.@LAWeekly’s PR firm that sells best of spots in their articles to people threatened me with a campaign of “negative articles” about me and “forced to get your account banned / taken down using the mass reporting tools / software we have access to” if I don’t delete this tweet.
"the austrasians rose and slew parthenius, the minister who had suggested to the king this method of increasing his revenue."
charles oman, the dark ages
conquered populations pay tax. if your government taxes you, they see you as a vanquished outsider
"the revenue of the merovings seemed chiefly to have fallen under four heads: first was the profits of the royal demesne worked by the domestici; the second was the produce ...
"theudebert, grandson of chlodovech [clovis], we are told, first subjected the native frankish districts to the impost, a grievance so deeply felt that, when he died ...
some amazonian tribes used to (do?) think that paternity wasn't necessarily individual. eventually enough semen builds up and that's your baby. no need for it to all be from one man. mother, kid and community would recognize multiple fathers
australian aborigines believed that pregnancy resulted from encounters with ancestral spirits living in certain identifiable places (that one rock, spring, tree)
i doubt they dismissed sex entirely as a cause, idk, but basically a baby was an ancestor who'd chosen to be reborn
if i'm murdered, you don't need to avenge my death by murdering my killer. i know that can have some pretty severely negative consequences, and i want good things for you
but i want you to *want* to do that. to acknowledge it as the correct and moral thing to do, in a vacuum
While drinking, a Pilot bet he could land outside the bar, 2 hours later he touched down in central New York in a stolen aircraft. Years later he repeated the stunt because someone wouldn't believe him.
In September 1956 after drinking heavily at a bar in New York City, Thomas Fitzpatrick made an intoxicated barroom bet that he could travel from New Jersey to New York City in 15 minutes.
At 3 a.m. he stole a single-engine plane from the Teterboro and flew without any lights or radio before landing on St. Nicholas Avenue near 191st Street in front of the bar where the bet was made.
The New York Times called it a "fine landing" and a "feat of aeronautics". For his illegal flight, he was fined $100 after the plane's owner refused to press charges.
In October 1958 just before 1 a.m., Fitzpatrick again stole another plane from the same airfield and landed on Amsterdam and 187th after another bar patron disbelieved his first feat.
For his second stolen flight, judge John A. Mullen sentenced him to six months in prison. When asked why did had undertaken the 2nd flight Fitzpatrick told the police "he had pulled off the second flight after a bar patron refused to believe he had done the first one"
Fitzpatrick was a Marine during the Korean War and received a Purple Heart. He has three sons and was married to his wife, Helen, for 51 years working as a steamfitter. He died in 2009 at the age of 79.
Fitzpatrick has a mixed drink named after him for his feat called the "Late Night Flight"