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Hey, folks. As much as I hate doing it, I have to pull a ‘gap week’ this week, as the second part of the Gracchi series (on the younger brother, Gaius Gracchus) isn’t done yet and I have some academic travel that I need to prepare for which is going to demand most of my … Continue reading Gap Week (January 24, 2025) →
a week ago

More from A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry

Collections: On the Gracchi, Part II: Gaius Gracchus

Last time, we started our retrospective on the Gracchi looking at the elder brother Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and his term as tribune of the plebs in 133 BCE; this week, we’ll wrap up this look by discussing Tiberius’ younger brother Gaius Sempronius Gracchus and his terms as tribune of the plebs in 123 and 122 … Continue reading Collections: On the Gracchi, Part II: Gaius Gracchus →

2 days ago 6 votes
Collections: On the Gracchi, Part I: Tiberius Gracchus

This week, we’re going to talk a bit about the brothers Tiberius (trib. 133) and Gaius (trib. 123-2) Gracchus, the famous Roman reformers of the late second century. There’s actually a fair bit to say about both of them, so we’re going to split this treatment over two weeks, talking about Tiberius this week and … Continue reading Collections: On the Gracchi, Part I: Tiberius Gracchus →

2 weeks ago 37 votes
Fireside Friday, January 10, 2025

Hey folks, Fireside this week! I’m currently working on a post “On the Gracchi” taking a somewhat darker look at everyone’s favorite Roman reformers (though hardly the same black takedowns Alexander and Cleopatra got) , which will hopefully be ready for next week. Before we dive into this week’s musing, I do want to take … Continue reading Fireside Friday, January 10, 2025 →

3 weeks ago 41 votes
Collections: Coinage and the Tyranny of Fantasy ‘Gold’

This week on the blog I want to take a brief detour into discussing historical coinage, particularly in the context of modern fantasy and roleplaying settings. In particular, the notions I want to tackle are first how did ancient currency systems work in terms of value (what could you buy with how much) and then … Continue reading Collections: Coinage and the Tyranny of Fantasy ‘Gold’ →

4 weeks ago 50 votes

More in history

Summary of changes for January 2025

Hey everyone! This is the list of all the changes we've done to our projects during the month of January. Summary Of Changes 100r.co, added a new page: tote. Added Week 8 and Week 9 of the Victoria to Sitka logbook. Tote, released the project on itch.io. Grimgrains, added a new recipe: chocolate turtles. Left, added an option to collapse the nav bar on the left. Orca, added community links. Devine spent time improving the html5 Uxn emulator, and thanks to their hard work it is now possible to play Niju, Donsol, and Oquonie directly in the browser on itch.io, the same goes for projects like Noodle and Tote. It's been a long time coming, but Oquonie is now playable on Playdate. Rek spent the last week converting the 2-bit assets for Oquonie to 1-bit, because some of the characters and tiles were too difficult to read, now all of the assets work perfectly on monochromatic screens. As an amazing plus, Devine got the music and sounds working perfectly, just like in the original iOS version. From January 19-25th, we both participated in Goblin Week, an event in which you make goblins every day for a week(whatever that means to you). See the goblin series made by Rek(viewable here in higher rez also) and the one made by Devine(Mastodon). Pino has earned two new replacement solar panels this month! We have not installed them yet, it is still too cold outside in Victoria (we are expecting snow this week). We share photos often in our monthly updates, and so Devine spent time building our very own custom photo feed named Days. It is possible to follow the feed with RSS. Book Club: This month we are reading How do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino and Middlemarch by George Eliot. Continue Reading

21 hours ago 2 votes
The Seven Deadly Sins Under Death’s Dominion by James Ensor, 1904

“…the eternal black night, death under the colourless earth” – James Ensor on his dread of death     Belgian painter and printmaker James Ensor (13 April 1860 – 19 November 1949) etched his Seven Deadly Sins in 1904. To hammer home the message of human foolishness, malice and the farce we construct around ourselves, … Continue reading "The Seven Deadly Sins Under Death’s Dominion by James Ensor, 1904" The post The Seven Deadly Sins Under Death’s Dominion by James Ensor, 1904 appeared first on Flashbak.

16 hours ago 2 votes
My Weekly Reader and Gemini (1965,1966)

As I got through boxes I found a couple of My Weekly Readers that I had not shared before. My Weekly Reader posts seem to be popular for their nostalgia effect and because as ephemera no one saved them from their youth. These particular ones are about the Gemini missions. At the time in elementary school many children saw these as their "space news" since the adult papers were not written at a basic level. So even if these are short articles they bring back a time when America was headed for the moon. Don't you wish you had lived in this neighborhood? Pretty fun to see someone's answers to the quiz. How did you do?

yesterday 4 votes