#inter-war period

[pagansphinx]

Karl Hubbuch (German, 1891-1979) • Hilda Twice • 1928

#art #painting #fine art #art history #karl hubbuch #german artist #weimar #1920s german society #neue sachlichkeit #new objectivity #women in artworks #portrait #double portrait #women in paintings #inter-war period #20th century european art

[gregor-samsung]

“ Kabul (5900 ft., 36 miles from Charikar), June 11th [1934].

From Herat to Kabul we have come 930 miles, of which forty-five were on horseback. A winding hill-road brought us down from the Charikar plateau to a smaller plain inside a ring of mountains; running water and corrugated iron glinted among its trees. At the entrance to the capital the police deprived the Vicar and the Curate of their rifles, to their great distress; but being in turbans, no one would believe they were government servants. We drove to the Foreign Office, where hot-red English ramblers were climbing over iron railings; to the hotel, where there was writing-paper in each bedroom; to the Russian Legation, where they had had no answer to M. Bouriachenko’s telegram; to the German shop, where they refused to sell us hock without a permit from the Minister of Trade; and finally to our Legation, where the Minister, Sir Richard Maconochie, has asked us to stay. It is a white house, dignified with pillars and furnished as it would be at home, without any mosquitonets or fans to remind one of the Orient. Christopher says he finds it peculiar to be in a room whose walls aren’t falling down. Opinion at the Legation agrees on the silliness of refusing the Russian diplomats in Kabul transit visas through India. Even if they go as far towards the frontier as Jelallabad, the Government of India sends in official complaints. The result is a sort of gentlemen’s agreement between the two Legations and the Afghan Government that the English shall not travel in the north of the country and the Russians in the south. That is why the authorities at Mazar could not allow us to the Oxus, though they would not admit such a reason lest it appear a limitation of their sovereignty. We were lucky to have got as close as we did, particularly as it appears that Haji Lai Mohammad, who bought the car, and our chauffeur Jamshyd Taroporevala, spread a tale that we were Secret Service agents engaged in map-making. Next time I do this kind of journey, I shall take lessons in spying beforehand. Since one has to put up with the disadvantages of the profession anyhow, one might as well reap some of its advantages, if there are any. British diplomacy in Kabul just now hangs on the Minister’s roses. At the King’s birthday party, on June 3rd, they were in full flower, and the Afghans, who are all rose-lovers, had never seen such big formal blooms. Next morning, visiting cards from the Minister of Court were fluttering from the finest trees; they had been left by his gardener in the night. Now all the other ministers want cuttings too, and are also in a turmoil over the peonies, which have been promised them for next year. Magnificent as the formal roses are, I yet prefer an Afghan tree which stands by the gate in front. It is fifteen feet high and covered with such a profusion of white blossoms that hardly a leaf is visible. “

Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana; first published by Macmillan & Co. Ltd, London, 1937.

#Robert Byron #The Road to Oxiana #Afghanistan #central Asia #XX century British literature #travel literature #English literature #Hindu Kush mountains #20th century #1930s #modernization #European empires #British Empire #British India #South Asia #Russian Empire #inter-war period #Kabul #Ghazni #Jalalabad #Charikar

[hagswags]

The boys get some moments to be cute and loving in chapter six of JaDD!

Read here❤️

#hagswags #soapghost #ghostsoap #john soap mactavish #simon ghost riley #fanfic #my fanfiction #ghoap #inter war period au #historical au

[vanishingsydney]

Former inter-war period factory/warehouse. Now a fitness centre and boxing gym. Paintwork by REUBSZZ. Marrickville.

#street art #mural #facade #gym #it's a sign #pictures on walls #streetscape #ephemeral #boxing #paintwork #spray #inter war period architecture #old warehouse #street scene #inner west sydney

[nazmazh]

Holy shit. It's one week until Christmas.

Guess I better get this cookbook edited before I'm going to distribute it to my family. Among all kinds of other things I need to get done this week.

#(My family does our big celebration on Christmas Eve) #(we may not have much of our German heritage but we do hold on to that bit) #(Great Grandparents' families came over during inter-war period. There was ...let's say a *bit* of anti-German sentiment during those times #(so they basically shed all outward signifiers - Didn't even teach their kids German. We only really have the recipes and Christmas Eve)

[cleaningbones]

saltburn is like if brideshead revisited were unbelievably boring. zero character and zero heart compared to brideshead.

#no I haven't seen it but I know it #evelyn waugh wrote sebastian based on his own lover #and everything abt charles's observations of catholicism is based on waugh's own experience with converting #the entire story is about the inter-war period and the nostalgia and trauma of the 2 world wars #what the hell is saltburn about. fucking. dick and balls. #evelyn waugh's narrative choices had a PURPOSE. YOU KNOW? #charles isn't JUST hopelessly in love with sebastian for the sake of tragic gayness #there's so much more to it than that #brideshead revisited

[hms-exeter]

Spanish cruiser Almirante Cervera

#inter war period #cold war #spanish civil war #spanish navy #almirante cervera #light cruiser #photograph

[ineffableigh]

Oh my god my brain hurts

Maggie has a poster in her shop (41:37, s02e02) that says "Who is Piet Hein?"

"Piet Hein, who, in his own words, "played mental ping-pong" with Niels Bohr[2] in the inter-War period, found himself confronted with a dilemma when the Germans occupied Denmark. He felt that he had three choices: Do nothing, flee to neutral Sweden or join the Danish resistance movement. As he explained in 1968, "Sweden was out because I am not Swedish, but Danish. I could not remain at home because, if I had, every knock at the door would have sent shivers up my spine. So, I joined the Resistance."[3]

The poster seems to say something about "Even the woman he loved could not run from the strange [blocked] cunning behaviour [blocked] cunning Man [blocked]."

IT"S EVERYWHEREEE

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens meta #set design clues #Clues™

[todayontumblr]

Wednesday, July 12.

1970s.

Ah, those were the days...

...not that we were there, of course. But we can sure as sugar pretend: listen to dusty vinyl records, grow our hair in all manner of styles, write on typewriters, watch films from the innovative "New Hollywood" directors such as Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Barbara Kopple, and Francis Ford Coppola if we're feeling artistic, neigh, intellectual (or sit down with Star Wars, Jaws, Rocky, and Saturday Night Fever if we're not), go to a lot of protests, recall our most grisly, harrowing memories from 'Nam, wear high-waisted trousers, and try to sneak into Fleetwood Mac's ever destructive, irresistibly sexy inter-band drama. 

In short, there was a lot happening in the 1970s, or indeed, the #70s, all of it big, bold, colorful, yet earthy, and very often brilliant. It was a decade of immense cultural, political, and societal change, much of it for the better, and much of it that, at the very least, continues in spirit to our own day. The 70s is not such a period of time, indeed, but a state of mind. 

#today on tumblr #culture #the 70s #70s #1970s #the 1970s #70s television #70s vintage #70s horror #1977 #70s music #seventies #that 70s show #1974 #hippy

[questionablecuttlefish]

Some Headcanons 2/3 Jinx. Hoo boy, Jinx, here we go - some TW/s for mental illness, suicidal ideation, self-harm, she's a mess, our girl...

In Ill-Omen's Light, Jinx vanished for a year after firing her Super Mega Death Rocket at the Piltover council.

Her disappearance coincided with the outbreak of the Piltover/Zaun independence war triggered by her attack on the Council.

During this period, Jinx used the chaos of the war raging around her and her own intimate knowledge of the labyrinths of Zaun to slip in and out of the conflict, killing and stealing whenever she wanted to keep herself alive and rub out anyone chasing her, including vengeful Enforcers, Silco's emboldened rivals, and anyone seeking her out for the copious bounty on her head.

By the time the war resolved itself, Jinx had become something of an urban myth, a living cryptid and figure of legend and terror lurking in the Underground and spoken of in whispers or in jest.

Jinx was NOT in a good mental space during this period, keeping almost entirely her own company, falling deeper into her hallucinations and internal spaces, developing even deadlier weaponry, and surviving mostly on loneliness and spite.

The one exception was Ziggs, whom she met early in the civil war and formed a fast - if volatile - friendship based on a mutual love of explosions and the fact she mistook him for a figment of her imagination and kidnapped him for a month to serve as her 'conscience'.

Ziggs tagged along on several of Jinx's adventures, mostly to try to minimalize casualties. Despite a bit of ongoing trauma from having been kidnapped by a mostly feral Jinx and witnessing a lot of her atrocities firsthand, Ziggs has a deep affection and concern for his friend and worries for her when she isn't looking after herself.

Due to the age and species gap, Ziggs sees himself as a kind of 'cool uncle' figure to Jinx ( and is pretty mortified when Jinx later hits him with the TMI about her budding relationship with Lux.)

After a month or two of friendship, Jinx found her intrusive thoughts - her 'scratchies' - telling her to hurt or kill Ziggs more and more often and pushed him away.

The rest of Jinx's time was spent sinking further and further into her, er, 'Gollum arc', sometimes dissociating for days alone in her lairs, before, over time, slowly pulling herself out of it on sheer willpower, spite - and the underestimated power of her boredom.

Eventually, Jinx's volatile thoughts resolved into a new plan; call Vi out to one final fight, see her one last time, and finish things once and for all, going out together the way they came in.

In preparation for this, she interred the dummies representing Mylo and Claggor and prepared to face her last hurrah... ...whereupon her path crossed unexpectedly with a runaway Demacian, in Ill-Omen's Light.

Jinx has a lot of skills an aptitudes, as we've seen in League and Arcane; Genius inventor, skilled at close quarters combat with a nimble, unpredictable, almost inhumanly flexible fighting style now greater enhanced by her Shimmer infusion.

Singed's experiment to save Jinx's life used a rare Shimmer variant that had the unexpected outcome of permanently infusing itself itself into her system; she doesn't have the brute super strength of the more hulk-like Shimmer mutants, but she does have enough to lift Vi's gauntlets unaided and she's extremely fast and agile. Her senses are heightened, particularly hearing and smell, and she can see in pitch darkness. She also recovers quickly from all but the most serious injuries (she's annoyed that she doesn't scar easily anymore because scars are cool).

Her blood, as shown in Ill Omen's series, does have healing properties similar to the potion used in Vi in Act 2 of Arcane; however, as it's a potent Shimmer variant, it has nasty side effects if taken in any quantity.

Jinx is very sensory and smells, particularly human smells, are partly how she confirms her reality; if she can touch or smell someone they might be more real than her hallucinations.

Jinx is very touchy-feely, partly as above to confirm her reality, but also because she loves poking, prodding, climbing on people and getting in their spaces because it unnerves them and throws them off guard.

Sex and romance aren't things she really understands, though; Jinx falls somewhere on the gray-ace spectrum in terms of her sexuality, being mostly disinterested in sex (she's seen things, she grew up down the street from a brothel, but she mostly thinks it's weird and funny) but having very visceral, pleasurable reactions to gunfire and explosions that straddle the line between spiritual and sexual in nature for her.

She does, in some way, see Lux as a 'living explosion' personifying the beauty she sees in destructive power, partially explaining her physical attraction to Lux, which Jinx herself is still figuring out.

Jinx is just as inexperienced as Lux is, having had few opportunities and little interest in exploring relationships - in no small part to Silco being a loving but overprotective (and terrifying) parental figure. As Jinx herself puts it, nobody in his circles would touch her with a barge pole out of fear of both Silco and Jinx herself....

Not unjustified fear.

Lightcannon are both just dorks figuring themselves out, really.

#lightcannon #luxanna crownguard #jinx #lux #jinx x lux #arcane #arcane jinx #lol jinx #arcane netflix #jinx arcane #jinx league of legends #my headcanons

[pagansphinx]

Karl Hubbuch (German, 1891-1979) • Hilda on the Stairs • c. 1926

#art #painting #fine art #art history #karl hubbuch #german artist #weimar #inter-war period #new objectivity #neue sachlichkeit #women in paintings #pagan sphinx art blog #oil painting #art blog #genre painting #art blogs on tumblr

[itsclydebitches]

Team RWBY getting introduced to the multiverse by a team of superheroes who've been fighting God-like beings for years and not asking for any help against Salem after establishing that she's apparently laying waste to the rest of Remnant and Vacuo is the last remaining hope is just... Typical, I guess.

I feel like that highlights how unintentionally selfish the writing makes the team out to be. Again: unintentionally because though the story is clearly aiming for a heroic perspective, lack of development and world-building like this ensures that falls flat. I haven't watched the movies yet, but we saw a more complex version of this in the Atlas arc where the group was more concerned with what was morally easy for them (save people) than grappling with the difficult choice that might help everyone in the long-run (lose people to maintain/win the war). It's a hard thing for a lot of fans to even pick up on because the knee-jerk response is, "How can saving people be bad?" and... it's not, but RWBY keeps presenting moral quandaries where the "best" outcome is both subjective and unlikely to come about through traditionally heroic means. Same thing with the Ever After. Team RWBY wants to leave the world they've been cast into so they can get back to saving people. That's good! Totally good. How could that in any way be bad? Well, because staying there, if only for a short period, means they may learn information that will assist them in defeating Salem. Lose another (metaphorical) battle to potentially win the war. Make a sacrifice to protect the majority. The go-to response for why they didn't hang around and question the Blacksmith is that they had to get back to help, but that short-term help is always what's prioritized. The immediate help. The easiest help to give without taking risks or making a hard call. Now, why go through the difficulty of acquiring inter-dimensional allies and attempting to figure out the logistics of them saving your world when you can just fix the immediate problems (defeating the one-off baddie, getting back home) and return to your regular saving people gig? That's a fantastic gig that indeed makes you look good... except when it's no longer enough to solve the problem and your preferred means, no matter how heroic on paper, are acting as a hindrance to your success.

Obviously in the realm of tie-in movies there are writing considerations too like, "These superheroes aren't actually a part of the canon proper, so they can't just swoop in to save the day" but that doesn't mean the writers can't craft a hand-wavy scenario for why that help is denied. The point is to have the heroes try to find that solution. Let the girls try to defend Mantle, try to help Ironwood keep the Relics safe, try to get the Blacksmith to fix things, try to ally with superheroes to win the war, and if the story doesn't want those to function as solutions it can come up with reasons why it didn't work/someone refused. But continually the team makes these terrible choices that don't forward their primary goal and the audience is left to try and justify that with very unpersuasive excuses.

#rwde #rwby #mymetas #me writing a rwby post?? #omg who'd have imagined XD

[hagswags]

Simon’s feeling some gay feelings in chapter four of JaDD!

Read it here.

#hagswags #soapghost #ghostsoap #simon ghost riley #john soap mactavish #ghoap #fanfic #my fic #call of duty mwii #soap cod #ghost cod #cod mw2 #historical au #inter-war period au

[vanishingsydney]

Great Depression era art deco apartment building in the "P&O Style". Four identical units only. Marrickville.

#art deco #Great Depression #1930's #vintage #apartment building #inter war period architecture #P&O style #streetscape #facade #classic #sydney red brick #inner west sydney

[tanadrin]

@snazzyjazzsounds

it’s weird how for much of human history “democracy” was just like. technologically unfeasible within a medium sized state.

on the one hand i’m a big fan of, like, material conditions as an explanatory factor for social and political structures. on the other, i’m wary of letting the dicks of history off for their dickishness, as if it was impossible to know or nobody ever suggested that war and slavery and exploitation were bad, because, y’know, they did.

i think the paucity of something we might call democracies in the ancient world is due to several factors:

1) states originating as wealth-extraction machines. the earliest states seem to have approximately in common the monopolization of a valuable resource, as in hydraulic despotism, and a degree of keeping people in place by force, so elites can glean the excess of farmers and live without having to do food production themselves. sometimes this supports things people consider to be socially valuable activities, like the upkeep of temples, and sometimes not. but if you want to live in an egalitarian society, even one with villages and farming and whatnot, your best option is the extremely vast territory outside the control of organized states, which at least back in the beginning of Sumerian civilization is, like, most of the Earth. States compete over resources and optimize for better resource extraction, and more sophisticated hierarchies and ideologies that enable them to control larger territories, but the goal of “roughly egalitarian society without a ton of coercion” is exclusive with the goal of “live within the boundaries of a state.”

and i think a lot of ancient commentators noticed this; this is why the Tao Te Ching seems so down on the whole idea of statecraft to begin with, and why it paints the picture of an ideal society being one where the people of one state can hear the dogs barking in the next state over, but have never met those people face to face in their lives. because it was written in a period of fierce inter-state competition, and it did not escape the authors’ notice that states were mostly a bad deal for the people who lived under them.

(as we might also notice of the Roman Republic and Ancient Greece, even “democratic” forms of government were ways of brokering power-sharing between elites; most people living in ancient democracies had no ability to participate in their political systems.)

2) infrastructure is expensive, communication is hard. as you note, how the fuck do you coordinate a medium-sized democracy when it takes days to get a message from one end of your state to the other? on the one hand, yes, very big states did exist in this period, like persia. as did states with comparatively well developed apparatuses, like rome. but a lot of how big states operated historically was delegating to local elites--you tax the big men in the province you just conquered, and trust them to figure out how to get the most money out of their peasants. our modern idea of democracy is in many ways predicated on our modern idea of a state, which is somewhat different an animal than an axial-age kingdom!

and a big part of why this is so difficult i feel like has to be linked to the small size of towns, which is linked to the fact that most of the population had to be farming, because the amount of extractable surplus from the rural population was small.

for centuries--longer than the industrial revolution itself, maybe since the late middle ages--my sense is that the yield per farmer has been gradually increasing, which in addition to the population growth enabled since the industrial revolution itself has really vastly increased the amount of time we can spend on things other than producing food. and i suspect that that means states have a lot bigger pool of manpower available to them to assist in their administration, and gives them the capacity to do things like be run for the benefit of a larger subset of their population--and in turn for the population to demand that they be run that way.

3) i suspect lots of ancient societies were run in ways we would approve of, i.e., comparatively egalitarian, not terribly exploitative. i also suspect these societies didn’t look much like (their neighboring) states. you’re not building pyramids for the pharoah if you don’t have pharoahs after all. your court officials are not writing histories of your dynasty if you have no court and no dynasts. so these societies, along with very many others, leave less of a historical impression.

but i don’t want to overly romanticize the past; lots of societies that left no lasting historical record also probably sucked ass. slavery is observed even among hunter gatherers. humans can be real dicks, and we have, as terry pratchett noted, a really unfortunate tendency to bend at the knees.

#very highly speculative #don't take any of this too seriously

[eldritch-spouse]

What does Eden look like? How is it divided up? Anything notable there?

[This is still something I'm forming bit by bit- Embarrassing, yes, but one step at a time. As such, this might not correspond to what I say in future posts.]

Eden is not divided by "Rings" the same way Hell is, more so by "Houses".

Celestials have always worked symbiotically with siadar, as auxiliary creations to them, meaning their population was previously very controlled and segmented in specific areas of Heaven itself, with there being several courts where individuals of all Houses could gather for specific events/meetings.

Recall how angels are primarily divided in a system of "three W"s, worshippers, warriors and workers? Well, each House corresponds to the celestials that fit into each of those casts.

The House of Worship, is where seraphim, cherubim and thrones reside. Since these angels are also the most important ones in their hierarchy, this is also the House that gets the most interaction/adjustments from siadar, especially Creators, Fathers and Mothers. It is also a fairly speedy House, as some of these celestials are needed to oversee/order other Houses and venture into the surface occasionally;

The House of War is where dominions, virtues and powers reside. These celestials tend to have periods of inactivity due to them being more of an unfortunate necessity than a desired cast of angels. It is also the most recent House in comparison to all others. This House is almost exclusively visited by the Proctectors of siadar society. The residents of this House don't like being cooped up for too long, so they are sometimes allowed to help workers in the next House;

The House of Work is where principalities, archangels and guardians reside. This is by far the more populated House of all, it is also the one that quite literally never stops, less visited by siadar but constantly watched over by worshipper-types like thrones. This is usually the only House of Eden that very carefully selected humans can visit.

Also unlike Perdition, Eden is more easily roamed. While the Rings all fragmented in a violent process and rift magic is required for inter-Ring traveling, the Houses of Eden do have elaborate pathways and non-magical transportation methods between each other.

There is no animal life in Eden but animals from Earth have been frequently transported to its Houses, especially the House of Work.

#general tce