Feet Swinging Champ

@hobbituscaesar.bsky.social

421 Followers 371 Following

Archivist and historian. Scifi fan. Not a time traveler or an immortal, I promise. Marylander. Gray-ace. He/him, 47. šŸ³ļøā€šŸŒˆ Husband: @jasperhedgehog.bsky.social Girlfriend: @shadii.bsky.social Boyfriend: @shiroishimatora.bsky.social

A movie poster for the movie, "Ebenezer," starring Johnny Depp. The tagline for the movie is, "Before he was Scrooge he was... Ebenezer." The movie comes out on Thanksgiving.
Muse, speak to me now of that drowsy commuter who wandered far and wide after departing the sacred sheets of Bed. They came to see many peopleā€™s commutes, where they learned their customs, while on the road and rail their spirit suffered many torments, as they fought to save their time and lead their shoes to work. But though they wanted to, they could not escape other commutersā€” they all plodded from their own necessity, the fools. They celebrated on the Caffeine of the Gods, Gods of the Morn, and so they fought their chances of fatigue of getting to work everyday. So now, daughter of Zeus, tell us their story, starting anywhere you wish.
Screenshot of a brief Messenger conversation at 5:10 PM. "I wrote a very brief article." "Is it, 'A'?"
Photograph of the painting "Allegory of Satan (Lord of the World)" by Ludwik Stasiak.
A screenshot from Extra History's South Sea Bubble series depicting the moment John Blunt's statement of projected dividends made everyone reƤlize it was too good to be true and the bottom fell out its stock price.
An example of Renaissance-era humanist handwriting from the hand of Poggio Bracchiolini.
A screenshot from Extra History's series on the South Sea Bubble, showing John Blunt riding a flying unicorn on a blast of rainbow while an onlooker says, "Erm... that's a little unrealistic..." referring to the final outlandish claim the South Sea Company made that finally made the British investors reƤlize they were being defrauded.
Image of a six panel comic in three rows. Each row has the same two pictures, a strong hamster working hard on their exercise wheel and a scared hamster recoiling in fear from the camera. The first row is captioned, "liberals during an election / liberals during a theory." The second row is captioned, "Marxists during a theory / Marxists during an insurrection " The third row is captioned, "Anarchists during an insurrection / anarchists during an election."
Gif of the scene where Rick warns a Nazi against invading New York.
Three-quarters of a pants button.
A clipping with the printed date of "JAN/FEB ISSUE" helpfully stamped "MAR-APRIL." The rest of the document contains no clue as to which year.
Two drawings, side by side, each of a horned ram with a brilliant halo. The ram on the left is in profile, but looking slightly away from the viewer while the ram on the right is in full profile as if turning its head to the viewer and is about to look full at you. The caption reads, "YOU WILL BE OKAY. YOU HAVE NO CHOICE."
"Contemporaries were pained and afflicted by moral and by social degradation. True merit was not the path to successā€”and success itself was unsafe as well as dishonourable. New men emerging established claims to the consulate by brutality or by craft. The marshals might disappear, some as suddenly as they had arisen, but the practice of diplomacy engendered in its adepts the talent of survival, with arts and devices of subservience loathed by the Roman aristocracy: no honest man would care to surrender honour and independence by becoming a minister to despotism." ā€”Ronald Syme, "The Roman Revolution"
Photograph of a small cardboard cup with plastic lid sitting on a table.
A mug of coffeeā€”one of my favorite mugs, with hieroglyphics on itā€”sitting on the very knockoffable corner of my desk (it was not).
Screenshot of an AI post on a Facebook "Dune" group that reads the excruciatingly obvious question, "Know this one? Which Dune character rules as God-Emperor for 3,500 years?"
A drawing of classroom teaching Christian catechism. The door is labeled "Membership Class." The teacher points to just one of the many branches of bifurcating lines from left to right and says, "So this is where our movement came along and finally got the Bible right." A student replies, "Jesus is so lucky to have us."
Two horizontal lines of clouds in the sky, resembling text.
Cardboard case of a Russian LFAI slide rule from 1951.
One side of a Russian LFAI slide rule from 1951.
One side of a Russian LFAI slide rule from 1951.
ā€œThe shift from denial of injustice to recognition of injustice canā€™t be unmade. What your eyes have seen they have seen. Once you see the injustice, you can never again in good faith deny the oppression and defend the oppressor. What was loyalty is now betrayal. From now on, if you donā€™t resist, you collude. But there is a middle ground between defense and attack, a ground of flexible resistance, a space opened for change. It is not an easy place to find or live in.ā€ ā€”Ursula Le Guin
Photograph of a Civilization board game in progress.
Front cover of "How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States," by Daniel Immerwahr. Cover art shows a central outline of the contiguous lower 48 States with Alaska, Hawaii, and "territories" immediately adjacent to that outline.
Photograph of a line of posts through a river, with a white bird perched atop each one, all facing right.
Photograph of a page from "Dune," by Frank Herbert: "Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never persistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man. ā€”FROM 'COLLECTED SAYINGS OF MUAD'DIB' BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN."
"Worse still, perhaps: Trump's actions and their consequences proclaim the bankruptcy of the bipartisan oligarchy. Trump has shown that outstanding success can be achieved by ruthless pursuit of self-interest. The hollowness of the so-called Republic now stands revealed for all to see. The secret of the government is out, that its rulers and chief beneficiaries no longer seriously believe in it. They have adopted success as their chief criterion. The lesson is bound to sink in sooner or later. Those who have suffered for their loyalty to either Democrats or Republicansā€”although, after all, it has ceased to bring them very much profitā€”are bound to remember. Later it may become clear that we and our heirs are no longer willing to defend what our rulers have so shamelessly abandoned." With minor apologies to Ernst Badian, whose phrasing I borrow and adapt.
Image titled, "Venn Diagram of Venn Diagrams," showing a triple Venn Diagram between "Information," "Things That Overlap," and "Circles." The intersection of "Information" and "Things That Overlap" is "Redundancy." The intersection of "Information" and "Circles" is "Pie Charts." The intersection of "Circles" and "Things That Overlap" is "Eclipses." The intersection of all three is "Venn Diagrams."
Screenshot of a Messenger dialogue: "I wrote a very brief article." "Is it 'A'?"
Photograph of two bottles of yellow tail and Domino's Pizza brand red wine.
Photograph of artwork of Salvador Dali depicting Montaigne at his home. The art is captioned, "Hommage a la France" and signed "Dali 1947."
Title page of "Essays of Michel de Montaigne, Translated by Charles Cotton, Selected and Illustrated by Salvador Dali." An illustration of an arm emanating from the back of a skull to hold a quill, writing a book.
Images of the spines of books entitled, "Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis," "More Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis," "Yet More Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis," "Further Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis," "Even More Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis," and "Once Again: Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis."
PROTECT THE PEACEFUL PROTEST THE SIT-DOWN WAVE What to do if violence breaks out at a protest: 1. SIT DOWN-TOGETHER Lower yourself to the ground immediately. Stay where you are. 2. SILENCE IS POWER Stop chanting, put down signs, and remain silent. 3. SPREAD THE SIGNAL Gesture or quietly tell others to sit. Let the action ripple through the crowd like a wave. 4. DO NOT ENGAGE Don't argue, confront, or respond to aggression. Discipline speaks for itself. 5. MAKE PEACE VISIBLE A calm, seated crowd is a powerful image for the world ā€”and the cameras ā€” to see. Nonviolence is powerful, strategic, and united. #SitDownWave #PeacefulProtest #NonviolentPower #Gandhi|
Text: "Oliver Wendell Holmes in the 'hydrostatic paradox of controversy': Don't you know what that means?- Well, I will tell you. You know that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way. And the fools know it."
Podany, Amanda H. "Weavers, Scribes, and Kings." Oxford University Press, 2022, p. 66. "The roughly drawn cuneiform signs that litter the sides of the boulder, and even extend over the figures themselves, record that this transaction pertained to animals, land, and houses, in large quantities: 450 iku of fields are mentioned (about 158 hectares or 392 acres), along with three houses and some bulls, donkeys, and sheep. Unfortunately, the inscription suffers from a dire shortage of verbs, which would have been useful in determining what exactly was going on."
Photograph of text I wrote on a sticky note, "I wish I could make money for having decently nifty handwriting."
Opening text from "Poem of the Gifts," by Jorge Luis Borges: "No one should read self-pity or reproach into this statement of the majesty of God; who with such splendid irony granted me books and blindness at one touch." [tr. Alistair Reid]
"This blithe attitude may have served in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but new technologies endowed islands with new significance. Aviation meant they could serve as landing strips; radio meant they could host transmitters. In 1935 the State Department announced that it was annexing Baker, Howland, and Jarvis Islands in the central Pacific. Two days later, it hastily rescinded the announcement. The United States didnā€™t need to annex those islands, officials clarified with embarrassment. A consultation of the records had revealed that it already owned them."
Photograph of a cardboard carton of Taco Bell chicken nuggets.
Tweet from Senator Lindsay Graham, @LindsayGrahamSC, at 5:33 PM on 4/29/2025, reading: "I was excited to hear that President Trump is open to the idea of being the next Pope. This would truly be a dark horse candidate, but I would ask the papal conclave and Catholic faithful to keep an open mind about this possibility! The first Pope-U.S. President combination has many upsides. Watching for white smokeā€¦. Trump MMXXVIII!"
Image of the front cover of the DVD documentary "Byzantium: The Lost Empire." An image of the famous Ravenna mosaĆÆc of Justinian in the background.
Single-panel comic. A woman and a man are walking past a Cheese Shop. The woman says, "Of course I love you more than cheese. What a silly question. In fact, cheese and I are just friends. Nothing's going on between cheese and me."
Image of the six main characters from the early 1980s Dungeons and Dragons cartoon.
Badian, Ernst. ā€œRoman Imperialism in the Late Republic,ā€ Cornell University Press, 1968, p. 80. "Worse still, perhaps: Sulla's victory and its consequences proclaimed the bankruptcy of the oligarchy. Sulla had shown that outstanding success could be achieved by ruthless pursuit of self-interest. The hollowness of the aristocratic res publica now stood revealed for all to see. The [secret of power] was out, that its rulers and chief beneficiaries no longer seriously believed in it. They had adopted success as their chief criterion. The lesson was bound to sink in sooner or later. Thoseā€”and especially ordinary Italiansā€”who had suffered for their loyalty to the res publica, although, after all, it had never brought them very much profit, were bound to remember. A generation later it became clear that they and their sons were no longer willing to defend what their rulers had so shamelessly abandoned."
Photograph of my ring with a replica coin of the Emperor Claudius on my right hand. The inscription reads: TICLAVDCAESARā€¢AVGā€¢Pā€¢Mā€¢TRā€¢Pā€¢
Image of King Charles I, seated. The caption reads, "In 1649 King Charles I was tried for treason and other 'high crimes.' The Monarch responded with the maxim; 'The King Can Do No Wrong and therefore he can not be tried or convicted.' He was beheaded ten days later." Separate text at the bottom, "Lessons from British History."
Image of a painting of Michel de Montaigne.
Photograph of a page of text, reading "Gregory explains elsewhere just how this miracle should have been handled. When the grain harvest at a Bordeaux monastery was miraculously saved by the prayers of a young novice, the wise abbot immediately had the youth seized, beaten, and shut up in his cell for a week lest he be inflated with pride at having been an instrument of God's will."
Calvin and Hobbes, 11/28/1992, wherein Calvin and Hobbes sit on the bed and discuss comic book heroes. Calvin: "I've noticed that comic book superheroes usually fight evil maniacs with grandiose plans to destroy the world. Why don't superheroes go after the more subtle, realistic bad guys?" Hobbes: "Yeah, the superhero could attend council meetings and write letters to the editor, and stuff." Calvin: "Hmm... I think I see the problem." Hobbes: "'Quick! To the bat fax!'"
Photograph of a plaque, reading: THE TORONTO RECURSIVE HISTORY PROJECT OF TORONTO'S RECURSIVE HISTORY This plaque was commemorated on October 10, 2018, to commemorate its own commemoration. Plaques like this one are an integral part of the campaign to support more plaques like this one. By reading this plaque, you have made a valuable addition to the number of people who have read this plaque. To this day and up to the end of this sentence, this plaque continues to be read by people like yourself. Heritage Toronto 2018
Photograph of a tiny toy seal in the palm of my left handed.
"...a genuinely spontaneous inner conviction. Different peopleā€™s convictions will differ, because Absolute Reality is a mystery of which no more than a fraction has ever yet been penetrated byā€”or has been revealed toā€”any human mind. 'The heart of so great a mystery cannot ever be reached by following one road only,'ā€ says Aurelius Symmachus. "However strong and confident may be my conviction that my own approach to the mystery is a right one, I ought to be aware that my field of spiritual vision is so narrow that I cannot know that there is no virtue in other approaches. In theistic terms this is to say that I cannot know that other peopleā€™s visions may not also be revelations from Godā€”and these perhaps fuller and more illuminating revelations than the one that I believe that I myself have received from Him. "Moreover, the fact that I and my neighbor are following different roads is something that divides us much less than we are drawn together by the either fact that, in following our different roads, we are both trying to approach the same mystery. All human being who are seeking to approach the mystery in order to direct their lives in accordance with the nature and spirit of Absolute Reality or, in theistic terms, with the will of Godā€”all these fellow-seekers are engaged in an identical quest. They should recognize that they are spiritually brethren and should feel towards one another, and treat one another, as such. Toleration does not become perfect until it has been transfigured into love."
"The fundamental positive motive for toleration is a recognition of the truth that religious conflict is not just a nuisance but is a sin. It is sinful because it arouses the wild beast in Human Nature. Religious persecution, too, is sinful because no one has the right to try to stand between another human soul and God. Every soul has a right to commune with God in Godā€™s and this soulā€™s way; and the particular way concerns none but God and the particular soul in question. No other human being has a right to intervene by the use of any means except non-violent missionary action. And Violence in this field is not only sinful; it is futile; for religions cannot be inculcated by force. There is no such thing as a belief that is not held voluntarily through..."
"You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. The power struggle permeates the training, education and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably much face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic." Frank Herbert
An image of a pizza cutter, captioned, "HERE BITCH, SINCE YOU WANNA BE ALL EDGE AND NO POINT."
Photograph of me sitting on a MARC train, smiling.
Text from "The Dune Encyclopedia," that reads, "The terms 'orange' and 'catholic' do, however, seem to have established themselves as reflecting the more innovative and rational as opposed to the more conservative and traditional schools of thought, sometimes being used quite lightly, if we may judge by odd remarks of Bertoli ā€” 'what a delightfully pompous catholic statement,' 'Catholic to a See,' 'utterly Orange is the only word to describe that nonsense,' 'for an Orange, that little acolyte of Bruin's is quite a peach,' 'all of those oranges are bananas' ā€” remarks not at all clear to us now, but some were clearly meant as witticisms. The origin of the term Orange as applied to a religious sectarian is now obscure but its religious significance is so overwhelming nowadays that few remember it as the ancient name of a fruit now called portyguls."
Photograph of white smoke emanating from the chimney of the Sistene Chapel, indicating the successful election of a Pope.