405 Comments

this is such perfect historiography.

(at some point in my ill administered life i got a graduate degree in history...)

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"Virtue" could just mean strength or power. Because 18th Century again.

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Do not pull a gun on a puppy in my company bitch, I will fuck you up.

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A suburb of Sydney Australia is named Wollstonecraft. Lest you think our early settlers were woke, it was named after Edward Wollstonecraft, who according to Wikipedia "left England to seek fortune for himself and his sister Elizabeth and to escape the notoriety of his aunt, Mary Wollstonecraft, author of the book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman."

So thanks, bitch Mary, for driving your own kith and kin from their ancestral homeland.

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OT, but conversion therapy has FINALLY been criminalized in Mexico (up to 17 years in the slammer). The right had been holding up the change to the criminal code for over 5 years. There were still a few "clinics" up on the US border (our north is your south politically) mostly catering to fundamentalist gringos.

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Most of Wollstoncraft's arguments for women's education were the same as those made by Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz almost two centuries earlier. I wonder if Wollstonecraft had read Sor Juana (although the English seem to have a strong allergic reaction to borrowing anything from the Spanish language, let alone Mexican nuns).

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Damn, William, that's a clunker of a title for your wife's biography.

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Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster.

Wisdom is understanding that the doctor was the REAL monster.

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Even "knowledger" is knowing Frankenstein was written by Wollstonecraft's daughter who never knew her.

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And genius is knowing it's Fronkenstheen

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And prudence is not jumping in with "actually, that was Frankenstein's MONSTER" every chance you get.

(Note: The Frankenstein/monster thing has been a punchline of Ruben Bolling's for years, including this week: https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2024/04/26)

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a) That's not what I said;

b) IIRC, the book referred to him as "the creature";

c) thanks for the link;

d) I enjoy talking in outlines.

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e) I was just trolling and knew what you meant. Actually, I don't know if anyone ever gets pedantic about the "Frankenstein's monster" thing IRL; I've only ever seen it as the setup for a joke.

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f) Although I would never actually start a statement with "actually", I would not be averse to wearing a fedora if they made one big enough to fit my head.

Sometimes tone is hard to read in comments. If my response was overly snarky, I will reel it in until it is only the correct amount of snark and no more.

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g) Oh hell no. I was apologizing, or trying to, for 𝘮𝘺 snark.

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OMG, thank you Robyn! Herbie and Dingus are wagging their tails as a thank you also too!!

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Super cute and sweet-faced doggos!

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Good doggies!

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The shared vacation of Byron Keats and Percy Shelly is unbelievable.

Tambora exploded in 1815.

The dust cloud caused the "year without a summer."

Famine and plague (cholera) walked the earth.

(I told you it was unbelievable)

Lord Byron fled England to get away from press stories of an affair he had with his half-sister.

He went to Geneva with his wife, his pregnant mistress, and his personal physician.

There he met Percy Shelly and his mistress, Mary Wallstonecraft.

The two mistresses were step sisters.

(I told you it was unbelievable)

They rented a house, but the bad weather kept them inside most of the time.

They told stories to pass the time, and eventually decided on a ghostly story contest.

Percy and Shelley, the two literary giants of their age, were non contenders.

The competition was between "Frankenstein" by Mary Wallstonecraft

and "Vampyre" by Dr John Polidori.

(I told you it was unbelievable)

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bloody poetry FTW

(I'm about to start a byron summer and i'm not sure i'm ready. my world is elizabethean england...)

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Back in 2018 when I was reading a lot about the Shelley/Byron/Godwin circle I tried to make a diagram of who was sleeping with whom and other relations. It required non-Euclidean geometry IIRC: Mary's one half-sister Fanny may have had the hots for Byron and killed herself when he didn't reciprocate, another half-sister Claire had a child by Byron, Shelly had 2 kids by his first wife when he met Mary (she later drowned herself while pregnant by yet another person), Mary lost 3 of her 4 children by Shelley before she was 20, Shelley was courting one of their housemates while Mary was pregnant with the 4th (using the old "my wife doesn't understand me" line) - and I haven't even started on Byron's affair with his half-sister and his relationship with his legal wife, mother of Ada Lovelace. Mary eventually made a good living by her pen for herself and her son, writing reviews and popular novels, because Shelley's wealthy family wouldn't give her a penny (Percy Shelley was the heir to a baronetcy when he died, which his son ultimately inherited). More drama than several seasons of a soap opera!

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These are both VERY SWEET PUPPY DOGS!

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Aren't they just the precious

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For all the existential dread and horror of the 21st century, I'm still glad my daughter didn't have to grow up in the 18th.

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Actually, 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘶𝘳 is a cool word -- a pity it didn't actually pass into the language.

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Thank you for this, Robyn.

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Fine him a grand a piece for the current batch of gag order violations. The next one that comes, at the end of that day's session, after the jury's been dismissed, give Trump the night in jail to contemplate not pissing the judge off.

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And ensure that the access "journalists" see him being led away to custody....

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That should put him over the top. After all, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

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Assumes judicial spinal vertebrae not in evidence.

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He's certainly contemptible.

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'Tis the virtual definition thereof.

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Oh, look everybody, capitalism at work in downtown Detroit. You have to be a naive NPR station to believe that parking lot and parking structure owners wouldn't take advantage of having the NFL draft in town:

https://wdet.org/2024/04/26/parking-costs-surge-downtown-during-nfl-draft-in-detroit/?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=der&utm_content=der_042624

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founding

That happened in Boston during the 1986 Red Sox season (I don’t need to be informed of their finish)

All the lots jacked their prices late in the regular season and into the playoffs/WS

Lot owners were fined because rate increases have to be approved by the city

I doubt they paid the fines and still enjoyed a profit

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I have a hard time getting worked up over people who have enough free time and money to go watch a bunch of rich guys exchange sportsball players like chattel getting fleeced by glorified parking meters.

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I am an angorophobe and claustrophobe. There is no way in hell that you could get me anywhere near that crush of humanity.

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You're afraid of mohair sweaters? /s

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