history music pragmatic historian

Duran Duran – “Keep Moving Into the Future But Acknowledge Your Past”

By Mary | by Mary

Over the past week my Twitter feed has been burning up with news of Duran Duran. It’s almost as though they’ve released a new album …. And they have! The album “Future Past” dropped on October 22, 2021, the fifteenth studio album for one of my all-time favorite bands. Whoever is operating Duran Duran’s Twitter account is doing a marvelous job of keeping fans updated on the band’s current media appearances to promote the album.…

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history ideas pragmatic historian thought fodder

Now & Then: A Useful History Podcast

By Mary | by Mary

One of the most important uses of history is to use it to work ourselves out of predicaments we are facing RIGHT NOW. It’s easy to assume that because history is about what happened in the past, we can set it aside. That it has nothing to say to us now because conditions were different in the past. Except that humanity seems to cycle through the same sorts of challenges even when presented with what…

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art history writing

Just the Punctuation

By Mary | by Mary

I ran across a cool new tool on Twitter recently. Created by tech writer Clive Thompson (@pomeranian99 on Twitter), the tool strips all the letters from your writing, leaving you only the punctuation. It’s called Just the Punctuation [https://just-the-punctuation.glitch.me]. If you’re a writer, go ahead and give it a try. Paste some of your writing into the box and click the Submit button at the bottom. It helps if you use  a substantial piece of…

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