Photo of the Week: Romanov's Tower

Tsar Nicholas II chats with other adults while one of his daughters, likely Grand Duchess Olga or Grand Duchess Tatiana, climbs to the top of a small tower.

 Source: Yale University Library

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It's for your own good

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

    -    C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

Photo of the Week: Seesaw Race

Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna and Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna in the Finnish skerries.

Source: Album of Tatiana Nikolaevna, 1912-1913

Monarchy and elections Part 1: Koruna Česká

    In any given nation there are numerous political parties. Most are some flavor social democrat or liberal conservative with some communist and ethnic nationalist parties thrown in. Perhaps the most rare of all are the monarchist parties; they are few in number and those that actively participate in politics are rarer still. One of those active parties exists in Czechia and is known as Koruna Česká or Czech Crown (Monarchist Party of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia).

    Koruna Česká is running in the 2021 Czech legislative election on October 8-9. Read more here.

Photo of the Week: Distress

     The subject of the photo is what I'm going to call Old Timey Hungry Hungry Hippos for lack of knowledge but what I'm going to focus on is Grand Duchess Maria, situated between her father and the man with his back to the camera. While her default expression is a smile, here she seems to be in great distress. Sweet little girl is a bit too emotionally invested in whatever game the adults are playing.

   Source: Album of Alexandra Feodorovna, 1907.

BlogSpot Graveyard: No Bad Memes

First post: Monday, August 2, 2010

Last post: Sunday, December 16, 2012

    Yet another interest of mine is internet archaeology. It started out as simply searching for old and/or rare videos on YouTube and has since evolved into digging up dead Blogger blogs. I'm going to use this series to spotlight these dead blogs. For me to consider a blog dead it must not have any posts within one calendar year and large gaps between posting must not be a regular occurrence.

    First up is a blog that has gained a little bit of infamy on the internet lately for allegedly being owned by Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

    I had first heard of No Bad Memes on the subreddit r/masskillers in the comments on a different post about Adam Lanza on his recently discovered and since terminated YouTube channel CulturalPhilistine. The comments speculated that No Bad Memes was Lanza and a cursory glance supports this. Not only is the blog filled with longwinded, pseudo-intellectual ramblings about subjects Lanza was known to be obsessed with such as anti-natalism and chimp society but the last two posts made on December 15th and December 16th, 2012 talk about guns and a generic mention of the Sandy Hook shooting (but doesn't mention it by name, only mentioning Connecticut). In addition, any Blogger user knows that posts can be scheduled to publish at a predetermined time meaning it is entirely possible that Lanza scheduled these two posts as a 'parting gift' for society. It would be a mighty large coincidence that a blogger sharing similar views as Lanza would cease posting within days of Lanza killing himself.

    However upon closer inspection it appears the blog is not connected to Lanza. For example the blog author, Leaving Society, claims across several posts to be an "IT guy" with "several college degrees". Lanza was a 20-year old jobless, college dropout living with his mother. Perhaps more convincing is that Leaving Society makes several comments well after Lanza's demise. As far as I know it is not possible to schedule comments:

• January 26, 2013 at 8:31 PM
  
• January 26, 2013 at 7:38 PM
  
• June 16, 2013 at 10:28 AM
  
• January 29, 2013 at 11:02 PM
  
• January 29, 2013 at 10:34 PM
  
• January 29, 2013 at 9:44 PM
  
• January 29, 2013 at 10:43 PM
• January 29, 2013 at 10:09 PM
  
• June 16, 2013 at 10:17 AM
  
• June 16, 2013 at 10:21 AM
  

    We can see that at least three comments were made as late as June 2013, some seven months after Lanza died. My conclusion is that No Bad Memes was not owned by Adam Lanza, it merely shared his beliefs.

    An interesting note, however, is that Lanza had a YouTube channel named 'fuckcomments' and that at least half of the comments on No Bad Memes are made by anonymous trolls mocking the blog. I also found it a little bit humorous that No Bad Memes/Leaving Society was at least aware of the existence of 4chan all the way back in November 2011.

Photo of the Week: Anger

An angry Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna

 

Updated book list #7

  Completed:

• The 9/11 Commission Report
• Columbine by Dave Cullen
• Caught in the Revolution: Witnesses to the Fall of Imperial Russia by Helen Rappaport
• World War I: The Definitive Visual History
• World War II: The Definitive Visual History
• The Romanovs 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore
• The Vietnam War: The Definitive Illustrated History
• The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra by Helen Rappaport
• The Race to Save the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport
• The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
• The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg by Helen Rappaport
• What If? and What If? 2 - A series of essays by historians on what might have been.
• Citizen Soldiers by Stephen Ambrose
• Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
• America Before by Graham Hancock
• All the Gallant Men by Donald Stratton
• Killing the Rising Sun by Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard
• The Cay by Theodore Taylor
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
• Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen
• When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt
• 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West by Roger Crowley
• Creature by John Saul
• The Civil War: A Visual History

In progress:

• The Only Plane in the Sky by Garrett M. Graff
• The American Revolution: A Visual History

On the docket:

• The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power by Max Boot (A book I bought between 8th and 9th grades in July 2003 but never actually read.)
• Dark History of Russia by Michael Kerrigan
• War and Peace (abridged) by Leo Tolstoy

Lazarus the Mulberry

    Just posting some photos of Lazarus. For before photos just imagine a stick with crunchy, brown leaves attached to it.

The three mulberries. I haven't decided which one to keep yet.

The tallest one had its top snipped off by a rabbit.

I also happened upon a mantis lurking on some Sedum, waiting for a bee or wasp to come close.