Adventures of a Modern Scholar @adventuresofamodernscholar - Tumblr Blog

not for riches but for love medieval posie ring

bethsbookshelf

Let’s say your matrilineal line is fairly consistent and everyone has their daughter at 25. So four women in your matrilineal line are born every hundred years. In a thousand years, that’s only 40 women. Like the math is so simple and yet ? You don’t think about it. So in 2000 years, 80 women. So basically, 0 AD started roughly about 80 mothers ago. That’s it.

hawthorn56-deactivated20230602

I’m……… i’m a little drunk n cannot deal with this right now

thevideowall

Yep

The advent of agriculture around 9500BC was about 450 mothers ago

quousque

you can’t just say shit like that without a warning

annechen-melo

Many, many mothers ago, when the world was new….

systlin

Many of the notes here are saying “But women used to have kids earlier”

Okay. So, assume every woman had her daughter at 20 instead.

That’s five mothers in a century.

Fifty mothers in a thousand years.

One hundred mothers in two thousand years.

That is five hundred and seventy five mothers since the dawn of agriculture.

Less than six hundred women, between you and the dawn of civilization.

You are never so far from your ancestors as you think.

duckbunny

The recently reconstructed Cheddar Man - the one with dark skin and curly black hair who is the oldest known modern Briton - has also had science done comparing his genome to living people.

They found descendants. Ten thousand years later, Cheddar Man’s many-times-great-grandson lives a mile away, teaches history at the local school, and still has the family nose.

That’s like four hundred generations. Same valley in Somerset. Same face. Ten thousand years.

I love humans.

mournfulroses

Rainer Maria Rilke, from "Letters to a Young Poet," originally published in 1929

soberscientistlife

littledoggy-girlcollar

some of you have GOT to get comfortable with lying and situational morality and i'm not kidding

theoptia

Clarice Lispector, from A Breath of Life

snowstories

My biggest tip for fanfic writers is this: if you get a character's mannerisms and speech pattern down, you can make them do pretty much whatever you want and it'll feel in character.

Logic: Characters, just like real people, are mallable. There is typically very little that's so truly, heinously out of character that you absolutely cannot make it work under any circumstance. In addition, most fans are also willing to accept characterization stretches if it makes the fic work. Yeah, we all know the villain and the hero wouldn't cuddle for warmth in canon. But if they did do that, how would they do it?

What counts is often not so much 'would the character do this?' and more 'if the character did do this, how would they do it?' If you get 'how' part right, your readers will probably be willing to buy the rest, because it will still feel like their favourite character. But if it doesn't feel like the character anymore, why are they even reading the fic?

Worry less about whether a character would do something, and more about how they'd sound while doing it.

mossbear-minese

I don't remember where I saw this piece of advice so I can't credit it, unfortunately

But it was along the lines of "instead of asking whether something is out of character, ask 'what would it take for this character to do this'"

Which I think fits really nicely with this advice of making the actual action itself also feel in character

moveslikekeithrichards

when i say “that reminds me” & theres zero connection you just have to take my word for it theres no time to explain

theseventeensteps

obsessed with how fixable society is, on a structural level.

obsessed with how all you need to do is throw money at public education and eliminate most standardized testing and you will start getting smarter, more engaged, kinder adults. obsessed with how giving people safe housing, reliable access to good food, and decent wages dramatically reduces drug overdoses and gun violence. obsessed with how much people actually want to get together and fix infrastructure, invent new ways of helping each other, and create global ways of living sustainably once you give them livable pay to do so. obsessed with how tracking diseases, developing medicines, and improving public health becomes so much easier when you just make healthcare free at point of use.

obsessed with how easy it all becomes, if we can just figure out how to wrench the wealth out of the hands of the hoarders.

theseventeensteps

i've lived in four different cities in my adult life and talked to literally tens of thousands of people about politics and the change they want to see in the world and the overwhelming majority of them wanted life to be better, happier, easier for everyone, and dreamed of that world. the only people who didn't think that way were A) really obviously in need of mental/medical care, or B) rich.

wanting universal free healthcare, well-funded public education, and social support for all people is the most unbelievably normie opinion that exists, even among people who have lots of bad or misguided opinions about other things. when you feel alone, know that the reason you feel that way is billions of dollars are being spent to obscure the fact that you are in the majority.

mournfulroses

Anaïs Nin, from a diary entry featured in The Early Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 3. (1923-1927)

kvothes

oh someone told me something useful yesterday. she said she’s been thinking about her tbr less as an overwhelming list of books she Must Read and more like she’s cultivating a wine cellar. making a rich collection that will provide the perfect thing when needed. a bottle will get uncorked when the time is right

rederiswrites

There really really ought to be a book about how the staple crops of different civilizations shape and influence those civilizations, and I really want to read it.

alexseanchai

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky and A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage (three are alcohol, three have caffeine) are not quite that, but may still be of interest?

rederiswrites

I read Salt back in the day and it's so so good, second the rec. I have heard of 6 Glasses and not read it but I am sure I would probably love it. Gotta see if the library has it. Thank you!

pandorasquillandquotes

Gonna throw Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert in the ring here! You'll never see the modern world the same way again.

vaspider

A Short History Of The World According To Sheep by Sally Coulthard blew my mind. So many things are tied to wool and sheep and weaving and so many words and phrases are tied to wool, people have no idea.

Example words which come from textiles/weaving, if not specifically wool (go look them up!): subtle, shoddy, tabby, Brazil, rocket, twit, warped, going batty, on tenterhooks, text...

foxofninetales

I'll throw in a rec for Pickled, Potted, and Canned by Sue Shephard - a very interesting look at food preservation and how the availability of different types of food preservation shaped cultures and cuisines.

electronsprotonscroutons

Sweetness and Power is this but for the topic of sugar

magneticdeclination

The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past might also be up your alley. It's about "forgotten" foods and staples. They talk about different types of wheat, sauces, veggies, etc and a little about the cultures from whence they come

doctornerdington

Also: Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Visser. One of my favourite books.

bitchwhoyoukiddin

DO I HAVE A SERIES FOR YOU. University of California Press has a gift for you and it is a 80+ book series on food studies. There are even some that are open access (legally free), but the rest are in libraries.

I also highly recommend Frostbite by Nicola Twilley. It’s about the impact refrigeration has had/is having on food preservation and culture, globally. It was one of my favorite books of this last year.