Links and Requests
Linkspam time so I can clean up Firefox!
Important
Insurance/Affordable Care Act and Health
History
Fannish
Work Options
Just for Fun
And now questions for you! Books and websites are both welcome.
The history of countries, cultures, and regions:
History of religion:
More specifics on culture:
I will ask about the second millennium CE, as well as the Americas, later. Plenty to do right now with much earlier history.
I don't expect many answers to these. A lot of it is stuff I needed to get down while I was thinking about it (which means it also needs to be added, in an altered form, to our community for the cowritten novel). It's also not as though I expect anyone to take notes or whatever; that would be very wrong. That said, if you can point me in the right direction on any of these, I'd be ever so grateful. My current starting point is going to Wikipedia and looking at the citations used so I can get better information than, you know, Wikipedia articles.
This is all the deep background stuff for the cowritten novel. We have to map out changes in history for the alternate reality the novel is set in, which starts way early. We're going to continue on mapping it all the way up to present day. There are really big changes in it.
And now I will save the rest of the rambling for the writing filter, once I have my filters more filled, so probably not until early next week or so. Which is not to say I won't write the rambling before then, lol, just that it won't be posted.
Suggested resources:
Important
- Inequality in the U.S.: So Much Worse than We Think has a video about economic disparity in the U.S., comparing what people think the disparity is; what they think it should be; and what it actually is. It is... really depressing, especially as someone who lives well below the poverty line (because Social Security can't provide a living income, donchaknow, despite its surplus). There's a reason I'm a dirty socialist.
- Another Unarmed Black Man Shot Down - this time while desperately seeking Help contains racism, gun violence, and police violence triggers. The title speaks for itself.
- A Statement of Trans-Inclusive Feminism and Womanism is just what it says. I've signed on; I hope you do, too. As a non-binary trans* person, it means a lot to me.
- Pope Francis says the Catholic Church should stop being obsessed with abortion, gay marriage, and contraception.
Insurance/Affordable Care Act and Health
p_cocincinus is answering questions about the Affordable Care Act; they're well educated in the matter, and they're licensed in Washington and Oregon as a health and disability provider. (Thanks to
finch for the link.)- It's not the morphine, it's the size of the cage: Rat Park experiment upturns conventional wisdom about addiction. Basically, an experiment involving rats and the option to ingest heroin-laced water, including after some had been given only heroin-laced water for fifty-seven straight days, showed that rats who had stimulating environments that provided a better quality of life--emotionally, socially, and physically--chose to drink the regular water. Its implications on the study of addiction in humans are huge.
- A post on Tumblr by naamahdarling that discusses allying with yourself when it comes to being your own advocate and ensuring you give yourself self-care when you have chronic illnesses; it acknowledges how difficult that is, but it also talks about the importance of those things if you can manage them.
History
- Literary Trysts It Gives Me Great Joy To Think About: Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman is making the rounds, but I'm sharing because it pleases me greatly. There should be more free and easy discussion about historical queer people (and I don't only say that because of the novellas).
- Internet Archaeologists Reconstruct Lost Web Pages in an effort to preserve history on the internet, since it's rapidly lost--11% of the history as data is lost every year, 27% every two years. Internet archaeologists and historians are working to reconstruct the data and have a developed a method to do so.
Fannish
purplefringe made a lovely, touching vid to Elbow's "Puncture Repair" for Elementary. I may not like the show, but I love the vid.- There's an indiegogo fundraiser to collect funds for the Atlanta Ball-Jointed Doll Convention. The convention's site is here (note that it's Pepto-Bismol pink, in case that hurts your eyes) if you want more information.
ashbet has been invited as a guest of honor. - If you're a Person of Interest fan, you can find high-quality caps for the entire second season here.
- Speaking of Person of Interest, hotch_fan has a great batch of icons pulled from 1x23, "Firewall".
astolat made a Person of Interest vid to Johnny Cash's song "God's Gonna Cut You Down".- smallfandombang has opened the third round's author sign-ups. You can read the rules and information at that link, as well. If you want to sign up as a beta or cheerleader, you can do so here. (I have not yet decided if I want to sign up. Mainly, I need to figure out a fandom before deciding.)
Work Options
- If you're looking for a job involving some kind of care (ranging from tutoring to caregiving to childcare to pet care to housekeeping), Care.com looks useful.
- SitterCity.com is a site to list yourself as a babysitter or nanny; it could also be useful.
- If you'd like to write SEO articles, check out INeedArticles.com.
- Fiverr.com is a site where you can list services for sale, starting at $5. There's a huge variety of services available. You can obviously also buy there, if there's something you want.
Just for Fun
- Sarah Palin sued for copyright infringement is being linked just because it amuses me.
- Fitspiration slogans on pictures of people drinking.
- Have a set of .gifs from the Australian Sex Party 2013 Campaign Ad.
- Have some kittens.
And now questions for you! Books and websites are both welcome.
The history of countries, cultures, and regions:
- I'm looking for Russian history, including governance, from the first millennium CE, as well as Russian religion from the same period.
- I'm also looking for both the rise and fall of the Roman Empire (the whole thing), as well as its culture and its expansion through Europe. This includes the Byzantine Empire.
- Even further back, I need a ton of information on the Roman Republic, particularly its founding, but really all the way from its founding to the transition to the Roman Empire.
- Further, I'm looking for information on the Holy Roman Empire, particularly relating to religion, but also to general governance. I am not looking for information on specific monarchs; if I decide to do so, I'll ask later.
- I also need a lot of information on Britain, both pre-Roman rule and during Roman rule. This includes governance, religion, and culture.
- I need information on trade routes to Asia and some basic historical information on Western Asia, China, Mongolia, and India. I'll need it in greater detail later, as well as more information on pretty much the rest of the content.
- I need information on Ireland and Scotland--religions, cultures, and governance--up through about 1500CE.
- I need a lot of information on the Vikings, the Viking Age, the Norse pantheon, and Scandinavian history and historical culture. This includes the Viking landings in North America and the eventual conversion of Scandinavian peoples to Christianity. (I know this goes beyond the first millennium CE.)
- I need information on what Greece was up to during the first millennium CE.
- I need lots of information on the various tribal cultures throughout Western and Eastern Europe during the first millennium CE, including their migrations throughout (including down into Spain, Portugal, the Mediterranean, and North Africa).
- I need as much information as you can give me about history, culture, governance, and religion from African empires, kingdoms, caliphates, and so forth, particularly before there was a lot of interaction with Europe. (My education is woefully lacking on that subject, and I really need to read up on it a lot for the thing I'm researching.) This includes information on Egypt, since I last learned much about it in eighth grade (half a lifetime ago) and mainly remember some mythology now. Other than Egypt, my education on African history was nonexistent, except for a tiny bit during the slave trade. Thanks, Western-centric historical education! (We did also get a couple of chapters on Chinese history, to be entirely fair.)
History of religion:
- I need a lot of information on Judaism in the first century BCE, as well as the first millennium AD; this includes migration patterns, reactions to them from other peoples, culture, religion of the time, and so on. We're going to find or buy a copy of the Bible, and I will, of course, reference the Old Testament, but that's obviously biased (depending on the version we end up getting).
- I need information on the spread of Christianity through the first millennium, plus what Christianity really was pre-Catholicism.
- Another thing I'm looking for is the rise of Islam and the history of the Middle East. I do have a copy of the Quran that I'm going to read and take extensive notes from.
- I'm looking for information on the Roman Empire's adoption of the Greek pantheon, as well as its absorption of various tribes' religions.
- I need as much information as I can get my hands on about religion within basically every culture in Europe, but especially Russia, the Roman Empire, Greece, Britain, and the rest of the Western European tribes.
- Good resources with a whole lotta Roman mythology would be most welcome. I'll also take mythology from the rest of Europe, from Portugal to Russia, including Scandinavia.
More specifics on culture:
- I'm looking for attitudes toward slavery in the first millennium AD from African, Asian, and European cultures, including which groups they enslaved.
- I'd like information on class divisions--wealthy, landowners, nobility, etc.--specifically within the Roman Empire and the tribes it absorbed. If you know of information for other cultures within the first millennium CE, I will gladly take it.
- I'm looking for the way governance worked--republics, democracies, dictatorships, divine right, oligarchies, whatever--throughout Europe and the Middle East in particular within the first millennium CE, but I'll take it for the entirety of the Old World.
- I definitely need attitudes toward women within pretty much every culture in the Old World, but especially Europe, and even more specifically Western Europe.
- I need attitudes toward children in the Roman Empire especially, though I'll take the rest of Western Europe, as well.
- I need as much information as possible on European militaries within the first millennium CE.
- Jumping ahead in time, I need information on how France and England were ruled during the time of Catherine of Valois--that is, the early 1400s. This is relevant to making the first millennium CE stuff as it integrates into the novel, promise.
I will ask about the second millennium CE, as well as the Americas, later. Plenty to do right now with much earlier history.
I don't expect many answers to these. A lot of it is stuff I needed to get down while I was thinking about it (which means it also needs to be added, in an altered form, to our community for the cowritten novel). It's also not as though I expect anyone to take notes or whatever; that would be very wrong. That said, if you can point me in the right direction on any of these, I'd be ever so grateful. My current starting point is going to Wikipedia and looking at the citations used so I can get better information than, you know, Wikipedia articles.
This is all the deep background stuff for the cowritten novel. We have to map out changes in history for the alternate reality the novel is set in, which starts way early. We're going to continue on mapping it all the way up to present day. There are really big changes in it.
And now I will save the rest of the rambling for the writing filter, once I have my filters more filled, so probably not until early next week or so. Which is not to say I won't write the rambling before then, lol, just that it won't be posted.
Suggested resources:
- The Younger Edda, Snorri Sturluson
- Project Gutenberg
- Internet Sacred Text Archive
- Rutgers syllabi-recommended books
- Judaism
Bernhard W. Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament
John J. Collins, A Short Introduction to the Hebrew Bible
Miller and Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah
John H. Walton, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
Adele Berlin, Marc Zvi Brettler and Michael Fishbane, The Jewish Study Bible
Lawrence Schiffman, From Text to Tradition
Martin Jaffee, Early Judaism
Shaye Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah - Early Christianity
Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings
John G. Gager, Reinventing Paul
Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus - Islam
Frederick Denny, Islam: An Introduction
A.J Arberry, tranz.,The Koran Interpreted
Abdullah Yusuf Ali, trans., The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an ( "This translation of the Qur’an is one of the most consistent with the Arabic text, and also includes extensive commentary offering background on events referred to in the text and discusses majority opinions on meanings and interpretations.")
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