Posts

Cast Adrift! - Koselleck, Benjamin, and Mudimbe arrive on time

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  Between the Two my Heart is Balanced , Lubaina Himid "Time is a difficult topic for historians. I remember an occasion when I was in the history department and I commented that—alluding to Koselleck—modern history not only is in time but also operates through it. This generated a rather snide comment from a colleague, a disgust with 'theory,' which is the only explanation for something that needlessly complicates what is so obvious and commonsensical as time."  — Stefan Tanaka, History without Chronology "Abu Huraira reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, 'How will you be when the son of Mary descends upon you while your leader is among you?'”  — Sahih al-Bukahri  3449 Hello, everyone! Pretty last minute for a (belated!) birthday post…already something of a tradition. Ramadan moved up in the Gregorian calendar again so March 12th is actually inside the month this year. This shift + getting older has me thinking about ti

Loving Goma - a farewell to VOLCANO CITY SOUKOUS + short note about the Congo

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  Bodys Isek Kingelez's 'extrêmes maquettes' of a weird-future Kinshasa (Kin la belle!) were a major influence on the Goma of  VCS "The story of ‘conflict minerals’ serves both as a cautionary tale and a powerful call to decolonise transnational governance and peacebuilding practice. It highlights the lack of ‘situated knowledge’ and critically interrogates the white saviourism that emanates from an unholy alliance that brings together (neo-)colonial frames, digital capitalism, neoliberal interventionism and humanitarianism."  — Christoph N. Vogel, Conflict Minerals, Inc.: War, Profit and White Saviourism in Eastern Congo "Congo is great; it requires greatness of spirit from us."   — Luc Nkulula Fucked up in the club, crying to a Tshala Muana record. I had a conversation about some of this recently and thought it might be worthwhile to put a version in a more permanent place. I haven't done a Congopost in a while, which is weird for this blog; it'

More Ideas for Civil Rights Holiday Tabletop T-shirts

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  literally impossible to improve upon this I didn't see the Goodman Games DCC RPG MLK DAY official tshirt until after MLK Day, but it's still before the Dallas MLK parade so I'm still on time in Texas, which is all that matters.  Aside: Dallas is the largest city in America run by a Republican mayor, a Black man who switched parties while in office. It's now ok to call Eric Johnson a c**ned-out race traitor; we couldn't say it when he was waging war on poor folks and destroying historic Black Dallas at the behest of his real estate / megachurch / Fortune 500 teat-suckling masters, but we can say it now bc he's doing all that under the other team's banner.  Anyways, this tshirt brought me to tears. I finally felt SEEN by the old/new schooldream renavolution's cognoscenti. This is what we've (a spiritual 'we', my own ancestors were herding camels in the Hawd during Reconstruction) been fighting for. When I stopped sobbing, though, I realized

Dark Princess: the Official RPG Setting (REAL [in progress])

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inclusion in a wojackpost might be the worst thing to happen to Du Bois since the feds stole his passport. i will do it four more times. "Matthew, Day has dawned. Of course a little Virginia farm cannot bound your world. Our feet are set in the path of moving millions... The Great Central Committee of Yellow, Brown, and Black is finally to meet. You are a member. The High Command is to be chosen. Ten years of preparation are set. Ten more years  of final planning, and then five years of intensive struggle. In 1952, the Dark World goes free - whether in Peace and fostering Friendship with all men, or in Blood and Storm - it is for Them - the Pale Masters of today - to say... Our chart is laid. Our teeth are set, our star is risen in the East. The 'one far-off divine event' has come to pass, and now, oh, Matthew, Matthew, as soon as both in soul and body you stand free, hurry to us and take counsel with us and see Salvation...The Day has dawned, Matthew - the Great Plan is o

NEW WISDOMS FOR NEW WORLDS - an oracular """resolution mechanic"""

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  an  ọpọ́n Ifá/divination tray brought to Europe from the Allada Kingdom in the 1650s, possibly the oldest African wood sculpture in a Western collection. Ọsa Otura says, “What is Truth?”  I say, “What is Truth?” Ọrunmila says, “Truth is the character of Olodumare.  Truth is the word that cannot fall. Ifá is Truth.  Truth is the word that cannot spoil.  Might surpassing all. Blessing everlasting.”    — from the O dù Ọsa-Otura Let be, my soul, fold your rebellious pinions, There is no way out of the web of things, It is a snare that never will be broken, And if you struggle you will break your wings. Be still a while, content to brood on beauty; Caught in the trap of space that has no end, See how the stars, august in their submission, Take their Great Captor for their changeless friend. — In the Web , Sara Teasdale the Birdking of the Prismatic Wasteland has issued a challenge ! many worthies have already offered up their responses - artisans of wonder piling  | jewels  | mechanica

being a problem - playable orcs at the limits of humanity

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SOB, SOB by Kerry James Marshall “For this too is what W. E. B. Du Bois might have us think of as the gift of black culture, the gift of blackness: the great chain of being come undone, life itself unfettered and moving in all directions, a window into the worlds that thrive at the underside of modernity." — Joshua Bennett , Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man [brief note]   i stealth edit posts all the time. this is a personal blog and im prone to typos + weird phrasing. god has already forgiven me for this. ive edited this post a lot tho, like much more than i normally would, and will probably keep working on it so its only fair that i make some mention of these frequent changes somewhere. ill do a second post if it gets bad enough, promise. we're all about works-in-progress here at A Most Majestic Fly Whisk! dictated. not read. — the management Hey y'all, hope everyone's been having a happy and restful (in that order) holiday season. My nieces j

Putting Things in Context - RPG bloggers vs. the Cambridge School intellectual historians

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Little says more about the soul of America than the fact that one of its greatest painters was briefly  an anarcho-McCarthyist Sometime towards the beginning of the year, I came across an interesting counterpoint to some of the reconsiderations of lore and its functions that bloggers had been posting about in an anonymous blog comment. It was a little more elaborate (and a lot more insulting) but the heart of the argument went something like this: things like conventional gazetteers are useful for providing the same contextualizing depth that historians rely upon when studying or writing, without this you can't have a truly grounded world of play. The actual argument being made is not interesting imo - it's already been dealt with by Sandro's post above . What makes this idea worth exploring to me is that historians themselves are often unclear or weird or both about what they mean when they say "historical context." Maybe even unclear or weird in ways that so