I didn’t think Ninjas were real, just spy’s and sometimes assassins but no one you’d specifically call “ninja”
Ninja is something of an affectation from later eras being backwards projected onto history. However, there were a number of groups that specialized in infiltration, sabotage, assassination, espionage and other “irregular warfare” tactics, often passed down in familial lines. The Iga clan of the Tokugawa period is a notable example.
The general distinction for the historical ninja groups as opposed to someone who just performed irregular warfare (like a guerrilla or a spy), was that the ninja in question had to be a mercenary, operating outside of the feudal hierarchy, and had to be a professional, so no slitting throats as a side-hobby.
Hey, wanna know why the modern idea of ninja is “wears black clothes”?
These are “Kuroko”.
Kuroko are men and women fully dressed in black and that wear tabi on their feet. They are Kabuki theater stagehands. When they are on stage, the audience is supposed to ignore them, pretend they aren’t there, as they are “special effects”, not people per se on the stage.
Well, see, some Kabuki plays liked to play with this idea.
In certain plays, a notorious character will suddenly get stabbed by a Kuroko and die. This is shocking to the audience because Kuroko are just straight up not supposed to exist as people or characters in the play, but suddenly, one of these special effects just murdered someone. Then, they’d remove the face covering veil and reveal they were one of the characters all along.
It was a meta manner of narrative, basically. A plot twist, if you will.
That’s why the modern image of Ninja was derived from Kuroko: Unexpected Assassins, striking when no one is supposed to strike, and gone like the wind, just like that.
“Ninja” actually looked like this:
Just your regular run of the mill peasant.
That was the entire point.
To not be noticed. To be one with the crowd.
Espionage history !
As both a ninja AND a theater kid- this pleases me
I love the picture from the stage up there – your eyes do sort of just slide right over the Kuroko helping the actress stand and show off.
every so often a british writer has a character call ‘shotgun’ for a situation not involving a car, or even a mode of travel at all, and for some reason i find this absolutely adorable.
i thought of making a post to explain the history and usage of the term, but if i did that they might stop.
i’m an american and i don’t know the history. i guess it’s because people drive with a shotgun next to them?
nope.
ok i’ve been informed by a couple people that outside america, it just means ‘dibs’, so it’s unlikely they’ll give up being cute about it if i explain, so imma explain.
it comes from this:
see, once upon a time, the american west was very sparsely settled, and between the few towns there were lay hundreds of miles of wild animals, criminals, desperate ex-confederate soldiers with raging ptsd and more ammo than food, and semi-nomadic first nations bands who at any moment might be at war with the us government, each other, and/or local landowners, or just looking to make their name by taking some trophies and bragging rights.
so if you wanted to get mail, goods, or passengers from one place to another, you better be prepared to defend yourself and run like hell at the same time.
enter the shotgun rider.
see in the picture, the fella that’s not holding the reins has a long gun over his knee? he must be confident, that’s a bit longer than the usual coach gun. you’d load with shot instead of slugs because you wanted scatter – aiming from a galloping coach isn’t easy even for a sharpshooter, and the intent was to deter, not kill. you’d aim for your attackers’ horses if you were smart. a man with buckshot in him might chase you harder in anger, but a horse with a peppered flank was goddamn done with your nonsense.
of course, such exciting episodes weren’t going to occur on every trip. so as a matter of practicality, while keeping watch for attackers, the shotgun rider was also navigator, relief driver, snack-fetcher, and in charge of entertaining you so you didn’t nod off and drive your horses in a circle all night.
the modern usage is sometimes just ‘dibs the front passenger seat’, so i see how it became just for claiming stuff across the pond. but the general connotation is also that you’re the main support guy. the co-pilot, the map-decipherer, the one who phones ahead and asks mom if you need to pick anything up on the way back. it’s not just about getting to ride up front, it’s about being in charge of stuff, which is very appealing but also a responsibility.
and that’s why you don’t call ‘shotgun’ for things other than driving. because that’s the only situation, really, where you’re calling dibs on being somebody’s right-hand guy for a task.
driver still picks the music, tho. that’s a cosmic law.
Passenger shuts his cakehole
it’s the American Way
Tbh it didn’t occur to me until I read it that anyone would take the passenger seat and NOT act as the right-hand of the driver.
Like, I’ve hand-fed my friends chips when we were on a long trip, so they wouldn’t have to take their hands off the wheel. Helped zip through the radio stations to find one that wasn’t static, or fiddle with the tech until bluetooth worked.
Passenger is in charge of making sure google maps or waze is working properly. In charge of answering any texts or calls to the driver. Checking in to make sure the driver isn’t tired on long trips, volunteering to take over if they are. Coordinating bathroom breaks if we have other passengers in the back, and figuring out where we should stop to eat or the nearest gas station.
Shotgun is a very important position on longer trips (and keep in mind, driving across the U.S. takes several days of driving. Twice a year I drive 7 straight hours from my house to visit my parents for Christmas, and I’ve driven westward on a 17-hour trip before.)
Driver’s responsibility is driving safely and maybe pumping gas.
ANYTHING else is for Shotgun.
Shorter trips, it’s not as big of a deal, but if it’s over an hour or two, you’ve got responsibilities
a fine addition.
it occurs to me that part of why the nuance gets lost in europe and new zealand is y’all don’t take car trips long enough to need a shotgun rider. or when you do, it’s a big damn deal, so you probably overprepare and take lots of breaks.
around here we’re like “hey let’s go up the lake this weekend” and next thing you know we’re off on a 260 mile daytrip with two cans of redbull and a joke mixtape from high school. i’ve soloed one of those and by the time you get to silver bay you’re speaking in tongues. you need a copilot if you’re going to be in any shape for fishing on arrival.
In New Zealand we mostly say bags rather than dibs or shotgun. I.e. ‘bags sitting in the front’ or ‘bags not picking that up’. No idea where it comes from though.
The photo above is the closest humanity has ever come to creating Medusa. If you were to look at this, you would die instantly.
The image is of a reactor core lava formation in the basement of the Chernobyl nuclear plant. It’s called the Elephant’s Foot and weighs hundreds of tons, but is only a couple meters across.
Oh, and regarding the Medusa thing, this picture was taken through a mirror around the corner of the hallway. Because the wheeled camera they sent up to take pictures of it was destroyed by the radiation. The Elephant’s Foot is almost as if it is a living creature.
Friendly reminder that this blob of core material was so hot and dense, it melted/burned through three floors of the building before coming to rest in the lowest basement.
And there’s now a unique species of black mold that feeds off the gamma radiation it produces.
Is no one else seriously freaked out by that mold? No? Just me, then?
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwhy was someone shooting it with a kalashnikov
dps check
I mean, the Elephant’s Foot is very very dangerous, but it wouldn’t kill you instantly. When it was first created about a minute of exposure would give you a fatal dose (x, x). That number is now around one hour. And yes, that photo was taken with mirrors, but you know which one wasn’t?
Yeah, this is a selfie. The guy set the timer on the camera and went and stood by it, and it produced this horrifying image that now haunts my dreams. The reason all the photos from Chernobyl are grainy and poor-quality, by the way, is due to radiation. The cameras were fine; radiation just… does that.
Anyway, that guy’s name is Artur Korneyev- and I use ‘is’ because he’s still alive! He helped to build the original sarcophagus which encased reactor 4 after the meltdown, and kept going back inside with reporters to be like ‘look how fuckin weird this is’. He helped plan the New Safe Confinement which now surrounds the sarcophagus, and would probably have helped build it too if they didn’t full-on ban him.
A quote:
‘Korneyev’s sense of humor remained intact, though. He seemed to have no regrets about his life’s work. “Soviet radiation,” he joked, “is the best radiation in the world.”‘
Possibly the coolest guy alive? I’m tempted to think so.
Honestly, I feel like Chernobyl has been shunted into this category of like, ‘a lot of innocent and naive people died horribly’, when in reality a lot of tough as fuck people saved everybody else. The oft-told story of the ‘suicide mission’ to dive into the reactor and open the valves of the pool? Yeah, all three of the men who dove lived. One died in 2005 of heart failure; the other two are still alive.
A total of 31 direct and 15 indirect deaths are thought to have occurred from the Chernobyl disaster. Long-term deaths are… difficult to measure. Oh, and there’s a few hundred people still living in the exclusion zone.
If you’re at all interested, I really recommend reading up about Chernobyl- and, in particular, what was done to contain it and deal with the radiation. This is a beautiful write-up, and the wiki page is also worth checking out.
A lot of people did absolutely incredible work and it goes unrecognised most of the time.
I don’t know who Megan Kelly is but I wanna piss her off
dis bitch
“Verifiable fact” 😭😂
I’d PISS ON HER tbh
btw Saint Nicholas, whom Santa Claus is based on, was a black guy
and we don’t know exactly what jesus looked like, but here’s an artistic reconstruction of an average 20-something male from his ethnic group at the time
DOES THIS LOOK FUCKING WHITE TO YOU
I want this post everywhere
jesus was represented more or less accurately as an ethnically jewish arab man up until the reign of pope alexander vi, in the late 15th century. since he was viciously persecuting roman jews during this time, alexander wanted to make them less sympathetic to the public, and did so in part by ordering that portrayals of jesus be based off of his son, cesare borgia.
the reason “jesus is white” is because someone purposefully attempted to alter the perception of history to benefit his goal of persecuting a targeted ethnic group.
God I hope I am immortalised by my husband for having 40 cats
Fun facts:
It cost $5,000 in 1888 to have this painting made, which is more than $120,000 in today’s money.
I say 1888 because it took three years for Kahler to complete, reportedly because he spent most of the time studying and sketching each cat to get a feel for their personality.
It was painted for Kate Johnson, the title was her husband’s idea though, proving him the most patient and good-humored husband in the history of crazy cat ladies.
Speaking of cat ladies, the picture actually contains 42 cats. Or more specifically, Mrs. Johnson’s 42 most favorite cats. She had 350 in total.
It sold at auction via Sotheby’s a few days ago for over $800,000 dollars, vastly more than its $200,000-$300,000 estimate.
O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil’s kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are thou, that canst not slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil shits, and your army eats. Thou shalt not, thou son of a whore, make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, fuck thy mother.
Thou Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-fucker of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, pig of Armenia, Podolian thief, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig’s snout, mare’s arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw thine own mother!
So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. You won’t even be herding pigs for the Christians. Now we’ll conclude, for we don’t know the date and don’t own a calendar; the moon’s in the sky, the year with the Lord, the day’s the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!
– Koshovyi otaman Ivan Sirko, with the whole Zaporozhian Host.”
Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire
In case anyone needed a dramatic reading of the above historical letter.
I’m dying!
Oh my god.
I’m now dying to know what happened next.
Period invective at its finest, even if it may not be quite as period as you think.
(NB – Peter Capaldi’s reading is probably NSFW without headphones.)
Here’s a link to much larger versions of the painting. Take a look at the full-size one: the facial expressions are a treat.
Also, check out Repin’s later, revised but uncompleted “sketch” version, which seems to have Vlad Dracula as a guest star just right of centre.
Listening to Capaldi’s reading you can really imagine this crowd of bros around a table yelling at the guy with the pen not to forget their favourite insult.
Tag yourself–I’m “don’t know the date and doesn’t own a calendar”
Thanks for tagging me @katjohnadams ! I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the Knights Templar, having done my Masters thesis on them. Most of my thoughts center on the sheer volume of BS that has been written about them over the centuries. I would love a chance to work on this site!
artherra 
