#first half 20th century

[merc-h-w]

"A Summer Night" by W. H. Auden (1933)

And, gentle, do not care to know,

Where Poland draws her eastern bow,

    What violence is done,

Nor ask what doubtful act allows

Our freedom in this English house,

    Our picnics in the sun.

Soon, soon, through dykes of our content

The crumpling flood will force a rent

    And, taller than a tree,

Hold sudden death before our eyes

Whose river dreams long hid the size

    And vigours of the sea.

https://voetica.com/poem/6095

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

This election day, I'm thinking of my Nana.

I'm thinking of how as a young woman, she fled political violence in her native Colombia to build a new home in a more stable country. I'm thinking about how she lived a long life, but not long enough to see her home country elect its first ever progressive president (just a few months ago!).

Coincidentally, I was living in Colombia at that time (in the very city she grew up in), and I was able to witness what felt like a miracle. A very conservative country, suffering from the violent inheritance of colonization and catholic invasion and the war on drugs, against a backdrop of the dangerous global rise of the far right--this unlikely country managed to elect one of the most progressive heads of state in the world, in 2022. That's a pretty big deal.

And I'm thinking about this, this election day, because that election was won by a very thin margin. I'm thinking about how it almost didn't happen. I'm thinking about how it was only possible thanks to the highest voter turnout in 20 year. And I am thinking about the countless number of voters who chose to vote for the first time. I am thinking of the poorest and most disenfranchised citizens who showed up at the polls. I am thinking of the indigenous women who rode 12 hours on public buses to vote at the 'nearest' polling stations. I am thinking of all the money and corruption that went into preventing minority citizens from voting, and I'm thinking about how they showed up in the millions and voted anyway.

I am thinking that I would like to see a miracle like that in my own home country.

So if you're on the fence about waiting in line today to cast your vote, I hope that you will think--about the country you want to live in, the future you hope will unfold, and about all of the people it takes to make a miracle.

Because history may deem us nameless and faceless, but when we show up en masse, we are the ones who make history happen.

And yes, maybe also spare a thought for my Nana. Who was in fact a very angry and judgemental woman who supported the republican party for 50+ years, and who would be turning in her grave right now (if the family hadn't had her cremated). Think about the mean angry ghost of my Colombian grandmother, who very much wants you to not show up at the polls to support abortion and other sinful progressive values. Think about her. Do it for her. Do it for Nana.

[castratedvader]

*ignoring literature's discovery of the great incommunicability between human beings* ah yes, another day of seeking the perfect communion of kindred spirits which will render useless the transmission of one's feelings through verbal signs

[chiropteracupola]

issue: people have been posting about a book series but not in any way that clarifies what the characters look like, so you are forced to confront the fact that you have been envisioning the protagonist and his villainous foil as ...tintin and revolver ocelot.

[nsewell]

37, defy - micro stories, please! 💕 (~agentnatesewell)

37. defy

Nat churns a swirl of whiskey inside her crystal tumbler and asks, "Will you not share a glass with me?"

Ava frowns from a settee that creaks precariously under her muscled frame, watching Nat sip a drink that won’t quench a thirst or stoke a hangover come the morning. Watching her play at something she’s not or ever will be again. She looks so in her element here, thick, glossy hair weaving down the length of her spine, outfitted in a collared blouse and a patterned scarf tied around the tempting slope of her long neck.

“I would if the contents were more to my appetite,” Ava mutters, glancing away. “But you know I see no use in trying to defy what we are.”  

After an interlude of silence, she steals another look; she’s been rationing glimpses all evening long. Nat is smiling at her warmly, eyes glittering, and she’s always beautiful, but especially like this with her marble profile set in the glow of the gas-lit lamps as she pours over the morning paper, all trifling human interests and current affairs. Sometimes, she'll do the crossword, ink stained and concentrated. It's as mundane as it is endearing.

“I don't see it as a defiance. More of an indulgence," Nat says carefully, tilting her head. "Why deprive myself of old comforts simply because I am a vampire? Flavor. Art. Passion. Eternity is a long time to do without humanity's pleasures.”

"I have no need of those. I have other comforts."  The adrenaline of a good training session. A mission executed to the full potential of its planning. The members of her team, namely the second in command she sits adjacent to.

"If you say so, old friend. But I wouldn't be so quick to sell yourself short of passion. Or pleasure.” Nat returns innocently to her paper with a concentrated furrow to her brow. And then lets a finger smooth delicately over the dip of her throat where Ava's mouth had trailed fervent kisses earlier without a further glance to her. No one can say that Natalie Sewell is without audacity.

And Ava’s smile is a small, self-satisfied thing that she turns away to keep just for herself. "No,” she replies. “I suppose not."

[storkmuffin]

***

[langernameohnebedeutung]

it's insane to me how toxic masculinity requires these alpha men types to balance in their minds that

a) "until now all men were always masculine warriors and farmers and defeated their enemies with their bare hands and ate raw meat all while wearing tailor-made suits and all art was super-masculine" and

b) "opera is effeminate, ballroom dancing is gay, poetry is gay, museums are for girls, gardening is gay, learning a classic instrument like playing the violin or the piano is gay, old books are too flower-y and emotional, working with clothes is unmanly, pottery is for middle-aged women-"

just tell me you like WW2-movies and go.

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

bad wolf soda <3

[kenobihater]

some recent pictures i bought online. i've found quite a lot of pictures of straight couples exchanging clothes, but none of them were posing on a kickass motorcycle with grins on their faces. the poses in the second one were unique and really conveys joy and closeness to me. and the last one of trumpeters napping in a pile in a cemetary is just stunning and so interesting. nothing better than catching some zzz's with your buddies on some graves i guess

[srdcovka]

not dad lore but my grandma randomly shared that great grandpa was on the run in the us and escaped to argentina ?? and then we never heard abt it again

[merc-h-w]

The Right to Be Happy (Preface) by Dora Russell (1927)

Far be it from me or anyone in this tortured age to suggest that it would not be well to re-create society. The world as we know it is a hideous nightmare. Human beings have made it, and therefore human beings need to be changed. The chemistry of the human body and the study of human reaftions can give us the means of going beyond changes of environment to changes in the nature of the human creature himself. I quarrel merely with the idea of a plan, according to which all men are at once to be made anew.

Pages vii-viii

[trashbagcommunist]

On one hand, yes, Ronald Reagan. On the other, nothing in capitalism is a problem of individuals, and Ronald Reagan was riding the economic wave of Neoliberalism, something that had many leaders doing horrific harm to innocent people in the name of expanding capitalism in new ways. Ronald Reagan shouldn't get all the credit, we should give at least some to Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics, and look at the decade before Ronald Reagan's administration, where neoliberalism was being experimented with in Latin America. How these same people took their methods to Russia and Eastern Europe in the decade after Reagan. And how in 1992, the Democrats sealed the deal that Neoliberalism was a bipartisan endeavor going forward.

[greatmuldini]

Any household equipped to receive the television service of the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1954 would almost certainly have done so on a “table-top” set not unlike the moderately priced and now iconic “TV-22,” which featured a circular 9-inch Mullard “television picture tube” capable of displaying the 405 lines its electron beam had to travel to draw the “high definition” images coming from London’s Alexandra Palace or the Birmingham transmitter in Sutton Coldfield. First manufactured in 1950 by Bush Radio, then under the umbrella of the Rank Corporation, the Bakelite-clad receiver came with connections for a dipole aerial and AC mains power, and no option at all to change the channel. What today would be considered a serious limitation was in fact a pragmatic decision as long as the country's airwaves remained limited to a single channel. (The set would have been ready for three additional channels which were proposed but never implemented.)

Growing audiences and an expanding schedule forced the new medium to create new content if it intended to fulfil its mission as a public broadcaster to “inform, educate, and entertain.” While the BBC's radio service had famously been on the air since 1922 and earned its merits during the war, television remained for a long time an experimental technology of questionable utility. Early programming therefore relied heavily on the spoken word and the conventions of live theatre, including the singular, and ephemeral, nature of each performance: very little was pre-recorded (on film), and once a programme was broadcast it ceased to exist. Much of the BBC's live programming and even material recorded on tape is now lost; what we do have from the era before and just after the introduction of magnetic tape in 1956 was routinely filmed off the television screen in a process known as kinescoping. Preservation of its output did not rank among the BBC's priorities; recording everything on film would have required vast resources dwarfing the convenience of "canned" content: repeat showings on the BBC often meant repeat performances – bringing the original cast and crew back to the studio was, after all, a well-rehearsed operation and more efficient than any existing technology. Similar traditional arrangements continued well beyond the arrival of effective technical solutions.

The lack of definition, in every sense, at first prevented the new medium from being recognized as such not only by those who worked in it but also the sceptical consumers into whose living rooms the images would be beamed. The privacy of the viewing experience would prove decisive: like its theatrical rival, television was visual, and it was live. With radio it shared the spontaneity of the live broadcast and a large audience that would not need to come together in a single room. Film could offer none of the above, certainly not in combination, but where television (and radio) opted for intimacy on the small screen, film went big and promoted the communal experience – a very basic, fundamental division which remained in place for more than half a century and is only now being challenged by the most recent innovations in streaming and subscription services.

In 1954 the BBC, as the sole operator of the new technology in the United Kingdom, looked to other pioneers abroad for suitable formats with which to fill their expanding schedules. In the United States, commercial television was in full swing by the early 1950s, with major broadcasters such as NBC and CBS competing for viewers and, more importantly, advertising partners – sponsors in the terminology of the scheme developed for radio that had businesses pay for the right to name an entire programme (today's wealth of "archival" recordings from the era is a direct result of the legal requirement to provide proof to the customers that their money was well-spent). Here, too, tried and tested radio content was being adapted for television and, in the process, began to take on hybrid features. One promising concept on the CBS network that appealed to the BBC decision makers was a former radio show turned televisual experiment: You Are There fused (fictitious) contemporary radio reportage with historical re-enactments – easily done on radio but more challenging – and more rewarding – as a live spectacle for audiences to see. Not quite ready, in technical terms, to rival the offerings of the film industry but arguably an alternative to a night out at the theatre, the "night in" promised to become an event in its own right.

You Are There set out to transport the viewer back in time and to bring them face to face with historical figures, who are moreover prepared to pause and be interviewed by modern-day (all-male, often real-life) TV news correspondents. The deliberate anachronism of the programme, examining a fictionalized version of history with the most modern tools available and presenting it to the viewer in the privacy of his own living room was the message and the medium rolled into one: the historical subject under scrutiny was by no means chosen at random or pre-determined by the American creators; licensees around the world dramatized historical events from their own national perspectives. Only seven episodes were produced for the BBC in 1954, none of which exist today. Press reviews and summaries confirm the use of exterior location sequences pre-recorded on film to supplement the live performances in the Alexandra Palace studio, but we can only speculate on the precise treatment of each subject.

The series opened, appropriately, with the Charge of the Light Brigade in the year of its centenary, followed by the trials (and tribulations) of Mary Queen of Scots, Charles I, Captain Dreyfus, and Julius Caesar. Joining this eminent circle were, somewhat less obviously, the instigators of a minor mutiny, as well as a major figure, arguably, of the Anglo-Irish political struggle whose historical – and literary - significance has only grown since 1954. The Fall of Charles Stuart Parnell has inspired generations of writers engaged in the fabrication of alternate histories. The enigma of his personality, and the complex set of circumstances surrounding the events of 1890 continue to be explored in imaginary what if variations. You Are There, by contrast, portrays a moment in time that must contain a myriad of possibilities. [Part 1 of 2]

[hahahax30]

Next time someone groups Spain and France together I’ll fling myself off a building

[milk-lover]

Eating a bowl of jello with the wikipedia page for jello open for a fully immersive experience.

[depoteka]

each time i'm somewhere where a radio is playing i'm so flabbergasted. the other day i heard a song on the radio which was "sampling" gangsta's paradise but to me it felt like it was just gangsta's paradise with a different beat. grow some balls and just play amish paradise instead