metadata-uber-alles

[metadata-uber-alles]

Footage of 1920s Juneteenth parades in Oklahoma and Texas, video held by Yale Library:

For more context see the writeup for the collection -> Solomon Sir Jones Films, 1924-1928

[metadata-uber-alles]

You can find the text of the Endangered Species Act right here: https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/endangered-species-act-accessible.pdf

It says right at the start that the purpose of the Act includes conserving the ecosystems where endangered species live. Seems like solid ground for keeping habitat damage within the purview of the act, if you ask me. In my comment I used the bald eagle as an example--there have been laws against hunting them since 1940, and they still nearly died out until we got rid of DDT. (Bald eagles! Where's your patriotism? Don't you care about our national symbol??) The IUCN Red List Advanced Search page will give you some great stats if you want to show how big a threat habitat loss is. For example I filtered for Endangered species in North America and got a neat bar graph showing the biggest threats.

On April 16th 2025 the US federal government has proposed to change the interpretation of the endangered species act so that it no longer protects habitat.

This is open for public comment until the end of May 19th. Please comment and make your voice heard.

Wildlife need their habitat. If the ESA redefines harm so that habitat is no longer protected, the implications for wildlife would be catastrophic.

[metadata-uber-alles]

Did you feel settled into your career by 25?

[metadata-uber-alles]

For my knitting archivist folks

[metadata-uber-alles]

It is the only surviving fragment of a lost medieval manuscript telling the tale of Merlin and the early heroic years of King Arthur's court. In it, the magician becomes a blind harpist who later vanishes into thin air. He will then reappear as a balding child who issues edicts to King Arthur wearing no underwear. The shape-shifting Merlin – whose powers apparently stem from being the son of a woman impregnated by the devil – asks to bear Arthur's standard (a flag bearing his coat of arms) on the battlefield. The king agrees – a good decision it turns out – for Merlin is destined to turn up with a handy secret weapon: a magic, fire-breathing dragon. 

[metadata-uber-alles]

[metadata-uber-alles]

From Ross Radio (@cqcqcqdx) on X (Twitter).

[metadata-uber-alles]

The ghosts and German handwriting

Completely niche, self-indulgent topic no one cares about except me but I would really love an episode in S2 where Emma finds an old hand-written document that she wants to decipher, and she goes to the ghosts for help, only to find that none of the ghosts can read it either because 1) it's just plain bad handwriting and 2) it's written in this specific handwriting that was only taught in schools from the 1910s to the 1940s and they don't have a ghost from that period on hand. Context: Around the beginning of the Modern era, in Germany (and some other countries too but this is about Germany) people started using two parallel handwriting systems. One, the so-called Latin cursive, was very close to the cursives used in other countries at the time and can still be read somewhat easily today. The other, the more commonly used one, was called Kurrent. Which one you used depended on context. Loan words, place names and quotes for example would often be written in Latin cursive, even if the rest of the text was in Kurrent. Here an example of the word Generalienmäßig (in the manner of generals) which has the first half written in Latin cursive and the second part in Kurrent to show the difference.

People nowadays still learn cursive in school (at least they did when I was in school) but since the 40s they'd only learn a cursive close to the Latin one. Kurrent has completely disappeared from schools and now you'll mostly only encounter it at the university level when you're studying history or archival science or something similar. Svenni and Joachim probably didn't learn how to read/write it. But, if Kurrent has been around for so long, wouldn't Friedrich or Adelheid be able to read it? Generally, yes. But of course writing styles have evolved over the 200+/100+ years since they've been dead as well. Here's what Friedrich's handwriting could have looked like:

(This one's a bit of a mix of Kurrent and Latin cursive but wikimedia didn't have any other good examples for Friedrich's time so it is what it is lol Here are Friedrich's and Ludwig's actual handwritings from the show, even if they're not very legible. Kudos to the set dressers and the actors for actually using Kurrent!)

And this is what Adelheid's Kurrent could have looked like:

Okay but now to the super specific 1910s to 1940 kinda Kurrent! It's called Sütterlin after the guy who invented it, it was in part inspired by the Jugendstil/Art Nouveau art movement and its main goal was to simplify the cursive for school kids to learn it easier. It looks a little something like this:

This one's a pretty neat and legible example but if the handwriting was really bad, on top of it being a new variant of Kurrent, even Friedrich and Adelheid could struggle a bit to read it. In the end of the episode maybe they find a new ghost that can read it, maybe it gives Urs a moment to shine or maybe it was Lotti's diary all along, any of these outcomes would be a lot of fun~ (And just for completion's sake, I don't know if Urs and Griet can write and/or read, but I'm sure Claudius can and his handwriting would probably look like this (which also wouldn't be very useful to Emma's deciphering quest lol):

[metadata-uber-alles]

The problem is lot of people perceive it as asking a secretary: you ask it a question, it goes out and searches the internet and sifts through stuff for you, and then it comes back to you and summarizes the most pertinent information. And I can hardly blame them because it is presented that way! In five minutes browsing I find "ChatGPT can help" "AI Smart Assistant", Microsoft's AI is called "Copilot"...heck I know I've seen commercials specifically implying AI can plan out an entire travel itinerary for you.

But this secretary can't tell the difference between an official government website and a random social media post and is just really good at bullshitting. If there are consequences for being wrong, for the love of everything double check the answers for yourself.

[metadata-uber-alles]

Even without words, we communicate through our eyes.

[metadata-uber-alles]

being a humanities major who’s friends with stem majors is so funny because you’ll ask your friends what they’re doing today and they’re like “UGH it’s so stressful i have to stabilize the reactor core for my nuclear power midterm and then i have to build the supercomputer from i have no mouth yet i must scream for my electrical engineering homework :/ what about you” and you’re like “oh well i have to read a fun little book and write an essay about gender.” and they still think you have it worse

[metadata-uber-alles]

Donald Trump signed an Executive Order to defund libraries!

SHOW UP FOR OUR LIBRARIES! 📚 CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSPEOPLE!

[metadata-uber-alles]

One weekend left to comment!

Just to be very specific: U.S. passports already have "sex" listed on them. The "proposed information collection" is to change the passport application form so that it says specifically "biological sex at birth." So word your comments accordingly.

I mostly went into how that is not really a useful data point for an identification document, because actually you cannot confirm someone's genitals or chromosomes by looking at them for 30 seconds while they stand in line at the airport.

(TIL: In the 2015 Transgender Survey, 56% of respondents reported that others can "rarely" or "never" identify them as transgender without being told.)

PUBLIC COMMENTS ARE OPEN FOR GENDER IDENTIFIERS ON US PASSPORTS

Right now, you can submit a comment for consideration on the proposed changes to US Passport law that will include requiring a change from "Gender" to "Sex" on all passports and require that people identify with their sex assigned at birth.

THIS IS THE LAW THAT WOULD BAN TRANS PEOPLE FROM UPDATING THEIR IDENTIFICATION

Please take a moment to click through and submit a comment. This kind of thing is fast, easy, and is one of the many ways to show your support of the trans community to the people that need to know how many of us there are.

[metadata-uber-alles]

Feels like a whole middle stage of consolidation in modern capitalism is being gradually forgotten. We've simplified things to "we had retail, then we had online monopolies" and left out the part - except for Wal-Mart - where big box chains took over retail

So much of nostalgia for brick-and-mortar revolves around those big chains; Toys 'R' Us and Barnes & Noble and Blockbuster Video etc. But those were the Amazons of their day: the force that drove smaller, indie stores out of business by sheer volume. Toys 'R' Us closing can't be an existential threat to the toy store itself if it hadn't first caused all the local toy stores to close.

Blockbuster gets the worst of it bc I guarantee many of the people nostalgic for Blockbuster now would've hated it then, and yet it's become synonymous with video rental itself. To have nostalgia for video rental is to have nostalgia for Blockbuster...the corporate monopoly that drove all the fun mom-and-pop video shops out of business, and replaced them with a space whose main promise was that they'd have a hundred copies of each and every major studio film, that seeing the latest mediocre action flick would always be possible. Did you know Blockbuster censored content? Not just in the indirect way where they killed off the nascent NC-17 rating by refusing to stock NC-17 & unrated films, but they would demand cuts to content within films. Blockbuster would also just refuse to stock films, like The Last Temptation of Christ, and if you lived somewhere where Blockbuster had pushed out all competition...well, then you just didn't get to see it.

But if you were a 90s kid you probably don't have any memory of indie video stores, and you probably weren't aware of the controversy of how they treated films for adults (hell, I doubt the blockbuster-loving non-cinephile adults in my life were aware of it), so Blockbuster is the video store, just like how Toys 'R' Us is the toy store. Heck, I remember going to game stores that weren't Gamestop & being disappointed when all of them turned into Gamestops or closed, and yet I know the generation after me has only ever known a world of Gamestop and whenever the walking corpse that is Gamestop shambles into its final grave they'll be just as nostalgic for it

(the censorship makes it even funnier when people laud how Blockbuster had a "wide selection" and that video rental stores were better than streaming and we should go back. Like I'm sorry Netflix sucks but the idea that it would be Good to ditch an era where you're just a few clicks away from watching any film ever bc it's *worse* in terms of accessibility and we were truly free when we had to choose from a video rental monopoly that had a single shelf for "Foreign" & a single shelf for "Classics" & that had the capability to make films they disapproved of unavailable entirely is bonkers. I can watch thousands of movies on a whim and they're putting out boutique Blu-Rays of the most obscure 80s slashers, this is a golden age of media accessibility & anyone insisting it's worse is plain nuts. Okay it's only a golden age if you have a good adblocker and VPN, but)

[metadata-uber-alles]

A nice way to cook a squash

This is how my parents always cook squash, and it is Very Good, 10/10 highly recommend. We usually use buttercup squash (not to be confused with butternut squash) but it works just the same with acorn squash.

First you should wash it. Then knock the stem off. The side where the stem was is typically flatter, and has much thicker walls, so that will be the bottom and you’ll treat the blossom end as the top.

Cut it open like you would a pumpkin for Halloween and scoop out the guts.

Into your empty squash place a spoonful or two of brown sugar, and a nice big piece of butter.

Fill the rest of the space with cranberries. As many as you can shove in there while still being able to close the lid.

Put the lid on and place it on a pan.

Bake at about 375 F (190 C) until it’s all nice and soft, which is usually an hour and a half for me, but it depends on the size of the squash. I stab it with a fork after the first hour to see how it’s doing.

Scoop it all out into a bowl and stir it up! When it’s cooked all the way through you can get pretty much every bit of squash out, and just have a paper thin empty squash skin left in the pan. Very nice. Much nicer than this badly lit photo makes it look.

It also works on butternut squash, but you’ll want to cut it lengthwise and cover it with foil for that.

[metadata-uber-alles]

Female Indian telephone switchboard operator ⁣ “Helen of Many Glacier Hotel"⁣ 26 June 1925⁣ ⁣ Source: Library of Congress⁣ ⁣

[metadata-uber-alles]

Literal definition of spyware:

Also From Microsoft’s own FAQ: "Note that Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers. 🤡