs roms to my phone and refuse to use sms since it's a security concern I require all of my friends to download a free and open source messaging app and I share with them my public gpg key so that we can verify that our conversations are secure. None of my friends are willing to do this. And I can't use sites like tinder since it's not only proprietary software but a major privacy vulnerability. How come it is so hard to find a girl concerned about software freedom. I feel like I'm going to be a virgin forever."
Meme - ""It costs $0 to be kind" as if being a hater ain't free too"
Scott Adams on X - "Two UFO possibilities:
1. UFOs are real, and the government has wreckage and alien body parts. Alternately, the entities are spiritual beings or early humans who somehow hide, or maybe humans from the future.
or...
2. Numerous credible-sounding witnesses risked their reputations to spin an absurd set of similar-sounding lies. And all of the pilot sightings and instrument readings and videos of objects are glitches, mistakes or lies.
Which one sounds more likely to you? Here's the answer. Discovering aliens, or non-human high-tech creatures of any kind, or early humans with advanced technology hiding somewhere, or time travel, would be extraordinary -- beyond anything humans have experienced. Whereas... Finding out all the witnesses are CIA, pranksters or just wrong, and all the physical evidence is bullshit would be . . . totally ordinary in human experience. So you can either believe the most extraordinarily unlikely thing is really happening or you can believe the most ordinary and common thing is happening. The way this "magic trick" works is that most people have trouble believing their could be so much solid-looking evidence for something that is untrue. But that situation is one of the most common situations in human experience."
Lucid dream startup says you can work in your sleep | Fortune - "Prophetic, a venture-backed startup founded earlier this year, wants to help workers do just that. Using a headpiece the company calls the “Halo,” Prophetic says consumers can induce a lucid dream state, which occurs when the person having a dream is aware they are sleeping. The goal is to give people control over their dreams, so they can use that time productively. A CEO could practice for an upcoming board meeting, an athlete could run through plays, a web designer could create new templates—“the limiting factor is your imagination,” founder and CEO Eric Wollberg told Fortune... The potential of lucid dreaming is less about conquering specific problems and more about finding new, creative ways to approach topics that a sleeper couldn’t previously fathom. For example, a mathematician might not reach a specific, numerical answer to a math problem while asleep, but the lucid dream allows them to explore new strategies to tackle the equation while awake... The technology isn’t without its skeptics. “It’s just not that simple,” according to Antonio Zadra, a psychology professor at the University of Montreal who specializes in sleep and dreaming (and is a frequent lucid dreamer himself). With other lucid-dream-inducing technologies, sleepers have been able to enter the lucid dream state, but they can quickly forget they are dreaming or get overexcited and wake up, he said. Being able to control a dream, which goes a step further than someone simply realizing they are dreaming, is even more difficult and something that experienced lucid dreamers struggle with, he said. Gaining control of the dream is vital for work applications like practicing for an interview or designing a building—“Control is what we want”"
Mother fears politician speaking to her 16-year-old daughter - "A mother whose teenage daughter has been invited to visit Spanish parliament after a politician spotted her blog, has voiced concerns about the trip because she's unsure if his interest in her work is genuine."
She couldn't even point to anything inappropriate he said or did. Of course, some people believe the mere act of talking to a minor is inappropriate
History is Written by the Losers - "Sima Qian is sometimes called the “Herodotus of the East.” It’s a fair title. Herodotus is one of two men who can claim to have invented history. Sima Qian is the other. This is a rare feat. It was accomplished in exactly two places. Herodotus did it in Greece; Sima Qian did it in China. Of the other great civilizations—the Mesoamericans, the Egyptians, Summerians, and their descendants, the Andean kingdoms, the early rulers of the Eurasian steppe, the great empires that sprouted up along the Indus and Ganges rivers, along with their cultural satellites across South and Southeast Asia—history is nowhere to be found. I remember my shock when I discovered our knowledge of ancient India relies more on ancient Greek historians than ancient Indian historians. Traditional Indic civilization simply did not have any... That a great thinker could profitably spend his time sorting through evidence, trying to tie together cause and effect, distinguishing truth from legend, then present what is found in a written historical narrative—it is an idea that seems to have never occurred to anyone on the entire subcontinent. Only in Greece and in China did this notion catch hold. The work of every historian who ever lived finds its genesis in one of these two places—and with one of these two people... We say that history is written by the winners. That is sometimes true. We have no Carthaginian accounts of their war with Rome; few historians today have much sympathy for Hitler. But the thread that seems to connect many of the great histories of the pre-modern world is that they were written by the losers. In his roundtable post, “Treason Makes the Historian,” Lynn Rees lists a few of the type. Herodotus wrote his history only after his exile from Halicarnassus; Xenophon wrote his memoirs only after his faction was forced out of Athens. Polybius was once a general for the Archean League, but wrote his history as a hostage at Rome. The destruction of Judea was chronicled by a Josephus, a Jew. These men abandoned their countries and people for the victors of the future. But Quislingdom was not the only losing path to historical fame. Tacitus’s loyalty to Rome never wavered—but neither did his identification with Rome’s Senatorial class, a group whose power was slowly stripped away as Tacitus wrote his chronicles. Sima Guang, the second most significant historian of Chinese history, only finished his massive Zizhi Tongjian after court rivalries had forced him to retire. The history of the Mongols was written almost entirely by their vanquished enemies. Ibn Khaldun was associated with so many failed regimes that it is a wonder he found time to write his history at all... Defeat gives brilliant minds like Thucydides the two things they need to become great historians: time and motive. Those who rule do not have the time to write about it... When high position is stolen from you, and access to the heights of wealth and power denied, there is little one can do about it—except write. History is thus rarely a “weapon of the weak.” The judgments of the historian do not serve the margins. They do not even serve the masses. They are a weapon in the hand of defeated elites, the voices of men and women who could be in power, but are not. What was true in Thucydides day is true in our own. The simplest explanation for modern academics’ hostility to 21st century capitalism’s “structures of power” is their complete exclusion from them. This is the motive of defeat. Intelligent enough to rule, but missing the wealth and position needed to lead, the historian continues the fight in the only domain that he or she can: the page. Here the historian wields absolute power. Given enough time, that power might bleed off the page and into reality"
Sparta Was Much More Than an Army of Super Warriors - "There is King Agis II, who bungled various maneuvers against the forces of Argos, Athens and Mantinea at the Battle of Mantinea (418 B.C.) but still managed to pull off a victory. There is the famous Admiral Lysander, whose glorious military career ended with a rash decision to rush into battle against Thebes, probably to deny glory to a domestic rival—a move that cost him his life at the Battle of Haliartus (395 B.C.). There is Callicratidas, whose pragmatism secured critical funding for the Spartan Navy in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.), but who foolishly ordered his ship to ram the Athenians’ during the Battle of Arginusae (406 B.C.), a move that saw him killed. Perhaps the clearest rebuttal of the super-warrior myth is found in the 120 elite Spartans who fought at the Battle of Sphacteria (425 B.C.); when their Athenian enemies surrounded them, they opted to surrender rather than “conquer or die.”"
Somehow, the Spartans not being super soldiers is supposed to mean that they were as good as everyone else - despite devoting their life to war
The hidden history of Versailles - ""When you go to the gardens, you're cycling... and you get to know more of the story of Louis XIV, XV and XVI," Mara Alfaro Prias, a Paris-based tour guide, told me over the phone. "It's not just what was behind the paintings or the chandeliers."... "Louis XIV needed what we would call today a 'bachelor pad' – that is to say, a small house of pleasures… for fun parties with some friends," said Michel Vergé-Franceschi, co-author of the book Une Histoire Érotique de Versailles. "So, he'll create Versailles, partially for his pleasure, for his sexuality, with amazing gardens."... "It's a garden where nothing is left to chance," Hélène Dalifard, the palace's communications director, told me. "The gaze is always guided toward a particular effect… the idea is really to imagine the garden as a museum in which the visitor thinks they're taking a random stroll, while in reality they're completely guided by the effects of perspective." The dimensions of Versailles and its park were carefully calculated to mirror the Louvre; the Etoile Royale (the vantage point at the far end of the canal) and the Fountain of Apollo are the exact same distance apart as the Place de l'Êtoile and the Place de la Concorde in Paris. And the distance between the Fountain of Apollo and the Versailles Palace is the same as the distance from Place de la Concorde to the Louvre. There are optical illusions, hidden groves and subtle messages alluding to the sun throughout the park. When he became king, Louis XIV chose the sun as his personal symbol, and became known as the Sun King. To reinforce that connection, the image of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, appears in fountains, groves and statues throughout the park. Symbolically, Versailles would revolve around him, and the gardens were his stage... The park has an air of excess and exclusivity, but surprisingly, the grounds were traditionally never closed to the public. The entire complex remained open, from the king's bedroom (as long as he wasn't there) to the gardens and the park. Today, Versailles still always remains open to the public, and access to the gardens and park is free, except during select days. "The tradition of the French monarchy is that the king should be accessible by his subjects, so one could enter into the chateau pretty freely under the condition of being well-dressed," da Vinha explained... The isolation of the monarchy at Versailles played a role in the Revolution; they continued to live in opulence while the French population was starving, and hundreds of citizens ultimately stormed the grounds in 1789. "Versailles contributed to [Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette] being disconnected from reality," Vergé-Franceschi said."
Why your realtor may be making too much money - "Can you think of any other job that got a 300 per cent raise over the last 15 years? Realtoring isn’t as easy as just showing houses to people: You’ve got office expenses, licensing considerations and all manner of whatever new paperwork the government has decided to throw at you. But, as with many things, the internet has made key parts of the job easier. A prospective buyer can now find your property, review its relevant details and even do a virtual walkthrough without your agent ever needing to pick up a phone. Also, did I mention we’re in the midst of a crazy red hot real estate market right now?... in Vancouver right now, the average property sells in 30 days. And oh look: This townhouse just sold for 30 per cent over its asking price. Far be it from me to say that, in certain markets, when buyers are literally throwing money at you, sales become a bit easier... I can turn it into a hotel room with Airbnb, so why can’t I sell it? You can: Services like Purplebricks will let you sell your home through an app for a flat fee, usually around $2,000. They’ll even put you on MLS! Quebec loves private sales: A single for-sale-by-owner website, DuProprio, is now responsible for 20 per cent of all Quebec real estate sales. Why is Quebec much more open to private home sales? Probably because Quebec’s housing prices haven’t been nearly as insane as the rest of Canada. When you’re selling the family home for about the same price as you bought it, you become a bit more discerning about someone wanting to take five per cent of that... if you’re handing five figures to someone who’s just going to post it on MLS and answer a few emails, you might want to consider whether an algorithm could do it just as well."
Singaporean men not independent? Ang moh TikToker provides views on local dating scene - "At the age of five, UK-born Daisy Anne moved to Singapore and she's been here for the past 20 years. But all that time here, and she still hasn't exactly warmed up to Singaporean men... "It's a running joke that Singaporean men are like a different species," she said. Daisy caveats her statement by mentioning that she's not a very active dater or that "her taste [in men] is very bad"... Daisy seeks an independent man, and she feels that this trait is "quite difficult to find" in Singaporean men. A major red flag for her is men who've been to Anglo-Chinese School or St Patrick's School. She explains: "To me, the people and the culture in those schools just churn out really cocky guys.""
Her accent is very weird, like a mix between British and North American
The risks of cousin marriage - "It is estimated that at least 55% of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins and the tradition is also common among some other South Asian communities and in some Middle Eastern countries."
From 2005. Islamophobia, discrimination and stigma are the real reason for the birth defects, of course
Oxford’s 2023 Word of the Year Is … ‘Rizz’ - The New York Times - "Sorry, Swifties. The Gen Z slang term — derived from “charisma” — went viral this year after the actor Tom Holland claimed to have none."
Review: A History of State Secrets and the French and American Revolutions (aka "Does Democracy Really Die in Darkness?") - "Public knowledge and transparency aren’t the same thing, in other words. And democratic revolutions—even the failed ones of the Arab Spring, which some have linked to the Wikileaks disclosures—call for transparency. As democratic revolutions have occurred time and again in states around the world, both external observers and the participants themselves have framed democracy as the form of government that is the antithesis of state secrecy. But what if democracies actually require secrecy?"
A Brief History of Mad Magazine - "Thanks to satire like The Simpsons and The Daily Show, it’s hard to imagine a time when irreverent humor wasn’t everywhere. But the 1950s were much different. Anti-establishment humor wasn’t part of the mainstream. Not until Mad magazine arrived to poke holes in everything from politics to movies to advertising. And even if you never picked up Mad, you probably know Alfred E. Neuman, its moronic mascot. But who came up with Mad? What prompted a lawsuit over Alfred E.? And why did the FBI feel the need to keep a file on a silly humor magazine?"
The spellbinding history of cheese and witchcraft - "As I was scrolling through Twitter recently, a viral tweet caught my attention. It was an image from a book of spells claiming that: “You may fascinate a woman by giving her a piece of cheese.” The spell comes from Kathryn Paulsen’s 1971 book, The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft – and, while proffering a lump of cheddar may seem like an unusual way of attracting a possible mate, Paulsen’s book draws on a long history of magic. It’s a history that has quite a lot of cheese in it. It’s not entirely clear why cheese is seen to have magical properties. It might be to do with the fact it’s made from milk, a powerful substance in itself, with the ability to give life and strength to the young. It might also be because the process by which cheese is made is a little bit magical. The 12th-century mystic, Hildegard von Bingen, compared cheese making to the miracle of life in the way that it forms curds (or solid matter) from something insubstantial."
Mugshot of K-9 Officer Ice goes viral after cops investigated him for stealing his colleague's lunch
Meme - "The mafia in my hometown ran a pizza chain as a front and it got so popular that the head of the family just stopped doing crimes and they do pizza full time now"
Meme - Gareth Halfacree: "Dear Microsoft. Here is a list of things I want the Start Menu to do:
Show my installed programs
Search my local files
Provide access to system settings
Here is a list of things I do *not* want the Start Menu to do:
Show the weather for a randomly-selected town near my network's public IP infrastructure
Show tabloid headlines
Show programs I *don't* have installed
Search the web via Bing
Show adverts(!)
Attempt to engage me in conversation with a hallucinating LLM
Thanks."
Kim Jong Un wipes away tears as he calls on women in North Korea to have more babies
Kim Jong Un One of Few Dictators Seen Repeatedly Crying in Public - "Kim's latest emotional moment came on Sunday during the country's fifth National Mothers Meeting — the first time North Korea held the event in 11 years, according to The Associated Press — in which mothers are honored for serving their husbands, children, and country. This year, Kim addressed North Korea's declining birthrate and called on women to give birth to more children as a form of patriotic duty... There are multiple documented or reported instances of the North Korean dictator crying. In 2011, Kim was seen with tears running down his face during a funeral for his father, Kim Jong-Il, according to Reuters. There was also a 2018 report from Japan's Asahi Shinbun, citing a North Korean defector with contacts inside the country with knowledge of the situation, of a video of Kim crying over his inability to improve the country's weak economy and that high-ranking officials in the ruling party had viewed it. Similarly, in 2020, Kim became emotional during a speech at a military parade that marked the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea because he felt his "efforts" were not enough for the country... Few dictators are known to have cried in front of their subjects. Even for leaders of democracies, crying in front of their constituents is a headline-worthy moment. Stalin was rumored to be someone often on the verge of tears behind closed doors, according to a Kremlin maid. Russian President Vladimir Putin also was seen crying during his acceptance speech near the Kremlin in 2012"
Meme - Man: "Do you want children?"
Woman: "No."
Man: "Me neither"
Man: "Kids, we need to talk." *upset boy and girl*
Meme - cal50 @cal50: "sorry for being nostalgia baited but it was kind of nice where the internet was a single, solitary, unmoving place instead of a terror that extends to everywhere. you went to this specific spot to go to the internet. when you left the spot, you left the internet. it was a place"
Dexter @planet_nerf: "There was a time when we respected the computer"
Meme - "When you turn on the lights during the threesome and you realize the divine gorilla grip hole you've been pumping into belongs to your homie"
Women Sucks The Bullets Out Of A Gun - YouTube
From Night of the Demons 3
Discord on X - "When it comes to sharing AI experiences with your friends, there's no place like Discord. Today, we’re introducing new AI experiments, including an AI chatbot named Clyde, AutoMod AI, and Conversation Summaries, and launching an AI Incubator. Learn more:"
RedMufflerMan on X - "Once upon a time there was a program called Skype Skype was too big to fail everyone used it! One day, Skype bloated itself with garbage to the point that everyone hated it, and left to go hang out with their friend Discord. Once upon a time there was a program called Discord."
Meme - *adults drinking coffee*
Children: "Look what they need just to mimic a fraction of our energy levels!"
Meme - jeeyonardo dicaprio @jeeyonshim: "Guess who taught himself how to open the rice cooker and woke me up by screaming in between mouthfuls of hot rice *grumpy cat with closed eyes*"
Meme - "Quand tu dis "subséquemment" au lieu de "du coup" *Louis XIV*"
Meme - "*Searches* Arya and Sansa reunion
Google: *Arya Stark and Sansa Stark*
Bing: *Extra Tall Lauren Phillips V Extra Small Alice Merchesi*"
Meme - "hey dad can i see you for father's day"
"Which one of my kids is this"
"albert"
"No"
Meme - CheatingWhore: "Sean. I'm sorry. I just really want you back in my life and to make up for everything. What if I let you do everything you ever wanted? I'll never do anything wrong again. You know you need me. I'm the only one who'll love you.
FUCKING ANSWER ME!!! Take me back and it'll all be okay!!!!
You're going to regret this
WHERE ARE YOU, WE'RE TALKING THIS OUT. THEIR IS NO REASON WHY WE CAN'T GET BACK TOGETHER"
"There*"
"YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE"
