A Long-winded and Not Particularly Focused Set of Thoughts Can’t Read Your Mind There is an official word for assuming that someone believes something because of some psychological problem. I think it’s ‘psychogenetic fallacy.’ Not super sure, though. It’s a tempting fallacy to use when it comes to pseudohistory claims, especially about aliens. I’d…

Or, How Did A Nice Devonshire Girl Get Mixed Up With Witches? — The Gist St Walpurgis, English name Walpurga, was a real person. She was an Anglo-Saxon women from a family pretty thoroughly invested in the Jesus sauce. Her father was a man named Richard the Pilgrim, and he had two sons named Winnebald and Willibald. …

I’m reading Agatha Christie’s short stories, and the first thing I noticed is how exactly Poirot and Hastings are modeled on Holmes and Watson. Or rather, how bastardized. Watson and Hastings are both the narrators, but Watson has his own life. We know he gets married, and, while his purpose…

What the heck is it, and why do we care? There was a small announcement in the history convention about three lengths of sheep skin parchment, sewn together to make about three meters. …

The Vultures Hovering Over My Safer Company Snapshot Are Scarier Than The FMSCA My husband has a courier company, and it had to update its company information this month in order to keep authorized. The letter the FMSCA sent said it had to be updated ‘on or before’ June 30th. …

To Every Problem, There Is A Solution That is Simple, Easy, and Wrong HL Mencken Actually, I’m not sure if that was Mencken. He said something similar, at least. But his quote gets to the heart of my complaint: making everything in history simple is wrong. It is particularly wrong…

Or why I can’t give advice “Should I start saving up to move out, Mom?” “Uuuhhhmmm….” For context, the moggy kitten is going to be 17 in July, so this isn’t a random question. …

Or why he I skimmed ‘G-Man’ — I ‘inherited’ a few hardback thrillers from my mom’s ex-roommate, and some of them are fine. It was my first brush with Jack Reacher, for one thing. Lee Child is ok. And some of them are…exceptionally shallow. Like, if it was a puddle, my heel would remain dry if I…

Auguste Dupin Sherlock Holmes Hercule Perriott Peter Wimsey Jane Marple What do they all have in common? A lot, actually. And they have set the standard for episodic detective fiction for generations. They have status in common. In the case of Auguste Dupin and Peter Wimsey, they are nobles. Peter’s…