IMO, American Protestants have always viewed certain forms of aesthetics with suspicion, such as ornate dress and interior decor, favoring instead plain, functional interiors and simple clothing. They believed this signaled Christian ethics and democratic norms.

And this chart suddenly feels particularly relevant.

Of course, Pierre Bourdieu noted this in his 1979 book Distinction, where he observed that our notions of "good taste" are nothing more than the habits and preferences of the ruling class. Georg Simmel said something similar in 1902 when he said fashion is a game of imitation.

At the end of the 1800s, "gentlemen" wore frock coats and lowly clerks wore suits. But as these broker citizens saw their fortunes rise with industrial capitalism, their clothes took on status. Soon, everyone wore drab and dreary suits. A Bond Street tailor lamented the change in 1912:

It wasn't until the end of the century that Eugene Sandow was able to rebrand visible strength. He opened a luxurious fitness club on London's prestigious St. James Street. Suddenly, muscle mass wasn't low-class; it demonstrated self-mastery. The bourgeoise bought into the idea.

not even palo santo just some random ahh wood that smells bad made me dizzy and absorbed some demonic energies along the supply chain

Astronomers in ancient Assyria were sometimes exempt from performing the “ilku”, or tax in the form of labour, and that wasn’t always a good thing.

Those excused from state-mandated labour to carry on their scholarship in service of the king sometimes faced violence.

Perhaps the most dangerous hunting accidents in the Middle Ages weren't accidents at all: they were actually instances of killer rabbits hunting humans. All people from emperor to lowly peasants feared these rabbits, especially the killer Rabbit of Caerbannog (from Monty Python😊).🧵7/7