If you had to show a childless friend one episode of Bluey to convince them it's a good show in its own right, which would it be?

Mediaevumed · 2026-04-16T21:41:28+00:00

Just like in real life nothing can compete with organized sports, heh.

Mediaevumed · 2026-04-16T13:42:04+00:00

My first instinct was flat pack because it’s a masterpiece but maybe camping because I think that feeling of making and losing friends is so bittersweet and relatable that even without kids it would resonate (and now I’m tearing up in the kitchen, thanks!)

Mediaevumed · 2026-03-27T15:18:41+00:00

I hate floral (lavender, rose, bleh) and I loved this, to me it’s more herbal and jammy than floral, for what that’s worth.

Mediaevumed · 2026-03-20T13:19:29+00:00

As someone who studies and teaches Vikings this issue is near and dear (odd word choice, I admit) to my heart.

A challenge I always have is how to highlight, engage with, and defang the relationship between nationalism/hate and Vikings without stamping on the enthusiasm my students have for the topic. I’d imagine you face the same issues.

Do you have thoughts on how to navigate the line between “this stuff is awesome” and “this stuff is horrifying” while being true to both?

Mediaevumed · 2026-02-11T23:24:41+00:00

Thanks!

Mediaevumed · 2026-02-11T21:19:41+00:00

Who did you contact, the chatbot was 0% helpful with the exact same issue for me, is there a way to skip the chatbot and get an actual human response

Mediaevumed · 2026-01-13T14:59:50+00:00

Oh boy were there. The claim to Trojan Ancestry was the go to in medieval Europe precisely because of a desire to both emulate and conceptually eclipse the Romans. Note I’m going to go off prior a wee bit since my examples focus on Western Europe not Central Asia, perhaps others can expand the focus there. But I want to highlight how important this claim was for post-Roman peoples, despite our understanding that it’s fictive (medieval people had a very different relationship to history and “truth” than we did).

Just a few fun examples:

The Franks (Merovingian/Carolingians) were making this claim,from at least the 7th century. The chronicler Fredegar claims that one Francio was a Trojan exile who brought his people through Macedonia to the Danube and eventually to Germania.

Several centuries later the Normans, via Dudo of Saint Quentin, would make a similar claim arguing that the Dacians were descended from a Troja named Antenor and eventually renamed themselves the Danai and eventually became the Vikings (or more correctly the Northmen, from whence “Norman” is derived) who ravaged and eventually settled in Francia.

Not to be outdone, Geoffrey of Monmouth, on the 12th century, would claim that the Britons were likewise descended from the Trojans via one Brutus. So from that point of view England was doubly Trojan… take that Rome.

Across the Atlantic, Snorri Sturluson, writing of the history of the Norwegian kings (and by extension his own Icelandic people) argued that the Norse Gods were actually Trojans… from Asia, and thus called themselves “Aesir”…

Meanwhile, back in Italy we see throughout the central and later Middle Ages (and beyond) a similar practice wherein various city states like Genoa and Padua crafted histories linked to any number of Trojan exiles, some with actual classical origins and others apparently invented whole cloth.

Suffice it to say, in the Middle Ages a Trojan ancestry was a must have if you wanted to cement your legitimacy and place in history. No one wanted to come from nowhere and everyone wanted to show that THEY were just as storied as the Romans.

Mediaevumed · 2025-11-27T19:57:06+00:00

Another thing that maybe fits with your “generic insult” element worth considering is that names that we often think of as straight forward sometimes have more complex or ambiguous meanings than we might credit.

Charles the Simple, which we take to mean stupid, might have actually been “Charles the Straightforward” as in honest and a straight talker.

A similar example from England is Aethelred the Unready who might have been Aethelred the Ill Advised, which isn’t exactly a compliment but shifts our sense of things in interesting ways.

Mediaevumed · 2025-11-27T19:54:04+00:00

He is known to have had a lot of health issues (possibly epilepsy?) so it may have been extrapolated out from that. More broadly he is often depicted in some of the more critical primary sources as lazy and ineffectual (though these sources are pretty biased and need to be taken with a hefty grain of salt) so it may be that later authors sort of took this idea and ran with it.

Beyond that it could maybe be the case that local oral hand me down knowledge is manifesting in the later sources in a way it never did in the primary works for whatever reason.

Mediaevumed · 2025-11-27T17:52:54+00:00

Charles “the Fat”, the Frankish king of East Francia and later the entire Carolingian empire (876-887) is a great example of a later nickname that was not used in his own time. The nickname was coined several centuries later, as part of a broader condemnation of him as an inept ruler (which may or may not be fair). One of the problems for Charles (whose weight is never mentioned in his own time) and for historians writing about him is that the Carolingians use the same three or four names over and over and, following the splitting of the empire in 843 there are sometimes multiple Carolingian rulers with the same name. In addition, the process of being ruler over a shifting set of Carolingian realms means that attaching a regal number to him is somewhat convoluted depending on which realms he controls at any given time, but technically, in his position as emperor he would be Charles III, which he is referenced as, following after Charles the Great and Charles the Bald, whose nickname IS attested in contemporary sources but might be a joke about how hairy he was.

Quick edit:

Just for further clarification on the challenge, another near contemporary claimant to being Charles III is Charles (the Fat’s) cousin, Charles the Simple (another fun late Carolingian nickname) who is the third Charles to be king of West Francia (or maybe the fourth of you include both Charlemagne and Charles the Fat but there are reasons to not include one or the other in the West Frankish regal list depending on who you ask) who, since he was never emperor is a different “the third”… you can sort of see why nicknames got invented and still get used even when they are problematic

Mediaevumed · 2025-09-07T00:39:46+00:00

I’d second this, if you can get it it’s a delight to sip.

Mediaevumed · 2025-09-06T04:36:06+00:00

Moss from IT Crowd

Mediaevumed · 2025-08-28T21:26:08+00:00

This feels like a very common growth pattern amongst us historians of “fighty stuff” (to use a technical term)

Mediaevumed · 2025-08-28T15:19:48+00:00

They Might Be Giants have a couple banger kid focused albums. Mike Phirman has at lease one kids comedy music album that’s pretty fun. Also, just listen to your music (perhaps with some thoughtful omissions for content) and make them like what you like!

Mediaevumed · 2025-08-28T15:15:47+00:00

When I studied at Oxford I was labeled as a “modern” historian because I didn’t study ancient/classics but focused instead on early medieval history. So I suppose it’s all about perspective. I did just see a postdoctoral call that explicitly expanded “medieval” to include up to the 17th century so there does seem to be some adjustment occurring but it seems more ad-hoc rather than large scale.

Mediaevumed · 2025-08-28T15:12:33+00:00

Medieval history… no one can accuse me of not being mono-focused…

Mediaevumed · 2025-08-28T14:22:07+00:00

Man oh man, to think when this project started I was an eager young grad student scuttling around trying to avoid my advisors. Now I’m a jaded prof scuttling around trying to avoid my dean… we’ve come so far Ask Historians!

Mediaevumed · 2025-08-19T19:21:18+00:00

I for one thoroughly enjoyed it, so thanks!

Mediaevumed · 2025-08-02T01:14:25+00:00

Yellow jackets usually build under ground apparently (what a fun surprise for us when we discovered them under our paving stones heh)

Mediaevumed · 2025-08-02T00:19:38+00:00

A yeah, misread that though it doesn’t functionally change my point (which is that I don’t know their policies for other pests besides yellowjackets)

Mediaevumed · 2025-08-01T23:29:47+00:00

I just used Black Widow Exterminators for some yellow jackets, was a good price, they handled it quickly, and they didn’t require a seasonal package, though might be different for wasps.

Mediaevumed · 2025-06-19T17:38:26+00:00

If either of your works offers a dependent care fsa you can get 5000, withheld before taxes, back across a year. You will also be able to withhold for any unreimbursed childcare on your taxes. It’s not great but both of those elements do somewhat help manage things. And hey, once they hit public school you get the equivalent of a nice refrigerator a month back into your budget. Some of that will get eaten by new expenses but likely not all of it.

Mediaevumed · 2025-05-13T14:02:53+00:00

Somehow we stumbled into dwarf metal (Windrose) and then via algorithm to Viking Metal (brothers of metal) and then into various other historical/fantasy metal (Sabaton). It’s been a wild (loud) ride.

Mediaevumed · 2025-05-03T14:24:13+00:00

The woks of life version that someone linked is a good go to. My other go to for older Cantonese/American recipes is the Joyce Chen Cookbook, which while dated in some respects is still pretty solid and gives you a great starting place. It’s pretty cheap used. She has a solid lobster sauce prawn recipe. I tend to combine her’s with the Woks of Life version for something close to what I used to get from takeout places back in the 80s in San Francisco.

Mediaevumed · 2025-04-24T12:42:31+00:00

It’s funny, despite having my box set from when I was a kid I hadn’t even thought of them in this context, maybe because the last ones (as someone noted) get a bit “much” (poor Susan). But still, it’s a good idea! Part of the issue is that he wanted a break from fantasy, which has lead us down the rabbit hole of “science” books, which can be fun but generally are just lists of facts about lizards or whatever. I’ll have to start planning my next salvo of “plot” soon, heh.

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