Seriously, the gospels are not exactly subtle about the whole wealth thing. Really, they're not subtle about most things. I cannot understand how people miss what's going on when every parable is immediately followed by "and this is the meaning".
Not that this stops certain whackjobs like Conservapedia from wanting to make their own "translation" of the bible to remove the "liberal bias". That's seriously a project - rephrasing things to sound more acceptable to their world view.
edit: as an example, search/replace "rich" with "miserly".
I see your points.
Though not sure how useful it is trying to tie millenia+ old teachings to modern social movements.
Think about it this way.
The Bible is not an economics text. It doesn't go into exhaustive detail about how people and societies should deal with resource production and distribution. And that mostly makes it a (somewhat) blank slate, overarching principles like "share your shit!" are more timeless than something more exhaustive would be. Money is something that pops up relatively frequently in the Bible, and if you're a modern Christian who believes in Biblical infallibility, you must reconcile your modern social movement with those millenia+ old teachings. If you look at a Bible quote, you need to figure out how that fits in with your ideology, whether you immediately agree wholeheartedly with it, or if you decide the translation is poor and there's actually meaning lost in translation, or in context it's more nuanced, or simply that that part of the Bible doesn't apply anymore.
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
There’s a reason Christianity had a large following among the lower classes, prior to Constantine, despite the numerous purges various Emperors did.
True enough, it did spread rather quickly through the ranks of agricultural slaves on Villa/plantations once it made it's way to mainland Europe and they eventually formed a large portion of the church membership once Constantine the Great came to power. However, due to how the Roman system worked, the most important group of converts in the first 2 centuries of the Church were Roman noble women.
They were drawn to the early Christian message of equality of all and were allowed to join in services and even preach (note this is before the 1st Council of Nicea that codified the New Testament and made the clergy a boys only club). These women in turn started the occasionally convert male family members which then got Christians into bureaucratic positions and got the Church involved in local and provincial level Roman politics. Remember, if there was no Helena (who Constantine Chlorus divorced and then married the pagan daughter Emperor Maximian) Constantine II would probably have never developed his platform towards Christians and odds are the revelation/vision before the Battle of Milvian Bridge would have been Jupiter or Ares, not the cross.
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
I see your points.
Though not sure how useful it is trying to tie millenia+ old teachings to modern social movements.
Think about it this way.
The Bible is not an economics text. It doesn't go into exhaustive detail about how people and societies should deal with resource production and distribution. And that mostly makes it a (somewhat) blank slate, overarching principles like "share your shit!" are more timeless than something more exhaustive would be. Money is something that pops up relatively frequently in the Bible, and if you're a modern Christian who believes in Biblical infallibility, you must reconcile your modern social movement with those millenia+ old teachings. If you look at a Bible quote, you need to figure out how that fits in with your ideology, whether you immediately agree wholeheartedly with it, or if you decide the translation is poor and there's actually meaning lost in translation, or in context it's more nuanced, or simply that that part of the Bible doesn't apply anymore.
The Bible is something that a modern Christian has to largely ignore in order to exist in a world where we've decisively proven that all of the really big claims in it are just flat out wrong. I think we've long since passed the point where what's actually written in the Bible has anything to do with faith.
GodFuckingDAMMIT I love Sesame Steet and "The Count" so fucking much.
Rest easy, Jerry Nelson. You too, Jim Henson. I wish I had one quarter of your talent so I could even begin to describe how much of an influence you were on me and how terribly much I miss you both.
Russian military and civilians of the Kronstadt naval base, which protects the harbor of St. Petersburg (then Petrograd), had formed a Soviet commune and were one of the most important bases of support for the Socialist Revolution. At the close of the Russian Civil War in 1921, there were numerous rebellions against the dictatorship and economic policy of the Bolsheviks. The Kronstadt Soviet made these demands after meeting with strikers in Petrograd:
1. Immediate new elections to the Soviets; the present Soviets no longer express the wishes of the workers and peasants. The new elections should be held by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda for all workers and peasants before the elections.
2. Freedom of speech and of the press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists, and for the Left Socialist parties.
3. The right of assembly, and freedom for trade union and peasant associations.
4. The organisation, at the latest on 10 March 1921, of a Conference of non-Party workers, soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and the Petrograd District.
5. The liberation of all political prisoners of the Socialist parties, and of all imprisoned workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors belonging to working class and peasant organisations.
6. The election of a commission to look into the dossiers of all those detained in prisons and concentration camps.
7. The abolition of all political sections in the armed forces; no political party should have privileges for the propagation of its ideas, or receive State subsidies to this end. In place of the political section, various cultural groups should be set up, deriving resources from the State.
8. The immediate abolition of the militia detachments set up between towns and countryside.
9. The equalisation of rations for all workers, except those engaged in dangerous or unhealthy jobs.
10. The abolition of Party combat detachments in all military groups; the abolition of Party guards in factories and enterprises. If guards are required, they should be nominated, taking into account the views of the workers.
11. The granting to the peasants of freedom of action on their own soil, and of the right to own cattle, provided they look after them themselves and do not employ hired labour.
12. We request that all military units and officer trainee groups associate themselves with this resolution.
13. We demand that the Press give proper publicity to this resolution.
14. We demand the institution of mobile workers' control groups.
15. We demand that handicraft production be authorised, provided it does not utilise wage labour.
The Kronstadt Soviet was accused of being infiltrated by or working with counter-revolutionaries and was crushed by the Bolshevik Red Army, led by Leon Trotsky, ordered by Lenin.
This event is considered by non-Leninist Socialists to be the point where it was made clear to the world that Lenin and his Bolsheviks had betrayed the Revolution.
The USSR and Leon Trotsky in exile created a lot of propaganda and fake history to paint the Kronstadt Soviet as being compromised, but anyone reading their demands can see that all they wanted was to be granted the freedoms promised by Socialism.
Mentioning Kronstadt in leftist circles in a good way of causing a massive argument as pro/anti-Leninists take the different sides. Its fascinating.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
I see your points.
Though not sure how useful it is trying to tie millenia+ old teachings to modern social movements.
Think about it this way.
The Bible is not an economics text. It doesn't go into exhaustive detail about how people and societies should deal with resource production and distribution. And that mostly makes it a (somewhat) blank slate, overarching principles like "share your shit!" are more timeless than something more exhaustive would be. Money is something that pops up relatively frequently in the Bible, and if you're a modern Christian who believes in Biblical infallibility, you must reconcile your modern social movement with those millenia+ old teachings. If you look at a Bible quote, you need to figure out how that fits in with your ideology, whether you immediately agree wholeheartedly with it, or if you decide the translation is poor and there's actually meaning lost in translation, or in context it's more nuanced, or simply that that part of the Bible doesn't apply anymore.
The Bible is something that a modern Christian has to largely ignore in order to exist in a world where we've decisively proven that all of the really big claims in it are just flat out wrong. I think we've long since passed the point where what's actually written in the Bible has anything to do with faith.
** On the Christian side of things, sure.
But whether anybody remembers it or not, other people do use at least the first half of the Bible for their religion as well.
And I would argue that there is plenty in the Old Testament that has plenty to do with my faith. But then it's my faith and I'm not sure that I could really put things into words to make myself understood.
Edit: oh hey. there was a whole half page of things I hadn't read but thought I had. Ignore me.
Seriously, the gospels are not exactly subtle about the whole wealth thing. Really, they're not subtle about most things. I cannot understand how people miss what's going on when every parable is immediately followed by "and this is the meaning".
There are probably a dozen passages in the New Testament where Jesus give a parable with a fairly obvious meaning (usually some variation of “Stop being dicks to people” or “stop caring so much about trivial material bullshit”, or “go convince other people of the previous two things”, the disciples totally misinterpret it into what they want it to mean, and He’s immediately like “no you fuckers, I really do mean (obvious moral of parable).”
came across a little blurb about this guy a week or so ago, seemed too fun not to share:
Meet Juan Pujol Garcia (seen here in a Spanish cavalry uniform), who would eventually be given by British intelligence the codename 'Agent Garbo.'
In 1936 Mr. Garcia was farming chickens when, like many of his able-bodied countrymen, he was conscripted into the Spanish Civil War. He fought for the Republican government but deserted after his family were jailed on suspicion of being counter-revolutionaries. He briefly went back into the poultry business but found communist management intolerable; once again he enlisted (using fake papers) and once again deserted, but this time to the fascist side. He fared no better there though, and was eventually jailed over his republican sympathies and discharged from the National army.
The Franco government in Spain quickly became a pawn of Nazi Germany, and our protagonist decided he needed to resist it somehow. So in 1940 he went to the British embassy in Madrid and offered his services as a spy against the Germans. The British, quite understandably, told him he could go kick rocks.
Undeterred he turned to the Germans, claiming to be an ardent fascist and businessman who frequented London. And so it was that he became a German spy, with an operating budget and instructions to travel to London and begin developing contacts.
Mr. Garcia of course was no businessman; he'd been at best a barely-successful poultry farmer. He spoke no English and had no means to get himself into Britain. Instead he traveled to Lisbon and using guidebooks, cinema newsreels and other materials available in the public library, began making false reports to the Germans. He claimed to be travelling around Britain and submitted expense reports for himself and a steadily growing network of recruits (after one of his 'agents' was killed, he even convinced the Germans to pay a pension to the widow.)
ed: my favorite detail, which I forgot to include initially, was that he didn't understand the non-decimal british currency system. Thus he never totaled his expenses; he simply itemized them in detail (frequently erroneous detail), and the Nazis evidently never inquired why
This little hustle might have passed unnoticed into history... except that by 1941, there were no free German spies in Britain. The British had been very effective at rounding them all up, imprisoned most and were using a few to feed false information back to the Nazis. When the British Ultra program began picking up mentions of a heretofore-unknown spy network they launched a hunt for it, even though its information was often false or outright fantastical.
Mr. Garcia's career as a semi-pro spy came to an end in 1942 when made contact with an American naval attache in Spain; information about him was passed to the British who before long put two and two together. By spring of that year he'd been brought to London, christened Agent Garbo, and taken his operation to the next level. He sent volumes of mostly-useless information to Germany and the Nazis eventually supplied him with their highest-level hand encryption, which gave British codebreakers a key component in their eventual breaking of Enigma. His reports were so voluminous that by the end of 1942 Germany had stopped trying to land new agents in Britain at all.
As the war went on the British increasingly used Garbo to pass along misleading military information; he notified the Germans of the Allied invasion of north africa weeks after it took place, and sent many fictitious reports of successful rocket attacks on London. His misinformation was eventually pivotal in convincing the German high command that the invasion of Normandy was in fact a feint, and that the bulk of the allied forces would land at Calais.
For his services he received both the German Iron Cross (in absentia) and the Order of the British Empire. Over the course of the war the Germans paid him and his 'agents' more than a quarter-million dollars. Fearing Nazi reprisal after the war, MI5 helped him fake his death (of malaria), whereupon he and his family were relocated to Venezuela. This deception was so successful that even the British lost track of him, until the British politician and historian Rupert Allason tracked him down in 1984. He died in 1988, in Caracas.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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Gabriel_Pitt(effective against Russian warships)Registered Userregular
Fearing Nazi reprisal after the war, MI5 helped him fake his death (of malaria), whereupon he and his family were relocated to Venezuela.
I mean, if you're going to try and hide from Nazi's post WW2, that doesn't seem like the best place to do it...
Honestly. "Nazis in South america" almost always refers to South South America. Chile, Argentina, Brazil. While Venezuela had a fair sized german population the Venezuelan general opinion was pretty hardcore anti-nazi.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Most of South America was left-leaning after all. That is why the US did dirty deeds to put right wing dictatorships and narco/paramilitary/right-wing party alliances in power.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Customer service is important. You may think no one reads those negative reviews, but it could come back to bite you, even 3,800 years later. From the ancient Babylonian city of Ur, a translation of the above tablet:
Tell Ea-nasir: Nanni sends the following message:
When you came, you said to me as follows : “I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots.” You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: “If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!”
What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt? I have sent as messengers gentlemen like ourselves to collect the bag with my money (deposited with you) but you have treated me with contempt by sending them back to me empty-handed several times, and that through enemy territory. Is there anyone among the merchants who trade with Telmun who has treated me in this way? You alone treat my messenger with contempt! On account of that one (trifling) mina of silver which I owe(?) you, you feel free to speak in such a way, while I have given to the palace on your behalf 1,080 pounds of copper, and umi-abum has likewise given 1,080 pounds of copper, apart from what we both have had written on a sealed tablet to be kept in the temple of Samas.
How have you treated me for that copper? You have withheld my money bag from me in enemy territory; it is now up to you to restore (my money) to me in full.
Take cognizance that (from now on) I will not accept here any copper from you that is not of fine quality. I shall (from now on) select and take the ingots individually in my own yard, and I shall exercise against you my right of rejection because you have treated me with contempt.
This is the earliest known customer service complaint, a demanding for a refund for poor products and treatment. As much as times change, some things just stay the same.
Tl;dr Review of copper merchant Ea-nasir of Ur: One star. Exercise right of rejection.
I see your points.
Though not sure how useful it is trying to tie millenia+ old teachings to modern social movements.
Think about it this way.
The Bible is not an economics text. It doesn't go into exhaustive detail about how people and societies should deal with resource production and distribution. And that mostly makes it a (somewhat) blank slate, overarching principles like "share your shit!" are more timeless than something more exhaustive would be. Money is something that pops up relatively frequently in the Bible, and if you're a modern Christian who believes in Biblical infallibility, you must reconcile your modern social movement with those millenia+ old teachings. If you look at a Bible quote, you need to figure out how that fits in with your ideology, whether you immediately agree wholeheartedly with it, or if you decide the translation is poor and there's actually meaning lost in translation, or in context it's more nuanced, or simply that that part of the Bible doesn't apply anymore.
The Bible is something that a modern Christian has to largely ignore in order to exist in a world where we've decisively proven that all of the really big claims in it are just flat out wrong. I think we've long since passed the point where what's actually written in the Bible has anything to do with faith.
This is not my experience, as a practicing Episcopalian.
It's both. There's stuff that is effectively ignored (if not outright rejected), and stuff that is, erm, taken as gospel (in the colloquial sense).
Eg, commandments for genocide or other sticky bits. Usually they are at least ignored. What is ignored and what is gospel depends on the denomination/person/time/culture.
It's both. There's stuff that is effectively ignored (if not outright rejected), and stuff that is, erm, taken as gospel (in the colloquial sense).
Eg, commandments for genocide or other sticky bits. Usually they are at least ignored. What is ignored and what is gospel depends on the denomination/person/time/culture.
Well depending on the interpretation everything in the old testament is superseded anyway. There’s a lot more theology that goes into it than just picking and choosing, though depending on church and pastor there can be a fair amount of that as well.
Hey history thread long time no see. I was down at my single favorite museum, the Smithsonian's American History Museum, and I bring you a grab bag of American history:
We start with a hodgepodge of PBS children's entertainment. Everything you see here is an original. Did you know that the sweaters Mr. Rogers wore were knit by his mother? That's motherly love inside a glass case right there.
Here we have Julia Child's literal kitchen. The only parts that were replicated were the fruit (plastic) and the linoleum floor (paper).
Up in the top right of this photo is the bar that the camera would hang from when Child would do her cooking show.
Since we're on the topic of people's work areas, here is Ralph Baer's. Often called the father of video games this is where the Brown Box was first created. It would later be licensed to Magnavox as the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console.
Here we have one of my favorite exhibits, disposable coffee cup lids from the 70's onward. This is the sort of exhibit I see that lets me know I'm at a quality museum. No one said these were exciting, no one said people demanded to see coffee cup lids. Someone pointed out they're a subtle, important change to how we lived our lives that started decades ago and they're going to make a display about them, dammit. It is the largest public collection of disposable coffee cup lids in the world and was donated by the owners of the largest private collection of coffee cup lids.
In a similar vein, the first telescoping grocery carts. A notable innovation for their time, the increased number of carts meant more people could use a grocery store at any given time.
Listen Imma cop to the fact that I spend almost all of my time in the food section of the museum. In the gardening section you can find an early comic dedicated to encouraging children to grow their own victory garden. Victory gardens were part of WWII movement to decrease pressure on the public food supply. They also served as a local morale booster for people away from war zones, providing them a sense of contribution to the war effort.
Finally, this was a new one for me, is the Woolworth's Lunch Counter the Greensboro Four conducted their sit in at. As part of a protest in 1960, four men sat at the whites only bar and, after being told to leave, refused to move. Their action sparked months long, nation wide protests against segregation. While most were only successful on a local level if at all, the original sit in and its results created significant sympathy for the injustices racial minorities faced and became an iconic reference point for future movements.
That wraps up the hour or so I spent at the museum the other weekend. Everything here is only a small portion of displays, inside a single wing, of which there are six. I might do more of these in the future if people are interested.
Here we have one of my favorite exhibits, disposable coffee cup lids from the 70's onward. This is the sort of exhibit I see that lets me know I'm at a quality museum. No one said these were exciting, no one said people demanded to see coffee cup lids. Someone pointed out they're a subtle, important change to how we lived our lives that started decades ago and they're going to make a display about them, dammit. It is the largest public collection of disposable coffee cup lids in the world and was donated by the owners of the largest private collection of coffee cup lids.
Is this better curated if you see it in person? I don't see much history there, just random noise.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
edited December 2017
No, it's not. We were there last year, and were extremely disappointed in the American History Museum. The history is so weak that we wondered if it were meant to be a satire of a museum.
There are themed areas, for the beginnings of Electricity(Including essentially an old piston engine the size of a building for early power generation), Americans At War(exploring every armed conflict in our history), America On The Move(Vehicles through our history, innovations in shipping)
the central hall is ringed by brick-a-brack of various artifacts that don't fit in the larger themed areas. The Julia Child's kitchen display is part of the food exhibit, which looks into various food crazes and how economics and immigration influence our modern food diversity.
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
We've only had a little while to get our history going!
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
ok the coffee cups are really kinda cool.
God I miss the Smithsonian.
I really want to go back and see the African American museum, go through the Native American museum again. I want to get out to Roosevelt Island and and and...
Why is the floor in Julia's kitchen paper? because collecting the linoleum floor would destroy it?
I would imagine that old linoleum flooring is applied in similar ways to modern flooring: permanent adhesive. Plus, it was a very common sort of product, and when considered relative to the rest of the project it was not a do-or-die factor to preserve the flooring.
It's both. There's stuff that is effectively ignored (if not outright rejected), and stuff that is, erm, taken as gospel (in the colloquial sense).
Eg, commandments for genocide or other sticky bits. Usually they are at least ignored. What is ignored and what is gospel depends on the denomination/person/time/culture.
Well depending on the interpretation everything in the old testament is superseded anyway. There’s a lot more theology that goes into it than just picking and choosing, though depending on church and pastor there can be a fair amount of that as well.
Nobody's ever been able to explain to me an actual method for how what is and is not relevant gets chosen.
It always comes of more as picking and choosing what is and is not acceptable to modern audience, it would be interesting hear about it from someone who actually has some knowledge of it.
Posts
And that sounds a lot like socialism. "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need"
WoW
Dear Satan.....
Not that this stops certain whackjobs like Conservapedia from wanting to make their own "translation" of the bible to remove the "liberal bias". That's seriously a project - rephrasing things to sound more acceptable to their world view.
edit: as an example, search/replace "rich" with "miserly".
Think about it this way.
The Bible is not an economics text. It doesn't go into exhaustive detail about how people and societies should deal with resource production and distribution. And that mostly makes it a (somewhat) blank slate, overarching principles like "share your shit!" are more timeless than something more exhaustive would be. Money is something that pops up relatively frequently in the Bible, and if you're a modern Christian who believes in Biblical infallibility, you must reconcile your modern social movement with those millenia+ old teachings. If you look at a Bible quote, you need to figure out how that fits in with your ideology, whether you immediately agree wholeheartedly with it, or if you decide the translation is poor and there's actually meaning lost in translation, or in context it's more nuanced, or simply that that part of the Bible doesn't apply anymore.
True enough, it did spread rather quickly through the ranks of agricultural slaves on Villa/plantations once it made it's way to mainland Europe and they eventually formed a large portion of the church membership once Constantine the Great came to power. However, due to how the Roman system worked, the most important group of converts in the first 2 centuries of the Church were Roman noble women.
They were drawn to the early Christian message of equality of all and were allowed to join in services and even preach (note this is before the 1st Council of Nicea that codified the New Testament and made the clergy a boys only club). These women in turn started the occasionally convert male family members which then got Christians into bureaucratic positions and got the Church involved in local and provincial level Roman politics. Remember, if there was no Helena (who Constantine Chlorus divorced and then married the pagan daughter Emperor Maximian) Constantine II would probably have never developed his platform towards Christians and odds are the revelation/vision before the Battle of Milvian Bridge would have been Jupiter or Ares, not the cross.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
The Bible is something that a modern Christian has to largely ignore in order to exist in a world where we've decisively proven that all of the really big claims in it are just flat out wrong. I think we've long since passed the point where what's actually written in the Bible has anything to do with faith.
Are you picturing that? Can you do that?
Ok. Cool!
ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY!
ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY YEARS SINCE WORLD FAMOUS DUBLINER BRAM STOKER WAS BORN!
AH AH AH AH!
Rest easy, Jerry Nelson. You too, Jim Henson. I wish I had one quarter of your talent so I could even begin to describe how much of an influence you were on me and how terribly much I miss you both.
Russian military and civilians of the Kronstadt naval base, which protects the harbor of St. Petersburg (then Petrograd), had formed a Soviet commune and were one of the most important bases of support for the Socialist Revolution. At the close of the Russian Civil War in 1921, there were numerous rebellions against the dictatorship and economic policy of the Bolsheviks. The Kronstadt Soviet made these demands after meeting with strikers in Petrograd:
The Kronstadt Soviet was accused of being infiltrated by or working with counter-revolutionaries and was crushed by the Bolshevik Red Army, led by Leon Trotsky, ordered by Lenin.
This event is considered by non-Leninist Socialists to be the point where it was made clear to the world that Lenin and his Bolsheviks had betrayed the Revolution.
The USSR and Leon Trotsky in exile created a lot of propaganda and fake history to paint the Kronstadt Soviet as being compromised, but anyone reading their demands can see that all they wanted was to be granted the freedoms promised by Socialism.
Mentioning Kronstadt in leftist circles in a good way of causing a massive argument as pro/anti-Leninists take the different sides. Its fascinating.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
** On the Christian side of things, sure.
But whether anybody remembers it or not, other people do use at least the first half of the Bible for their religion as well.
And I would argue that there is plenty in the Old Testament that has plenty to do with my faith. But then it's my faith and I'm not sure that I could really put things into words to make myself understood.
Edit: oh hey. there was a whole half page of things I hadn't read but thought I had. Ignore me.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
There are probably a dozen passages in the New Testament where Jesus give a parable with a fairly obvious meaning (usually some variation of “Stop being dicks to people” or “stop caring so much about trivial material bullshit”, or “go convince other people of the previous two things”, the disciples totally misinterpret it into what they want it to mean, and He’s immediately like “no you fuckers, I really do mean (obvious moral of parable).”
And yet, 2000 years later...
Meet Juan Pujol Garcia (seen here in a Spanish cavalry uniform), who would eventually be given by British intelligence the codename 'Agent Garbo.'
In 1936 Mr. Garcia was farming chickens when, like many of his able-bodied countrymen, he was conscripted into the Spanish Civil War. He fought for the Republican government but deserted after his family were jailed on suspicion of being counter-revolutionaries. He briefly went back into the poultry business but found communist management intolerable; once again he enlisted (using fake papers) and once again deserted, but this time to the fascist side. He fared no better there though, and was eventually jailed over his republican sympathies and discharged from the National army.
The Franco government in Spain quickly became a pawn of Nazi Germany, and our protagonist decided he needed to resist it somehow. So in 1940 he went to the British embassy in Madrid and offered his services as a spy against the Germans. The British, quite understandably, told him he could go kick rocks.
Undeterred he turned to the Germans, claiming to be an ardent fascist and businessman who frequented London. And so it was that he became a German spy, with an operating budget and instructions to travel to London and begin developing contacts.
Mr. Garcia of course was no businessman; he'd been at best a barely-successful poultry farmer. He spoke no English and had no means to get himself into Britain. Instead he traveled to Lisbon and using guidebooks, cinema newsreels and other materials available in the public library, began making false reports to the Germans. He claimed to be travelling around Britain and submitted expense reports for himself and a steadily growing network of recruits (after one of his 'agents' was killed, he even convinced the Germans to pay a pension to the widow.)
ed: my favorite detail, which I forgot to include initially, was that he didn't understand the non-decimal british currency system. Thus he never totaled his expenses; he simply itemized them in detail (frequently erroneous detail), and the Nazis evidently never inquired why
This little hustle might have passed unnoticed into history... except that by 1941, there were no free German spies in Britain. The British had been very effective at rounding them all up, imprisoned most and were using a few to feed false information back to the Nazis. When the British Ultra program began picking up mentions of a heretofore-unknown spy network they launched a hunt for it, even though its information was often false or outright fantastical.
Mr. Garcia's career as a semi-pro spy came to an end in 1942 when made contact with an American naval attache in Spain; information about him was passed to the British who before long put two and two together. By spring of that year he'd been brought to London, christened Agent Garbo, and taken his operation to the next level. He sent volumes of mostly-useless information to Germany and the Nazis eventually supplied him with their highest-level hand encryption, which gave British codebreakers a key component in their eventual breaking of Enigma. His reports were so voluminous that by the end of 1942 Germany had stopped trying to land new agents in Britain at all.
As the war went on the British increasingly used Garbo to pass along misleading military information; he notified the Germans of the Allied invasion of north africa weeks after it took place, and sent many fictitious reports of successful rocket attacks on London. His misinformation was eventually pivotal in convincing the German high command that the invasion of Normandy was in fact a feint, and that the bulk of the allied forces would land at Calais.
For his services he received both the German Iron Cross (in absentia) and the Order of the British Empire. Over the course of the war the Germans paid him and his 'agents' more than a quarter-million dollars. Fearing Nazi reprisal after the war, MI5 helped him fake his death (of malaria), whereupon he and his family were relocated to Venezuela. This deception was so successful that even the British lost track of him, until the British politician and historian Rupert Allason tracked him down in 1984. He died in 1988, in Caracas.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I mean, if you're going to try and hide from Nazi's post WW2, that doesn't seem like the best place to do it...
Honestly. "Nazis in South america" almost always refers to South South America. Chile, Argentina, Brazil. While Venezuela had a fair sized german population the Venezuelan general opinion was pretty hardcore anti-nazi.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Customer service is important. You may think no one reads those negative reviews, but it could come back to bite you, even 3,800 years later. From the ancient Babylonian city of Ur, a translation of the above tablet:
This is the earliest known customer service complaint, a demanding for a refund for poor products and treatment. As much as times change, some things just stay the same.
Tl;dr Review of copper merchant Ea-nasir of Ur: One star. Exercise right of rejection.
MWO: Adamski
The Mina would have been a fair bit of money (according to Wiki) but I would think the half ton of copper would have cleared that.
Are you saying it's possible that Gimil-Sin was the Babylonian equivalent of Trump?
Which actually makes the comparison to modern customer service complaints even more apt.
This is not my experience, as a practicing Episcopalian.
Eg, commandments for genocide or other sticky bits. Usually they are at least ignored. What is ignored and what is gospel depends on the denomination/person/time/culture.
Well depending on the interpretation everything in the old testament is superseded anyway. There’s a lot more theology that goes into it than just picking and choosing, though depending on church and pastor there can be a fair amount of that as well.
We start with a hodgepodge of PBS children's entertainment. Everything you see here is an original. Did you know that the sweaters Mr. Rogers wore were knit by his mother? That's motherly love inside a glass case right there.
Here we have Julia Child's literal kitchen. The only parts that were replicated were the fruit (plastic) and the linoleum floor (paper).
Up in the top right of this photo is the bar that the camera would hang from when Child would do her cooking show.
Since we're on the topic of people's work areas, here is Ralph Baer's. Often called the father of video games this is where the Brown Box was first created. It would later be licensed to Magnavox as the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console.
Here we have one of my favorite exhibits, disposable coffee cup lids from the 70's onward. This is the sort of exhibit I see that lets me know I'm at a quality museum. No one said these were exciting, no one said people demanded to see coffee cup lids. Someone pointed out they're a subtle, important change to how we lived our lives that started decades ago and they're going to make a display about them, dammit. It is the largest public collection of disposable coffee cup lids in the world and was donated by the owners of the largest private collection of coffee cup lids.
In a similar vein, the first telescoping grocery carts. A notable innovation for their time, the increased number of carts meant more people could use a grocery store at any given time.
Listen Imma cop to the fact that I spend almost all of my time in the food section of the museum. In the gardening section you can find an early comic dedicated to encouraging children to grow their own victory garden. Victory gardens were part of WWII movement to decrease pressure on the public food supply. They also served as a local morale booster for people away from war zones, providing them a sense of contribution to the war effort.
Finally, this was a new one for me, is the Woolworth's Lunch Counter the Greensboro Four conducted their sit in at. As part of a protest in 1960, four men sat at the whites only bar and, after being told to leave, refused to move. Their action sparked months long, nation wide protests against segregation. While most were only successful on a local level if at all, the original sit in and its results created significant sympathy for the injustices racial minorities faced and became an iconic reference point for future movements.
That wraps up the hour or so I spent at the museum the other weekend. Everything here is only a small portion of displays, inside a single wing, of which there are six. I might do more of these in the future if people are interested.
What a great old picture, what great beards, what a strange "cat got the cream" expression on the gentleman in the middle
Yet for all it's splendour, it's maybe the 5th best piece of fur in the photo.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Is this better curated if you see it in person? I don't see much history there, just random noise.
the central hall is ringed by brick-a-brack of various artifacts that don't fit in the larger themed areas. The Julia Child's kitchen display is part of the food exhibit, which looks into various food crazes and how economics and immigration influence our modern food diversity.
God I miss the Smithsonian.
I really want to go back and see the African American museum, go through the Native American museum again. I want to get out to Roosevelt Island and and and...
I love DC.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
I would imagine that old linoleum flooring is applied in similar ways to modern flooring: permanent adhesive. Plus, it was a very common sort of product, and when considered relative to the rest of the project it was not a do-or-die factor to preserve the flooring.
Her first foray into cooking was to create a shark repellent for the OSS during WW2.
It always comes of more as picking and choosing what is and is not acceptable to modern audience, it would be interesting hear about it from someone who actually has some knowledge of it.