2022-06-15

marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
2022-06-15 09:39 pm

MI6 Spy Skills for Civilians

MI6 Spy Skills for Civilians by Red Riley

Who is, as you might guess, not actually Red Riley. Some basic tradecraft starting with becoming a spy -- as bland as possible, and probably not possible if you are striking such as being immensely tall or short -- hit on maintaining an alias, evasion, extractions, fighting if you absolutely can't escape, evading surveillance, and other such spy things.
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
2022-06-15 11:09 pm

Dressing the Past

Dressing the Past edited by Margarita Gleba, Cherine Munkholt, and Marie-Louise Nosch

Not so much a discussion of what people wore as how people reconstruct, as best they can, what people wore.  Observations on everything from Scythian women wearing elaborate headdresses because most of the gold ornaments in their graves had to have been on it, to tracing the history of Hollywood's use of historical accuracy.

marycatelli: (Reading Desk)
2022-06-15 11:47 pm
Entry tags:

quarrels

What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.

― G.K. Chesterton