Hello all-

As part of my ongoing "Questions about the Ancient Greeks and Romans (you were afraid to ask in school)" YouTube series, I recently posted a short video about racism in the classical world. As always, follow-up questions (here, on YouTube, or wherever) are welcome.

Pondering: What's history's best pencil sharpener?

The German "Jupiter-1" is a solid piece for sure - but with its massive cast-iron construction, is it over-engineered? There was a "Jupiter-2" as well, but I'm not sure what improvements were made. These use a single cutter.

The Gem sharpener from the same period used a big rotating sanding disc. Seems pretty dust-producing.

Of course we know that in the end, the design with cylindrical milling cutters and planetary gears won out in the end. Perhaps the ubiquitous mid-20th century desk sharpeners are the peak of hand-cranked pencil sharpener technology? Later ones haven't really improved on the design, they're just made more cheaply and with more plastic.

But what should be said for power sharpeners? It's the same thing there; modern ones just have more plastic. It seems the Panasonic auto-stop KP-110 from the 1980s (complete with 80s fake wood veneer) seems to be considered the last great electrical sharpener by the people who care about such things.

But the problem with these is; how do you sharpen these helical milling cutters? Anyone know? I don't. (are there pencil-sharpener-sharpeners?)

What is the best deal if you want to buy a pencil sharpener and make it the last one you ever need to buy?

Gankom's Fun Discussion Time!

(I'm still work shopping the acronym.)

Anyone got any history pictures that are particular favorites? Could be actual photographs of events or objects, or maybe sketches, diagrams, clay pots or whatever!

Heck for that matter I'll take fabulous pictures of the planet, wildlife, animals, whatever.

I'll even start us off with one of my favorite pictures that tackles both our world and a momentous historical occasion. The Blue Marble.

Asked before but never got an answer. So I’ll ask again. Best biography on Union General Sherman of the American Civil War?

I actually made a really fun discovery. Apparently, all the working papers for Comparative Study of Social Transformation are online via Michigan's Deep Blue. Of particular interest to me is Eley's paper on the Sonderweg and Sewell's paper on historical temporalities.

I read the Sewell one in Logics of History, but knew there had been an earlier version. Was not aware though that the earlier version had an even earlier one as a working paper. I plan on reading through in chronological order for a bit, but am looking forward to doing a comparison between the working paper version, the one in The Historical Turn in the Human Sciences, and the Logics of History one.

Also, I know a bit of historical sociology, but very little historical anthropology, so hope to see interesting hist anth stuff cited.

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Book recommendations for the second Sino-japanese war. Hello everyone, I have spent a large amount of time reading about the nazi-soviet war due to its incredible scale and have noticed recently that this similar scale, at least in land occupied and casualties, also exists in China. Does anyone know of some fundamental reading to get into this topic, one that focuses on the grand scale of the front and actual war. I usually only hear about US involvement or brief summaries about Chiang Kai-shek. I want to delve more into this front of the war and appreciate your time, thank you.

So, in honor of Pride Month, and to give myself a quarantine project during furlough I have a project I am working on:

Playing with the concept of Disney Gays, I want to make a kind of Compare and Contrast between what was going with Disney and what was going on with the Queer community during the same time period.

Does anyone have any references on organization of notes?

At this point, my plan was to have files organized by decade, with subfiles for Disney Animates films and Disney historically significant events. I would then read a bunch of Queer Histories to find accounts that match up with the timeline of the Disney Animated films.

I also am a complete amateur in doing this type of historical research.

Is Evernote and a spreadsheet the way to go?

Any comments or feedback would be appreciated.

I've only recently started reading this sub more regularly and I'm just blown away looking at the FAQ section which answers just so many questions which sometimes come up in day to day conversation or reading something - so a big thank you to all contributors and mods.
I did get the feeling browsing through old answers linked there that the questions over time have generally gotten better and more specific, do you find that, too or am I imagining things? And if so do you think it has to do with the strict moderation?

Is there a point in history that it is generally accepted that a civilisation were the first to start wearing footwear?

is there a subreddit Where you can ask historians questions that doesnt require them to write a small novel?

I was reading The Order of the Death's Head by Heinz Höhne. It's really interesting but I had to stop reading it, because I was reading it to fast and thinking about the nazis to much is depressing and unhealthy.

Trump claims he is part of the party of Lincoln. Was Lincoln not technically a Democrat by today's standards? I know the parties switched platforms at some point in the 1800s, but I am not sure. So is Trump correct or incorrect that he is part of the party of Lincoln?

Hi everyone. I am looking for books about the history of Scotland, Ireland, and Alfred the great era English books. I looked online but there was nothing that I really wanted. Any recommendations would be great!

Hmm, I wonders if you guys ever encountered such issues in public space?

Let's say there is a dominant culture A which have huge geopolitical influence around her sphere. There is a minor distinct culture B, which lives near the dominant culture A, and appropriates some aspects of culture A, but otherwise still identified themselves as member of culture B. However, some members of culture A don't actually think member B is what they themselves claimed, but a descendant of culture A that refuse to recognize their "true root" due to their political leanings, and therefore should be "educated" by either shaming them or just plain ignoring their claims.

I wonder if that's a common occurrence in your own area of study, and how you guys combat this issue?

Is there a good way to ask the moderators a more long form question? The summary of it is I have seen some anti-BLM posts that I suspect can't be correct, and would like help refuting them where possible with historical context (obviously, working with current events directly would fall under the 20 year rule). At the same time I don't want to just link the posts here because I don't want to give the posts more publicity, because it seems likely to me that they are bad faith sea lions trying to expose as many people as possible to their "facts."

I'm kind of annoyed by how many of my good questions aren't being answered here if only because they are not western centric.