Boobytrap

tirsdag den 24. september 2024

CATTELENA: Black Spinster In Tudor England

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I admit that I was quite surprised to learn about the 16 Africans living in the small village of Almondsbury close to Bristol in England. How did they get there? One of them was Cattelena who seems to be the best known of this group of Africans. She left possessions which secured her name through the inventory of them after she died in 1625. It's obvious that she wasn't poor in the go-hungry-sense of the word:

"She is described as ‘Cattelena, a negra deceased of Almonsbury in the county of Gloucester, single woman & in the diocese of Bristol’. Her inventory includes cooking utensils, clothes, bedding, tablecloth, and a candlestick. However, Cattelena’s most prized possession was a cow."

As pet names were common for cows one may wonder why Cattelena's cow didn't have a name. After all, it must have been the source of sustenance for her, as it gave her milk and butter. Also she may have sold dairy products in the village. The worth of this cow has been made up to be: "Catellena’s cow was worth £3 10 shillings, £460.32 in today’s money. In 1625, the year Cattelena died, this would have also bought you 10 stones of wool, a quarter of wheat, and was the equivalent of 70 days of skilled labour."

To be the owner of a cow may have been the way Cattelena survived as a citizen in a small village because, without making her "rich", it must have kept her free of grave money troubles. It seems that she was a well-to-do spinster who happened to be black, but that leads to a question: How did she - and the other 15-16 black citizens - end up in England????

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Being a spinster wasn't that unusual, as c. 30% of the English adult female population is supposed to have been single. What was special about someone like Cattelena was that she, single as she was, lived in her own home, although she may not have been the owner, but rented it. Not more than 5% of single women below the age of 45 were head of their households which she seems to have been.

By the way, the total of the possessions listed on Cattelena's inventory came to £6 9s 6d (: £851.59). As she presumably wasn't toiling as a servant, but simply lived off her cow she did quite well ....

https://schoolhistory.co.uk/early-modern/cattelena-of-almondsbury/

https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/black-tudors/0/steps/224781

Wikipedia

søndag den 22. september 2024

Whatever Made The Toad Hop?

Whatever made the toad hop?
He wasn’t tickled or spun like a top
Why did he make such long strides
When nothing threatened his toad-hides?

Maybe he sang to annoy me
I shouted as loud as I could: Stop, let it be!
But no, he did not stop his infamous noise
Well, that was his own choice

A singing and quacking toad is at danger
The stork wants his lunch without anger
He grabbed Mr. Toad to swallow him in one gulp!
Poor Mr. Toad cried out but nobody stopped the stork

Down he went in the throat of the stork
Even down into his stomach, singing all along
Poor, poor Toad bore no vengence or regrets
He just sang and danced as down he went

fredag den 20. september 2024

Camille Claudel, Sculptor, Muse And Mistress

This young woman doesn't look happy, but when one sees her soulful and beautiful face it speaks volumes both of an interesting personality as well as a difficult life: Camille Claudel (1864-1943). As so many other talented women she dreamed of giving vent to her artistic visions, although her mother found her ambitions of becoming a sculptor very unladylike and tried to curb them. However, Camille had her way and she went to Paris to study at The Academie Colarossi which not only allowed female students, but also gave them the opportunity to work with nude, male models. (At that time Ecole des Beaux-Arts barred women from enrolling to study). Alfred Boucher became her mentor and friend for three years, and he was the one who introduced her to the famous sculptor Augusta Rodin in 1883. Much to her mother's chagrin the 18 years old Camille not only became his muse, but also his mistress. This relationship gave her access to the artistic circles of Paris, but it was seen as scandalous, not least by her family.

August Rodin, c. 1875–80

It's well-known that many of Rodin's works were made in collaboration with Camille, but typically for that time, Rodin received the honors. Camille wasn't recognized as the artist she was, and she also had to share her famous lover with another woman, the mother of his son. In 1898 she suffered a miscarriage and broke off her sexual relationship with him. At the same time she seems to have developed some kind of psychological problems, smashing some of her works, withdrawing from society now and then which gave her mother the opportunity to have her locked up in a mental asylum for the rest of her life.

Another reason for her changed attitude may have been that Rodin, who had been of help to her, started to oppose some of her ideas and see to it that she didn't get the opportunities she deserved. That didn't condemn her to an eternal obscurity: In 2017 she was sort of being "re-discovered", and today her works are exhibited in several famous museum. Also she now has her own museum, southeast of Paris: Musée Camille Claudel which holds approximately half of her artworks.

Camille Claudel in her studio with a plaster model of "Perseus and the Gorgon"

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-woman-of-genius/

https://www.christies.com/en/stories/camille-claudel-collecting-guide-6102000635104cbe88a705f65fdf8288

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Claudel

lørdag den 14. september 2024

WARNING: Facebook is attempting ID-thefts

This Facebook-message in Danish, which I received this morning, reads as follows: "Prove your identity using a videoselfie: In order to make sure that you are a real individual you need to make a videoselfie. We want you to move your head during this process to help us in shooting your face from various angles."

WOW, this very first message of the day really set my soul aflame after being told that I had been kicked out of Facebook: THANK YOU, Mr. Zuckerberg, I SEE THAT KIND OF EFFORTS AS A GENUINE RECOMMENDATION OF EVERYTHING I STAND FOR!!!!!!

Well, but HOW did our ongoing fight over my Facebook-postings being "proper" or not end up in something like this? I think it started out with my not liking the 45th president of USA, whom I always refer to as Don the Con (or even worse), but I can't be sure, and it may be something else that turned the focus on me and my postings, even called some of them "pornographic" (which they are not!!!). One of these assumedly pornographic postings goes back 10-12 years and Facebook has been harping about it for a long time: It's the photo of teenage-girls and one of them is "mooning" the photographer/onlooker. I see that as a joke, but the Facebook-"police" see it as child pornography. It goes without saying that had it been anything close to child-pornography I wouldn't have brought it as I'm against exploiting other people, young or not. However, photos like that one sent me to Facebook jail over and over.

After being kicked out (they called it something else) by Facebook they offered me a sort of comeback by starting a new profile. To me that looked silly, but I decided to se what happened if I tried to do so.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly, but then I was asked to give them my "videoselfie". THAT was a full stop for me as I know that they, actually right now, are harvesting the comments, sayings, etc. by the members for the developing of their (more or less illicit) AI-programs. However, I my face or my words, are not for that kind of exploitation by Mark Elliot Zuckerberg.

By the way, during the process of starting a new profile I was asked about the date of my birthday, and I chose to give them a random age. Why? Because, these days, a birthday-date may be the first step in attaining access, etc. to the most private parts of someone's privacy ....

As they always stress their concern about privacy issues and the importance of not exploiting them I'm quite flabbergasted at their reading - and sampling??? - private conversations on Messenger. Looks weird, looks illicit or "out of character for what they propose to be"??? Yup, and still it's true as I can prove by this screenshot of their comment to one of my private Messenger-conversations:

The framed part reads as follows: "You can't post messages for 3 days. Something you wrote in a chat goes against our rules."

As will be known Facebook is working on developing some of those, before-mentioned, AI-constructions and that's what they use as an excuse of several kinds of transgressions, like e.g. the "burglary" of Messenger. They are not the only ones who are working on something like that, but that's no excuse as people come to the platform for some innocent fun, not to be exploited by something that looks more and more like an attempted ID-theft. Actually, they seem to suffer from some delusions about "ownership", but the users of Facebook are NOT "owned" by anybody but themselves.

https://www.meta.com/da-dk/help/quest/articles/accounts/account-settings-and-management/delete-meta-account/

Noyb - Google-søgning

https://headshottr.com/

fredag den 13. september 2024

Star Gazer and X-ray Woman

Sarah Frances Whiting (1847-1927) was a true pioneer in astronomy, and her work stands today, as she was one of the founders as well as the first director of the observatory at Wellesley College. She made a career before that was considered proper for women.

Actually, Sarah Frances Whiting was the first one to establish a program of astronomy in laboratory instruction for women in the United States. However, she also delved into another - and then quite new - field of science: X-rays. She started out only a few weeks after Wilhelm Röntgen annonced the discovery of this kind of rays which to me is a proof that she was of a genuine scientific mind, ready to study something that not many have done before. That turns her into a "double pioneer": A physicist, which she was, as well as an astronomer, which she also was.

In her long career she introduced many women to physics and astronomy even though both these fields of science were almost entirely associated with men at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Fr

https://pubs.aip.org/aapt/ajp/article/91/6/417/2891436/Sarah-Frances-Whiting-pioneer-of-laboratory

https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1927PA.....35..539C

onsdag den 4. september 2024

Was Einstein A Science-Thief????

Albert Einstein was a gifted man

For ages Albert Einstein was considered the smartest man on Earth. According to legend he himself pointed at Nikola Tesla as someone who deserved that acclaim more than he did. However, if he did, there may be another reason for his declining the honorable appellation of a genius: He may have stolen some scientific works from other scientists. As is well-known he battened on the works of his first wife, the Serbian physicist and mathematician, Mileva Maric. Actually, she seems to have registered most of her works in his name because he convinced her that she, being a woman, would be met by prejudices that wouldn't allow her to publish it in her own name. Also he told her that her gender would make both her and her work unnoticed or even rejected as science.

Mileva Maric was the first wife of Albert Einstein

The allegations that he stole the Theory of Relativity from his brilliant wife, Mileva Maric, stems from Abram Fedorovich Joffe who saw the original manuscript, "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Korper", and then it was signed with both names. However, later on the name of Mileva Maric was left out when the work was published.

Albert and Elsa Einstein in Japan

One shouldn't forget that Albert Einstein also collaborated with fellow scientists Jurgen Rehn and Michel Jansis in forming parts of the Theory of Relativity, but somehow "forgot" their contribution after it was made famous. After the murder of his friend, the Egyptian scientist Mustafa Mosharafa, he may have stolen his science.

Albert Einstein and The Einstein puppet

After his first marriage to the brilliant and also wealthy mathematician, Mileva Maric, he married his first cousin, Elsa, who had no scientific ambitions. Actually, it has been said about her that she could hardly read, but was very good at gate-keeping against all the bothersome fans of this alleged "smartest man on the planet", Albert Eintein.