Explanation From Original OP/Artist:

FDA: The Food and Drug Administration is the American institution responsible for overseeing food products and medicines.

The Morhange Talcum Powder Affair is a public health scandal that broke out in France in 1972. At its origin was a baby powder marketed by the Morhange brand, accidentally contaminated with hexachlorophene — a substance with antiseptic properties but also neurotoxic at high doses. As the product had been applied to very young infants, it triggered a massive poisoning: 36 children died and more than 168 were affected, with cases of coma and severe neurological damage.

The investigation established that a handling error had led to the incorporation of approximately 6% hexachlorophene into the talcum powder — a concentration far beyond any admissible threshold — thereby turning an everyday care product into a poison for infants. The toxicity of hexachlorophene was not unknown to scientific authorities: the FDA had conducted studies on mice that revealed characteristic brain lesions, described as the brain having turned into a sponge. The FDA had moreover issued repeated warnings as early as 1971 regarding the use of this substance.

On the judicial front, the affair gave rise to prosecutions and the indictment of several industrial and technical managers at the Morhange company. The most troubling aspect of the judicial handling of the case lies in the unequal treatment of the families: some were compensated through out-of-court settlements in exchange for dropping their legal proceedings — having little choice given their financial hardship — while others, refusing this compromise, had to face years of lengthy legal proceedings alone. It is worth noting that Robert Badinter represented the industrial defendants.

On the regulatory and public health front, the affair left a lasting mark and represented a decisive turning point: it led to tighter oversight of cosmetics and products intended for infants in France, and more broadly, to a collective awareness of the necessity of strictly regulating the placing of such products on the market.

Explanation From Original OP:

One of the earliest critiques (of 'Baby it’s Cold Outside) came from Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian writer whose work influenced modern Sunni Islamism and who went on to become a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Upon visiting Greeley, Colo., in 1949, Mr. Qutb wrote angrily about a church dance where the minister dimmed the lights and went to the gramophone to put on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”

The ‘Father’ waited until he saw people getting into the rhythm of that erotic song,” Mr. Qutb wrote in an article for an Egyptian magazine.

The NYT. Other stuff:

Qutb frequently described a college dance where “the room convulsed with the feverish music”. He was disturbed by the intermingling of the sexes, noting, “Dancing naked legs filled the hall, arms draped around the waists, chests met chests, lips met lips”.

Qutb was shocked to observe similar social mixing and physical contact occurring inside church spaces, which he viewed as a loss of religious morality.

He claimed American women were “well acquainted with [their] body’s seductive capacity”.

He wrote that women used their bodies “from their lips and legs to their curves” to manipulate men, transforming basic interactions into transactional, animal-like behavior.

In his theological works, such as In the Shade of the Qur’an, Qutb emphasized that women’s true nature is suited to nurture, and that the “laxness” of Western individualism destroyed the traditional family unit.

He was a major leader, philosopher, and martyr of the Muslim Brotherhood, and his writings were hugely influential in the rise of modern Islamism generally, and Al Qaeda specifically.

Explanation: During the US Civil War, the great general Ulysses S. Grant would be placed in command of the Union’s armies during the later period of the war, fighting against the pro-slavery secessionist Confederacy. General Grant has sometimes been maligned as a butcher by postwar slaver apologists peddling what has come to be known as the “Lost Cause” in historical academia, but the truth is very far from that. Grant’s losses were not greater than any other Union general’s, but his victories were far greater - because when he failed to take a position, he would simply attempt it from another angle.

This sounds simple, perhaps even deceptively intuitive, but it was also a risky strategy insofar as it required the morale and organization of the soldiery to remain high. Grant, who was attentive to the needs and feelings of the enlisted man, judged them correctly. After an especially brutal draw at the Battle of the Wilderness, the Union troops, having penetrated into Confederate-held land, were downhearted and convinced that, like after every other setback under other Union generals, they were going to give up their hard-earned gains and retreat to lick their wounds.

When it became apparent that Grant had given the order to penetrate deeper into Confederate territory instead (by a different route), the men cheered. They sang. They praised Grant’s name. By all accounts, they were thrilled after the brutal bloodletting to be led into more fighting - because it means that they and their comrades had not fought and died in vain.

Men do not want to die, generally. But perhaps even more than that, they do not want to die for nothing. Keeping up the fight even after heavy casualties is, paradoxically, sometimes better for morale than attempting to stem the losses.

In Rome (and many Roman cities) urinals (effectively, jars set into suitably out-of-the-way parts of the sidewalk) were installed by private firms/individuals, because (fermented) urine was used in bleaching cloth and treating leather.

Vespasian started the practice of taxing those firms (only in the city of Rome itself, not all across the Empire) according to the amount of urine or urinals they collected.

Funny enough, the Emperor Vespasian, who was generally a good Emperor, to this day has urinals named after him in Italian (‘vespasiano’) because he taxed urine during his reign, lmao.

Explanation for those wondering: Commodus was the son of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius is generally regarded as a good Emperor, a man of great restraint and mildness, and the author of some fantastic musings on the Greek philosophical school of Stoicism - his Meditations. Highly recommend (if you find one version too stuffy or archaic or conversely, not archaic enough for your A E S T H E T I C, looking for a different translation can make all the difference).

Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill… I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together.

His son, Commodus, was the first son to be actually born to a reigning Emperor since the very start of the Empire some ~200 years before. Commodus would become Emperor after his father’s death - itself only the second time in the Empire’s history that a biological son had succeeded his father*. The first few years went alright, but before long, ultimate autocratic power apparently got to his head, and he went off the deep end. He chose to dress up as the Graeco-Roman demigod Hercules (whom he claimed to be a reincarnation of), fight rigged matches in the Colosseum, murder anyone who looked at him funny, and tried to rename the Empire and its citizens after himself. He ruled for 12 years.

He would be assassinated in his bathtub by his own personal trainer after everyone in the fucking Empire, Senate included, got tired of his nonsense, and one Roman politician by the name of Pertinax, the son of a freed slave, would be elected by the Senate as Emperor the morning afterwards.

*The Emperor Titus had succeeded his father, Vespasian, but Titus was born some ~30 years before Vespasian became Emperor, and was not raised with even the vaguest expectation that he or his old man would someday become Emperor. So he didn’t have the whole ‘spoiled royal’ thing going on

“like a cunt” and the unexpected sad lion Pepe both got me, lmao

The democratic processes did not die completely. Apparently only the nobles and the representatives could vote.

In the Late Empire? Not in any meaningful sense. Even the Senate was castrated at that point.

My point is that the meme is very exaggerated.

Sure, but nearly all humor is to some degree.

Alot of those tribes just straight up joined, yes. Often through democratic processes because there were many benefits.

Most of the (largely local) democratic processes of the Roman Empire were long-dead by the 5th century AD.

Most important was the taxes to Rome and access through roads. There was even freedom of religion. A very sucessful system with a strong center that could hold cohesion inside its borders.

Freedom of religion? In the Late Empire?

Guy on the right has MASSIVE uncle energy, I feel like he’s going to teach me how to spot a cop while driving on the highway.

“Silver can buy many grains of salt.”

“Explain.”

“Money can be exchanged for goods and services.”

“Woohoo!”

In the Early Empire, the retirement bonus received by legionaries at the end of enlistment was a bonus equivalent to ~12 years pay, with your pay grade affecting that payment. Enough to buy a nice little farm in the provinces!

Notes: Legionaries of the Early Roman Empire were supposed to be 5’10… in Roman feet, which is around 5’7 (174cm). Archeology supports that shorter men were regularly accepted.

Legionaries of the Late Empire were often not regularly paid in coinage at all, but reimbursed in-kind - that is to say, supplied with food and equipment. Bonuses were still distributed in coin, but were irregularly received and not always easy to spend anyway, on account of the whole “Empire falling apart” bit.

Estimating the lifespan of an average legionary (if there could be said to be such a thing) is incredibly difficult with most records being obliterated by time. ANY estimates offered will always be DEEPLY contentious. However, one article I read posited, acknowledging the shortcomings of the available evidence, that the average lifespan of a legionary in the Early Empire was about the same as the average man of the Early Empire. That is to say, whatever dangers Roman military life offered, they were about equally offset (in this proposed interpretation of the limited data) by recruitment preferences for healthy men, reliable access to a robust and healthy diet, and free top-of-the-line medical care. Estimates of lifespans in the Late Empire, military and civilian, are generally accepted to be… worse.

“Patriotism” is an old Latin term meaning “a steady paycheck”, at least in this context.

Explanation: Mehmed the Conqueror, of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, was the ruler who finally finished off the long-enduring (but long-sickly) rump state of the Byzantine Empire, centered in modern-day Greece and European Turkiye, by conquering the formidable fortified city of Constantinople (now-Istanbul).

Look out for the cannon in the back!

Explanation: In the Late Roman Empire, various Germanic tribes (including the Goths and Vandals) overran the Western Empire entirely, and established themselves as long-term residents of the areas they conquered - most relevant to the meme, Spain/Portugal and North Africa. Rather than reveling in the destruction of civilization, these Germanic tribes were largely looking to settle on land that they wouldn’t freeze to death and die horribly in, trampled by other, Central Asian migrating barbarian tribes. Thus, a large part of the appeal of Roman lands was that it was already ‘mapped out’, so to speak - not vast, unknown forests separated by hostile tribes, but mostly cohesive lands where everyone already knew where the good farmland was and all that was needed was a little ‘transfer’ of ownership!

For that reason, and the prestige/well-established culture of Rome, many of these Germanic tribes went through great pains to present themselves as Roman to the new lands they ruled over, even adopting large parts of (Late) Roman law in the process. They would be the best damn Romans they could be!

… but a few short centuries later, the Arab-dominated Umayyad Caliphate (the cultural Arab chauvinism would actually lead to its eventual downfall and replacement with the Abbasid Caliphate), championing the then-new faith of Islam, would overrun North Africa and most of Spain in turn. The response of the Germanic ruling class of North Africa and Spain?

… be the best damn Arab Muslims they could be!

I know Warsaw in particular was still cleaning up rubble in '47.

Explanation From Original OP:

In his autobiographical Confessio, St. Patrick wrote that upon trying to secure passage on a ship to escape slavery, the pagan sailors offered their breasts to be sucked. He refused, stating it was “out of reverence for God”. In pre-Christian Ireland, offering a nipple to be sucked or kissed was an ancient Celtic custom, it served as a symbolic gesture of submission, asking for protection, or swearing loyalty to a superior or chieftain.

I think I see what I missed, edited to make it a little more clear.

The nomenclature for the years is based on the presumption that there are two people.

“The Consulship of Julius and Caesar” subverts that by using the two-person structure for a one-person occurrence.

In Fight Club, Tyler Durden and Jack are presented as two different people, but the climax of the movie reveals they’re actually only one.

… cat is a member of the People Eating Leopards’ Faces Party?

I’ll change the title, then!