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⭐ 🎥 The invention that broke English spelling

"The invention of the printing press ushered in a literary revolution, helping to create the world as we know it. However... it also made a terrible mess of English."

length: twenty two minutes and forty six seconds.

youtu.be/Syp1DVQgN_g

@linguistics

⭐ How Did the Babylonian Exile Shape Judaism?

"The Babylonians also changed the names of the Israelite nobles to reflect the Babylonian gods instead of the God the Israelites served in Jerusalem. They were also required to eat from the table Nebuchadnezzar had set before them. Babylonian cuisine went contrary to Israelite traditions and faith."

De Jager, Eben. "How Did the Babylonian Exile Shape Judaism?" TheCollector.com, thecollector.com/babylonian-ex (accessed September 28, 2024).

⭐ 🎥 A simple yet impossible test (unless you have synesthesia)

"Synesthesia (or synaesthesia British spelling) is a phenomenon in which stimulating one sense or thought automatically triggers another."

length: nine minutes and fifty two seconds.

youtu.be/-hc29pbzM1A

@psychology

⭐ 🇺🇸 Unearthing the 20th Century’s Ground-Breaking Soil Surveys

"Inspired by European advances in soil science by such soil luminaries as Friedrich Fallou and Vasily Dokuchaev, an effort in the United States to better organize and classify soils for varied uses took root around the turn of the century."

blogs.loc.gov/maps/2024/09/une

⭐ 🇺🇸 US President or American Caesar?

"The clamour about an American Caesar hit a kind of crescendo during the Jacksonian era of the 1830s. The heirs of the Federalists saw the military hero-turned-president Andrew Jackson as an American Bonaparte, whose claim to represent the true voice of the American people illustrated the worst excesses of democratic politics."

historytoday.com/archive/behin

attribution: Marcantonio Raimondi, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil

⭐ The new political economy of the middle ages: a review essay of the medieval constitution of Liberty

"Having established that free cities developed the first truly modern market-friendly legal institutions, Salter and Young advance their most provocative claim: McCloskey (2010) gets the timing wrong on her Bourgeois Dignity thesis. Instead, Salter and Young (2023, pp. 202–206) argue that self-governing medieval cities cultivated bourgeois virtues and lent dignity to merchants in the High Middle Ages."

Truitt, T. The new political economy of the middle ages: a review essay of the medieval constitution of Liberty. Rev Austrian Econ (2024). doi.org/10.1007/s11138-024-006

@econhist @medievodons

⭐ An Instrument of Social Control: The Scientization of Drunkenness

"Theories of alcoholism came to be used as instruments of social control. Medical discourses influenced anti-alcohol movements and later supported the tendency to make “drunkards” invisible by committing them to drinkers’ asylums."

historyofknowledge.hypotheses.

@histodon @histodons

⭐ Investment in generative AI has surged recently

"In 2023, funding for generative AI soared to $22.4 billion, nearly nine times more than in 2022 and about 25 times the amount from 2019. This surge occurred despite overall investment in AI declining since its 2021 peak."

ourworldindata.org/data-insigh

@ai

Our instance is being upgraded. I think the process is still on going, normal service will resume as soon as possible.

🔴 **Bigger AI chatbots more inclined to spew nonsense — and people don't always realize**

_In other words, the chatbots’ tendency to offer opinions beyond their own knowledge has increased. “That looks to me like what we would call bullshitting,” says Mike Hicks, a philosopher of science and technology at the University of Glasgow, UK, who proposes the term ‘ultracrepidarianism’ to describe the phenomenon2. “It’s getting better at pretending to be knowledgeable.”_

🔗 **doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-031**

@ai

🔴 📖 **Thomas Jefferson Knew his Greek**

"_Among these, he owned at least two copies of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, a biographical novel written in Greek about the Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great (circa 600 – 530 BCE)_"

🔗 **blogs.loc.gov/bibliomania/2024**

@histodon @histodons @bookstodon

🔴 **Scientists grow ‘lost tree’ mentioned in Bible using mysterious 1,000-year-old seed**

"_Researchers suspected the “Sheba” tree to be a candidate for the “Judean Balsam” or “Balm of Judea”, which was cultivated exclusively in the desert region of southern Levant during Biblical times._"

🔗 **independent.co.uk/news/science**

@science @archaeodons

🔴 **Migrant Voices in Multilingual London,** **1560****–****1600**

"_By charting how linguistic diversity was part of the lives of ordinary Londoners in this period, including close examination of incidents of multilingual insult, slander, and conflict, this article argues that the civic and religious authorities relied on the stranger churches’ abilities to carry out surveillance of speech in languages other than English, and that urban social relations and urban spaces were shaped by multilingualism._"

Gallagher, J. (2024) ‘Migrant Voices in Multilingual London, 1560–1600’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, pp. 1–23. doi: doi.org/10.1017/S0080440124000

@histodon @histodons @linguistics @earlymodern

🔴 📖 **Oliver Cussen** **-** **Prophet of the Past**

"_According to the environmental historian Chris Otter, Britain in 1930 ‘imported 99 per cent of the world’s exports of ham and bacon, 63 per cent of its butter, 62 per cent of its eggs, 59 per cent of its beef, 46 per cent of its cheese, and 28 per cent of its wheat and wheat flour’, despite having only 3 per cent of the world’s population. Malthus may well have helped build the infrastructure of this empire, but he would have been horrified by the way it enabled Britain to live beyond its means and to ignore a natural law designed to stimulate not gluttony, but self-reliance and restraint._"

🔗 **lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n18/ol**

@bookstodon

🔴 **The forging of countries**

"_The nobilities of the Habsburg-ruled kingdoms – of diverse ethnic and linguistic origins – had strong and well-developed conceptions of belonging to a common nation. So strong, in fact, that they resisted incorporation into the kind of centralised absolutist states characteristic of 18th-century Europe. The Habsburg Monarchy was nearly torn apart by the pressures of such policies pursued by Joseph II, who rescinded most of them on his deathbed in 1790._"

🔗 **aeon.co/essays/the-myth-of-civ**

@histodon @histodons

🔴 🇺🇸 🗺️ **Made in America: U.S. Manufacturing in Gilded Age Census Maps**

"_I recently heard a factoid in passing that fascinated me and sparked further investigation: after having been decidedly middle of the pack immediately post-Civil War, the United States’ share of total world manufacturing output became the highest in the world between 1880 and 1900, with a near exponential pace of growth during these decades._"

🔗 **blogs.loc.gov/maps/2024/09/mad**

🔴 🇬🇧 🎥 **1957: BRITISH SUNDAYS - Should We Have More FREEDOM?**

"_Christopher Chataway reports on the British Sunday, when theatres, shops and restaurants are closed and most sporting events are prohibited._

length: eight minutes and fourteen seconds.

🔗 **youtu.be/n62zZATx9Ts**

🔴 **The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea**

"_What’s more, historians such as Oscar and Mary Handlin, Edmund Morgan and Edward Rugemer have largely confirmed Du Bois’s suspicion that while xenophobia appears to be fairly universal among human groupings, the invention of a white racial identity was motivated from the start by a need to justify the enslavement of Africans._"

🔗 **theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/**

🔴 🎥 **Why There's a New Race to the Moon**

"_It’s been over 50 years since an astronaut last walked on the moon, but this decade could see a number of countries attempt to send humans back. So, who’s in the race and why now?_"

length: twelve minutes and eleven seconds.

🔗 **youtu.be/HGdVC2V_f3I**

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