Marie Antoinette, impression of her head taken immediately after she had been guillotined, October 16, 1793,

Religious art leaves out the best part and it’s such a goddamn shame. Livestock, Agriculture and Food is an integral part of any culture and we all need to be pushing for more realistic sheep in religious art. #FATTAILSFORJESUS

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it IS hard to talk about fandom/fanfiction in reference to mythology too because like yeah okay technically any adaptation could be called fanfiction. if that's how you want to define fanfiction, like... yeah okay. fine. but also, like... fandom and fan culture are a very modern thing, and they function very much within our culture. especially when it comes to like... how media is commodified etc. i don't have the brainpower to go into more depth but yeah i feel like sometimes when people are like "all adaptations are fanfiction" they're missing the nuance of the different cultural context

Don't be mean to me if I'm wrong but from what I remember (I didn't study this specific area in my degree but we touched on it) translating classics and myths was an intellectual practice and pastime for highly educated nobles and functioned almost as a right of passage or intellectual flex for a long time. Like showing up to English class and declaring you'd read and fully understood James Joyce's Ulysses and Homer's Lliad only more so and in a more official sense. Translating classics and Myths were also a way of getting your name out and earning respect in a similar way to newly budding academics writing reviews and applying to modern day journals. Even that comparison is tenuous and relies on a modern lense that didn't exist in the same way at the time. But to call it fanfiction is a misunderstanding of the purpose, function and audience of these works.

If this isn't right and I'm getting mixed up, do tell me because my area is actually early modern medical and advertising history

Regarding selling off social housing, it was specifically that the income that local authorities generated from doing so was not allowed to be reinvested in acquiring new social housing. And no extra budget was allocated to cover building new social housing. The aim was clearly to create a social housing shortage as a twisted way of “motivating” people to stop being poor.

Great post. I hate seeing US feminists praising Thatcher, and I’ve seen it a lot.

Let’s not forget how she made repeated attempts to get Britain’s most prolific sex offender Jimmy Savile a knighthood, gave him free rein to do whatever the hell he liked at Stoke Mandeville hospital (including running it into the ground, making himself indispensable there, and oh yeah, abusing scores of patients), as well has having a close friendship with him. This is all in spite of the fact that rumours about him were going around even back then, and on a related note, she actually knew of the abuse accusations against many of her ministers and let them go free despite this.

A feminist? Pah! She actually said, “The feminists hate me, don’t they? And I don’t blame them. For I hate feminism. It is poison.” (and if for some reason you don’t trust that article, just google that quote). She also said that “the battle for women’s rights has largely been won. I owe nothing to women’s lib”, and whilst being PM for 11 years, she only ever appointed one woman, Baroness Young. As this article says, she basically “refused to accept that the majority of women do not have the privilege she had, in other words a rich partner, and lots of childcare provision.” In terms of feminism, she hated any woman who wasn’t financially well off, able-bodied, cishet, white, neurotypical (as you can see in this article), and basically, like her. Great feminism.

She also played a huge part in making Rupert Murdoch the hugely powerful man he is today (and consequently, making the British press so unreliable, ridiculous, and downright dangerous), and it seems she also used this connection to help giver herself more “sunshine headlines” (read: favourable).

I could go on but I feel like I’ve been at this for a while. OP has done a great job in summarising most of the main reasons she’s so hated. I’ve added a number of other important ones here too, but to be honest, just look at any reasonably credible article about her. If it seems positive, then google the topics at hand, and I guarantee there will be the flip side, often explained with a more socially conscious approach.

If you want proof of the bigoted, unrepresentative establishment’s continuing hold on Britain and our politics, just take a look at Thatcher, and take a look at those who praise her to the skies.

This is a great post, all I really want to add is that Section 28 (which was a hateful enough piece of legislation anyway) was introduced during the AIDS crisis, & homophobia was very much on the rise at the time.

It’s also worth looking up the controversy surrounding the sinking of the General Belgrano, which killed 323 people. during the Falklands War (Thatcher’s response on hearing of it was “Just rejoice at that news”)

she supported pinochet both politically and personally and i hope she burns for 10,000 screaming years of agony

My favourite piece of London graffiti (since been removed, I believe) was on the line coming up from south London to London Bridge station:

“The witch is dead but the spell remains.”

It’s tragically true in the UK.

Elvis Costello said it well - she was a monster and I’d happily piss on her grave.

OP talks about a lot of disparate things but doesn’t really tie them together. Thatcher did hundreds of awful things and this doesn’t talk about the horrific things she did in Northern Ireland enough (we are talking children being killed with rubber bullets).

However, the real reason people hate Thatcher is because she tried to break working class class consciousness in the UK, and arguably destroyed the UK’s social democratic ‘Post war consensus’.

The destruction of nationalised industries, selling off of council housing, breaking the power of the unions - all of this aimed to break the idea of a working class which were ‘looked after’ by the state.

And the thing is she succeeded-she dragged Britain drastically to the right, and everything that has come after, from the Iraq war to austerity to asylum seekers dying in the back of lorries to Boris fucking Johnson can be blamed on that.

Thatcher broke this country and we never recovered and that’s why we hate her.

Great contributions, everyone

Thatcher should have been assassinated, it’s that simple.

Goodness knows, they tried

New York Times Source

“Be Myrthfull and Mak Melody”: Happy Yule, Best Wishes for New Year, and a Merry Uphaly Day from Mediaeval Scotland

(Merry Christmas guys- not my picture unfortunately. At least the college is medieval)

Well as it’s Christmas folks- or Yule, as it was much more frequently known in medieval Scotland, at least to Scots-speakers who rarely used the term Christmas- I thought I’d talk a bit about how the festive season was observed in mediaeval Scotland. This is not a completely exhaustive guide, but as it is sometimes difficult to envisage how Christmas in particular was celebrated in Scotland in the past, it’s still fun to look into what people got up to at that time, whether riotous or religious. Christmas was generally discouraged by the reformed church after 1560, and actively proscribed by an act of parliament under Cromwell in 1640. When the act was repealed under Charles II, the festival was not fully revived in most of Scotland, unlike the rest of the British Isles. Though it took quite some time for the church to eliminate Yuletide festivities- as well as those at Uphaly Day (Epiphany) and other old Catholic feast days- and it is possible that some celebrated Christmas in small ways after the Reformation, the majority of those who conformed to the established Church of Scotland were not supposed to observe Christmas and Epiphany.

Though similar efforts were made to get rid of New Year festivities, for some reason this was less successful. In the absence of Christmas, New Year’s importance only grew, until it was the premier festival in Scotland by the nineteenth century. But where Scotland nowadays has two bank holidays after New Year, Christmas Day was not officially a public holiday until 1958 and Boxing Day not until 1974. This makes it difficult to trace Christmas traditions in Scotland, mediaeval or otherwise, and even in the case of New Year, it is sometimes unclear which traditions predate the Reformation and which are more recent. In the case of both festivals, as well as Epiphany and other feasts, it is thus interesting to briefly consider some of the ways in which people in the Middle Ages enjoyed themselves during the festive season, from carolling and kirk-going to cross-dressing and Abbots of Unreason.

Celebration of the feast of St Nicholas, which takes place on the sixth of December, has mostly lapsed in Scotland nowadays (with the exception of certain churches), though it remains highly popular in other countries. St Nicholas being the patron saint of children, this was a day where religious institutions such as abbeys and grammar schools might commonly elect one of the young choristers or schoolboys to become the bishop of St Nicholas for the day and preside over the celebrations. This was only the first of many such reversions of the social order which took place across the festive period, and the bishop’s “authority” lasted from the sixth of December through to Holy Innocents’ day on the twenty-eighth, hence the alternate name of ‘St Innocents’ bishop’. These boy bishops could also become a part of the celebrations of the royal court if they happened to be members of an important enough religious institution, and lads in Linlithgow, Holyrood, and many other places were given money by the king for their time as bishops. In some places, like Aberdeen where the main kirk of the burgh was dedicated to St Nicholas, the saint’s feast was celebrated with even more gusto, involving official processions of the crafts taking place and the appointment of unruly abbots charged with making merry throughout the town.

(A nineteenth century portrayal of the role of the boy bishop in medieval custom)

Such abbots- usually known as the Abbot of Unreason (or some variation)- were similar to the English Lord of Misrule and were to be found in many other towns once Christmas proper rolled around. For ordinary folk in the Middle Ages, the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany might be an occasion for riotous behaviour as much as solemn reflection, and whilst many masses took place to mark the important feasts throughout the period, people also engaged in wild festivity and socially transgressive behaviour. The Abbots of Unreason were an important part of this, leading the community in revelry, and making merry in ways which were often far from pious. They might be officially elected by the inhabitants of a town or unofficially regarded as an abbot by their friends. In some towns it was their special duty to organise festivities, but in others they were seen as a menace. The name of the ‘Abbot of Unrest’ of Peebles, though officially sanctioned by the town, perhaps reflects the fragile stability of these Christmas traditions- satirising the social order and swapping roles was often encouraged at this time of year, but could reflect genuine grievances among the population and there was always a danger this could lead to riot if left unchecked. 

In some places though it was a sincere matter of civic pride that the burgh put on a good show at Christmas. In Aberdeen, from at least 1440, the leader of the celebrations was known as the Abbot of Bon-Accord (for the town’s motto) and was attended by a prior of the same name, with power of organising all the burgh’s young men in order to put on a good show on feast days and other festivals. The abbot was considered essential to the burgh’s reputation at this time of year and, though once or twice the character was still banned for going too far, his role was respected by Aberdonian officials, who even occasionally had to force/pay unwilling men to accept the honour of performing the abbot’s duties. The merry-making abbot did not just preside over Christmas celebrations. As well as being a feature of Yuletide in general, he was occasionally present at other festivals like Mayday and Lammas, though more often this role was filled by the equally popular Robin Hood and Little John (this could sometimes go the other way too- in 1508, the abbot and prior of Bon-Accord are referred to as going under the name of Robin Hood and Little John at Yule).

The royal court also seems to have hosted an Abbot of Unreason and in the reign of King James IV, we know that the master cook, Alexander Kers, took up the role on several occasions. In the winter of 1504-5 he made merry to such an extent that it was not until late February that he was finally paid to release the king’s drinking stoup, “quhilk wes tane quhen he wes Abbot of Unresoun”. The raucous behaviour of the Abbot of Unreason was not always appreciated by the Crown however, and in 1555 the regency government under Mary of Guise passed an act banning all elections of the Abbot, as well as Robin Hood, Little John, and the May Queen. Though the act was unpopular in some circles, given the straitened political circumstances, it may have been intended to limit disturbance of the peace and trouble-making. This act was certainly not going to be repealed after the Reformation which took place a few years later. The new reformed kirk in Scotland thought Yule, New Year, and Epiphany, as well as all the other feast days, smacked of superstition and popery and banned celebration of them all together. Even taking the personal decision to stop work on Christmas Day could get you into trouble with the authorities. Nonetheless, many people still decided to celebrate, even if they were censured by the kirk session, and regular acts against the Abbot of Unreason and other such figures were still being issued many years after the Reformation.

(A seventeenth-century Dutch depiction by Gabriel Metsu of the figure the English called the Lord of Misrule, here looking rather more sedate and weary than normal. The Scots had a similar figure usually known as the Abbot of Unreason. Not my picture)

The boy bishop and the Abbot of Unreason were not the only examples of the medieval fascination with turning the social structure upside down at Christmas. Gender was as much a target for satire as class, age, and morality. In Scotland between Yule and Uphaly Day (and occasionally at other times of the year) young men and women frequently switched clothes and took to the streets, dancing openly together or with bells and masks, or visiting houses as carollers and guisers. This cross-dressing was part of a wider guising tradition- literally disguising oneself in order to visit or celebrate- which was popular in Scotland throughout history, though it could occasionally result in disturbance of the peace and violent quarrels. It was also a favourite past-time of the upper classes across Europe, and at various times of the year: for example, Mary Queen of Scots and her ladies are supposed to have dressed as men at one court event in February of 1566. However his kind of activity, which was not particularly concerning to the authorities before the Reformation despite the possibility of violent disturbance, absolutely horrified the reformed Church who did their best to stamp out guising in all its forms, whether it involved cross-dressing or not. 

But old habits died hard and we find records of groups of men and women being punished for cross-dressing and dancing for over a century after 1560, especially in the north-east, which was at this point a little more conservative in its religious behaviour and only abandoned Catholic traditions with much reluctance. Though the kirk session frowned on such scandalous behaviour, which was even worse as it commemorated a superstitious old feast day, it is the records of the kirk session which have preserved written evidence of these customs for us today. This is important as from the seventeenth century until (in some places) as late as the early twentieth century the kirk did largely succeed in stamping out Christmas in much of Scotland, and the Yule traditions often did not survive in practice. Thus in 1574 we have record of a large group of women in Aberdeen who were censured for playing, dancing, and singing of ‘filthy’ carols on Yule Day and the following Sunday; the next year another group of women were tried for dancing in men’s clothes; in the early 1600s there were frequent instances of men being admonished for dancing in bells and masks on Yule and New Year’s; and ecclesiastical records in Fife cautioned against the 'great abuses’ committed by guisers at festivals as late as the 1660s.

(”All Sons of Adam”- one of the few popular pieces of Scottish music that can be proved to be pre-Reformation in origin and a Yuletide carol)

More conventional merry-making also took place, and this can be traced through a second main source for Christmas festivities- the financial records of the royal court. In the late fifteenth century, King James would wake on Christmas morning to the sound of singing outside his chamber, whilst musicians, mummers, dancers, poets, and tale-tellers flocked to the royal court to seek rewards and provide entertainment for the twelve days. Poetry was offered to the court and king at both Yule and New Year, ranging from the bawdy and funny to solemn religious pieces, and several compositions by poets competing for patronage survive, including pieces by notable figures such as William Dunbar, William Stewart, and Alexander Scott (the title of this post comes from one of Dunbar’s on the nativity of Christ). It is not so easy to track down surviving popular carols, and only a couple of songs which would have been sung by the lay community can certainly be dated to before the Reformation. However, as seen above, groups of carollers did make the rounds in the towns, while some burghs paid minstrels to play through the streets. One of the few surviving pieces of Scottish pre-reformation music is a carol called “All Sons of Adam”, which was possibly sung at New Year- have a listen above.

Plays were also a staple of the season, especially those telling religious stories, and scaffolding was erected in the towns by burgh councils for some special performances, while others were played on local hills or in streets. The court also enjoyed many such performances, and James IV had his own mummer’s gown for Yule, presumably for guising or taking part in plays, masques or pageants. Food, as ever, was a major part of the celebrations, especially since much of the period leading up to Christmas was dedicated to fasting. Given the custom in parts of Scotland of having a special bannock for most old feasts, it is unsurprising that traditionally in Scotland bannocks have been made for New Year, though whether this dates back into the Middle Ages is less clear. There were twelve days of Christmas, however, and even if, as today, there was a lull in between the major feasts, it was important to keep the festivities going throughout the period.

Of course Yuletide was not entirely about raucous festivity, though this was not usually seen as detracting from the solemnity of the occasion. The dancing, plays, carolling, misbehaviour, and feasting were accompanied by more dignified ceremony and religious observances, though the twelve days of Christmas were not quite as deeply spiritual as Easter week. Masses were not only held on Yule Day, but also on the feasts of St Stephen, John the Evangelist, Holy Innocents, and others afterward, as well as dates before Christmas such as St Nicholas Day on the sixth of December and St Lucy’s Day on the thirteenth. The upper classes might make offerings on these feast days, and alms were given to the poor. Meanwhile, a great deal of ceremony surrounded the occasion, with the king attending mass in company of important councillors and his heralds. The heralds were customarily given gifts of money on Christmas Day, having cried “Largesse!” upon the king, and new liveries were also distributed to courtiers and servants around this time. It was similarly commanded that the provost of Edinburgh should be accompanied honourably from the kirk to his house by craftsmen and their servants, bearing torches, after evensong on Yule, New Year, and Epiphany. Many further down the social scale would also stop work on Christmas Day, both out of religiosity and leisure, though again this rankled with the post-Reformation church, with local presbyteries frequently prohibiting unauthorised stoppage of work on old feast days and times of 'superstition’.

(A detail from “Hunters in the Snow” a work by the sixteenth century Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, showing what appears to be a curling match and other winter games. There is some debate over whether curling was invented by the Scots or in the Low Countries, but the two peoples have long been closely connected, and the game was certainly played in both areas by the sixteenth century. Not my picture.)

In later centuries, with Christmas and Epiphany celebrations heavily discouraged after the Reformation and especially so as Presbyterianism became more established in Scotland, Hogmanay took on a new importance- and it has not yet completely lost its power in Scotland. But even before the Reformation New Year was a date which loomed large in the minds of medieval Scots. Though technically, as far as administration was concerned, the medieval year did not start until Lady Day on March 25th, the 1st of January was still seen as the beginning of the New Year in many secular calendars. A mass was held on New Year’s day, but since it sat right in the middle of the Christmas period, it was more generally a time of feasting and revelry. As at Yule, guisers danced and carolled in the streets, plays were performed, and abbots of unreason caused havoc- in some places, the festivities may have exceeded those at Yule. Perhaps New Year’s Day was also a time for sports, as in later centuries important shinty matches were often played on that date in the Highlands (other favourite winter sports in the Middle Ages and early modern period included curling and skating, but usually people had to wait for a loch or pond to freeze over before they could indulge). 

More importantly, New Year was the occasion on which the upper classes usually gave presents, both in Scotland and across medieval Europe. Gold rings and chains, as well as rosaries, were favoured gifts among the royals, whilst new clothes were often gifted to favoured courtiers besides the livery the servants had received at Yule. One outstanding gift was the ’“great serpent-tongue”, a glossopetrae or what we would now call a fossil, which was set in jewels and believed to be capable of curing poison, and was presented by James IV to Margaret Tudor on one such occasion. Whilst their son James V was in France in 1536-7, he spent a considerable sum of money on items such as fine daggers, bracelets, and jewels which were presented to the French dauphin and dauphiness, the King and Queen of Navarre, and the Duke of Orleans at New Year, along with various smaller gifts for porters, ushers, minstrels, trumpeters and other servants at the French court. In 1538, among the gold rings and other pieces which were purchased by the King as New Year’s gifts were two hearts of gold, while tablets were presented to the chapel at New Year’s mass. Whether this tradition of giving gifts at New Year extended right down the social scale is more difficult to verify, though the poetic offerings at New Year would sometimes be entitled ‘A New Year Gift’ and addressed to a monarch. There is also the question of whether it continued as an unbroken tradition after the Reformation, though in the nineteenth century some children were indeed receiving presents at New Year in Scotland, whilst first-foots occasionally brought other gifts besides food, drink, and the usual piece of coal.

(Weirdly, it was more difficult to find early modern depictions of New Year in Scotland than you might think, so have a modern one instead. Not my picture).

The end of the twelve days of Christmas was heralded by the arrival of Uphaly e’en and day, on the fifth and sixth of January respectively (i.e., the feast of Epiphany). To some, Epiphany was the most religious of the festivals of the Christmas period, and masses and processions duly took place, whilst it was a favourite time for religious plays. However there was also room for revelry, and the usual guisers, dancers, and musicians again took to the streets, whilst the royal court celebrated the custom of the ‘King of the Bean’. Essentially this involved the baking of a cake with a pea or bean inside, and whoever received the slice containing this bean became the ‘king’ of the feast and master of revels. We know that at one Epiphany feast during the reign Mary I, one of her famous ladies in waiting, Mary Fleming, was named Queen of the Bean, and led the festivities clad in a dazzling ensemble of silver cloth and jewels. Meanwhile, in 1540, the royal court’s Epiphany celebrations included a performance of a play at Linlithgow Palace, which might have been an early version of Sir David Lindsay’s famous “Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis”. In the Northern Isles, certain yuletide traditions- such as sliding on barrels- may have been preserved in the more recently famous Shetland festival of Up Helly Aa. As with Yule, however, Uphalyday was frowned upon by the reformed church, who discouraged participation in the feast, and it gradually fell out of favour among the majority of the population. 

As I said at the beginning of this post, this is not intended to be exhaustive, and many of these customs were observed in other countries too, but hopefully this provides a lot of different information about the festive period in medieval Scotland. It’s not always a festival we think about very much from a Scottish perspective, but it’s pretty interesting and there are more primary sources than might first be thought, though they are, as ever, imperfect. If you’re at all feeling bored at Christmas though, or blue as a result of the temperamental Scottish winters, perhaps you could come up with some filthy carols, institute a king of the bean or abbot of unreason, or cross-dress and dance openly through the streets with bells to liven up the proceedings.

A guide to some of the main sources, but not even half a bibliography- if you’re curious about something specific, it’s probably best to ask:

Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland

Exchequer rolls

Ecclesiastical records of places such as the synod of Fife and the kirk session records of the burghs of Aberdeen, Dunfermline, and other towns. You ought to be able to find quite a few on internet archive.

Similarly books such as ‘Extracts from the council register of the burgh of Aberdeen/Stirling/Peebles/Edinburgh/e.t.c.’ and equally ‘Charters and Documents’ of towns like Glasgow. Again see internet archive or ask.

Acts of the Parliament of Scotland site

Also a variety of other primary and secondary sources, I do apologise I may do a more comprehensive bibliography in the morning but I am very tired.

man i don't wanna derail a post but i just saw a post that was showing different megafauna of different areas, like moose in colder climates like canada and russia, camels in the middle east area/deserts, kangaroos in australia. and someone commented "all we have in america is squirrels!!! 🤣"

but like. bison. bison were america's megafauna. i don't want people forgetting about bison and what happened to them.

I don’t know how to tell you this - but Moose are native to upper Midwestern states like MN, WI and MI as well as mountainous areas as far south as CO. Also Alaska.

this post was about american colonizers trying to kill off bison to starve native americans of one of their primary food sources.

Map of the historical range change of bison

I couldn’t find a map of total populations today, but there’s around 500,000 today - compare that to the millions before the colonization of the western US.

Just a reminder that it was once considered “fun sport” to shoot bison from passing trains, leaving the corpses to rot in the sun.  And don’t forget this lovely photo--those are bison skulls.  Imagine how many animals were slaughtered to make a pile this big.

This wasn’t for sport.  This wasn’t for meat.  This was for genocide.

Just to follow up, and to make this abundantly clear - the mass slaughter of the bison was to cause genocide of Native Americans. It was a deliberate destruction of their most valuable food source. 

possibly the most important addition this week on Hozier Liked

Indentured servitude is opresssion.

Indentured servitude is not chattel slavery.

The Irish were oppressed and have a history of indentured servitude.

The Irish were not bought and sold or held as property generation to generation.

Please stop confusing the two. Thanks.

Also Beau Brummel got in terrible debt and had to flee the country, and died in Paris, of syphilis. So there’s that.

a singular scuit. just one. 

an edible cracker with just one side. mathematically impossible and yet here I am monching on it.

‘scuit’ comes from the french word for ‘bake’, ‘cuire’ as bastardized by adoption by the brittish and a few hundred years ‘biscuit’ meant ‘twice-baked’, originally meaning items like hardtack which were double baked to dry them as a preservative measure long before things like sugar and butter were introduced. if you see a historical doccument use the word ‘biscuit’ do not be fooled to think ‘being a pirate mustve been pretty cool, they ate nothing but cookies’ - they were made of misery to last long enough to be used in museum displays or as paving stones

‘triscuit’ is toasted after the normal biscuit process, thrice baked thus the monoscuit is a cookie thats soft and chewy because it was only baked once, not twice

behold the monoscuit/scuit

Why is this called a biscuit:

when brittish colonists settled in the americas they no longer had to preserve biscuits for storage or sea voyages so instead baked them once and left them soft, often with buttermilk or whey to convert cheap staples/byproducts into filling items to bulk out the meal to make a small amount of greasy meat feed a whole family. considering hardtack biscuits were typically eaten by dipping them in grease or gravy untill they became soft enough to eat without breaking a tooth this was a pretty short leap of ‘just dont make them rock hard if im not baking for the army’ but didnt drop the name because its been used for centuries and people forgot its french for ‘twice baked’ back in the tudor era, biscuit was just a lump of cooked dough that wasnt leavened bread as far as they cared thus the buttermilk biscuit and the hardtack biscuit existed at the same time. ‘cookies’ then came to america via german and dutch immigrants as tiny cakes made with butter, sugar/molasses, and eggs before ‘tea biscuits’ as england knew them due to the new availability of cheap sugar- which is why ‘biscuit’ and ‘cookie’ are separate items in america but the same item in the UK the evolution of the biscuit has forks on its family tree

In response to the accusations of being solely responsible for the Reign of Terror this was the explanation given by Maximilian Robespierre......

Surprise. :)

romans: conquer a shitload of the known world, including parts of africa and the middle east

romans: institute a policy that says that conquered peoples are allowed to gain citizenship by military service, but also can’t serve in their home areas (because armed native soldiers + angry locals = revolt), thus requiring everyone who wants to be a citizen to work abroad for years of their lives, creating diversity.

racists: a single black person in an educational video about rome is unrealistic and i feel attacked.

Who would you chose for a family baby sitter?

Megan

—Honor roll student

— 2 years babysitting and childcare experience

— 1st chair clarinet player

— Wants to go to college to be a pediatrician

Sandy

—Star high school Athlete

—Plays Volleyball and Basketball

—Recommended by neighbors

—Gold Award Girl Scout

Rasputin

—Claims to be able to heal diseases and predict the future with magic powers.

— Immune to poison and resistant to bullets

— Favorite pastimes include orgies and alcoholism

— Might have sex with your wife