TIL: the Medicis were severely disabled. Also #disability news:
This is why the Vatican has so many weirdly shallow staircases—popes are old so the Vatican was a palace expecting to always host a disabled monarch, so it’s full of built-in accommodations, the most complex and fascinating accessible architecture case study in the world.
And it’s not chance that it was the first Medici pope, Lorenzo’s son Leo X, who finally installed a donkey-powered elevator in the papal fortress Castel Sant’Angelo. Leo was elected young, still fairly fit, but had memories of his parents’ condition getting worse, and knew his would.
So, Lorenzo’s descendants finally built Earth’s largest, most famous disability access ramp. It’s name is the Vasari Corridor, the elevated walkway…(snip)…conquering Duke Cosimo I’s project of architectural domination, the tyrant’s assassin-proof walkway piercing the city’s heart. Diversity celebration or tyrant’s monument? It’s the same piece of architecture but feels completely different depending on what question we ask about it: Why was it built? For power? For chronic pain? Yes. Both.
Came here to post that.
The photos are just incredible and immediate.
I can’t believe we are basically coming full circle here in 2025.
Thanks for posting.
did they actually go into caves and get groovy with several species of small furry animals?
that would be cool.
LOL!
More about how the term came to be, and how it was cemented in the Christian era…
Sorta on topic - would any of you history buffs recommend an undergrad major in this area?
My teen recently applied for business studies w a second choice of History - the latter is easier to get into.
I’m concerned about the real-world utility of this degree - though some like Philosophy and Ethics seem to be on the rise thanks to their role in AI development.
Thx!
The job market for professors is absolute shit (at least here in the US, I can’t speak for other countries). Unless they end up coming out of a top school with a PhD (harvard, yale, etc), they’ll end up adjuncting or at least with a lecturing positions at a community college (which can be rewarding, but it can be a slog, since adjuncting is so very contigent)… like anything else, it’s networking that matters.
But I think that if they stop at a BA (maybe gets a masters in something else?) they will find the skillset of a historian useful for any type of work that involves writing, research, project based work, etc. Many people with BAs in history end up going into lawschool, since the overlap of skills is pretty strong.
Yes, if they want to have a stronger set of skills with regards to critical thinking, research, being able to organize large projects, history is great for that. They should think of it in terms of developing strong skills, I’d argue.
And if they are a self-starter, then getting a history degree and becoming an independent researcher, writing books or doing videos on youtube or writing a substack, any kind of freelance writing is also an option…
History could also be useful there, if they pairs a history degree with some coding skills. Far too many tech-dude-bros dominating the field have no historical imagination, and this is part of why we’re suffering through this current crisis. People need to be grounded in a firm understanding of historical processes and concepts like historical contingency than is the case now. The tech and business fields are full of arrogant pricks who think that understanding the past and how we got here is irrelevant, since they believe themselves to be forging some bold new future… well, making any future depends on understanding our path to the current moment. We could use a LOT more of that in the business world in general, but especially with regards to technological development…
My $.02 as a failed academic! Best of luck to him, whatever path they choose!
Picts or it didn’t happen.
Maybe Mindy-san can reGael us with stories instead.
We talk a lot about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but less so about the firebombing of Tokyo… I think we talk about the firebombing of Dresden more, even, than Tokyo…
See also [Eric] Berne’s Law: “The basic existential position of human beings is, ‘I am blameless.’”
Berne also succinctly described, in his textbook for professionals working with the Transactional Analysis school of psychology/psychiatry, one of the commonest and most toxic of human ego-states: the “Little Fascist.”
A fascist may be defined as a person who has no respect for living tissue and regards it as his prey. This arrogant attitude is no doubt a relic of the prehistory of the human race, [when] ruthlessness meant efficiency and greed was motivated by hunger. But as the human mind and brain evolved through natural selection, these qualities were not bred out… Ruthlessness developed into cruelty, and greed into exploitation and theft. The small fascist in every human being is a little torturer who probes for and enjoys the weakness of his victims. …He who pretends that these forces do not exist becomes their victim.
It was a wake-up call when I read it the first time in the '70s. It remains one, day by day, this year.
Yes, this is about history.
144 years ago today, Andrew Watson was captain of the Scotland football team, becoming the first Black footballer to be capped anywhere in the world.