Ettore Costa
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ettorrecos.bsky.social
Ettore Costa
@ettorrecos.bsky.social
Historian, Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Napoli. Social Democracy, Western Communism, Socialism and science, Socialist International, Human Rights, Cold War
Reposted by Ettore Costa
Inflation is like body temperature. Too much above base value? Bad. Below base value? REALLY bad!
November 14, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Reposted by Ettore Costa
My theory is imposter Simba. The official story is that Simba miraculously escaped the stampede, went into voluntary exile and returned years later to claim the throne from his usurper uncle. How convenient for the new Lion regime! The truth is that Simba died in the stampede with Mufasa
October 16, 2025 at 9:35 PM
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October 11, 2025 at 5:51 PM
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sorry this is so stupid
September 24, 2025 at 4:18 AM
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BROKE: Catalan is closer to French than Spanish
WOKE: Catalan and Occitan are closer to each other than Langues d'oil and Castilian
BESPOKE: The Albigensian Crusade was a plot by the Pope and Paris to conquer Languedoc and prevent the rise of big Romance nation in North-East Iberia and South Gallia
September 24, 2025 at 4:05 AM
September 15, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Reposted by Ettore Costa
I suppose if I had to advance my own view, it is that The Dawn of Everything flatters the preconceptions of the academic and chattering classes, so invariably gets termed 'insightful' and 'interesting' moments before experts explain that it does, however, get *their* field catastrophically wrong.
September 7, 2025 at 2:45 PM
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June 11, 2025 at 5:34 AM
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Mentre l’estate finisce e capiamo che non realizzeremo mai l’ambiziosa lista di cose da fare che ci eravamo promessi, è tempo di pensare ai grandiosi progetti da iniziare al ritorno al lavoro
August 21, 2024 at 6:01 PM
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if you want to get a sense of just how crazy poor WW2 Italy was, I strongly recommend Norman Lewis' incredible book NAPLES '44. By 1971 that same country had become the world's dominant producer of white goods. (Judt's POSTWAR is also very good on this)
Italy was a pre-modern country with some modern cities under fascism. It was democracy — specifically Christian Democracy — that gave everyone houses, sewers, cars and fridges. I remember an interview with a rural person who finally got an indoor bathroom and said “I finally feel like a human being”
August 8, 2025 at 7:21 PM
AI made Google shittier. Once the AI is convinced that you want to look for a specific thing, because it misunderstand the term you are actually looking for, it will only present links to that thing. It's like dealing with an arrogant stupid person who is convinced they are right
July 18, 2025 at 9:35 PM
Setbacks are not definitive, you can always find a way out! Unfortunately the way out is always “do more work yourself”
July 15, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Summertime! Time for research... right?
July 14, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Vive la France! We might mock their obsession with grandeur, but they are the only nuclear power democratic Europe can rely on! www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeF...
La Marseillaise Casablanca
YouTube video by Andrew Barbin
www.youtube.com
July 14, 2025 at 9:49 AM
Reposted by Ettore Costa
To bring this monomaniac energy to my grind, I’m sticking this on top of my to-do list
July 12, 2025 at 4:21 PM
We really should have already come to an agreement on how to cite eBooks without fixed page numbers
July 6, 2025 at 8:48 PM
Reposted by Ettore Costa
Something that A New Hope communicates well is that the precarious equilibrium is finally crumbling. A senate ship is being attacked directly, the senate is abolished, planeticide is on the table, the Rebel Alliance moves. You go from Vichy collaborationism and quietism to SS combing the village
July 5, 2025 at 5:49 PM
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thank you to ettore to introducing me to truly insane new type of guy
June 30, 2025 at 4:51 PM
"Dear professor, does the character limit include spaces or....."
IT INCLUDES SPACES! IT ALWAYS INCLUDES SPACES! IF YOU EVER HAPPEN TO HAVE RULES WHERE SPACES DON'T COUNT, THEY WILL TELL YOU BECAUSE IT ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS!!!
June 23, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by Ettore Costa
I think one important role of pop science is legitimising public funding for research, countering “why should we spend all this money on the James Webb Telescope instead of potholes?!?!”
June 21, 2025 at 11:22 AM
Reposted by Ettore Costa
anti-bedtime left is a reactionary force: there's a reason socialist movements emphasized public education and dedication to craft.
Dress it up in progressive language but you're cheating yourself by not doing the work. This is the worst thing about AI: millions of students refusing to learn, taking zero interest in the world around them, empty in mind and heart. Your punishment is the person you will become.
June 19, 2025 at 11:18 PM
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My undergrad thesis supervisor liked to complain that no-one reads 'real history' any more (he was talking about massive doorstopper tomes on social history)

At the same time, he acknowledged that without those thin journalistic volumes and documentaries, history would be a much smaller discipline
Historians about history popularisers. Among ourselves we complain that often they give the wrong picture and provide no more information than reading Wikipedia, but we recognise they legitimise the profession and offer a gateway that is at least better than journalists and ideologues
June 19, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by Ettore Costa
Historians about history popularisers. Among ourselves we complain that often they give the wrong picture and provide no more information than reading Wikipedia, but we recognise they legitimise the profession and offer a gateway that is at least better than journalists and ideologues
June 19, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Every scholar who is writing or organising something goes through different stages of despair before finally landing on Arrakis's attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's complete because it's ended here.'
June 18, 2025 at 10:25 AM