#my focus is more on the distribution of information than which information it is. history is just a good starting point

[arthur-r]

would it be ridiculous to major in classics

[everydaydg]

That wierd time manga was on the 3DS eshop

Available only in Japan and France

Dokopon Choice

While looking for MH Stories on hshop (not gonna sugarcoat it, that was what I was doing)

I ran into something that caught my eye... a strange name Ive heard of every MH game on the platform so something was off when I saw a name I didnt recognize.

MH Flash... huh?

It coudnt be a game considering it was literarly 75MB and there were like 7 different volumes

looked it up and realised that was a manga... I thought it was going to be some sort of tie in bonus, like a series of 3D videos, because I never heard of anything like the 3DS having actual manga publications but...

No that wasnt the case actually, it was just a whole issue of Monster Hunter Flash

The menu did leave me asking some questions. it didnt look like something capcom themselves made, instead a platform that was made by a third party which lead to the question

"are there more of these?"

yes. there were.

And so I present to you one of the neatest things ive ever ran into while looking into the 3DS's catalogue

The French and Japanese eshop's selection of digital manga!

"どこぽんちょいす" - "Dokopon Choice”

Sadly its french equivalent had no such name holding everything together

No this is not homebrew, no this isnt a joke. This happened.

Where do I begin...

The 3DS has a neat history with ebooks

There were two services that provided ebooks on the system, these being: HONTO for 3DS and Dokodemo Honya-San. both exclusive to japan.

Honto had a more general ebook line up. no manga

Honya-San was kinda like that but you also had a whole lot of manga baby

So where does Dokopon Choises fit into this?

Well Dokopon Choise was the name for standalone releases of things found on Honya-San

Imagine it this way, in Honya-san, releases are treated like DLC

Through Dokopon its treated as its own app.

Purchases of Dokopon apps and Honya-San books are treated as separate so you could end up buying the same thing twice (its actually aknowledged on every dokopon release on the eshop, be careful that you dont buy the same thing twice by accident)

Both were managed by Librika, a digital book distribution company

That leads the question as to why I didnt make this post about Dokodemo Honya in general as that service has alot of things to talk about

Well Honya-San didnt make it out of japan... The only one that got out of japan was Dokopon Choise which is why I want to focus on it.

its an incredibly neat oddity for the system

Some day Ill have to do more propper research on HONTO for 3DS but for now lets focus on the french manga

So Japan makes sense but... France? why france of all places

Well from what ive read, apparently out of most countries in Europe. France had the largest audience for manga, which made something like this profitable.

Even then because of the small selection that made it over, it mostly feels like a small experiment more than anything

The french eshop had the following series:

Nisekoi

Professor Layton

Little Battlers Experience

Rock Lee (Manga spinoff)

Blue Exorcist

Monster Hunter Flash

Inazuma Eleven

Beyblade Metal Fusion

Beyblade Shogun Steel

List of series originally found on GBAtemp by user "Asia81"

I did go ahead and verify this list and indeed. this was everything that came out of this in france.

All of these with various amounts of volumes released. I believe the series with the most volumes on the service was that of beyblade metal fusion at a whopping 11 Volumes

What an odd bunch. France never got Dokodemo Honya san in any shape or form. only these series.

I wonder if the experiement worked out in any way.

Something I find wierd is that some of the ones here never got a Dokopon release in Japan. They most likely were stuck on Honya San

I sadly dont have any pricing information on these, there is alot I havent been able to find about the french releases... I hope some day more about these comes to light

So what about Japan? well to start, the selection was waaayy bigger

98 volumes of multiple series made it into the eshop. Thats quite a substancial increase.

(The following list is comprised (mostly) by the localised names of the series for the sake of making it easier to read. Romaji will be provided for some so they are easier to look up

and so you can see a few familiar names -w-

its also organized in order of release on the service)

The JP selection was:

Attack on Titan

Love's Reach

Magi

Detective Conan

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Screaming Lessons

DRAGON BALL (colored version)

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid

Monster Hunter Flash

FAIRY TAIL

Yozakura Quartet

Chihayafuru

HUNTERxHUNTER (colored version)

Sweet Devil Laugh - 甘い悪魔が笑う

Today, Our Love Begins (Kyō, Koi o Hajimemasu)

Grandpa Danger

Kuroko's Basketball

Kitchen Princess

Hiyokoi

My Little Monster (Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun)

Hell Girl

Hell Girl R

Thermae Romae

Stardust Wink

MONSTER HUNTER EPIC

Ro-Kyu-Bu!

Lotte's Toy!

Spice and Wolf

Ayakashi Hiougi - あやかし緋扇

The World God Only Knows

Monster Hunter Orage

1st grade, 5th group, Ikimono-gakari - 1年5組いきものがかり

Kings of My Love - Oresama Kingdom

Hozuki's Coolheadedness - Hōzuki no Reitetsu

Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple - Shijō Saikyō no Deshi Kenichi

Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches

BLACK BIRD

Space Brothers - Uchū Kyōdai

We Were There - Bokura ga Ita

Tonari No Atashi - 隣のあたし

Shugo Chara!

Kids on the Slope

Inazuma Eleven

Lucky☆Star

Super Mario-kun

Blood Lad

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya

Sgt. Frog

Gakuen Basara

Nobunaga Concerto

Mushishi

Monster Hunter Play Manga

To Love-Ru (color version)

Prince & Hero - Ouji to Hero

Jimikoi

2.5D Boyfriend - 2.5 Jigen Kareshi

iShoujo - i・ショウジョ (color version)

I”s

Aoha Ride - Ao Haru Ride

Ane Doki

Ichigo 100% (color version)

Tokyo Ghoul Remastered Edition

Hatsukoi Limited.

Nisekoi

MY GOD thats alot more stuff than the french eshop

Something I would like to note is that these were sold as multi packs on the eshop. Tonari no Atashi has a Vol.1-10 pack which retailed at ¥4,400

The prices for the packs with multiple volumes are all over the place but they tend to float arround ¥1,800 to ¥5,125

Price depends on the amount of volumes offered and the series.

Jimikoi and 2.5D boyfriend were the cheapest of the entire lot at ¥400 and ¥880 respectively

And the most expensive release was in fact Tokyo Ghoul Remastered at a whopping ¥7,000 for Volume 1-14

Source

The list here did not include prices because most of these had multiple... multi packs like dragon ball.

Dragon Ball had like 1 pack for every arc and that would have been a pain to keep up with. maybe some other time I will go ahead and organize that info.

Something I found interesting is how the file size for the JP manga are considerably bigger than that of the french releases, most likely due to the french releases not being in multi packs.

The French releases were 75 MB a pop. No multi packs to my knowledge.

While the japanese releases often go over 200 MB. Most likely due to having most of the volumes in one singular download.

Keep in mind that the list here is only for what was on Dokopon Choise. Dokodemo Honya-San had even more things... but sadly due to the nature of it being a digital platform and its downloadable content not being shown on the eshop... I cant find more info on what was on the service...

Most I have is tweets of people talking about the service.

I found a tweet that showed how JOJO was on the service, ive seen tweets mentioning people reading nichijou on the service too

Photo by Twitter user: TOUTO_jojoDR

Original Tweet

I also sadly I cannot check on the application itself due the service shutting down and no clear archive of this stuff being out there. some day ill find a way to look more into this

Dokopon Choise got new releases from 2013 all the way to 2016.

Last release being Nisekoi in Japan.

I sadly dont have data on when they released for french audiences, I just have data on the JP releases.

All of the releases under Dokopon Choises were removed from the eshop in January 31, 2019

Source

and subsequently, Dokodemo Honya-San got removed in 2020

Users could buy manga up to February 28, 2020

And they could redownload their stuff up to July 30, 2020

Source

Luckily for anyone who purchased content on the 3DS, they had a chance to move their 3DS library to their web library.

Honya San wasnt only on 3DS, same as HONTO, it had a web client under the name Dokodemo Bookstore

To my knowledge it seems like users who still have the app, on their 3DS, with downloaded books can enjoy them just fine.

And despite Librika merging with MEDIA DO in 2019, it seems like Librika still operates their digital bookstore to this day on mobile platforms.

What an odd piece of nintendo history isnt it.

I thought I was going to make a short post for once but no I ended up having to do a bunch of research for this. Because if I didnt... who was going to talk about the damm book services on 3DS.

I think making the list of manga on the service was the worst part.

But yeah! I recommend giving these a shot! even if you dont understand japanese, its still really cool being able to show off manga on your 3DS outside of the homebrew manga reader.

Ima leave this off with two silly tweets about boobs being uncensored on the release of Dragon Ball on the platform lmao.

"What the Hell! The 3DS is increasingly becoming a wonderful piece of hardware that creates special fetishes in children!!"

That is going to live in my head rent free for a month LMAO

[self-surveillance]

Project path ~ Some family isn't past

(part 2 of 3)

This project has always been about elements of my family; there have always been elements of it i have wanted to focus on, and others i have been uncertain about how to approach, yet have felt the urgency to consider in the work. This has long been the case with the Gatling gun, and several years after beginning the SS project i found an approach. It turned out that proximity was a key factor, when a home move brought me very close to the place where the gun was first invented, and the Gatling family gravesite.

It was always a subject of some fascination that this gun was part of my family history, and also a creeping sense of discomfort as i grew older. Before beginning the SS project, i never really had a way of framing this as a subject in my work; with this project and my newfound proximity, i suddenly felt there was a way to approach it. The ways i began doing this were informed quite a bit by the collage methods i had developed in the earlier work, but it also took on an assemblage-like form in the installation work; i realized i wanted a more physical object-oriented work, which could be approached and also handled by people. I wanted the subject of the work to also be an object, both seen and felt.

At the same time that i started this work about the Gatling gun, i also became aware (through my research and through popular media) that perception of the gun is much more widespread than i had thought possible, and that there is an extensive history of these connections distributed throughout the culture. This realization led me to begin work looking at these connections, and to create relationships in the manner of some of the earlier project work.

[grantgoddard]

Mining for radio news in an editorial black hole : 2004-2007 : Paul Boon, The Radio Magazine

 Magazine editors. What do they do? “They create editorial calendars, develop story ideas, manage writers, edit content and manage the production process…” according to Google. Makes perfect sense. Except sometimes…

Journalism started for me in 1976 when I volunteered for student newspaper ‘Palatinate’ and attended regular meetings under editor George Alagiah who managed a team of section editors, discussed ideas for stories and sub-edited our writing efforts. Subsequently I contributed articles to many publications, including ‘rpm Weekly’, ‘City Limits’, ‘For The Record’, ‘Jazz Express’, ‘Broadcast’, ‘Music Week’, ‘Jocks’, ‘NME’, ‘Now Radio’, ‘Music & Media’ and ‘Radio World’, whose editorial systems worked in much the same way. There was dialogue, there were meetings, story ideas were passed upwards and downwards, teamwork and editorial direction were de rigueur.

In late 2004, lifelong radio industry buddy Bob Tyler called to say he was relinquishing his job as news editor of ‘The Radio Magazine’ and asked if I wanted to take over. I was desperate for paying work, having just returned from a poorly paid freelance contract in Cambodia and then been hung out to dry by ‘BBC World Service Trust’ whose promise of further, more lucrative work never materialised. I had been applying for radio-related job vacancies but none had resulted in an offer. This was the second occasion that Tyler had passed on his editorial jobs to me, for which I remain eternally grateful.

I knew ‘The Radio Magazine’ as the only weekly publication for the UK radio broadcast industry, published as a colour A5 booklet. In May 1986, it had been launched as a scrappy paid-for fanzine named ‘Now Radio’ by Howard Rose, former pirate radio presenter under the aliases Crispian St John and Jay Jackson, filled with gossip and opinion for wireless ‘anoraks’. In October 1992, I had begun to write and publish a weekly four-page ‘Radio News’ newsletter which I photocopied and distributed for free by mail to a small group of people I thought would be interested, not as a competitor to Rose but complementary since my focus was hard news, information and statistical analysis of ratings.

Unexpectedly, within weeks of my newsletter’s debut, Rose relaunched his fanzine as ‘The Radio Magazine’ with a new layout and new features that looked remarkably similar to mine, such as an events calendar and analysis of ratings. This seemed somewhat coincidental, given his fanzine’s prior six-year, 177-issue history. Any ambition to eventually transform my tiny newsletter into a paid-for magazine had been effectively scuttled, so I persevered for twenty issues before ceasing publication. Unfortunately, ‘good ideas’ prove impossible to copyright and I had already learnt to my cost that the radio industry included people not averse to taking credit for my innovations.

Nevertheless, twelve years later, I was so desperate for income that the opportunity to write for ‘The Radio Magazine’ had to be accepted. Rose had tragically died in 2002 during routine surgery, bizarrely one week after selling his magazine business to Sir Ray Tindle, a local newspaper and radio station owner. Paul Boon had taken over as managing editor and had employed acquaintance Bob Tyler as news editor until now. Boon was asking me what payment I would require to do the job. I quoted him the National Union of Journalists’ rate per word for contributions to the very smallest publication. He responded by saying he would only pay half that rate. I was disappointed but reluctantly accepted his measly offer, reasoning that some income would prove better than none at all. After all, this job might not last long.

At the outset, I decided upon a financial survival strategy for myself. I would need to spend zero to gather news stories because my expenses were not to be reimbursed. This meant no phone calls, no interviews, no travel to meetings. I would have to depend upon second-hand sources I could cull from the internet, newspapers and magazines. In order to maximise my payments, I would submit as many news stories as I could write, since I was to be paid per word written. Doubtless, the magazine must be receiving dozens of press releases from every organisation connected with the UK radio industry. Naturally, as with my previous magazine work, I anticipated these would be regularly forwarded to me by the editor for a quick rewrite…

Except that they were not. I quickly learnt that no press releases, no news tips, no rumours, no nothing was forwarded to me by the magazine. There were no editorial discussions, no phone calls, no meetings, no guidance, no delegation of work. In fact, nothing at all except the odd emailed complaint about things I had written. I started work in December 2004 but, by New Year, Boon wrote a complaint to my predecessor Bob Tyler:

“I've just had David Bain of CFM on the phone complaining about an out-of-context story with the "wrong perspective" which was printed this week.  It was a local press story and as we all know local reporters do not understand radio and in this case printed a story which was not factually correct.  We then reprinted, courtesy of Grant the same errors. While I know it has been difficult to contact people at stations over the Christmas period I really think these types of story need to be checked out.  We are not in the market of producing overtly partisan stories which demoralise staff at stations. I had a similar call from another station before Christmas.” [sic]

Already, I was baffled as to why ‘The Radio Magazine’ functioned unlike any other publication for which I had worked previously. The managing editor was printing my stories mostly verbatim (fine), sometimes chopping their ends to fit a page (okay), changing my headlines (no problem), but otherwise was only communicating with me by forwarding complaints. Another one arrived in April 2005:

“We have been fending off an irate Simon Horne of Virgin Radio who says the article you wrote (Issue 681) was based upon a mis-quote published in the Scottish Daily Record (or similar paper). Furthermore he is upset that he was not contacted over the story to either check the facts or to give them an opportunity to respond.” [sic]

Surely, this sort of beef should have been with the journalist who had originally quoted the complainant’s words, not with me who had merely extracted the quote from a respected newspaper. Normally, you might expect a managing editor to defend their staff when they had evidently done nothing wrong, but Boon’s reaction in a further email to me was:

“We just cannot let this continue.  The Scottish press are notorious for getting facts wrong, heaven knows they have some big axes to grind up there. Time would have allowed for a quick call to the appropriate press officer, Collette [Hillier] can give you a list if you don't have one. Even an email would have given us some support.  Virgin are advertisers as well as news fodder, so treating them fairly seems only reasonable.” [sic]

Editorial ‘dialogue’ continued in a similar vein for my entire time as under-resourced news editor of the magazine. Every Monday morning, I emailed as many stories as I could muster, receiving no feedback other than occasional complaints from radio industry personnel who did not approve of what had been published. However, I was submitting so many news stories to maximise my earnings that the magazine regularly added additional pages to print them all, week in, week out…

Except for four issues per year when Boon required no news stories from me because, despite my training in statistics, he insisted upon covering the radio industry’s quarterly audience ratings results. Having collated and analysed radio station data since 1980, I regularly attended the RAJAR organisation’s press conferences announcing its latest numbers at a central London lecture theatre. Boon was present too but did not acknowledge me or seek to collaborate.

Apart from Boon (and Tyler), nobody was aware of my role providing the bulk of ‘The Radio Magazine’s editorial content, as a result of its news stories being published without author bylines. At the time, I was content with this arrangement because I was busy applying for full-time jobs in the radio industry and believed that I was unlikely to be offered employment if it were evident that I was reporting everything that was happening within the sector. 

My somewhat distant relationship with the magazine continued until March 2007 when I received an unanticipated email from Boon:

“I am sorry to say I have been forced to bring to a close the freelance arrangement we have with you for news stories. I am sorry. […] On a personal note, I’d like to thank you for the detailed and analytical dimension you have brought to your stories covering the radio industry in these stormy times. My thanks once again.” [sic]

It was the first (and last) occasion I received positive feedback from Boon. By then, I had thankfully found better paid work as a media analyst so the resultant loss of earnings was less consequential. However, this apparent ‘warm glow’ of gratitude vanished almost immediately. Prior to my abrupt dismissal, I had registered for a free press pass to attend a forthcoming radio conference whose organisers then contacted ‘The Radio Magazine’ to rightly confirm my credentials. Boon responded to them bluntly:

“Grant Goddard does not work for this publication.”

I wrote to Boon accusing him of “rudeness” because, instead of simply explaining to the organisers truthfully that, since registration, I was no longer news editor, his words connoted I was a liar. Was he already seeking to erase my substantial and transformational involvement in his magazine during the previous two years? My suspicions were far from allayed by Boon’s response to me:

“I think rudeness is rich coming from you, but that is a separate issue. […] Just chill my friend - life is too short!” [sic]

On that sour note, our email correspondence ended once and for all.

In November 2008, Boon started a job with government regulator Ofcom’s radio licensing division in the same role I had held five years previously. Perhaps he was sat at my former desk. Given that I (and predecessor Bob Tyler) had written 90% of his magazine’s editorial, I pondered whether any number of anonymous “detailed and analytical” news stories published in ‘The Radio Magazine’ might have accidentally fallen into Boon’s journalism portfolio. Any number between zero and the 848 I had written? Those words ‘detailed’ and ‘analytical’ might even have figured in Ofcom’s job description for the role.

During Boon’s subsequent “nine-year stint” at Ofcom, his CV states he was:

“Chapter Editor of the radio & audio chapter of Ofcom’s Communications Market Report an annually published in-depth insight into UK radio and audio developments.” [sic]

My work had once again passed through Boon’s hands! In 2003, having been The Radio Authority’s staff member with a maths/analysis background, I had been ordered to undertake a mammoth project to create for Ofcom the new regulator’s first historical database combining commercial radio licence, audience and financial information in a group of interlocking Excel spreadsheets. My complex formulae were required to summarise the state of the UK commercial radio industry, for publication in Ofcom’s initial annual ‘Communications Market Report’. Naturally, uncredited once again.

[revolutionarywarhistory]

A "person of trust": the story of Archibald Golder [Part 1]

Focus on Annapolis, which is taken from a map of Maryland in 1786 by John Churchman for the American Philosophical Society. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

In our previous post, it was noted that Archibald Golder was a captain within the Extra Regiment, even as he was a rank lower than Alexander Lawson Smith, the commander of the regiment. However, he was described in numerous documents as the "regiment's paymaster" and it is not known if he commanded a company. In September 1780, he resigned his rank, and was one of the 19 known people within the regiment who had a pension. This article uses the said pension and other documents to expand the story of Archibald, a "person of trust."

Reprinted from my History Hermann WordPress blog.

The last years of the war

During the last years of the revolutionary war, Archibald served numerous military positions. Before his service as a captain in the Extra Regiment, he was part of the state government in Annapolis, helping Maryland Governor Thomas Sims Lee with coordinating distribution of provisions across the state to the Maryland military units, for example. Still, he would serve as a captain even after the dissolution of the Extra Regiment, gaining certain supplies and such in March 1781. In 1782, even as he still received his payments for his service, he was requested to supply and quarter incoming French troops into Baltimore. [1] On September 7, 1782, the Council of Maryland, then the state government, wrote to the Chevalier De la Valette, saying that [2]:

"We are honored with your Letter, and have directed Mr Golder to provide proper Quarters for your Officers and Men, and make no Doubt of his doing it in such a Manner as to give you and the Officers Satisfaction. If it is necessary a Person should be constantly on the Spot, to prevent your Men from suffering, and it should be inconvenient to Mr Golder to remain, we will appoint a fit Person to do that Duty; but it is our Wish, as it would be more agreeable to the Inhabitants of the Town, that temporary Barracks or Huts, be erected on Whetstone Point for the Soldiers, and the State will pay any extraordinary Expence which may be incurred therein."

The same day, he would be requested by this same council to provide quarters for the French troops and officers. Later that month he would be notified that boats and hands for the French Army would be hired, and told to inform himself "particularly of this Transaction, and make a Representation of all Circumstances to us." [3] Basically, he would be the welcoming party for the French coming to America, providing quarters, and allowing the French to ''procure Waggons, Carts, Teams and Drivers, Vessels and hands for the Carriage and Transportation of their Baggage through the State" as one letter in July stated. [4]

Years later, in 1836, Archibald's wife, Sarah, would appear before a Baltimore City court saying that her husband was a lieutenant and captain within the Extra Regiment, along with being the regiment's paymaster and quartermaster. Within her widows pension to the federal government, it would be noted that he served in the Maryland line for two years (1780-1782), was a paymaster from Oct. 1780 to Nov. 1782, and would have been a "supernumerary officer" of the state after 1781, since the Extra Regiment ceased to exist. [5] Also, Archibald would be described as a person would was appointed Lt. in Extra Regiment on July 27, appointed captain on Sept. 1, and appointed paymaster on Oct. 18. This list of documents would also say he would be appointed quartermaster in another regiment on July 18, 1782, serving in this position until Nov. 11, 1782.

Marriage and settling down

Page 168 of this PDF which indexes marriage references within the annals of the Maryland State Archives.

In 1782, Archibald's military career would end. On the tale end of his service in the Maryland Line, on April 4, he would marry a woman named Sarah Ashmead in Annapolis, Maryland. [6] A woman named Sarah Callahan would be present at the marriage ceremony as is noted in the widows pension. Reportedly, she would be born in 1758, making her two years older than Archibald. [7]

In the following years Archibald would begin to sink his roots in Annapolis. In 1783, a Anne Arundel County assessment would say that he only owned one acre of land within Annapolis Hundred. The following year he would be elected as a part of the clerk's committee within the House of Delegates. [8] This would not be a surprise since he had been elected as an assistant clerk in House of Delegates in 1777. That same year, the following "runaway slave advertisement" would appear in the Maryland Gazette:

It would describe Benedict Calvert as the former owner and say that this enslaved black woman  was his "property," showing that his wealth was growing even during this time. This advertisement would also cement Archibald as directly involved in the oppressive system of slavery.

The following year he would receive (or buy?) $1.22 in liquidated debt certificate from Maryland. More importantly was his appointment, along with Thomas Purdy, Ephraim Ramsey, and William Meroney as a clerk of Maryland elections.

Three years later, in February 1788, he would be appointed as an assistant clerk of Constitutional Convention. [9] For this, he would be called a "person of trust" by William Smallwood, later a governor of Maryland for several years (1785-1788) and former military man. By May 1788, Archibald would be appointed by the Maryland state government to tell the Continental Congress about "the Proceedings of the said Convention and their Act ratifying the Plan of Government proposed for the United States." The following year, he would be chosen as an officer to "carry [an] election certificate to the secretary of Congress."

A life in Annapolis

Focus on Annapolis from map of Maryland in 1795 by multiple authors (Dennis Griffith, James Thackara,  and John Vallance). Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Also see this 1797 map of Maryland by a German cartographer.

By 1790, Archibald and his wife Sarah would be living in Annapolis. While he does not appear in the U.S. federal census that year, there is no doubt he is living in the city. This is evidenced by the fact that he assaulted a man named William Grant, for reasons not yet known, that year. [10] Grant was reportedly from the Highlands of Scotland and had a distaste for British power but was also a private in the Maryland line. His son, of the same name, would reportedly be one of the first White settlers in Kentucky, marrying into the Boone family, which pioneer Daniel Boone was part of. [11] He was a former blacksmith (and silversmith) within the city, which means that Archibald could have been a higher class than him, setting up the possibility of inter-class conflict in the fight between these two individuals.

Five years later, in 1795, Archibald would increase his land holdings. He would pay Charles Carroll of Carrolton, a Catholic powerbroker with Maryland, and Western shore senator, five hundred pounds for lots 67, 68, and 69. [12] However, due to previous land agreements he would acquiesce to not buying a part of lot 67 which was sold by John Golder (his father?) to a man named John Gordon. One of the structures Archibald would buy was a "structure in which he was born." The following year he would reportedly open "a dry and wet goods store in that building."

Later that year, in December 1795 he would be the clerk for a committee meeting in Annapolis. This committee would handle the issues of "specie remaining in the treasury...fines and forfeitures, marriage, ordinary and retailers licences...[and state of] a land-office on the eastern shore," accompanied by the pay to the state treasurer.

This notice of continuing meetings would appear in the December 10 and December 17 issues of the Maryland Gazette as well.

On December 14, a man named Quaker named John Needles, of Easton, Maryland and former high sheriff of Talbot,  would die "at the house of Archibald Golder." He would be given a one-paragraph obituary with a poem with Christian religious themes tacked on the end:

The late 1790s and Archibald concentrating wealth in Annapolis

In 1797, Archibald would again make an agreement on his land holdings. Three commissioners of Annapolis,Charles Wallace, James Brice, John Randall, commissioners of Annapolis, along with William Hall III, and James Mackubin would buy, for 100 pounds, lot 69 within Annapolis. [13] It would be used for "the purpose of a public prison" in Anne Arundel County, which would serve his new business well. As such, it is no surprise that he, and his wife, were on-board with this land agreement.

By 1798, the Federal Tax Assessment would indicate Archibald's increased property holdings in Annapolis. He would be listed as owning three enslaved blacks but also numerous other "property" in terms of land. He would control one frame dwelling in "very bad repair":

Other columns on page 100, relating to this entry, indicate that this property is only worth $100.10 and cover 1/4 of an acre.

Apart from this, other records indicate that he owned three other buildings on Annapolis's West Street. They would consist of a "brick dwelling," and two frame dwellings, one of which has a frame edition, kitchen, six outhouses, milk house, and other small house:

All together these properties consist 2 1/2 acres and are worth $700.10 dollars. William Spencer is living in the brick dwelling and Richard Daws in the first frame dwelling.

The Baltimore Sun would later note that Archibald owned a tavern in the city. Possibly consisting the last property in the above picture, it would consist of a clientele that at oysters, shucking lots of "tasty mollusks and chuck[ing] the shells," which ate at his Sign of the Waggon and Horse tavern. According to the Sun, visitors could fill up on "food and wine and retire to a boarding room to sleep it off" with such remnants "of bygone revelry" which includes bone toothbrushes, tobacco pipes, and oyster shells, would be "unearthed by archaeologists at 44 West St., about two blocks from the State House" in 2007. [14]

Since the list of original writing of "three frame dwellings and four support structures on his property" which he owned in 1798 is hard to read at times, one researcher transcribed the above picture and every property/entry listed in the 1798 assessment of parts of Maryland. What they said of Archibald showed that two of his properties had one tenant each but two others did not:

In 1799, Gottlieb Grammar would be reported as leasing Golder’s two-story frame dwelling on West Street, which he operated as a “house of entertainment” known as the “Sign of the Pennsylvania Farmer." In later years, his tavern at 46 West Street, alternately known as “Mount Vernon” or “Hunter’s Tavern”,  would remainin operation through the early 19th century. [15] This reported leasing would be declared in the November 28, 1799 issue of the Maryland Gazette:

While this leasing would not be reported in the land records of Maryland, as much as we know, in 1989, archeology would uncover "late eighteenth through early nineteenth century artifacts, including tin-glazed earthenware, pearlware, and creamware," which were interpreted as remnants of the Archibald Golder's occupation starting in 1760 and the subsequent use of the space as "a tavern or hotel service area after 1799."

© 2016-2023 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

[reporterswithoutorders2]

Reporters Without Orders: Launching January 1, 2023

Reporters Without Orders is an anarchist news publication, launching on Substack on the first day of next year. You can subscribe to the Substack page by following the attached link.

The kind of subject matter that will be covered is suggested in part by the name itself, and by the tagline, “the home of anarchist journalism.” By “anarchist journalism,” I do mean all of the obvious things: journalism which is anti-authoritarian, which holds power up to scrutiny, which gives voice to needs and welfare of the voiceless, the disenfranchised, the deprived, excluded and subordinated. But it means much more than this, as well.

The philosophy of Anarchism is not merely oppositional, against authority, against government, etc. It also offers its own rich, creative, and eminently positive vision of a different, free society. 

It proposes that people have the capacity to organize every necessary or desirable aspect of a functioning society through voluntary arrangements and relationships. A function of anarchist journalism, therefore, is to document the myriad ways in which people are already doing this, whether motivated by an explicitly anarchist ethos or not. In short, a major focus of anarchism is what may broadly be called ‘emergent order’.

A focus on emergent order involves, for instance:

Stories about people, groups, and projects which address the needs of their community and its most disadvantaged members, especially in innovative and unique ways;

Analysis of governmental regulatory and artificial barriers to essential services and better living standards;

Informative articles on what individuals can do to take a more active part in their communities; and…

Generally, such related subjects as: 

the gig, sharing, and gift economies; in more theoretical language, black markets, gray markets, microenterprises, and homebrew production projects; modular and vernacular techniques for constructing affordable housing and other vital goods and services, and economies characterised by moves toward reduced capital outlays, distributed infrastructure, and scalability; disruptive technologies; co-operative businesses and business models; 

unschooling, homeschooling, free or open schools/universities, and other alternative systems of education; community organization and developing the infrastructure of civil society; mutual aid and resource sharing; etc

In addition to this, we will cover a broad cross-section of those aspects of the social and political landscape which seem most significant to us, including: law and justice, with a focus on the Melbourne and Victorian courts and the cases being heard therein, and Victorian legal advocacy and reform groups; policing and police reform; protests and other forms of civil activism in Australia; civil unrest and activist movements globally, and particularly the global anarchist movement.

Finally, one of the aims of this project which is nearest to my heart is to celebrate the craft and tradition of journalism, and to keep alive the memory of its great practitioners and the noble heights to which they took the medium. To this end, I will be publishing a series of articles on the history of journalism, consisting of: longform essays on significant chapters in that history — the Abolitionist Press, the Afro-American Press, the "Race Beat", the Muckrakers and the genesis of investigative journalism, etc. — supplemented by profiles and critical discussions of the writers who figure most prominently in these narratives and annotated reading lists/guides to the journalism of these historical episodes; and profiles of the great journalists of history, such as I. F. Stone, Murray Kempton, Sy Hersh, Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, etc., etc.

If you’re interested in getting involved, submitting an article, or becoming a regular contributor, drop me a note at leekavanagh1@gmail.com or check out the ‘Submissions/Volunteers’ page.

[dictionaryjust]

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[wednesdaysat7]

Post n 54 | 6th Fictional Summer Session / Part 1, 2 & 3

Published on Sunday August 21st 2022

Today, while I was boiling some pollens extracted by Oak to produced a yellow pigment, I have also worked on an interview that I was asked by Artsted.

Part 1 It is always challenging & stimulating to expose myself in an interview. In a way I feel that is moment of truth-telling rather than to raise my profile. I will publish it when it will be out.

So I have used Jonathan’s method of writing (we used during two sessions on the last term - I will add this information later). I planned six sessions, 15 minutes each. Six sessions of writing for six questions for the interview. 

I used the six row pieces of writing as drafts, that I then copied and edited several times. I was very happy with the results. 

Part 2 

Summer's heatwave could have been bad for British bumblebees

"When conditions were warm and relatively wet, stress was higher," Dr Richard Gill, Imperial College London

Climate change has an impact on the geographical distribution of some bumblebees. New analysis of ancient stresses have studied long-dead collections of bees held in museums.

Research Team from Imperial College London, the Natural History Museum and four other Scottish and English museums to analyse their bumblebee collections to look for variations in body shape.

Bumblebees have endured nearly a century of stress, (due to hotter / wetter conditions) but new DNA techniques may help focus future conservation efforts.

"When bumblebees are stressed, it has an impact on their developing offspring. Their bodies - wings in particular - become asymmetrical. By correlating the level of asymmetry in four species of bumblebee to climate records over the last 120 years, the researchers discovered stress appears linked to climatic conditions."*

Stress levels were lowest around 1925. Since then, there's been a general increase in stress levels - with higher levels found in years that were both wetter and warmer than average.

Things started to change around 1925, one possibility is that it's linked to changes in agricultural practices and the use of pesticides which are known to have led to insect declines in the later part of the 20th Century.

"One genome constitutes such a vast amount of information about a past situation," says Prof Barnes. Taking just a single leg from around 100 bee specimens his team was able to reconstruct genomes from long-dead bees - a hugely valuable tool when compared to the genetic code of bees living today.

By matching historical data on things like climate, pesticide use and changes in land use with the genetics of bees at the time, the researchers can see how the bee populations responded, or identify whether particular species were more vulnerable to changes than others.

"We can look for changes in diversity or signals of adaptation," says Dr Gill. "It might reveal things we can't see on the outside of a bee".

Part 3 

Can gut microbes influence the way animals organise their societies?

Honeybees represent a fascinating model to investigate how the gut microbiota affects social behaviour at both the individual- and the societal-level.

The gut microbes affect the neurophysiology and consequent behaviour of their animal hosts, including the host’s social behavior. Recent studies have found gut microbiota composition to associate with multiple neurological diseases and behavioural dysfunctions. 

Evidence from mammalian model systems has accumulated most rapidly. However, little is known about how the ‘gut microbiota – brain axis’ varies across the tree of life. 

Bacterial symbionts have been present since the first neural systems evolved and may have been important in the evolution of neural function and behaviour. 

If microbe-brain interactions are ancient, to what extent do they influence animal cognition and (social) behaviour? And how similar/ different are the proximate mechanisms regulating these interactions across animal lineages? This could lead us to understand how animal behavior evolves at the individual-level, and how individual-level effects build up to shape animal societies and their cultures. 

Could the microbiome influence the organization of animal societies?

To properly understand evolutionary convergences in microbiome-gut-brain axes, researchers will need to provide mechanistic characterizations of this axis in different species. Some species may be challenging because the microbiome is very complex, unstable, yet to be characterized or cultured, or not manipulable. 

This investigation was focused on the gut microbiota – brain axis in the honeybee. Social insects like honeybees offer a unique opportunity to unravel the contribution of symbiotic microorganisms to complex social traits. 

A decade of previous research into the honeybee gut microbiota had laid a fantastic foundation for this study - i.e. The University of Lausanne - Prof. Philipp Engel at the Department of Fundamental Microbiology on the honeybee gut microbiota. 

At the Department of Ecology and Evolution, Prof. Laurent Keller developed an automated behavioural tracking system, and uses it to decipher the collective behavioural dynamics of social insects at unprecedented scales and resolutions. With this sophisticated setup it seemed feasible to study the effects of the gut microbiota on the social (group-level) behaviour of the honeybee and associated individual brain physiology.

These experiments are lthe result of nine replicates in series (to produce gnotobiotic adults, first there is the collection of pupae). Each experimental replicate lasted 13 days. Starting on a Friday. 200 adult bees for each experimental replicate so extracted ca. 400 pupae to give a comfortable margin for development failure. 

The pupae were placed in sterile cages inside an incubator, and they would emerge as adults over the weekend. 

Naturally, these emerging adults would rapidly acquire a standard gut microbiota, but in the absence of contact with older nestmates or nest material they remain ‘microbiota-depleted’.

On the Monday, the bees were transferred into new sterile cages and manually glue QR-codes (which can be scanned multiple times per second by the tracking system) to their thoraces. The same day some were inoculated (but not others) of the tagged bees with gut microbiota. 

Observations occurred until Wednesday, when the tracking procedure started, by which time the microbiota should have fully established within the guts of the colonized bees. While these methods are generally highly effective, the risk of contamination is non-zero so it wasn't sure that microbiota-depleted bees were truly sterile until the experiments were long-finished and the bacterial DNA from their guts was sequenced. 

On the Wednesday, two groups of 100 bees (one microbiota-depleted and one colonized subcolony) were moved into the tracking systems. 

Each 100-individual subcolony could freely move between two identical plexiglass arenas covered with transparent lids and connected by a plastic tube. 

One arena was kept at 30 ºC in the dark (to mimic in-hive conditions), while the other was exposed to cycles of light, temperature and humidity mirroring what bees would experience when foraging outdoors. The bees were able to acclimatize for several hours and then began recording their positions and orientations multiple times per second. 

After one week of tracking the bees were collected, scan their tags (to determine their identities) and stored them [Tear!] at -80 ºC for molecular analyses.

This process was repeated for nine times. 

Result: bees that had been inoculated with gut microbes engaged in more social interactions than their microbiota-depleted sisters. This pattern was consistent with findings from other model organisms, where the gut microbiota is known to promote host social responsiveness. 

Furthermore, individual-level change influenced group-level organization: bees with a gut microbiota tended to form stronger social ties with specific nestmates, while microbiota-depleted bees interacted more randomly. This would likely impact nutrient and information flow within colonies, meaning that the gut microbiota may be vital in allowing bees to be so well organized and efficient at extracting, processing and storing resources from their environment.

Conclusions:

Is known that pollinators are declining at an alarming rate and have inestimable value to maintaining ecological balance via their ecosystem services. 

If we can understand how symbiotic bacteria enhance their pollinator hosts’ cognitive performances and social organization we may be able to design ‘psychobiotic’ treatments to improve health and manage (collective) behaviour. 

The research team suggest to consider this inestigation as a starting point for an opposite reasoning, which could be applied to insect pests and invasive species. Those are responsible for some of the most serious ecological disturbance and disease spread dynamics.

Extract from 

Original publication: Liberti, J., Kay, T., Quinn, A., Kesner, L., Frank, E. T., Cabriol, A., Richardson, T. O., Engel, P. & Keller, L. The gut microbiota affects the social network of honeybees. Nature Ecology & Evolution (2022) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-022-01840-w

Read the press release (French/English) from the University of Lausanne

FROM “SOCIAL SCULPTURE AND INTERNET HIVE”

The following text is a contribution by Jody L. Stokes-Casey and I believe it is underlining the file rouge between individual human being and communities / honey bee and hive. This relationship seems to me much deeper than an allegory; it is suggesting us how relevant is the well beings of individual in order to have an healthy and resilience community (read hive too) because individuals can rely on their communities to make, collaboratively, the most complicate choices.

"The colony of honeybees provides a model to understanding interactions between groups of individuals in person and online. Honeybees live and work within a group called a hive. While their eforts as a collective are vital, their individual actions also play a part in the cohesive whole. The hive itself frames the interactions between the bees much as difering groups/organizations in person or on the Internet frame interactions between people. Thomas Seely, a biologist specialising in bees, compared the insects’ plight to that of the human stating: ‘Living in groups, there’s a wisdom to finding a way for members to make better decisions collectively than as individuals.’ This system of individuals participating in the group to produce and share ideas for the greater good of the group is often referred to as ‘hive mind’." [x Research Paper]

*Search Thomas Seely's work

[aphrodite1288]

This is not about kadi so if you don't want to answer I would understand. Have you ever had information that surprised you? Something you can't believe? Related to kpop idols, actors or ent industry?

That Jongdae didn't want to have a child at this young age and in the beginning of his Solo career! But once it happened he was so accepting and so understanding! He married his GF becoz he loved her and accepted her pregnancy with open arms even though that brought him so much hate! But he protected her and never let the bad words reach her he is a shield to her and his baby 🍼 But the baby was not planned! when the girl is born he loved her with all his heart and she is so spoiled i saw her she is so cute and has Jongdae's lips 👄. I recently saw Jongdae's footage with his wife and daughter at Apujongreodo entering the mall, he was holding his baby and his wife was holding the baby bag! And they went shopping and got back into his fancy black car.

All Exo members are smoking some stopped but most of them not!

That Sehun is not a happy person and he has more dark thoughts that what y'all see. He hasn't had the best childhood like yall thought. I won't say more i don't want to interfere his private life and expose it. So please Love him and give him a lot of support! He is lovely and he thinks he is useless in the band and members always cheer him up but he needs to hear it from his fans! That's why he is working harder and attending vocalization lessons with Baekhyun and chanyeol's voice tuning teacher and y'all can tell his singing skills has improved from the DFTF ALBUM!!! PLEASE GIVE HIM LOTS OF LOVE!, He is working hard for his fans to be proud of him! He needs reassurance!

That BAEKHYUN is so attached to ExoL! He is so scared of losing them and being forgotten when he comes back from military. He has these doubts and he talked about it with everyone he knew! Even His Fans! Yes he calls his fans and talks to them!

That BAEKHYUN often calls his fansites' masternims and fans he trusts and they chit-chat a lot!! He is close with them!! He asks them about everything related to Exo if they enjoyed the albums, the songs, his Solo etc.. he asks them if he should improve on something, he asks them to tell him if he lacks something in his latest performances! He even calls his fans to chitchat for hours about what content he should post on youtube ! He asks his closest fans to check what other Exol want him to do! And if they're satisfied with his hard work! And if he made the proud ! He discusses everything that bothers him with some of his fansites and trustworthy fans! ALSO He talks to fans about their struggles and he cheers them up! And buys them gifts during their birthdays yes he remembers their bdays!

That BAEKHYUN loaned money to a fan when she called him saying she needed money! He even paid surgery for a fan!

Sehun often pays meals for Exol secretly before leaving the restaurants or Coffee shops especially when he couldn't sign for them !

That Seungri wasn't the one to be blamed in the burning sun but all evidence was against him and he was played ( I don't know abt this, i don't defend any man who assaulted women as a feminist myself i can't come to terms with believing this but i saw a lot of ppl saying it!)

That BP members are jealous of Jen for getting all the brands and the commercials, which YG ent solved and started distributing solo projects to the other members and asking sponsors to not only focus on Jen and suggesting them the other members! Now we see other members promoting for famous fashion, cosmetics, sports and make up brands, while before, they were jobless and only Jenn who was getting all the money and roles and brands and was the only member active for two years 2018/2019 and even the first one and the yongest to have the earliest solo debut only after 2 years of debuting with her band, i mean a rookie shouldn't get a solo until they skill their singing and acting! But Jenn's potential was big and she has tons of fans that's why YG wanted money so took advantage of her epitome fame to debut her to get cash🤑💰 Jenn didn't like her members being left out and she talked to them about this a lot. This subject of members being jelaous of her bothered her and at a certain period caused their dinamics to go down in the band. She saw them changing and she saved the issue from getting worse by talking to YG coz she truly loved her members.

Jenn is more perverted than what ppl think, she knows a lot of guys and she is very loved by everyone. She is Nice! But she is not innocent! SHE DATES A LOT! ONLY HOT and Tall wealthy GUYS ! MODELS and ULZZANGS! Her mom and dad are in the industry that's why she gets everything she wants and she does work hard for it though! But the opportunities mostly come at her through her parents ! She is very spoiled baby girl.

Kaistal are close friends i mean i saw their pics together and they're still friends and they're still talking and Ji supported her so much when she left SM also he is still supporting her Solo career as an actress now, he texts her to support her works and to give her his opinions, Krystal trusts him a lot he protected her and helped her a lot before! 🤷🏻‍♀️

Ksoo hid his relationship with Ji from his Fam for a long time??

Kaisoo kissed during a truth or dare game when Ji lost and had to kiss Kyungsoo on the lips and Ksoo didn't object it was from before debut! I guess that's when the members knew they were in love?? I don't know abt this! I'm not sure. But it's a possible probability.

Chanbaek did kiss but it was not during a truth or dare game, it was Chanyeol who shocked Baekhyun by kissing him on the lips to shush him down 🤫

Chanbaek living together coz baek is a clean freak and can't stay with many ppl in one place he is a private introvert who loves to stay alone and play videogames! And chanyeol granted him this wish and invited him to live in his house for 2years or more i don't remember 🤷🏻‍♀️

SUHO dated Two members of Apink

Jongdae dated one member of Apink!

Exo are so so close with APink!

Luhan had a crush on Chorong from APink!

Sehun is close with Oh Hayong of Apink! Coz they have the same last name!! He is still close to her and supports her a lot, she is close with Suho too! And all other APink members! Sehun is also close to Gugudan.

Taeyeon loved Baekhyun truly and their breakup left a scar on her heart! She hates men now hahaha I hope she gets to find the love of her life she deserves happiness please give her much support! I want her to be dating Ravi he is a softie and will treat her well!

Yeri of RV is a playgirl she is so bold and asks guys out when she likes them! I love her for that! Girl power! But she is so nice!!!

A lot of news about BTS their Gfs their Exes with Pictures and all their dating history, their toxic company overworking them etc... But I'm not too interested in BTS these things came to me I didn't ask for them🤷🏻‍♀️ lucky? IDK maybe.

And many many many more things. I just can't list everything

I don't know if I answered your question! But that's all that came to my mind! Some things may not be too shocking it surprising or unbelievable like you asked but still they're precious secrets and gave them to y'all for free!

[postmodernbeing]

Shingeki no Kyojin headcanons: 104th training corps (College AU)

Hello, Postmodernbeing here. This time I wanted to write about things that I actually know, since I’m a college student and I’m studing History and Social Sciences I found myself wondering about what would the 104th training corps focus their studies on if all of them had chosen humanities as their career. I hope you find this funny and at least a bit accurate.

IMPORTANT:  I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin, only these HCs are my own. // Might contain a few spoilers from the manga. // English is not my first language and I study uni at Latin America, so scientifical terms/words/concepts may vary. Anyhow, I thank you for reading and for your patience.

Eren Jaeger

He’s passionate about Military History, not to be confused with history of army. Eren’s rather focused in strategies, weapons and semiotics involved in military speech.

First started with books about great wars in modern era. The use of certain weapons took him by surprise due the technological development.

Then he took classes about discourse analysis, semiotics and such, and felt inspired by the discourse reflected in emblems, uniforms, flags, etc.

Eren doesn’t really have a preference between occidental or oriental, North or South, Modern or Ancient settings. He would simply devour all the books that deal with military strategy and warlike conflicts. Although he has more experience and information about great wars in modern era.

He’s fascinated with the inexhaustible human desire of freedom and the extent that it can reach. This fascination might not be very healthy, he concludes.

Also, finds a cruel beauty in violence when showed in freedom and ideals are protected over one’s own life. But he won’t tell his classmates or professors. He knows is a controversial opinion for he’s still aware the implications of massive conflicts and the abuse of power.

One thing led to another, Eren is now taking classes and reading about philosophy in war and anthropological perspectives about violence through time.

He’s so into social movements besides his main interest in college: “No one’s really free until all humanity is”, that’s his life motto pretty much.

Due his readings and researches he decided it was important to develop a political stance about the world’s problems. Eren strongly believes all lives worth the same, but systems and nations had imposed over others and vulnerated other human's lives.

Yes, Eren is anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist.

Mikasa Ackerman

Asian Studies Major / History Minor.

She thinks by studying these degrees, she pays honor to her heritage. Specially to her mother. Her family is the proudest for Mikasa is also the best student in her whole generation.

Mikasa received a scholarship thanks to Azumabito family, who are co-founders of an academic institution dedicated to Asian historical and cultural research. She might as well start working when she graduates.

Although she’s passionate about Japan’s history, she has written a few articles and essays about Asian Studies themselves and the importance of preserving but also divulging by means of art and sciences.

In her essays and research work, she likes to employ tools from many disciplines since she strongly believes all humanities and social sciences serve the very same purpose at scrutinize the social reality all the same. Might as well use demographics, ethnology, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, archeology, and so on. For it proves to bring light into questions that history by itself could answer unsatisfactorily (in Mikasa’s opinion).

Even her professors wonder how she manages to organize that much information and pull it off successfully. She might as well be more brilliant than a few PhD’s students.

Armin Arlert

Prehistoric studies / Archeology

He’s so into the studies about the prehistoric humans and routes of migration.

Passionate about the ocean and natural wonders since kid, Armin believed his career would be environmentalist or geoscience related.

That was the agreement he had with his grandad since middleschool, until he read Paul Rivet’s “The Origins of the American Man” book and captured him thoroughly. The way the book explained logically the diverse theories about global migration and enlisted the challenges of modern archeology -for there are numerous mysteries- simply devoured his conscience.

He knew from the books he’d read that most evidence of the first settlements are deep under dirt or far away in the ocean whose level has risen over the centuries leaving primitive camps – and answers – unreachable. 

That’s the reason he is so eager to study and give his best to contribute both archeology and history disciplines. Also, he’ll forever love the ocean and nature, just leave him do all the fieldwork, please.

Jean Kirstein

History of industry / Industrial heritage / Historical materialism

Jean first started interested in capitalist industries and production development in first world countries. Kind of rejected other visions and explanations since he’d read about positivism studies.

His interest in such matters started when he was a just boy. He often found himself wondering how things were made and that question captured him ever since. As he grew up, he realized that machines and industrial processes were highly involved in the most mundane objects creation.

Nonetheless, he learnt that not always the best machinery was used, nor the best work conditions were available for mass production. From that moment he’d started to read about the First Industrial Revolution and his mind just took off with questions. Invariably, he learned about labour struggle and the transforming power due workforce.

Between his readings and university classes, he’d knew more about labour movements, unions. And in the theoretical aspect, he'd learned about historical materialism analysis.

One could say that Jean possesses a humanistic vision of the implications in mass production under capitalist system along history and nowadays.

Marco Bodt

Royalty's history / Medieval Studies 

I wanted to keep his canonical fascination to royalty and the best way to do that was including Medieval Studies.

Marco would study since the fall of Roman Empire until the latest gossip of royal families all across Europe.

Might get a bit of Eurocentric with his essays but in real life discussions he’s always open to debates about decolonization. He has even read Frantz Fanon books and possesses a critical thinking about colonial countries and their relations with the so named third world.

Nevertheless, Marco finds a strange beauty in the lives of monarchs and he’s interested in study from their education, hobbies, strategies, relationships, everything.

I’d say that his favorite historical period is probably the establishment of the descendants of the barbarian peoples in the new kingdoms such as the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Vandals, Huns, Saxons, Angles and Jutes (holy shit, they're a lot).

Because this would transcend as the beginning of his favorite matter of analysis.

Sasha Braus

History of gastronomy, development of cooking, antropology and archeological studies.

Sasha’s interested in the history that shows human development of food and cooking. She finds wonders when she inquires into cultural aspects from the first farming till modern artistic expressions that would involve food.

Such as gastronomy. But her attention got caught in literature’s food representation too, with its symbols and allegories, also in paintings that belong in still life movement, but also Sasha finds interest when food is used as rhetorical devices (for example: the apple in Adam and Eve’s myth).

She’s curious about primitive systems of irrigation, cultivation, food distribution, adaptation of wild species; as well as the domestication of animals, the diversification of the diet and its link with sedentary life, as well as the subsequent division of labor once the need for food was assured in humanity’ first cities.

Sasha’s convinced that alimentation is the pilar of civilization as we know it. For it involves cultural, artistic, economic, emotion and social aspects. Food is a microcosm of analysis of humanity.

Sasha hasn’t a favorite historical period or setting. But she definitely has a special fascination for first civilizations and their link with alimentation. Also, she likes to study the development gastronomy in occident world around different regions, social classes, and time.

Although, let’s be honest, Sasha would devour (lol, couldn’t help it) ANY book about agriculture, cattle raising, cooking or gastronomy. 

Connie Springer

Micro-history / History of everyday life.

Connie loves his hometown, has a deep respect to his family and traditions. That’s why he finds himself wondering about the most ordinary events that developed in his dear Ragako. 

The book “The Cheese and the Worms” by Carlo Ginzburg changed the way he used to understand history and capture him into meaningful discussions about what he learned was called micro-history.

His favorite quote from that book is: “As with language, culture offers to the individual a horizon of latent possibilities—a flexible and invisible cage in which he can exercise his own conditional liberty.”

Once deep into studying the Italian historians and their works, he decided to give it a try, and ever since he’s mesmerized with the mundane vestiges craftsmen that worked in his village left behind.

Connie’s parents are so proud of him and his achivements, but mostly because he became a passionate academic over human and simple matters, (so down to earth our big baby).

His attitude towards his essays and research works truly shows his great heart and humility. Connie is aware that academic works have no use if they are not meant to teach us about ourselves too and current times.

Empathy and hard work, that’s how one could describe the elements that integrate his recently started academic career.

Historia Reiss

Political History / Statistician

Her father’s family pressured Historia since she was a little girl into studying History just like his dad. For he’s a very famous historian that had made important researches and books about the greatest statesmen of Paradis.

She thought in numerous ways that she could sabotage her career or study any other career without her family’s consent and end with her linage of historians. But she ended up enrolling in tuition and so far, she is trying her best in her studies. Historia swears this is the right path for her.

But don’t let the appearances fool you, even thought she studies her father’s career and the very same branch of history’s discipline, she has her own critical sense and she’s so talented on her own, very meticulous with her research papers.

Definitely wants a PhD about women, power and politics. We stand a Gender Studies Queen.

Her complementary disciplines are Political Sciences. Historia also has a talent for philosophy and owns a diary with all her thoughts about them. She hopes one day she would write a book or a manifesto about an innovative methodology for research and teaching History of Politic Thinking.

Ymir 

Religion’s History / Theology

Just like Historia, Ymir was pressured into studying History. And if she’s totally honest, she still has some doubts about it. Even if she couldn’t imagine herself studying anything else.

Anyways, Ymir thought that she could build her career around topics that she enjoys. So, she finally chose theology for unusual reasons.

Her classmates had grown up in religious families or had experience studying the doctrines they practiced. But she, being an agnostic, found satisfaction in unraveling belief systems in different cultures and time periods.

Albeit she studies in Paradis’ University, she currently has the opportunity of taking an academic exchange at Marley’s University. This only made Ymir more conflicted about her future, for she wants to stay (near Historia) but she’s aware that Marley would offer her more academic opportunities for her specialization.

Nowadays she’s working in some collaborative research paper with some people from Mythological Studies from the Literature department. She’s nailing it, writing some historical studies about titans in Greek mythology and its impact in shaping neoclassical poetry. Her brains ugh, love her.

Reiner Braun

Official History / Biographies of heroes and great wars.

His mother convinced him with numerous books about great national heroes, but mostly because she knew that would mean sure job to her son. All political administration in every level requires of an official chronicler. 

When he started his college courses, Reiner felt motivated and he was actually convinced that he had the vocation. But the more he read the less sure he felt that the academic world was for him. He wondered if he made the right choice. If he did it for him or for his mother.

Stories and myths about heroes have always cheered him up. That gave him purpose and consoled him when feeling down. Or at least it was like that when younger. Reiner truly didn’t feel like himself when regretting his choices, but he couldn’t help it for he was changing in more than a way.

That’s why he decided to experiment with other disciplines and with time he would find joy in historical novels. He would analyze them just as good as a litterateur and research about historical context in the written story AND study the artwork’s context itself.

His favorites theorical books are: “Historical Text as Literary Artifact” by Hayden White and Michel de Certeau’ “The Writing of History”.·        

Heroes stories would always accompany him, just differently now.

Bertolt Hoover

History of mentalities / Les Annales

Intimate relationships, basic habits and attitudes. / Culture

Bertie has always been a much reticent and shy guy. As he grew up, he consolidated his sullen personality, but maintained a friendly attitude towards anyone who needed him. That’s why he thought that the priority in his studies was to be at the service of his classmates.

So, although he was passionate about research and was a fan of the French Les Annales current, he considered his mission to be in the Archive. As a cataloger, organizer and curator of ancient documents.

But the ways of History are always mysterious, and Doctor Magath showed him that other way of being was possible. Before Bertolt picked his specialty, he met Theo Magath, a professor who recently had finished writing a book: “The Idea of Death in Liberio’s Ghetto in Marley During its War Against Eldia (Paradis)” (long-ass titles are historians specialty btw). After Magath ended his book’ presentation, Bertolt reached him. They talked for hours and finally, he felt inspired into pursuing his true passion. Magath gifted him “The Historian’s Craft” by Marc Bloch as a way to reminding him his way.

By the time Bertolt took History of Mentalities as optional class, he already had some basic notions about Les Annales, Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel, Jacques Le Goff and such. 

Being the gentle giant he is, Bertolt finds joy in reading about different lifestyles in diverse cultures. He constantly wonders about the origin of social constructs and the way they shape thinking as much as identity.

This boy is a wonder, he might not be the best in oral presentations or  extracurricular activities but sure as hell he’ll graduate with honors.

Annie Leonhart

Oral history, about institutions. Particularly, police and justice system in early XXs.

Albeit she got into the same University than Bertolt and Reiner, even shared classes and hopes, Annie regularly felt disconnected from her studies. With time she realized it wasn't due her career itself but rather because of the currents that her professors had suggested her taking. Until now.

Talking with Hitch and Marlow about their doubts concerning subjects and departments it came up the topics of history and present time but also oral history. She’d never heard something like that before. So, that very same week, Annie started searching for information about that.

She ended up with more questions: is it all of this just academic journalism? Or maybe sociology? When we can talk about regular history and when it starts being present time? If she introduces interviews due oral history, then that makes it an interdisciplinary work? Which are the best systems for analyzing data? Definitely, she’ll need help from anthropology and sociology departments if she wants to keep going. 

Contrary to her initial prognostic, philosophy and history of historic writing became her new allies, and the text “Le temps présent et l'historiographie contemporaine” (Present Time and Contemporary Historiography) by Bédarida among others, provided Annie another perspective. 

Regarding her favorite topics, she wouldn’t say that she selected them freely. They were just practical preferences. For institutions own extensive archives and numerous functionaries. One way or another, she ended up tangled in judicial system and police issues.

With new tools and object for studying, one could find Annie having a blast as detective too. Even if her academic essays focus on institutions’ history and configuration, she’s also working in corruption and more. She doesn’t do it because she believes it’s the right thing, but besides, the thrill of the tea is spicy. Although she won’t admit it. 

[swedishshieldmaiden]

Any books you recommend? I want to read as much as I can to educate/inform myself on paganism/wicca/witchcraft because I am so fascinated by it all. I would love to practice it. But I want to know a lot before really starting.

So if you have any books that helped you a lot when starting. It would be really great!!

Sorry for not answering this sooner. I saw the question and had to let it sit in my inbox partly due to finals but also because it's a bit of a tricky question for me. Since I am Swedish most of the sources I've read are in Swedish and I would be more than willing to recommend some of them if anyone is interested. However since you asked the question in english I'm gonna have to assume that you'd prefer some sources in english. I am a norse pagan so all of my recommendations will be related to that. Many of these sources are good not only for understanding the norse mythology but also the cultural context in which they were written and the religion was practiced in.

Before I begin to answer this I think it is important that I mention that you can practice in pretty much any way you want. Considering we have quite little source material from the actual viking age about exact practices during rituals it is quite hard to say what the RIGHT way to worship is. The one thing I can say is to be respectful towards the Gods and towards nature. Now let's get into the meat of this question.

As some of you are aware I'm currently taking a university course in Old Norse religion at my university. Some of the sources I've come in contact through this course are in english so I'll start by recommending them!

1. More than Mythology: Narratives, Practices and Regional Distribution in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Religions by Catharina Raudvere and Jens Peter Schjødt. (Specifically the chapter called "Continuity, Change and Regional Variation in Old Norse Religion", but I'm sure the whole book is interesting. It's available on google books.)

2. Old Norse Religion in Long Term Perspectives: Origins, Changes and Interactions by Anders Andrén. (Haven't had the time to read this one yet but I will soon and it looks really promising. Also available on google books.)

There were a few more in english but i think these two were the most relevant. They are academic books however and focus a lot on historical facts and theories. As for actual, modern day practice I'd recommend internet sources.

1. https://asa-community.se/ Here is a link to one of the more serious norse pagan groups in Sweden. The website has the option to be viewed in english. I am not part of this group but from what I have heard and seen on their website they are serious in their worship and it's founded on good principles. They might not offer the most in terms of facts but they have some good tips for how to think and how to practice the norse pagan faith, specially if you are new and need some guidance. Of course this is just one way to do it, there are multiple ways to worship the Gods as stated above.

2. Life and Afterlife: Dealing with the Dead in the Viking Age by Neil Price: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu2gN8n15_A (A lecture by the archaeologist Neil Price at the University of Cornell. It's about practices concerning burials and an analysis of Ibn Fadlan's text about meeting with Rus vikings. I'm sorry, I'm a history major so these sorts of videos and sources are important to me).

3. Jackon Crawford on YouTube. He is a scholar at the University of Colorado and specialises in Old Norse. His videos are good but sadly I watch them quite rarely. https://www.youtube.com/c/JacksonCrawford/videos

4. Lastly of course the eddas and other norse literature. However I am unsure what english translations are good.

Finally, before I finish this post bc it got super long, a book that I love and perhaps was more of what you were asking for anon.

1. Norse Gods by Johan Egerkrans. (Beautiful illustrations that accompany some of the stories from the Eddas in an easy to read way).

Sources are important and it is a constant issue within this community to know which sources are good and which are less good. All sources should of course be approached with a critical lens! I'm sorry that this answer is a bit all over the place, I had a hard time answering this question tbh. I hope it is a bit helpful at least. I did not include any sources about wicca/witch stuff bc I do not identify as a witch. For that I'd have to direct you, anon, to a different blog I'm afraid.

Thank you for reading and thank you for asking anon!

[lorei-writes]

Match-Up #31

Hi I’m Ana and I’m new at this, if it’s wrong don’t do it. Sorry for my poor english and and I forgot the pet peeves

Ah, hello, Ana @a6r6o6k! I hope you’ll have plenty fun in the fandom :D And don’t worry, it’ll be all good. The match-making shall begin! >:3

*5 positive qualities: 📍I think I’m intelligent (but I don’t really know) 📍 I’m curious: so I like to know the why of the things 📍Loyal: even if I like to see and have other options I always want to keep with the same people 📍I like to help, I’m studying psychology to understand people and help them: if I can help being a psychologist GREAT, if I need to do something else it’s also GREAT. 📍I’m adventurous if I have the security

To begin with, let’s consider intelligence and curiosity together. As per usual in such situations, I’d dare look more so towards the rather intellectual suitors who could match such characteristics - perhaps leaning a bit more towards the encouraging ones, the ones who simply challenge the people around them to think more.

Nobunaga (+2) Mitsuhide (+2) Mitsunari (+1) Masamune (+1) Shingen (+2) Sasuke (+2)

Now, loyalty! Hmm... The way you describe it... I suppose it could be understood either as a sign of investing in relationships, even despite some differences... Although I do think some could take it as choosing to stay in relationship at the expense of your ideals. Let’s see how those two approaches balance out.

Nobunaga (+1) Mitsuhide (-1) Hideyoshi (+1) Mitsunari (+1) Ieyasu (-1) Masamune (-1) Kenshin (+1) Shingen (+1)

Ah, helping others! Oh love, with psychology... I mean, hm, how do I put it? Please, do not become a therapist for all of our Ikemen, because gash, that’s a real threat with how sad most of them is ;-; But, that aside, I think most suitors would understand the drive to help others very well... Although some perhaps a tiny bit more than others.

Hideyoshi (+1) Ieyasu (+1) Kenshin (+1) Shingen (+1)

Adventurous, if provided with enough support? Ha, that brings some suitors to mind! (I picked those who are less likely to suddenly prank their partner with something potentially dangerous, even if just for laughs).

Mitsuhide (+1) Masamune (+1) Kenshin (+1)

*5 negative qualities: 📍Picky eater (I can’t eat thing with certain textures like snails, or things very bitter or acid) 📍I’m very pessimistic, sometimes realistic but more pessimistic: I don’t have depression, but there is history of depression in my family. 📍Easily distracted: I have ADD (Attentive Deficit Disorder), so I have the concentration time spam of a fish, even e with the things I like, if I have to use all my attention I can, but if not usually I doing 5 things at the same time. 📍I very disorganised: I think it comes with the ADD but I don’t know 📍I don’t have the knowledge of the social clues, so I’m very talkative sometimes and very silent other times.

Picky eater? Oh, there should be some suitors who could either understand that, or who could try to remedy that... Although the latter option may come with a bit of a rocky start, haha.

Mitsuhide (+1) Hideyoshi (+1) Mitsunari (+1) Masamune (+1)

Hmm... So you say you tend to lean more so towards pessimism? I suppose suitors who would amplify that could be a bad choice... But perhaps those that have more of a soothing, grounding aura?

Mitsuhide (+1) Hideyoshi (-1) Mitsunari (+1) Ieyasu (-1) Masamune (+1) Kenshin (-1)

To be honest, I can think of only one character that would be annoyed by deficits of attention. Same with lack of understanding of social situations and such (also, I can high-five you on that).

Ieyasu (-2)

As for being disorganized... I think it could prove troublesome when in relationship with some suitors who also share this characteristic.

Hideyoshi (+1) Mitsunari (-1)

1st Summary

Mitsuhide (+4) Shingen (+4) Nobunaga (+3) Hideyoshi (+3) Mitsunari (+3) Masamune (+3) Kenshin (+2) Sasuke (+2) Ieyasu (-3)

*5 likes: 📍Read: everything (fantasy, culture, history...). Knowledge is power. 📍I would like to travel to learn language to understand people 📍Sweet things: I love sweet things 📍Animals: I wanted to be a veterinarian but I couldn’t enter in the University 📍Listening and observe people

Points distributed for likes:

Nobunaga (+3) - he would agree with such views on knowledge, sweet things, travel Mitsuhide (+3) - views on knowledge, travel, observing people Mitsunari (+1) - reading Ieyasu (+2) - views on knowledge, animals (veterinary in particular) Masamune (+1) - travel Shingen (+3) - views on knowledge, sweets, observing people Sasuke (+3) - observing people, reading, travel

* 5 dislikes: 📍I have a big scar in the side of the chest, combined with a hunched back and two breast of different size it makes me uncomfortable, so my body. 📍Get my freedom limited 📍Have to stay still 📍Just do things because the people talk 📍I have fear to be alone, like not psychically, but emotionally

A break from match-up. Oh love, we all have our imperfections, and what you mentioned in the first point are perfectly human traits. Breasts generally are of a different size, and it can vary a lot - and which is bigger can even change depending on the point in time of your menstrual cycle. Scars tell stories of what we went through and what makes us ourselves. We all have some, smaller, bigger ones, but they are there... And, lastly, as a person who used to have very bad posture (somewhat hunched back and some more): you may want to look into whether it could potentially cause some complications later on. Of course, it may not be a concern, but you know. Caring about your body is very important.

So, with that, some extra points, specifically for suitors who know how to cheer on their lover and who cherish them openly.

Mitsuhide (+1) Masamune (+1) Shingen (+1)

Points distributed for dislikes:

Nobunaga (-2) - limited freedom, emotionally aloof at times Ieyasu (-1) - may give the aura that you have to do something, because he says so, or because somebody says so, some norm says so Masamune (-1) - emotionally aloof at times Kenshin (-2) - emotionally aloof at times, limited freedom Shingen (-1) - emotionally aloof at times

2nd Summary

Mitsuhide (+8) Shingen (+7) Nobunaga (+4) Mitsunari (+4) Masamune (+4) Hideyoshi (+3) Sasuke (+5) Ieyasu (-2)

Only characters with positive value by their names will be considered in the final stages of the match-up.

* Relationship dealbreakers: 📍I don’t think I have any relationship dealbreakers except the mentioned in the pet peeves(it would be my first relationship), but I would not like be cheated without a reason (you don’t trust me so you don’t tell me the plan, okay; you don’t tell me all the information to tease me, okay; you just lie to me to hurt me, not okay) 📍Okey, may be I have 1 or 2 dealbreakers: I don’t stand people that treats others like garbage just because (if the other did something okay, but just because no) 📍Being ignored 📍People that is very possessive physically and emotionally: I need to talk and touch my friends. 📍People that believe that just because I can’t do things: like “you’re a woman you can’t fight” or “you can’t show so much skin”... 📍People that assume things: I like to be asked. 📍People that touch me without permission: if is a bet or a game I can, but without permission I can’t.

Oh, so I should consider pet peeves as dealbreakers?

* Up to 3 pet peeves: dealbreakers v.2 📍Poor hygiene 📍Be cheated 📍Constant criticism

Nobunaga (+4) & Masamune (+4) - too touchy, may not ask for permission first, they do struggle with the idea of consent at first Hideyoshi (+3) - may initially assume some things

* 3 Wild Cards: 📍I’m very naive and believe what people say so... if someone says “I don’t like/love you” in the real life I would believe them. 📍I think that I’m like a cat: I want a home base to return but I want to have the freedom to explore my environment. I want to have someone to return but with freedom to leave 📍My type of love is Words of affirmation

Mitsuhide & Shingen (-1) - they may use this sort of naivety and say such things, although they’d most likely have a good reason for it (hence not cross out for meeting a dealbreaker)

*Most disliked characters: 📍Kennyo: I don’t like that he is trying to kill me. 📍Ranmaru: I see him like a little brother 📍Mitsunari: the same as Ranmaru 📍Motonari: sorry Motonari, you’re very hot but the chains and necklaces are out of fashion

Mitsunari (+4)

Final Results

Mitsuhide (+7) Shingen (+6) Sasuke (+5)

Mitsuhide

Confessed first: You, although he didn’t realise you truly did mean it and weren’t just playing a role.

Makes tea in the morning: Mitsuhide. Having learnt of your problems with focus, he decided to make sure you’d at least eat something in the morning too - it made him realise how he worried others, so to say.

Hogs blankets at night: There’s no hogging blankets involved. He always has a spare blanket on hand. Sometimes you wonder whether there’s an infinity of blankets hidden around... Although, quite honestly, he is just more likely to go in for a hug if you did steal one from him.

Is the little spoon: On most days, you.

Possible points for conflict: Given his line of work, it happens sometimes that he has to pretend, to say things he does not mean. At times he may forget of how literally you take his words as well.

Free time ideas: Strolling through the town, visiting the marketplace, playing with his pet fox (Chimaki), just resting in the gardens of his manor.

Favourite date spot: The quiet and cosy teashop in the town.

A secret you share: He adores how literal you can be, but sometimes... Sometimes it causes for you to overwork yourself, or get otherwise hurt. Whenever such things happen, he gently urges you to stay inside while he lies on your behalf.

His favourite thing about you: How open you are. He fell for you, which means everything that you are, but he is still amazed by the fact that you dare be so direct and trusting. In his mind, it is a sign of a strong heart.

His message to you: “What is it, little mouse?” ”You’re not convinced you deserve so much?” ”My, my... Then let me prove to you how gorgeous you are. After all, you’re the only one I dare want.”

[seyesnyl]

Examining the history of queer comics in the US

As previously mentioned, I am interested in creating graphic novels or comics during my practice as an illustrator. As a Nigerian, I also wish to include Nigerian elements in my comics and social commentary about the state of my home country. I want to comment on the injustices being faced by minority groups in tasteful ways in both metaphorical - like some of my favorite superhero comics- and literal as comic journalism. A particular social injustice I am interested in that the Nigerian government seems unwilling to budge on is its treatment of LGBTQIA+ people.

Considering the laws set in place against LGBTQIA people in Nigeria, a graphic novel about the situation will be controversial. I am intrigued to research how entertainment media (specifically, comics) navigated representing queer issues and topics in other countries that previously had unfavorable laws and attitudes towards queer people but have changed over time

The focus for this post will be the United States of America with a look at the correlation between the developments in the representation of queerness in comics and other mass media and the change in the country’s attitudes towards queer people.

In 1954, major U.S. publishers formed the Comics Magazine Association of America and its censorship arm, the Comics Code Authority (CCA 1954). This has been said to be in response to concerns over the explicit violence and sexual themes in depictions of superheroes (Bramlett, Cook and Meskin, 2016). The sexual themes that seemed queer in these comics were largely sub-textual and highlight the prejudice and paranoia against queer possibilities like what the Nigerian government currently emulates. This act of censorship brought to a halt any subtle references to gender nonconformity and same-sex attraction in mainstream comics.

Because of the restrictions in mainstream publishing, queer comic strips started to appear in underground comics and adult magazines in the 1960s. Chute (2008) talks about the rise of underground comics during this period as a reaction to the censorious content code that debilitated the mainstream industry and describes them as an influential cultural vehicle, challenging and arresting because they meditated on the violation of taboo. According to Murphy (2014), the world’s first gay comic strip was arguably Harry Chess: That Man from A.U.N.T.I.E., (Fig. 01) published from 1965 to ’66. However, other scholars like McGurk (2018), have pointed out earlier presences of queer comics - even though subliminal- like Lucy and Sophie Say Goodbye (Fig. 02) which was published weekly in newspapers in 1905, written and drawn by an unidentified artist. In the same decade as Harry Chess, Tuoko Laaksonen illustrated and released  another popular gay comic series titled 'Kake', under the pseudonym, Tom of Finland.

(Fig 01) Harry Chess That Man from A.U.N.T.I.E. https://glreview.org/article/the-lives-and-times-of-harry-chess/ 

(Fig. 02) Lucy and Sophie Say Goodbye, May 21, 1905. Chicago Tribune.

Unlike Lucy and Sophie Say Goodbye, which could be interpreted as an exaggerated parody of women's social behavior, Harry Chess and Kake were inherently sexual and left little for subtext. Murphy (2014) describes the publication of Harry Chess as a key shift in gay publications and gay politics, and Ajuan Mance in The Routledge Companion to books noted that the explicit sex in strips of the two comics “created both a space and a demand for broader portrayals of gay men’s lives”. (Bramlett, Cook and Meskin, 2016).

To provide context for where the United States was in laws concerning queer rights in the ’60s, Illinois had just become the first U.S. state to decriminalize homosexuality by repealing its sodomy laws, and several milestone protests including the Stonewall Riot occurred during the decade The Supreme Court had also ruled in favor of an LGBT magazine when a suit was filed against them after the U.S. Postal Service and FBI declared the magazine obscene material. (Milestones in the American Gay Rights Movement | American Experience | PBS, 2021). There had been little progress in legal rights compared to the country’s present status, but queer Americans were visibly fighting for them.

The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the next wave of queer comics like Wendel, It’s a Gay Life, Leonard and Larry, Poppers and Chelsea Boys, which were all published in gay magazines. These comics reflected their primarily gay male readership in that the characters “attended gay pride celebrations, shopped at LGBTQ bookstores, and responded to the AIDS crisis, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, all while falling in and out of love.” (Bramlett, Cook and Meskin, 2016).

It was not until about 28 years later in Marvel’s Captain America Vol. 1 #270 (1982) that either of the large mainstream comics publishers (Marvel and DC) featured a story-line depicting queer or trans characters (Bramlett, Cook and Meskin, 2016). In this issue, Captain America helps his childhood best friend, Arnie, by rescuing Arnie’s close friend, Michael. Through subtext, it seemed to become clear to Captain America that Arnie and Michael were, in fact, a couple. (https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Captain_America_Vol_1_270).

(Fig. 03) Cover of Marvel’s Captain America Vol. 1 #270 (1982)(https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Captain_America_Vol_1_270). 

Throughout the 1980s, more queer characters were depicted, although indirectly and still with subtext like Captain America’s Arnie. The CCA, in response to the greater inclusion of LGBTQ characters and themes in the film and other popular media forms, revised its Code to lift its prohibitions against queer characters and content. CCA-approved comics however were to avoid the graphic depiction of “sexual activity” and that depictions of adult relationships, “be presented with good taste, sensitivity, and in a manner, which will be acceptable by a mass audience” (CCA 1989).

Over the years to date, DC and Marvel have introduced characters explicitly stating their orientation, including Northstar, an X-Men character; members of The Runaways and the Young Avengers; and notably Batwoman, who came out as a lesbian. The popular Archie Comics in 2010 introduced a gay character named Kevin Keller (Fig. 04) who eventually had his spinoff comic in 2012. Ajuan Mance noted the debut of Kevin Keller as queer attracted a higher level of attention than any Marvel or DC character (Bramlett, Cook and Meskin, 2016). In 2014, Kelvin Keller got married to his spouse in the Life with Archie series (Fig. 05) a few years after New York and other US states legalized same-sex marriage and a year before the Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal.

(Fig. 04) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11661956-kevin-keller

(Fig. 05) https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2019/06/the-wedding-issue-pride-edition-kevin-keller-and-clay-walker/

Taking this study for use in the Nigerian context can be applied in different ways. In the US, when the laws were restrictive and limiting towards queer content, the creators of comics and graphic novels under mainstream publishers had to operate in line with the laws. The creators could merely represent queer people through subtext. Unambiguous representation was only viewed through underground magazines from the ’60s up to the ’80s. In today’s age, Nigeria still has comparable, if not more regressive laws, but the Internet provides a similar and arguably better platform than the 20th century underground comics did.

The ease of access and ability to self-publish can cut out the publishing middleman, and I can illustrate distribute the stories I want via the Internet and social media platforms. Of course, if I am fortunate to secure a publishing deal for other ideas I have, I can employ subtext to include queer elements. 

I will carry out more research on the best ways to present these proposed comics. Do I go in the explicit and sexually charged direction like Harry Chess and Kake to show a boldness and an unapologetic display of Nigerian queerness? Do I go the route of illustrating average Nigerian queer people to reflect their humanity hopefully to convince prejudiced people that queerness is not an abnormality? Or do I represent queerness in my comics for the Nigerian queer people to identify themselves in the media? These questions relate to the audience I want to reach because they will inform the content I want to create.

References

Bramlett, F., Cook, R. and Meskin, A., 2016, The Routledge Companion To Comics, Taylor & Francis Group.

Chute, H. 2008, "Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative", PMLA : Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. 123, no. 2, pp. 452-465.

McGurk, C., 2018, Lovers, enemies, and friends: The complex and coded early history of lesbian comic strip characters, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 22:4, 336-353, DOI: 10.1080/10894160.2018.1449502

Murphy, M., 2014, The Lives and Times of Harry Chess, The Gay & Lesbian Review , 21(2): 22– 24.

Pbs.org. 2021. Milestones In The American Gay Rights Movement | American Experience | PBS. [online] Available at: <https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/stonewall-milestones-american-gay-rights-movement/> [Accessed 12 January 2021].

[littlyon]

I would love to hear your rant about your hatred for the concept of literature

Okay. So here’s the thing about literature and why I hate the concept of Literature with a capital L. Bear in mind this is an American perspective.

Generally speaking, when your average Joe talks about “literature”, they’re referring to the material that was taught in high school: old, dry, pretentious, written by middle-aged white men, etc. Now, that’s not always the case anymore (for instance, we read The Hunger Games and The Book Thief in a couple of my English classes, both modern), but even so, the general cultural understanding of literature derives from what people are taught, which tends towards that type of content.

When you get into higher academic circles, the concept is even more solidified. There is so much criticism and theory out there about what Literature is, and what qualifies as Literature, and there’s an incredible amount of shame leveraged towards people who argue against what’s been normative over the past century. Think about how much vitriol the Twilight fans got, or the embarrassment at admitting you read fanfiction in non-online circles. A lot of that is sexism and homophobia, since society in general really doesn’t like it when media is aimed at women or queer people, but those societal pressures are part and parcel with how we define Real Literature. 

Academia overall is a male-dominated and male-created field. What is canonized as Real Literature by the literary field is largely material that appeals to that demographic. Books written by straight white men about straight white men are the most prominent (i.e. Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby). Works predating 1900 come next (i.e. Jane Austen). Following that come works by marginalized groups about being marginalized (Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, etc). 

That’s not even getting into genre; it’s very rare to see anything other than realistic or historical fiction considered Literature, unless it’s suitably old. Aasimov and Heinlein count, Tolkein sometimes counts, Dracula and Frankenstein count, but modern scifi and fantasy rarely enter the conversation when you talk about Literature. “Genre fiction” is a derogatory term in academic circles, or at least a disrespectful one.

Now this is not to say that books considered Real Literature are inherently bad, or that you shouldn’t read them. There are things to gain from Austen and Salinger. The issue is that in mainstream academic circles and cultural consciousness, we don’t look beyond these Officially Canonized works when discussing literature. (Incidentally, this is why I studied Comparative Literature instead of English Literature; the body of work that’s looked at is much broader, and allows for more nuance, plus the focus is on examining the interplay of culture and literature. A lot of what we read in CompLit classes would not have counted as Literature by mainstream academic standards.) 

So why is this a problem? Well to start with, it limits the lens through which people see literature, and thereby the lens through which people see the world. There’s a pretty common response teachers will give when asked why students have to read all this stuff, which is that literature helps us understand culture. This is true. However, if your window into culture is the pen of a straight white man from the 1960s, you’re not actually getting an accurate fix on the culture of wherever the book is from. If the point of literature is to learn about the rest of the world, you need to be able to access multiple perspectives, not just the perspectives deemed acceptable by high academia.

But accessing those perspectives is hard, because they’re not respected by high academia. Works that fall outside of the Literature definition are less likely to be considered important enough to distribute across language lines. Now, there’s a bit of an exception for English literature here, since that’s what dominates the market; there are plenty of translations of English YA and scifi/fantasy and romance novels etc. It’s the other way where it suffers. Non-English literature is just as important to the world as English literature, but because the market is dominated by English, they don’t get as much traction. I have no idea what, say, a teenager in France reads, let alone China or Saudi Arabia - countries the English-speaking world has less of a boner for. The to-English translation market is more geared towards the classics and Literature than it is towards popular fiction.

The other big issue with the perception of literature forwarded by academia is format. Throughout this I’ve been talking about books and the written word, which is an incredibly Western perspective. Literature encompasses so much more than that. Typically literature is defined as “written works”, but that eliminates a great body of work that by all rights should count. I would say that a better broad definition would be “composed works”. A folktale doesn’t become literature when it’s put to paper; it was already part of the literary canon of its culture before it was validated by ink. 

This focus on the written word stems largely from colonialism: the counterpoint of “civilized” vs. “uncivilized”, with written tradition being seen as one of the signs of civilization. There is a lot of classism and racism inherent in the academic definition of literature, since it tends to rely on the novel, the short story, the essay, and the poem as its main components. Any type of media or method of storytelling or conveying information that isn’t one of those four aforementioned formats has a hell of a time being seen as anything but “popular literature,” if the word “literature” is appended to it at all. This especially applies to methods of storytelling that do not jibe well with being written down; oral storytelling traditions are usually not considered Literature, or often considered sophisticated. Hell, songs are barely considered literature; there was a big controversy over Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize For Literature back in 2016 because people weren’t sure his works should count.

But under the paradigm of literature as “composed works”, a lot of media that isn’t typically considered literature becomes so. It gives us that broader perspective on the world. It’s incredibly damaging to discount pieces of a culture’s history or storytelling simply because they don’t fit into the narrow definition of Literature as put forth by Western academia. And that’s why I hate the idea of Literature as a concept: it asks us to set guidelines for what should be respected, and what should be discarded. Capital-L Literature inherently sets itself as superior to everything else, and defines itself as What Should Be Focused On. Anything not included in that is derided and disrespected, and because of what doesn’t fit, it contributes to the derision and disrespect of marginalized groups and the devaluing of their narratives and experiences.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 27, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

America is in a watershed moment. Since the 1980s, the country has focused on individualism: the idea that the expansion of the federal government after the Depression in the 1930s created a form of collectivism that we must destroy by cutting taxes and slashing regulation to leave individuals free to do as they wish.

Domestically, that ideology meant dismantling government regulation, social safety networks, and public infrastructure projects. Internationally, it meant a form of “cowboy diplomacy” in which the U.S. usually acted on its own to rebuild nations in our image.

Now, President Joe Biden appears to be trying to bring back a focus on the common good.

For all that Republicans today insist that individualism is the heart of Americanism, in fact the history of federal protection of the common good began in the 1860s with their own ancestors, led by Abraham Lincoln, who wrote: “The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves---in their separate, and individual capacities.”

The contrast between these two ideologies has been stark this week.

On the one hand are those who insist that the government cannot limit an individual’s rights by mandating either masks or vaccines, even in the face of the deadly Delta variant of the coronavirus that is, once again, taking more than 1000 American lives a day.

In New York, where Mayor Bill de Blasio has required teachers to be vaccinated, the city’s largest police union has said it will sue if a vaccine is mandated for its members.

In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott on Wednesday issued an executive order prohibiting any government office or any private entity receiving government funds from requiring vaccines.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has also forbidden mask mandates, but today Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Cooper ruled that DeSantis’s order is unconstitutional. Cooper pointed out that in 1914 and 1939, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that individual rights take a back seat to public safety: individuals can drink alcohol, for example, but not drive drunk. DeSantis was scathing of the opinion and has vowed to appeal. Meanwhile, NBC News reported this week that information about the coronavirus in Florida, as well as Georgia, is no longer easily available on government websites.

On the other hand, as predicted, the full approval of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine by the Food and Drug Administration has prompted a flood of vaccine mandates.

The investigation into the events of January 6, when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, also showcases the tension between individualism and community.

Yesterday, after months in which Republicans, including former president Donald Trump, called for the release of the identity of the officer who shot Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt, Capitol Police officer Lieutenant Michael Byrd, the 28-year veteran of the force who shot Babbitt, gave an interview to Lester Holt of NBC News.

Right-wing activists have called Babbitt a martyr murdered by the government, but Byrd explained that he was responsible for protecting 60 to 80 members of the House and their staffers. As rioters smashed the glass doors leading into the House chamber, Byrd repeatedly called for them to get back. When Ashli Babbitt climbed through the broken door, he shot her in the shoulder. She later died from her injuries. Byrd said he was doing his job to protect our government. “I know that day I saved countless lives,” Byrd told Holt. “I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that’s my job.”

The conflict between individualism and society also became clear today as the House select committee looking into the attack asked social media giants to turn over “all reviews, studies, reports, data, analyses, and communications” they had gathered about disinformation distributed by both foreign and domestic actors, as well as information about “domestic violent extremists” who participated in the attack.

Representative Jim Banks (R-IN) immediately responded that “Congress has no general power to inquire into private affairs and to compel disclosure….” He urged telecommunications companies and Facebook not to hand over any materials, calling their effort an “authoritarian undertaking.” Banks told Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson that Republicans should punish every lawmaker investigating the January 6 insurrection if they retake control of Congress in 2022.

Biden’s new turn is especially obvious tonight in international affairs. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, a country we entered almost 20 years ago with a clear mission that became muddied almost immediately, has sparked Republican criticism for what many describe as a U.S. defeat.

Since he took office, Biden has insisted on shifting American foreign policy away from U.S. troops alone on the ground toward multilateral pressure using finances and technology.

After yesterday’s bombing in Kabul took the lives of 160 Afghans and 13 American military personnel, Biden warned ISIS-K: "We will hunt you down and make you pay.”

Tonight, a new warning from the State Department warning Americans at the gates of the Kabul airport to “leave immediately” came just before a spokesman for CENTCOM, the United States Central Command in the Defense Department overseeing the Middle East, announced: "U.S. military forces conducted an over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation today against an ISIS-K planner. The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangarhar Province of Afghanistan. Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties."

Biden’s strike on ISIS-K demonstrated the nation's over-the-horizon technologies that he hopes will replace troops. Even still, the administration continues to call for international cooperation. In a press conference today, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby responded to a question about U.S. control in Afghanistan by saying: “It’s not about U.S. control in the Indo-Pacific. It’s about protecting our country from threats and challenges that emanate from that part of the world. And it’s about revitalizing our network of alliances and partnerships to help our partners in the international community do the same.“

Meanwhile, this afternoon, news broke that the Taliban has asked the United States to keep a diplomatic presence in the country even after it ends its military mission. The Taliban continues to hope for international recognition, in part to claw back some of the aid that western countries—especially the U.S.—will no longer provide, as well as to try to get the country’s billions in assets unfrozen.

A continued diplomatic presence in Afghanistan would make it easier to continue to get allies and U.S. citizens out of the country, but State Department spokesman Ned Price said the idea is a nonstarter unless a future Afghan government protects the rights of its citizens, including its women, and refuses to harbor terrorists. Price also emphasized that the U.S. would not make this decision without consulting allies. “This is not just a discussion the United States will have to decide for itself.… We are coordinating with our international partners, again to share ideas, to ensure that we are sending the appropriate signals and messages to the Taliban,” he said.

Evacuations from Afghanistan continue. Since August 14, they have topped 110,000, with 12,500 people in the last 24 hours.

Perhaps the news story that best illustrates the tension today between individualism and using the government to help everyone is about a natural disaster. Hurricane Ida, which formed in the Caribbean yesterday, is barreling toward the U.S. Gulf Coast. When it hit western Cuba today, it was a Category 1 storm, but meteorologists expect it to pick up speed as it crosses the warm gulf, becoming a Category 4 storm by the time it hits the U.S. coastline. The area from Louisiana to Florida is in the storm’s path. New Orleans could see winds of up to 110 miles an hour and a storm surge of as much as 11 feet. Louisiana officials issued evacuation orders today.

The storm is expected to hit Sunday evening, exactly 16 years after Hurricane Katrina did. But this time, there is another complication: this is the very part of the country suffering terribly right now from coronavirus. Standing firm on individual rights, only about 40% of Louisiana’s population has been vaccinated, and hospitals are already stretched thin.

Today, President Biden declared an emergency in Louisiana, ordering federal assistance from the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the region ahead of the storm, trying to head off a catastrophe. The federal government will also help to pay the costs of the emergency.

—-

Notes:

https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/pentagon-officials-hank-taylor-john-kirby-press-briefing-transcript-august-27-afghanistan-update

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/27/weather/tropical-storm-ida-friday/index.html

https://apnews.com/article/health-louisiana-coronavirus-pandemic-1a2264b5a43033ed70fe9790c2e89437

NYPD story is from the New York Post, but a citation from them always stops the delivery of lots of letters, so I’m going to suggest people look for it themselves.

https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/EO-GA-39_prohibiting_vaccine_mandates_and_vaccine_passports_IMAGE_08-25-2021.pdf

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/08/27/president-joseph-r-biden-jr-approves-louisiana-emergency-declaration-2/

://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/27/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-live-updates/#link-KFQMWZKFSNH4DBBMK2VAJMAZF4

Meredith Lee @meredithlleeCENTCOM: "U.S. military forces conducted an over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation today against an ISIS-K planner. The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangahar Province of Afghanistan. Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties."

78 Retweets151 Likes

August 28th 2021

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/08/27/afghanistan-live-updates-taliban-kabul-news/5611093001/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1277715

https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-health-education-florida-coronavirus-pandemic-1908088a0b5c5b02d89fd7e007822408

Ryan Struyk @ryanstruykThe United States is now reporting 1,194 new coronavirus deaths per day, the highest seven-day average since March 19, according to data from @CNN and Johns Hopkins University.

246 Retweets677 Likes

August 27th 2021

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/officer-who-shot-ashli-babbitt-during-capitol-riot-breaks-silence-n1277736

Jim Banks @RepJimBanksRead my letter to 1/6 Chair @BennieGThompson about his norm shattering decision to spy on his colleagues. @ATT @Verizon @TMobile @Facebook @Twitter @FCC

136 Retweets311 Likes

August 27th 2021

/photo/2

https://news.yahoo.com/gop-rep-jim-banks-republicans-195845753.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/27/politics/us-military-airstrike-isis-k-planner-afghanistan/index.html

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[pierreslittleredblog]

Inside the Eastern Bloc: A Brief History Of The Ex-USSR

“All victories inevitably come at a cost.” ‑ Mikhaïl Gorbachev, HBO Chernobyl

Nikola Tesla Boulevard on a summer evening, Serbia - Photo Source: Pierre (PLRB)

A Tale Of Winners & Losers

Nothing feels more hopeless than a self-destructing world around you. We often forget how easy we have it, snuggled in our cocoons of excessive love and smothering. Sometimes, we need to be remembered who we are and where we come from. Not too long ago did our grandparents struggled and fought for their basic needs. Of course, now, with our technology, we don’t even have to worry about the basic survival priorities of the past. With the simple click of a button, we can have everything delivered to our doorstep without even raising an arm.

 Ah, doesn’t it feel good to taste the sweet fruits of our capitalistic labor? Isn’t it great to be the “winners” of today’s world? Sometimes, we tend to forget that our victories come at a great cost. Sometimes, we forget to humanize our enemies. They too can love, laugh, cry and fear. They too, are humans like us.

Propaganda poster of Yuri Gagarin - Photo Source: @soviet.propaganda on Instagram

Watch Out For The Communist!

Let me ask you a question: How many times have you heard the word “communist” on the news? My guess of your answer is quite a few times. Although rare, sometimes it is used simply to describe the people that identify with the socialist Marxist-Leninist ideology. Most of the time though, it is used as a pure and simple insult. An insult that describes everything we don’t understand, fear, and dislike. 

This exact description though is exactly what our grandparents were told about the red flag-carrying “commies” over in the eastern bloc. When the canons of wars tear through the skies, governments tend to create a sense of unity within their population to, somehow, justify the war on a national scale. They dehumanize their enemies and convince us that we must fear the others, and win this war at all cost (as they did with Vietnam). 

But when we don’t even know who our enemies are, how can we fully grasp what’s at stake?

Propaganda poster of Lenin’s revolution - Photo Source: @comrade_quotes on Instagram

Rise Up, Comrade!

Before getting into the modern Soviet Union (the 1970s-1990s), let’s focus on the beginning. If you went over to the former republics of the Soviet Union in 2021, you would notice how terrible everything looks. Potholes, crumbling buildings, outdated trolleybuses, and subway cars, beaten up Lada’s plowing through knee-deep puddles under the unimpressed look of the driver’s face. 

When you come to witness this spectacle in person, it is easy to assume that the Soviets must’ve had it rough back in the day, and boy you would’ve been right. Once the Tsars were no more, the new Soviet party lead by the revolutionist Vladimir Lenin promised a bright and equal future turned on the workers and the equal distribution of their labor. However, this promise wouldn’t be easy to achieve. What followed afterward were decades and decades of purges, wars, hard work, and brutal leadership by our good ol’ friend Comrade Stalin. Some argue about Uncle Joe’s good intentions, but this is not what I want to focus on. Here I want to talk about the last soviet’s aspirations and dreams, the ones our western leaders promised to crush for our freedom.

Haludovo Palace of Kirk, Croatia - Photo Source: @socmod on Instagram

For The Happiness Of All Mankind

The 1970s was a great time to be a Soviet. If you were a citizen, you would’ve been able to move into brand new apartments, get a stable job in any industry you wish, get all the food you can eat, obtain the diploma you wanted, have access to healthcare, you would even be able to get a brand new Lada, and all for free! Yes, you’ve read that right: for free. 

Communism in the Soviet Union wasn’t about a totalitarian regime and oppressing its citizens (as the western propaganda wants us to believe), it was about universal free access to one’s every need. Now of course there were some questionable policies such as limited free speech and limited access to the outside world beyond the iron curtain (however more and more freedoms were given to the Soviets in the 1980s with the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev into office). The Soviet Union wasn’t lacking behind in technology either, in fact, it was the world’s second industrial and military superpower back in its heyday! They even sent the world’s first man into space. 

This is what the real Soviet Union was about: unity and comradeship. They truly had a will to build a greater future for humanity and like us today, they had reached such a level of comfort that a bright future was taken for granted by everybody in the USSR. 

However, this candor belief in a great future would suddenly come to a brutal end.

Edge of the Chernobyl Red Forest, Ukraine - Photo Source: Pierre (PLRB)

Porridge With A Side Of Radiation

It’s April 26th, 1986. In a small town of the Ukrainian SSR, citizens are eating breakfast and preparing for yet another routine day. Children are headed to school and parents, to work. Some of them could notice smoke coming out of the industrial site nearby, and others had heard rumors about a possible roof fire that started in the night. 

However, nobody seemingly cared as everybody went on with their day none the wiser. At the same time on the other side of town, ambulances are flying in one by one into the general hospital, carrying firefighters from the smoking site. Nurses run outside and discover men with unusual burns, screaming in pain. Nobody knew what was happening and they all tried to assist them to the best of their knowledge. The citizens didn’t know it yet, but only 3 kilometers away from their homes, the worst nuclear disaster that mankind would ever experience had happened. 

Today, this event is simply known as “Chernobyl”. Of course, back then, they had no clue about what was actually happening, and Soviet bureaucracy would immensely delay the travel of information up to the top state officials. It took them a full 3 days before they evacuated the town of Pripyat, and on the same occasion, creating the famous 30 km exclusion zone (which is still in place today). Of course, by then, it was already too late. Most of the citizens had already received a fatal dose of radiation that would affect their descendants for generations, and make their land uninhabitable for hundreds of years. 

This event was a true shifting point for the USSR, as the Soviet leader Gorbachev took the opportunity for the first time in Soviet history, to be as transparent as possible with its citizens and to the world. He finally admitted that the Soviet Union is about to crash.

Palace of Yugoslavia, Serbia - Photo Source: Pierre (PLRB)

A Russian Traitor

Gorbachev told the shocking truth to its citizens. The country’s banks are empty, and for years the Union was living off the reserves accumulated in the past decades. The Soviet Union wasn’t producing anymore, and instead, became buyers. The self-sustaining system they had built before was no longer in place and everybody would have to brace for the rough years coming ahead.

 This news naturally came as a true shock for the entire population, and suddenly all hopes of a bright future were lost. The citizens learned that the good years are over, and from now on, they should expect misery and poverty. The Cold War and the Afghanistan War had ruined the country’s economy, the former leader Leonid Brezhnev had lost the leadership with his lazy ways and had become too comfortable in his spending. 

However, amid all this chaos and confusion, not a single second did anybody think the Soviet Union would simply collapse and disappear. They truly believed in the strong and powerful nation they had built in the past 69 years, and never imagined one second that it would come to an end. They thought they would simply fight through the rough years and rise again as they had done in the past century. 

One politician though had another idea of how things would turn out. Boris Yeltsin, a man rejected by the Soviet party for having ideas too far away from the communist ideology, was grooming republics for their independence and made deals with the Americans without the knowledge of Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Party. This is how bad the bureaucracy had gotten. They became so out of touch with their own reality that on December 8th, 1991 the Belovezha Accords were signed by Yeltsin and two other figureheads (without the knowledge of Gorbachev), essentially ending the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Soviet mosaic bus stop in Kalmykia, Russia - Photo Source: @realbaldandbankrupt on Instagram

Shock Therapy

It’s Christmas Day, 1991, and the Americans have won. The Soviet Union, which they had fought for decades to end, finally ceased to exist. The dreams that were built, the futures seemingly so bright that was promised to its citizens, all disappeared on that one fateful night. What was a great victory for one side of the world, was a terrible event for the other. They had lost their nation, their future, their security. 

They had now entered a decade of banditry, crime, and chaos. They were living through what we now refer to as “Shock Therapy”. The shift from communism to capitalism was so brutal that there were no more police to ensure safety. No more government to tell you what you can and cannot do. No more authority existed which left space for anarchy. The now ex-Soviet citizens were promised better times with the arrival of democracy but were only betrayed by the incompetence of their new leader that only brought them crime and misery.

Deteriorating children’s playground, Moldova - Photo Source: @kuca_ky_ky on Instagram

Crumbling Streets & Broken Dreams

Nowadays, the cities of the former Soviet Union seem to be nothing else than vast jungles of crumbling concrete. The brutalist blocks that were once the pride of a powerful nation, are now nothing but the symbol of a lost past and broken dreams. Elders remember the good days when they lived in a stable country, and the youth, forever and ever seduced with the exotic lifestyle of the Americans, see no future in their country and only dream about moving to the sunny beaches of California. 

Ironically, the ex-Soviet generation fancies the lifestyle of those who caused their end, but we cannot blame them either. They truly don’t have much of a future in the former eastern bloc, and their old enemies seem to thrive more than ever now that their 20th-century nemesis had been eliminated for good. In the victories we win, we forget to remember the fate of our opposing forces. 

On the surface, it may only seem like we are ending a powerful and evil regime, but underneath the surface, we fail to consider that we are also ending the peace and unity that existed in the nation. 

We must recognize that we are not only ending a government but also all the hopes and dreams attached to it and that sometimes, we must put humanity first and political interests second.

The Genex Tower of Belgrade, Serbia - Photo Source: Pierre (PLRB)

A Word For The End

Thank you for reading my blog post about what I’ve retained from my trip to the former USSR. Please note that this is not meant to take a political side, but only to focus on the human aspect of the events. Either you’re a communist or a capitalist, everybody deserves a future and secure access to food, housing, education, and healthcare. 

I have seen and met people who were deeply saddened by what they went through, and by the loss of their native country. Please remember that the government doesn’t always represent the population. A nation is 1% leaders, 99% normal people trying to make it in the world just like you and me.

If you are interested in learning more about the former Soviet world, I invite you to check out the YouTuber “Bald and Bankrupt”, which explores former USSR republics. He is the one that inspired my trip to the Ukraine last month. 

If you are into music, I suggest you check out “Sovietwave”, which is a musical genre based on the nostalgia of the dreams and aspirations that the soviet people once had.

Thank you for reading and have a good day. 

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