#history

[yesterdaysprint]

The Boston Globe, Massachusetts, February 26, 1894

[bluepersonaartisan]

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” —Winston Churchill

[prokopetz]

My retro video game pet peeves:

No, sprite flicker on consoles like the NES didn't look like that. The NES ran at 60fps (and how it managed this on contemporary televisions which technically didn't support progressive scan is a fascinating piece of technical bugfuckery, if you have an afternoon to kill to read up on it), but YouTube downsamples all videos that are below a certain resolution to 30fps, which makes sprites that are flickering at 60fps look weird. The way that sprites sometimes seem to disappear entirely for long periods in NES gameplay footage on YouTube is also usually an artefact of this process – YouTube just happened to exclusively pick frames where the sprite in question is not visible when converting from 60fps to 30fps.

No, not all old-school pixel art was explicitly designed with "CRT fuzz" in mind. While this was often the case for games originally released for non-portable consoles, portable consoles have always had LCD screens (yes, even the original Game Boy!), so CRT fuzz simply wasn't a thing for them. Conversely, while desktop PCs of the era did use CRT monitors, from the mid 1980s onward, PC monitors typically used a variant CRT technology that had a much higher scan rate than contemporary CRT televisions in order to improve legibility of small text; such monitors had pixel sharpness comparable to that of modern LCD monitors, so CRT fuzz wasn't a thing for most PC games, either.

No, the textures on N64 and PS1 games weren't that bad. While these consoles were technically capable of resolutions up to 480p, this was very demanding for them, and rarely used outside of menus and cutscenes; actual gameplay output for games on these consoles typically ranged from 192p to 240p. The textures were of an appropriate size for the gameplay resolution. The whole "razor-sharp polygons with drab, muddy textures" look that pops up in a lot of retro media inspired by games of this era isn't imitating how such games look on their native hardware – it's imitating how they look when played on desktop PC emulators that have to stretch the textures all to hell in order to render them.

Like, I'm not saying these aren't valid aesthetic choices for modern retro games – particularly those that are trying to capture the experience of playing pirated console games on a janky PC emulator – but it's the spurious assertions of greater authenticity that often go with them that get my goat. If you want to slap a CRT filter on a Game Boy Advance title because you like the look of it, be my guest, but insisting that this is "how it was meant to be played" is simply false.

[sacramentohistorymuseum]

We have reached a new social media milestone on one of our platforms and all of us at the Sacramento History Museum continue to be in disbelief of our viewership.

We would have never thought that our institution, a small nonprofit museum in Sacramento, California, could reach this many followers from around the world, but we are incredibly thankful for all of those who take the time to watch our videos and for your support.

In this video, Howard letterpress printed a headline announcing “Sacramento History Museum Reaches 750,000 Instagram Followers” while using our Washington hand press, which was manufactured in 1852! The wood type for the headline is 6 line Gothic font.

[memories-of-ancients]

Obsidian spear point, Hopewell Culture, Ohio River Valley, 100 BC - 500 AD

from The Hopewell Culture National Historic Park

[tinagodiva]

Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🍂

[humanoidhistory]

Overhead view of the Space Shuttle Atlantis at Cape Canaveral, 1996.

[classicalcanvas]

Title: The Railway Bridge at Argenteuil

Artist: Claude Monet

Date: 1873

Style: Impressionism

Genre: Landscape

✨ Feel free to check out our community for more art! ✨

[st-just]

Unironically I do think if we're going to keep doing historical hate-cults then Leopold II should have a hitler-sized one. 'Would you murder Leopold II as a baby' should be a standard dorm room thought experiment. Tasteless genre fiction should be full of Force Publique officers who were secretly evil wizards. The statues that inexplicably still exist should have powerful acids poured on them. Things of that nature.

[artschoolglasses]

Moonstone Ring with a Carved Frog, Late 16th to Early 17th Century

From the London Museum

[illustratus]

View of Reims Cathedral by Domenico Quaglio the Younger

[vintagecamping]

An ice-cold campsite on the southside of Mt. McKinley

Denali, Alaska

1959

[unbfacts]

[upstairsdownstairsandinbetween]

Casa Romagnolo, Acquarossa, Switzerland,

Courtesy: Wespi de Meuron Romeo

[memories-of-ancients]

Bronze bell, China, Shang Dynasty, 13th century BC

[tinagodiva]

Faroe Islands 🇫🇴