The Internet Almanac

Miscellaneous Blather
#1

The choicest parts of the internet, stripped from the bone.

https://placesjournal.org/article/eadweard-muybridges-secret-cloud-collection/

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#2

Via RPS: charming, utterly pointless game about driving a tram through a pencil-drawn landscape inhabited by cats: Short Trip.

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#3

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2017/summer/feature/studying-the-vietnam-war - “history is written by the victors.” is the cry of the stupid. History is written by the writers, and by those who can most effectively publicise it. Now we’re seeing more and more non-US sources surface, the historiography of the Vietnam War will change, and improve.

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#5

One thing that Luther seems especially to have loved about his children was their corporeality—their fat, noisy little bodies. When Hans finally learned to bend his knees and relieve himself on the floor, Luther rejoiced, reporting to a friend that the child had “crapped in every corner of the room.” I wonder who cleaned that up—not Luther, I would guess—but it is hard not to feel some of his pleasure. Sixteenth-century Germans were not, in the main, dainty of thought or speech. A representative of the Vatican once claimed that Luther was conceived when the Devil raped his mother in an outhouse. That detail comes from Eric Metaxas’s book, which is full of vulgar stories, not that one has to look far for vulgar stories in Luther’s life. My favorite (reported in Erikson’s book) is a comment that Luther made at the dinner table while in the grip of a depression. “I am like a ripe shit,” he said, “and the world is a gigantic asshole. We will both probably let go of each other soon.”

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#6

This was written a while ago but it applies more than ever.

http://www.invisibleworks.co.uk/join-hands/

I have little time for anti-war sentiment; war is something humans do well and we do it naturally, and it has been brought to unthinkable levels thanks to our technology, allowing us to create a large population and enough materiel to inflict and endure incredible loss. War is a horror, but it is a fact of life, and you cannot wish it away. Wringing your hands over it does no good. You must deal with it honestly.

I am ashamed of what my country is doing. Heartily ashamed. The loss of life alone is enough to mourn for any one person, for any one society. You can weep for that, I know I have. But the subverting of remembrance is a step more horrific, and it’s something I cannot bear. I can mourn the dead unashamedly. If I cry over this, I feel I must cover my face. It is ignominious and vile.

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#9

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/holocaust.html - Endor Holocaust

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#16

http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm

#17
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#18

He may be best remembered for planting the Aboriginal flag on the white cliffs of Dover on the Australian Bicentenary Day of 26 January 1988. This was his tongue-in-cheek way of claiming England, as Arthur Phillip had done to Burnum Burnum’s homeland in 1788 when arriving with the First Fleet.

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