Consider that Late Registration came out in 2005.

A 15 year old would only know Kanye as a maga hat embarrassment.

The Selfish Gene came out in 1976. Anyone under 44 only knows dawkins in his bigot form.

Fun fact: the standard advice for if a dog, cat, or human bites your hand, is to feed the bite. Push your hand further into their mouth, forcing the jaw open.

Nurses, EMTs, veterinarians, etc are taught to respond this

The advice for a human biting you is to jam your hand or arm deeper into their mouth, and rub the spot under their nose back and forth.

If you attempt to remove your hand, or forearm, the teeth do what they're supposed to and gouge out a chunk.

This vicious wolf attack illustrates proper technique.

So: every EMT and nurse who gets bitten by a human, is trained to jam their hand or forearm deeper into the mouth, feeding the bite so the jaw widens enough to remove the limb

Also, every redneck learns this along with the advice of "never run from an angry dog"

Here's an interesting ncbi article on rage:

One of the claims argued, is that frustration triggers rage.

Either frustration from behaviour not producing expected outcomes, or frustration from someone not doing what one asks.

And, you can experimentally trigger rage by frustrating people sufficiently.

Get someone to do something in order to get a reward. Suddenly stop rewarding them for that. Bam, frustration and then rage.

Alternatively, pair your test subjects, ask them to cooperate to accomplish a task, and have your inside guy not listen.

Bam, frustration and then rage.

The thwarting of expectations is the common theme. Thwart someone's expectations, violate their model of how things work, and you frustrate them.

Keep at it, and you enrage them.

It's odd that 2020 is almost over and I've not seen one person the whole year go viral for using astrology to predict how shit a year it would be this time last year.

Not one post from november or december last year going "the stars say pandemic, lockdown, unemployment, your parents will die." Etc

It's been a whole year. One person would have gone viral for having a post this time last december saying their astrologer predicted basically *any* part of this year

At the same time: remember the sheer joy of thinking he was dying? Billions of people eagerly urging that to materialize? Wishing all the negative energy you could possibly want on one man?

Kinda disproves that whole thing, huh.

2020: the year woo failed, entirely.

Not even preppers got out of it. They were the first people to start proudly coughing in each other's mouths to own the libs upon their fantasized biological disaster finally occurring.

Would you like to live in a UFO? Well in 1968 you could, thanks to Finnish architect Matti Suuronen. He created the Futuro House and for a while it was a worldwide sensation!

Let's take a look around...

The Futuro was a round prefabricated house initially designed as a ski chalet. Quick to build and easy to heat it reflected the optimism of the times.

Inside the spacious Futuro were all the 1960s mod cons: a central cooker/heater, reclining chairs, funky furniture and cool, crisp lines. Did it have shagpile carpets? Of course it did!

The Futuro was made of fibreglass- reinforced polyester and was light enough to be towed to any location. You literally moved house.

But its futuristic design caused an immediate backlash: Futuro houses were banned from many municipalities by zoning regulations because they didn't 'blend in' with the environment. Production was halted in the mid 1970s.

The Kushana Empire was founded by Mahārājādhirāja Kujula Kadphises, a Shaivite Hindu convert from his ancestral Steppe religion of the Yüeh-chih. He was not a Buddhist, as popularly believed.

A thread on the Hindu Emperors of the Kushana Dynasty.

The Kushanas were part of a tribal confederation called the Yüeh-Chih that originally lived in the western part of the Gansu Province of China. They were pushed west by the invasions of the Xiongnu (Huna) confederation. Kuja Kadphises united all the five sub-tribes under Kushana.

Emperor Kuja Kadphises had converted to Shaivism, a Mathura inscription from the Tōkrī Tīla mound (Maṭ village) clears up previous confusion (Based on him being called "satyadharmasthita" or 'steadfast in the true dharma' people speculated he was a Buddhist)

This is incorrect.

The Mathura inscription applied the same epithet to Emperor Huvishka (satyadharmasthita) but explicitly says the Kingdom was conferred upon its founder by Lord Shiva (Sarva is the epithet of Shiva). This makes it clear Kujula Kadphises had adopted Shaivism & the Kharoshti script.

This also makes sense, when we realize his son, Emperor Vima Kadphises was also a devoted Hindu Shaivite (and in his coins we clearly see a trishulin ithyphallic shiva with a tiger skin).

So his son had just been continuing his father's tradition & upbringing.

In 1637, the Dutch Republic erupted into a speculative fever over an unlikely item...the tulip.

Tulip Mania has become a legend synonymous with market euphoria and bubbles. But is this tale all it's cracked up to be?

Who's up for a story?

👇👇👇

1/ The tulip is a spring-blooming flower native to the valleys of the Tien Shan Mountains in Central Asia.

It is believed to have been introduced to Europe in 1554, when an ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor sent tulip bulbs and seeds to Vienna from the Ottoman Empire.

2/ Tulips gained in popularity as people were attracted to their rich color and ability to grow in sub-optimal conditions.

They soon became a coveted status symbol for the wealthy.

The Semper Augustus, with its colorful, flame-like streaks, was the most desired of them all.

3/ By the early 1600s, the Dutch Republic was entering a golden age.

Many financial innovations popped up during this time - the first stock exchange, for example.

But it was another financial innovation that would propel tulips into historical lore: the futures contract.

4/ As tulips grow slowly and may take several years to bloom, paper contracts were written that entitled the buyer to the future tulips.

These contracts were freely-traded.

So in addition to the physical market for tulip bulbs, a thriving paper market was established.

Why and how did the ancient Egyptians build pyramids?

Pyramids were built for religious purposes. The Egyptians were one of the first civilizations to believe in an afterlife. Most were built as tombs for the pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods.

Most accepted construction hypotheses are based on the idea that it was built by moving huge stones from a quarry and dragging and lifting them into place. There are three known chambers inside the Great Pyramid.

All the pyramids were built by Egyptian workers and Imhotep was the architect of the first pyramid and the Saqqara step pyramid. He also built the pyramid of Djoser’s successor, Sekhemkhet. He was later deified as the god of medicine throughout Egypt in the Late Period.

It is not known who designed the Great Pyramid, but the man responsible for supervising its complex construction was Hemiunu, Khufu’s nephew, a senior civil servant who acted as the pharaoh’s vizier.

Despite the mystery surrounding Giza, Hemiunu himself was a flesh-and-blood man, as shown by his decidedly lifelike—and fleshy—statue, found in his tomb in Giza’s west cemetery.

THREAD: Meditations on marriage metaphors in Ruth

The book of Ruth is, of course, a story about a beautiful marriage. But even before the courtship and the wedding and the important genealogy at the end, we find interesting language that is strikingly reminiscent of Genesis 2:24

That important verse reads:

'Therefore a man shall leave [יַֽעֲזָב] his father and his mother and hold fast [וְדָבַ֣ק] to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.'

The verb עזב can be quite strong in force. For example, Joseph leaves behind [וַיַּעֲזֹ֤ב] his garment as he flees from Pharaoh's wife's sexual advances. Countless times, Israel is depicted abandoning the LORD, for example in Judg 2:12 [וַיַּעַזְב֞וּ], and going after other gods.

Likewise, the verb דבק is rather striking. Lot is mortified of disaster overtaking him [תִּדְבָּקַ֥נִי] as he flees from Sodom. Israel is commanded in Deut 10:20 to cling fast [תִדְבָּ֔ק] to the LORD and serve him and swear by his name.

Together they illustrate how radical God designed marriage to be. Marriage is a real severing of family relations in order to form a new, permanent bond with another human being.

Something very similar to this takes places in Ruth's life.