15th-century Heart-shaped Brooch

 

From the Victoria and Albert Museum:

This heart-shaped brooch with its romantic inscription was given as a token of love. It would have been used to fasten a tunic, gown or cloak. Gold was the most costly of metals, generally used only by royalty and the nobility. It is inscribed and would have formerly been enamelled on the reverse in French, in black letter script, ‘Ourselves and all things at your whim’ ('Nostre et tout ditz a vostre desier'). The design on the front of the brooch, possibly stylised leaves and flowers or feathers, would also have been colourfully enamelled.

Ring brooches often fastened garments with a slit at the neck. Both men and women used them. They first pulled the fabric through the ring. They then pushed the pin horizontally through the fabric. When they pulled the fabric back through the ring, it held the pin in place. (Read more.)

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Can Ignorant, Anti-Israel College Students Even Find Gaza on a Map?

Megyn Kelly is joined by Heather Mac Donald, author of "When Race Trumps Merit,” to discuss uneducated students unsure of what they’re even protesting, the ignorance of our next generation, and more.

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The 49th Parallel (1941)

 From Word and Song by Anthony Esolen:

Our Film of the Week, The 49th Parallel, was intended as a plea for help, from one friend to another. That is, the English, who of course had all the nations of the Commonwealth on their side, including that grand and unique nation of Canada, wanted the Americans to enter the war against the Nazi regime. Goebbels, misunderstanding quite badly both American feelings and American affection for our cousins across the ocean, thought that he could win the United States over to the German side.

By the time The 49th Parallel had made its way to the screen, however, the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, and the United States was in the war on both fronts. So the immediate political use to which the director, Michael Powell, and the screenplay writer Emeric Pressburger wished to put the film had already been accomplished. And yet the film is quite moving and powerful as a tribute to the kind of nation that the Canadians wanted to be, at their best, and also as a gesture of gratitude and appreciation for their southern neighbor. For, as the voice-over says at the beginning of the film, the forty-ninth parallel is unique in the world. It is merely a line on the map, well over a thousand miles long. It marks no river or mountain range. It is undefended. It requires no defense. And my family and I speak now from over twenty years of experience: we love Canada, and though we see that the people of each nation think they know more about their neighbors than they really do, we are always struck by the welcome we receive there, and the good cheer of the people, especially of the common folk who live far from the cosmopolitan cities. (Read more.)

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Debauve & Gallais

 A  200-year-old French chocolatier. Chocolate was once seen as medicinal. From Atlas Obscura:

WHEN SULPICE DEBAUVE STARTED SELLING chocolate in 18th century Paris, he touted the exotic import as medicinal. Debauve was a trained pharmacist, and, not incidentally, a “lumière,” one of Voltaire’s enlightened who saw science as the future. He used the utile dulci (useful sweet) to help the French Queen, Marie-Antoinette, cure her headaches.

In the process he revolutionized French chocolate. At the time, cacao was largely consumed as a beverage, one which Marie Antoinette had been drinking since her childhood in Vienna. Debauve mixed drinking chocolate with sweet almond milk and the bitter headache powder he concocted for her, then molded the mixture into disks and allowed it to solidify. The queen named these chocolates Pistoles after their resemblance to gold coins. (Read more.)

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The Marxist Roots of DEI

 Session 1: Equity | James Lindsay

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A Room of Her Own

 The Tuileries, which was the part of the Louvre where Marie-Antoinette lived, was destroyed in the 1870's. From Euronews:

France’s Louvre could move the Mona Lisa to her own basement room. Here’s why. She’s the world’s most famous and most visited work of art, with up to ten million admirers per year. Her enigmatic smile has been idolised by art lovers, and even targeted by thieves, soup-loving protesters, and even a man disguised as an elderly woman in a wheelchair who threw cake in her face. But now, a new project may prove the last queen of France Marie Antoinette right, as she found her “too small, too dark.”

Leonardo da Vinci’s painting "Mona Lisa" is about to be moved, in order to give La Gioconda more space. And appease visitors. Indeed, with Louvre visitors getting an average of 50 seconds to admire the "Mona Lisa", which is displayed behind a barrier and bullet-proof glass in the centre of the Salle des Etats (glass installed in the 1950s to protect it after an acid attack), many have dubbed it the world's most disappointing masterpiece. Understandable really, as the huge crowds and limited space in the gallery means it’s difficult to see Mona Lisa. (Read more.)

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The Real Jeanne du Barry

 From Tatler:

Born Jeanne Becú in 1743, the identity of du Barry’s father is lost to history. There are rumours that he was a monk, rather ironically known as Frére Ange – Brother Angel. Her mother Anne was a seamstress, who raised her daughter in the home of her own aristocratic lover, Monsieur Billiard-Dumonceaux. After the family was ousted from the Dumonceaux household, Jeanne worked on the streets of Paris, selling trinkets to passers-by to raise money for her family.

And so she would have remained, were it not for her unparalleled beauty. Known for her blonde ringlets and almond-shaped eyes, Jeanne’s face launched her into the courtesan intrigues of the French aristocracy. ‘Madame du Barry was the incarnation of beauty,’ historian Evelyne Lever told the documentary Secretes d’Histoire three years ago, ‘she was a veritable goddess.’ After being fired from her role caring for an elderly widow – whose two sons reportedly fell in love with the young Jeanne – she found herself preforming sex work in the gambling dens of Paris. It was here that she met Jean-Baptiste du Barry, a nobleman whose character is probably best summarised by his unfortunate nickname: Le Roué, or ‘The Old Lech’. (Read more.)

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Why the Centrists Changed Their Trans Tune

 From Mary Harrington at UnHerd:

So, now the winds have changed, we find Allsopp also back-pedalling. It was never true, she asserts, that there was “no debate” on the issue of medical experiments on gender-confused children. Puberty blockers, Kirstie informs us, were bad all along. But we could always talk about it: “it is, and always has been possible to debate these things and those saying there was no debate are wrong”. All the people (mostly women) unfairly fired or bullied out of jobs, all the grannies punched in Hyde Park by men with special identities, the no-platforming, the intimidation, the threats, and the censorship — that wasn’t actually a thing.

Allsopp is the clearest indicator yet that at least where child gender vivisection is concerned, at least some of the grandes dames of Truth Universally Acknowledged may have paused broadcasting a TUA in order to convince themselves, in the light of a new emerging groupthink, that the new consensus is what they believed all along. And because moral consensus precedes its “expert” rationalisation, so we also find that those who purport to stand for science and reason are also curiously quiet.

On Sunday, for example, Sex Matters founder Maya Forstater (herself notoriously a victim of the “No Debate” consensus Kirstie Allsopp says never existed) called on science communicator and Humanists UK president Adam Rutherford to defend systematic scientific reviews, against the trans activists spreading misinformation about the Cass Review. Did he come out swinging for science and reason over gender ideology? Reader, he flunked it: “It’s not something I know much about.” (Read more.)

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