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pitbolshevik

got diagnosed with cool guy disorder over at the epic doctor

pitbolshevik

god what the fufk am i even talking about anymore

#me

estchiyu

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

#tadc

this shit was so ass

#tadc

nohoperadio

You know that thing would eat you if you died, right? *pointing to the false image of you that others perceive*

the four tempers.

this too shall pass but the fuck was that for

#txt

theweight

#gif

toastyglow

(some guy on the internet voice) it's so unrealistic and forced when women win fights against men in stories. of course, when a young boy defeats a huge man I'm cheering and screaming because it is so badass, and when a frail old man defeats a cocky young warrior I feel nothing but satisfaction. I love these power fantasies about easily dispatching people who underestimate you, a thing I desire despite the fact that I will likely never have the skill to achieve it in real life, but I'm pretty sure women don't have that same desire, and even if they do, they shouldn't get to see it in media. because it's so unrealistic, you see. I mean I'm smart enough to know I can't take down a big man in a fight but the women, you know, they'll get ideas. I could probably do it if I trained hard enough, but the women??? for some reason I can't see it happening, and who can say why that is.

#txt

systlin

Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them.

Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said “Oh yeah sure that’s a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.”

“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”

“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”

It’s just.

50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job.

saxifraga-x-urbium

i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok

assasue

One of my professors often tells us about a time he, as and Egyptian Archaeologist, came down upon a ring of bricks one brick high. In the middle of a house. He and his fellow researchers could not fpr the life of them figure out what tf it could possibly have been for. Until he decided to as a laborer, who doesnt even speak English, what it was. The guy gestures for my prof to follow him, and shows him the same ring of bricks in a nearby modern house. Said ring is filled with baby chicks, while momma hen is out in the yard having a snack. The chicks can’t get over the single brick, but mom can step right over. Over 2000 years and their still corraling chicks with brick circles. If it aint broke, dont fix it and always ask the locals.

anx1ous-op0ssum

I read something a while back about how pre-columbian Americans had obsidian blades they stored in the rafters of their houses. The archaeologists who discovered them came to the conclusion that the primitive civilizations believed keeping them closer to the sun would keep the blades sharper.

Then a mother looked at their findings and said “yeah, they stored their knives in the rafters to keep them out of reach of the children.”

whatevercomestomymind

Omg the ancient child proofing add on tho lol

pbrim

I remember years ago on a forum (email list, that’s how old) a woman talking about going to a museum, and seeing among the women’s household objects a number of fired clay items referred to as “prayer objects”. (Apparently this sort of labeling is not uncommon when you have something that every house has and appears to be important, but no-one knows what it is.) She found a docent and said, “Excuse me, but I think those are drop spindles.” “Why would you think that, ma’am?” “Because they look just like the ones my husband makes for me. See?” They got all excited, took tons of pictures and video of her spinning with her spindle. When she was back in the area a few years later, they were still on display, but labeled as drop spindles.

catchester

So ancient Roman statues have some really weird hairstyles. Archaeologists just couldn’t figure them out. They didn’t have hairspray or modern hair bands, or elastic at all, but some of these things defied gravity better than Marge Simpson’s beehive.

Eventually they decided, wigs. Must be wigs. Or maybe hats. Definitely not real hair.

A hairdresser comes a long, looks at a few and is like, “Yeah, they’re sewn.”

“Don’t be silly!” the archaeologists cry. “How foolish, sewn hair indeed! LOL!”

So she went away and recreated them on real people using a needle and thread and the mystery of Roman hairstyles was solved.

She now works as a hair archaeologist and I believe she has a YouTube channel now where she recreates forgotten hairstyles, using only what they had available at the time.

hazelsheartsworn

^^ THE PERSON MENTIONED HERE IS JANET STEPHENS!!

Here’s her YouTube channel with the recreated hair-styles

And the research she did got published in the Journal of Roman Studies (which is a big deal in the Classics world) “even though” she doesn’t have at least a Masters degree in the field.

[To give reference to the gate keeping in this field, she was, I think, only the second or so person without a PhD to be published in the history of the Journal]

But that’s the point, she knew hair and she knew her craft so well that when scholars had ridiculous theories and scoffed at her own, she went ahead and experimented and proved her theories right.

scarred-but-still-smiling

@archaeologistproblems have you experienced anything similar?

archaeologistproblems

Honestly this is probably my #1 favourite thing about archaeological research and looking at things with an interdisciplinary eye. This is also why experimental archaeology is such a great aspect of research - sometimes we no longer have living people who “do the thing,” so we try to “do the thing” ourselves to find out what works best.

Two years ago I got to visit an active brass and bronze foundry and do some filming, because the couple who do the casting could clearly demonstrate and identify what a lot of the mystery items I was finding on a 200-year-old iron foundry site actually were. Biggest one, I was speculating that some of the items I was finding were some kind of rough ingot for excess molten iron during a pour - turns out they were remnant pouring cups. Who knew? (They did. Heh.)

I did some work on a historic Mi’kmaw site seven years ago, one of the first items we found was a small knife. To me it was just a knife, but when one of the Mi’kmaw excavators saw it, he immediately knew that it was specifically a basket knife (Mi’kmaw basket-making was a really prominent craft in my area for generations, though there are far fewer people still doing it today).

On the same site I had a weird, ornamental piece of glass that I was identifying as some kind of candy dish lid. I contacted an antique glass collector who immediately identified it as the base to a glass oil lamp - he even knew which pattern it was. I love this stuff.

(Side note and pet peeve on one of the earlier anecdotes in this post, no decent archaeologist would have referred to a civilization as “primitive.” We don’t exist as civilizations on a single spectrum of “primitive to advanced.” Technology is technology, whether it’s incredibly skilled stone tool manufacture, or designing cell phones.)

#interesting

girlrust

issues and problems man

#marty supreme

opencommunion

Palestinian militants protecting the Maghen Abraham Synagogue in Beirut from attacks during the Lebanese Civil War. The synagogue stood from 1925 until the IDF bombed and destroyed it in 1982

weakfleshwillingsoul

the misinformation here is appalling! and replies are turned off so no one can provide fact-checks, which is so convenient. they arent “protecting” the synagogue, they’re guarding the cache of weaponry stored inside it to be used in the civil war, and were instructed to do so during the approach of the IDF to indicate that the most significant jewish place of worship in beirut had been occupied and desecrated. it was damaged, not destroyed, by Israeli bombardment of the broader area in 1982, and was not the target - if you read up on the war then you can make your own informed opinions on the presence of the IDF in Lebanon during the conflict - but by that time the Jewish community had shrank to a minute size due to the violent targeting of Jewish civilians by militant extremists, most fleeing as refugees to Israel. the synagogue was rebuilt in the early 2000s, partially as an attempt by the government to portray itself as tolerant of Judaism, but no services are held there due to the fact that there are less than 50 Jews left in Lebanon. next time try your best not to fall for easily refuted propaganda …

opencommunion

Replies are restricted to followers for all my posts. This post isn't special and neither are you. Funny you talk about “reading up” on the history of MY HOMELAND when literally all your facts are wrong. I would looove to see your sources 🤔

There is no evidence that there were weapons stored at Maghen Abraham. The IDF claimed that there were, purely on the basis that the PLO had members stationed in the neighborhood. The same thing they do now when they want justification to bomb important civilian institutions.

Here’s a New York Times article from the time:

BEIRUT'S ONLY SYNAGOGUE IS CASUALTY OF THE ISRAELIS (Published 1982)

It was not rebuilt by the government. It was rebuilt by the Lebanese Jewish community, using private donations and grants. Photos from before the 2009 restoration:

As you can see, it had no fucking roof. Because the self-anointed "Jewish state" bombed it. After driving out the majority of Beirut's large, thriving Jewish community by funding violent Christian ethnonationalists and starting a regional war.

Nice try though

thottacelli

Interesting how the commenter said the Lebanese Jewish community was driven out by 'religous extremists', leaving people to assume it was Muslim extremists, when it was done by Christian extremists funded by irsael

#politics