I've said this before and you can't control how people ask questions but...

Whenever I see "why didn't they just do this" or "why didn't they simply do that" in the question... it's alway a war related question that just feels like a 14 kid who plays HOI4 and thinks historical commanders are idiots.

Sometimes I wish we could have r/MeanHistorians who can slap the nonsense outta those kids.

For the last fifty years, my tribe has been working to protect a major village site (actually the major village site) from which many of us descend. The site has, in the past, had two highways constructed through it. A large portion was destroyed when a sawmill was constructed on it in the 1950s. But, there are still about 8 acres of the site intact.

A cannabis growing operation purchased the property on which the site sits and applied for a permit to allow cultivation on adjacent portions of the property that are disturbed. We entered into negotiations with the owners three years ago to create a conservation easement to protect the remaining intact areas. Cajoling the property owners into protecting the site was not an easy or simple proposal and the key turned out to be getting attorneys that really understand conservation easements in our corner. Earlier this week we closed on the transfer of the easement for the intact site (8 acres). The protected portion of the site has at least 11 remaining housepits, at least two cemeteries and deposits that exceed two meters in depth. It was a major bucket list item for me personally. It's done, we did it, and we are absolutely stoked about it.

The deeper I get into learning about the French Revolution, the more I realize just how many primary sources are out there. It makes me wonder if any one person knows the existence of them all, or how we could ever know about everything that's out there. I just came across $700 book of remonstrances from the 1750s and couldn't even find them for free online, making me realize there might even be docs out there that aren't in archives/digitized.

It feels so overwhelming yet so exciting. I want to read them all to truly understand the time period, but at the same time I feel like I want a guidebook laying out every known primary source (which of course is impossible). Perhaps some of this is underscored by the fact that I'm a bit of a novice with professional/academic methodology, seeing as I just have a Bachelor's (starting my Master's this Fall).

Anyone have any thoughts here? Feel the same way? Tips? Advice?

Something that might amuse a few people. I ran across a reference in a 1957 pulp magazine to a letter from Lovecraft that had been published in a Canadian fanzine titled A' Bas. Well, as it turned out, the issue is out of copyright and has been scanned and is available online - but the text isn't searchable and the pulp didn't list the issue number, so it took a bit of clicking through but I found the letter in question

Gerry de la Ree was a noted collector of Lovecraftiana, so as a source he's no surprise. He is incorrect in labeling this the last letter of H. P. Lovecraft, however: there are at least ten letters known after this one. But de la Ree had no way of knowing that in 1957.

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Anyone else work in academia? My library is preparing for new student orientation with a special collections how to guide and new subject based LibGuides. Hopefully we'll have a new exhibit up by September if we're back.

Silly question, but maybe some of you are European witchcraft people:

I could almost swear I read a quotation from a primary source, probably in English translation, that was a physical description of Heinrich Kramer that was really unflattering. I thought it was in Broedel's book on the Malleus Maleficarum, but I'm only seeing the same old "childish mind" description there now.

Does anyone know if this actually exist somewhere, or am I thinking of somebody else?

It would almost certainly have been in the 'biographical overview' bit of whatever work.

NEH Internship Update: I did not get the position. It was an automated and very mechanical (and not particularly descriptive) email, so i don't know if that means I was just not chosen, or if they just decided not to do program at all this summer because of the way the world is. I did get a message two months ago (a couple weeks after applying) saying that I passed at least the first stage of consideration and might get an interview (which I never got, alas), and I consider that some sort of victory.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Would've been cool, but… oh well.

/u/Vandirac wanted to know what call letters were in this thread. Posting here because the rules are more lax.

The four letters in a radio station's name are its callsign (short for call signal), awarded by the Federal Communications Commission, a national government agency that also regulates television, the internet and associated technologies. The call sign tells you what radio station is broadcasting at a specific frequency (or amplitude on an AM radio) For example, KQCH and KPFA are both broadcast from the frequency 94.1 MHz , but their terrestrial broadcast areas are nearly 2700km apart. When you are tuning an analog radio, it's not always easy to tell what frequency you're on, so if you like the music you hear, the DJ wants you to know how to find it again. KPFA owns the 94.1 signal in the Bay Area (Northern California, on the Pacific Coast). If you and your radio are traveling North, South, or East, eventually the sounds of KPFA die out and a new station is broadcast at that frequency. If the station is lucky, the callsign is both memorable and euphonious, like KAOS instead of KJZQ. Once a callsign is assigned to a station, it cannot be used by another station, so the only KPFA is in California, even though numerous stations use the 94.1 signal. The call letters would only be reassigned if KPFA were to shut down entirely. Sometimes if it's a big station, there are parallel broadcasts across multiple frequencies, each with its own call letters, usually outside the original broadcast area because 99.3 (for example) in the next town over is licensed to someone else.

There are exceptions, but the fact that both KPFA and KQCH start with K tells you they are in the Western USA. Stations east of the Mississippi River traditionally start with W, like WFMT in Chicago or WBAI in New York City. The majority of callsigns have four letters, but some have three, like WIP 94.1 Philadelphia and KUT 90.5 Austin (the "UT" is for the University of Texas). Originally most stations had 3 call letters but they expanded callsigns to 4 because it allowed for more permutations. If a station has three letters, you know it's been around a long time.

Broadcasters are obliged to identify the station on the hour with a combination of callsign, frequency, and place of broadcast, usually in that order, e.g. "This is DJ Vandirac of K-P-F-A 94.1 Berkeley!", between :55 of the last hour and the :05 of the next hour. You are strongly encouraged to also identify the station at the half-hour mark, and fold in a "soft" ID with either the callsign or the frequency whenever you're on the microphone. The half-hour ID is especially helpful during an interview, to let new listeners know what's going on, e.g. "This is Lorena Lamarck and I'm interviewing Albert Einstein, here to talk about the research for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize this week, on WPRB 103.3 Princeton" All three components are necessary for a legal ID. Famous people can also be cajoled into recording an ID, which are then played at convenient times. If you're really slick, famous people will do interviews and do a show-specific ID, not just for your station but the genre/format you do, like Sonny Rollins on a jazz show.

Favorite book recommendations or essays that explicitly covers the question of why history matters? Or what can we learn from studying history?

What are some good books about second-wave feminism? I meant to ask yesterday but it slipped my mind.

Was it true that Nazis began compiling lists of those who were to be sent to concentration camps two years prior to the outbreak of the war?

Did cavalry ever fight cavalary in the medieval period? I’ve been doing some minor research into cabalry tactics and can’t seem to find anything about horseback-horseback combat. Why were cavalary not used to fight other cabalry as often?

Why are square rigged boats/ ships so hard to come by now?

I'm sorry if this has been asked before but, what kind of coin did japanese people use during the feudal age? I hope this isn't a stupid question.