#german post war modern

[dashalbrundezimmer]

city hall stolberg // stolberg (rhineland)

completion: 1977

stolberg town hall is a prime example of brutalism in the rhineland. a solitary building in the old town whose special feature is the stilts on which the front of the main building rests. unfortunately, the building was damaged during the flood of 2021 and is to be demolished. An unparalleled disappointment.

#architecture #photography #architecture photography #moderne #rhineland #nrw #germany #stolberg #post war modern #post war architecture #nachkriegsmoderne #nachkriegsarchitektur #nachkriegsmoderne rheinland #nachkriegsarchitektur rheinland #nachkriegsmoderne deutschland #nachkriegsarchitektur deutschland #german post war modern #german post war architecture #design #brutalism #brutal architecture

[panicinthestudio]

#Hong Kong #exteriors #Architecture #design #photography #Walter Koditek #Blue Lotus Gallery #exhibition #art #post war #1950s #1960s #1970s #German #history #modernism #hong kong free press #contemporary #20th century #urban

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Israel has published intel retrieved on Dec 18 from Hamas headquarters in Gaza, on how Hamas was using a network of fake Facebook profiles, pretending to be Israelis living abroad, and looking to hire Israeli Jews to make deliveries for them. First, they were meant to be innocent deliveries, in order to "groom" the Israelis for the moment when they will unknowingly be helping Hamas to deliver explosives. This was carried out by, among others, terrorists released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit hostage exchange deal (where Israel exchanged 1,027 Palestinian prisoners for the release of one captured Israeli soldier), who had a better knowledge of Hebrew and of Israeli due to their time in Israeli prisons. The terrorists released in the Gilad Shalit deal include Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza.

Israeli soldiers in Gaza have reached a cemetery for British soldiers who died there during WWI. The Brits usually buried their soldiers where they died. Among the British soldiers who fought and died in Gaza during that war were Jewish ones, too. I've seen people using the good state of their graves to claim that in Gaza, they are very respectful of Judaism itself, that it's evidenced by how they treat Jewish graves well, and it's only Zionists they have an issue with. What they leave out is that this cemetery was so well preserved because it's NOT a Jewish one, it's British. I found a pic where you can specifically see the grave of a Christian soldier, with a cross on the tombstone, buried next to the grave of a Jewish man, with a Star of David engraved. In comparison with this British cemetery, we can talk about the ancient Jewish synagogue in Gaza, that was appropriated and turned into a mosque (that they then used for terrorist activity, leading to its destruction in this war), or the modern synagogues left behind by Israel when it withdrew from Gaza in 2005, which were burned down by the Palestinians.

For several days now, protesters have been headed down south to where aid trucks pass from Israel to Gaza, in an attempt to block them. I wanna emphasize that they are NOT looking to deprive civilian Gazans of aid, they are just saying that humanitarian aid should be given in exchange for humanitarian aid making it to the Israeli hostages held in Gaza. On different days, the protesters have been sometimes more successful, sometimes less, but what's clear is that Israel is doing its best not to allow this, arresting protesters, and temporarily declaring the roads leading to the Gaza crossings as closed military areas.

In Sweden, a suspicious object was found next to the Israeli embassy, meaning they fear it was an attempted bombing. In an interview, the Israeli ambassador said that the staff is sure that's what it was, that the Swedish police is handling it, and they have no further information. The Israeli embassy in Sweden has recently been a target for Hamas' terrorists in Europe.

If you're interested, Reuters has uploaded the House Hearing on the future of US support of UNRWA. You can watch the whole thing here:

Sweden is now the 18th financier suspending their funding of UNRWA. In Germany, there are voices calling for the dismantling of it completely. I'm gonna attach a piece about that in Hebrew, but the Germans being interviewed are speaking in English, so it shouldn't be a problem to understand them. The first speaker is Uwe Becker, an amazing ally to Jews, who has been in charge of fighting antisemitism in the German state of Hessen, the rest belong to the democratic liberal party FDP, which is a part of the coalition.

Meanwhile, Norway, Ireland, Spain, Denmark and Belgium are continuing their funding to UNRWA, despite its ties to Palestinian terrorist organizations. Let it be remembered that Norway, Ireland, Spain, Denmark and Belgium have no issue with their money going to antisemitism and anti-Jewish terrorism.

The amount of pics and vids coming out of Gaza, showing weapons and rockets being hidden inside UNRWA schools, facilities and bags is insane, so I kinda stopped repeating myself with them at some point, but here's another one, fresh from today, explosives and mines found inside a bag with the UNRWA logo.

It only took several decades of people in the music industry knowing Roger Waters is an antisemite, and several very long years of the public starting to see it as well, for Waters to be fired by his music company, BMG. People are now connecting the news to an interview he gave back in November, in which he of course accused Jews for his firing.

This is 24 years old Ran Gevili.

On Oct 7, he was at a hospital, awaiting surgery. When he heard the news, he didn't hesitate and left for the area attacked by Hamas terrorists to help. At 10:50 in the morning, he sent his friends a message on WhatsApp that he's been shot twice in the leg. He was thought to be kidnapped, but today it's been confirmed that he had been murdered that day by Hamas, and his body is being held hostage in Gaza. May his memory be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

#israel #antisemitism #israeli #israel news #israel under attack #israel under fire #terrorism #anti terrorism #hamas #antisemitic #antisemites #jews #jew #judaism #jumblr #frumblr #jewish #israelunderattack

[sheetz]

i keep seeing that picture of the Chinese railway employee (Han Junjia I believe, if the People's Dailt article I found is the same as the post I'm thinking of) posed in front of a steam locomotive in the 80s when he first started work on the railway side by side side a more modern picture of him in front of a high speed train. i don't think the post is that complicated- it like illustrates the development of china and the rapid transformation of the network and the country. from the 1980s to the current day -but the "before" picture - in the 1980s - is like. not the place where the Chinese state railways started and is worth discussing because it is an impressive development which I'd imagine a lot of the people who see it take for granted.

the locomotive is a JF class. the class of locomotive which would become the JF was originally designed and built in America and sent to Manchuria to work on the Japanese colonial railways and designated "Mika" or 'Mikako". After World War I, Japan assumed operation of the Sifang locomotive shops built by the Germans during their occupation of China, which was then used by Japan to produce Mikas of the same design as those orders from the United States. After China was liberated by the PLA the railways were recategorized and standardized and the Mika was renamed JF standing for - Jie Fang (Liberation). Spare parts leftover at the Sifang Locomotive Works from the Japanese Occupation at the Sifang Locomotive works were used to produce the first locomotive produced in the People's Republic and the first truly indigenous locomotive - JF no 2101 - which would enter service on railroads run for the benefit of the country and its people rather than colonial powers. The JF would be the backbone of the Chinese railway in the early years of the People's Republic as the railway network grew and the country rapidly industrialized. it was a reliable design examples of which lasted in service for at least 86 years. by 1980 the entire railway network had undergone a drasric transformation compared to just 40 years previously- from one with locomotives built by colonial powers to work on colonial railways to domestically produced locomotives to work on railways which were for the benefit of the country itself and not a colonial power.

even at the time the "before" picture in the aforementioned post had been taken, there had been people who had witnessed a massive and almost unimaginable transformation within the Chinese railway network. who started as employees in Japanese colonial railways or German colonial locomotive works who ended their careers building locomotives in not only a newly liberated country but a worker's state. and i think that's as impressive if not more impressive than the high speed rail construction.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Far-right politicians with an explicit history of antisemitism, such as Marine Le Pen, have been praised in recent months for their support of Israel and virulently anti-Muslim sentiment. On November 15th, Elon Musk tweeted out his support for the “great replacement theory”—the idea that Jewish people are engineering white genocide—leading to condemnations from the White House, and from X advertisers such as Apple and Disney. On November 17th, Musk announced an X ban on pro-Palestinian phrases like “from the river to the sea,” which he characterized as antisemitic hate speech. Minutes after the announcement, Jonathan Greenblatt, Director of the ADL, logged on to express his gratitude to Musk, writing: “I appreciate this leadership in fighting hate.”  In a recent article for the far-right Washington Free Beacon, provocatively titled “What Makes Hamas Worse Than the Nazis,”  bestselling British historian Andrew Roberts mounts a rousing defense of Nazism, ostensibly in the name of condemning antisemitism. Although the Nazi government began systematically murdering disabled and queer people even before the start of the war, Roberts insists that their operations were incidentally rather than deliberately sadistic, and that the majority of German people during the war opposed mass murder. If his aim is clearly to demonize the cause of Palestinian liberation as a whole, his exoneration of European fascism as “just following orders” is no less central of a claim. By conflating “antisemitism,” “genocide,” and even “Nazism” with Palestine, Hamas, and Islam as a whole, this kind of historical revisionism works to redeem the European far-right as inherently civilized even in its most barbaric actions.  Any attempt to adopt a more humanist perspective, to take a longer or wider lens on the annihilation of Europe’s Jewish communities, or to relate their struggles and suffering to the struggles and suffering of others would appear to betray the ethos of post-Holocaust Jewishness. Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon both famously argued that the extreme state violence of fascism and the Holocaust was an imperialist backlash, the excesses of colonial violence returning home, only shocking in that it took place on European soil. In his introduction to Modernity and the Holocaust, Zygmunt Bauman describes the insistence on the uniqueness of the Holocaust as a form of historical decontextualization. Or, more plainly, as a refusal to engage in collective self-reflection. “One way is to present the Holocaust as something that happened to the Jews; as an event in Jewish history. This makes the Holocaust unique, comfortably uncharacteristic and sociologically inconsequential.” Bauman asserts that the underlying rationale for this circular logic, by which abstracted antisemitism is both sole cause and sole effect of the Holocaust, is collective exoneration. It works as a shield for modern European civilization, capable of outliving such atrocities.

[...]

It is not incidental then that, in line with right-wing ideological programs, the mainstream current of Holocaust narratives primarily encourage identification with the perpetrators rather than with the victims. They are propelled by the cause of personal enlightenment, encouraging the reader to look within for evil and to root it out rather than ever looking outward at the world surrounding them. Evil, this version of history would have you believe, is a personal problem and not a systemic one. It can crystallize through a mysterious process into mass evil, a spiritual rot. This gives it a kind of mystical aspect. It is easier from this perspective to believe in the innate evil of some, in the innate goodness of others. This moral binary is frequently mobilized in defense of violence and injustice. In a deleted tweet, Netanyahu called Israel’s ongoing genocidal attack on Gaza “a war between the children of light and the children of darkness.” In a December 2023 speech, Joe Biden reaffirmed his condemnation of Hamas, which he implicitly collapsed into a condemnation of Palestinians as a whole, calling them “a brutal, ugly, inhumane people, and they have to be eliminated.” Both were invoking this moral binary, the deformed vocabulary of white supremacy and colonialism. For if the world is made up of people who are “good” and “bad,” “civilized” and “barbaric,” rather than of societies shaped by ideologies, then it is possible to characterize an entire group of people as evil, to dehumanize them, to declare them guilty all the way down to their newborn babies, to justify their mass murder. In broader terms, this is a totalizing story about history; one in which the European perpetrators of wars of aggression, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, can redeem themselves by retelling their crimes but this time as witnesses to horror rather than as active participants. They can atone and wash away the sin of what they have done by giving it a narrative structure with an ending and a moral lesson, one in which the Holocaust finds its silver lining in the creation of the state of Israel, one in which Europe becomes civilized again, one in which blame is shifted from Germany to Palestine, and from fascists to anti-fascists. 

#israel #holocaust #genocide #antisemitism

[minetteskvareninova]

As someone who had to study Czechoslovak relations before World War I in excrutiating detail (elective course, for the sweet, sweet credits), you can't even imagine my endless frustration with foreign history enthusiasts and their wonder at the whole idea of czechoslovakism.

Like. In the 19th century the idea that Czechs and Slovaks are one nation was THE NORM in Czech circles. Even within Slovak national movement, there were plenty of proponents of this idea - Kollár and Šafárik, for one. Slovak nation had no prior history of independence, zero nobility and very little in terms of elites (mostly minor clergy and urban intelligentsia, classes which prior to 18th century had almost no political power). Add to this the fact that since the Reformation, Slovak protestants (who were a minority, but still had a respectable literary culture post-emancipation by Joseph II.) used Biblical Czech, which was closer to Slovak than modern Czech, for religious purposes, and that at first there actually wasn't any commonly-accepted literary Slovak, only a cluster of dialects... And you can see that the idea that Slovaks are a distinct nations from Czechs was hardly obvious to a 19th century observer.

This is not to diminish the hard work of Slovak catholics and later Štúr's group (which included both catholics and younger protestants) at establishing a unified Slovak language and culture - especially since the victory of Štúr's Slovak was very much a result of organic growth untethered to any government mandate. The belief in an independent Slovak nation was very much just that popular within Slovak intelligentsia and was spread among the lower classes trough hard work; many modern leftists could marvel at the wide scope of activism that these 19th century nationalists engaged in. The idea of Slovak nation persisted despite extreme pressure from the Hungarian government to hungarize, which in and of itself is truly admirable. And yes it was incredibly ignorant of the Czech elites to dismiss Štúr's reform as "separatism". But. That doesn't change the fact that among Czechs, the idea of Slovaks as separate from them was only adopted very slowly. Heck, you had Czech people in the late 19th century being like "uhm, that's a nice language you have over there, very useful for common speech and literature and stuff, but can you please use Czech in your scientific works at least, because this new tongue honestly isn't well-developed enough for that..."

And yes czechoslovakism was very useful politically, which Masaryk, ahead of his time as he was, realized, and yes Masaryk's roots among Moravian Slovaks probably gave him a good view of the grey area between the two nations. But like. Can we just stop pretending it was some kind of novel idea, when a united Czechoslovak nation was in parts of both national movements the default from which the autonomous existence of Slovaks had to be established?!

Especially the whole "it was just a cynical ploy to outnumber Germans" thing. Yes, that's what partly motivated Czech politicians at that specific moment, but it's kinda unreal to reduce the idea of czechoslovak unity to that, when in the 1880's you literally had some Czech writers wax poetically how Slovaks are their brothers, how beautiful Slovakia is and how unfairly they are treated by Hungarians in the least cynical way possible.

#random history #čumblr #ťumbľr #slovakia #czech republic #'member Českoslovanská jednota? #Českoslovanská jednota was rad #čumblr and ťumbľr should unite #and call ourselves Českoslovanská jednota

[inficetegodwottery]

So. Werewolf 5th Edition.

Werewolf 5th edition sucks. A lot.

Edit- I made some errors in my initial edit of this post that were fuelled entirely by being underinformed and almost insensible with anger, disappointment, and anxiety.

Some very informative responses have been made that I intend to incorporate into a much better and less rambling post with those updates and corrections. I'll probably delete this one soon as I type that one together, so folks only see the updated version.

Sorry for any mistakes I made on this old version, again, I was in an extremely poor place mentally and thoroughly dispirited by the total butchering of what was supposed to be a less shitty and mean-spirited version of a setting I care deeply for despite its foundational flaws and 30+ year history of exactly this thing happening.

I'm still very, very angry. But it's important to be angry and correct. This post was not made by someone informed of all the facts, and I intend to correct that.

Paradox Interactive has made the brave decision to reboot the controversial Werewolf the Apocalypse setting entirely rather than try and fix it, and have somehow done a worse job than the games studio that released an RPG book titled an ethnic slur.

It's taken me almost a month since this came out to be anywhere near mentally prepared enough to even collect my thoughts on it.

Man, it is rare to see an edition of ANYTHING that pisses off old players, new players, players who want to keep the lore the same, players who want to change the lore, conservative players, radical players, and even powergamers.

How do you set out with the intention of making an infamously dated and poorly researched/outreached setting LESS uncomfortable and racist from a modern perspective.... and end up with something EVEN MORE racist and uncomfortable, but also suffocatingly tonedeaf, insincere, and deeply sinister and corporate in its erasure of existing issues rather than addressing them whatsoever.

We made the Get of Fenris irredeemably evil because some of them in the past were nazis and also nazis like Germanic mythology, so the viking werewolves are all nazis now.

Okay, I understand why you did that from a modern political perspective even if its kind of heavy hand-

The Native American werewolf tribes have been removed entirely and replaced with American Murican werewolf tribes. Renaming and rewriting them to be more respectful was just too much work! Now they're more inclusive. :)

The Irish werewolf tribe is now the Nature Werewolves tribe, like every other tribe of Werewolves also is, but also stripped completely of celtic origins.

The Red Talons are openly genocidal ecofascist malthusians and somehow NOT IRREDEEMABLY EVIL like the Get of Fenris are.

Also the feminist all women werewolves are no longer all women or even feminist. AND ALSO SOME OF THEM ARE SOCIAL DARWINISTS AND THATS SUPPOSED TO BE A GOOD THING!?!

Also we entirely dropped the themes about how forcing children to be a part of a war they barely understand while also lying to them about the crimes their ancestors committed that led to the current crisis is fucked up and evil.

Now its actually awesome to be a child soldier born into a repressive apocalyptic death cult with a siege mentality and everything is cool about that actually, you're the Good Guys, and no amount of covered-up historic genocides or internal/external bigotry will ever change that! :)

Also we solved the way people were uncomfortable with the idea that werewolf society is transitioning messily from being horrible ableist assholes that discriminated for centuries against those they view as deformed, disabled, or sexual deviants to new generations that don't care about that stuff, by removing disabled werewolves entirely! Problem solved! No more discomfort or moral conundrums! We are the liberal-est!

There's just something so unbelievably fucked up and suspicious about erasing entire minorities from a fictional universe because they were handled poorly in the first edition, rather than talking to writers and outreach specialists FROM the real world equivalents to those minorities to try and rewrite them.

Don't worry, we removed the group the setting was bigoted against! Problem solved! Just remove the minority!

I've written my own post on why the Metis/Crinos-born should be renamed and probably rewritten, but as a severely disabled individual with multiple hereditary disabilities that severely impact my QoL, outright removing disabled characters in a work of fiction because the prejudice other characters showed them in-universe made people uncomfortable makes me want to tear out someone's throat with my teeth.

Sure, completely remove my ability to play disabled a character fighting back against prejudice and bigotry, rather than rewrite the most uncomfortable aspects of YOUR FUCKING PORTRAYAL OF THOSE CHARACTERS to make it more clear who the sympathetic one is supposed to be.

It's just so unbelievably cowardly and whinging and wretched.

So fuck it, I guess!

Fuck the deeply applicable themes of being born into a well-intentioned but deeply flawed and bigoted society, and trying to create the better world your parents always told you your ancestors fought for, while dealing with the fact that your world is built on mass graves those ancestors helped fill.

Fuck a game that deals with intergenerational trauma and the ethical hellscape that is a highly religious society devoted to the very same ideals it often violates just to win fights against the enemies it created through its own arrogance and prejudice.

Fuck a game that lets you play someone born different, born strange and sickly, bouncing constantly between people who pity you and people who view you as subhuman, before finally finding the people, the family who love and accept and fight alongside you for a world that has never accepted you, but WILL FUCKING KNOW YOUR NAME.

That's not relevant to the real world at all!

There are no kids born in deeply flawed and hypocritical societies, who grew up on stories of the glorious future their society would create, forced then to reconcile the hopeful dreams of a better world with the comprehensive list of horrific things done in the name of that future.

There are no children born confused and alone in their navigation of the maze that is past atrocities, ethnic conflicts, religious prejudice and dogma, or modern propaganda attempting to erase the histories of all of those things.

There are no disabled teens who spent their lives believing they didn't belong in the world, kept going only by the connections they forged with other outsiders and people who fought back against the kind of wretched bigotry that suffocates children to death, who found homes and families they could trust outside the pissant communities they were born into.

Apparently those people don't need a game! They don't need to explore those feelings!

Just throw some more nazis in, so we can pretend we care about social issues or understand the redeeming threads of a deeply flawed gameline, ostensibly so we market it to leftist youngsters, but while we also erase the entire point of a game WHICH IS ALL ABOUT BEING PUNKASS YOUNGSTERS DESPERATELY TRYING TO FIND THE REDEEMING THREADS OF A DEEPLY FLAWED AND PREJUDICED SOCIETY THAT CONSTRAINS THEM, FINDING A WAY TO REBEL AGAINST BOTH THE EVILS OF THE RACIST BASTARDS WHO RAISED THEM AND THE POMPOUS SHITHEADS WHO WANT TO DESTROY THE WORLD OUT OF GREED.

No! We want a squeaky clean, sterile white game that AmericanTM parents can be proud of their kids for playing! A marketable game, that advertisers will gladly pay Revenue to put their products in! Play the good guys, everyone! You're the good guys! Be a big werewolf UwU!

Don't worry about historical atrocities or the flaws of the society that raised you! That's Pentex propaganda!

Fighting bad guys means you can't do anything bad yourself! The Emperor told me so! Deus Gaia Vult!

A hollow, performative, offensive jizzstain that should've been scrapped in its crib. I have no idea how this edition got past a quality assurance team.

Hell I have no idea how it got past a legal team, given the number of real peoples' likenesses they used without permission.

Devoid of artistic integrity or merit.

#werewolf the apocalypse #W5 #wta #owod #world of darkness #I'm just so tired man #putting most of this under a TLDR so I don't flashbang people with tabletop rpg drama #I genuinely thought the new writers would be better at this stuff than the old White Wolf #Nope. #turns out they're just as bad #I shouldn't have expected anything more from them after the V5 Chechnya bullshit #but I guess I just had the dumb notion of hoping they'd gotten better #how the fuck do you do worse than a company that wrote a sourcebook about the Holocaust???!?

[ego-meliorem-esse]

Do you hc America to speak other languages or is he a fully English bimbo? To my knowledge, NASA requires Russian fluency, I don't think many other US-government level agencies require another language but I could be wrong. I know Spanish translations of official documents are increasingly accessible but English is still the de facto language.

What I will say is that the notion that Alfred, as a superpower in the modern age, does not speaks several languages is absurd to me.

The languages i hc him to know, besides English, are:

Spanish - first and foremost. Though Alfred does have more of a Mexican dialect when speaking Spanish, which slightly annoys Antonio. As it should.

German - very good at it! Gets the accent almost perfect. For Alfred, German was one of those easier languages he learned. With most nations, Alfred speaks English. And not really because he doesn't want to or try to speak their language, but mostly because it's rare that other nations expect this dude to speak their native languages. Not with Gil tho! Their conversations are full of German-centric memes. Alfred is a big fan of Mitten im Leben. Unapologetically so! He knows enough German to understand the shitty acting in the show.

Mandarin - this on is very straight forward, it's good business. He uses it too much for diplomatic purposes to find joy and interest in speaking it. Sad really, as its a fascinating language.

Russian - also very straightforward, he works at NASA for commissions and contracts and its very common to speak it. Even besides that, the Cold War required it as well. His Spotify playlists are full of post communist songs of Russian, Polish, Yugoslav origins but he'll die before show it to anyone.

Japanese - He stutters and takes his time when speaking Japanese. He learned it but rarely uses it nowadays.

Korean - man, he tries. It's a relatively new language under Alfreds belt. But his problem is that he sounds very flat when speaking Korean. Nowadays he uses it more than Japanese though!

French - oh this is a very fun one for me to get into. Contrary to popular headcanoning, I hc him to struggle with it. He does understand most of verbal French, but as a child he started learning it and at that point he wasn't really all that interested in other languages. He had other shit keep his focus. So, while he did hear a large amount of it growing up, he had few attempts to speak it himself. Even during the American revolution, when he made his way across the pond to woo his french patrons, he was mostly spoken to in English. In their minds he was not very cultured. A mixed race country bumpkin putting his big boy pants on for the first time. As annoying that was for Alfred, he had other shit to worry about. And Matt rarely spoke French when living with Al and Arthur so there wasn't really an opportunity there for Alfred. This is one language that he is constantly passively learning, which is hilarious bc it's one of the first ones he should have known lol. I get that this is a very niche hc and makes little sense but i find joy in it. And also in François' frustration.

Plus a limited knowledge of other languages. Alfred is trying to make time to learn more languages, but finding time for it is a challenge.

I'll expand on Alfreds knowledge of both specific classifications of Algonquian and Iroquois languages in a later post.

All that said, Alfred is, in heart and soul, an "English bimbo" 🙏

#what a polyglot little guy #hetalia #ask meli #hws america #alfred f jones #hetalia headcanons #my headcanons #historical hetalia

[blue-and-gilt]

17th Century 'Walloon' Sword.

While I've shown this sword before, I've held back from making a dedicated post while I attempted to researched it further. Unfortunately, there just isn't enough information available to come to any definitive conclusions and we are left to speculate based on snippets of information and clues we find in the objects themselves.

This style of sword is typically described and the 'Amsterdam town guard sword.' And is a sub-class of the broader 'Walloon' sword. Calling these 'Walloon swords' is another modern collectors' practice of convenience which is believed to have originated with the French cavalry sword; 'Epee Wallone' which was in service from the late 17th to the middle of the 18th Century.

Walloon swords are believed to have originated in the German states of the Holy Roman Empire during the time of the Thirty Years War. They are identified by the asymmetrical disk shaped guards, solid knuckle guard with two of more side branches. The guards can be solid and decorated with grotesque faces, animals or plant motifs, or they can be perforated. Typically they will have a thumb-ring attached on the left underside of the guard. Blades can be either double or single edged.

The 'Amsterdam' Walloon sword, named because of the Amsterdam Coat of Arms invariably found stamped into the ricasso, is a very distinct sub-type that features a perforated asymmetrical disk guard decorated with pierced suns surrounded by moons. It is finished by a short upturned rear quillon. They have a single knuckle bow which is fixed to the ball pommel by a screw and a thumb-ring on the left side that extends out to the edge of the guard. The grip is wrapped with wire and finished at both ends with a 'Turks head' knot. The blades are long, double edged with a single fuller at the base. They are invariably stamped with triple Xs under a crown Coat of Arms for Amsterdam. The surviving examples are very uniform for this period in time, making it is possible that this was the first European pattern sword produced.

While the link to Amsterdam is clear in the markings, it is unlikely that this type of sword was issued to the cities guard or militia. The number of surviving examples indicate that these were made in too large quantities to have been issued to a small localised force.

During the 17th Century, The Netherlands was a republic of seven provinces. And rather than a standing national army, each province would have supplied and maintained their own levies in times of war. One possibility is that these swords were supplied to the cavalry of the Province of Holland, of which Amsterdam was the economic capital.

Another theory is that the French experience of 'Walloon' swords, encountered during their war with the Dutch in 1672 to 1673. Dissatisfied with their current cavalry swords, French King Louis XIV ordered that his cavalry be equipped with a new sword of the 'Walloon' type. This is discussed in an article in the French magazine Gazette des Armes. However that doesn't explain the presence of the Amsterdam Coat of Arms on these swords. Then again, Amsterdam was a major mercantile center for Europe, and it is possible that the French order was brokered by Dutch merchants who placed their mark on the blades when they arrived from Solingen.

It should also be noted that the Amsterdam mark is often accompanied by the Solingen blade smiths' own mark. On this sword the makers mark is mostly obscured by the guard, but you can just make out the top of a crown at the ricasso (the horizontal stamp is another verson of the Dutch markings).

In the hand, this is a beast of a sword, the grip and guard are large to accommodate gloves and the blade is very long, suitable for fighting from horseback. But despite its' proportions, it is not a heavy or unwieldy sword.

Stats: Overall Length - 1,080 mm Blade Length - 920 mm Point of Balance - 120 mm Grip Length - 145 mm Inside Grip Length - 120 mm Weight - 990 grams

#antiques #swords #cavalry swords #cavalry #military antiques #17th Century #Walloon Sword

[dashalbrundezimmer]

niehler gürtel // köln nippes

the cleverness of the design of this high-rise façade lies in the staggered concrete parapets on the front site. this makes the building stand out very well, also because it functions as a solitaire in this location.

das pfiffige bei der gestaltung dieser hochhausfassade liegt in den versetzt angebrachten betonbrüstungen an der stirnseite. damit kommt das gebäude sehr gut zur geltung, auch weil es als solitär an dieser stelle fungiert.

#photography #architecture #architecture photography #design #high rise #moderne #rhineland #nrw #germany #german post war modern #cologne post war modern #rhineland post war modern #nippes #cologne #köln #german post war architecture #cologne post war architecture #rhineland post war architecture #nachkriegsmoderne #post war architecture #nachkriegsarchitektur #deutsche nachkriegsarchitektur #deutsche nachkriegsmoderne #nachkriegsmoderne köln #Nachkriegsarchitektur köln #nachkriegsmoderne rheinland #nachkriegsarchitektur rheinland

[darklcy]

☆ 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧! 𝐀𝐎𝐓 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬 ☆

this has been in the drafts for a long, long time and i haven’t posted aot in a while, so enjoy :) | also i feel like some of these may be ooc but this was fun to write! just keep in mind this is how i think they’d act in a modern setting, ofc minus the war & trauma

attack on titan masterlist

𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐍

skips class to vape

smokes to thundercat & nirvana

flannels flannels flannels

naturally you steal them. acts coy when you do.

“you didn’t steal it, i just let you wear it and didn’t say anything when you went home with it.”

i feel like he’d be into meditating. idk why. like someone said he should do it so now he does a quick 5-min guided meditation every morning

showers with his chain on and gets green neck

doodles on his converse and yours

writes “hi :)” on your homework, journals, notes, etc during class

has a minecraft server w jean, connie and armin

claims he’s not scared of games like outlast or silent hill but everyone knows he’s lying

ends up hiding behind you in haunted houses

LOVES DRIVE THRUS/FAST FOOD. sonic & in n out specifically

toddler sense of humor, like finds things falling over funny (y’all remember the video of the piece of bread falling over-)

doesn’t know how to work pinterest

leans over people’s shoulders to look at their phones

tried getting his cartilage pierced but it got infected

has a few tattoos on his wrists and bicep

will bite you impulsively

𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐈𝐍

you mean my bf

so this boy DOES know how to work pinterest, and has so many boards

one of them is filled w future pets he wants & another one includes house ideas with you :3

is the best language learner and knows french, spanish, and german

can’t watch gory shows like squid game or the walking dead, but enjoys psychological horrors like black swan

has a billion playlists with like 6 songs each

your playlist is titled “lovey” bc i said so

has maybe one lobe piercing. but only one

he goes so hard to TV girl and mac demarco, but also loves singers like sza & jack stauber

LUVS SMOOTHIES

downloaded bumble only for the fun of it once but immediately deleted it when someone liked him

bounces his leg and picks his nails

best. skin. ever. has a good skin care regime

drives a silver toyota prius 

super into journaling & drawing :>

such a gentle bf, but lives for gossip

you text him, “you will NOT believe what i just heard.” and he drops everything he’s doing to respond

coffee dates!!!

you two have a stardew farm together with a dog and a bunch of chickens and cows

his favorite character is crobus

i love him very much

𝐌𝐈𝐊𝐀𝐒𝐀

hardcore alison from breakfast club vibes

secretly into girl kpop groups

but loves hardcore women, like björk & poppy

definitely owns a lot of platform shoes: has like three pairs of demonias

shaves her brows to draw them on 

loves online shopping from aliexpress & etsy

into weird chunky jewelry!! has a necklace with a heavy cat pendant & a pair of eyeball earrings

loves to do your makeup! if you don’t wear a lot daily, she’ll do something for special outings like concerts or even for fun she’ll ask you to let her do it :3

has a tiktok specifically for ootds

favorite foods include spicy ramen, mediterranean meals & ice cream

i feel like she’d be in art class! she’d draw you random portraits or cute versions of you two to put in her scrapbook

oh yeah i also feel like she’d have a scrapbook!!! and keeps a lot of mementos from your dates/hangouts

when you come over, you, her and eren play mario kart

no doubt a spiritual girly: maybe not super into spells but has a tarot deck and a few oracle decks as well as a beautiful incense burner

you two go to goth clubs cuz yeah

her lipstick gets on you all the time

dressed up as lydia deetz one year for halloween

makes rings and necklaces and gives them to you, and she debates on opening an etsy shop

— hope you enjoyed!

#attack on titan #aot #snk #shingeki no kyojin #shingeki no kyojin x reader #x reader #aot x reader #attack on titan x reader #eren jaeger #eren jeager x reader #mikasa ackerman x reader #mikasa ackerman #aot armin arlert #armin arlert x reader #armin arlert

[loving-n0t-heyting]

the idea that the Germans overwhelmingly supported the nazis is a perversely fascinating tool of propaganda tbh bc it was and is used by so many people with different goals and in different ways. The nazis obv just tried to legitimize themselves by faking the results of eg the 1934 referendum; the various German governments of the post-war period in turn use this referendum to show that referendums are bad and everything should be left up to qualified politicians bc the people would just elect another Hitler (who was, in fact, empowered primarily by so-called qualified politicians). Various far-right groups uphold it to claim that modern democracy is a sham. The allies used it to tell theri soldiers "see? They chose this! You can kill them without second thought, men, women, and children, and it's totally justified bc they unanimously stand behind their dictator", and lastly (afaik, at least) there's the cult of guilt in Germany as well as internationally condemning every German who was born after the whole thing as guilty by association. Like practically zero people of influence have any interest at all in being honest about this, and if you do, somehow, it's nazi apologia to say that the NSDAP were oppressors who did not care about what the population actually wanted.

If you for some reason are in need of upping yr blood pressure you can try reading this obscene Jason stanley article in which inherent german blood guilt for Hitler is used to justify treating all future generations of Russians as analogously guilty of the invasion of ukraine by way of their national identity

Even so, my first thought when meeting another German is that their grandparents most likely would have enthusiastically supported murdering me and my family. […] [T]here is still fear and shame in their eyes whenever they attempt to steer the conversation away from their country’s dark legacy. There always will be, because genocide will not and cannot be forgotten – ever.

Imagine just saying this, in print, on purpose! I cannot, as the saying goes, fucking even

#ask #anon #as a friend pointed out: #does he think this is also true of jewish Germans? Or does he not think they *are* germans? #same for gay/communist/Romani/etc Germans

[kathanglangit]

The Second Blade: Diplata - Extinct Bolo

Continuing the countdown to the launch of the Gubat Banwa Kickstarter coming up on the 10th of October- 6 days to go! Gubat Banwa is a tactical war-drama TTRPG set in the Sword Isles, a fantasy setting inspired by Southeast Asian cultures and folklore.

To promote its launch, I'll be posting some of the weapons I've been drawing for the game every day until the campaign kicks off in earnest. These were meant to be Swordtember entries, pardon the lateness I suppose. 2/7 blades so far, let me introduce you to the DIPLATA.

The diplata is a short-to-mid-length blade with a distinct handle, with most specimens sporting a horn-like protrusion facing the same side as the edge.

The blade shape itself I feel is something common across most toolblades in the Philippines, not much longer than one's forearm with a more-or-less rounded out tip- though the diplata seems a bit wider than most. I would say the most unique features definitely lie in the shape of the hilt, and the circular guard. Most Philippine blades don't have anything in the form of hand protection, so a wide guard like this stands out.

This one was a little difficult to find photo references for, as apparently they're quite rare. Some blade scholars call it an "extinct" blade, meaning those who traditionally forge authentic ones supposedly aren't around anymore.

(Photo from Victor Balaguer's museum near Barcelona; Diplata on the blades hanging on the wall, the two next to the rightmost blade) "Traditional" blades refer to those made by the same people to whose culture a blade belongs. To illustrate in the simplest terms, a katana made by a traditional Japanese swordsmith would count as a traditional blade. A messer made by a traditional German blacksmith would count as a traditional blade. I'm sure there's more internal nuance there, but that's the quickest reference point I could come up with. Take note however that the Philippines is composed of many, many different cultures who all happen to exist in the same archipelago with varying levels of overlap- there is no singular, unifying blade culture, so categorizations like "Traditional" and "Modern" (often referring to modern reproductions) aren't always as exact as convenience may demand. In particular, material exchange between cultures makes a mess of this categorization, not just because the blades themselves could get traded (or stolen or lost) and physically make their way to other places beyond the imaginary borders of their "homelands", but because the smiths themselves (or their knowledge and techniques) may travel around. Smiths in different places may also see blades from different cultures that they might feel like imitating or emulating in some way- that's how certain Philippine blades obtained D-guards- but that's a story for another time. The diplata is oft-attributed to the Aeta peoples, specifically those who come from Mt. Pinatubo in Zambales. Not much confusion as to whose culture these blades belong.

It is a little disheartening that most of the refs I could find were photos from foreign museums and loose images in books and blade forums. I will not speculate here as to how these blades ended up in these places, but it isn't hard to guess.

(Image from a Spanish museum)

(Image from Philippines, Early Collections, Museum of Ethnologie Vienna)

(Image from The Philippine Journal of Science Volume 81) I'm not a hardcore blade scholar, but even I recognize how inseparable blades are from the myriad cultures of the Philippines. I'm forever thankful to the random communities of blade enthusiasts who dedicate a not-insignificant portion of their time (and wallets) to supporting local artisan blacksmiths to grow their collections, and keeping track and tracing which blades came from which places and peoples. Our blade cultures are alive and still developing, but they could still use a little help sometimes, just so we don't lose them.

(Photo from the collection of Zel Umali) In any case- while it's not exactly a scholarly work in the academic sense- part of Gubat Banwa's violence is pushing a fantasy setting of our own making, as seen by our own eyes, as told on our own terms. This is no foreign museum; This time, SEAsian cultures take center stage.

The Gubat Banwa Kickstarter launches in 6 days! Check it out here:

It would be a huge help to this very small team from the global south if you could help us get the word out! We straight up can't afford to advertise on the same scale as bigger players in the field, so we're relying heavily on word of mouth. You can find out more about the game on its itch page.

#gubat banwa #gamedev #ttrpg #ttrpgs #indie ttrpg #indie ttrpgs #tabletop rpgs #rpgs #rpg #southeast asia #southeastasia #dnd #kickstarter #swords #philippine blade #weapon design #dagger #philippine history #philippine culture #filipino artists #artists on tumblr #kathang langit #help us get the word out! #fantasy #fantasy worldbuilding #swordtember #bolo #itak #diplata

[formulinos]

HYPERFIXATION CORNER | NOW, THAT'S WHAT I CALL LATE STAGE FORMULA 1!

theydies and gentlemen of f1blr, i regret to inform you guys that the rumours are true: we live in a society. liberty media's tenure with FOM has opened a can of worms that ushered in what i've been calling lately "late stage formula 1". But the thing is, what the fuck would that be, exactly? so, as a good scholar, i took it to myself to study more about late stage capitalism in order to truly understand the term and see if my application made any sense. in today's hyperfixation corner, we'll get deeper than necessary on the microcosm of capitalism that f1 has become. and then we will get depressed. but maybe, just maybe, we can figure this out.

note: this has 7k words AND at times gets quite dense in terms of sociological theory, but i truly did my best to make it palatable. still, this is not going to be everyone's cup of tea and might get boring. if you still believe this is your thing, i just ask you to please hang on tight and see it through to the end as i truly feel everything ties up together rather logically.

PART I: THE DAWN OF LATE STAGE FORMULA 1

the basics of late stage capitalism

the application in late stage formula 1

PART II: YOU CAN'T RUN AWAY - FORMULA 1 AND CAPITALIST REALISM

mark fisher's capitalist realism

the indycar situation

was there ever class consciousness in f1?

the illusion of abu dhabi

THE DAWN OF LATE STAGE FORMULA 1

1. The Basics of Late Stage Capitalism

For a term we see being used daily on several outlets, you'd be surprised to find out that there isn't a rigid definition. In fact, depending on who you talk to, you'll get widely different explanations, since there's basically "academia" late capitalism and "normie" late capitalism. I'll brush up those two for you guys real quick because, at this point, might as well.

The term was coined by a German scholar Werner Sombart. At the time, just at the start of the XX century, he was a HUGE Marx/Engels stan. He had all of their photocards, but beyond that, he also took to himself to write his lifetime's defining work, which is basically an expanded universe fanfic to what Marx and Engels wrote, tbh. In 1902, Sombart started to publish "Der moderne Kapitalismus" (Modern Capitalism), comprised of three volumes in which he discussed four stages of capitalism: proto-capitalism, related to the appearance of capitalist-like tendencies in feudal society until it became proper capitalism + early capitalism, which was basically seen pre-industrial revolution; high capitalism, which came in with the industrial revolution and ended with WWI; and at last, late capitalism, which was what they were living at the time of the third book release (1927), that is, post world wars world. That's all very chill, but given that later on Sombart drank the kool aid and became a Nazi, he can fuck off.

Thank God, two other dudes came in to take the expression from Sombart. Ernest Mandel and Fredric Jameson are two scholars who, although published their works in different times, were responsible for widespreading the term. Mandel published Late Capitalism in 1975, marking it as the era of economic expansion post WWII that, in his view, would reach its peak in the 70s since the economy was starting to have frequent crises. Jameson, however, dropped his book, Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 16 years later, talking about the then-current world marked by globalisation and the expansion of capitalism to culture (arts, lifestyle, etc.). 

All of this is to say that, today, if you ask an economist or a political scientist, they will most likely talk to you either about this time progression or straight out use Fredric Jameson's definition. Which, tbh, works, since in a way Jameson touches on the expansion of capitalism to daily life, something that goes in common with the contemporary POV on late capitalism.

We legit live in hell rn, no big deal

If you go on Reddit or watch corecore edits on tiktok, then there is a sense of dread and irony that's unique to the internet's definition of late capitalism. Since it's a relatively recent thing, there isn't a concrete way to define it, so I'll just use the one given by Ian Neves (Brazilian Historian) in his video about Capitalist Realism because I think it's the one that manages to summarise it the best: Late Stage Capitalism is the stage of capitalism in which the contradictions of capitalism are so evident that they become explicit to the population. That is, it is so in your face that it stops being campy. It's just tacky.

In the video, Neves further explains that one of the big deals about capitalism is that it sells itself as a contradiction-free system, but in our current time we aren't quite fooled anymore. A few examples of this would be multinationals like Amazon opening factories in underdeveloped places like Tijuana, under the guise of wanting to "help develop the country" but placing themselves close to a slum, clearly showing their intentions of exploitation; You can also think of the "art" market of NFTs, which are nothing more than numbers stored in a computer - capitalism touts itself as being a creator of value capable of meeting society's needs, yet there is no need met with NFTs besides value generation for the sake of value generation and pure speculation. Anyway, there are several examples and whatever you think is probably Late Stage Capitalism.

2. The Application in Late Stage Formula 1

Having done this deep dive, imagine my face when I realised that it turns out I didn't just pull "Late Stage F1" out of my ass. I was gooped! Gooped, I tell you. See, if late stage capitalism is now defined as the era in which capitalism's contradictions are explicit, then Late Stage F1 can be easily perceived as the stage of the sport in which its contradictions are no longer capable of being ignored by the fans either. In that sense, it does feel that this is the perfect way to synthesise the bitterness that a large part of the fandom tastes in their mouths. 

note: I'm not stating that pre-Liberty Media Formula 1 was perfect. God forbid I become one of the purist fans talking about the good ole days. Bernie Ecclestone wasn't shit and in a way, some of our issues nowadays are inherited from his tenure as the head of FOM. But, at the same time, the sport managed to sell itself as a luxury hobby while still being satisfying and accessible, in a way or another, to the non-wealthy fans. You couldn't see as many contradictions as now because the image of the sport was more or less aligned with what you actually saw, good and bad. 

The same, unfortunately, can't be said nowadays. To illustrate my point, let's take a look at FOM's Corporate Strategic plan, released in 2020. The idea, in their words, is "to deliver a more popular, more exciting, and sustainable sport, which pushes the boundaries whilst protecting our heritage.", supported by six axes:

Race – Increase competitiveness and unpredictability on track

Engage – Produce an amazing spectacle for fans on and off track

Perform – Generate value to our shareholders

Sustain – Deliver sustainable and efficient operations

Collaborate – Create win-win relationships with our partners

Empower – Build an engaged and high-performing workforce

Besides Perform and Collaborate, arguably the two most capitalistic inclined pillars, it's incredibly easy to find counter-arguments to illustrate how this is just corporate talk and doesn't actually reflect on the sport. [cracks fingers] So, let's get it:

✷ Increase competitiveness and unpredictability on track: Ok, sure, they try with this one as it is the core of the sport - after all, this is what the regulations' tweaks are for. But you just need a quick overview of the Andretti situation to see that competitiveness only serves the structure to a certain point. After all, although Andretti managed to get the backing of a manufacturer (General Motors, in the form of Cadillac) which, in theory is enough to make it a more legitimate entry less likely to Caterham levels of bankruptcy, the vibes are still somehow off from camp F1. 

Michael and Mario Andretti on a pit wall during something that WASN'T a Formula 1 race

This all boils down to the revenue split at the end of the season between the teams and FOM: once you remove the bonuses that are thrown around, roughly 50% of what's left goes to FOM, and the other 50% are the championship prize money (don't quote me on these percentages actually, I'm not sure if it's exactly 50/50) . If Andretti gets in, then either the teams' share gets diluted as a consequence of an extra mouth to be fed, either FOM needs to adjust its own reward to increase the total prize money and make sure that all teams still get the same liquid value for positions 1-10. 

Now, Andretti are willing to pay the 200 million dollars "anti-dillution" fee that's to be distributed to the already existing teams as a regulated "sorry we're gonna have to split the prize money in 11 from now on". Yet, instead of welcoming the bid, teams have lobbied for an increase to that fee to 600 millions, a cheap tactic to either get more money or to keep Andretti out. On one hand, Christian Horner has made it clear, from the teams' perspective it is about the money. On the other hand, Stefano Domenecali and FOM are hot and cold, stating that he's happy Andretti are interested but mad that they're calling out the bureaucracy of the process. 

The key aspect here is that F1 no longer needs an American team to reinforce their position in the United States market as they did back in 2014 when Haas formalised their entrance. In fact, they don't even need Haas to assert themselves as American anymore as they have three GPs lined up regardless of the team's national fanbase. This way, in FOM's optics, they have nothing to gain from Andretti. In a way, the teams are basically doing what's expected of them, but bottomline is the fact that FOM is fucking mental in adopting the same perspective instead of planning how an extra entry of such magnitude as Andretti-Cadillac could pay itself with time.

✷ Produce an amazing spectacle for fans on and off track: See, I guess you can call me a bit of an old school fan, because when it comes to Formula 1, I WANT TO SEE THE FUCKING CARS RUN ON THE FUCKING TRACK. I suppose many of you are aligned with me on that one.

Using the 2021 numbers as reference since we didn't get the 2022 report yet, the average global audience is around 70.3 million. Given that the biggest venues can only hold 400k attendants tops, the rest of those 70m fans are watching the GPs from home. They are also most likely having to pay for it, since F1TV's dominion keeps increasing. While, all credit is due, F1TV offers a much better pay-per-view experience than many other sports have, with a very rich archive and incredible coverage of each race weekend, some of these prices per country are a legit effort for a fan to make. 

From the Reddit post, an example of the price disparity between countries. F1TV is priced accordingly to the purchasing power that each country has.

Could be worse as many other fans are held hostage by Sky Sports, which is only available with a much more expensive £34.99 subscription to UK and Ireland fans, who don't even have F1TV as an alternative option. Given that Sky also has the airing rights in Germany and Italy, the fact is that F1's free to air presence has been lowering over the years (a problem that has been discussed in 2016 and represented a decrease in viewership at the time, mitigated by the Liberty Media efforts). But F1 really can't be arsed in considering a full return to free-to-air TV given the current times and so, the idea is to basically adapt to the pay TV market as much as possible and to retain free-to-air positions in specific markets. And if you, individually, don't have the money to pay for it and there is no free-to-air alternative for you, tough titties.

When it comes to actually attending a Grand Prix though, it's becoming equally harder to do it. The F1destinations 2023 rank shows that there has been an average 56% increase on the average 3-day ticket price in relation to 2019, costing roughly 508 dollars. In terms of affordability, these tickets can represent from under 10% to over 50% of the average monthly net wage for the countries hosting the GP. If it was just the tickets that would be easy peasy, but the fact is most of the times attendance includes the need for housing, transportation, food, etc. What this means is that it's fucking expensive, ok? 

The GPs are getting more and more packed, but for how long?

Again, the sport has always been elitist, but there was for a good while a relative balance between your average fan who managed to save up and get a GA ticket with the rich wealthy fans at the paddock drinking their champagne. Nowadays, even people who were regular attendees of their home gps have tapped out due to being priced out. Plus, even the new GPs added to the calendar already come with a big disclaimer "FOR MONEY ONLY" as, for instance, the cheapest tickets for Las Vegas cost 500 bucks but the real average price for the three days is $1,667.

So, if they are in fact producing a great spectacle for fans, it's becoming more and more hard for said fans to actually be able to see it. Whatever.

✷ Deliver sustainable and efficient operations: F1 made a pledge in 2020 to improve their relationship to Mother Nature by 2030, which includes: Net Zero carbon, sustainably-fuelled, hybrid power units, efficient and low/zero carbon logistics & travel, 100% renewably powered facilities and credible carbon sequestration. The whole pdf has a bunch of lovely lines about their grandiose plans, but these are somewhat easily dragged to filth by anyone who understands just a tiny bit of eco-sustainability. One of these people is David Bott, chief innovation officer for the Society of Chemical Industry*. 

Bott explains well the situation with the fuel. F1 cars currently use E10, which is a mix of gasoline (+ the likely additives that gasoline already has) with 10% ethanol, a sustainable fuel. The thing is, gasoline is more popular than ethanol for cars for a reason: if you take 1L of gasoline and 1L of ethanol, when you burn them, gasoline will give you way more energy. According to Bott, this means that the new E10 fuel is not as potent as gasoline would be, so you end up needing to use more of it anyway and in the grand scheme of emissions, that means fuck all.

F1's carbon footprint per sector. Does something feel funny to you?

Still, as F1 itself showed in their sustainability report back in 2020, the power unit emissions are less than 1% of the total emissions during a season. As you'd imagine, the thick of it really lies in logistics (45%, transportation of all equipment) and business travel (27,7%, transportation+hotels of f1 staff). Drivers and TPs carpooling with their private jets might help a little bit, but it's evident that F1 doesn't give a single shit about improving those numbers given that the calendar has expanded to 23 races, three of them in the same country but in completely different times of the year, which means that the back and forth of airplanes between continents will correspond to a 15% increase to emissions in relation to last year. According to Paolo Feser, If they were to at least organise the calendar in a sensible manner, they could cut these emissions by half, but such a calendar would go against their contracts with Bahrain and Abu Dhabi for the season's opener (till 2036) and finale (till 2030), respectively. When you consider the pledge's deadline of 2030, it's pretty evident that they'll say they made it because of the drop-in fuel in development, but logistics are far removed from the rest of it.

✷ Build an engaged, high-performing workforce: TALKING OF THE 23 RACE CALENDAR, the biggest impact is obviously on the workforce. Race weekends are gruelling enough for the drivers, who have stated through the GPDA their concerns of burnout. But then, you also have to consider the garage side, who are used to a minimum of 12-hour shifts during a race weekend, having to adapt to more frequent double and triple headers. As an anonymous mechanic said:

"Then, when you are coming home on a Monday morning or Monday evening, and you haven't slept properly in days, that then affects how you feel in your personal time. It means your relationships can suffer – either because you are agitated with your partners or you've got other things on your mind. And that's not fair on you nor them. You are not just mentally fatigued, you are physically drained as well. As the season wears on, there are a hell of a lot of injuries happening. The teams do have doctors and physios to help look after you, but the easiest solution is to pump you with painkillers to just keep you going. There is no way in a million years that a regular doctor would give you what we are given to keep us going."

The psychological strain adds to the anxiety of creating the perfect car and work culture has become increasingly tense. To add to the tension, the cost cap negatively reflected on the workforce as many teams, including RBR and Mercedes, had to fire people to adapt to it. Those who stay have to be reminded that they are "so lucky" to still have a job and if "they don't like it, they can go" (as Tost said in 2021) but the situation is overall so demotivating that yeah, people are quitting motorsports overall or changing categories. To sum up, the engagement and performance of the workforce isn't out of love for the sport, but fear and pressure.

To wrap this with a golden bow, I could never forget the #WeRaceAsOne initiative, still touted by F1 as a campaign that really wants to bring awareness and impact important problems in our society. When it was created in 2020, the main focuses were COVID-19 and social inequalities, but given that they banned T-shirts in podiums in 2020 after Lewis Hamilton protested the death of Breonna Taylor by the hands of US pigs, they clearly weren't comfortable in really tackling the inequality issue. Therefore, they changed the goals of the campaign for a very corporate "Sustainability, Diversity and Inclusion & Community" axis, whatever the hell they mean with that. It's good that they can focus on it all they want, as the FIA has banned drivers from political statements during race weekend procedures. Moreover, while the boycott of the Russian Grand Prix is completely justifiable, it still feels empty once you consider they raced in Saudi Arabia while a factory mere miles away from the track was bombed, also as an act of war.

To sum up, the fact is that late stage Formula 1 is here to stay and we have to deal with all of the sport's contradictions. The same way that late capitalism does not mean that the end of capitalism is near, late stage f1 means nothing as its popularity has been rising more and more, and at the current rate, the abandonment of the older fans means jackshit as more people show up on social media and are willing to pay what's necessary to either watch it or attend races. The question that might linger, in fact, is if F1 has reached the point of inevitability at last?

----

YOU CAN'T RUN AWAY - FORMULA 1 AND CAPITALIST REALISM

1. Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism

Even when we're faced with the existence of a late stage Formula 1, whether when it's concretely laid down or just a feeling deep down, many of us still continue to engage with it. As much as we complain about it, the current panorama does show an expansion of the sport, which can only happen as well because a good chunk of the old school fans remain. The question is, why do we insist on watching a sport when we know shit is that bad? Is it solely because of affectionate ties to a team, a driver or even f1 itself? Sure, these factors contribute to it, but what if I told you that it is also because current F1 has finally managed to sink into our collective consciousnesses as inevitable?

To understand what I'm trying to say here, we need to look first at the big picture. That is, if we have been treating F1 as a microcosm of capitalism up to this point, it's now necessary to step back and face Capital itself. In order to do this, I want to introduce to you guys the concept of capitalist realism.

Say hello to Mark Fisher (1968-2017), an incredible mind gone too soon

While, just like late stage capitalism, "capitalist realism" was an umbrella term used for a myriad of different meanings, we don't have to contextualise its timeline. Rather than that, we can jump straight to Mark Fisher's defining work, "Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?", published in 2009. In it, Fisher defines it as "the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it". Putting it in simpler terms, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. 

With capital realism, Fisher no longer talks just about the influence of capitalism at a socio-economic level, but also how it bled into the cultural and psychological spheres (scary!!!!!!!). All of this culminates in apolitical attitude towards capitalism: since we can't escape the system because things are like this, all we can do, realistically, is to adapt to it and try to minimise its effects instead of actually fighting them.

Having that in mind, I ask you guys: can you imagine the demise of F1? We often hear about it separating from the FIA, but similarly to capitalist realism, Formula 1 losing its world championship status (as close to its end of the world as it gets) feels more likely that a massive restructuring of the category or it shutting down for good. Similarly, fans have adopted an "it is what it is" point of view towards the sport as we all know what FOM and the FIA are like and we don't have, supposedly, the power to change anything, we just have to suck on whatever they propose to us.

Stefano Domenicali (FOM CEO) and Mohammed bin Sulayem (president of the FIA), joined in unholy matrimony

Now, capitalist realism didn't show up out of the blue. According to Fisher, neoliberalism was the mother of capitalist realism. This is because its campaign in the 80s and 90s with regan and maggie thatcher (names in lowercase because I don't respect them) was successful in gaslighting people into thinking that it wasn't necessarily perfect, but it was the only approach of government rooted in reality. Once it was implemented, the next step was to consolidate it, which happened thanks to two factors: the end of the soviet union and the transition to post-fordism. I know this seems crackheaded and with no relation to F1, but give me a chance pls!

Trigger warning: the many faces of neoliberalism

During the Cold War, there was a concrete antagonist to capitalism in the shape of the USSR*. With its demise, this role of a real opposition to it was completely obliterated, allowing for capitalism to expand however it pleased without anything to contest it. Similarly, maybe F1's biggest triumph in these last two decades - and this is why I said at the top that Bernie wasn't shit and the problem about late stage F1 had its roots further back - is that it successfully managed to free itself from the sole category that threatened its popularity: Indy Car.

*note: by stating this, there is absolutely no value judgement. the statement is not about the ussr being a problematic fave or a communist hell that needed to be abolished. it was just a physical entity that asserted itself as a possible alternative to capitalism. by its physical existence, it allowed for public consciousness to understand that, if the ussr was a possible alternative to capitalism, then there might as well be plenty of others. kindly remember that the ussr was quite oppressive and countless people and countries suffered on their hands, while also understanding that for this particular purpose, it did its job.

2. The IndyCar Situation

The IndyCar World Series as we know it was established in 1979, with CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) as the governing body behind it. The similarities between F1 and IndyCar went beyond the cars (although the Indys were a tad less sophisticated than F1s): the creation of CART itself was based on Bernie's FOCA model (television rights, sponsorships, etc). 

IndyCar's Indianapolis 500, 1992. Not bad in terms of attendance!

From the 80s, its popularity grew in America, with them even inheriting venues that originally held grand prix, like Long Beach. Still, no one was really intimidated by them as F1's presence in the US, albeit messy with several different events attempted, was constant during that period. However, shit went down in the next decade, when Formula 1 was shut down by the organisers of the US Grand Prix at Phoenix right in 1991. From that point, it would take 9 years for F1 to get back, at the heart of American racing, Indianapolis. Hold this information.

Once F1 disappeared from 'Murica, IndyCar thrived, at least for a while. CART had managed to join ACCUS (Automobile Competition Committee for the United States), who are affiliated to the FIA, which made it possible for drivers to race in Indy without losing their super licenses. Soon, there was a migration from foreign drivers to IndyCar, and that included people from F1, such as Emerson Fittipaldi. Once that happened, the sky became the limit for Indy and they started to race outside of the US. By 1993, Nigel Mansell had dropped F1 after a rift with Williams and decided to go drive for Newman/Haas at IndyCar instead.

Nigel Mansell and teammate Mario Andretti. Oh how I want Nigel, ngl.

note: the motherfucker demolished his competition, won IndyCar and is still the only person to be, technically, F1 and IndyCar champion at the same time.

At this point, some people will say Bernie Ecclestone wasn't bothered, but he hadn't even gotten over losing the Long Beach GP to CART back in 84. You know Bernie, I know Bernie, we all know Bernie. HE WAS MAD!!!! At the same time, NASCAR was rising in popularity like never before, causing a certain rivalry between the categories over who would take over the hearts of all the petrol head americans.  

Enter Tony George, then head of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and chairman at CART. Tony believed that CART was getting lost in the game and ignoring Motorsport Traditions by racing in venues that weren't ovals. Since Georgy was annoying as fuck, CART booted him from the board of directors, which was one of the most stupid decisions given that he owned the track that literally gave the name to their championship. IndyCar's whole thing was the Indianapolis 500, right? "So fuck you too," Tony George cried while being thrown away from the CART offices by security "You don't want me? Then you don't get to race the Indy 500 anymore!".

Well, it didn't happen exactly like that. Instead, Tony George created a separate category called Indy Racing League that would be dedicated exclusively to ovals and get to be the owner of the Indy 500 from 96 onwards. The original IndyCar series changed its name to CART and Indy racing in America became fractured. Just to be clear, IRL did allow an 8 CART car limit to compete at Indy 500, but CART decided to boycott the event instead. This worked for some time, and CART still managed to make do with their reserves (they even offered to buy F1 in 1998) but soon these started to dry out as sponsors dropped the series and teams started breaking the boycott to race in Indy 500, eventually by the 2000s completely defecting to IRL. In 2004, CART filed for bankruptcy and got bought out, living as a zombie series until 2008 when IRL bought it and reunified them. At this point, the damage was done as NASCAR had taken over in popularity and F1 was back since 2000, racing the IMS.

Tony and Bernie, BFFs 5eva

Oh yeah, haven't you heard? 1998 also marked the year where it was announced by Bernie that F1 would come back to the United States, racing at the holy land of Indianapolis herself. Sounds sketchy? You're not the one to think that, as both Jacques Villeneuve (1995 IndyCar champion 1995) and Gordon Kirby (journalist, US correspondent for Autosport 1973-2004) have stated that Bernald, alongside NASCAR boss Bill France, basically whispered sweet nothings in Tony George's ear to get him to act a fool. Although it took several more years for F1 to finally sink its teeth into the United States in an effective manner, the main competition was out before they could even expand further. 

It was up to Formula 1 then to expand without anything to stop it, as we can see in the many calendar changes we've had over the years. Even further, since there is no antagonist, this has also allowed F1 to turn its sights to the feeder system, creating its own "preferred" path that, with the super license points system basically make it harder for drivers who are outside of the F1 feeder series bubble to make it to F1 (as we've even seen recently with Colton Herta). Same thing is happening to the W Series, which for lack of funds wasn't able to finish their 2022 season even though they were promoted to an F1 support championship, racing. While Formula 1 did not offer to help them or tried to integrate them properly in the feeder series ladder, they have just recently announced F1 Academy, their own initiative for female drivers, placed officially just under Formula 3 with a direct link. That's great for the female drivers, but incredibly fucked up at the same time.

3. Was There Ever Class Consciousness in F1?

Yeah, so the whole lack of opposition didn't help on an external basis, but there is also an internal factor that cannot be ignored and it's linked to post-Fordist work structure. In Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher cites a study by Richard Sennett called "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism". In it, Sennett states:

"Where formerly workers could acquire a single set of skills and expect to progress upwards through a rigid organizational hierarchy, now they are required to periodically re-skill as they move from institution to institution, from role to role. As the organization of work is decentralized, with lateral networks replacing pyramidal hierarchies, a premium is put on ‘flexibility’.[...] This flexibility was defined by a deregulation of Capital and labor, with the workforce being casualized (with an increasing number of workers employed on a temporary basis), and outsourced."

Translating this, instead of becoming a specialist on something, you become a jack of all trades without any job stability. In the F1 world, this is seen not only in drivers changing teams and getting sacked of the category altogether, but also in the poaching of talent between teams and the frequent internal restructurations. Ian Neves says that post-Fordism was key in the establishment of capital realism because its natural consequence is the individualisation of work, which leads to the weakening of trade unions and ultimately, the mining of class consciousness.

As one would expect, there isn't a trade union that looks after all F1 workers. Instead, most of the engineers, mechanics and other staff are subject to the unions of the countries the factories are located at (for instance, Alpine is protected by the "collective convention of metallurgical engineers and workers").Therefore, as much as the personnel is against work conditions and calendar expansion, it's much more difficult for them to unite and rally against it as they have been segmented. 

Ferrari team photo, 2022. Together, but divided nevertheless 

This is particularly fucky when you consider the existence of the GPDA. The Grand Prix Drivers' Association is a trade union that, historically, has made itself heard in delicate situations where drivers needed to claim their rights and fight for their safety. Unfortunately, this comes with a side effect that reinforces a difference between drivers from the rest of the F1 crew. While they are absolutely right and the GPDA should exist as a trade union regardless of the existence of a larger one encompassing all workers, the fact is that the illusion that drivers are in the status quo of the sport, and not subject to it, remains.

Look, as much as they are in a privileged spot and reap all its benefits, the fact is they do not own the cars they run - well, at least not most of the time [stares at the Strolls]. They still rely on the teams that own the structure and the backing of sponsors, that is, the means of production, to work. Most of the time, when they retire from F1, they still tend to race in other categories or find side quests. While I have no doubt that drivers are super passionate for racing and you can't completely quit it, how much are we sure that this is also not partially motivated by the desire to make sure they are still able to afford the lifestyle they had as Formula 1 drivers? Marx was clear, baby, the drivers are as much the proletariat as anyone else. By separating them from the rest of the structure and maintaining the post-fordist work structure for the rest of the teams, class consciousness inside the paddock is close to none and it helps to consolidate F1's status as an almighty being.

4. The Illusion of Abu Dhabi

Here's the thing: if "realism" is used as an argument for maintenance of the current state of affairs, by conforming to what's in theory "realistic", then the best way to threaten it, according to Fisher, is if you manage to expose the cracks of said "realism". This should be able to work because, get this, there is a difference between what's Real and what's reality. 

Again, sorry but I'm gonna get theoretical here. However, when you consider that so much of what we're talking about here directly relates to a psychological sphere, you can't not add some psychiatric theory into this. When you look at it from the point of view of Jacques Lacan (French psychiatrist who spit some bars), reality is constituted not of what's actually Real, but of social conventions and symbolism. The Real itself is unrepresentable and even traumatic at times, and you can only perceive it when you look at the inconsistencies of reality, that aims to suppress it! What the fuck!!!!

It's super easy, you just have to show that the whole framework is inconsistent!

Except it never works that way.

Going back AGAIN to capitalist realism, take a look at the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. I don't understand much about the mechanisms of the economy (and I am right not to, as this is all made up by weird people), but even I know that the Lehman Brothers collapse resulted in a worldwide clusterfuck that saw many lose their lifetime of savings. After that point, the ripple effect was so severe that companies were falling like flies and it was up to State interventions to halt things. Maybe the greatest example of late stage capitalism, this was the key point to explicit the greatest contradiction of neoliberalism: they sell themselves as a system above the State, however they needed the State to save it, which means they don't really want to abolish State, just to occupy it to their own desires.

The absurd numbers of the financial crisis in the US.

So, you have your reality cracked, you can look at the Real and see the inconsistencies of capitalism laid bare in front of all of us. This should have been enough for neoliberalism/capitalism to go out of style completely right? As you can see if you look out the window, however, we're still living in a capitalist society. Then what happened? The crises ended up reinforcing the status of capitalism precisely through the bank bail-outs as the States doubled down on the whole "realistic" thing because they had no alternative and saw these companies as "too big to fail". What we see today, then, is an economical model that clearly fallible, yet remains because it's perceived as a default. Mark's words, not mine. 

But this is in the field of Capital. It's not like, in the F1 bubble, anything of the genre has ever happened.

Yup.

I guess you could say there have been moments in Formula 1 that came close to exposing these inconsistencies but didn't, like crashgate, spygate or the whole 1989 championship debacle. Still, these didn't expose anything because:

1) F1 didn't sell itself at the time of those events the same way it does now

2) All of these could be easily pinned to individuals instead of the whole structure of F1 itself - even Senna put 1989 on the back of Balestre only, instead of the entire FIA.

Abu Dhabi, however, wasn't looked at the same way given that it's still such a controversial topic and was the point of rupture to many fans with the category.This is because the series of events that led to Abu Dhabi, touted as the biggest showdown since 1974 and followed it afterwards managed to create the circumstances to break the veil between the reality (F1 as the greatest, most spontaneous motorsport modality in the world) and showed the Real (the newfound need to push narratives, consequence of the transition from sport to entertainment encouraged by Liberty Media ran-FOM, enabled by the FIA and accelerated by Drive to Survive). 

The animosity between TeamLH and the Orange Army lingers to this day. However, regardless of its peak at the time, the controversy of the actions taken at the Grand Prix did not provoke just an outcry amongst Hamilton fans, but to a good chunk of neutral parties as well. We're still here though, so how did Formula 1 manage to escape from it? Simple, they also reinforced their position by the immediate actions of the FIA, as Jean Todt demanded a review of what happened. In its swiftness to respond, the World Motor Sport Council, that is, the one institution that could bail-out F1, states they would take action to understand what happened and avoid any problems in the next season. 

The bail-out, in this sense, isn't monetary, but institutional as they place their focus on the "relevant parties" instead of the major structure itself. From their side, FOM avoided taking responsibility for their role, as Domenecali said right after that "We have already spoken with the president [Mohammed bin Sulayem, who had just assumed his role] . We talked about the priorities he will have to face, and there are many.". This landed as well, as the common reaction was to demand the FIA changes and penalties, blaming Michael Masi for "trying to balance the need for spectacle with the rulebook" instead of addressing the root causes of the need for spectacle itself. 

Masi had it coming, but he sure made it easy from the FIA and FOM

In that sense, the reinforcement also comes in the sense of self-criticism, since it leads to something called "interpassivity", a concept developed by Robert Pfaller:  when the actors in Formula 1 take it to themselves to discuss and criticise the sport themselves, they are performing our opposite stance for the fans, who then are able to continue to consume it as they please. This is possible as well because we take a "cynical distance" from the sport and thus become passive spectators. This way, as long as we say to ourselves "oh, F1 is rotten nowadays", that's all we need as a cop-out to keep watching it. This is not just us being hypocrites, per se, but legit one of capitalist ideology as Zizek puts it that we overvalue our internal beliefs in detriment of our external actions - literally the "there is no ethical consumption in capitalism" of it all. It's inevitable we replicate this behaviour when it comes to watching Formula 1.

So, once we get all of the way, the question remains: is there anything that can be done to truly change Formula 1? It's not just a matter of direct action, as what we're talking about here is a result of a concealed mulit-layered internal organisation that acts on an abstract level. As much as we can bitch and moan, fan protests and team appeals are direct action and thus, easily countered by the FOM/FIA complex. Hell, these two fight all the time and yet any crisis is easily fixed, as just the mere possibility of F1 separating from the FIA was enough to get bin Sulayem to step away from day to day administration. On one hand, FOM doesn't want to truly separate from the FIA, they just want to occupy the FIA themselves. On the other hand, the FIA needs F1 to stay so that they can continue to assert themselves as the big dawgs in motorsports. This is how they manage to walk hand in hand and compromise over their own interests instead of the interests of the sport itself.

Maybe, this triumph of FOM is directly related to the biggest weapon of capital realism: the individualisation of the being, placing their responsibility and expectations solely on the self instead of the greater structure. This can be seen in situations such as the climate change approach, focused way more on our need to recycle than the large corporations' impact on the environment. Another example is the approach of mental health, that most of the times places on your brain alone the responsibility for your disorders instead of considering as well the influence of social conditions.

In the context of F1, the individualisation is exacerbated by the nature of the competition. Everyone is fighting for their own interests, and in a way, that has always been the goal. Still, the excessive encouragement of rivalries and toxicity - not only in the fandom, but in the paddock itself - serves the role of segmentation very well and helps FOM to continue pushing through F1 as they please. It all boils down to the lack of class consciousness between ALL the personnel, who could adopt strategic approaches that directly affect FOM's directives, turning what was abstract into a concrete issue and thus making it possible to take direct action. (tbh many of these issues can be addressed if capitalism itself is fought but then again, the impact of that on the vroom vrooms can be quite extreme and maybe that's asking too much of a sport dominated by car manufacturers and such).

In the role of fans, we both reflect the inner machinations of Formula 1 and feed it. Thus, the same way that all the staff should unite, so should we. While when it comes to track action many of us are rivals, and some of the drivers legit make it hard to stand with them, fact is the real enemy at the current date is FOM - even if Liberty Media sells it, the next administration will most likely double down on their approach. Our best hope isn't to boycott F1, but to encourage the union of its staff and show that while we welcome the technical evolutions, the main goal must be preserved. Food for thought, really. In the meantime, thank you for surviving till the end! As always, screw you guys, I'm going home!

In the role of fans, we both reflect the inner machinations of Formula 1 and feed it. Thus, the same way that all the staff should unite, so should we. While when it comes to track action many of us are rivals, and some of the drivers legit make it hard to stand with them, fact is the real enemy at the current date is FOM - even if Liberty Media sells it, the next administration will most likely double down on their approach. They were the ones that created the conditions for Abu Dhabi to happen, they are the ones that benefit the most from the rifts. Our best hope isn't to boycott F1, but to encourage the union of its staff and show that while we welcome the technical evolutions, the main goal must be preserved. Food for thought, really. In the meantime, thank you for surviving till the end! As always, screw you guys, I'm going home!

#hyperfixation corner #late stage capitalism #capitalist realism #cheers you guys good luck to those who read it #most normal ana formulinos write-up moment

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Timeline: Part 10 - December 11-31 2017

For earlier timeline posts: click here or here.

There's a limit to how many links you can put in a tumblr post. Who knew. Anyway, continuing where we left off...

12/11/2017: Andrew Morton announces new biography of Meghan. Rebecca English writes about Meghan's yoga influencing. Meghan's "Sexy Santa" costume from Deal or No Deal is republished. Kensington Palace announces William and Kate's trip to Sweden and Norway, and The Times debunks The Crown.

12/12/2017: Harry and his friends kill 15 boars during German hunting trip (Meghan's not happy). Harry and Meghan take credit for William and Kate showing a little PDA on an engagement, while Meghan merches her parka. Later, William and Harry attend the Star Wars premiere.

12/13/2017: Kensingon Palace officially confirms Meghan is spending Christmas with the royals. Meghan is revealed as Google's most-searched celebrity of 2017. Meghan merches her handbags, especially Strathberry's, and modernizes the monarchy.

A UK survey finds that a majority of their respondents are unhappy with Harry's engagement:

67% of women surveyed are devastated by the engagement announcement.

20% of overall respondents prefer Harry to be single.

57% of respondents are against Harry marrying Meghan.

And Meghan leaks that Kate has taken her under her wing to protect her from negative parts of royal life. She tells The Express that "Harry is like a brother to Kate and she has never seen him so happy."

12/14/2017: Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, announces that he expects to preside over the royal wedding. In the morning, the royals attend a service for Grenfell Tower at St. Paul's Cathedral (Meghan isn't allowed) and they gather again in the afternoon for The Queen's annual Windsor Christmas luncheon at Buckingham Palace (Meghan is invited). In the evening, the Kensington Palace Christmas party is held at a nearby restaurant that Harry and Meghan may or may not have attended (it's claimed they left early) while William and Kate are papped leaving.

Meghan merches Strathberry again and she is named the #4 Fashion Influencer of the Year, besting Kate who comes in at #5. (I really doubt Kate cares about this.)

12/15/2017: Kensington Palace announces the wedding date. Palace gift shops begin selling engagement memorabilia. Harry visits Sandhurst Academy and awards Cadet of the Year. Idris Elba shows support for Meghan while Meghan merches tea tree oil.

12/16/2017: Meghan teases a Canada tour post-wedding again.

12/17/2017:

The Daily Mail reminds us that Meghan is attending royal Christmas.

Harry announces that he has interviewed Barack Obama for BBC Radio 4 Today, but the interview won't air until the end of the month.

Meghan used to work at a yogurt store in LA as a teenager and everyone just loved her.

William's diary clash: Harry scheduled his wedding on the same day as the FA Cup Final, which William usually attends.

To prep The Queen and Prince Philip for spending Christmas with Meghan, Harry says he has shown them clips of Meghan in Suits.

Windsor hotels begin to profit off the wedding by marketing Meghan and Harry.

12/18/2017: The Cambridges release their Christmas card photo and Kensington Palace announces that Charlotte will begin nursery school in the new year. Meghan is voted one of the UK's ideal Christmas dinner guests and she leaks that The Queen likes her better than Kate but Buckingham Palace hits back with a denial.

12/19/2017: William and Kate attend the Royal Variety Performance. Meghan tries to ride their coattails by hinting she and Harry may be their guests and Harry is appointed Captain General Royal Marines, succeeding Philip.

Sketches of potential wedding dresses are published/leaked again.

Doria is papped at a LA laundromat.

Meet Meghan's lookalike

Will Meghan have to curtsey to Kate?

Meghan is crowned Hello Magazine's "Woman of the Year."

12/20/2017: Meghan hypes up her Kate-like style makeover from the Windsor Christmas luncheon at Buckingham Palace and merches her dress again. More wedding dress sketches are published.

12/21/2017: The royal engagement photos are published and:

Prince Philip and The Queen leave London for Sandringham.

Meghan modernizes the monarchy.

Meghan merches Ralph & Russo.

Body language analysis

Yorkies are papped at Soho House.

Meghan leaks that The Queen wants her and Harry to have a prenup and that she (Meghan) is hurt the family thinks she has an ulterior motive for marrying Harry. (Well...) In the same article, Meghan teases her and Harry's individual net worths and hints at the wedding budget - £22 million minimum overall cost and her dress budget is £375,000.

Harry debunks Meghan's PR about the prenup, saying no one asked for one and that William and Kate don't have one so they don't need one.

Meghan v Kate fashion showdown over their engagement photos.

12/22/2017:

Princess Michael's Blackamoor brooch controversy kicks off.

Cambridge vs Sussex engagement portraits showdown

Meghan merches her Ralph & Russo gown again

Press criticism of the engagement photos begin

Meghan takes credit for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner posing together.

12/23/2017: Meghan announces that Guy has broken two legs in an unprecedented Kensington Palace statement and her lookalike does a wedding dress photoshoot.

12/24/2017: Meghan leaks that Harry will not participate in the royal family's Boxing Day shoot because it would upset her.

12/25/2017: Meghan joins the royal family on their Christmas Church Walk. She merches her coat and her hat is the stuff of poo memes.

12/26/2017: Criticism from Meghan's Christmas Church Walk continues with coverage on her curtsey fail and sticking her tongue out. Meghan also merches her outfit again.

12/27/2017: Harry's interview with Barack Obama is finally released. He makes a "we're the family she never had" comment that sets the Markles off. Harry also bans blood diamonds from Meghan's jewelry and Meghan merches her lip gloss.

12/28/2017: Some poor media intern who listened to the Harry/Obama interview realizes that Harry invited the Obamas to the wedding. Meghan deals with more curtsey criticism. She deflects by announcing that she was shortlisted to be the new Bond Girl but she had to give the role up because of her relationship with the Harry. Meghan also merches the Soho House restaurant she and Harry had their first date.

12/29/2017: The royal family's engagement count for the year is released and Harry worked more than William and Kate. The Markles begin popping off about Harry's "we're the family she never had" comment.

12/30/2017: No new Meghan or Harkle stories.

12/31/2017: No new Meghan or Harkle stories.

#brf #timeline #sussexes #pr shenanigans

[fitzrove]

Rambling about Hass in Elisabeth for a REALLY long time. TL;DR - yeah, it is necessary as a song...

Because of the costumes and staging people often just see it as "the antisemitism song", which it is, strongly, but I think sometimes the wider context presented therein is ignored. Really, the song shows how antisemitism and hatred are fuelling and entangled with other movements!!

The nationalists in that song come from various groups and social classes, and identify as their enemies:

Socialists

Pacifists

Jewish writers

Jewish women

"Those who are not like us"

Crown prince Rudolf (because of his - historically strong - friendships and other positive associations with Jews)

The Habsburgs as a whole

Elisabeth and her Heinrich Heine (= a Jewish poet) monument project (which also attracted such strong criticism from German nationalists [Austrian Germans who were nationalists, not "Germans" in the modern sense] historically)

Hungary

The "barons" - so the nobility

The "slavic state"

The ongoing "betrayal of the people"

And to contrast, they identify as good:

Strength ("the strong wins, the weak fails", and also "strong leaders") and "purity"

"Unity"

Glory/splendour ("pracht")

Christian values

"Unified Germany", an alliance with Prussia and even an Anschluss (the joining of Austria and other "ethnically German" [so-called] lands to the German Reich. Hmm does anyone remember who also strove for and eventually implemented this... /s)

The conservative Wilhelm II as emperor (again, they want to join Austria into the German Reich)

So like. There is a glorification of all things "German" and of conservative values (religion) and reactionary power politics ("weakness" was and is by similar groups now considered to be a major flaw of liberalism and a liberal world order - in the song, pacifism and socialism are also connected to it), as exemplified by Wilhelm II's Germany specifically. To contrast, racial enemies ("non-Germans") threatening "racial purity" must be eliminated, with violence if necessary. And the Habsburg monarchy, being a multinational empire, is described as immoral and weak because of it being multinational (and the position of Slavs and Hungarians in politics and imperial administration).

The themes of "betraying the people" (Volksverrat) are especially interesting because the enemies of the nationalists as listed in the song, Jewish women, pacifists and socialists, were also the people blamed for German defeat in WW1 (the "stab in the back" at the home front myth). It's overall 19th and 20th century anti-establishment fascist imagery.

Ajdkkf I don't think I'm clearly making my argument but the song's key functions are:

To dispel the myth of the late 19th century being "the good old days", the glory days of Austria before the world wars somehow magically came to happen and ruined it. In fact, the songs shows that the developments leading to the world wars stem from politics and mass movements of hatred that developed alongside and gave power to & drew power from nationalism in the 19th century

To show the audience exactly what Rudolf is talking about in "Die Schatten werden Länger (reprise)". What is the "evil that is developing"? It's not Rudolf's personal petty wish for more power, or his angst about not being emperor yet, or some generic amorphous disdain for how FJ is reigning; it's not the lack of Hungarian independence either, for god's sake. I will die on this hill, if you cut Hass or replace it with conspiracy or whatever you can cut Rudolf as well, Elisabeth as a show is (in my opinion) a good portrayal of him precisely because it depicts him as a political thinker (in contrast to many depictions and post-Mayerling accounts which diminish that and just talk about Mayerling and his "immorality" - a talking point devised by the nationalists and antisemitists who hated him lol, liberal politics were connected to lack of morality) and someone who, unlike most of his contemporaries, saw that antisemitism, emphasis on "power" and realist power politics, exclusionary/hateful rhetoric and excess nationalism would lead to ruin. AND Hass also shows that he was hated by the German nationalists for this! As was his mother, for her sympathy to Heine...

To connect genuine popular dissatisfaction (from Milch - Hass is a reprise of Milch in terms of rhythm and the call-and-response structure where Lucheni talks to the crowd) with inequality, the lack of democracy and the excesses of royalty... to the rise and presentation of fascism as a "solution"

To show that 19th century nationalism was, in many ways, exclusionary, antisemitic, racist and "war-mongering", and that this rhetoric is old - not somehow magically appearing for WW2 and then disappearing again - and will time and again rise... and that it's everyone's responsibility to recognise it for what it is when it happens, if we are to have a reasonable, decent world to live in.

The framing of Hass sometimes confuses people I will never recover from that one post cancelling Elisabeth das musical for being antisemitic because Hass exists ajiddfkdllfgl what's next, it's pro-suicide and homophobic because a character technically dies from being gay? but to me it's rather clear that it's unsympathetic lol, with the whole doomsday atmosphere (no music, just footsteps/marching and drums and screaming, it's meant to be threatening), the way the ensemble harshly criticises the most sympathetically portrayed characters we have seen so far (Elisabeth and Rudolf) for things that seem petty and harmless (having Jewish friends), and the extremely direct comparison drawn to N*zism (to indicate what such a movement would develop to) in many stagings. I don't know how to say this but somehow I've always assumed that "H*tler and n*zism = evil" is EXTREMELY common knowledge and it mystifies me when people like. Think it should have been stated more clearly in the show. Like, the show is working off the assumption that you know what it is and that it's bad because of the millions and millions of people they killed............. this is EXTREMELY common knowledge in Europe, not least in Germany and Austria lol.

So um yeah akwkldlf, sorry for the ramble, I just feel like the song can be poorly understood and criticised on shaky ground sometimes. I mean, I am not Jewish and not equipped to talk about whether it's triggering or traumatising to watch especially with lived or family experience of antisemitic violence... But I think for non-Jewish people there is a huge responsibility to be aware and vigilant of antisemitism, historically and in the present, and sometimes it needs to be hammered home for people to understand...

By that last point I also somewhat mean... I think you don't "get" to be triggered by it if you're not Jewish but perhaps otherwise affected by politics of hatred. Of course I'm not emotions police lol, but many Jewish people have intergenerational trauma AND have to live with extremely similar antisemitic rhetoric and culture to this day, so there I understand criticisms - and there is also a discussion to be had about how and to what extent it is ok to use and display Jewish suffering as a device to educate non-Jewish people.

But anyway, to my original point. This is something I've seen people say and I just... if you're queer and it makes you uncomfortable to see Hass because modern n*zis hate you and it's traumatic, I mean, it's valid to feel uncomfortable and you can choose not to watch it personally to avoid being triggered, but you don't get to call for it to be erased from the show for "problematic content" or for "escapism" or to make you feel better. It is there because the destruction of the 19th century world, and Rudolf's and Elisabeth's suffering, is intrinsically tied to the rise of such hateful politics and without that being shown there is no show. You don't get to make it something it's not, this show is not ONLY an epic gothic romance with imaginary boyfriend, it's a commentary on past, present and future politics in that it shows the dangers of conservatism, antisemitism, racism and illiberalism. Calling for or supporting censorship, or state emphasis on militarism/"destroying the enemy", or advocating hatred, violence or oppression against any group based on ethnicity, religion, race, political views, etc. are all political stances held by and propagated by various people today in various political contexts. And you are not immune to antisemitism or reactionary nationalism if you're queer or whatever, so you have the constant responsibility to think critically about your worldview and your politics!!

#politics #musicals #theatre