Stop Excluding Me From Your Secret Clubs.

MINIATURIST, Flemish Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung: Romance of the Rose 1490s Manuscript (Harley Ms. 4425) British Library, London

I saw a man this morning going from tree to tree, painstakingly painting each leaf of every tree yellow, red, and gold, one by one. I always wondered how they got that way.

Scientific fraud is the most baffling thing ever to me like do they think they're just going to make a huge breakthrough and no one will notice that it's fake by trying to replicate their results

7 a.m. is too damn early for running errands but, it is currently the only way

TIL that approximately 41% of first marriages end in divorce, 60% of second marriages end in divorce, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce.

TIL: early movable-type printers would store the normal letters in a case on a bottom shelf, and the capital letters in another case on a top shelf, and that’s where the terms “upper case” and “lower case” come from.

first century: honestly off to a little bit of a slow start here like. jesus was obviously doing some big stuff, thats why its called the first century. han dynasty is neat but spans a longer time period so i cant give it too many points for that. 6/10 i’d say

second century: idk anything about the second century. not memorable, 4/10

third century: beginning of the mayan classic period. big fan of elagabalus. setting of (most of) romance of the three kingdoms. 6.5/10 honestly pretty good

fourth century: another one thats kind of, idk. council of nicaea i guess and wikipedia says this is when stirrups were invented. late classical vibes. 5/10

fifth century: fall of the roman empire! sexy! drama! attila the hun! not much else going for it honestly, but still like maybe 6.75/10 just for that. big fan of the huns

sixth century: sui dynasty is a pretty big deal, that’s about it. 5/10

seventh century: a lot going on. islam. tang dynasty. first written attestation of old english and (depending on exactly which inscriptions you wanna count) old japanese. hight of classic maya civilization. 9/10 love this one

eighth century: pretty much the beginning of japanese literature, man’yōshū etc. start of the islamic golden age. dresden codex. 8/10 would be higher but seventh century is a hard act to follow

ninth century: the invention of algebra, you gotta love that. we’re really on a roll now, 8/10

tenth century: this one always tricks me, the turn of the millennium happens at the end not the beginning. i know its the same with the twentieth century but that one’s in living memory so its different. song dynasty. “dark ages”. i like it but somehow it just doesn’t stick in my mind like the last couple. 6.5/10

eleventh century: norman conquest, heian jidai, 7/10 for sure

twelfth century: genghis khan is born, does some sweet ass steppe politics and power plays, 8/10

thirteenth century: a personal favorite of mine. the mongol conquests. half the known world. biggest contiguous empire. walk from one end to the other with a gold plate on your head. letter to the pope. im as big a fan of this century as temujins empire was thicc. 10/10 perfect score.

fourteenth century: i have nothing of interest to say about the fourteenth century. 5/10 by default

fifteenth century: ThE ReNaIsAnCe 7/10 love me some leonardo

sixteenth century: lots of genocide, 3/10 probably my least favorite. there’s lots of genocide in all the ones after this too but its not part of their aesthetic gestalt for me and thats what I’m basing this on

seventeenth century: sort of, wizard-astronomer with a big ass telescope vibes. calculus. 7/10

eighteenth century: american revolution, french revolution, haitian revolution, lots of drama. also i love townsends eighteenth century cooking, 7/10 

nineteenth century: overhyped fashion design, “lol what if the bad guys actually did conquer the world” edgey bullshit. marx was neat, also darwin. 5/10

twentieth century: dramatic, lots of twists and turns, very high concept. absolute masterpiece. 10/10.

twenty-first century: technologys gonna get so fucking crazy it could be great or terrible. honestly this coronavirus stuff will not be more memorable than the spanish flu in 100 years, in fact i bet less. trump’s bullshit will all just be like, idk weird facts to tell people about at parties like. ?/10 we shall see

whimsy is a virtue I think. one of the more important ones, especially if you're about to embark on a serious undertaking. and when things are getting distinctly unwhimsical in a situation it's generally a sign you ought to make yourself scarce.

If we think hard and cooperate with one another, we can make Slytherin great again, but only if we try really, really hard.

Today I learned that in 36 BCE, Roman statesman Marcus Varro wrote one of the earliest descriptions of germs, going on to say,

"...there are bred certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose, and there cause serious diseases."

The germ theory of disease would not be widely accepted for another 1,900 years.