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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 13m

Catherine 🐸 @catebridget.bsky.social · 11d

“They had fangs, they were biting people, they had this look in their eyes, totally cold, animal. I think they were Young Republicans.”

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 30m

Things are getting noticeably worse here in the UK too, but not as rapidly. Our politics are heavily influenced by the US. Musk has been bankrolling the far right agitator Tommy Robinson, for example.

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 34m

There's been non-stop escalation for the last nine months and I don't see it ending any time soon.

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 40m

www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

Lol, what a question on #askhistorians! Let's consult the Magic History Eightball to find out the answer...

Magic eightball saying "signs point to yes".

Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 53m

My impression, please correct me if I'm wrong, is that the major change in politics over the last few decades has been the radicalisation of right wing elites. If they've radicalised then hopefully they can deradicalise.

Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 58m

Is that the "Teeth of Mordor" from the Jackson movies?

Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 1h

@ohmz.bsky.social

Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 1h

You couldn't name a cow Hitler nowadays. Because of woke.

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 1h

An important contribution toward answering the question 'Were witches healers?' Excerpt from @magicnotwitches.bsky.social's "Cunning Folk" (2024).

#witch #witches #witchtrials

In my research I have found reference to more than 380 service magicians practising in England between 1542 and 1670, many of whom were healers and midwives, diviners and goods-finders. Of these, fewer than five were accused of malevolent witchcraft, and only one was eventually found guilty and executed. I’m sure there are other cases, but even so, the proportions are striking, belying the modern assumption that the witch trials of early modern England targeted healers and other women who professed cunning skills. For most people at the time, there was a difference between the useful magic generally being practised and sold by cunning folk and the harmful, vindictive curses dealt out by witches.

Reposted by Doug-a-boo McCrae

Catherine 🐸 @catebridget.bsky.social · 11d

“They had fangs, they were biting people, they had this look in their eyes, totally cold, animal. I think they were Young Republicans.”

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 1d

It's a nice feature of Alan Moore's Watchmen that Sally Jupiter has changed her surname from Sally Juspeczyk to hide her ancestry. Her daughter, Laurie, changed it back.

Possibly a reference to comics creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby having changed their surnames from Lieber and Kurtzberg.

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 1d

You'll know a lot more about this than me I'm sure, but I recently learned that Frankfurt's city council imposed an elaborate dress code on its inhabitants in the EM period. This could be used to identify suspected criminals.

Excerpts from Maria Boes' "Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany":

However, the crucial question remains: how did Frankfurt’s population know whom to accuse, explicitly or implicitly? How did local inhabitants identify offenders, given the lack of passports, identification cards, and photographs? Contemporaries resorted to oral and visual forms of identification: for example, by adding to a first name one’s birthplace or the designation of a physical feature, frequently a handicap, often in the form of a nickname. In fact, the use of sobriquets was ubiquitous.

Another and more elaborate system of identification ascribed clearly
discernible symbols to each person walking Frankfurt’s streets. Specific dress, badges or color schemes described every aspect of a person’s life—rank, wealth, religion, occupation, marital status, age, even bereavement. From birth to death, a person’s whole life was mirrored and even regulated by outward appearances.

The concept of using visual aids for identification was introduced by
Frankfurt’s city council in the mid-fourteenth century. At first it was a
vague dress code, but by the end of the fifteenth century it had become more elaborate. It was primarily during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, that Kleiderordnungen, dress regulations, multiplied, stratified, and were institutionalized.

From 1572 to 1672, 11 identifiable dress codes were promulgated in
Frankfurt. With each citation of the codes, they became more stratified. While the 1572 dress code was rather vague with regard to birth and professional status, the 1593 code made it clear that everyone should dress according to their social standing, honor and wealth. For example, only nobles, doctors and patricians were permitted to wear jackets or coats made of velvet, damask, satin or other silk products. Even the yardage to be used for these garments was prescribed in that only well-known burghers and traders, merchants and city councilmen were permitted to use 2 yards of velvet for their clothing, while prominent retailers and notaries were entitled to use one.

Dress regulations also applied to Frankfurt’s female population. Not
surprisingly, the dress ordinances of “reputable” women closely followed their husbands’ and fathers’, based primarily on social status, honor, and wealth. Frequently an additional color scheme was used to indicate a woman’s marital status. Generally, the color red indicated young and single women, and blue and green, married women. Old age was accentuated with gray and black. Virgins were subjected to further labels. In 1483, for example, a young girl was arrested on suspicion of theft, partly because she falsely claimed virginity by wearing the customary “Bändchen im Haar,” ribbon in her hair.

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 2d

As all experienced adventurers know, you can easily pacify a kappa by offering it a cucumber.

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 2d

Scholars who study conspiracy beliefs have found they only became stigmatised after WWII, and have recently become partially destigmatised.

Excerpt from Michael Butter's chapter in the "Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories" (2020):

However, drawing on an approach from the sociology of knowledge (Anton et al. 2014), I will argue that the opposite is the case. Conspiracy theories have not increased, but decreased, in popularity and importance over time in American culture. They have moved from the mainstream to the margins, not the other way around. They were once orthodox, that is, officially accepted and legitimate knowledge, and became heterodox, that is, stigmatised and illegitimate
knowledge after the Second World War. It is true that conspiracy theories have become more important again in recent years and are now more visible and influential than 30 years ago, but they are still far less widely spread and influential than 100 or 200 years ago.

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 2d

I'm not sure we've ever been sane, at least not for long. "Cursed Britain", Thomas Waters' study of witch beliefs in Britain from 1800 to the present, finds they were "fairly common" until the late 1930s. Conspiracy beliefs are a lot like witch beliefs imo, purporting to explain inexplicable harm.

this evidence suggests that witchery faded as a popular belief during a
familiar period, much of which remains within living memory, an era
beginning with Edwardian imperial grandeur and suffragette radicalism, and ending with the swinging sixties.

Yet witchcraft remained widely believed in until about 1900, and fairly common until the late 1930s

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 2d

Not sure I trust a guy with such a short fuse to handle an important job like space laser maintenance.

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 2d

That does capture a truth about Trumpism: its enemies are entirely imaginary. Right wing populists live in a fantasy world conjured into existence by the febrile media they consume. The only real enemy America currently faces are the right wing populists themselves.

Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 2d

@picturesofnixon.com in the American Film Theatre's 1974 production of Eugène Ionesco's play Rhinoceros, starring Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel.

Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder in an apartment with a large picture of Richard Nixon on the wall.

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 2d

Excerpt from Laurence Rees' "The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings from History" (2025):

At first sight all of these different approaches to anti-Semitism among Nazi supporters in the 1920s seem confusing. Nonetheless, they offer an insight into the appeal of the party in these early days. As long as you accepted that the Jews – in one form or another – were a danger, then the kind of anti-Semitism you believed in was to a large degree up to you.

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 3d

I like to worship the Dragon of Chaos in a cathedral while the Antichrist performs the liturgy.

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 3d

Yeah, the Deep State is an important idea in the MAGA world-view. Just as you say, it’s a left-wing enemy within operating inside government agencies like the FBI. Ofc it’s hard to square that fantasy with the reality that Trump was president from 2017 to 2020, supposedly opposing the Deep State.

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 4d

The unmooring from reality is distinctive of right wing populism in general and Trumpism in particular. Recent claims about “war ravaged Portland” are a good example, but just one of many. The movement couldn’t exist without the bubble provided by the right wing media ecosystem.

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 4d

Nonetheless I think the claim that Trump has "faced surprisingly little resistance... in the first nine months" is entirely correct.

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Reposted by Doug-a-boo McCrae

Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 4d

I like how the news will be like “while the President claiming Portland was ruled by a giant skeleton named Mr Nibbles is not strictly true, it does speak to the anxiety of many Americans”

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Doug-a-boo McCrae @dougmccrae.bsky.social · 4d

That does make me wonder whether players in a horror rpg should act sensibly or like characters in horror fiction ie always going into the cellar, attic, spooky house, etc. In general I have a preference for doing in genre stuff when an rpg has a clear genre.

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