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Forgotten History

escargot said:
I do. Where there are men in a position of power over young women, the women will be exploited.
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We may both be wrong in this case. This is what Reddit says (maybe not the best source, but this sounds legit):

Exhibit A:
There’s a funny story about Louis XIV and his nanny. Remember that a lot of what happened at the French court went on in public in the main rooms.
The very young Louis (aged about 2) was being very awkward. His nanny tried to persuade him to be a good little boy and behave, but initially without success. Then, like many a nanny until well into the 20th century, she masturbated him - except that this was all in full view of the court. The boy’s mood changed quickly and soon he was smiling and became very easy to control.

Exhibit B:
These things still go on. My grandmother, born in 1880s in the USA was raised by an old German nanny who used masturbation to quiet down the children at bedtime. My mother and her sister were raised by the same nanny. My mother gave me suppositories to make me empty my bowel on schedule, before bedtime so no dirty diapers at night, as she believed all children were constipated. She controled her own as tightly. She would put in the suppository and masturbate me until I produced, and then off to bed. It was always with subdued lighting. This was at 2 years old. So from personal knowledge I know such practices continued into at least the mid 1950s.
 
There's a place near here known as Bone Hill Farm, local rumor has it
that it got it's name due to it being the place serving girls used to go
when the master or his sons had got them into trouble.
 
escargot said:
The maids probably thought themselves lucky to get away with only giving a wank.
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If I interpret Exhibit A and B above correctly, it was not seen as a sexual thing. More as a convenience thing, like today you hand the baby an iPhone to keep it quiet ...
 
Some patterns stay the same. History rhymes:

IDF special forces—led by Sayeret Matkal, which had infiltration into enemy territory as its specialty—suddenly landed in helicopters at the international airport near Beirut, Lebanon, on December 28, 1968. Two days earlier, terrorists had attacked an El Al airliner in Athens, Greece.

Almost casually engaging in a gun battle with Lebanese troops, the Israeli commandos blew up 13 empty civilian aircraft belonging to Arab airlines.

The world was shocked by the audacity of the move. Some critics condemned an act of “state terrorism” and found it hypocritical that now the Israelis were attacking civil aviation. The United Nations Security Council voted, 15 to 0, to condemn Israel’s raid on Beirut. Israeli leaders would feel, over the decades that followed, that the U.N. always voted against them; and that sending a strong message that terrorists and their supporters were subject to attack was more important than winning votes in New York.

From:
Spies Against Armageddon
Dan Raviv
,
Yossi Melman

​

 
The Bulgarian computer Industry. I've sent this review of Ptrov's book to Ken MacLed siggesting he pen a trilogy on what might have been.

The Bulgarian Computer’s Global Reach: On Victor Petrov’s “Balkan Cyberia”​

November 10, 2023 • By Alex Langstaff

https%3A%2F%2Fdev.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2023%2F11%2FScreenshot-2023-11-08-at-4.52.07-PM.png

Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernization, and the Information Age Behind the Iron Curtain
VICTOR PETROV

LET’S PLAY a history game. Imagine it’s the 1960s and electrical engineers and coders are colonizing a golden valley of dipping hills and collective communes. Miraculously, they build a thriving computer industry in what seems like a matter of months. It prospers. This cyber-land comes to occupy the hopes and dreams of the whole nation, especially its youngest generation. Where are we?

Bulgaria. It is not the first place many people would think of. In the popular imagination (and in much economics scholarship), Bulgaria is a poster child for rural agrarianism and underdevelopment. Cold War Bulgaria conjures an even more inauspicious image as one of the most stalwart political vassals of the Soviet Union.

But by the 1980s, Bulgaria was one of the world’s major producers of computers. By conservative estimates, one in every 10 industrial workers was employed by the computer industry. The country held a 45 percent market share of electronic exports inside the Eastern Bloc. Its executives rubbed shoulders with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in 1980s California and sold the PCs powering India’s IT revolution. Its children were taught coding in communist youth groups, attended computer clubs, and swapped comic books depicting cyborg Lenins and a socialist ChatGPT. The country’s factories built pneumatic robot combines that could automate manufacturing, and its manufacturers supplied microprocessors for the state-of-the-art satellite Interkosmos 22 pinging around Earth’s orbit.

How did this happen? And why on earth haven’t we heard about this cyber-land before? The second question is easier to answer. We haven’t heard of it because it collapsed in 1990, and winners don’t like remembering losers. And because Bulgaria is classed as “peripheral.” It is on the margins of every map: Europe, the Cold War, the global economy, the digital revolution. Policymakers and trendsetting gurus don’t tend to look for answers to big issues in these “small” and unfamiliar places (unless doing so involves a happiness index). This is finally changing. Some of the best history books being written today are turning “to the margins” to find previously unrecognized laboratories of modernity. ...

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article...lobal-reach-on-victor-petrovs-balkan-cyberia/
 
Yet another case of hemorrhoids derailing World history by delaying a plot against Hitler:

Direct action to overthrow Hitler was the only solution and he was willing to play a leading part. Probably the best time to strike would be during the summer of 1942 when the German offensive in Russia was resumed. To prepare for The Day he intended to be in top physical trim and would have a minor operation to put him in shape. Unfortunately for the Field Marshal and his coconspirators this decision had disastrous consequences. Like Frederick the Great—and many others—Witzleben was troubled by hemorrhoids.* The operation to correct this painful and annoying condition was a routine case of surgery, to be sure, but when Witzleben took a brief sick leave in the spring to have it done, Hitler took advantage of the situation to retire the Field Marshal from active service, replacing him with Rundstedt, who had no stomach for conspiring against the Leader who had so recently treated him so shabbily.

From the famous Shirer book ...
 
Doesn't Aberfan count as an avalanche? I know the spoil tips were man-made but ... ?
 
Stormkhan said:
Those Normans, eh? A lot more ... liberally minded?
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The Bayeux tapestry was actually made by seamstresses in Kent, probably as a tribute to King William, and then sent to Normandy.
There is a near-perfect copy dating from Victorian times in the Reading museum, except that all dangling male genitalia were obscured by some masking stitches to appease Victorian sensibilities.
Perhaps, rather like the Greek claims about the Elgin Marbles, we should ask for our tapestry back?
 
Wells, H.G and Welles, Orson: join the dots.

Well it did in fact happen. Weirdly, Wells was in Saint Antonio in the States to address the US Brewers Association and Radio KTSA used the occaision to - rather fawningly - get him to meet up with his namesake who had not so long ago caused a rumpus with his radio adaptation of the Well's `War of the Worlds`.

So...the chap who wrote novels with penny farthings in them met up with the guy who did the voice overs, which you can probably remember, of those TV Carlsberg beer adverts - and they both had a matey chinwag together. To listen to this is to realise just how truncated modern history really is.

And there's much to marvel at here: Some diction and accent details aside, this could be a contemporary podcast - with Well's -in cheeky-chappy Brit mode - expressing scepticism as to how scared America really was by that broadcast - comparing it to a Halloween prank which everyone enjoys, saying that Welles should lose the `E` in his name and calling him a `great fellow`, and saying that Welles `does a bit of evertything really`, referencing his work on the then unreleased `Citizen Kane`. And so on. The subject matter also sounds kind of current: discussion of what is and isn't appeasement and What To Do About Russia.

Great stuff, but kind of gloomy too when you remind yourself what they were talking about.

 
Zeke Newbold said:
Wells, H.G and Welles, Orson: join the dots.

Well it did in fact happen. Weirdly, Wells was in Saint Antonio in the States to address the US Brewers Association and Radio KTSA used the occaision to - rather fawningly - get him to meet up with his namesake who had not so long ago caused a rumpus with his radio adaptation of the Well's `War of the Worlds`.

So...the chap who wrote novels with penny farthings in them met up with the guy who did the voice overs, which you can probably remember, of those TV Carlsberg beer adverts - and they both had a matey chinwag together. To listen to this is to realise just how truncated modern history really is.

And there's much to marvel at here: Some diction and accent details aside, this could be a contemporary podcast - with Well's -in cheeky-chappy Brit mode - expressing scepticism as to how scared America really was by that broadcast - comparing it to a Halloween prank which everyone enjoys, saying that Welles should lose the `E` in his name and calling him a `great fellow`, and saying that Welles `does a bit of evertything really`, referencing his work on the then unreleased `Citizen Kane`. And so on. The subject matter also sounds kind of current: discussion of what is and isn't appeasement and What To Do About Russia.

Great stuff, but kind of gloomy too when you remind yourself what they were talking about.

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Wells doesn't sound like I imagined!
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
The Bayeux tapestry was actually made by seamstresses in Kent, probably as a tribute to King William, and then sent to Normandy.
There is a near-perfect copy dating from Victorian times in the Reading museum, except that all dangling male genitalia were obscured by some masking stitches to appease Victorian sensibilities.
Perhaps, rather like the Greek claims about the Elgin Marbles, we should ask for our tapestry back?
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For my last working day of the year and before going for a well-earned pint or two, I revisited the copy of the Bayeux tapestry in the Reading Museum this lunchtime.
Here is the guy who was depicted as "tackle out" in the original, but who was given some underpants by the Victorian seamstress:

bay1.png


and I was especially pleased to see that they have a new exhibit - a 2019 recreation of the final 8 feet of the tapestry, which was torn off the original. It depicts William's coronation and has been created based on the textual accounts and in the style of the original:

bay2.png
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
and I was especially pleased to see that they have a new exhibit - a 2019 recreation of the final 8 feet of the tapestry, which was torn off the original. It depicts William's coronation and has been created based on the textual accounts and in the style of the original:

View attachment 72333
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Fascinating. Thanks for this. Cynically though, l look at the very end where “Omnes gaudent” - “Everyone is happy” - and can’t help adding “… if they know what’s good for them.”

maximus otter
 
Steven said:
A failure to learn from the past:

Wales fears another Aberfan as Westminster refuses to clean up tips
Map shows 350 coal tips close to communities as UK government unwilling to take on costs

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...erfan-as-westminster-refuses-to-clean-up-tips
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Floyd1 said:
Wales fears another Aberfan as Westminster refuses to clean up tips
Map shows 350 coal tips close to communities as UK government unwilling to take on costs

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...erfan-as-westminster-refuses-to-clean-up-tips

@escargot
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Horrifying. I've often wondered if it could happen again. Seems it could.
 
escargot said:
Horrifying. I've often wondered if it could happen again. Seems it could.
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Without getting political. It seems to be an argument over who should sort it out the devolved Welsh Parliament or Westminster.

To me it sounds like. I’m a big kid I can stand in my own two feet I don’t need you... Dad I need help.
 
It's more of an argument about who is funding it. The devolved government thinks it's for Central Government - it'd be a huge chunk out of the Welsh budget - and Central Government has refused funding, saying (with some merit) that it's the devolved government's responsibility. The Welsh Assembly seem to be reminding people of the last tragedy - when central government was slow to respond to the disaster - to gain support.
And all the while, the danger remains.
 
Part of the problem is various Westminster governments' hostile or dismissive attitudes regarding devolved administrations; as recently revealed by evidence unveiled at the Covid Inquiry concerning Boris Johnson's government.
 
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