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Carbon dioxide posted:Have you at least heard of the Raid on the Medway? Just sail up the river, and burn/steal all of the English navy ships while they aren't looking. so thats where they learned the trick. those fuckers!
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Dec 10, 2022 17:00
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Offler posted:England the UK have historically been very good at sweeping embarrassing parts of their history under the rug. I spent much of my early ears on the internet on various history-related gaming forums talking about games like Civilization etc. As you might expect, these forums all also had discussions of regular history. Within a few years I had heard about battles like Crecy and Agincourt hundreds of times, and I had the general idea in my head that the Royal Navy was basically unbeatable from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II.
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Dec 10, 2022 17:40
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chitoryu12 posted:I was taught about even things like the Zoot Suit Riots in high school. It highly depends on your public school location but generally the non-chuddy parts of the US aren't as embarrassed as a lot of other countries to talk about the negative parts of their past. I remember learning about the Zoot Suit Riots in high school as well. I don’t remember what they were, but I know we learned about them
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Dec 10, 2022 19:17
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I found out about that when I finally remembered to look up what the hell "Sleepy Lagoon" was, because a Daffy Duck cartoon I watched about a billion times when I was six mentioned it
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Dec 11, 2022 05:13
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Book recommendation: The Autobiography of Fukuzawa Yukichi Fukuzawa Yukichi was a Japanese intellectual who took part in the first Japanese diplomatic missions to The Us and to Europe after Japan was forced to open up to foreign trade in the mid 19th century. I first learned about him through these two videos, where a narrator reads aloud parts of his autobiography: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvPxCuIspWs&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drIt0EIIteA&t=1s *I should note that I read the book more than a year ago and might get small details wrong. Also, I only know the broad strokes of Japanese history, and as the book is written for a Japanese audience of the time it obviously assumes that the reader is familiar with a lot of stuff I know nothing about* After watching the videos I wanted more, so I decided to find the autobiography and found it incredibly fascinating. Yukichi is a second son from a very minor family of the samurai class based in a small town, who decides to travel to Kyoto to get an education. This is just after Japan has been forcibly opened to foreign trade, and Yukichi and a bunch of other students become endlessly fascinated by western scientific knowledge and set out to learn as much about it as they can. This is not an easy task, as western books are both very rare and very expensive, and also written in a language none of them understand and in an unfamiliar alphabet. Also, the general attitude in the country is still very, very hostile to foreign influence. Still, this group of students manage to copy about a dozen Dutch books, mostly about fortification and medicine and teach themselves first the alphabet and then the language through intense study of these books. They essentially have to make up their own rules for how to pronounce it among themselves since the only people who speak any kind of Dutch in the country are a few traders in Nagasaki. Still, this small group of students are so devoted that they fairly quickly manages to become proficient in the language by studying the same dozen books over and over. In fact, when they later manage to travel to other parts of the country were Dutch is supposedly taught, they are dismayed at how crude these teachers' understanding of Dutch is. Then, after a few years of this, when Yukichi and his mates are almost certainly the best Dutch speakers in the entire country, he travels to Yokohama to finally visit a market where he can meet western traders. And....he is absolutely dismayed when he realizes that not only is Dutch not the one true western language of science and learning, he can't even find a single Dutch trader at the market! (this is briefly mentioned in one of the videos). He eventually comes across a German who knows enough Dutch to tell Yukichi that almost all the traders here speak a language called English. At first Yukichi is angry that he wasted all this time and energy on learning Dutch, but eventually he understands that even though English is another "sideways language" than Dutch, it is still fairly similar. So in almost no time at all he learns English as well. And since he now is both as close to an expert Japan has at both English and at understanding western culture in general he is invited to take part in the first embassies to the US and Europe - which is what the videos at the start of the post are mostly about. This book is very fascinating as it provides a unique perspective on western culture from someone who is at first wholly unfamiliar with it, and who has no easy way to learn more about it. For me it was also a fascinating insight to life in Japan at the time, especially when Yukichi almost have to give up on his studies when his brother dies and he almost becomes forced to live out his life as a small town samurai lord. Also, the translation I found online seems to be from the early 1900s, so when he is travelling through a town famous for tattooed gangsters the translator uses neither the word "yakuza" or even "mafia" but goes with "city bullies". The most fascinating part of the book for me, apart from the visits to the US and Europe that the videos cover, is the early part when he is a student. There is this feeling of both excitement and frustration among the students that they have these books that contain almost endless amounts of information, but at first they can't access this information due to the language barrier, and when they start finally learning the language properly they realize that some of their few books are decades out of date. A favorite part is when Yukichi finds out that a rich acquaintance has an almost knew Dutch book on general scientific knowledge. He convinces the guy to lend him the book for a few days to "look at the pretty pictures" - and then the entire dorm he lives in all stay up for several days straight frantically copying the entire chapter about electricity, diagrams and all. They just about manages to do this, but they are all beyond crushed whey they have to return the book since they can only imagine all the knowledge they held in their hands that now seems gone forever. This is the online translation of the book i found - it's a bit clunky to read, but just press the arrow forward to change the page. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.172747/page/n3/mode/2up
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Dec 11, 2022 15:53
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Very good post!quote:Yukichi is angry that he wasted all this time and energy on learning Dutch Would probably feel the same if i ever learned Dutch
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Dec 14, 2022 11:17
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The snow in 1939's The Wizard of Oz was 100% pure asbestos.
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Dec 15, 2022 21:11
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Carbon dioxide posted:The snow in 1939's The Wizard of Oz was 100% pure asbestos. Poppies will put them to sleep [eventually]
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Dec 15, 2022 21:26
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Not really a 'fun' fact, but in 1987, a guy was murdered in a graveyard in my hometown, Nyköping (Sweden). Why's this notable? Because they used dynamite. The way I heard it, is that the victim was trying to score drugs from some acquaintainces, one of them got paranoid and thought he was an undercover cop, decided to beat him up, so the victim ran away and tried to lose them in the graveyard, but got caught and beat down. At this point, the three guys who beat him unconcious panic because they think they've just killed him, and the paranoid guy thinks for a while and then goes "we gotta cover this up, I know what to do" and goes home to pick up dynamite. Why does he have dynamite? Well, he works at a demolitions firm in Stockholm, who're currently blowing up granite bedrock next to the school I went to, a few blocks from the graveyard, in order to put up a new building, and this being the 80s of course he just had some lying around at home. He comes back with the sticks of dynamite, they wrap it around the victim and then set up a trigger and take cover. In the morning after, on a Sunday, a woman goes to the graveyard to put some flowers on a relatives grave, and discovers what she, at first, though was a load of trash and trashbags strewn about, before realising the gruesome truth. She calls the emergency services and they show up, cordon things off and start to document stuff. It's fairly quickly established that this is clearly a suicide, possibly ritualistic in nature due to being at a graveyard (this was the middle of the smaller swedish version of the Satanic Panic about roleplaying games, yeah we had it too) Eventually, one of the detectives realised that the victim wore glasses, and goes "hang on, if he wore glasses, why haven't we found anything like that at the scene?" and they do a second round of checking, find nothing, and then start to ask questions around town, like "hey, did anyone see this kid on Saturday, October 17th?" and a few people call in saying they'd seen him near or on the parking roof to the supermarket, hanging out with X, Y, and Z, which is quickly narrowed down to the three suspects, who cave under questioning and all of it comes out, eventually leading to their arrest and incarceration. The weird part is hardly anyone knows about it, outside of people who grew up in the city (and even then, it seems like it was kind of localized knowledge, my stepsister and brother had no idea about it, and they grew up in Oppeby (which is like 5-10 minutes by bicycle from Nyköping, if not just 'in Nyköping' these days) and I know people from the other side of town who had no idea, etc.) Here's an old article from the local newspaper about the event, posted in 2017 around the 20th 'anniversary' of it happening. https://sn.se/nykoping/dodssprangningen-pa-kyrkogarden My own memory of it matches a lot of it, but I definitely had some things wrong, but also it reminded me of being at school and hearing people talking about finding dynamite behind Bankiren, etc.
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Dec 17, 2022 18:34
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I bet that dude's going to valhalla
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Dec 17, 2022 20:26
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a bit surprising that they found only one corpse in a graveyard
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Dec 17, 2022 20:39
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Keru posted:Not really a 'fun' fact, but in 1987, a guy was murdered in a graveyard in my hometown, Nyköping (Sweden). Why's this notable? big boomer energy
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Dec 17, 2022 20:53
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ChubbyChecker posted:a bit surprising that they found only one corpse in a graveyard "Sir, the boys found more bodies. Some satanist creep seems to have buried them under these goth-looking carved stones..."
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Dec 17, 2022 21:11
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Look, sky burials in sweden are hardcore, okay?
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Dec 17, 2022 21:16
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"thousands of victims over several decades. This is obviously a large and well organised Satanic cult"
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Dec 17, 2022 21:17
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Well thats just great, now they'll make an expensive Hollywood horror movie about Nyköping, is that what you wanted? The stockholmians will have a fit you know
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Dec 17, 2022 21:31
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FreudianSlippers posted:"thousands of victims over several decades. This is obviously a large and well organised Satanic cult" Right under the nose of the church, too. The whole thing stinks, the priests have to be in on it. There's no way they could have pulled this off otherwise.
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Dec 17, 2022 21:33
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:Well thats just great, now they'll make an expensive Hollywood horror movie about Nyköping, is that what you wanted? The stockholmians will have a fit you know Please, they'll just move it to Stockholm because who the gently caress cares about Nyköping
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Dec 17, 2022 21:40
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its not like anyone knows where either of those places is anyway
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Dec 17, 2022 22:31
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Keru posted:Please, they'll just move it to Stockholm because who the gently caress cares about Nyköping Nyköping is already part of Stockholm, at least according to Ryan Air. If you google "Stockholm airports" you won't see it right away, but if you click on the map and zoom out, and then zoom out some more, you will eventually come across a new tag on the map for Stockholm Skavsta Airport, located about 90km from Stockholm. AKA the Airport that isn't above straight up lying to you to get your business.
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Dec 17, 2022 22:44
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RFC2324 posted:its not like anyone knows where either of those places is anyway Ask yourself how every other country manages to hide its Lexington, AL and how yours don't
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Dec 17, 2022 22:46
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Keru posted:Not really a 'fun' fact, but in 1987, a guy was murdered in a graveyard in my hometown, Nyköping (Sweden Thirtieth
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Dec 17, 2022 22:51
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Do swedes even have drugs worth killing over
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Dec 17, 2022 22:56
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Platystemon posted:Thirtieth i was gonna lol at you, but now i lol at myself and keru
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Dec 17, 2022 22:56
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Milo and POTUS posted:Do swedes even have drugs worth killing over Disparage the "Jule Must" at your own peril
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Dec 17, 2022 22:59
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Platystemon posted:Thirtieth Look, I didn't finish school _and_ I was studying music, what do you want?
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Dec 17, 2022 23:00
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Milo and POTUS posted:Do swedes even have drugs worth killing over nah, easier to just go to läkemedelsbolaget
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Dec 17, 2022 23:03
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Go there? I can't even say it!
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Dec 17, 2022 23:04
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Milo and POTUS posted:Go there? I can't even say it! really? its easy, just pronounce it "läkemedelsbolaget"
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Dec 17, 2022 23:24
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Milo and POTUS posted:Do swedes even have drugs worth killing over We do, but usually it's over a bit more than 5$ of hash. This wasn't about that either though, the hash probably didn't even exist. It was one drunk guy who got angry at something the victim said, but instead of punching him in the street he and his two buddies got the victim to follow them to a secluded location by offering to sell him some hash. Then they beat him so badly that they thought they had killed him, so of course the next logical step was to explode his lifeless body with dynamite. Anyone who didn't read the article want to guess how many years 3 adults who beat and exploded a guy to tiny pieces got in prison? drumroll One got 7 One got 10 One walked as it couldn't be proven that he actively participated in either the beating or the exploding.
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Dec 17, 2022 23:28
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probably they could have gotten 5ish if theyd insisted he was already dead when they blew him up
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Dec 17, 2022 23:43
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Carthag Tuek posted:probably they could have gotten 5ish if theyd insisted he was already dead when they blew him up Depends on the distance to other spaces though. Desecration of a corpse gets worse if it's coupled with the "general destruction constituting a danger to the public" charge. tr. "general-danger destruction" 
ThisIsJohnWayne has a new favorite as of 23:59 on Dec 17, 2022 |
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Dec 17, 2022 23:56
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Carthag Tuek posted:Denmark sterilized so-called "feeble-minded" men & women (aandssvage, literally weak of spirit), even decades after ww2 made eugenics unfashionable. Basically, if you were considered unfit, you were put in camps and were not allowed to leave until you got snipped. I have no context for this letter, aside from finding it when looking for my retard uncle. To me it reads incredibly coached. Note also the formal third person direct address we talked about earlier. Wow, just going right out there calling your uncle a retard. drat that's pretty mean.
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Dec 17, 2022 23:58
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Shifty Nipples posted:Wow, just going right out there calling your uncle a retard. drat that's pretty mean. well its the most accurate translation of what he was called, keeping in mind tone and baggage and such decided to go for naturalism, which might have been a bad call
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Dec 18, 2022 00:11
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:Depends on the distance to other spaces though. Desecration of a corpse gets worse if it's coupled with the "general destruction constituting a danger to the public" charge. Yeah and I don't have time to calculate the escape velocity of individual body parts. Not to mention we have no idea how high the fence was around it. There's too many variables!
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Dec 18, 2022 00:29
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if they did the same thing today, you could probably tack on bioterrorism for coating a wide area with that dude
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Dec 18, 2022 00:32
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34
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Dec 18, 2022 00:46
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Wasn't that the ending of Orson Well's movie adaption of Kafka's "The Trial / Der Prozess"'? [Edit] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_KUNKHkrdg Sorry, that was among rocks, not among gravestones. My mistake. Wipfmetz has a new favorite as of 13:39 on Dec 21, 2022 |
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Dec 21, 2022 07:16
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Keru posted:Not really a 'fun' fact, but in 1987, a guy was murdered in a graveyard in my hometown, Nyköping (Sweden). Why's this notable? How did they figure that he was actually alive before they blew him up?
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Dec 21, 2022 21:31
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Ariong posted:How did they figure that he was actually alive before they blew him up? The article doesn't say, the only sentence about it translated reads like this "The coroner established that Östergren [the victim] was alive at the time of the explosion - probably unconscious, but alive."
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Dec 22, 2022 10:09
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