Daily Archives: May 6, 2024

Top Tens – Miscellany: Top 10 Youtube (Special Mention) (17) Potential History

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Youtube channel banner as at 6 May 2024

 

(17) POTENTIAL HISTORY (USA 2017)

 

He brought the Bob Semple tank – “the best tank ever built” – to my attention, deserving special mention for that alone.

His Twitter bio is brief and to the point – “I sh*tpost about history on Youtube”. As for that matter is his Twitter handle – Tank memes. A history channel with a focus on World War Two, particularly the tanks of World War Two, often told through memes – and much to my delight, usually skewering Wehraboo delusions or pretensions about Germany or its tanks.

Hence the adaptation of Palpatine’s dialogue for his Youtube bio – “Did you ever hear the tragedy of King Tiger the heavy? I thought not. It’s not a story the Panzerwaffe would tell you. It’s a Wehraboo legend. King Tiger was a Heavy Tank of the Wehrmacht, so Armored and so deadly he could use his cannon to influence the 88mm shells to Burn Shermans… He had such an unnecessary amount of armor that he could even keep the ones who crewed him, from dying. The German tank design theory is a pathway to many monstrosities some consider to be under powered. What happened to him? He became so up-armored and heavy… the only thing he was afraid of was destroying his transmission, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his adversaries everything he knew, then his adversaries copied the good parts of his design after the war. It’s ironic he could save others from damage, but not himself.”

Sadly somewhat dormant for the past year or so, although he has posted on Twitter

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mancy (Special Mention) (17) Chronomancy

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16th century German half-hour sand glass, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City) – public domain image Wikipedia article “Hourglass”

 

(17) CHRONOMANCY

 

“Mastery is achieved when telling time becomes telling time what to do”

Funnily enough, Wikipedia does feature chronomancy among its methods of divination in terms similar to geomancy but with respect to time rather than space – the divination of the best or most propitious time to do something, or the determination of lucky and unlucky days.

Although arguably all divination is ultimately a form of chronomancy – in so far as it looks through time to the past or future.

However, the more popular usage of chronomancy is with respect to magic for moving through or manipulating time – potentially the most ridiculously overpowered form of magic if given full force.

And with a little imagination, it can adapt or replicate the usual schools of magic in Dungeons and Dragons in some form or other. Divination is straightforward, but also conjuration of anything from any time, such as dinosaurs.

And so on through time transmutation even to some sort of weird time necromancy with enough imagination or lateral thinking – time ghosts or time zombies, anyone?

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythologies (Special Mention) (17) UFOs & Ufology

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Possibly the most iconic UFO picture of all time and certainly the mantra of UFO enthusiasts – the poster for The X-Files made by the production team for the series

 

(17) UFOS & UFOLOGY

 

Close encounters of the third kind.

The modern mythology par excellence, a mythos of extraordinary depth and complexity – one that has even absorbed former fairy folklore, angelic visitations, and divine encounters into itself, as well as forming part of new religions.

Technically, there is nothing mythic about UFOs in their purest sense – as unidentified flying objects. Observations or sightings of aerial phenomena and unidentified flying objects have been a prosaic matter of fact, both since human flight and previously throughout history.

And there is nothing mythic about any number of prosaic explanations for them, which could well be the subject of their own top ten – setting aside human error (often of known or subsequently identified objects), delusion, hoax or psychological effects, there are a number of ordinary objects or phenomena.

Aircraft or balloons. Astronomical objects. Atmospheric objects and light phenomena, including my personal favorite I yearn to see for myself, ball lightning.

Of course, what is mythic is the hypothesis that has become synonymous with UFOs – the extraterrestrial hypothesis, essentially UFOs as alien spacecraft or visitation. Although arguably that is one strand, albeit the predominant one, of various overlapping hypotheses, which propose exotic explanations other than ordinary phenomena.

Timecraft rather than spacecraft (and future humans or posthumans rather than aliens). The cryptoterrestrial hyphothesis. The interdimensional hypothesis. Space Nazis or communists.  Or some sort of government conspiracy to manipulate perception.

UFOs and ufology have a number of layered elements. There are the UFOs themselves – ranging from the foo fighters and ghost rockers of WW2 (or their predecessors as mystery airships) to more contemporary black triangles, flying saucers and green fireballs.

Then there’s the aliens, most predominantly the aliens known as the Greys, or their predecessors Little Green Men – the former being suspiciously humanoid and nude – as well as their predilections for cattle mutilation (presumably as bowsers they pump as fuel for their spacecraft), crop circles, abduction, and the omnipresent probing (or lurid sexual fantasies to rival those of witchcraft).

That last always throws in a skeptical note for me. It’s hard to imagine that aliens are so advanced as to cross light years of space or different dimensions just to give some hick an enema. I mean, I would, but I’m not particularly advanced and that’s just my sense of humor.

Also – why is it never the sexy aliens? Although there is (or was) a strand of aliens in UFO mythology as Nordic aliens.

And then there’s the deeper levels of UFO mythology revolving around human interaction – or conspiracy – with aliens. Roswell and Area 51. Men in black. Majestic 12. And my personal favorite, the endless ancient alien hypotheses, with Eric von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods foremost among them for me – aliens built the pyramids!

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (Special Mention) (17) Greatest Conspiracies of All Time

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Cover of the last edition by Citadel Press in 2004 – it’s a pity as I think they should have kept going to 100

 

(17) JONATHAN VANKIN & JOHN WHALEN – GREATEST CONSPIRACIES OF ALL TIME

 

The other modern folklore par excellence, where history meets mythology – conspiracy theories need no introduction, particularly on the internet, that conspiracy theory kitchen sink(hole).

There is of course a plethora of conspiracy theories – it seems at least one for every significant contemporary event at this point. Enough for their own top ten – in some cases enough for their own top ten just with respect to particular events (hello 9/11 and JFK).

Or indeed for their own top ten a number of times over in general – which leads me to this special mention entry which does just that, and is of course irresistible to me combining top ten type lists with conspiracy theories. These compilations of Greatest Conspiracies of All Time went from 50 in its original edition before tapping out at the 80 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time in its last edition in 2004. No doubt they could have piled up more to at least 100 (or 200) in the two decades since.

Interestingly, both writers were also writers of comics and it is intriguing how often comic storylines overlap with conspiracy theories. Indeed, I suspect I could compile a top ten of comics based on the premise of overarching conspiracy theories – Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, Nick Spencer’s Morning Glories, and Jonathan Hickman’s The Manhattan Projects to name a few.

Of course, my favorite section of the books was for the various overarching grand unifying theories of conspiracies – with the Illuminati as my favorite.
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Murray Rothbard proposed a model of types of conspiracy theory contrasting deep conspiracy theories to shallow ones, with the latter observing an event and asking cui bono or who benefits, “jumping to the conclusion that a posited beneficiary is responsible for covertly influencing events”.

As Vankin and Whalen lamented in their books, conspiracy theories have become pretty lazy these days – and they tapped out in 2004, before the internet truly transformed conspiracy theories into something which could spring into existence with the click of a button. Previously, conspiracy theories involved the meticulous, even obsessive, compilation of facts or evidence. Now, it’s mostly along the lines of Rothbard’s shallow conspiracy theories – simply proposing a beneficiary or motive behind any event, which is pretty easy to do, and asserting that as a conspiracy.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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