Category: Other Page 107 of 182

In Ancien Régime France, a nom de guerre (“war name”) would be adopted by each new recruit (or assigned to them by the captain of their company) as they enlisted in the French army. These pseudonyms had an official character and were the predecessor of identification numbers: soldiers were identified by their first names, their family names, and their noms de guerre (e. g. Jean Amarault dit Lafidélité). These pseudonyms were usually related to the soldier’s place of origin (e. g. Jean Deslandes dit Champigny, for a soldier coming from a town named Champigny), or to a particular physical or personal trait (e. g. Antoine Bonnet dit Prettaboire, for a soldier prêt à boire, ready to drink). In 1716, a nom de guerre was mandatory for every soldier; officers did not adopt noms de guerre as they considered them derogatory. In daily life, these aliases could replace the real family name.^[36]

Noms de guerre were adopted for security reasons by members of the World War II French resistance and Polish resistance. Such pseudonyms are often adopted by military special-forces soldiers, such as members of the SAS and similar units of resistance fighters, terrorists, and guerrillas. This practice hides their identities and may protect their families from reprisals; it may also be a form of dissociation from domestic life.

Wikipedia: Nom de Guerre

If I remember correctly, you can’t write *good* blog posts without also writing a bunch of klunkers and a whole lot of filler. But if I also remember correctly, the good posts end up being built out of the bits and pieces of the other stuff… sort of like a recycled prima materia.

…the ubiquitous starting material required for the alchemical magnum opus and the creation of the philosopher’s stone. It is the primitive formless base of all matter similar to chaos, the quintessence or aether.

Wikipedia: prima materia

And the trick is, you never know quite which is which while you’re doing it. You just put your head down & do it.

Hyperreality is seen as a condition in which what is real and what is fiction are seamlessly blended together so that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins. It allows the co-mingling of physical reality with virtual reality (VR) and human intelligence with artificial intelligence (AI).

Wikipedia: Hyperreality

The theory of narrative identity postulates that individuals form an identity by integrating their life experiences into an internalized, evolving story of the self that provides the individual with a sense of unity and purpose in life.^[1][2] This life narrative integrates one’s reconstructed past, perceived present, and imagined future. Furthermore, this narrative is a story – it has characters, episodes, imagery, a setting, plots, and themes and often follows the traditional model of a story, having a beginning (initiating event), middle (an attempt and a consequence), and an end (denouement).

Wikipedia: Narrative Identity

The early Celtic monasteries were like small villages, where the people were taught everything from farming to religion, with the idea in mind that eventually a group would split off, move a few miles away and establish another monastery. In this way, the Celtic way of life, and the Celtic Church propagated its way across Ireland and eventually to Western Britain and Scotland.

Source: Insular monasticism – Wikipedia

“…the name for fresh water from underground aquifers which was given a religious fertilising quality in Sumerian and Akkadian mythology. Lakes, springs, rivers, wells, and other sources of fresh water were thought to draw their water from the abzu. In this respect, in Sumerian and Akkadian mythology it referred to the primeval sea below the void space of the underworld (Kur) and the earth (Ma) above.”

Source: Abzu – Wikipedia

“Focus your eye on some point––any point will do––along the contour of the model,” Nicolaïdes wrote. “Place the point of your pencil on the paper. Imagine that your pencil point is touching the model instead of the paper.” Once you’re convinced that the tip of the pencil is synonymous with the sight of the eye, Nicolaïdes told artists to begin to slowly follow the contour of the model across the surface of the page. “Be guided more by the sense of touch than by sight,” he instructed.

Source: Blind Contour Drawing Can Help You Become a Better Artist – Artsy

In the mythology of Valmiki, the composer of the Hindu epic Ramayana, it is claimed that his first verse was inspired by the sight of a hunter kill the male of a pair of demoiselle cranes that were courting. Observing the lovelorn female circling and crying in grief, he cursed the hunter in verse. Since tradition held that all poetry prior to this moment had been revealed rather than created by man, this verse concerning the demoiselle cranes is regarded as the first human-composed meter.[7]

Source: Demoiselle crane – Wikipedia

The name “Birds’ Path” is used in several Uralic and Turkic languages and in the Baltic languages. Northern peoples observed that migratory birds follow the course of the galaxy[10] while migrating at the Northern Hemisphere. The name “Birds’ Path” (in Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Bashkir and Kazakh) has some variations in other languages, e.g. “Way of the grey (wild) goose” in Chuvash, Mari and Tatar and “Way of the Crane” in Erzya and Moksha.

Source: List of names for the Milky Way – Wikipedia