The persistence of tradition: the curious case of Henry Symeonis 2025 Apr 2
What happens when you're so hated that the Oxford statutes personally snub you by name? What happens then when you're not memorable enough to be biographied in any other form, and your sole contribution to history is your legal snubbing?

Nowhere in the statutes did it explain who this Henry Symeonis (or Simeonis) was, what he was supposed to have done or why those getting their MAs should never agree to be reconciled with him. Who was Henry Symeonis and why was he specifically named like this in the University’s governing regulations? What had he done to offend the University so much?

In 2013, Oxford's Bodleian Libraries finally dug up the answer.

What Americans think about the Middle Ages 2025 Mar 28
YouGov has released their poll results from when they asked Americans questions about the Middle Ages. Unsurprisingly, there is some bonkers stuff in here, like some people "viewing the black plague favorably" (wtf???) and some people thinking the assassination of Julius Caesar and the French Revolution both took place during the Middle Ages but that the Crusades did not (wtf???)

The real surprising thing here, though, is the revelation that Americans think more often about the Middle Ages than they do Ancient Rome, and with less gender separation between the results, too.

The Grateful Dead, Helicopters, and More Power 2025 Feb 22
Linked is the webpage of Janet Furman, founder of the brand bearing her name. Furman lead her firm in creating audio and power gear for musicians. But before all that, she was a Grateful Dead roadie, traveling along with the band in order to help capture recordings of their live shows, most famously for the Europe '72 album. But while that's interesting, far more wild is the crazy way Furman helped the Dead achieve their awesome sound at the Watkins Glen Summer Jam, the first festival New York State allowed after Woodstock. Held in 1973 on a racetrack, 600,000 people showed up – a double-digit percentage of all young people in the area, and twice as many as Woodstock – and more power was definitely needed.

Detouring briefly, Watkins Glen is also famous for the debut of digital delay lines, a new technology created by Eventide which was needed to keep the sound in sync as it was played through a series of PAs for a crowd that stretched far, far away from the stage.

But back to Furman and the Dead's power needs, in her own words since she's a captivating storyteller:

The Dead would need a massive amount of amplification to reach all those people. At the time, they insisted on using only McIntosh 2300 power amps, an audiophile rather than pro audio product, made in small quantity and hard to find on short notice. The McIntosh factory happened to be near Watkins Glen, in Binghamton in upstate New York. We were already backstage at the concert, and every road in the area was clogged with concert traffic. My assignment was to get five more of those giant amps, any way I could. Sam Cutler, the former Rolling Stones road manager now working for the Grateful Dead, handed me $6000 in cash and the use of a helicopter and pilot. Though it was a weekend and the McIntosh factory was closed, I tracked down the owner at his home. The pilot flew me from the venue to downtown Binghamton. Helicopter landings there were not an everyday affair, and there was great media interest. Flashbulbs popped and reporters stuck microphones in my face. In the summer heat, I was wearing only shorts and a concert T-shirt, with the cash wadded up in my pocket. I met up with the owner, who drove me to the factory and sold me the amps off the production floor. We drove back to town in his station wagon, his wife and kids aboard on their way to a summer vacation, and transferred the amps into the copter. At over 100 lbs each plus two people, it was a heavy load for a small helicopter. We had a very scary moment as we took off, coming within inches of crashing into a highrise building. But back at Watkins Glen, the sight of that enormous crowd from the air was unforgettable. In the moment I landed, delivering the goods, I became an instant hero.

Gay Bathhouse History 2025 Feb 21
For some reason, the websites documenting the history of gay bathhouses seem to have fallen off the net. I don't know why. Lucky for us, the Internet Archive nabbed copies of sites such as Bathhouse Addict and Gaytubs, allowing us to learn about e.g. the linked Continental Baths which a centerpiece of gay culture from 1968-1976 in New York City. It's a remarkable piece of not just gay history – understanding the attitudes and norms of the club's day-to-day and how it survived hostile governments – but also as a part of the zeitgeist's pre-AIDS sexual liberation which was affecting all parts of American culture.

Complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir 2025 Jan 17
Speaking of random shit from ancient times, how can anyone forget about Nanni's complaint to Ea-nasir in Babylon year 1750BCE?

Quoting the ancients:

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.

Onfim 2025 Jan 17
Onfim was a boy about 800 years ago in Russia whose homework was accidentally preserved for all time by the odd combination of the material he wrote it on (birch bark) and the ground on which he discarded it (clay). Like all seven-year-olds, his homework is a combination of actual assignments and doodles of dragons and people stabbing each other. If only he'd been a few years older, then we could all be enjoying 800yo dick drawings.

Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House 2025 Jan 4
Scott Alexander (pseudonymous author of high-readership blog Slate Star Code/Astral Codex Ten) is insightful and clever, if a bit "too online" for me to subscribe to outright. He's a psychologist by training and that's where he started blogging, but in the past decade his blog's contents have wandered anywhere and everywhere, with posts lengthy and frequent enough I don't understand how he would have time left enough to actually see patients.

Anyway. The post I've linked here is his book review of Tom Wolfe's 1981 critique of modern architecture, From Bauhaus to Our House, which has nothing to do with psychology (except, you know, the psychology of spaces, man) but is fascinating anyway. Fascinating because I don't possess the stamina to read a book-length Tom Wolfe critique of anything, but also because Alexander doesn't just regurgitate Wolfe's points but actually dissects them, prods them, pokes them to see whether they hold up to scrutiny. I can't say whether Alexander's being fair to the source material (as, again, I ain't reading that, and I know zilch about modern architecture) but I can say that I like that he's churned it into something which I can digest, and thus feel enlightened by despite doing none of the work of having to actually *shudder* read the damn thing. Thanks, Scott!

List of prices of medieval items 2025 Jan 3
Linked is historian Kenneth Hodges' collected list of various items sold during European Medieval times and what price (in pence, shillings, pounds) those items could be purchased for. The list is sourced to real academic research, although care should be taken not to extrapolate these prices to our modern, industrial economy. Quoting Dr. Bret Deveraux on this topic:

The problem is both that the value of commodities changes over time, but in particular that the second agricultural revolution and the industrial revolutions so wildly shifted the values of commodities as to make any possible translation of ancient or medieval currency values into modern ones misleading.

So what's the point in this linked list? The prices can still be understood relative to one another, to put into context the values of various commodities in those societies. A war horse was more valuable than a sheep, but how much more? Here's your answer.

The bloodiest Western gunfight you’ve never heard of 2024 Nov 13
In 1880 California the railroads (led by among others Leland Stanford) squared off against a group of former Confederate soldiers now squatting on speculated land in a place called Mussel Slough, in the southern Central Valley. When the conflict spilled over into violence, it resulted in a gunfight leaving 7 dead immediately. The incident's infamy was felt far and wide though, by those as far away as Karl Marx in London, with many siding with one interest or the other for their own ideological or political reasons. This linked well-researched 2015 blog post by historian Adam Smith goes into all the details.

Building the Panama Canal had a huge human cost 2024 Nov 11
Sometimes relegated as a mere footnote to the Panama Canal's construction, the project claimed tens of thousands of lives and injured an uncounted swath more. Lost limbs were such a frequent occurrence that a charity in New York was created specifically to send artificial legs to Panama. But the conditions for receiving the replacement limbs were strict, and many lives were left in tatters. Quoting directly a 1913 appeal from one of the laborers, Wilfred McDonald, from either Barbados or Jamaica:

I have ben Serveing the ICC [Isthmian Canal Commission] and the PRR [Panama Railroad] in the caypasoity as Train man From the yea 1906 until my misfawchin wich is 1912. Sir without eny Fear i am Speaking Nothing But the Truth to you, I have no claim comeing to me. But for mercy Sake I am Beging you To have mercy on me By Granting me a Pair of legs for I have lost both of my Natrals. I has a Mother wich is a Whido, and too motherless childrens which During The Time when i was working I was the only help to the familys.

The surprisingly contentious boundaries of Santa Cruz County 2024 Nov 11
Linked is a recent blog post about the history of the borders of Santa Cruz County, since while we've always known where the city of Santa Cruz lies, we have not always agreed to what extent those smelly hippies should tame their surrounding chaos.

Wikipedia's List of the Indian Wars in California's history is horrifying 2024 Oct 31
I grew up here in California, going to school in the regular public education system. It's been a long time, but I do not remember covering in much (or any) depth the Native Americans who lived in this state prior the wars and genocide which killed them off. Indians weren't completely forgotten -- our curriculum did at least acknowledge that the Indians were killed off, but we were told it was primarily through disease and the word "genocide" definitely was not used. I used to think "how nice it is to live in a place where there's never been a major war."

That was pretty naive of me, right? A recent quick glance through this list of California Indian Wars on Wikipedia left me noticing a stark trend, one which I feel should have been taught to us:

1. White Americans move into California Indian lands and push them out so they can take those lands over for agriculture and mining.
2. California Indians make what peace they can with their new white neighbors. It's not great, but it's not so bad. But one white neighbor in particular hates that Indians exist at all, and despite the relative peace, goes about raping and murdering Indians.
3. The Indians get tired of being raped and murdered, and kill that asshole.
4. The white townspeople hear of this, and don't care that the white man in question was an asshole and that the Indian's lethal revenge was justified. They only see race, and can abide no Indian killing any white man, so they step up the revenge and go and murder and burn entire Indian villages in reprisal.
5. Repeat the massacres until there's almost no Indians left.

So many of the entries on the list follow this pattern, it's shocking. (Maybe not shocking if you're Indian and grew up knowing this.)

David Neagle 2024 Oct 27
David Neagle led one heck of a life. Raised amidst the California Gold Rush, he was a gunslinger and prospector and saloon owner and mining foreman and marshal and bodyguard and when he was arrested, his case went all the way to the US Supreme Court where a precedent-setting ruling is now named after him. He was deputized as sheriff in the town of Tombstone, Arizona and worked alongside the Earps keeping the law, but most interesting of all is his involvement with Justices David S. Terry and Stephen J. Field.

David S. Terry was a monumental asshole who somehow became one of California's earlier state supreme court Chief Justices (voted in during a special election). Although when his pro-Southern Slave State politics failed to earn him re-election he blamed his good friend the free-soil Senator from California David Broderick, and then resigned his place on the bench to kill Broderick in a duel. A generally violent man, Terry was known for threatening people with a bowie knife he kept on his person. After a stint fighting in the Civil War (on the wrong side) he returned to California as a lawyer and represented in court a woman named Sarah Althea Hill against her former lover, William Sharon.

William Sharon was another monumental asshole (perhaps even a bigger asshole than Terry) who was a banker and also briefly the US Senator from Nevada (although he rarely showed up to Senate). Sharon used his position as bank agent among the Comstock Lode prospectors to control their operations, loaning them money only to starve them out and forcing them into bankruptcy so that the bank could foreclose on the mineral rights. He also swindled his business partner William Ralston out of his fortune. The part relevant to this story, however, is that Sharon kept Sarah Althea Hill as a mistress.

Until he got bored of her, that is. Hill was significantly younger than him and something of a firecracker, having a reputation for threatening those who crossed her with a Colt revolver she kept in her purse. And so when Sharon dumped her, she filed a lawsuit claiming that he actually couldn't do that because they were secretly married.

And in that lawsuit she was represented by David S. Terry, the first asshole. Although Terry and Hill weren't just working together, they were also sleeping together, and soon got married.

Stephen J. Field was also a judge and also something of an asshole, although more known for being rude than for threatening people with knives or swindling them of their fortunes. He was one of the judges in the Circuit Court that heard Hill's case, and the one who spoke the ruling that Hill's documents were forgeries. She did not care for this ruling, and screamed and reached for her gun. I guess you could bring a gun into a courtroom at the time, I don't know, the 1800s were wild. Anyway, the marshals subdued her, and lawyer/husband Terry sprung to her defense with his bowie knife. David Neagle was one of those marshalls, however, shoving his gun in Terry's face and arresting the pair of them for contempt of court.

When Judge Field returned to California the next year, Neagle was assigned to protect him. Which proved fortuitous, as Field and Terry (along with Hill and Neagle) had the poor luck of catching the same train from LA to SF. When the inevitable happened and Terry confronted Field, presumably with some violent intent, Neagle proved himself once again quicker on the draw, shooting Terry in the heart and ear, killing him.

It was this act of self-defense which landed Neagle in jail, as at that time what Neagle did was not technically legal. But to nobody's surprise, when Neagle's case reached the Supreme Court, the judges were happy to rule that someone like Neagle defending their lives was, in fact, quite legal actually thank you very much (even with Field recusing himself from the vote).

Neagle's reputation now well-cemented, his later years were spent as a bodyguard for hire, working for various wealthy and powerful men. He finally passed away in 1925, at 78 years old in Oakland.

Why Diego Garcia? 2024 Oct 16
There's a tiny little scrap of dry land in the middle of the Indian Ocean named after two of the first people to report seeing it: Diego Garcia. It's an atoll a thousand miles from nowhere administered as a lingering remnant of the British Empire. Mauritius really wants Diego Garcia and the rest of the outlaying nearby atolls for itself, though, the Mauritius-ites saying they were promised the isolated atolls when they split off from the British Empire and became a country 50-someodd years ago.

So why not give Diego Garcia et al to Mauritius? Well, famous British frenemies USA! USA! USA! have built quite the military base on the island, using it for our favorite Just Superpower Things: housing all sorts of fun toys up to and including nukes. Because of course we have.

But I guess the powers that be have finally figured out a deal. As of earlier this month, after decades of bickering (including UN resolutions calling the UK a bunch of wankers for kicking out the islands' original ~1,000 inhabitants) Mauritius, the UK, and the USA have come to an agreement. Mauritius gets the Chagos Archipelago, but can't settle anyone on Diego Garcia (the biggest atoll), and the American military base gets an "initial" lease of 99 years (making this the next generation's problem).

Why do I care? Well, its interesting, in the way all edge cases are interesting. But it's also interesting in that this struggle of tiny population of Chagos Islanders versus big old mean Britain has recently adopted the narrative of colonized versus oppressors, even though (in my opinion) that's not really what happened here. The Chagos Islanders aren't exactly indigenous to the islands, having their own inhabitation of the place only date back a few hundred years, and Britain didn't exactly colonize Diego Garcia as there is no colony there, only a military base. But there's no arguing against the narrative, I suppose, and so after an increasing Mauritian PR campaign against the UK, and the UK looking for international support on its other concerns, the British Empire has peacefully surrendered one of the last remnants of its once-massive holdings.

Don't worry, though, about the Falkland Islands. Saith the Falklands governor, Alison Blake: "The UK’s unwavering commitment to defend UK sovereignty remains undiminished."

Exploring 120 years of timezones 2024 Oct 15
This article puts to graphs what 120 years of changing timezones look like. From the origination of them, to the alignment of them onto the integer adjustments off Greenwich Mean Time, to the adoption and then gradual rejection of Daylight Savings Time. Kinda fascinating.

CANS 2024 Oct 13
Explore old abandoned sites from America's westward expansion, and the thing you'll be most likely to encounter is cans. Yes, old tin cans. Why cans? This website explains why, going into the history of canning and their popularity among people living on the periphery of their civilization, and also how to identify the can's age and possible contents, if for some reason that is important to you.

Plat of Zion 2024 Oct 11
I was previously unaware that the founders of Mormonism Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, in addition to creating their modern spin on Christianity and convincing their friends that sleeping with dozens of woman (many below the age of consent) was actually fulfilling a religious obligation, had utopian dreams of planned cities. And they're about as successful as you'd imagine: enforced in Salt Lake City despite leaving the place unfriendly and hostile to everyday folks.

A Protest County 2024 Oct 11
Protests take many forms. But rarely, I would imagine, do protests take the form of a state legislature creating a county. Yet exactly that happened in Nevada in 1987, when the federal government planned a nuclear weapons waste dump at Yucca Mountain. Nevadans, not wanting to be the country's nuclear trash dump (understandable), used some political funny business (the legislative vote took place at 3:45am, for instance) to create a the tiny "Bullfrog County" directly around Yucca Mountain, with prohibitively high property taxes which would go directly to the state government.

Nobody actually lived in Bullfrog County, and so its county seat was placed at the far-away state capital, Carson City, and officers were appointed rather than elected, and the rules allowed a single person to sit in multiple (or all) the offices. There were no courts, no paved roads, no buildings, and almost all the land was closed to the public. And it was entirely an enclave inside Nye County. So Bullfrog County was a county like none other.

This created problems. The lack of courts created a legal paradox. As the taxes flowing directly to state government now incentivized the creation of the nuclear dump they originally sought to dissuade, there were political problems. And there were government problems, as the Department of Energy was not happy about this development (understandable) and redirected their funding to Clark County.

But mostly, Nye County residents, who existed and were not happy about this new lawless, people-less enclave popping up in their territory and potentially robbing them of the economic benefits of having a nuclear dumpster in their backyard (a federally funded nuclear dumpster, I should say), challenged Bullfrog County's very existence in court. And they were successful. The Nevada Supreme Court ruled Bullfrog County to be unconstitutional, as it had no residents and thus no representative government. And so Bullfrog County was dissolved two years after it was created, and Yucca Mountain went on to be selected as American's nuclear weapons garbage repository.

Good news, though. Due to political complications, the nuclear dump has yet to be built, and since its funding has been eliminated, maybe it never will. And so we bury our nuclear weapons trash instead two thousand feet beneath New Mexico in a salt... thing, as the Founding Fathers intended.

Nobles Emigrant Trail 2024 Oct 11
The Nobles Emigrant Trail was a key route into California during the Gold Rush times. The trail is now preserved by the Bureau of Land Management. The very well-produced short video on the BLM website about this trail, though, goes into more than just the history, but also how the BLM researches and identifies these trails, including consulting with the Native American authorities in the area who have their own history and opinion about these "emigrant" trails.

AT&T Long Lines 2024 Sep 9
How did a long distance phone call work in the era before satellites and fiber optics? AT&T Long Lines is how: a series of microwave repeaters linking together our country. And as they were built at the height of the Cold War and carried critical military information as well as regular phone calls (and television) their remnants serve as another of the many monuments left in our country to the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Santa Rosae 2024 Sep 5
The four northernmost Channel Islands of California used to be, until about 7000 years ago when the sea levels rose, one bigger Channel Island which geologists have named Santa Rosae. One of the oldest human remains in North America has been found there. Something similar happened on Maui.

Nevermind I'm lying I forgot sea level rise is a hoax.

Esselen Tribal History 2024 Sep 5
Speaking of difficult-to-get-to-places, this is the website for a Native American people called the Esselen. They are from near the place we now call Big Sur, in the very remote Santa Lucia Mountains. Now landless, their ancestral homelands were never returned to them, even though they are out of reach of almost everyone.

Sealab, underneath the sea 2024 Aug 29
Growing up on science fiction, most of the stories took place on Earth, out in space, or on distant worlds. But there were always a few stories that looked down at our own oceans for their settings. Seaquest DSV, The Abyss, and Sphere are the three that first come to mind, plus of course the Adult Swim re-animated spoof, Sealab 2021.

But far less famous are our nation's actual deep sea living attempts, a series of three Sealab bases on the ocean floor in the 60s. Why this aquanaut program never captured the public's attention like its twin in space did I'll leave as an exercise for the reader, but as I've only recently learned of the program's existence, it's fair to say that humanity probably will not be colonizing the ocean anytime soon.

The border between California and Nevada is fuzzy 2024 Aug 28
Applying specific geographic coordinates to specific landform features seems trivial today, what with GPS in our pocket telling us the precise spot we're at. But GPS only goes back a generation, and the border between California and Nevada predates that by a large measure, to a time when meridians and coordinates were a touch trickier to determine. And it mattered, specifically around Tahoe, where mineral rights were being bought and sold at a furious pitch. While this dispute has mostly petered out by today, this petering is remarkably recent, with gunfights and legal disputes continuing up into modern times.

Market Street 1965 San Francisco Neon 2024 Aug 4

Neon-laden video clip of San Francisco’s lower Market Street in 1960s. This clip shows that every business on this strip was aglow with neon, even dentists! A bit of neon nirvana on Market Street. All of these neon signs have disappeared, except the Golden Gate Theatre and the Odd Fellows Temple.

The Print Shop 2024 Jul 31
In 1984 the best-selling computer software was Broderbund's The Print Shop – a program which could create signs and greeting cards and letterheads. Now, through the bliss of the internet, you can relive the best part of the 80s and print out (to PDF) your creations.

How to design telephone switching stations that survive a nuclear attack 2024 Jul 31
In Cheshire, Connecticut is buried underground an AT&T phone switching facility from the 1960s, with all the equipment (including toilets) mounted on springs so as to survive when the Russkies inevitably lob a nuke at America. The facility not only includes massive power generators and air filtration systems, but a suite for the survivors to live in for up to 30 days, including brand new pairs of Converse shoes so they discard their old, fallout-contaminated pairs.

Where the heck did badminton's shuttle come from? 2024 Jul 30
There's a lot of loosey goosey "history" articles on the internet about badminton's shuttle, but the New York Times in 2016 had at least the most information about modern Olympic shuttlecocks. Nobody knows who first attached goose feathers to a wooden pellet and smacked it around with a racket, but everyone seems to agree that we like whacking them about.

When an Argentine pirate conquered Monterey 2024 Jul 28
In 1818, when Monterey was the capital of Spanish Alta California, an Argentine captain Hippolyte Bouchard (born in France, 1780) attacked the city and with a force of 200 armed men, conquered it and burned down the presidio. He didn't kill anyone in the process, however, and after six days grew bored and left, letting the Spanish return and resume doing their thing, I guess. Although Bouchard later abandoned Argentina in favor of Peru, turns out he is still considered something of an Argentine hero, and his whole story is steeped in nineteenth-century sailing shenanigans.

The time the USA didn't bomb Sudan 2024 Jul 28
In the 1960s our wise American leaders blew to smithereens with a nuclear bomb a place called Sedan, Nevada. These manchildren posing as serious scientists claimed they wanted to see if nuclear kabooms could be used to quickly mine things, but instead proved that Americans really don't like living in huge plumes of radioactive fallout. Who coulda guessed? And there the matter lied until 2005, when a House of Representatives committee report confused the names "Sedan" and "Sudan" and talked about doing some casual nuclears over in Africa. The Sudanese noticed, and they were less than thrilled to discover that their sandy country was now being claimed as an American test site! But it was explained, it was all just a typo. "A likely story," the Sudanese said, and launched their own investigation. The results of said investigation are not mentioned in this BBC article, but one must presume that they found themselves assassinated by the CIA unable to prove anything.

Armenians in Fresno 2024 Jul 26
Why does California, and Fresno in particular, have so many people of Armenian descent? It started with Hagop Seropian and his brothers in 1881 who found the climate similar to their homeland, and when their business was successful, more of their fellows followed. But, sadly, the population really expanded with people fleeing the Armenian Genocide committed by Turkey in 1914-15.

NUTS! 2024 Jul 9
The story of, in World War II at the battle of Bastogne, Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe responded to a German demand to surrender with the very short message, "Nuts!"

Sri Lanka's Mythical Bridge Over the Ocean 2024 Jun 3
Sometimes legend does align with the geologic record, as in the case with Adam's Bridge, a shallow landform connecting the island of Sri Lanka with the mainland Indian subcontinent. Myths say it used to be walkable, and geologists who have studied it confirm this, that sea levels have risen to cover what used to be a very large isthmus.

Thugee: Monsters of Orientalism 2024 Jun 2
The word "thug" famously comes from the Sanskrit word "thag" due to the reports of "thuggee" – tribes of organized highway bandits in India which would steal and murder from unsuspecting travelers. But how much of this is true, and how much of it it simply Western Orientalism projected onto India and reinforced through lurid tales? This paper in Nature puts forth the argument that since most accounts of thuggee come not from Indian sources but from British, that the thugs in question likely didn't ever exist at all.

The Space Quest II Master Disk Blunder 2024 May 24
Or the time that Sierra On-Line accidentally sent their game engine source code to all their customers, back in 1988, and nobody realized until 2016.

Magic Edge, Inc. 2024 May 12
I visited Magic Edge when I was an adolescent. It was a motion flight simulator in Palo Alto where you could pretend to dogfight against other players in modern but high-tech fighter jets. While I don't see many references anymore to this Silicon Valley Mountain View 90s anomaly, I recently read a book where the author retold his experience in the simulator. And so I did some searching online, finding not much, but did stumble upon this, a short recollection from someone who worked there, along with some photos and videos.

Glendenning Barn 2024 May 9
The Apple spaceship campus in Cupertino is the cutting edge of private, hyper-modern, secretive technology company campuses covered in the the most advanced, updated buildings money could buy, and one old barn. Why one old barn? Turns out, it was less of a pain in the ass to just let it continue to exist and use it for its original function.

Footage from the world in 1896 2024 Apr 29
This YouTube channel has posted a video taking old Lumiere Brothers footage shot in cities around the world 1896 to 1900 and colorized it, upscaled it, and converted it to 60fps. This seventeen minute trip into the past feels like viewing the world through a time machine, seeing common people doing everyday things in a way not usually available to us beyond a few decades back.

Why did chemical company 3M make floppy discs? 2024 Apr 3
This IEEE/Tedium article titled "The Rise and Fall of 3M’s Floppy Disk – The high-profile creator of magnetic media gave it up nearly three decades ago" talks about exactly that. The history of magnetic storage is reviewed, including its unexpected serendipity that brought the chemical company famous for its adhesives into prominence as the premiere maker of this once-vital computer peripheral.

How document copying led to flextime and world citizenship 2024 Mar 29
Another Computers Are Bad post, this one weaving the thread through the history of the xerographic process, how those xerographs were accounted for, and how that inventor later went on to create the flextime schedule and then renounce his citizenship from Germany and become a "citizen of the world."

Barcelona’s famous Sagrada Familia will finally be completed in 2026 2024 Mar 25
The famously incomplete basilica is scheduled to finally be "finished" (by which they mean, the 18th and final spire completed, ending major construction) in a couple years. Neat! Also the article spuriously refers to the building as a "cathedral" which even this Jew knows is wrong, as "cathedral" doesn't mean "big church", it means "building which hosts a cathedra (throne of a bishop)". It is accurately a "basilica" though, since it has been designated as such by the pope because of its importance.

Relics of the Ancients 2024 Mar 13
Linked is a website which maps and collects information about the "mysterious" stone structures which line California, the most known of which are the East Bay Walls. They are mysterious in that their builders are unknown and predate any written or oral histories. While entirely less famous than Stonehenge, California it turns out does have its own collection of cairns and other megalithic structure.

a history of the tty 2024 Mar 11
This is the story of how society went from typewriters and telegraphs to computers, and why the term 'tty' (acronym for teletypewriter) continues to persist in computing.

Pagan Yahwism 2024 Mar 9
The Torah's full of instructions to the Hebrews to not worship other gods or idols. This leads the modern reader to beg the question – what was going on back then that this was a problem? Here's a 2001 article from the Biblical Archeology Review which surveys what's been dug from the ground from that era, and how widespread idolatry and paganism was, and how deeply it infiltrated the everyday lives of ancient Hebrews.

The Oddness of February 2024 Mar 5
While we went through our annual wondering why February was so short and I was content to settle for half an answer, Conversable Economist Timothy Taylor was not. Read his blog for the full discussion, but the meat I've neatly copy/pasted here, a quote from a quote, originating (I believe) from Dartmouth professor Paul Calter in 1998, from a Geometry course syllabus:

Odd numbers were considered masculine; even numbers feminine because they are weaker than the odd. When divided they have, unlike the odd, nothing in the center. Further, the odds are the master, because odd + even always give odd. And two evens can never produce an odd, while two odds produce an even. Since the birth of a son was considered more fortunate than birth of a daughter, odd numbers became associated with good luck.

WebTV Shrine 2024 Mar 5
Back in the mid-90s, a new gadget came out that let you -- without a computer -- use your TV to browse the world wide web! I never used it, as my household was privileged enough to always have computers around, but I certainly remember it. So here's some nostalgia, someone collecting parts of it and narrating the journey for those who never experienced it in the flesh.

Why does February have only 28 days? 2024 Feb 28
This recent BBC article about the history of our calendar slips into its middle an answer to a question that's long plagued my brain: why is February so short? Why not pluck some of those 31st days off two other months and donate them to February? The article explains: the answer lies in Roman superstition around generally avoiding even numbers and wanting to end their year (in February) on an even number to concentrate all the bad luck onto one spot or something. Roman mysticism always confounds me – every answer just leads to more questions – so simply knowing that this stems from their religious belief is enough of an answer to satisfy me.

Every Default macOS Wallpaper 2024 Feb 16
This is a collection not so much of the wallpapers – since I don't think most of them are very good at being desktop wallpapers – but of macOS versions, and how it felt to walk by the Apple store and see machines glowing with these big, bright, colorful images on them, welcoming you in like a big invitation to come and touch the shiny thing.

Rajneeshee Bioterror Attack 2024 Feb 12
In September 1984, there was an outbreak of salmonella food poisoning in The Dalles, Oregon, where at least 751 cases were confirmed. This, in a community numbering only in the 10s of thousands, was massive in scale. The CDC blamed poor food handling practices. It was only a year later, when the FBI was investigating the nearby cult Rajneeshee that they discovered, in a lab on the cult's compound, vials carrying organisms identical to the outbreak strain that authorities understood the salmonella outbreak to in fact be bioterrorism, the first and most successful major such attack in our country's history. That this incident is so little-known baffles me.

Fight the Ship 2024 Feb 1
What exactly happened on the Arleigh Burke destroyer USS Fitzgerald when it collided with a cargo vessel on June 17, 2017? This long and detailed ProPublica article pulls together a compelling narrative from numerous interviews and intensive research.

Corralitos California History 2024 Jan 27
This tiny homegrown website has an enormous wealth of information about Corralitos, California, a small town wedged into the northern part of the Monterey Bay between Santa Cruz and Watsonville. Corralitos is unincorporated, rural, and neither heavily populated nor touristed, but here on this internet of ours is evidence that it is loved.

We Polked You in ’44. We Shall Pierce You in ’52. 2024 Jan 21
This listicle collects presidential campaign slogans which – again, who cares? – and where I'm already familiar with all the good ones. Except this one, the best one, how did I not know this? Comparing Franklin Pierce in 1852 against the popular James Polk presidency of 1844, this slogan is amazing. But now with 170+ years of hindsight, while neither is terribly famous, Polk is at least regarded by historians as a good president, where Pierce not so much.

The Middle Name of every US President 2024 Jan 18
This is some dumb Reader's Digest non-content, but it amused me for a few minutes. The largest number of presidents have no middle names, with the 2nd biggest trend being a middle name that's a relative's surname. At least one president has just a single letter as a middle name (Harry S Truman), possibly two, and a surprising number are known primarily by their middle name and not their first. What does this all mean? Absolutely nothing.

The Carrington Event may have been more localized than we realized 2024 Jan 16
As we enter anther solar maximum on the Sun's 11-year cycle, this article may help lessen fears of an apocalyptic Coronal Mass Ejection frying all electronics on Earth (such as the one which fried telegraph wires, witnessed by Richard Carrington back in 1858) and destroying society (and my camera collection) as we know it. Apparently incidents in 2002 and 2005 were also linked to solar activity, and while they did cause issues, they were obviously not the globe-spanning catastrophe that doomsayers have been predicting.

USS Thompson (DD-305) 2024 Jan 3
There's a shipwreck in the South Bay? How have I never known this?

Quoth Jan Lettens writing in 2009:

After her sale, she served as a floating restaurant in lower San Francisco Bay during the depression years of the 1930s. In February 1944, the Navy repurchased the ship and partly sank her in the mud flats of San Francisco Bay, south of the San Mateo Bridge, where Army and Navy aircraft carried out bombing runs with dummy bombs. Portions of the wreck remain above the waterline to this day. She is commonly referred to as the 'South Bay Wreck' and many tide tables reference her as a reference.

The Witch King and Fear 2023 Dec 29
A forum post from 2014 shares an interesting new perspective on what Tolkien meant in some of his key passages by gleaning parallels from Tolkien's biography.

Oh, what's this bomber airplane doing just sitting here? 2023 Nov 21
Well, since nobody else seems to be using it, might as well put it to some use.

50 years ago, the Munich Olympics massacre changed how we think about terrorism 2023 Nov 18
An article which grows more interesting in light of the current Israel hostages being held in the Gaza Strip. Clearly not an echo of what happened in Munich, but certainly an unfortunate continuation.

This country existed for only seven hours 2023 Nov 7
I don't know if this is the shortest-existing country of all time, and maybe calling this a "country" is a stretch, but the Republic of Benin (not the other Benin, which wasn't called "Benin" until later) was organized and existed in the midst of the Nigerian Civil War right as the Nigerian army was marching its direction.

Don't mess with a genius 2023 Oct 29
That time Isaac Newton had someone hanged, drawn, and quartered.

1581 affair ended by death, diplomacy 2023 Oct 5
Mathurin Romegas was a nobleman and Knight Hospitaller of the Order of Saint John of Malta and a wildly successful sailor in the struggle against the Corsairs and Ottomans, personally enraging Suleiman the Magnificent with his exploits. But his late career and death is wrapped in Papal intrigue and politics. When he died in Rome at around 55 years of age, what really killed him?

Bir Tawil 2023 Sep 18
Apart from Antarctica, every piece of land on the planet is part of a country, right? Well, every piece of land, except this one. Due to a border dispute between Egypt and Sudan stemming from their joint history with English colonialism, there is an 800-square-mile quadrilateral of uninhabited, hot, dry desert which is claimed by no country.

Cultural History: Portola Redwoods 2023 Aug 29
One final posting in this run, this one from the official State Parks website on the history of Portola Redwoods. There's nothing new here about Iverson or Page, but it does confirm many of the same details as the other links.

The Long and Winding Road 2023 Aug 29
This 1998 article in Palo Alto Weekly (a small local newspaper) celebrating Page Mill Road contains another snippet, adding some more color to this story I'm stumbling my way into. The article is short, but it teaches us that "Page Mill is one of the oldest thoroughfares in the area. It was carved out in the early 1860s as a route for lumber harvested in the nearby hills. The main user at the time was William Page, a New York-born businessman who owned timberland in the Pescadero area and a large mill near California Avenue, in what was then the settlement of Mayfield. As late as 1918, people remember Page's horse-drawn wagon lumbering over the hills along Page Mill, bells attached to animals' harnesses to warn travelers of their approach along the steep and narrow road."

William Page - Lumberman 2023 Aug 29
Here's an 1882 biography of William Page (the namesake of Page Mill Road), written when he was still living and working in the community. In it we learn that

In 1854 he [...] retraced his footsteps to San Mateo county, and opened a store at Searsville, which he conducted for thirteen years. In 1878 he came to Mayfield where he has since resided, being now engaged in the lumber business. He has an interest in a large tract of timber land in the southern portion of San Mateo county, also a half interest in a steam sawmill, with a capacity of fifteen thousand feet in the twelve hours.

Christian Iverson and William Page 2023 Aug 29
Buried in this article about a 2012 effort to save some big old redwoods is this fascinating nugget of local history expanding on the story of Christian Iverson, snippets that aren't sourced but which I can find scant other account of online. The juicy bits are about halfway through the article, but I'll copy/paste them here for posterity:

Iverson split redwood shakes and shingles for a living and, in the 1880s, served as a bodyguard for the wife of Capt. Harry Love, a California ranger who supposedly captured and beheaded the famous outlaw Joaquin Murrieta. One day Love flew into a jealous rage and opened fire on his wife and her protector, only to be shot to death by Iverson.

In 1889, Iverson sold his property to William Page, who had built the first of two sawmills along Peters Creek, which was named after another early immigrant named Jean Peter, who ran a dairy and grew hay and grain.

Page, who also operated a general store and served on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, used the lumber to make shingles. He later built a logging road that became known as Page Mill Road. The road, which still exists, was used to transport lumber to Palo Alto.

Christian Iverson, California Pioneer 2023 Aug 29
Here's a fascinating little bit of early Europeans in California history, something I've never come across before. It regards a Danish settler who maybe rode for the Pony Express, lived in a cabin in the Santa Cruz mountains, and slept with the sheriff of Santa Clara's wife. What do you get for living like this? They named a trail after him in Portola Redwoods State Park.

Santa Claus Bank Robbery 2023 Jul 30
The synopsis of this 1930s shootout between cops and robbers includes too many fanciful details for me to quite believe all of it as it's been recorded on Wikipedia, but it does make for a fantastic story, one I could easily visualize being turned into a movie film.

87% Missing: the Disappearance of Classic Video Games 2023 Jul 10
Unlike movies, books, audio recordings, and pretty much everything else, video games once they pass from publication are no longer easy to experience. This places the vast majority video games ever made out of reach of almost everyone. As video games are undeniably a part of our culture, this blindness to the past damages us and should be corrected.

Admiral Cloudberg 2023 Jul 4
I was lucky enough to have somehow stumbled across Admiral Cloudberg's fascinating and detailed write-ups of aviation disasters back in her early days. I drifted away at some point, but recently saw a new post linked on Hacker News, and much to my delight was pleased to see that not only is she still going, but her posts are stronger than ever. Congratulations!

East Bay Hill People 2023 May 4
The site description says it best: "Explore the East Bay Hills of the San Francisco Bay Area and discover a world inhabited by our local Native Americans for over 10,000 years. Many sites are virtually untouched since missionization, manslaughter and European diseases drove these people from their ancestral homelands just over 200 years ago. Respect their history."

Time and the Laundering of History 2023 Apr 22
Why do we villainize Hitler while we lionize Julius Caesar? This article delves into the tricky topic of how popular history's perceptions of conquerors of past can grow divorced from their true carnage.