IRISH

We’re all having “hard conversations” about racism, police brutality, and #BlackLivesMatter I hope. 

You’ve probably noticed that detractors often use the same “racist talking points” in response. Here’s a researched and sourced guide to help you answer, for the times you may get stuck.

Feel free to save these images and share them!

In an effort to share a little black and queer history during this turbulent Pride month, here’s a comic about one of my favorite musicians, Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

1964. Not ancient history. The Beatles were climbing up the charts with “She Loves You” and “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” Surfer rock had the Beach Boys “I Get Around” was was competing with Jan and Dean’s “Dead Man’s Curve. Manfred Mann’s “Do Wah Diddy” was a hit with staying power. The Supremes performed “Where Did Our Love Go?” on tv this year or early in the next.

Bioluminescence series by Rob Rey

Can’t wait to watch this!

two years ago i wore baggy sweatpants and flip flops every day because i was depressed but then decided eh to hell with it and bought some black edgy emo clothes bc thats how i always wanted to dress but never got a chance to and it was only then that i realized that the sweatpants flip flops look was just keeping me in my depression funk. i didnt like the way i looked and i didnt identify with the clothes i was wearing and it only made me feel worse.

i then went through my entire wardrobe and got rid of everything that made me feel that way.

now i have multiple outfit possibilities requiring different levels of effort but on days where putting on clothes just seems like a project i just have to put on black jeans and a band t-shirt and i can still feel good about the way i look which is a really good way to start off my day.

“National Geographic called me and asked me to write the feminist facts about how The Lion King gets lion pride dynamics all wrong. I happily complied. Lions are matrilineal!! 

When I contacted Craig Packer, one of the world’s leading lion researchers, to talk  about this story he was IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE. He Skyped me almost instantly from a camp in Kenya and said he’s been waiting for someone to ask him this question since the original film came out.

Anyway, if The Lion King were real, Nala would be the star, Sarabi would be holding her up saying everything the light touches is our kingdom, Simba would have left and never come back, and when Nala got old enough Sarabi would have carved out a territory for her to rule.”

- Erin Biba‏ 

In real life, Simba’s mom would be running the pride

“Reasons men gave for lecturing me on lion pride social structure and telling me one of the world’s leading lion researchers is wrong (I am not kidding these are real): -Watched The Lion King DVD extras -Read a textbook 25 years ago -Has been to the zoo -Everyone just knows

If you ever wondered what it’s like to be a woman that communicates science, this is what it’s like. Any expertise you or your sources may have gained over decades of hard work are null and void because someone watched a DVD extra 25 years ago.”

dolphins

that’s my point

big brains….

size o f

?????????

damned

big brains

the lot of them

not to mention the WhALeS

ooh…….

Great BIG BUGGER

supposed to rise up

right

riiiiiight up

right at the end

TH!!!!1!!1!!

THAS MA P ÖINT

Whole Sea Bubblin’

th  dolphins

the WHALES?!?

EVVRYTHING turning into

builibu

buib,,

????

. ..buibé? ??

Same with Gorillas

They say WHOOP

Sky’s gone all red

Akksssffhghh

, Stars crashing down❗❗❗🌠

WHa…

??

WhAt are they putting in

GREAT ✨

And SMALL.

. , .

And ya’ KnOw what’s

woRse❓❔

Tinnitus is more a sound that’s always there regardless of where you are or what you’re doing (always the same high pitch is the most common form, though there are other types).

Tinnitus: internal damage to your cochlea, usually from over-exposure to loud sounds, triggering the constant hearing of the pitch that’s connected to the place that’s damaged.

ADHD/autism: sensory sensitivities and the inability to filter the sounds around you, causing you to hear things that others can’t even though they’re real.

Reynolds was raised Mormon (I don’t know if he is still practicing) but has created this concert to give hope and understanding to the LGBT+ community there, especially the youth.

Utah has an extreme problem with youth suicide, especially Mormon LGBT+ kids who feel especially stressed due to the Mormon religious regulations and beliefs against being LGBT, but also the cultural biases and attitudes of the people that ostracize even non-Mormon LGBT+

Reynolds has advocated for attention to these issues from the Church and State Government, and also uses the LoveLoud concert to gain attention to these issues (and if I’m not mistaken, donates any proceeds to charity for LGBT youth in the state)

As far as I know, he is not LGBT, just a great fucking ally who saw a need in his state/culture and has done his best help.

Your slow-motion montage backed by a Gregorian choir can be done with a few technques that all involve repetition.

First is epizeuxis, the repeating of a word for emphasis.

Example:

Falling. Falling. Falling. There was nothing to keep Marie from plunging into the rolling river below. She could only hope for a miracle now, that she would come out alive somehow despite a twenty-foot drop into five-foot-deep water.

Then there’s anaphora, where you write a number of phrases with the same words at the beginning.

There were still mages out there living in terror of shining steel armor emblazoned with the Sword of Mercy.

There were still mages out there being forced by desperation into the clutches of demons.

There were mages out there being threatened with Tranquility as punishment for their disobedience, and the threats were being made good upon.

Mages who had attempted to flee, but knew nothing of the outside world and were forced to return to their prison out of need for sustenance and shelter.

Mages who only desired to find the families they were torn from.

Mages who only wanted to see the sun.

as a writer

90% of the time, when I’m trying to research x or y, what I actually need to know is what daily life went like.  Daily life of a person living in x region from y class during z time period.  How does a barley farmer spend their day in late September?  What tools are they using?  What are they using them for?  How hard is each task?  How much does a cooper earn in a day, and what can it buy?  How about a spice merchant?  What’s the procedure for tanning hide in Scotland during the 1100s, from beginning to end?  What does an alpine shepherd spend their time doing, when it’s not lambing or shearing time?  What do they spend their time doing when it is lambing season?  What sort of medical knowledge would they have?  How many people is a reasonable number for a minor lord to employ in this kind of castle, or in that kind of manor house, and how much food would they eat in a day, and how much would it cost?  How long would it take to build a house?  A palisade?  A wagon?  A brick wall?  A stone wall?  A road?  How many workers would you need for each?  How many people in a given town would know how to play the flute?  How many would know to make one?  How long would making one take?  How much would it cost to buy one?  How many could afford that?  For how long would the meat from each different animal feed a subsistence hunter?  How successful can they expect to be on any given day?  With a dog?  With traps?  In the rain?  In the snow?  In the autumn?  In the summer?  How far would they range?  How many chickens would a peasant own in medieval Brittany?  In Viking age Iceland?  In Roman Britain?  What would they have to do to care for the chickens each day?  If you’re travelling on horseback across the Eurasian steppe in the mid-1000s, what would you need to do to care for your horse over the course of a multi-day journey?  How much time would your horse have to spend grazing?  What would you carry and eat?  What would you forage?  How easy would it be, assuming you’d grown up being taught how, to find wild onions while travelling in unfamiliar country?  How long would it delay you to do so?  How would you carry water?  What sort of vessel would you cook in?  How heavy would it be?  How would you carry it?  How much weight could your horse carry?  For how long each day?  How did they carve stone in the ancient world?  In the medieval world?  In the early modern world?  Did cowhands in Europe ride ponies?  Wouldn’t that have made their jobs easier?  WHAT WERE THEIR JOBS EVEN, WHAT DID THEY DO ALL DAY, WHAT DID THEIR DAYS LOOK LIKE

but NO all the research that’s easy to find is about Big Important Events and Great Men and “FUN FACT DID U KNOW: maize and potatoes are both from the New World!!”  Ok great did they eat egrets.  How long does it take to pluck and clean and cook an egret.  What tools would you need to get an egret from point a.) “minding its own business in a swamp” to point b.) “fit for human consumption.”  How many people would one egret feed.  Do egrets live in Poland.  What color egret lives in Poland.  “Henwardric the XIVIVI conquered the—”  WHAT WAS HIS ARMY’S RANK STRUCTURE LIKE.  HOW EASY WAS IT TO GET PROMOTED.  HOW DID HE KEEP THEM SUPPLIED.  WHAT DID HIS FORAGERS’ JOBS ACTUALLY ENTAIL, DAY TO DAY AND HOUR TO HOUR.  HOW DID THEY DO THEIR LAUNDRY.  WHAT DID EACH SOLDIER CARRY ON THEIR PERSON AND WHAT WOULD GO IN A SUPPLY WAGON.  WHAT KIND OF ANIMAL DREW THE SUPPLY WAGONS.  WHAT DID YOU NEED TO DO TO TAKE CARE OF THE ANIMALS.  HOW MUCH OF YOUR DAY WOULD BE SPENT ON IT.  WHAT ABOUT A CENTURY EARLIER.  WHAT ABOUT A CENTURY LATER.  WHAT KIND OF SHOES DID THEY WEAR.  HOW OFTEN DID THEY NEED TO BUY NEW SHOES.  HOW LONG DID IT TAKE A SHOEMAKER TO MAKE A PAIR OF SHOES.  HOW MUCH WOULD THEY COST.  HOW MANY DAYS’ WAGES WAS THAT FOR A SOLDIER IN HENWARDRIC’S ARMY.

When training as an historian, so much emphasis is put on making an argument. This technology was important because. That event was important because. What were the causes of x? What were the consequences of y? And we’re also trained to look at detail and say, “So what? How does that advance my argument?” And if the answer is “It doesn’t, I just thought it was interesting,” that’s what gets cut when we go over wordcount (we always go over wordcount).

The exception to this is the technique called ‘thick description,’ which I assume we stole from anthropology or possibly sociology. Thick description is a technique for historical writing that piles on all of the details, in the belief that you need as much context as possible in order to understand an historical event or decision.

If we have the sources—and a lot of the time we do—historians can and often do go into great detail about the daily life of people in whatever time at whatever place. But this sort of detail, while commonly included in historical writing, is not usually easy to find. It’s supporting evidence for some other point, not the point itself, which means it won’t be in the keywords or title. So, I know Peter Wilson’s doorstopper Europe’s Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Year’s War has quite a lot of information about the organisation, weaponry, food, payment and clothing of the armies involved, and the occasions on which they lost their shoes or resorted to cannibalism, but that’s because I’ve read it. It’s not going to show up as the first result in a search for any of those things.

Then there are the paywalls. There’s some great stuff stuck behind some hefty paywalls. Enough said on that one, though if you have a university library account you might be in luck.

So.

Rather than looking for histories and articles, try going to the sources. There are a lot of online databases with digitised sources and historical texts. Recipe books, household tips and travel writing are often very good for specific details. So are military intelligence reports, particularly for terrain and speed.

Most university and research libraries have library guides—libguides—which are intended to point researchers in the right direction for sources.

Add terms like ‘primary sources’ ‘database’ ‘libguides’ to your search strings: ‘primary sources recipe books’ or ‘historical travel writing database’ or ‘historical agricultural guidebooks’ or ‘libguides architectural history.’ 

‘Experimental archaeology’ is a subdiscipline dedicated to replicating historical crafting techniques.

And of course gutenberg.org, hathitrust.org and archive.org have many digitised books, periodicals and pamphlets.

If you are looking for scholarly articles, try scholar.google.com and academia.edu – the latter often has articles uploaded that you can read for free. It does have a search function but you can also do a google search ‘site:academia.edu [your keywords here]’

Then there’s search engine techniques. The first thing I’d suggest is what I think of as ‘broaden and backstop.’ You break down the question in bits. So for egrets:

‘Egret recipe’ gave me a recipe for ‘Heron Rosted’ from 15th century England which suggests roasting a heron in the same method as a crane (one must look elsewhere for how to roast a crane) and serving with a sauce of ‘gynger, vynegre & Mustard.’ ‘Egret distribution’ gives me Wikipedia, which tells me egrets migrate, so their availability in Poland will depend on the time of year. ‘egret weight’ tells me the little egret is about 310g, so one egret would probably only feed one person. And ‘taboo eating egret’ tells me that eating egrets was taboo in Irish and Bantu culture, but brings me nothing specifically about Poland, suggesting that it at least wouldn’t have been seen as sacrilege to eat an egret there.

‘Stonecarving tools archaeology’ gives me the website ‘The Art of Making in Antiquity: Stoneworking in the Roman world’, with many essays and videos on the processes involved.

‘Medieval soap recipes’ led me to the works of Susan Verberg, who has collected, tried and published a number of soap recipes, including medicinal, cosmetic and laundry soap, explaining the purpose of each ingredient.

For my own fiction research, I’ve spent a lot of time on wikipedia looking up the geographic distribution and common names of various animals & plants. I spent a lot of time looking at anthropological texts from the nineteenth century about Māori and Pasifika myths, legends and cultural practices. A lot of it is written by terribly superior 19th century White Academica, but the information is still useful. The New Zealand Electronic Texts Collection–a database run by Victoria University–has an extensive collection of digitised texts. I’ve also looked at a lot of early twentieth century labour history, trying to develop a rhetoric for a fictional group of radical political activists, and here as well I’ve had more luck looking at pamphlets published by early twentieth century radicals than at history books.

Or some slightly more in-depth information about salt mining:

u wanna write a single, passing line of dialogue so u fact check it to make sure it’s historically accurate, then suddenly you’ve lost track of time, space,, urself

He asked somebody to raise their hand and ask him when we would use calculus in our everyday life. So one student rose their hand and asked, “When are we going to use this in our everyday life?”

“NEVER!!” the teacher exclaimed. “You will never use calculus in your normal, everyday life. In fact, very few of you will use it in your professional careers either.” Then he paused. “So would you like to know why should care?”

Several us nodded.

He picked out one of the varsity football players in the class. “You practice football a lot during the week, right Tim?” asked the teacher.

“Yeah,” replied Tim. “Almost every day.”

“Do you and your teammates ever lift weights during practice?”

“Yeah. Tuesdays and Thursdays we spend a lot of practice in the weight room.”

“But why?” asked the teacher. “Is there ever going to be a play your coach tells you use during a game that requires you to bench press the other team?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why lift weights?”

“Because it makes us stronger,” said Tim.

“Bingo!!” said the teacher. “It’s the same thing with calculus. You’re not here because you’re going to use calculus in your everyday life. You’re here because calculus is weightlifting for your brain.”

When it’s taught right, learning math teaches you logic and how to organize your brain, how to take a problem one step at a time and make sure every step can bear weight before you move to the next one.  Most adults don’t need to know integrals, but goddamn if I don’t wish everyone making arguments on the internet understood geometric proofs.

Scientific concepts broaden our understanding of how the world is put together, which does not mean that most adults ever really understand how light is refracted through a lens or why spinning copper wire creates electricity–and they don’t need to.  But science classes in general are meant to teach the scientific method: how to make observations and use them to draw conclusions, how to test those conclusions, how to be wrong and grow stronger from it.

History isn’t about dates and names of battles, it’s about people, patterns, things we’ve tried before and ought to learn from.  It’s about how everything is linked, how changing one circumstance can lead to changes in fifty others, cascading infinitely.  Literature is about critical thinking, pattern recognition, learning to listen to what somebody is saying and decide what it means to you, how you feel about it, and what you want to do with it.

Some facts matter: every adult should know how to read a graph, how global warming works, some of the basic themes and symbols that crop up in every piece of fiction.  But ultimately, content is less important later in life than context.