Matt Panhans @mpanhans@librem.one

Historians, do you have a preferred resource for digital access to historical newspapers? I have library access to a limited version of ProQuest, but it is missing a lot; other newspapers have been digitized, but access is sold by genealogy sites of varying shadiness and opaque pricing #history #econhist #economichistory #socialhistory #histodons

Manet's famous painting Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère never appealed to me. But now I realize its genius and my spine tingles every time I see it.

The perspective looks all wrong. You're staring straight at this barmaid, but her reflection in the mirror is way off to right. Even worse, her reflection is facing a guy who doesn't appear in the main view!

But in 2000, a researcher showed this perspective is actually possible!!! To prove it, he did a photographic reconstruction of this scene. Check it out in my next post.

This blow my mind.

(1/3)

It's the first sunday of March and it's Digital Independence Day again.

If you would like to spend some minutes to install an independent messaging app and get a cool indie messaging address, you might have a look at:
https://imday.de/en/

And don't panic: It's easier than you might expect.

#did #didit #xmpp #whatsapp #diday

🐧 Just dropped the 2026 Linux tier list, but instead of ranking best to worst, I'm showing which distro fits YOUR journey.

Beginner? Intermediate? Advanced? This tells you exactly where to start (and where NOT to start)
https://youtu.be/6ip-S5QyzuI

WhatsApp can access virtually all of it 3 billion users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications,” according to a lawsuit filed against Meta. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72183413/1/dawson-v-meta-platforms-inc/

"The joy of not being sold anything"

📷 Photographer: unknown
Artist: unknown (?)

#StreetArt

Einstein realized that gravity is due to the curvature of spacetime, but earlier mathematicians had guessed that it's due to the curvature of space.

On the 18th of August 1869, the eminent mathematician Sylvester gave a speech arguing that mathematics is not separate from physics. He later published this speech in the journal Nature, and added a footnote raising the possibility that space is curved:

“the laws of motion accepted as fact, suffice to prove in a general way that the space we live in
is a flat or level space [...], our existence therein being assimilable to the life of the bookworm in a flat page; but what if the page should be undergoing a process of gradual bending into a curved form?”

Then, even more dramatically, he announced that the mathematician Clifford had been studying this!

“Mr. W. K. Clifford has indulged in more remarkable speculations as the possibility of our being able
to infer, from certain unexplained phenomena of light and magnetism, the fact of our level space
of three dimensions being in the act of undergoing in space of four dimensions (space as
inconceivable to us as our space to the supposititious bookworm) a distortion analogous to the
rumpling of the page.”

This started a flame war in Nature which the editor eventually shut off. Clifford later wrote about his theories in a famous paper:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Space-Theory_of_Matter

But now I hear that maybe Clifford even did experiments to TEST his ideas by measuring the polarization of the skylight during a solar eclipse in Sicily on December 22, 1870:

• S. Galindo and Jorge L. Cervantes-Cota, Clifford's attempt to test his gravitation hypothesis, https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.09230

The amazing prehistory of general relativity!

Welcome to the Public Domain, THE MALTESE FALCON (1930) 🦅💎

🕵️ Sam Spade is on the Case of the Disappearing Copyright as The Maltese Falcon novel joins the public domain.

Learn more ➡️ https://blog.archive.org/public-domain-day-2026/

#PublicDomainDay #CopyrightFree