Articles I read in May 2022

I normally don't do this, but since I have been working full time on my thesis, I read a lot of articles, so I thought I do a wrap up of those aswell. The theme of the articles is witch hunts and the historiography of witchcraft, as my thesis is on a witch trial. All the articles I found on jstor (and I will link the website), the majority are in English but I'll also include those written in Italian.

The Pursuit of Reality: Recent Research into the History of Witchcraft by Malcolm Gaskill

The Historiography of European Witchcraft: Progress and Prospects by E. William Monter

The European Witch Craze of the 14th to 17th Centuries: A Sociologist's Perspective by Nachman Ben-Yehuda

Who Were the Witches? The Social Roles of the Accused in the European Witch Trials by Richard A. Horsley

Witchcraft, Female Aggression, and Power in the Early Modern Community by Edward Bever

Witchcraft Prosecutions and the Decline of Magic by Edward Bever

The Invisible Men: The Historial and The Male Witch by Lara Apps and Andrew Gow (This is the first chapter of the book Male Witches In Early Modern Europe, I ended up reading the whole book, all the chapters are present on jstor, but I will link only this one. For those interested the book is composed by five chapters plus the introduction and conclusion)

La stregoneria. Confessioni e accuse, nell'analisi di storici e antropologi di Mary Douglas Reviewed by Michela Pereira

Ancora a Proposito di Streghe by Michaela Valente

The full list of books I read this month and their reviews is here

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

obsessed with the fact humans successfully made computers to do math so now we are making computers worse at math

been seeing homies get deep into "the terror" and making me want to rewatch SO i spent two hours in the dead of night reading the wiki/the subreddit/other linked articles and like. one of those articles was deadass fucked up

there was a woman who spoke inuktitut who was writing a book containing a lot of inuit oral histories, and in nunavut she was able to hear passed-down recollections of when survivors from the franklin expedition were passing through

and like. i can't imagine being an inuit family/group, knowing that europeans exist but having never seen them, seeing 8-9 shambling, blue-skinned, cold-to-the-touch out-of-their-minds white men come wandering by. they invited the men inside their igloos for warmth, for food, to be hospitable. the men refused to eat, refused to speak, and when trade was offered, clutched their possessions close and refused to entertain the idea of trade. this was, offputting, to say the least. the group set them up in their own igloo, with their own fire, and left three whole seals for them to eat. and then they fled cause what the FUCK get out of there. they came back in a few days to check on the strangers. the three seals were completely untouched, while all of the men had killed and eaten each other

i mean. fuck dude. there are obviously pretty dark angles to view the franklin expedition from– honestly can't think of a good angle, it's pure colonialism and british exceptionalism– but that specific interaction, that inuit group who were living lives as normal until a dozen fucking walking dead showed up and did cannibalism. no wonder that story got passed down, i'd be shitting my pants if i saw that

Mostly spoiler free summary of my viewing experience

100 small acts of love by The New York Times 💌

genuinely it will never stop baffling me how people will wear twilight shirts and talk about team Edward vs team Jacob and then the same people will be like "I'm not basing my personality off of a piece of media (harry potter) made by a transphobe 😌" like good that's great! so you can excuse racism but you draw the line at transphobia? good to know

Clicked on an article from the anthropology subreddit about loneliness and was immediately blasted into oblivion by this opening paragraph

wait but can we talk about how jarring it is to read official news releases ab this show after marinating for months in the good omens fandom on tumblr?? like, i'll read a piece from an actual news site that goes something like,,, "Good Omens explores the dynamic between two unlikely friends--one angelic, one demonic--as they navigate their lives on Earth in the aftermath of a failed attempt to enact Armageddon. Throughout the course of the second season's six-episode run, Crowley (as played by Dr. Who's David Tennant) and Aziraphale (played by the delightful Michael Sheen of Prodigal Son) must face down power-hungry demons, unexpected visitors, and new job prospects, all while playing matchmaker for a couple of shopkeepers in the area. In the wake of an overwhelmingly positive reception from fans, there's discussion of an upcoming season 3."

and it's like,,, I-- WHAT??? is this how non-brainrotted individuals approach the story? did we even watch the same show???

cause meanwhile, for the past three months, we've all collectively been like,,,

we really truly are living in the eye of the hyperfixation hurricane, huh?

'asking for the severance they’re owed by law could potentially become a financial burden to the studio and further jeopardize the development of Dreadwolf' ?? girl

Brown University students are launching an indefinite hunger strike for Palestine

they are asking for their university to divest from companies profiting from the genocide in gaza and openly call for a ceasefire and will not eat until the university governing bodies hears and considers a divestment resolution. if you are not familiar with the physical toll a hunger strike takes on the body, it might be worth looking up to get a better sense of what a significant action these students are taking. the university's highest governing body is having their first meeting of 2024 on february 8-9th so let's rally around them to muster even more pressure on brown university.

brown university contact page: let's state our support for these students and let brown university know the world will be watching what happens next!

additional reading: coverage of this story in the university's student news paper - get to know some of the hunger strikers

BABYBEL CHEESE, HOME OF CHALLENGE PISSING! THATS RIGHT CHALLENGE PISSING. HOW DOES IT WORK? IF YOU CAN PISS SIX FEET IN THE AIR STRAIGHT UP AND NOT GET WET, YOU GET NO DOWN PAYMENT ON YOUR NEXT ORDER OF BABYBELS VEGAN CHEESE WHEELS!

unironically everyone should become a wikipedia guy especially if you have a really bad social media addiction. it really helps you rebuild your attention span in a way that's really interesting and engaging I feel

wikihow is asking me to pay to find out if driving a car is scary