Cryptocartographer

Fuck indeed.

Sat, 25 May 2013 21:11:49 -0400

Fuck indeed.

Source: http://gifdaygif.blogspot.com/2012/06/zardoz.html

Sat, 25 May 2013 12:55:43 -0400

Source: http://gifdaygif.blogspot.com/2012/06/zardoz.html

medievalcartoonist: What Was the Drink of Choice in Medieval...

Sat, 25 May 2013 11:40:37 -0400

medievalcartoonist:

What Was the Drink of Choice in Medieval Europe?

This question originally appeared on Quora.

Answer by Tim O’Neill, medievalist:

Contrary to what is found all over the internet on the subject, the most common drink was water - for the obvious reason: it’s free. Medieval villages and towns were built around sources of fresh water. This could be fresh running water, a spring or, in many cases, wells. All of these could easily provide fresh, disease and impurity free water - the idea that water from these sources would be the causes of disease and so had to be made into ale or beer is fanciful.

Where water was more likely to be contaminated, largely by tanning, slaughtering or dying facilities, was in larger towns. But since medieval people were not idiots, they dealt with this in several ways. There were ordinances on where tanners, dyers etc could operate so water for domestic use could be drawn from rivers and streams in the town to ensure the water was clean. And there were fines for contaminating areas of streams used for household consumption.

In larger cities, water supply infrastructure was built to ensure public access to clean water. In Medieval London, for example, the City Council began construction on what was called “the Great Conduit” in 1236. This was a complex of pipes that brought water from a large fresh spring at Tyburn to a pumping house with cisterns at Cheapside. This fed local cisterns all over London.

Wealthy Londoners could apply to have a private pipe or “quill” run from the conduit system to their house, giving them running water. This was expensive, and cases where citizens illegally tapped into the conduits were severely punished. Most people either drew their water from the nearest conduit cistern or paid a “cob” or water-carrier to bring them their day’s water supply in three gallon tubs which they carried through the streets on a yoke. Public celebrations, such as the return of Edward I from Palestine or the coronation of Richard II, saw the City stop the water flow and fill the conduits with wine for the day, with people able to drink as much as they wanted.

People did drink a lot of ale and beer, though not because their water was so bad. The brews in question were much weaker than their modern equivalents but had the effect of providing much needed calories to labourers and farmers, as well as being thirst-quenching and re-hydrating in hot weather or when working hard and losing sweat. Given the long days Medieval workers put in, ale and beer were a major and necessary part of a Medieval labourer’s daily energy intake. This should be seen as something like the Medieval equivalent of drinking Gatorade.

Wine was the drink of choice for the upper classes and anyone who could afford it. It was produced all over Medieval Europe and, due to Medieval Warm Period that prevailed over western Europe until the Fourteenth Century, the climate meant it could be produced as far north as northern England. Wine was expensive and buying a small barrel was beyond the means of most people. But taverners bought it in bulk and sold it by the cup, so for a penny or even a halfpenny an English peasant could enjoy a Bordeaux red.

In Medieval England the wine drunk most was red wine from Bordeaux and Gascony. Rhenish white from the Rhineland was twice as expensive and favoured by the upper classes. Spanish white wines such as Lepe and Osey were cheaper and sweet wines from Greece, Crete and Cyprus such as Romonye and Malmsey were popular after dinner.

I love it when I learn something, especially when it contradicts what we all just take as “fact.”

Going to the Club in 1999, also the Club is in Germany

Sat, 25 May 2013 11:05:00 -0400

I remember going to this huge nightclub in Germany called Riverside or some dumb shit. I don’t even think it was near a river, and no one outside of Vandals fans or people in California really understand how gross Riverside, CA is. It would be like naming a club Schenectady or something. The club itself was enormous and they had this killer laser light show. Plus you could smoke everywhere, because in 1999 in Germany you could do that. I don’t know what the laws are in Germany now. I imagine smoking is still pretty accepted over there. When I was stationed there, you could smoke at the preemie ward at the Hospitalzunginschlab. I don’t know since I haven’t been back since. The club, with its gigantic arena-like interior and fancy drinks and European sensibilities seemed like it should have been super fun to the max. But some cracks appeared in the facade of fun right away. First off, German DJs don’t really have a sense of how to tie a set together. One thing my USA DJ friends tried to teach me was beat-matching, how to adjust varied beats ever so slightly so that one song flowed naturally into the next. No such thing existed at The Riverside, or any of the other German clubs I visited. The music would end abruptly and the next song would begin just as abruptly, but it would be not only a totally different tempo but also a completely different genre of music. Like unntis-unntis-unntis techno to Wop Bop a-loo Bop oldies. So that was hard to understand.

Another weird thing was the dancing. In America, most young people can dance competently. In Germany, people only know one dance, the electric slide. When the electric slide comes on, they do it for every song after. It’s very strange to try to dance up on a lady and have her not know what the fuck is going on. People kind of move around a little, but it’s just no good. Their ancestral memories of dance are of Teutonic suicide rituals, so they are very subdued in their movements. Americans, with our melting-pot culture and vibrant street scene, instinctively know how to dance. Americans that can’t dance had to unlearn it, because they live in an area where dance proficiency is sinful or boastful. When you see a white American doing the stereotypical white-American dance, what you don’t realize is that if that person were living in Germany they would be heading up a crew. The language barrier pales in comparison to the dance barrier.

Since I was living in Germany because I was in the service, the particular area of Germany I was in was crawling with annoying, drunk GIs. Most of the German people there hated us. I can understand why. Germans, and pretty much everyone in the world, are intimately familiar with booze and its effects by the time they turn seven or eight. They go through their “shitty-drunk” phase when they’re in junior high, so by the time they hit 18+, they have fully mastered drinking. Occasionally they’ll cut loose and get a little too excited, like when their football team wins a match. Mostly they just get a happy little buzz on and every drink afterwards is just a maintenance drink. Not so with 18-24 year old Americans. Since we live in a culture of scared pussy babies, who worry that the devil drink will make our pristine children dance to jazz music, we have to make up for lost time by drinking as much as possible when given the opportunity. The chance might not present itself for a long time, so the attitude is to just get fucked up. This attitude lasts for years and years, even when getting alcohol is legal and easy and fun. So we’d be all fucked up on overrated German beers and Germans hated us. Some were more vocal than others. At Riverside, I was going pee in the bathroom and I was approached by an intoxicated German dressed like how people in 1992 imagined hackers would dress in the future. My baseball cap and cocksure swagger gave my American citizenship away instantly, and this German dude wanted to dance battle me, only with his fists. “FUCK USA! FUCK USA!” he kept yelling at me. So I just yelled at him “YEAH FUCK USA! YEAAH!” He was very confused and backed down because ever since the Nuremberg trials, Germans have been afraid to commit to conflict.

Finally, the club had really nice glass ashtrays, like you find in fancy hotels from Mad Men, but if you try to steal one or nine, they will intimidate you and ban you from the club for all time. The club, as it turned out, was fully equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment. I only know this because some large German men escorted me into the security room to shake me down for the ashtrays I was trying to liberate. What an idiot kid I was.

My old 1up.com avatar, when I went by the name “Chunks...

Sun, 19 May 2013 09:24:15 -0400

My old 1up.com avatar, when I went by the name “Chunks Chewbacca.”

adamowenftw: Gamecube/Owen2016 It just feels good, you know?

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:38:29 -0400

adamowenftw:

Gamecube/Owen2016

It just feels good, you know?

Let's Play Ducktales for NES with SG-88

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:21:45 -0400

Let's Play Ducktales for NES with SG-88:

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game DuckTales is made by Capcom in 1988. Considered a classic by many, watch as SG-88 play’s this frustrating game! DON”…

I need to cash in on this Let’s Play craze.

Your Tired Meme

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:45:05 -0400

In an effort to ruin fun for people, I think a good tumblr would be one where you just repost peoples meme posts and claim that you’re doing it because the meme is tired. No one can really pin down when a meme starts, and being cool means you must constantly be ahead of what is not cool. So if you just made the claim, authoritatively, that you were an expert, people would see their fav meme on your site and tug at their collars and be like, “Oh shit, I just posted that tired meme,” and stop using it. It would definitely cause some strife for people, but if the site got big enough we could literally see the rise and fall of memes in mere hours instead of days.

The Worst Kind of Online Articles

Wed, 15 May 2013 19:42:00 -0400

One of the best things about the future in which we live is that we all have these magical devices that let us see everything. There is just so much stuff on the Internet to read or watch or participate in, it’s staggering and awesome in the literal sense. So many publications exist today that simply could not have existed at the scale they’re operating ten years ago. I love it. I think it’s great. We’re living in a cool time where entertainment and news is evolving in how it’s delivered and how it’s consumed. In such a transitional period of evolution, it’s not uncommon or unexpected to see bursts of adaptations exploding onto the scene only to quickly disappear. I’m hoping the shittiest, laziest type of article is soon made extinct by something better and less dumb. You probably think I’m talking about list articles, like “44 Reasons Your NES Rocked!!” or something. But I’m not talking about list articles. List articles are totally fine. They order information, making it easily digestible to an audience that is increasingly distracted. No, the laziest and worst article is the current-event Twitter-mining for outrage article. That’s when a current event happens and a writer goes on Twitter and searches for a term relevant to the event. One that will, ideally, invoke rage and teeth gnashing in viewers. Like searching for “nigger” on MLK day, or “faggot” when something LGBT related is in the news, and then putting these results in an article to prove a point. I’m totally fine with publicly shaming people who deserve it, but cherry-picking offensive tweets is just super lazy. Effective, sure, but really dumb. You could support any claim by cherry-picking Twitter search results. Finding a layer of retardation on the Internet is like writing an expose about the color of the sky. Yes, there are dumb and hateful people out there. Everyone knows this. They are in the minority. Shocking, but true. Bringing attention to them serves no purpose other than to scratch the itch people have to see a group of freaks doing disgusting things.

detenebrate: 0xymoronic: shitarianasays: theeyesinthenight: t...

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:36:51 -0400

detenebrate:

0xymoronic:

shitarianasays:

theeyesinthenight:

the-sonic-screw:

platinumpixels:

volpesvolpes:

unseilie:

sarahvonkrolock:

gaysexagainstawall:

them-days-was-olden-as-fuck:

The spread of the black death.

Poland

Poland, tell us your secret.

Poland is the ~~old~~ new Madagascar.

If I remember correctly, Poland’s secret is that the jews where being blamed all over europe (as usual) as scapegoats for the black plague. Poland was the only place that accepted Jewish refugees, so pretty much all of them moved there.

Now, one of the major causes of getting the plague was poor hygiene. This proved very effective for the plague because everyone threw their poop into the streets because there were no sewers, and literally no one bathed because it was against their religion. Unless they were jewish, who actually bathed relatively often. When all the jews moved to Poland, they brought bathing with them, and so the plague had little effect there.

Milan survived by quarantining its city and burning down the house of anyone showing early symptoms, with the entire family inside it.

I reblogged this tons of times, but the Milan info is new.

Damn Italy, you scary.

Poland: “Hey, feeling a bit down? Have a quick wash! There, you see? All better”

Milan: “Aw, feeling a bit sick are we? BURN MOTHERFUCKER, BURN!!!!!”

Also, this might have something to do with it: from what I understand, O blood type is uncommonly… common in Poland. Something to do with large families in small villages and a LOT of intermarriage. The black plague was caused by a bacterium that produced, in its waste in the human body, wastes that very closely mimic the “B” marker sugars on red blood cells that keep the body from attacking its own immune system. Anyone who has a B blood type had an immune system that was naturally desensitized to the presence of the bacterium, and therefore was more prone to developing the disease. Anyone who had an O type was doubly lucky because the O blood type means the total absence of ANY markers, A or B, meaning that their bodys’ immune system would react quickly and violently against the invaders, while someone with an A may show symptoms and recover more slowly, while someone with B would have just died. Because O is a recessive blood type, it shows in higher numbers when more people who carry the recessive genes marry other people who also carry the recessive gene. Poland, which has a nearly 700 year history of being conquered by or partnering with every other nation in the surrounding area, was primarily an agricultural country, focused around smaller, farming communities where people were legally tied to, and required to work, “their” land, and so historically never “spread” their genes across a large area. The economy was, and had been, unstable for a very long period of time leading up to the plague, the government had been ineffective and had very little reach in comparison to the armies of the other countries around for a very very long time, and so its people largely remained in small communities where multiple generations of cross-familial inbreeding could have allowed for this more recessive gene to show up more frequently. Thus, there could be a higher percentage of O blood types in any region of the country, guaranteeing less spread of the illness and moving slower when it did manage to travel. Combine this with the fact that there were very few large, urban centers where the disease would thrive, and with the above facts, and you’ve got a lovely recipe for avoiding the plague.

Interestingly enough, as a result from the plague, the entirety of Europe now has a higher percentage of people with O blood type than any other region of the world.

WHY IS THIS ALL SO COOL

When Tumblr teaches you more about the plague than 12 years of school ever did.

Just to throw a nod in, as a medieval historian, this is all credible, and is the leading theory as to the plagues effectiveness at this point. So. Enjoy your new knowledge!

“ …literally no one bathed because it was against their religion.” Uh… that isn’t true. Be careful trying to make facts fit into your tidy narratives, folks.

Today's Cartoon History Lesson

Sun, 12 May 2013 14:21:00 -0400

Today I learned that the shitty car version of Voltron is referred to (in Voltron circles) as “Voltron Vehicle Force.” I feel this is a case of fans willing to apologize for a terrible aspect of their favorite series. They worry that lobbing even some light criticism may open the flood gates for a deluge of critical assessments. Technically, Shitty Car Voltron isn’t even in the Voltron universe. It’s just an adapted version of the Japanese show Armored Fleet Dairugger XV. It’s similar to how Power Rangers is just a collection of clips from Japanese shows purchased for pennies. But Shitty Car Voltron isn’t spliced crustily into a show about a rainbow coalition of southern California 20-somethings playing teenage ninja. It’s a stand-alone show where a rainbow coalition of galactic species fight evil in flying minivans.

Shitty Car Voltron came on after they ran the story of Awesome Lion Voltron to completion. Continuity has never been a strong point in American television. Adaptations of foreign shows marketed to kids was basically a guy in a distribution office somewhere going, “lol ya right,” and shipping all the episodes to affiliate stations in a cartoonishly large and disheveled box. Being a little kid means being confused constantly, and you start to accept the confusion, because doing so is a survival instinct. But as you grow more mature and start to understand your limitations, you’re at the same time growing out of many of those limits. It’s frustrating, especially when you are used to watching a show every day after school about giant lions turning into a robot man who battles enormous alien monsters. Then, one day, without warning, you tune your television to the Voltron station and suddenly there are all these stupid cars flying around. It wasn’t fair to us, as children, to be so willfully lead astray by thoughtless local programming directors.

Remember when you stood in line to see Phantom Menace, because your whole life had been leading up to that point, and all your Star Wars dreams were about to come true? Then you got about ten minutes into the movie and your mind recoiled in horror, because you realized your whole stupid life was a lie, and nothing could have possibly met your expectations of a new Star Wars movie? And then, after a little more time, you felt sick to your gut because you could see everyone around you was mentally kicking themselves in the balls to convince themselves that it was not a shitty movie? Further still, you figured out that while your expectations were unrealistically high, that still didn’t excuse how terrible Phantom Menace turned out to be? That’s a lot of questions, but if you took those feelings and broke them into smaller chunks of despair, those chunks would perfectly encapsulate the feeling of coming home from school and finding an episode of Shitty Car Voltron was airing in place of awesome robolions.

ourvaluedcustomers: After his friend said something, something...

Thu, 09 May 2013 17:14:09 -0400

ourvaluedcustomers:

After his friend said something, something NEW NINJA TURTLES MOVIE something, something RUINING MY CHILDHOOD…

You know what actually ruins childhood? Divorce.

I Went to the Museum Yesterday

Fri, 03 May 2013 22:09:13 -0400

The Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. I’ve never been. I’ve been past it a million times. I’ve been in the building itself, but back when it was J.J. Newberry Co. and the floors were wooden planks and the old ladies who worked there would follow you around because you looked like a shoplifter on account of not being super old. I had an hour so I figured I’d check it out. It’s kind of a big deal on the coast of Maine. So I went in. I was disappointed, mostly. I didn’t check out the entire place, but nothing I did see grabbed me. There is a selection of Louise Nevelson works, and I find her paintings to be really boring. Her sculptures are alright, I guess, but they don’t take me to another place, emotionally or imaginatively. So bleh. They also have a pretty decent selection of Andrew Wyeth pieces, and I really like Andrew Wyeth. He’s like the gritty reboot of Norman Rockwell, who I also like non-ironically. So I was super stoked to go and point my eyes at some of his works, but I was startled to find that Wyeth’s works have no difference in impact when viewed in person or seen in a quality book. Bummed out. Their bathroom facilities, however, are second to none. Clean, fresh smelling, and tucked far enough away from anything to allow for a really stress-free surprise pooping. Surprise poops are stressful enough, so it was really refreshing to be able to relax in what was essentially my own private poop dungeon. A+.

This is the best one.

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:47:34 -0400

This is the best one.

themascott: melodiesoflifeffix: Black Mage Village, Final...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:53:25 -0400

themascott:

melodiesoflifeffix:

Black Mage Village, Final Fantasy IX

ugh FF9 is so good and no one even cares.

FF9 marks the last time I felt the magic of a Final Fantasy game. Really need to replay it, it’s been, shit, 13 years?

I Want to be Better at Taking Photos

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 19:47:05 -0400

I Want to be Better at Taking Photos:

I like taking photos, but I want to take better photos. Gaze upon my work and criticize it, please.

My blog for putting up pictures of stuff.

Whoa, hey, wow

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:50:43 -0400

retronauts:

1229 backers, 56,728 dollars. That’s kind of amazing. You are all kind of amazing.

When Bob and Ray and I first started discussing the details of this Kickstarter venture a couple of months ago, we speculated how much we could reasonably expect to raise.…

View Post

Everything is good. Make sure you read the whole thing for the SHAMLAYNANAIAN TWIST!

keepingwolterbusy: pixystitches: Sean Connery as Zed cross...

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 12:31:11 -0400

keepingwolterbusy:

pixystitches:

Sean Connery as Zed cross stitch. You can go home now. There’s nothing left to be done.

Holy freaking god.

Fantastic.

Chloe Sevigny for Opening Ceremony, FW 13 Holy shit. If they...

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 09:40:00 -0400

Chloe Sevigny for Opening Ceremony, FW 13

Holy shit. If they ever make a BioShock Infinite movie, Chloe Sevigny could play both Lutece siblings.

I was looking to clean the dust out of my camera, but I forgot...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 10:47:15 -0400

I was looking to clean the dust out of my camera, but I forgot it’s 4/20.