#16th cent. women

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[ptseti]

WYCLEF: WHY AM I SO SEXY? I’M AFRICAN!

Haitian-born rapper, Wyclef Jean, recently joked he used to ask himself ‘why am I so tough, sexy and good looking?’ He then had a DNA test that showed he was 80 per cent Nigerian! His quip is a reminder of the indelible link between the Caribbean and Africa, brought about by the European slave trade.

In the 16th-century millions of African men, women and children were shipped abroad and sold into slavery in the Caribbean Islands, America and Europe. Most came from areas now part of modern-day countries such as Nigeria, Benin, Senegal, Ghana, and the Congo region. Major ethnic groups that contributed to the Haitian population include the Yoruba, Igbo, Fon, and Kongo.

Wyclef identities as an African, something that was instilled in him by his parents from a young age. His DNA test in 2019 just proved what he always knew.

The musician was speaking at a recent annual meeting of the African Export-Import Bank in the Bahamas. It states its aim is to strengthen economic ties between Africa and the Caribbean. But, as Wyclef explains, those ties run a lot deeper.

Video Credit: @afreximbanktv

[thisisyourdriverspeaking]

In honour of F2 being back in Imola this weekend, this is the F2 edition of my US number ones posts. Enjoy 😊

Juan Manuel Correra (9th August 1999) & Ritomo Miyata (10th August 1999) - Christina Aguilera - Genie In A Bottle

Kush Maini (22nd September 2000) - Madonna - Music

Richard Verschoor (16th December 2000) - Destiny's Child - Independent Women Pt 1

Victor Martins (16th June 2001) - Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya & Pink - Lady Marmalade

Enzo Fittipaldi (18th July 2001) - Usher - U Remind Me

Rafael Villagomez (10th November 2001) - Mary J.Blige - Family Affair

Amaury Cordeel (9th July 2002) - Nelly - Hot In Herre

Dennis Hauger (17th March 2003) - Jennifer Lopez ft LL Cool J - All I Have

Franco Colapinto (27th May 2003) - Sean Paul - Get Busy

Zane Maloney (2nd October 2003) - Nelly, P.Diddy & Murphy Lee - Shake Ya Tailfeather

Joshua Durksen (27th October 2003) - Beyonce ft Sean Paul - Baby Boy

Paul Aron (9th February 2004) - OutKast - Hey Ya!

Roman Stanek (25th February 2004) - Twista ft Kanye West & Jamie Foxx - Slow Jamz

Taylor Barnard (1st June 2004) - Usher - Burn

Isack Hadjar (28th September 2004) & Gabriel Bortoleto (14th October 2004) - Ciara ft Petey Pablo - Goodies

Zak O'Sullivan (6th February 2005) - Mario - Let Me Love You

Jak Crawford - (2nd May 2005) - 50 Cent ft Olivia - Candy Shop

Ollie Bearman (8th May 2005) - Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl

Pepe Marti (13th June 2005) - Mariah Carey - We Belong Together

Kimi Antonelli (25th August 2006) - Fergie - London Bridge

Another link to this playlist 😊

[therealcocoshady]

Diddy stuff , What is that??

A few things about the Diddy Situation

Diddy aka Sean Combs aka P. Diddy is an American rapper (also producer, actor, dancer...) who happens to be in the spotlight lately because of some ongoing cases. I'll share what I know so far, but if there are things missing, you are free to comment !

Cassie (the singer who happens to be his ex) filed a complaint against him for assault and rape on November 16th, 2023.

After that, multiple other women came forward, accusing him of raping and assaulting them as well. Apparently, one of them was underage (17 at the time).

On February 26th, 2024, producer Lil Rode filed a complaint against him for sexual harassment and sexual assault.

On March 25th, 2024, federal agents came to investigate Diddy's Los Angeles and Miami properties as part of an investigation about alleged sexual trafficking on his part.

Some people have also come forward about parties organized by Diddy, which were known to be quite savage, notably with orgies, which resonates with the sexual trafficking allegations. An interesting thing is the name of the people who went to Diddy's parties : Prince Harry, Prince William, Beyoncé, Kanye West... Basically, Diddy was known to be quite the entertainer and his parties were "legendary". Of course this does not mean these people did anything out of line or could be in trouble.

Apparently, Diddy has fled the country on his private jet and knew law enforcement was coming for him.

This situation is making a lot of noise because People have been talking about Diddy for years now, and now that he is in legal trouble, I reckon some people are scared that they might get dragged 👀. It's all fun and games until the police is involved, right ? Allegedly, Diddy had hidden cameras in his home and there could be footage of a lot of people taking part in some illicit or at least immoral activities.

I think the upcoming weeks are going to be full of surprises 👀

Personally, I am here for 50 Cent's memes, comments and overall trolling. That man is a menace and I love him 🥲. For those asking, I don't think Marshall has anything to do with that. As far as I know, he is not really at close quarters with Diddy. Plus, we all know that man is not really in the LA, Miami, NYC party scene. That being said, everybody knows everybody in that world so I'm sure he knows stuff. 👀

[a-room-of-my-own]

Susie Green, the former chief executive of Mermaids, who stood down “unexpectedly” last year, has been hiding in plain sight for so long that I sincerely hope we can see her clearly now. How this woman was ever allowed to have so much influence over vulnerable children, never mind medical professionals, is frankly disturbing. She is a former IT consultant with no medical training – unless you count the fact that she won 2016’s Sparkle Diversity Champion of the Year as a specialised qualification. I certainly don’t. The story of how much power she came to have remains shocking.

The organisation she ran was once not controversial; it was a support group for children and parents of kids with gender issues until she got her hands on it. It became an activist and lobby group receiving hundreds of thousands of pounds in lottery funding and grants and was hired by the Department for Education to provide training on “gender identity” in schools. As with Stonewall, it had huge reach into key institutions and the usual gormless celebrity support.

We now find that Green herself had direct influence on policy at the gender identity development service (GIDS) at the Tavistock. After being told that the Tavistock did not have any records of meeting with Green, when threatened by court action, miraculously it found 300 pages of them.

They reveal that Green spoke directly to the director Dr Polly Carmichael, had advisory roles on two studies and – most scandalous of all – could refer children for treatment at the clinic even when their own GPs had repeatedly advised against it. The Cass Review, remember, effectively shut down GIDS as it was not fit for purpose.

GIDS was in turmoil and dealing with a new cohort of distressed young women with gender dysphoria; the number of girls jumped 5,000 per cent in a seven-year period. Cass found there were no long-term follow-ups even though nearly every child who was referred for prescribed puberty blockers went on to cross-sex hormones [which are used to transition from biological gender to desired gender].

Puberty blockers are controversial because we don’t have enough longitudinal studies to really understand their impact, which is why several countries such as Sweden and Norway have stopped them. The NHS site says they are not simply reversible. Research is showing that when distressed teenagers are given therapy, they no longer want to change gender and many accept they are gay. Puberty blockers tend to be the first step on a medical pathway that leads to cross-sex hormones and surgery. The other issue which Green should know well, is that if given too early, genitalia do not develop enough to make satisfactory “new models”. These kids may well lose their fertility and any chance of sexual pleasure.

There is an infamous Ted Talk and other YouTube videos of Green talking of what happened to her own son. He wanted a Barbie Rapunzel and other girl things. Her husband, she claims, didn’t like this “girly” boy. Later, he was whizzed off to the States at age 12 for puberty blockers and at 14 was out on oestrogen. He spent seven hours on his 16th birthday on an operating table in Thailand in what is euphemistically called “gender-affirming” surgery.

Green explains this meant “basically use[ing] the skin from the penis to create a vagina. And she hadn’t developed through full puberty so, not to put too fine a point on it, there wasn’t much to work with”. That is the work of puberty blockers.

This operation was done in Thailand as it is illegal to do that to a 16-year-old here. Indeed, it is now illegal in Thailand. If this well-known information is not a red flag, I don’t know what is. Yet this woman was, we now know, given carte blanche to overrule psychiatrists and medics and to push her dubious agenda. What is that agenda? It is the lucrative invention of the trans child. I say lucrative, because in the States, billions of dollars are projected to be made by surgeons and drug companies with lifelong medicalisation being offered to 13-year-olds who have been diagnosed sometimes as young as four.

Green herself has now chummed up with Dr Helen Webberley of GenderGP, who was once suspended, and who sells cross-sex hormones to under-16s, which is not allowed in the UK. This is done online with no counselling.

None of this is really about the trans rights of adults. It is about the pushing of extreme gender ideology on to distressed children. Any basic model of safeguarding has gone out of the window. It is a complete negation of the duty to ‘Do No Harm’ and at its centre is a woman who should never, ever have been given any authority.

I really hope that for Susie Green, the game is finally up.

[feministdragon]

"

“Only connect.” This sums up the political perspective of ecofeminism, as Ariel Salleh writes in the foreword of the book Ecofeminism, by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva. The article below pays tribute to the memory of Maria Mies, who passed away on May 16th, and who for so many years has been an inspiration as an intellectual and militant for so many of us, grassroots feminists waging ecological struggles.

Maria Mies was a German sociologist who greatly contributed to feminism, especially ecofeminism, with her formulations about development, the dynamics of accumulation, globalization, and ecological crisis. She especially looked into the patriarchal and colonial oppression of women from the global South, and she was an important interlocutor with thinkers including Vandana Shiva and Silvia Federici. Salleh argues that “ecological feminists are both street-fighters and philosophers.” Mies was one of them, as many of us are.

Only connect. No other political perspective—liberalism, socialism, feminism, environmentalism—can integrate what ecofeminism does: why the Roma people are still treated like animals; why women do 65 per cent of the world’s work for 10 per cent of its wages; why internet images of sexually abused children generate millions of dollars; why chickens are bred only for livers and wings; or why the Earth itself is manipulated as a weapon of war. Species loss is endemic; peak water is on the way; soils are losing organic integrity; the atmosphere is riven by angry storms. Ariel Salleh

“Only connect” is a political perspective that Maria Mies adopted to the nth degree. By doing so, she revealed to us the profound connections between patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism, building a radical theory for the liberation of women and the peoples.

In line with other ecological feminists, she reminds us in her book Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale—recently translated into Portuguese by the Sycorax collective and published by Ema Livros—that the paradigm of never-ending growth and progress is a patriarchal myth. It is a paradigm that cannot become true, both because we live in a materially finite world and because the condition for the progress of certain societies, under capitalism, is the exploitation of others.

In this sense, Mies also challenges what we would now call “techno-solutionism,” challenging the idea that, under a socialist society, technological development would ensure the expansion of workers’ free time. Her key argument is the fact that the development of technology has historically relied on the exploitation of the territories and the peoples of the global South, through mega power and mining projects, for example.

In her perspective, expanding women’s free time is an important topic that has to be considered in tandem with the transformation of the sexual division of labor. She argues that these two transformations could not be ensured by technology, but rather by establishing a political stance of appreciating the labor that reproduces life and challenges the division between leisure and socially necessary labor. This is especially important for freeing women’s time and labor, because most labor carried out by women is not alienated labor: they produce life and use value, including care and agriculture for own consumption. So the issue is not about reducing as much as possible the existence of this labor by replacing it with technology, but rather appreciating it, placing it at the center of the economy, and building work relationships that are interwoven with rest and pleasure.

Maria Mies has also opened the way with her formulations about the division between productive and reproductive labor. She rejected the way this division is usually understood, in which the labor that generates surplus value—and often the exploitation of nature with the exploitation of labor—is rendered productive, while the labor that generate the reproduction of life is deemed “reproductive.” She daringly suggests that productive labor is labor that generates life and use value, important for most people, including education, care, and food—while labor that only generates surplus value and destruction, like the death industries (weapons, agrochemicals, relentless mining exploitation) is “destructive” labor and should cease to exist.

To make this happen, Maria Mies reminds us that the countries in the global South must necessarily build their sovereignty with more self-sufficient economies. By challenging the international division of labor, she proposed a more decentralized production and consumption model, which would reduce the alienation of labor and lead to a positive ecological impact.

By providing harsh, well-formulated criticism and designing propositions for a horizon of emancipation, Maria Mies fed our feminist imagination. This imagination is ever more necessary so that we do not adopt a cynical, defeated stance in face of the sheer amount of connected crises we are facing. “Only connect” is an imperative to find ways to destroy the systems of domination—all at once."

[andydrysdalerogers]

Following Team Orders - Monaco

Pairings: Steve Rogers x OFC Olivia Williams

Summary: Olivia Williams is Formula One royalty. Her father is a racing legend and all Liv wants is to be one of only six women in the world to have raced in the most elite racing division in the world. When she finally gets the chance, she has to not only take on a male dominated sport, but her past, her teammate and a life beyond the track that she was not ready for. She just has to follow team orders but what happens when one man challenges her on and off the racing line...

Word Count: 2.5K

Warnings: A-N-G-S-T!!! eventual smut, slow burn, enemies to lovers, love triangle (if you squint) misogamy, fluff, racing accidents, an asshole Steve Rogers (you'll see what i mean)

Dividers by @firefly-graphics

Series MasterList - Main Masterlist

Liv fidgeted, the ripples on her gown flowing down. She tried to calm her nerves, but nothing was working.  Tonight is the annual charity ball that Formula one hosted.  Monaco was the ideal location since the richest of the rich attended.  Movie stars, billionaires, anyone who was anyone attended paying the $10,000 per seat price tag.  The drivers were invited, of course, since the race was the same weekend.  But tonight, it was about the ball and nothing Liv thought or did could clear the nerves. 

“Hey Bug! You ready?”  Frank adjusted his bow tie in the hall mirror. Liv sighed before grabbing her clutch and walking out of her suite. Frank offered to escort her to the ball, knowing how bad her nerves were going to be. 

“I can’t do it Frankie.  Everyone will be looking at me.  They’ll be judging me from Spain.” 

Frank looked with sympathy at his best friend. Spain had been a shit show from the onset.  Olivia arrived still reeling from Miami and was unfocused. She qualified 16th and was distraught.  It took Andy, Bucky and himself to coax her out and head to the hotel.  Steve, luckily, had stayed away, hanging out with Johnny Storm of all people.

Race day was hard but Liv worked it like a champ.  She ended seventh but kept pace.  Unfortunately, Drysdale decided to insert his two cents during the post-race interviews, insinuating that maybe a woman could not handle the pressure. Liv shut down completely after that.  That was until Charles stepped up, saying that since natural talent was hard to come by, that could be the reason why Ransom had failed to win another championship. The other drivers, including Steve, agreed with Charles, leaving Ransom fuming but Liv had checked out, barely answering any more questions. 

“Liv,” Frank called out, “you can’t hide Bug. Yes, people may talk but that just means that you should be even more determined to prove them wrong.  Let’s just get through the gala and then we can focus qualifying.” 

“Frankie,” Liv peeked her face and he could see the tears pooling in her eyes. 

“Oh Bug,” he pulled her in.  “Don’t cry.  Don’t give Ransom the satisfaction. C’mon, wipe those tears.” He kissed her forehead. You look beautiful.  He stepped back to take her in.  The navy-blue haltered dress gathered at the deep V below her sternum and flowed down to an A-line dress.  It had a slit up her right leg and he could see the silver strappy stilettos she was wearing. “You will bring every man to his knees, Bug.” 

“Stop,” she replied with a blush. She calmed and fluffed her long hair once more. “Ok, let’s get this over with.” 

“That’s the spirit.” Frank smiled, held out his arm for her to loop hers through and headed down to the hotel ball room. There was a curved staircase and Frank held onto Liv tight to make sure she didn’t fall.  The room was already full when they arrived, and all eyes were on the couple.  Steve had his back turned to the staircase, talking with Bucky, Charles, Johnny and Andy. When Bucky inhaled harshly, he turned and his mouth dried. 

She was a vision in blue, her long dark hair in soft waves down her back, her face in a neutral pallet with just a hint of color to bring out her eyes.  When she took a step, her gown reveal a flash of her long legs and the fuck-me heels she was wearing. Before he had a chance to react, Charles moved around him and went to the bottom of the stairs.  When she arrived, he took her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles like the fucking suave debonair he was.  Steve grinded his teeth at not being able to think of doing it first but kept his face impassive.  Charles guided her to the group with Frank trailing him and he was able to breathe her in. 

“Hi, gentlemen.” Liv felt herself blush at the looks she was getting from around the room. 

“Bug, you look lovely,” Andy said as he reached over to kiss her cheek. 

“Wow, Livie, you clean up good, doll,” Bucky complimented. 

Steve tried to swallow and speak.  “Olivia, you look beautiful.” 

“Thanks guys.” Charles handed her a champagne glass.  “So, do we just mingle or…”

“Oh right.”  Andy pulled out some envelopes.  “This is some playing money,” handing it to his crew as Charles and Johnny pulled out their own.  “Spend it.  All of the money is going to charity. Food will be passed around.  Please, do not get drunk here. Be polite and Liv, if any men are inappropriate, please let one of us know.” 

She nodded as he took off to talk to some people he knew.  Charles cleared his throat.  “I believe the craps table is calling my name.  Olivia?”

She wrinkled her nose.  “I hate that game.  But please, enjoy yourself Charles.”  He took her hand again to kiss it and left her with the other men.  “What do you guys want to play?”

“I’m headed for roulette,” Bucky said. 

“Poker,” Johnny said with a smirk. 

“Same,” Frank said. 

“Blackjack,” Steve replied.  He saw Liv’s eyes light up and sent hope in him, confusing him slightly.

“Umm, if its ok, can I join you, Steve? I love blackjack.” 

“Sure, that’s fine.” Steve swallowed but put on a smile.  He held out his arm for her and she looped it around. She smiled at the guys and he led her to the tables, finding seat together.  “I thought you would be a Pai Gow or Baccarat girl.” 

Liv couldn’t help but giggle.  “No, my sister and I played a lot of black jack when I was in the hospital.” 

Steve looked at her curiously. “Hospital?”

“Yeah,” she swallowed.  She looked around to see if anyone was listening.  “Ever noticed the age gap between Claire and I?”

He nodded. “I did.” 

“I’m a miracle or accident depending on the day.  See, my mum was a lot older when she had me and then I was early.  I wasn’t supposed to survive.  But I did after 10 weeks in the NICU. Tiny but mighty is what my dad said.  His little ladybug.” Liv had a faraway look on her face. But she shook her head.  “Anyways, I had a few problems growing up and I would have to stay in the hospital for treatment so Claire would play games with me.  Blackjack was our favorite.” 

Steve looked with wonder at this woman who survived the most impossible of odds. “If you are a miracle, then why do you race?”

“Because I want to live life to the fullest.” She smiled up at him and his heart took an extra beat. “Yes, I am precious, probably why my mother hates me doing it.  But how could I not take this gift given to me and do what makes me happy?  Racing is in my blood.  I’m a Williams and all we do is race.” 

Steve was in awe. She was perfect.  Not the entitled brat he assumed but a rockstar who just wanted to shine.  They sat and chatted while playing the cards.  After a while, and a few drinks, he blurted out, “I gotta ask.  Drysdale. Why him?”

Olivia sighed. “Hugh was a developmental driver at Williams, and I was a fresh faced 18-year-old interning for my sister.  He charmed me.  He wasn’t like he is now. Not until he won that championship his rookie year. We lasted three months after that. Caught him with some girl the day before our anniversary. Needless to say, I was done. I quit Williams Racing and went to race in the States.” 

“Right, motocross queen.  I remember seeing your around my rookie year.  Kept saying how could that douchebag have someone as gorgeous as you.”

She looked at him shocked. “You remember me?

“Took me a while but yeah. The only time I saw you was in my rookie year.  The blonde threw me off, but you look better now.” He brushes some hair off her shoulder. “It looks better with your eyes.”  He licked his lips involuntarily, but the motion made Liv a little hot and bothered.  The big band finished playing and a DJ took over.  Sexy back came over the speakers. 

“I love this song,” Liv said as she made her next bet. 

“Wanna dance?  Promise to be appropriate,” Steve offered. 

“Sure.”  Steve motioned for the dealer to hold their seats and he took her hand. He spun her onto the dance floor and held her at her hips, moving with the music. Liv wrapped her arms around his neck. He moved them to the music, one hand guiding up to her lower back and he realized, the gown was backless.  He felt a shiver run through her and he bit his lower lip from letting out a sound. He spun her again so her back was to his front. He felt her breath hitch as she felt him on her behind.  The music changed and it slowed to Ed Sheeran’s Perfect started to play and Steve spun her around again. Her arms landed on his shoulders, and she looked up into his blue eyes.

Liv could feel his heartbeat on her chest.  She looked up to study him.  His blue eyes were dark and his lips darker from his own bite.  She pulled back subtly.  “Maybe we should go back to the cards.” She was feeling vulnerable. 

“Livie, what’s wrong?”

“Look, Steve, I know that you are just being nice to me because I’m your teammate.”  She looked away to make sure she didn’t cry again in front of this man. 

“Livie, look at me.”  She turned her head. “I think you are beautiful and smart, one hell of a racer.  I don’t want you to think that I’m like Drysdale, using you.” He pulled her closer. “I like you. Like really like you and I really want to kiss you, but I know you don’t want that to happen in front of all of these people. So,” he breathed out loud, “let’s be friends first.  Let me get to know you and you get to know me and see where that takes us ok?”

Liv stared at the ocean blues that had started to haunt her in her dreams.  “I never noticed that there is a bit of green in your eyes. I like that I know that now.”  She blushed at her statement and took a breath.  “Yes, let’s get to know each other and then whatever happens, happens. 

Steve smiled.  He twirled her on the dance floor as the song ended.  He moved her back to the card table. 

Liv woke up for the first time optimistic that qualifying was going to be good.  After the gala, she and Steve joined the rest of the team in drinks and conversation.  Steve sat next to her, not obviously touching her but his leg was pressed next to hers and his arm was over the back of her chair.  It made her feel wanted and it was a feeling she hadn’t felt in a long time.  As she did her stretches with the team chiropractor, Wanda, she reviewed the racetrack.  Monaco is tricky, being one of the few races driven on actual streets. 

The street circuit is meant to test the reflexes of a driver while they drove as fast as they could.  Unlike a normal race circuit, a street circuit is narrower and bumpier, making it near impossible to pass and dangerous with its constant barriers to protect the city.  Monaco is notorious for taking out drivers who make the tiniest of mistakes.  It takes a lot of skill to drive here, and it take huge balls to qualify first. 

As qualifying begins, Liv is smart.  She takes her time with her first lap, making mental notes of the changes to the track from practice.  She made it with ease through the first two qualifying sessions and was waiting in her car for the third.  Bucky came over and kneeled down.  “How are you feeling Liv?”

“Ready to take pole,” she replied with a smile. 

“There’s my girl. I’m gonna time it just right so you can have a clear track.  Rogers will be right behind so don’t let up unless you have to.  You got this Livie.” 

“Thanks boss.”  He turned back to get to the timing booth and Liv took a deep breath.  She remembered what her father told her this morning. “If you move just a fraction faster than expected, they will never see you coming Bug.  That is Monaco. That’s how you beat it.”

“Liv, release in 3,2,1…”

Liv exited the garage and went down the pit lane.  She warmed up her tires as she drove the track.  Her radio crackled to life. “Track is clear for you, Rogers will be 30 seconds behind,” Bucky said. 

“Copy.” 

“Do your worst, Liv. Good luck.” 

As Olivia got closer to the startling line, she took a moment. She let the troubles, the comments, the hate melt away and she accelerated.  She zoned in, corner after corner, turn, straight, bump, it was an intricate masterpiece of moves. She never let up, forgetting to breath until she saw the start/finish and let go a breath.  She slowed down, waited, driving around to get back to the pits. 

“Olivia…”

Liv’s stomach dropped. “Yeah?”

“P1.” 

“What?” She assumed that she misheard him. “Rogers?”

“P2. Rogers is P2.  Livie, you did it.  P1. You’re on pole.”

She almost crashed.  “Oh my… YES! YES! Thank you, guys! Whoop!” 

She drove in and was directed to park in the pole position spot.  She unhooked herself from the car and climbed out and jumped into Bucky’s waiting arms.  “You did it Livie!”

“I did it!” He spun her around before setting her down and being engulfed by the rest of the team. Frank bear-hugged her, Tony gave double high-fives.  Andy came down and hugged his little girl. 

Steve pulled in with a smile, watching his girl celebrate.  He climbed out with congratulations from Sam, his crew chief and Andy came by with a handshake.  All the drivers, except for Ransom came up to congratulate her. She pulled off an amazing feat.  The first woman to record a pole position in Formula One. 

Steve was the last one to congratulate her.  He pulled her in for a hug. “You did an amazing job, doll,” he whispered in her ear. 

“Thank you, Stevie,” she blushed in response. 

Didn’t really matter if she finished first or last in the race. The look of admiration from Steve was enough to send her to the moon.

Taglist:

@patzammit @slutforchrisjamalevans @jennmurawski13-writes @firephotogrl74 @texmexdarling

[twentythreemillionstories]

Monday 16th September 2024, Mountain View, 7.41pm.

#181,946 — A middle-aged unmarried man is completely lost after the death by suicide of his sister and long-time companion. Suddenly a miracle seems to happen: she’s pregnant. Only last month, thirty-four people were treated for gunshot wounds, fifty per cent of them were women, children, and the elderly.

[blogdemocratesjr]

Livia by Felice del Riccio (16th cent.) & Lívia 5 by Janaina Tschäpe (2003)

The Roman was first of all a soldier and a lawgiver and a statesman and a tax-gatherer and a road-builder and a city-planner. He conquered and administered the entire known world from the dark and foggy coast of Wales to the endless plains of Dacia and the scorching sands of northern Africa. That was his job. He did it well and he liked it. But he was too busy to bother about such details as schools and academies and theatres and churches and candy-stores. And so Rome soon was swarming with the brilliant but none too reliable progeny of Pericles and Aeschylus and Phidias. They were very plausible orators, those handsome black-haired Greek teachers who talked vaguely of a thousand things of which the honest Roman had never heard, and which therefore had meant nothing in his life. They could argue about the Gods and in the same breath they could tell a man how to dress. They could explain the mysteries of a new Oriental religion to the women and at the same time give them a few useful hints about the use of cosmetics. They were never at a loss for a jesting word, and altogether, they turned the dull and dour Roman community into something which began to resemble that famed marketplace at the foot of the Acropolis.

—Hendrik Willem van Loon, The Story of the Bible

[omcqin]

Daily Current affairs of 18th Jan 2023

Practice daily Current affairs and give quiz for assess your knowledge. Today you can study current affairs of 18th Jan 2023 and this is suitable for almost all type of government competitive exams.

Daily Current affairs for 18th Jan 2023

1: Which state belong to Vidisha, the first district for deployment of innovative 5G use cases? A. Odisha B. Madhya Pradesh C. West Bengal D. Assam AnswerAnswer Madhya Pradesh 2: Which institution released the 'Rural Health Statistics report'? A. NITI Aayog B. Ministry of Health and Family Welfare C. AIIMS D. IMA AnswerAnswer Ministry of Health and Family Welfare 3: Which public sector bank partnered with 'Garuda Aerospace' under the Kisan Pushpak Scheme? A. Canara Bank B. State Bank of India C. Union Bank of India D. Punjab National Bank AnswerAnswer Union Bank of India 4: Which state/UT suggested the Centre to grant "migrated minority" status? A. Punjab B. Jammu and Kashmir C. Assam D. Delhi AnswerAnswer Delhi 5: 'Pineapple Express' phenomenon, which was seen in the news, is related to which field? A. Agriculture B. Transport C. Meteorology D. Tourism AnswerAnswer Meteorology 6: Maghi Mela festival is being celebrated from January 14 in which state? A. Punjab B. Odisha C. Assam D. Telangana AnswerAnswer Punjab 7: NTPC Renewable Energy Ltd signed an MoU with which state on 16 January 2023 for the Development of Floating and Ground Mounted based Renewable Energy Projects? A. Karnataka B. Tripura C. Gujarat D. Odisha AnswerAnswer Tripura 8: Which of the following films will be screened at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Film Festival in January 2023? A. Jungle Cry B. Jhund C. SpaceBoy D. Toolsidas Junior AnswerAnswer Toolsidas Junior 9: The Indian Army, first time, cleared more than _____ women officers for command roles on 16 January 2023? A. 20 B. 25 C. 27 D. 30 AnswerAnswer 30 10: Who has been concurrently accredited as the next Ambassador of India to the Republic of Marshall Islands on 16 January 2023? A. Sibi George B. Vikas Purohit C. Ajay Kumar Sirvastava D. Santosh Kumar Yadav AnswerAnswer Sibi George 11. Which country population has dropped by 850K, declining for the first time since the Great Famine of 1961? A. Canada B. USA C. India D. China AnswerAnswer China 12. United Nations Security Council (UNSC) listed Pakistan-based terrorist _________ as a global terrorist. A. Mullah Omar B. Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi C. Hafiz Saeed D. Abdul Rehman Makki AnswerAnswer Abdul Rehman Makki 13. Merchandise exports shrank _______ per cent in December 2022 from a year before to $34.5 billion A. 08.2 B. 09.2 C. 10.2 D. 12.2 AnswerAnswer 12.2 14. Who among the following won the Malaysia Open Super 1000 men's singles titles? A. Seo Seung Jae B. Kodai Naraoka C. Viktor Axelsen D. Kang Min Hyuk AnswerAnswer Viktor Axelsen 15. Warehousing Development Regulatory Authority (WDRA) has signed a memorandum of understanding with ----- to help farmers in getting low interest rate loans. A. Punjab National Bank B. Bank of Baroda C. Canara Bank D. State Bank of India AnswerAnswer State Bank of India Now Try Quiz of Jan Current Affairs 2023 Attention: You must prepare daily current affairs of January 2023 for Quiz, so you can rank better and motivate for your upcoming government exam comptition.

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[xtruss]

After Tuesday, What Can Democ(Rats) Do Now?

Democratic voters don’t send Democratic politicians to Washington to give the Republicans what they want. They want that stuff shot down.

— By Ted Rall | November 9, 2022

O u can’t blame the Democrats for spinning the fact that their losses fell short of worst-case scenarios. But elections are arithmetic, not calculus. A loss is a loss. Democrats lost the midterms.

Why They Lost

1– History: In a two-party system, voters express anger and annoyance by lashing out at the party in power. They elect a president, get pissed at crimes of commission and omission, and punish the incumbents by voting for the other party two to four years later. This tendency worked against them.

2– Weak Leadership: We live during an era of unprecedented connectivity. You can place a phone call to Mongolia for free. You can see a picture of what someone in Botswana had for dinner a minute ago. Voters want to hear from their president more than ever before—yet Biden, no doubt due to his advanced age and fading mental acuity, followed the longstanding trend of chief executives who give fewer primetime presidential addresses and press conferences than their predecessors. No wonder the number of voters who think Biden cares about people like them keeps plummeting. They feel disconnected from him.

3– Denying Voters’ Reality: Who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes? Voters’ top issue this year was the economy, specially inflation. Biden dismissed rising prices as a temporary blip while—political malpractice alert!—failing to emphasize a far more important economic indicator, low unemployment. Citizens worried about rising violent crime; Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) dismissed their concerns as “people’s feelings” while accusing Republicans of being “dishonest” about the issue, and almost lost a race that should have been a cakewalk. Even if you don’t have a solution for their problems, voters want to be “seen.” Donald Trump didn’t do anything about deindustrialization but Rust Belters loved him for being the first president to call out NAFTA.

4– It’s the Future, Stupid. It’s nearly impossible to win a political campaign in the U.S. based on past grievances, yet that’s what the Democrats did in 2022, running against Trump, tying GOP candidates to the former president in ads and reminding voters about the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot. Yet investigations into Trump ranked 16th in the list of issues voters cared about. Voters want to hear politicians acknowledge their present problems—inflation, healthcare, gas prices, crime, gun violence, abortion rights—and offer a credible plan to fix them in the (near) future. Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act didn’t pass the smell test, Biden’s release of petroleum reserves addressed a dollars problem with cents of relief and had no credible solution to the Dodd SCOTUS decision with which to motivate angry women voters. P.S. If you don’t have a solution to a problem, say so. Voters don’t want magicians. They want elected officials to try.

5– They Sounded Self-Serving: It took the hammer attack/home invasion against Paul Pelosi, a personal friend of the president, to bring him to the mic for a primetime address about crime—crime against politicians. Likewise, the Democrats’ pitch that voting GOP would lead to the end of democracy-as-we-know-it fell flat. Democrats should have been fighting for we, the people. They came off instead as fighting against Republican voter suppression—in other words, they fought our right to vote for Democrats. The democracy argument might have landed in a multiparty parliamentary democracy—but vicious Democratic lawsuits to keep the Green Party off the ballot ensure we don’t get that.

What Democrats Can Do Now

Act how House Republicans do when they’re out of power. It works.

1– Obstruct! Newspaper pundits’ conventional wisdom says that voters dislike obstructionism, love compromise and want both parties to work together to get things done in Washington. History says the opposite. Recently, you need only look at the GOP’s relentless ankle-biting of Obama to see that a minority party that relentlessly blocks the majority’s agenda can be effective—ask Supreme Court Justice Merrick Garland—and drive its acolytes into such a spasm of loyal enthusiasm that it later recaptures the majority. “This strategy of kicking the hell out of Obama all the time, treating him not just as a president from the opposing party but an extreme threat to the American way of life, has been a remarkable political success. It helped Republicans take back the House in 2010, the Senate in 2014, and the White House in 2016,” Politico noted in 2016.

2– Veto! Democratic voters don’t send Democratic politicians to Washington to give the Republicans what they want. They want that stuff shot down, with extreme prejudice. Biden should pull a Gerry Ford and veto every crazy bill the Republican Congress sends to his desk.

3– Executive Orders! Executive orders have become abused and are overused and antidemocratic and—get real. End-runs around the legislative branch are here to stay, so Biden should go nuts doing stuff that will shore up his party’s progressive base and drive the Republicans to distraction. Pardon Edward Snowden and other political targets. Pardon every nonviolent drug offender and commute the prison sentence of every nonviolent criminal in federal custody. Tell states and cities that refuse to do the same that they’ll lose federal highway funding; that’s how we got the national drinking age of 21.

4– Quorum Theater! The House of Representatives needs a quorum of 218 members present in order to conduct business. Democratic representatives should stick around for most matters. When Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his merry band of bigots try to pull something truly cruddy (ahem national abortion ban cough) there’s no reason for the Dems not to leave town on a secret road trip. Call your buddies in the Texas state legislature; they did it to bring attention to a GOP effort to suppress voting.

5– Open Field! 75% of Democratic voters don’t want Biden to run again. Anyway, obviously, he can’t. He’s too feeble. So, politically, is Kamala Harris. Only 28% of Democrats want her to step in as their party’s nominee in 2024. That’s pathetic. The lame-duck #1 and #2 must step aside, open the field and refrain from issuing endorsements. The strongest nominee is, by definition, the winner of the primary process. Let a battle-tested candidate with the most support within the Democratic Party go on to face Trump or another Republican standardbearer. Abolish superdelegates. Dutifully sticking with a doomed sacrificial lamb, like Bob Dole in 1996, would be the height of idiocy.

— Ted Rall, the Political Cartoonist, Columnist and Graphic Novelist, is the Author of “Francis: The People’s Pope.”

[mscoyditch]

D'Artagnan.

"Traditional embellished boots from two different cultures ,the Tatars and the people of Yarkand in China These traditional boots date from 16th cent to early 20th century.

#1 Tatar Boots; ca 1925 ; worn by Alicia Markova (1910-2004) as a Polotsvian maiden in Mikhail Fokine's ballet Prince Igor .Markova was only 14 when she joined the Ballet Russe in 1925 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

#2 Pair of boots, most likely worn by women from the city of Yarkand (also known as Shache in Chinese) at festive occasions. Made of leather with purple and brown woollen felt appliqué with elaborately embroidered and heavily couched floral motifs in a combination of silk, metal, gold and woollen threads on its upper and its cuff, with a blue-painted hemp layered at the top of the pitched cuff. The front vamp is decorated with magenta-dyed cotton/woollen ends, made in chagrin (or shagreen) between its upper and wooden sole and 4cm-high heel painted with decorative marks, and layered with leather at the bottom. Ca 1873 Height: 42cmLength: 23.5cm Width: 9cm © V&A. Museum

#3. Pair of boots, most likely worn by women from the city of Yarkand (also known as Shache in Chinese) at festive occasions. Made of leather lined with bright red and green woollen felt appliqué with elaborate floral motifs embroidered or couched in a combination of silk, metal, gold and woollen threads on its upper and its cuff, with a blue-painted hemp layered at the top of the cuff, a front vamp lined with magenta cotton/woollen ends, and edged with chagrin (or shagreen) between its upper and wooden sole and 4cm-high heel which is layered with leather at the bottom. Height: 43cm

Length: 23cm Width: 8.5cm ca 1873 © V&A Museum

#4 Pair of Tartar boots dated to 1582, in the Livrustkammaren museum in Stockholm, Sweden. Embroidered all over with a 4 layer leather stacked heel. The picture comes from June Swann's "History of Footwear in Norway, Sweden and Finland. Prehistory to 1950," Originally, this boot is thought to have been a present from the Khan of the Crimean Tartars during his visit to the Stockholm at the end of the century..

#5 Boots from Kazakhstan in the early 1900s Made for men and women these soft, light, indoor boots (ichigi or masi) have thin, flat soles. hey are decorated with brightly coloured leather appliqué patterns that evoke the natural world such as beetles, rams’ horns and cat faces. Leather overshoes were worn over these boots to protect them from the dirt and moisture outside © British Museum

#6. Boot 19th century Ukraine, possibly Crimea, Tartar (Tatar) peoples Pieced, dyed and embroidered leather Height x width: 14 9/16 x 3 1/8 in., 33 cm (37 x 8 cm, 13 in.) © MFA Boston

#7. Pair of Kazakh women's boots in orange-brown leather with applications of pieces of dyed leather in blue, brown and beige representing floral motifs - Republic of Kazakhstan - Central Asia 
H.: 25 cm 
Visible restorations.© Drouot Richelieu

#8. Woman’s boots, Yarkand, Xinjiang (China), mid 19th century. Leather, cotton, silk, height: 40 cm. Robert Shaw Collection, Ethnological Museum© Ethnological Museum SMB. Photo: Claudia Obrocki

~~~ooo~~~~

Yarkand

In the western outskirt of the Takla-Makan Desert, in the Yarkand River water gap there lies Yarkand one of the ancient cities on the southern branch of the Great Silk Road. Yarkand city, or Shache in Chinese, is one of the largest cities of Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous region of China. The city sprang up in the Ist millennium BC as a transhipment place for caravans, moving along the Great Silk Road, and is considered one of the main trade centres of Eastern Turkestan. Late in the Ist century AD, the city was occupied and annexed to China by Han troops and its importance diminished .Then later, under the Tang dynasty Yarkand once again became a strategically important point on the Silk Road.

~~~ooo~~~

Tatar boots (also Kazan boots, ichigi, chiteck) that date centuries back can be found in the collections of many prominent museums. There, the boots are labelled as originated from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Crimea, Russia, Indonesia, Ukraine, Georgia, Asia, Europe; in accordance with the area from which they came. The labels do not always accurately credit the authorship of the unique craftsmanship and technique of this kind of exquisite leatherwork. The boots were created using a unique leather mosaic technique developed and mastered by Volga (Kazan) Tat people.

The Tatars is an umbrella term for different Turkic ethnic groups bearing the name "Tatar".Initially, the ethnonym Tatar possibly referred to the Tatar confederation; which was eventually incorporated into the Mongol Empire when Genghis Khan unified the various steppe tribes. Historically, the term Tatars (or Tartars) was applied to anyone originating from the vast Northern and Central Asian landmass then known as Tartary, a term which was also associated with the Mongol Empire itself. Recently the term now refers to related ethnic groups who refer to themselves as Tatars or who speak languages that are commonly referred to as Tatar, namelyVolga Tatars (Tatars proper), Crimean Tatars and Siberian Tatars.

Love D'Artagnan xxx".

[hexandbalances]

Fife student Len Pennie, one of the rising stars of Scotland’s poetry scene thanks to her daily posts on Twitter, has described their treatment as “state-sanctioned murder of innocent folks” in a powerful new video.

It includes a pledge to “demand justice” for all those who were tortured and tried when the Witchcraft Act was law in Scotland between the 16th and 18th centuries, branding it “a punishment lacking a crime.”

The 21-year-old was commissioned by campaigners fighting to secure a pardon, apology and new national memorial for all those accused, convicted and executed between 1563 and 1736.The film featuring her poem, In Memorial, was launched to coincide with the Scottish Parliament being formally asked to right a “terrible miscarriage of justice” suffered by almost 4000 Scots accused of witchcraft, the vast majority of whom were women.

The poem includes the lines: “Noo yer’re deid but never gone, hen, there’s them that still carry yer name

“There’s them that mind ciminals bidin in courts, heids that should hing heavy wae shame

"Auld Nick didnae ken ye fae Eve, hen, ye had but yer ain eyes tae see

“The wrang wasnae yours, the guilt was misplaced, yer innocence plain as can be.”

The petition lodged with the Scottish Parliament by the Witches of Scotland campaign, which is being led by QC Claire Mitchell and author Zoe Venditozzi, suggests that Scotland had five times as many witch trials as anywhere else in Europe.

Their petition states: “As with elsewhere in Europe, the vast majority of those accused, some 85 per cent were women. The stripping and pricking of women was common, as was sleep deprivation. Most confessed and that was used as the basis for their conviction. The method of execution was by way of strangulation and then burning at the stake.

Pennie’s poem goes on: “Yer soul’s noo at peace wae the earth, hen, sleep and be wan wae the sky

"We’ll scrieve yer name in books they cannae burn, write a legacy never tae die

“But we willnae just beg ae yer pardon, hen, those days have lang ceased tae exist

“We noo demand justice fur aw those lit you, lang gone but eternally missed.”

Pennie, who has amassed more than 70,000 followers on Twitter in the last few months, has had her work championed by actor Michael Sheen, author Neil Gaiman, playwright David Greig and comic Janey Godley in recent months.

She also starred alongside broadcaster Edith Bowman, writer and broadcaster Billy Kay and comic Janey Godley in the National Trust for Scotland’s virtual Burns Supper last month.

Mitchell said: “Zoe Venditozzi and I wanted to mark the presentation of the petition to the Scottish Parliament to seek a pardon, apology and national monument."

We thought that Len Pennie was the obviously choice as a brilliant Scots poet who uses the Scots language. We were delighted when she agreed to write a poyum for us.

“In Memoriam perfectly captures why it is necessary to remember the women and men killed as witches and to galvanise support for the petition, it is a beautiful tribute to those killed as witches.”

[anghraine]

Rambling about family relationships in my research for my PhD exams (16th- to 18th-century British literature):

One of the things that came up in my reading for my exams was, inevitably, ~the rise of the companionate marriage~. The usual framing is often over-simplistic and very heterocentric; people sometimes talk as if there was no concept of marriage involving romantic ties (sometimes even exclusive romantic ties!) until the 17th/18th century or something.

That said, IMO there’s something to it, at least in England. As someone who had mostly done research in the 18th and earlier 19th centuries, 16th-cent takes on marriage often sound like they come from Earth 2. Over time, there’s more and more emphasis on the ties of marriage, companionship, and parenthood in cultural discourse, with other family relationships increasingly subordinated to those, even while generally earlier ideas about the importance of those other relationships persisted in some ways.

Like, there was a lot of talk about how brothers were supposed to care for the interests of their siblings, especially unmarried sisters, but there’s also a lot about how that was increasingly not happening, and how the ties between brothers and sisters were becoming less important and less reliable as a ‘net’ for unmarried women. 

Men increasingly resented their sisters for taking resources that would otherwise go to their wives and children, or simply denied them meaningful resources at all in favour of focusing on their own wives/children. It was a really well-established dynamic by the time that Wollstonecraft wrote about it in Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Austen in Sense and Sensibility.

One of the things that S&S highlights is that John and Fanny Dashwood’s son does not need the resources that are denied to John’s sisters; he already has a comfortable separate inheritance. John prioritizes Fanny and Harry over his sisters both because of his character and because doing so had become very culturally normalized by then. 

By the 20th century (at least in the UK and US), people prioritizing their spouses and children over their siblings or other connections was and is often going to seem ‘well, of course.’  But the degree to which that is the case is really influenced by cultural norms and expectations. Going back to Austen (surprise), she has an intriguing passage about it that speaks to the shifts in how the sibling tie was seen and experienced:

An advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal. Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connection can justify, if such a precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely outlived. Too often, alas! it is so.—Fraternal love, sometimes almost every thing, is at others worse than nothing.

I don’t even have siblings (sort of surrogate siblings, but not people I was actually brought up with), but I do find the evolution and melancholy over it really interesting. And I do think that a lot of the, hmm, enthusiasm over the rise of the “companionate marriage” tends to ignore the cost of it.

[tipsycad147]

Pendle witches

The trials of the Pendle witches in 1612 are among the most famous witch trials in English history, and some of the best recorded of the 17th century. The twelve accused lived in the area surrounding Pendle Hill in Lancashire, and were charged with the murders of ten people by the use of witchcraft. All but two were tried at Lancaster Assizes on 18–19 August 1612, along with the Samlesbury witches and others, in a series of trials that have become known as the Lancashire witch trials. One was tried at York Assizes on 27 July 1612, and another died in prison. Of the eleven who went to trial – nine women and two men – ten were found guilty and executed by hanging; one was found not guilty.

The official publication of the proceedings by the clerk to the court, Thomas Potts, in his The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, and the number of witches hanged together – nine at Lancaster and one at York – make the trials unusual for England at that time. It has been estimated that all the English witch trials between the early 15th and early 18th centuries resulted in fewer than 500 executions; this series of trials accounts for more than two per cent of that total.

Six of the Pendle witches came from one of two families, each at the time headed by a woman in her eighties: Elizabeth Southerns (a.k.a. Demdike[a]), her daughter Elizabeth Device, and her grandchildren James and Alizon Device; Anne Whittle (a.k.a. Chattox), and her daughter Anne Redferne. The others accused were Jane Bulcock and her son John Bulcock, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, Alice Grey, and Jennet Preston. The outbreaks of witchcraft in and around Pendle may demonstrate the extent to which people could make a living by posing as witches. Many of the allegations resulted from accusations that members of the Demdike and Chattox families made against each other, perhaps because they were in competition, both trying to make a living from healing, begging, and extortion.

Religious and political background

The accused witches lived in the area around Pendle Hill in Lancashire, a county which, at the end of the 16th century, was regarded by the authorities as a wild and lawless region: an area "fabled for its theft, violence and sexual laxity, where the church was honoured without much understanding of its doctrines by the common people". The nearby Cistercian abbey at Whalley had been dissolved by Henry VIII in 1537, a move strongly resisted by the local people, over whose lives the abbey had until then exerted a powerful influence. Despite the abbey's closure, and the execution of its abbot, the people of Pendle remained largely faithful to their Roman Catholic beliefs and were quick to revert to Catholicism on Queen Mary's accession to the throne in 1553.

When Mary's Protestant half-sister Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558 Catholic priests once again had to go into hiding, but in remote areas such as Pendle they continued to celebrate Mass in secret.[3] In 1562, early in her reign, Elizabeth passed a law in the form of An Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts (5 Eliz. I c. 16). This demanded the death penalty, but only where harm had been caused; lesser offences were punishable by a term of imprisonment. The Act provided that anyone who should "use, practise, or exercise any Witchcraft, Enchantment, Charm, or Sorcery, whereby any person shall happen to be killed or destroyed", was guilty of a felony without benefit of clergy, and was to be put to death.

On Elizabeth's death in 1603 she was succeeded by James I. Strongly influenced by Scotland's separation from the Catholic Church during the Scottish Reformation, James was intensely interested in Protestant theology, focusing much of his curiosity on the theology of witchcraft. By the early 1590s he had become convinced that he was being plotted against by Scottish witches.After a visit to Denmark, he had attended the trial in 1590 of the North Berwick witches, who were convicted of using witchcraft to send a storm against the ship that carried James and his wife Anne back to Scotland. In 1597 he wrote a book, Daemonologie, instructing his followers that they must denounce and prosecute any supporters or practitioners of witchcraft. One year after James acceded to the English throne, a law was enacted imposing the death penalty in cases where it was proven that harm had been caused through the use of magic, or corpses had been exhumed for magical purposes James was, however, sceptical of the evidence presented in witch trials, even to the extent of personally exposing discrepancies in the testimonies presented against some accused witches

In early 1612, the year of the trials, every justice of the peace (JP) in Lancashire was ordered to compile a list of recusants in their area, i.e. those who refused to attend the English Church and to take communion, a criminal offence at that time. Roger Nowell of Read Hall, on the edge of Pendle Forest, was the JP for Pendle. It was against this background of seeking out religious nonconformists that, in March 1612, Nowell investigated a complaint made to him by the family of John Law, a pedlar, who claimed to have been injured by witchcraft.[9] Many of those who subsequently became implicated as the investigation progressed did indeed consider themselves to be witches, in the sense of being village healers who practised magic, probably in return for payment, but such men and women were common in 16th-century rural England, an accepted part of village life.

It was perhaps difficult for the judges charged with hearing the trials – Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley – to understand King James's attitude towards witchcraft. The king was head of the judiciary, and Bromley was hoping for promotion to a circuit nearer London. Altham was nearing the end of his judicial career, but he had recently been accused of a miscarriage of justice at the York Assizes, which had resulted in a woman being sentenced to death by hanging for witchcraft. The judges may have been uncertain whether the best way to gain the King's favour was by encouraging convictions, or by "sceptically testing the witnesses to destruction"

Events leading up to the trials

One of the accused, Demdike, had been regarded in the area as a witch for fifty years, and some of the deaths the witches were accused of had happened many years before Roger Nowell started to take an interest in 1612.The event that seems to have triggered Nowell's investigation, culminating in the Pendle witch trials, occurred on 21 March 1612.

On her way to Trawden Forest, Demdike's granddaughter, Alizon Device, encountered John Law, a pedlar from Halifax, and asked him for some pins. Seventeenth-century metal pins were handmade and relatively expensive, but they were frequently needed for magical purposes, such as in healing – particularly for treating warts – divination, and for love magic, which may have been why Alizon was so keen to get hold of them and why Law was so reluctant to sell them to her.  Whether she meant to buy them, as she claimed, and Law refused to undo his pack for such a small transaction, or whether she had no money and was begging for them, as Law's son Abraham claimed, is unclear. A few minutes after their encounter Alizon saw Law stumble and fall, perhaps because he suffered a stroke; he managed to regain his feet and reach a nearby inn.  Initially Law made no accusations against Alizon,[19] but she appears to have been convinced of her own powers; when Abraham Law took her to visit his father a few days after the incident, she reportedly confessed, and asked for his forgiveness

Alizon Device, her mother Elizabeth, and her brother James were summoned to appear before Nowell on 30 March 1612. Alizon confessed that she had sold her soul to the Devil, and that she had told him to lame John Law after he had called her a thief. Her brother, James, stated that his sister had also confessed to bewitching a local child. Elizabeth was more reticent, admitting only that her mother, Demdike, had a mark on her body, something that many, including Nowell, would have regarded as having been left by the Devil after he had sucked her blood.When questioned about Anne Whittle (Chattox), the matriarch of the other family reputedly involved in witchcraft in and around Pendle, Alizon perhaps saw an opportunity for revenge. There may have been bad blood between the two families, possibly dating from 1601, when a member of Chattox's family broke into Malkin Tower, the home of the Devices, and stole goods worth about £1,equivalent to about £117 as of 2018.  Alizon accused Chattox of murdering four men by witchcraft, and of killing her father, John Device, who had died in 1601. She claimed that her father had been so frightened of Old Chattox that he had agreed to give her 8 pounds (3.6 kg) of oatmeal each year in return for her promise not to hurt his family. The meal was handed over annually until the year before John's death; on his deathbed John claimed that his sickness had been caused by Chattox because they had not paid for protection.

On 2 April 1612, Demdike, Chattox, and Chattox's daughter Anne Redferne, were summoned to appear before Nowell. Both Demdike and Chattox were by then blind and in their eighties, and both provided Nowell with damaging confessions. Demdike claimed that she had given her soul to the Devil 20 years previously, and Chattox that she had given her soul to "a Thing like a Christian man", on his promise that "she would not lack anything and would get any revenge she desired".Although Anne Redferne made no confession, Demdike said that she had seen her making clay figures. Margaret Crooke, another witness seen by Nowell that day, claimed that her brother had fallen sick and died after having had a disagreement with Redferne, and that he had frequently blamed her for his illness.Based on the evidence and confessions he had obtained, Nowell committed Demdike, Chattox, Anne Redferne and Alizon Device to Lancaster Gaol, to be tried for maleficium – causing harm by witchcraft – at the next assizes

Meeting at Malkin Tower

The committal and subsequent trial of the four women might have been the end of the matter, had it not been for a meeting organised by Elizabeth Device at Malkin Tower, the home of the Demdikes  held on Good Friday 10 April 1612. To feed the party, James Device stole a neighbour's sheep.

Friends and others sympathetic to the family attended, and when word of it reached Roger Nowell, he decided to investigate. On 27 April 1612, an inquiry was held before Nowell and another magistrate, Nicholas Bannister, to determine the purpose of the meeting at Malkin Tower, who had attended, and what had happened there. As a result of the inquiry, eight more people were accused of witchcraft and committed for trial: Elizabeth Device, James Device, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, John Bulcock, Jane Bulcock, Alice Grey and Jennet Preston. Preston lived across the border in Yorkshire, so she was sent for trial at York Assizes; the others were sent to Lancaster Gaol, to join the four already imprisoned there.

Malkin Tower is believed to have been near the village of Newchurch in Pendle,or possibly in Blacko on the site of present-day Malkin Tower Farm  and to have been demolished soon after the trials.

Trials

The Pendle witches were tried in a group that also included the Samlesbury witches, Jane Southworth, Jennet Brierley, and Ellen Brierley, the charges against whom included child murder, cannibalism; Margaret Pearson, the so-called Padiham witch, who was facing her third trial for witchcraft, this time for killing a horse; and Isobel Robey from Windle, accused of using witchcraft to cause sickness

Some of the accused Pendle witches, such as Alizon Device, seem to have genuinely believed in their guilt, but others protested their innocence to the end. Jennet Preston was the first to be tried, at York Assizes.

York Assizes, 27 July 1612

Jennet Preston lived in Gisburn, which was then in Yorkshire, so she was sent to York Assizes for trial. Her judges were Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley. Jennet was charged with the murder by witchcraft of a local landowner, Thomas Lister of Westby Hall, to which she pleaded not guilty. She had already appeared before Bromley in 1611, accused of murdering a child by witchcraft, but had been found not guilty. The most damning evidence given against her was that when she had been taken to see Lister's body, the corpse "bled fresh bloud presently, in the presence of all that were there present" after she touched it.  According to a statement made to Nowell by James Device on 27 April, Jennet had attended the Malkin Tower meeting to seek help with Lister's murder. She was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging;  her execution took place on 29 July on the Knavesmire, the present site of York Racecourse.

Lancaster Castle, where the Lancaster Assizes of 1612 took place

Lancaster Assizes, 18–19 August 1612

All the other accused lived in Lancashire, so they were sent to Lancaster Assizes for trial, where the judges were once again Altham and Bromley. The prosecutor was local magistrate Roger Nowell, who had been responsible for collecting the various statements and confessions from the accused. Nine-year-old Jennet Device was a key witness for the prosecution, something that would not have been permitted in many other 17th-century criminal trials. However, King James had made a case for suspending the normal rules of evidence for witchcraft trials in his Daemonologie. As well as identifying those who had attended the Malkin Tower meeting, Jennet also gave evidence against her mother, brother, and sister.

Nine of the accused – Alizon Device, Elizabeth Device, James Device, Anne Whittle, Anne Redferne, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, John Bulcock and Jane Bulcock – were found guilty during the two-day trial and hanged at Gallows Hill  in Lancaster on 20 August 1612; Elizabeth Southerns died while awaiting trial. Only one of the accused, Alice Grey, was found not guilty

18 August

Anne Whittle (Chattox) was accused of the murder of Robert Nutter. She pleaded not guilty, but the confession she had made to Roger Nowell—likely under torture—was read out in court, and evidence against her was presented by James Robinson, who had lived with the Chattox family 20 years earlier. He claimed to remember that Nutter had accused Chattox of turning his beer sour, and that she was commonly believed to be a witch. Chattox broke down and admitted her guilt, calling on God for forgiveness and the judges to be merciful to her daughter, Anne Redferne.

Elizabeth Device was charged with the murders of James Robinson, John Robinson and, together with Alice Nutter and Demdike, the murder of Henry Mitton. Elizabeth Device vehemently maintained her innocence. Potts records that "this odious witch"[ suffered from a facial deformity resulting in her left eye being set lower than her right. The main witness against Device was her daughter, Jennet, who was about nine years old. When Jennet was brought into the courtroom and asked to stand up and give evidence against her mother, Elizabeth, confronted with her own child making accusations that would lead to her execution, began to curse and scream at her daughter, forcing the judges to have her removed from the courtroom before the evidence could be heard Jennet was placed on a table and stated that she believed her mother had been a witch for three or four years. She also said her mother had a familiar called Ball, who appeared in the shape of a brown dog. Jennet claimed to have witnessed conversations between Ball and her mother, in which Ball had been asked to help with various murders. James Device also gave evidence against his mother, saying he had seen her making a clay figure of one of her victims, John Robinson. Elizabeth Device was found guilty.

Statue of Alice Nutter in Roughlee

James Device pleaded not guilty to the murders by witchcraft of Anne Townley and John Duckworth. However he, like Chattox, had earlier made a confession to Nowell, which was read out in court. That, and the evidence presented against him by his sister Jennet, who said that she had seen her brother asking a black dog he had conjured up to help him kill Townley, was sufficient to persuade the jury to find him guilty

19 August

The trials of the three Samlesbury witches were heard before Anne Redferne's first appearance in court, late in the afternoon, charged with the murder of Robert Nutter. The evidence against her was considered unsatisfactory, and she was acquitted

Anne Redferne was not so fortunate the following day, when she faced her second trial, for the murder of Robert Nutter's father, Christopher, to which she pleaded not guilty. Demdike's statement to Nowell, which accused Anne of having made clay figures of the Nutter family, was read out in court. Witnesses were called to testify that Anne was a witch "more dangerous than her Mother". But she refused to admit her guilt to the end, and had given no evidence against any others of the accused.Anne Redferne was found guilty.

Jane Bulcock and her son John Bulcock, both from Newchurch in Pendle, were accused and found guilty of the murder by witchcraft of Jennet Deane. Both denied that they had attended the meeting at Malkin Tower, but Jennet Device identified Jane as having been one of those present, and John as having turned the spit to roast the stolen sheep, the centrepiece of the Good Friday meeting at the Demdike's home

Alice Nutter was unusual among the accused in being comparatively wealthy, the widow of a tenant yeoman farmer. She made no statement either before or during her trial, except to enter her plea of not guilty to the charge of murdering Henry Mitton by witchcraft. The prosecution alleged that she, together with Demdike and Elizabeth Device, had caused Mitton's death after he had refused to give Demdike a penny she had begged from him. The only evidence against Alice seems to have been that James Device claimed Demdike had told him of the murder, and Jennet Device in her statement said that Alice had been present at the Malkin Tower meeting.Alice may have called in on the meeting at Malkin Tower on her way to a secret (and illegal) Good Friday Catholic service, and refused to speak for fear of incriminating her fellow Catholics. Many of the Nutter family were Catholics, and two had been executed as Jesuit priests, John Nutter in 1584 and his brother Robert in 1600. Alice Nutter was found guilty

Katherine Hewitt (a.k.a. Mould-Heeles) was charged and found guilty of the murder of Anne Foulds. She was the wife of a clothier from Colne,and had attended the meeting at Malkin Tower with Alice Grey. According to the evidence given by James Device, both Hewitt and Grey told the others at that meeting that they had killed a child from Colne, Anne Foulds. Jennet Device also picked Katherine out of a line-up, and confirmed her attendance at the Malkin Tower meeting.

Alice Grey was accused with Katherine Hewitt of the murder of Anne Foulds. Potts does not provide an account of Alice Grey's trial, simply recording her as one of the Samlesbury witches – which she was not, as she was one of those identified as having been at the Malkin Tower meeting – and naming her in the list of those found not guilty

Alizon Device, whose encounter with John Law had triggered the events leading up to the trials, was charged with causing harm by witchcraft. Uniquely among the accused, Alizon was confronted in court by her alleged victim, John Law. She seems to have genuinely believed in her own guilt; when Law was brought into court Alizon fell to her knees in tears and confessed She was found guilty.[

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Pendle_witches

[peepcrybaby666]

This was the first birthday I had since I was 15 that I wasnt depressed at all. I get depressed every birthday and I think it's because my grandmother passed before my 16th birthday and I was born on her birthday. We had such a close bond. I was so close to her and losing her was devastating. I actually seen her die I seen her last breath and it scarred me. She would always make me baked good every fall. Shed make me a pumpkin pie and a apple pie for my birthday. She always asked which one I wanted I said I'll have to think about it because they're both so good. So she always made me both. If she could be alive for one more birthday and could make me her homemade cookies pies bread biscuits and all the such I'd eat it all and I would not feel bad about it and I would probably cry while eating it because I miss her so much and I would give anything to taste that stuff just one more time. When she died my ed started to really develop. I had disordered eating before that would go long periods of time without eating things like a week. But then would go back to normal eating without no bad thoughts. I think my ed started developing when I was around 8. When I asked my mom after looking in the mirror at my stomach after eating, why isnt my stomach flat. I wanna go on a diet. And she said flat bellies r for grown women. You'll have one when u grow up. I proceeded to go play and when I came inside I looked in the mirror again and my stomach was flat and I showed mom and said playing made my stomach small again, does eating make your stomach grow? And she said yes it does, but when your active it works it off. I dont know if what she was saying was appropriate to this day but all I know is this stuck with me since then and it's kinda strange because most of my childhood memories r gone. They've been repressed. I dont remember my life as a kid except very minimal things. My mom was abusive but the thing is I dont think she intended to be. She has been and is still mentally ill but refuses that there is anything wrong and will not accept seeing someone about it. Shes been through a lot herself and I feel bad but I still don't think that justifys how she treated my sister and I. I dont know if anyone have actually read this but if u did and u relate to this in anyway let me know, so I dont feel so alone in my battle. Also please hand me your two cents about what my mom said as a response to why my stomach wasnt flat. I really dont know if it was appropriate to say to q child or not because to me that was normal. She was engaging in disordered behaviors around eating all my life and I do believe that what made me aware of my body and how it looked at such a young age.