A thread to ask about cultural stuff you should know

[OneFrenchEgg]

Ok so there's loads of stuff other people know and stuff I know.
Where do I start with Noam Chomsky and why? Is he left wing? Why is he so relevant?

Good call @FortunataTagnips

Noam Chomsky has died.

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/noam-chomsky-health-update-tributes-b2561064.html

But he had a stroke?

He’s definitely not a well linguist. But his wife has denied the rumours that he’s dead.

Okay. I was worried that we'd somehow nobbled him. Not really but it was weird to see that news.

Omg, so it's not true! I'm guilty of spreading fake news then. No wonder it's nowhere on the Guardian website!

Worryingly, if you Google it, there seem to be a couple of legit websites reporting it as fact- the Belfast Telegraph and the New Statesman. Genuine mistakes, or fake websites?

Just been catching up on this excellent thread. It's balm to the wounds I suffer when I hear someone saying they don't know something because "it's before my time".
I know a lot of people think we don't need general knowledge because we have phones, but I suspect an awful lot of people never bother to look up something with which they're unfamiliar.

Anyway. Milton Keynes - obviously named after Milton.

Genuine mistakes, I think. Easily
done if you don’t go back and check your story with someone in a position to know.

Sorry for spreading false news! Blame twitter.

The poet?
Is it Paradise Lost?

Zonder

The poet?

Maybe.
Or perhaps another economist (Friedman).
Hadn't quite decided.

Is it Paradise Lost

No, because I can always find my way there. It's Paradise Regained I struggle with when leaving MK as, with all the roundabouts and inadequate signage, I inevitably get hopelessly lost.

I think it was AA Gill (who wrote about so much more than food) who said that it was ironic that MK seemed to be named after two people would have really disliked it.

Milton Keynes

Within Milton Keynes is Milton Keynes Village, the original village that was built around to create the New Town.

The Saxons originally named it.
In 1067 after the Norman conquest it appears in the Doomsday Book, as Middletone, the Old English for 'middle farmstead.’ Meaning it was the middle one of three settlements or farmsteads, the other two almost certainly being Broctone (later Broughton) and Waltone (later Walton)

Post Norman conquest, the villages feudal masters were the de Cahaignes, (pronounced de Kaynes) who also held Ashton Keynes, Somerford Keynes, and Horsted Keynes (modern spellings)
By the 13th century the village had been anglicized to and was known as Mideltone Kaynes.
Everyone called Keynes descends somewhere from the de Caignes later spelt Kaynes, then Keynes.
John Milton has no connection, other than that the name Milton also evolves from the Old English word Middletone for farmstead, and later Mill town.

The name Midleton Kaynes slowly evolved into Milton Keynes over the centuries.

In 14th, 15th centuries, the estate was owned by the Stafford family (have coat of arms) who sold out in 1658 to Heneage and Daniel Finch (father and son who lived in Rutland- also coat of arms) Other landowner is CofE but rectors appointed by Lord of the manor.

1939 last male member of that part of the Finch family dies and it's sold to William Mitchell, (rich but not gentry AFAIK) then towards end of WW2 sold to the Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol. The Society had bought up several local estate villages and their estate office was in Milton Keynes Village. Society then sold to the Milton Keynes Development Corporation.
However during planning, the decision to name the City after the village it was built around, was announced to Dick Crossman, housing minister in Harold Wilson's late 1960’s cabinet.

It's claimed Crossman was looking at the map of the area where the town was going to be built around MK village when told, and commented: "Milton the poet, Keynes the economic one. 'Planning with economic sense and idealism, a very good name for it.'" The press repeated it and that is where the naming myth came from.

(Quite a few of the planners and their friends took advantage of villagers 'evacuating' and selling up when the plans went through, to buy up housing in the village and modernize it, thus changing the 'social level' of who lived in the village and it's nature.)

Elleherd

Milton Keynes

Thank you; most interesting.

I prefer to gain my knowledge without typing key words/phrases into a search engine - it sticks more.
And it gets the jokes.

Would anyone like to help me out with some Russian history? The names that come to mind are Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Brezhnev.

For a complete history of the Russian Revolution you need Orlando Figes 'A People's Tragedy'

For books specifically about Stalin then I would pick Simon Sebag-Montefiore who has a few books about him starting with 'Young Stalin'

These would all cover a lot of Lenin and Trotsky along the way.

Brezhnev I can't really help with but have you seen Adam Curtis's 'Russia:Trauma Zone ' on iplayer? It's fascinating on how the Russian economy used to work in the Brezhnev era and why is so rapidly collapsed.

Thank you @AnnaMagnani but unfortunately I'm very lazy and the Figes book is about 959 pages longer than I'd ideally like. I probably need The Bluffer's Guide to...

I mostly google things I'm curious about and end up in wikipedia rabbit holes. But stuff I haven't got around to, because I'm only mildly curious and stuff about serial killers or nuclear power station accidents takes precedence:

When people talk about "it girls", what is "it"? I mentally associate the term with models/fashionistas but is that correct?

I don't properly understand what "zeitgeist" means, it's something like the spirit of the age right, but what does that actually mean.

Before memes were memes like they are today, which is pictures of cats and stuff with funny text on, meme meant an idea or concept that gets passed between people (I think?). How is that a thing. Why isn't it just an idea/concept.

A random one: cigar smokers don't inhale the smoke right, so what is the point. And they talk about the "taste" of a cigar - do they mean the smell really, or do you actually get a taste from having the smoke briefly in your mouth?

I'd have thought Keynes the man/family would be more likely to have been named for the place than vice versa, or possibly descended from the original de Cahaignes family after which the village was named.

Post modernism always confuses me. How can it be post if it’s already modern 🤷🏻‍♂️

Simon Sebag-Montefiore is good at a page turning read @HarpQuartet

I wouldn't be put off a long book by him as some of them race along. He has a complete history of Russia as well.

Are you more of a podcast person? The Empire podcast has had a season on Russia.

Actually I do have an Audible credit burning a hole in my pocket and Simon SM's books have very good ratings, @AnnaMagnani

Zeitgeist - zeit is time and Geist is ghost or spirit, in German.

but zeitgeist is about how an era is conceptualised eg “free love in the swinging sixties”

@givemushypeasachance ’It’ girls is still a term today I think, but it really started with an English novelist, Elinor Glyn, who wrote scandalously sensational books and screenplays for Hollywood. The term was around before she wrote her novel Three Weeks in 1907 but she defined it (or didn’t define it) thus:

’With It, you win all men if you are a woman and all women if you are a man. It can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction.’

The novel was filmed in 1927 with Clara Bow as the girl with the titular IT.

Nowadays I’d say it’s more upper class moneyed posh girls about town who are called ‘It girls’.

Zeitgeist is particular attitude, atmosphere, mood or the commonly shared ideas prevalent in a given period. First coined by the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder in the 18th century.
The adjective 'zeitgeisty' refers to the defining spirit of a particular era (funny to me as a native German speaker to see a German word used as an English adjective, it's usually the other way round).

ElectiveAffinities

It really started with an English novelist, Elinor Glyn, who wrote scandalously sensational books and screenplays for Hollywood.

Would you like to sin with Elinor Glyn on a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer to err with her on some other fur?