Matt Gabriele

it's delightful!

You are describing a golf cart (laudatory)

Plus there’s a quite funny origin story

Living in Blacksburg the home of Bennys I find it funny that it’s elsewhere

Love the alt text

Oh wait. 1350, after Black Death

It’s always good to have mayo

HE’S INSIDE THE HOUSE

Let’s gooooooooooooo

Favorite response

They did! Fought against the Beneventans and Byzantines in the 790s. Didn’t get super far and then Louis the Pious kind of got distracted by other problems so couldn’t follow up…

Runic inscriptions in Hagia Sophia - Wikipedia

Sure. Maybe the Vikings who carved their runic names in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_i...

Right now a drink with scotch and sweet vermouth, batched for happy hour

If I’m feeling spicy 1789. Effective end of the European aristocracy (thank you Ernst Troeltsch)

Is that a Benny’s?

The cocktails are good btw

At a bar and a couple in. Good vibes. AMAA

Graham Platner’s claims that he didn’t know tattoo was Nazi-linked undercut by new evidence | CNN Politics A KFile investigation has uncovered mounting evidence that Platner — a Marine veteran— was aware of and defended the use of Nazi symbolism that had come to be embraced by some members of the military.

Plus he knew!

www.cnn.com/2025/10/24/p...

Thinking back to Jesse Simple calling himself a “veteran of the Twitter wars” after the Harper’s Letter dropped and can only hear Ashokan Farewell as I type this

plus you might get kidnapped or murdered while taking your kid to school!

It’s funny that most of the comments are about how people like shorter novels and novellas and perhaps that also explains the nonfiction crisis

Let’s talk about Graham Platner’s Big Lie, finally. In 2009, at the height of the Gulf War, the Marines barred him from active duty. Platner claims it was his forearm tattoos. But his one forbidden tattoo was the Nazi symbol on his chest. He knew - and he left the Marines rather than give it up. 1/

and as my friend says, the "dark ages" claim does modern, political work

bsky.app/profile/loll...

neither the dates nor the claim are true at all!

I’d like people to notice is how the reviewer and the introduction uses a multi-century movement of peoples to support today’s anti-immigrant argument in Britain.

However you characterize movement from 200-600, it ain’t anything like anything modern. Because FOUR HUNDRED YEARS

reported in Ademar of Chabannes and Rodulfus Glaber

so in 1009, the Caliph al-Hakim destroyed (well, likely damaged) the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. in certain cities, rumors were started that said that the Jews of Europe had instigated it and pressured the Islamic ruler to do what he did. massacres were carried out of the Jews in those cities.

“The ‘Dark Ages’,” Haywood writes, “has become a byword for ignorance, brutality and squalor.” He objects to that generalisation but then goes on to show that many areas were indeed dark. After Rome fell, the threads that held society together began to break. Across the old empire, splendid buildings were abandoned and knowledge of Latin waned. Violence took the place of governance. It is interesting to note that the Visigoths ruled the Iberian peninsula from 418 to 631 but left almost no cultural mark on the region.

come the fuck on, man. do you think Rome and Greece were not violent? do you think languages wouldn't change across 1000 years and (at least) 3 continents?

Cone-headed barbarians! Welcome to the Dark Ages John Haywood’s delightfully old-fashioned The Making of the Middle Ages uses maps to reveal how marauding tribes changed Europe after the fall of Rome

so when @lollardfish.bsky.social and me wrote THE BRIGHT AGES one of the things (some!) colleagues pushed back on was that no one thinks about the medieval world as "dark" anymore. those people were silly and very very wrong.

www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

no it does not