iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The French vessel "Courtisan", which if I'm reading this marvelous website correctly had its name changed to the Belliqueux before being broken up in 1708. threedecks.org/index.php?di...

pen and ink drawing of a sailing ship of the line. stern view, no masts or rigging depicted.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Another one, more elaborate. To do with Napoleon, set to music it looks like? purl.stanford.edu/gc145qv0911

a nearly 20-line rebus, with a portrait of napoleon at the top and some text off the to the side.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The Underground Railroad to Ontario on the side of a U-Haul.

Side of a U-Haul. the graphic is about Ontario, "Venutre across Canada" -- the underground railroad, le chenin de fer clandestin - dresden. with a map of lines leading from the us south to canada, some prose, and also a large standing figure of a woman with dark skin, wearing a shawl and headcovering, holding a lantern and looking about. .

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

A rebus from the French Revolution exhibits.stanford.edu/frenchrevolu...

it's a rebus, a little puzzle. naming the images correctly gives you a sentence.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"A floral fantasy of animals and birds (Waq-waq)" www.clevelandart.org/art/2013.319

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

this is a fantastic epigraph though

God and Man were inseparable companions. One day God
said to M an: why don't you go walk around on earth for a
while so we can find some new topics for conversation?
-beginning of a Malagasy folktale

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The swimming pool "was the seat of an envious goddess intent on putting us to her breast and suckling us from those cold chambers until there would be nothing left to recall us up above."

Not far from the pool was the municipal reading room. With its iron galleries it was not too high for me and not too chilly. I sensed my proper territory. For its smell preceded it. It waited as if under a thin protective covering under the cold moist smell that met me in the stairwell. I pushed the iron door open bashfully. But scarcely was I in the room when the quiet began to work on behalf of my powers.

In the swimming pool what most repelled me was the noise of voices that blended into the roar in the pipes. It came through from the entrance hall, where everyone had to get a bath token made of bone. Stepping across the threshold meant taking leave of the upper world. After that nothing protected me from the mass of water below the vaulted ceiling inside. It was the seat of an envious goddess intent on putting us to her breast and suckling us from those cold chambers until there would be nothing left to recall us up above.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Babur, Mughal founder, crashing around in central Asia getting drunk and stoned. Early 16th century, from the his autobiography, *The Baburnama*.

there was a wine party under a plane tree. Baba Qashqa Moghul was awarded a robe of honor.
On Friday the eighth came Käpä, who had gone to Mirza Khan.
Thursday afternoon I rode out on an excursion to Khwaja Seyaran, Baran, and Koh Daman. Late that night we camped at Mama Khatun. The next morning we stopped at Istalif. That day we had some ma jun.
On Saturday there was a wine party at Istalif. The next morning we rode out of Istalif and passed through the Sinjit valley. When we were near Khwaja Seyaran, a huge snake as big around as a man's forearm and a fathom long was killed. From inside the snake came a smaller snake that must have just been swallowed: it was completely whole. The smaller snake was only a bit shorter than the big one. [240b] Then, from inside the smaller snake came a big rat. It too was whole, and none of it had been digested.
Having reached Khwaja Seyaran, we had a wine party. This same day, Kichikkinä the night watchman

On Sunday the last of the month [September 25] we marched out of Juy-i-Shahi and stopped at Qirq Ariq. [243] I got on a raft with a few of my special retinue. While at this camp, we saw the festival moon. A few mule-loads of wine had been brought from Dara-i-Nur, so after the evening prayer there was a wine party. The members of the party included Muhibb-Ali Qorchi, Khwaja Muhammad-Ali Kitabdar, Shah-Hasan son of Shah Beg, Sultan-Muhammad Dulday, and Darwesh-Muhammad Sarban. Darwesh-Muhammad was ab-staining. From my childhood it had been my rule not to force drink on anyone who did not drink. Darwesh-Muhammad was always at these parties, and no coercion was ever exerted. However, Khwaja Muhammad-Ali would not leave him alone and kept trying to compel him to drink.
On Monday morning, the feast day, we marched off. Along the way we ate some ma'jun to get rid of our hangover. While we were high on the ma'jun someone brought a colocynth. 248 Darwesh-Muhammad had never seen one before. I said, "It is the watermelon of Hindustan." I cut a slice and gave it to him. He bit into it with great relish. It took him until that evening to get the bitterness out of his mouth.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

John Brown in preparation for the Harper's Ferry raid. Killing snakes and letting his people read Tom Paine. From Du Bois' biography.

Anne, the young daughter, says: "One day, a short time after I went
down there, father was sitting at the table writing. I was near by sewing (he
and I being alone in the room), when two little wrens that had a nest under
the porch came flying in at the door, fluttering and twittering; then they
flew back to their nest and again to us several times, seemingly trying to
attract our attention. They appeared to be in great distress. I asked father
what he thought was the matter with the little birds. He asked if I had ever
seen them act so before; I told him no. 'Then let us go and see,' he said. We
went out and found that a snake had crawled up the post and was just ready
to devour the little ones in the nest. Father killed the snake; and then the old
birds sat on the railing and sang as if they would burst. It seemed as if they
were trying to express their joy and gratitude to him for saving their little
ones. After we went back into the room, he said he thought it very strange
the way the birds asked him to help them, and asked if I thought it an omen
of his success. He seemed very much impressed with that idea. I do not
think he was superstitious; but you know he always thought and felt that
God called him to that work; and seemed to place himself, or rather to
imagine himself, in the position of the figure in the old seal of Virginia,
with the tyrant under her foot."

The men discussed religion and slavery freely, read Paine's Age of Reason and the Baltimore Sun. John Brown himself was careful to cultivate the
good-will of his neighbors, attending with skill the sick among animals and
men,so much so that he and his sons became prime favorites. Owen had
long conversations with the people, while Cook was also moving about the
country selling maps. A little Dunker chapel was near with non-resistant,
anti-slavery principles; here John Brown often worshiped and preached. Yet
with all this caution and care, suspicion lurked about them and discovery
was always imminent.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Sem. Pour La Liberte Du Monde : Souscrivez a l’emprunt National a La : Banque Nationale de Credit. 1917. jstor.org/stable/commu....

muted color print. the statue of liberty, but half covered up by the ocean. over a horizon? or is the water rising? then text across the bottom.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

thisisnthappiness.com/post/8641687...

panel of a printed comic. tall. along the side is a fire and smoke, then a figure in blue pants and back shirt, turning face to look at the fire, lit by it. above in print: I carefully burned the past.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Bats and sloths are both semi-apes, but differently. Haeckel, 1887. www.jstor.org/stable/commu...

An evolutionary tree starting with primitive mammals and going up to MAN at the top middle. It's from the later 19th century and is no longer likely to be considered accurate.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

And here it sort of is again in the next letter

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Willa Cather had kinda wild handwriting collections.newberry.org/asset-manage...

A handwritten note, in ink. Custom stationary with a gothic W.S.C. at the top. Dated Monday, in another hand Jan 11, 1926.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

"Margot la Critique," Félix Bracquemond, 1854. www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

an engraving of a magpie, its wings spread wide. it is surrounded by handwritten verses, and stands astride a globe labeed Paris. The title at the bottom says, Margot la critique.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

A. Aubrey Bodine. Pratt Street, Baltimore. 1935. www.jstor.org/stable/commu...

b&w photograph. three figures in the center, either loading or unloading sacks of something from a ship behind them. behind the ship is the wall of a building with windows.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The Hyperboreans, according to Pliny: "they worship the gods severally and in congregations; all discord and all sorrow is unknown. Death comes to them only when, owing to satiety of life, after holding a banquet and anointing their old age with luxury, they leap from a certain rock into the sea"

Behind these mountains and beyond the north wind The Hyperthere
dweHs (if we can beHeve it) a happy race of ''^^""'"
people caHed the Hyperboreans, who Hve to extreme
old age and are famous for legendary marvels. Here
are beHeved to be the hinges on which the firmament
turns and the extreme Hmits of the revolutions of
the stars, with six months' dayHght and a single day
of the sun in retirement, not as the ignorant have
said, fi-om the spring equinox till autumn: for these
people the sun rises once in tlie year, at midsummer,
and sets once, at midwinter. It is a genial region,
with a delightful cHmate and exempt from every
harmful blast. The homes of the natives are the
woods and groves ; they worship the gods severaHy
and in congregations ; all discord and aH sorrow is
unknown. Death comes to them only when, owing
to satiety of Hfe, after liolding a banquet and anointing
their old age with Uixury, they leap from a certain
rock into the sea : this mode of burial is the most

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

OK last Du Bois posting for a while. From toward the end of the last chapter, "The Propaganda of History."

The most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human
history is the transportation of ten million human beings out of the
dark beauty of their mother continent into the new-found Eldorado of
the West. They descended into Hell ; and in the third century they
arose from the dead, in the finest effort to achieve democracy for the
working millions which this world had ever seen. It was a tragedy that
beggared the Greek ; it was an upheaval of humanity like the Reformation
and the French Revolution. Yet we are blind and led by the
blind. We discern in it no part of our labor movement ; no part of our
i ndustrial triumph ; no part of our religious experience. Before the
dumb eyes of ten generations of ten million children, it is made mockery
of and spit upon ; a degradation of the eternal mother ; a sneer at
human effort; with aspiration and art deliberately and elaborately distorted.
And why ? Because in a day when the human mind aspired to
a science of human action, a history and psychology of the mighty
effort of the mightiest century, we fell under the leadership of those
who would compromise with truth in the past in order to make peace
in the present and guide policy in the future.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The first two chapters of this book are an extraordinarily concise and powerful history of democracy in the United States before the Civil War, and always right there, just in the background, is empire, white supremacy, war, and the arrival of fascism between 1880 and the 1930s.

Then came this battle called Civil War, beginning in Kansas in
1854, and ending in the presidential election of 1876-twenty awful
years. The slave went free ; stood a brief moment in the sun ; then
moved back again toward slavery. The whole weight of America was
thrown to color caste. The colored world went down before England,
France, Germany, Russia, Italy and America. A new slavery arose.
The upward moving of white labor was betrayed into wars for profit
based on color caste. Democracy died save in the hearts of black folk.
Indeed, the plight of the white working class throughout the world
today is directly traceable to Negro slavery in America, on which modern
commerce and industry was founded, and which persisted to
threaten free labor until it was partially overthrown in 1863. The
resulting color caste founded and retained by capitalism was adopted,
forwarded and approved by white labor, and resulted in subordination
of colored labor to white profits the world over. Thus the majority
of the world's laborers, by the insistence of white labor, became the
basis of a system of industry which ruined democracy and showed its
perfect fruit in World War and Depression. And this book seeks to
tell that story.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:3...

small piece of an allegorical map. a straight road with paths leading off labeled way called destruction, way called danger. places also labeled deceit, other things.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

La Bastille purl.stanford.edu/jj292vv7019

map of the bastille. main fortress is in red, green areas around it.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Do all books that the University of Arkansas sends out via ILL get stamped with a cowboy possum? I hope so.

A book.open to the inner cover, so that you can see the inside of the paper band attached to send a book through ILL. There is a light and blurry stamp of an opossum with a cowboy hat and bandana

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

"The historians have been guiltier than the princes."

affable manner. He approached me with a smile on his face; he asked me for news of my century; he insisted that I speak can-didly. "Ah!" I said to him, "your forebears weren't so generous as you! They passed their days at hunting (c) and at table. If they killed hares, it was out of idleness, and not to give them to eat to those whose crops had been destroyed by them. They never elevated their souls toward some great and useful pur-pose. They spent millions on dogs, valets, horses, and syco-phants: in short, they were professional courtiers. They abandoned the cause of their country."
Everyone threw up his hands in astonishment. They had a great deal of trouble believing my testimony. "History," they assured me, "never told us all that on the contrary."-"Ah!" I replied. "The historians have been guiltier than the princes."

010

Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Here is Hansel that same year being interviewed by the FBI in, for some reason, a molybdenum mine.

b&w photograph of three people sitting in an enclosed space. all wearing mining helmests and heavy clothes. one man is taking notes.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Hansel Mieth // Otto Hagel -- Ford workers or strikers at a union hall, 1940. www.jstor.org/stable/commu... www.jstor.org/stable/commu...

b&w photograph of a group of men standing in the entryway stairs of a building, elaborate mural covering walls. they are talking in an animated fashion.

same group of men, seem from another angle, in a somewhat different pose -- reading papers, from a slight distance.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

A mirror print, not familiar with this sort of thing. Naufrage, 1736. www.jstor.org/stable/commu...

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Asante. Weight for Measuring Gold, 19th century. www.jstor.org/stable/commu...

Metal fish, looking sort of happy, a bit cartoonish. central shape is a half circle.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

March 1943. "Argentine, Kansas. An Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe train pulling out of the railroad yard." www.loc.gov/pictures/res...

b&w photo, shot out from the back of a train -- and hand waves at a man standing on the tracks, who is also waving. we are in a train yard, many tracks and in the distance some buildings.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

IWW poster, 1917. www.jstor.org/stable/commu...

Bright red print. THIEF! across the top in negative, then an image of children working a cotton mill machine, while a wealthy man stands to the right. written below: "The worst thief is he who steals the playtime of children. - WD Haywood" Join the IWW and help put the thieves to work.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Went ahead and cropped the genitals out of this in order to use it as a decorative element for the French Revolution Canvas page. www.jstor.org/stable/commu...

preparatory sketch for a portion of David's oath of the tennis court. mainly nude male bodies in various dramatic poses, with some faces and hands done in oil paint.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

"As for the reference to the Venetians, p----- means w-----s."

4 Not that Montesquieu was without an extreme class consciousness. Cf. the note he made in 1729 on arriving in London from Holland, on a journey made in company with the Earl of Chester-field: "A Londres, liberté et égalité. La liberté de Londres est la liberté des honnêtes gens, en quoi elle diffère de celle de Venise, qui est la liberté de vivre obscurement avec des p----- et de les épouser: l'egalité de Londres est aussi l'egalité des honnêtes gens, en quoi elle diffère de la liberté de Hollande, qui est la liberté de la canaille." Oeuvres (1955), III, 284-85. It is hard to see what Montesquieu could have meant by his reference to the Dutch, except that he preferred the English aristocracy (bonnêtes gens) to the Dutch patricians, whom he seems to have regarded as canaille. As for the reference to the Venetians, p- means ws

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Montesquieu, quoted in Palmer

"There are always in a state some people distinguished by birth, wealth or hon-ors; but, if they are confounded with the rest of the people, if they have only one vote like others, the common liberty will be slavery for them, and they will have no interest in defending it.... Their share in legislation should therefore be propor-tionate to their other advantages in the state."3

020

Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Sharing this with a student today, and couldn't find the link to the original post, so here again is Istvan Hont's 10 point guide to writing brilliant history of political thought essays.

Subject Group in Political Thought and Intellectual History -- 2000-01

A GUIDE TO SUPERVISION IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT

Relating in particular to History Papers 19, 20 in Part 1 and Papers 3, 4, 5 in Part II and the equivalent papers in Social and Political Sciences

HOW TO WRITE BRILLIANT HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT ESSAYS: A 10 POINT GUIDE

1. Openings are crucial. Plunge in with something substantive about the theory and text in question. Never begin with potted biography or history, or generalities about the meaning of life.

2. Get the balance right between exposition and criticism. Some people are over-eager to show their critical powers: avoid hatchet jobs; it shows lack of sympathetic understanding: your author may be wrong but he or she is not stupid. Other people, by contrast, are not eager enough to show their critical powers: avoid tame plot summaries which just summarise the contents of the text.

3. Impose a conceptual framework on your essay. Give clear direction to the argument, a sense of an unfolding of the implications of your key claims. Provide signposts to the reader.

4. Most political philosophers address not just politics narrowly conceived, but also ethics, episternology, ontology, or theology. Show how these interconnect.

5. You cannot cover everything in an essay, but try to make allusions to the wider hinterland of your knowledge. The specific question should be specifically answered, but should not induce tunnel-vision.

6. Quote from the text, using brief phrases, integrated with your own sentences. Avoid the most boringly famous quotations. Avoid large chunks of displayed quotation. Cite specific chapters or sections of the text. Acknowledge your sources, both primary and secondary.

7. Get the balance right between text and context. The essay should be structured as an account of a theory and a text, but along the way you should allude to influences and circumstances and traditions of a political, intellectual, or biogr…

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Durer, The Sea Monster, 1498 www.jstor.org/stable/commu...

engraving of a man with a fish-tail churning through the water, having carried a woman away, we see, from the receding shoreline in the background. there is even further in the back a castle on a hill.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

"For ours is a most fictile world; and man is the most fingent plastic of creatures. A world not fixable; not fathomable!" Carlyle, just hitting all the levers (racist ones included)

For ours is a most fictile world; and man is the most fingent plas-tic of creatures. A world not fixable; not fathomable! An unfathom-able Somewhat, which is Not we; which we can work with, and live amidst, and model, miraculously in our miraculous Being, and name World. But if the very Rocks and Rivers (as Metaphysic teaches) are, in strict language, made by those Outward Senses of ours, how much more, by the Inward Sense, are all Phenomena of the spiritual kind: Dignities, Authorities, Holies, Unholies! Which inward sense, moreover, is not permanent like the outward ones, but for ever grow-ing and changing. Does not the Black African take of Sticks and Old Clothes (say, exported Monmouth-Street cast-clothes) what will suf-fice; and of these, cunningly combining them, fabricate for himself an Eidolon (Idol, or Thing Seen), and name it Mumbo-Jumbo; which he can thenceforth pray to, with upturned awestruck eye, not without hope? The white European mocks; but ought rather to consider; and see whether he, at home, could not do the like a little more wisely.

So it was, we say, in those conquests of Flanders, thirty years ago: but so it no longer is. Alas, much more lies sick than poor Louis: not the French King only, but the French Kingship; this too, after long rough tear and wear, is breaking down. The world is all so changed; so much that seemed vigorous has sunk decrepit, so much that was not is beginning to be!-Borne over the Atlantic, to the closing ear of Louis, King by the Grace of God, what sounds are these; muffled-ominous, new in our centuries? Boston Harbour is black with unex-pected Tea: behold a Pennsylvanian Congress gather; and ere long, on Bunker Hill, DEMOCRACY announcing, in rifle-volleys death-winged, under her Star Banner, to the tune of Yankee-doodle-doo, that she is born, and, whirlwind-like, will envelop the whole world!

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

John Steuart Curry painting c1946, to illustrate Stephen Vincent Benét's epic poem, John Brown's Body.

Unfinished painting. John Brown in an open coffin across the bottom. Us and confederate flags held in color.innthenleft by a vaguely classical looking figure, cityscape in the background to the right.

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

"After that the good people of the village greeted me by saying that I had exterminated the Holy Trinity"

little bone and went forty days without doing anything to heal the break I went with one of my comrades to do work in a number of villages on behalf of the widow I was in a place called Mondoubleau working in the church above the main altar I was at the top of a scaffolding made of several ladders lashed together and set above the altar when the prior entered and asked me how the work was going He went to touch his hand to his hat letting go the ladder which fell step by step with me on top (I) grabbed the Eternal Father by the beard and ripped off his entire face The Holy Ghost that was a little lower down (I) tore off entirely along with the angels and the crucifix underneath I broke an arm After that the good people of the village greeted me by saying that I had exterminated the Holy Trinity

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Eric Brandom @ebrandom.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Kind of charmingly lo-fi advertisement for Tribune bicycles (by John Deere) in 1896 *Kansas Cycler* www.kansasmemory.gov/item/314168/...

advertisement. mostly blank page, with three odd-looking silhouette figures to the left, and most of the text in a sort of box to the right.

Tribunes are
Fast.
On the Kansas Circuit they cap tured five firsts, nine seconds, six thirds; broke six track records, four State and two World's records.
R. S. Enslow broke the one-mile State amateur record of 2:14, riding in 2:08.
A. L. Hunt started in three races in Wichita and finished first in each.
The Tribune Triplet captured two World's records:
1-3 mile in 37 2-5 by Vesper-Bren-Hunt.
1-2 mile in 55 4-5 by Morrow-Bren-Hunt.
Verily, Tribunes are fast, because they run easy.
John Deere Plow Co.,
Western Agents,
Kansas City, Mo.

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