November 2024 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Subscribe to Blog via Email
Join 296 other subscribers
Category: Culture
What is your favourite celebrity nickname?
Some celebrity nicknames are funny, and ingenious, and a sign that you have made it big, if you have an instantly recognizable nickname. On the other hand, some celebrity nicknames show familiar contempt for celebrities, and I like those too. Australian bent in these. Madge for Madonna This. So delightfully pulling her down a peg. […]
What should be included in the Constitution of Sockistan?
Habib, so many good answers here with allusion to the US Constitution, and I couldn’t hope to exceed them or even reach them. And then, I remembered a different country’s constitution. Not even its current version. In the 60s, Greek leftist youth protested the assassination of Grigoris Lambrakis and the subsequent upheaval in the country, […]
What is it like to be raised by immigrant parents?
I love my folks, however problematic things have been between us, and I don’t begrudge them their struggles in a strange land, to do the best they could for their kids. (Maybe their objectivity, but not their struggle.) But what was it like to be raised by immigrant parents? Defensive. Don’t assimilate to those drunkards. […]
Are there any examples of a successful ethnic cleansing such that the race is extinct?
As others have said, this is a matter of definition. There are many older claims of such mass exterminations, but without the modern day efficiency of a Heydrich, it was hard to be as thorough as people would have liked, especially if you allow for intermarriage. This is a particularly sensitive issue in Australia, as […]
What about Vegemite is so appealing to the Australian palate?
As others have said—many of them not even from God’s Own Country (but certainly honorary Aussies, one and all): Vegemite is ace. I’ll add a couple of observations: There are certainly cultural predilections in what food you end up eating by default: what a culture happens to have come up with in cuisine determines what […]
What ancient names, if any, would you name a child nowadays?
From harrumphing, get-your-hippy-names-away-from-me answers such as Why do English-speaking people often have strange first names? and Is Khalisi a weird name for a baby?, you will have surmised correctly that I would only go with ancient names that have survived in modern times. Or been revived in modern times. Ιn Greece, the difference matters: Helen […]
Why is the West so open about sex?
This answer is an antithesis of Franklin Veaux’s answer, which I find unhelpful. I find his answer boils down to “because the West is right about sex”. And that’s not an explanation of “Why is the West so open about sex?”: Because, through long experience, we have learned that societies are healthier, more egalitarian, safer, […]
Rolandina Ronchaia
Cross-posted from https://opuculuk.quora.com/Rolandina-Roncaglia In 1355, Rolandino Ronchaia was burned alive in Venice for sodomy. The Lords of the Night (Signori della Notte), the magistrates who condemned Rolandino, kept meticulous notes, and those notes proved a rich quarry for Guido Ruggiero, when he wrote one of his first books, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality […]
The Decalogue of Nick #7: I play the mandolin badly and the violin worse
For Victoria Weaver. Music came early to me. Soaking up the multiple musical traditions of Greece while living there, from 8–12. (Or to be more precise, the musical traditions that Greek State TV allowed through. Crete was in by then, but no violins, only lyras, by an ahistorical metric of authenticity—I was living in violin […]
If you were trapped in an elevator with a trans woman who obviously doesn’t pass, would you feel awkward talking to her?
Heavens, a lot of righteousness in this thread. I’m going to… well, I’m going to answer this the way I would. I saw the answer before OP clarified, and I’m giving the same answer I would before, but maybe with a bit more details. I am cis het, and present as such. I’m also middle-aged, […]