More from @DilettanteryPod

sean

@DilettanteryPod

27 Jun

Time for another art/perception thread that's gonna go...all over the place.

In societies filled with photography, movies, tv, phone cameras, and many other technologies, we don't often think of how weird it is to see a three-dimensional image on a two-dimensional surface.🧵

In 1895, the British formed what they called the East Africa Protectorate, taking it over from the Imperial British East Africa Company because they went bankrupt. In 1920, it became the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya.

There was lots of brutality. Whites were given 999 year leases on land, effectively creating a white monopoly on land use. Native Kenyans were forced to work the land. Floggings were common. We'll never know everything because of Operation Legacy.

Read 56 tweets

sean

@DilettanteryPod

13 Jun

All of you have seen cave art, right? Either sketches or photos in books or online. If you're really lucky, maybe you've been in a cave yourself with a flashlight or something. But is it possible that the way we look at cave art today hides a key aspect of the art? 🧵

First off, something to note: Although the term cavemen still persists as a synonym for paleolithic human, and although the idea of cavemen is still replicated throughout society, there isn’t much evidence that prehistoric humans actually lived in caves that often.

They lived often in rockshelters or like, the mouths of caves, but further in, in the dark zone, they didn’t live or shelter there unless in extraordinary circumstances like natural disasters or people *really* wanting to kill them.

Read 33 tweets

sean

@DilettanteryPod

12 Mar

"Thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those Aborigines having
from choice become Europeans!"

-J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeu (1782), describing how many Europeans converted to indigenous lifeways in the first centuries of N.A. colonization

Benjamin Franklin, 1753:

Read 16 tweets

sean

@DilettanteryPod

12 Mar

The ultimate failing upwards story is Timothy Dexter, who in the latter half of the 18th century, kept getting richer by making what appeared to be the dumbest business decisions. He had very little schooling, and began working at the age of eight.

At the age of 22 he married a rich widow in Massachusetts, his first stroke of luck. They bought a mansion together.

He also for some reason bought a ton of Continental currency after the American Revolution, currency that seemed worthless. Luckily, while the US gov't accepted the old currency at 1% of it's value, Massachusetts decided to accept it at face value, making Dexter much wealthier.

Read 15 tweets