"Dining Room in the Country", 1913 oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Pierre Bonnard

 

Life Noble Notebooks

 

Rome in Egypt

 

Pause music for Goldeneye

 https://youtube.com/shorts/0k23djFBHt8?si=IoT4gyxa1cqfO9aV

The Ghost and Mrs Muir

 

Ardacraft

 

European Vegetation Survey

 https://euroveg.org/

Philter

 

Anbernic RG Rotate

 

Spriggan

 

Danto's “Ideal Chronicler.”

Almost two centuries ago, Hegel observed that “the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk”, meaning that philosophical understanding of an era is possible only as it is ending. 

Arthur Danto, an analytical philosopher, developed this intuition into a theoretical argument for why the judgement of history is intrinsically unpredictable1 . 

Danto imagined a hypothetical entity—the ideal chronicler—that possesses complete information about the state of the world, along with its entire history up to that point, and unlimited ability to integrate and analyse that information. Danto then argued that the ideal chronicler would still be unable to anticipate the significance that will be assigned to contemporaneous events by future historians because their judgements are inevitably informed by events that have not yet taken place. 

Evaluating the historical significance of a single event would in principle require the ideal chronicler to accurately predict not only its impact on subsequent events, but also how those events would impact broader social structures and practices5 . 

For example, to have anticipated the historical significance of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, the ideal chronicler would have had to predict not only the whole sequence of events leading to the French Revolution, but also their transformation of political and philosophical notions of sovereignty—a profound structural shift that has arguably shaped all subsequent revolutionary movements6 . 

Danto’s argument is compelling in theory, but as a practical matter it may still be the case that some, or even most, historically significant events could be identified at the time they are happening or shortly thereafter. For example, while the full significance of the Bastille took many years to develop, contemporaneous accounts show that within days it was perceived as a legitimate act of popular revolution, the implications of which might well have already seemed historic. 

One can also easily think of other events, such as Einstein’s formulation of special relativity, the moon landing, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA, that were immediately hailed as historic and continue to be viewed that way decades later. Certainly, in our current era, politicians, journalists and experts alike do not experience any difficulty in deciding what future historians will judge to be important: a simple web search for ‘historic moment’ reveals more than 100 usages per month. 

So, who is right? Conceptually, one way to answer such a question would be with the aid of a hypothetical dataset that satisfies three key properties. First, it would constitute a complete census of events. Second, the events would be well defined and separable, allowing unambiguous evaluation. Third, each event would be labelled with two importance scores (one assigned by contemporary observers and one by future historians). Imagine, for example, a team of experts who develop a codebook for defining events and rating their historical significance. 

These experts would train until they achieved high intercoder reliability, and then set about evaluating all candidate events as they occur, including many that may seem trivial. Decades or even a century or more later, another team would use the same coding criteria and training regimen to evaluate the same data. One could then simply compute the classification accuracy of the contemporaneous experts using standard metrics such as precision and recall. By definition, a dataset of this sort would take at least decades to construct. 

It also presumes that historians treat events as discrete and uniform units of analysis when, in fact, events in the historical literature are extremely heterogeneous. For example, events such as the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the negotiations leading to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles occurred on two very different time scales and could even be conjoined into a single event on yet a third time scale. World War I and World War II, in turn, could be described as distinct or as parts of something bigger: a Thirty Years War, a Forty Years War or an even longer “Crisis of the Middle Powers”.7 

Debates about how to categorize and periodize such complex phenomena in fact lie at the very core of historical scholarship and are rarely resolved to universal satisfaction. Confronted with this potentially insoluble conceptual ambiguity, we proceed in much the same way as historians do when attempting to identify and define events: by turning to the written historical record; that is, to collections of documents that have been preserved and curated by archivists. Given limited time and storage capacity, both archivists and historians must continually make judgements about which documents will be most valuable in representing, illuminating and explaining events and trends. In practice, therefore, when historians debate the relative importance of different events, they typically cite different historical documents

Minas Tirith

 

The Great Cat Massacre

The Argonath

 

Polo Coat

 

58mm 1.2 Ai Noct-Nikkor

Nikon made three manual focus f/1.2 lenses for the F-mount and the most famous one is undoubtedly this Nikon 58mm 1.2 Noct-Nikkor, often referred to as “the Noct”. What makes it special is its hand ground aspherical element, something you didn’t see often in 1977. Let’s have a closer look at this legendary lens!

Egyptian Honey

Brigador Killers

 

Sony CDP-X7ESD

 

Steam Controller

 

Retromags

https://www.retromags.com/




This site is set up to digitally preserve video game magazines from 10 years ago and earlier. The rules vary on a case-by-case basis. We do this because issues of these magazines are not readily available from publishers/content owners. While we don’t have legal permission, we operate in a way where we do not release anything that will reduce any potential income for you, or magazines that are available from you, nor do we release scans that are of a quality that may reflect poorly on you. So far this has worked, with several publishers/content owners basically ignoring our existence. However, if you wish that we do not make content that you legally have ownership of available on this site, just let us know and we will remove it. While we would prefer permission, we will fully oblige with your wishes concerning your content. This is a hobby we do out of passion and love for the video game magazines of yesterday, and not worth legal battles of any kind.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys Daily entries from the 17th century London diary

https://www.pepysdiary.com/



Monday 4 May 1663

Up betimes and to setting my Brampton papers in order and looking over my wardrobe against summer, and laying things in order to send to my brother to alter. By and by took boat intending to have gone down to Woolwich, but seeing I could not get back time enough to dinner, I returned and home. Whither by and by the dancing-master came, whom standing by, seeing him instructing my wife, when he had done with her, he would needs have me try the steps of a coranto, and what with his desire and my wife’s importunity, I did begin, and then was obliged to give him entry-money 10s., and am become his scholler. The truth is, I think it a thing very useful for a gentleman, and sometimes I may have occasion of using it, and though it cost me what I am heartily sorry it should, besides that I must by my oath give half as much more to the poor, yet I am resolved to get it up some other way, and then it will not be above a month or two in a year. So though it be against my stomach yet I will try it a little while; if I see it comes to any great inconvenience or charge I will fling it off.

After I had begun with the steps of half a coranto, which I think I shall learn well enough, he went away, and we to dinner.

And by and by out by coach, and set my wife down at my Lord Crew’s, going to see my Lady Jem. Montagu, who is lately come to town, and I to St. James’s; where Mr. Coventry, Sir W. Pen and I staid a good while for the Duke’s coming in, but not coming, we walked to White Hall; and meeting the King, we followed him into the Park, where Mr. Coventry and he talked of building a new yacht, which the King is resolved to have built out of his privy purse, he having some contrivance of his own. The talk being done, we fell off to White Hall, leaving the King in the Park, and going back, met the Duke going towards St. James’s to meet us. So he turned back again, and to his closett at White Hall; and there, my Lord Sandwich present, we did our weekly errand, and so broke up; and I down into the garden with my Lord Sandwich (after we had sat an hour at the Tangier Committee); and after talking largely of his own businesses, we begun to talk how matters are at Court: and though he did not flatly tell me any such thing, yet I do suspect that all is not kind between the King and the Duke, and that the King’s fondness to the little Duke do occasion it; and it may be that there is some fear of his being made heir to the Crown. But this my Lord did not tell me, but is my guess only; and that my Lord Chancellor is without doubt falling past hopes. He being gone to Chelsey by coach I to his lodgings, where my wife staid for me, and she from thence to see Mrs. Pierce and called me at Whitehall stairs (where I went before by land to know whether there was any play at Court to-night) and there being none she and I to Mr. Creed to the Exchange, where she bought something, and from thence by water to White Fryars, and wife to see Mrs. Turner, and then came to me at my brother’s, where I did give him order about my summer clothes, and so home by coach, and after supper to bed to my wife, with whom I have not lain since I used to lie with my father till to-night.

Ulysses - 10th edition

penguin little black classics

 

Morrowind - 24 years