9 ms·

This was really nice. I'll just say, it starts out deconstructing the way "magic" in the modern world has given way to "engineering" and thus mythological thin

This was really nice. I'll just say, it starts out deconstructing the way "magic" in the modern world has given way to "engineering" and thus mythological things like 'deals with the devil' are no longer believed. But, in my view, a significant part of the appeal of the 'deal with the devil' is that it isn't mysterious. A Faustian bargain works according to exactly the letter of the deal, and the devil always keeps his end of it. Part of what makes it interesting, enticing even, is that it looks like there might be ways to outwit the devil. The devil then is a force of nature to be engineered just like any other branch of engineering in modern times, not an arbitrary fact of life beyond our comprehension.

mrec 2y ago
Coincidentally, I've just finished Thomas' Religion and the Decline of Magic. It's very long and massively overexampled, but still a good and eye-opening read. When it came out in 1971 it cost an extortionate £7; one national newspaper had an editorial saying people might be forced to pay for it in instalments.
- petschge 2y ago
  How is that extortionate? Using the inflation calculator of the Bank of England that is 86 pounds now or $110. Admittedly that more expensive than the current price of $24 for the paper back, but at worst that seems to be twice as expensive as a common price for a 850 page book?
  - gambiting 2y ago
    I cannot imagine paying £86 for any book tbh. That seems crazy high.
    - burkaman 2y ago
      Don't go to college, you'll have to do that 5 times every semester.
      - gambiting 2y ago
        Oh I forgot that's a thing in some countries. I did both of my university degrees just borrowing books needed from the library, they have to have enough copies for every student if needed.
      - tucnak 2y ago
        American way of life
        Izkata 2y ago
        Most of the time we'd end up with a group of friends where we'd each buy a different book then share among each other. Not many were spending the whole amount every semester, especially past the first year when we didn't really know any better.
      - exoverito 2y ago
        Luckily most of my courses did not require textbooks. Though it was easy enough to get PDFs on libgen.
      - michaelt 2y ago
        But did you get a loan and.... pay for it in instalments?
    - JonChesterfield 2y ago
      Consider that some technical books have a potential target audience of thousand or so people. Then ask how many hours the book needs to save you to be worth $100. Depending on the book that can look very cheap.
    - marcus_holmes 2y ago
      I think I paid similar for Wolfram's A New Kind of Science back in the early 00's. Huge great beast of a hardback tome, promising the secrets of the universe. I don't think I ever finished it, and ended up giving it away to a charity shop after schlepping it around the world with me, unread.
  - yial 2y ago
    At October, 1970, the provisional figures of average weekly earnings of full-time manual workers were £28 Os. 11d. for men aged 21 years and over, and £13 19s. 10d. for women aged 18 years and over. Between October, 1965 and October, 1970, average earnings of all workers covered by the regular inquiry rose by 45.9 per cent. and the general index of retail prices by 26.4 per cent. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1971/jan/28/average-weekly-wage https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1971/jan/... So it would have been around a decent chunk of your weekly wage as an average worker, it sounds like. I think what we would need to know is how much excess income someone would have for something like that at the time.
  - robocat 2y ago
    > twice as expensive as a common price for a 850 page book? Costs per page have dropped significantly - so not valid to use page count as a fixed comparison point??? So perhaps its price is more reasonable than we might assume.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    > but at worst that seems to be twice as expensive as a common price for a 850 page book? Huh? https://www.amazon.com/Fires-Heaven-Wheel-Time-Book/dp/0312854277/ https://www.amazon.com/Fires-Heaven-Wheel-Time-Book/dp/03128... Hardcover for $24.49 (703 pages), paperback for $16.99 (848 pages).
- Narhem 2y ago
  Surprised what educating people and making them write their own sentences does to the psyche of a population.
nine_k 2y ago
Yes, the point, as I have always thought, is not that playing with the devil is playing with a deceitful sharper, but playing against one's own inability to handle one's desires, one's own imperfections and basically facing the corruption of the original sin in oneself. The devil just sets things up in such a way that the human who yielded to the temptation arrives to the state of ruin faster, and initially enjoying the ride, all while not being formally lied to at any moment. The idea is that there logically may be ways to outwit the devil, but he will never offer you a deal where you would be able to outwit him by the power of your (weak and corrupted) mind, so the faith is the only salvation, and rejecting any deals is the only non-losing strategy. Remember, Dr Faustus was not written by an atheist.
- moffkalast 2y ago
  So in a nutshell the whole genre can be reduced to "be careful what you wish for, you might get it"?
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Not just that, but also "...and you'll never be able to handle it, and the sleek scoundrel on the other side knows it".
  - throwanem 2y ago
    Or "don't think you're as smart as you think you are." Perhaps there's a line to be drawn from here to the dictum that code should be only half as clever as it could be, because debugging is twice as hard.
    - nine_k 2y ago
      Jokes about recursion are always funny, just like this one!
  - ozim 2y ago
    So you want to wave away whole storytelling experience by sentence that fits in a tweet. Gist of it might be true but reading dry sentence doesn’t do to a brain same thing as reading a story and going for a ride along with the imaginary person. Well done story evokes emotions, makes one think of what ifs and what nots. Also a lot of memes or tweet length life lessons are not possible without long form background we share as a society.
nonrandomstring 2y ago
It worked for me. The first part did a great job of painting the horror of living in an age of ignorance, at the mercy of unseen, never understood forces. But I kept thinking... no, hold on... that's now too! [0], so was pleased the last stanza wrapped up as I anticipated, concluding modern forms of magic and Faustian bargains are indeed "exchange in which short-term gain threatens long-term security." As a book review it went off into the long grass for a bit in the middle. [0] EDIT; sorry but that SouthPark episode where Butters prays to the government just popped into my head; "And if it wouldn't be too much trouble, I'd really like to get a puppy for Christmas this year. G'night, Government!"
_yb2s 2y ago
Exactly. All of magic is like that and has never really been mysterious... the people actually practicing it have mostly always understood that it was psychological hacks: that people are mostly holding themselves back from what they want, one just needs to align their unconscious desires with their will, and it will happen. (in)famous occultist Aleister Crowley was asked if magic is "real" e.g. can you actually do physical things like light a fire with your mind. His answer was basically that he didn't care or it doesn't matter- because the magic that aligns your unconscious with your conscious will is more powerful than people even imagine that type of magic would be. "Magic" in its various forms is alive and well, and is actually widely used (although often on the down low) by creative types to create things that far exceed what confused/ignorant lay people historically imagined magic to be capable of.
- im3w1l 2y ago
  > (in)famous occultist Aleister Crowley was asked if magic is "real" e.g. can you actually do physical things like light a fire with your mind. His answer was basically that he didn't care or it doesn't matter- Aligning the conscious with the subconscious is surely powerful, but this dismissal seems more like sour grapes tbh.
  - _yb2s 2y ago
    Perhaps, but Crowley actually claimed to be capable of that type of physical magic, and still dismissed it. I’m not sure what to make of that- he was brilliant but probably both crazy and dishonest.
    - cratermoon 2y ago
      > I’m not sure what to make of that Easy. Crowley was a grifter taking advantage of credulous people for his own ends. "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
      - _yb2s 2y ago
jfengel 2y ago
Faust himself didn't get tricked. He was offered the chance to get out of it until the very last instant. There wasn't any sneaky wording. There wasn't anything to outwit. At the beginning he somehow convinced himself that his soul didn't really exist, despite the presence of a literal devil in front of him, offering the power to do genuine magic. At the end he somehow just couldn't bring himself to repent. In between he uses his power for absolutely nothing of interest. The most earth shaking thing he does is that he plays a prank on the Pope. I'll be honest that I really don't get the point of the story. It's not about the devil being a trickster. If anything it reads kinda like a self critique by Marlowe, but that reading is also kinda shaky. It's more like people just wanted to see an academic get taken down a peg.
- CobrastanJorji 2y ago
  Even if the Devil was being honest with the terms, Faust did get tricked so long as he did not believe in souls, even if it was Faust tricking himself, and presumably the Devil was counting on that, knowing as he did that it was a bad deal. That's not unbelievable. It's human nature. I think a lot of real life businesses that work more or less the same way. It's a tragic tale about a pretty regular guy convincing himself to accept a shitty deal because the short term upside sounds pretty great, despite not even particular wanting or needing that upside.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Have I mentioned that I’d be happy to loan you money for your startup’s cashflow issues, with deferred interest, secured only by your immortal soul?
    - lelanthran 2y ago
      > Have I mentioned that I’d be happy to loan you money for your startup’s cashflow issues, with deferred interest, secured only by your immortal soul? Well I'm atheist, so I don't believe in souls. I guess I'll ... take the deal?
Lerc 2y ago
Recently I encountered a piece discussing "The Prestige" as a counter to the opinion that science dulls the wonder of the world by removing magic from the equation. The idea is that the machine in The Prestige is stipulated as being science as a conceit to allow the audience to experience an unexplainable phenomenon as the people of the time of the film would have experienced to technology of today. The distinction between magic and technology is shown to be that the wonder goes away for magic tricks once you know how the trick is performed. Technology maintains wonder even after you know how it works, because the wonder is the appreciation of how the goal is achieved by known principles.
lazide 2y ago
Honestly? ‘deals with the devil’ aren’t dangerous because the devil is doing any of the enticing, we are to ourselves. The devil just gives us a glorious chance to be hoist on our own petard (long term) in exchange for short term glory/enjoyment. A temptation eternally present in humanity, no matter the environment. We’re more than happy to scam ourselves later.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  You mean like burning oil and single use plastic?
  - CatWChainsaw 2y ago
    No, no, we totally have an infinite number of technological tricks to pull out of a magic hat and will roll nat20 every time.
    - lazide 2y ago
      It’s crazy how often it’s actually true though, when it really comes down to it eh?
      - CatWChainsaw 2y ago
        I don't think climate breakdown, industrial pollution, and microplastic saturation count as nat20s, nor do I think that we'll find a replacement fuel source that can sustain energy demand where it stands right now much less what this civilization would demand between AI/blockchain/metaverse everywhere, for everyone, for everything. But for a brief period of time we generated a lot of value for shareholders.
        lazide 2y ago
        Eh, that’s a rather myopic view though isn’t it? None of those issues you’re talking about seem intractable using the same tools that caused them, frankly, and are likely no harder to solve (if we want) than some of the things we’ve already successfully resolved quite thoroughly like; - world hunger from a technical/energy basis, as the only remaining hunger issues appear to be politically driven. - Smallpox, Cholera, Typhoid, Leprosy, and a large slew of other infectious diseases which have ravaged humanity since at least the dawn of recorded history, and probably earlier. Even Malaria is controllable/controlled, depending on the political situation. - Death by violence or accident is a rare and distant possibility for humans today compared to even 100 years ago. - Actual life impacting environmental pollution (comparing historical norms like open sewers, indoor wood burning stoves, dangerous fine particulates/dusts), etc. is at historic lows. - Real world quality of life for the population of the world is at the highest level globally we’ve seen, probably ever. And while there will be dips, that is not likely to materially change back. At least not without a lot of work to intentionally break things. Do we still have issues that need to be solved, and more upcoming? You bet. Some of them quite urgent. We also have more tools than ever at our disposal to solve them, if/when we use them. Currently, the biggest issue appears that it isn’t actually obviously critical that we use them, so people are holding back. Because it’s more fun to live their lives than make the sacrifices necessary to use many of those tools. I mean, just look back to what was going on 100 years ago vs now.
shostack 2y ago
If you like the structured nature of deals with Other beings and the intersection of that with magic, you might really enjoy the Pact web serial and its sequel Pale by Wildbow. They contain an exceptionally intricate and well thought through magic system in a modern "hidden world" setting. My favorite part is how litigious it all is. Power is gained, lost, and traded through deals practitioners make with Other beings, and these are mired in details and exploitation of nuanced language and such. It even features diabolist lawyers! https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/ https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/
throw7 2y ago
The devil never lies.
- 98codes 2y ago
  Or so the devil would have you believe.
kstenerud 2y ago
The mark always believes he has an edge.
thimkerbell 2y ago
Are the persistent themes the outcome of generation via the authors' predilections, or of winnowing via the readers'? Ok I read it. More it served the interests of power, "Protestantism (and, of course, Christianity generally) had a need to enforce the discipline of delayed gratification". It has a heckuva closing sentence.
- thimkerbell 2y ago
  Interesting, the theme that "the dangers of knowledge (Pandora, Genesis) may be as old as humanity.". Did that one stem from power (and pesky upstarts) too? (Is nixtamalization (of cornmeal) an example or a counterexample?)
  - thimkerbell 2y ago
    What is the field that studies or pontificates upon the historical? forces that led to various cultural themes?

mrec 2y ago

Coincidentally, I've just finished Thomas' Religion and the Decline of Magic. It's very long and massively overexampled, but still a good and eye-opening read. When it came out in 1971 it cost an extortionate £7; one national newspaper had an editorial saying people might be forced to pay for it in instalments.

petschge 2y ago
How is that extortionate? Using the inflation calculator of the Bank of England that is 86 pounds now or $110. Admittedly that more expensive than the current price of $24 for the paper back, but at worst that seems to be twice as expensive as a common price for a 850 page book?
- gambiting 2y ago
  I cannot imagine paying £86 for any book tbh. That seems crazy high.
  - burkaman 2y ago
    Don't go to college, you'll have to do that 5 times every semester.
    - gambiting 2y ago
      Oh I forgot that's a thing in some countries. I did both of my university degrees just borrowing books needed from the library, they have to have enough copies for every student if needed.
    - tucnak 2y ago
      American way of life
      - Izkata 2y ago
        Most of the time we'd end up with a group of friends where we'd each buy a different book then share among each other. Not many were spending the whole amount every semester, especially past the first year when we didn't really know any better.
    - exoverito 2y ago
      Luckily most of my courses did not require textbooks. Though it was easy enough to get PDFs on libgen.
    - michaelt 2y ago
      But did you get a loan and.... pay for it in instalments?
  - JonChesterfield 2y ago
    Consider that some technical books have a potential target audience of thousand or so people. Then ask how many hours the book needs to save you to be worth $100. Depending on the book that can look very cheap.
  - marcus_holmes 2y ago
    I think I paid similar for Wolfram's A New Kind of Science back in the early 00's. Huge great beast of a hardback tome, promising the secrets of the universe. I don't think I ever finished it, and ended up giving it away to a charity shop after schlepping it around the world with me, unread.
- yial 2y ago
  At October, 1970, the provisional figures of average weekly earnings of full-time manual workers were £28 Os. 11d. for men aged 21 years and over, and £13 19s. 10d. for women aged 18 years and over. Between October, 1965 and October, 1970, average earnings of all workers covered by the regular inquiry rose by 45.9 per cent. and the general index of retail prices by 26.4 per cent. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1971/jan/28/average-weekly-wage https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1971/jan/... So it would have been around a decent chunk of your weekly wage as an average worker, it sounds like. I think what we would need to know is how much excess income someone would have for something like that at the time.
- robocat 2y ago
  > twice as expensive as a common price for a 850 page book? Costs per page have dropped significantly - so not valid to use page count as a fixed comparison point??? So perhaps its price is more reasonable than we might assume.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > but at worst that seems to be twice as expensive as a common price for a 850 page book? Huh? https://www.amazon.com/Fires-Heaven-Wheel-Time-Book/dp/0312854277/ https://www.amazon.com/Fires-Heaven-Wheel-Time-Book/dp/03128... Hardcover for $24.49 (703 pages), paperback for $16.99 (848 pages).
Narhem 2y ago
Surprised what educating people and making them write their own sentences does to the psyche of a population.

nine_k 2y ago

Yes, the point, as I have always thought, is not that playing with the devil is playing with a deceitful sharper, but playing against one's own inability to handle one's desires, one's own imperfections and basically facing the corruption of the original sin in oneself. The devil just sets things up in such a way that the human who yielded to the temptation arrives to the state of ruin faster, and initially enjoying the ride, all while not being formally lied to at any moment. The idea is that there logically may be ways to outwit the devil, but he will never offer you a deal where you would be able to outwit him by the power of your (weak and corrupted) mind, so the faith is the only salvation, and rejecting any deals is the only non-losing strategy. Remember, Dr Faustus was not written by an atheist.

moffkalast 2y ago
So in a nutshell the whole genre can be reduced to "be careful what you wish for, you might get it"?
- nine_k 2y ago
  Not just that, but also "...and you'll never be able to handle it, and the sleek scoundrel on the other side knows it".
- throwanem 2y ago
  Or "don't think you're as smart as you think you are." Perhaps there's a line to be drawn from here to the dictum that code should be only half as clever as it could be, because debugging is twice as hard.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Jokes about recursion are always funny, just like this one!
- ozim 2y ago
  So you want to wave away whole storytelling experience by sentence that fits in a tweet. Gist of it might be true but reading dry sentence doesn’t do to a brain same thing as reading a story and going for a ride along with the imaginary person. Well done story evokes emotions, makes one think of what ifs and what nots. Also a lot of memes or tweet length life lessons are not possible without long form background we share as a society.

nonrandomstring 2y ago

It worked for me. The first part did a great job of painting the horror of living in an age of ignorance, at the mercy of unseen, never understood forces. But I kept thinking... no, hold on... that's now too! [0], so was pleased the last stanza wrapped up as I anticipated, concluding modern forms of magic and Faustian bargains are indeed "exchange in which short-term gain threatens long-term security." As a book review it went off into the long grass for a bit in the middle. [0] EDIT; sorry but that SouthPark episode where Butters prays to the government just popped into my head; "And if it wouldn't be too much trouble, I'd really like to get a puppy for Christmas this year. G'night, Government!"

_yb2s 2y ago

Exactly. All of magic is like that and has never really been mysterious... the people actually practicing it have mostly always understood that it was psychological hacks: that people are mostly holding themselves back from what they want, one just needs to align their unconscious desires with their will, and it will happen. (in)famous occultist Aleister Crowley was asked if magic is "real" e.g. can you actually do physical things like light a fire with your mind. His answer was basically that he didn't care or it doesn't matter- because the magic that aligns your unconscious with your conscious will is more powerful than people even imagine that type of magic would be. "Magic" in its various forms is alive and well, and is actually widely used (although often on the down low) by creative types to create things that far exceed what confused/ignorant lay people historically imagined magic to be capable of.

im3w1l 2y ago
> (in)famous occultist Aleister Crowley was asked if magic is "real" e.g. can you actually do physical things like light a fire with your mind. His answer was basically that he didn't care or it doesn't matter- Aligning the conscious with the subconscious is surely powerful, but this dismissal seems more like sour grapes tbh.
- _yb2s 2y ago
  Perhaps, but Crowley actually claimed to be capable of that type of physical magic, and still dismissed it. I’m not sure what to make of that- he was brilliant but probably both crazy and dishonest.
  - cratermoon 2y ago
    > I’m not sure what to make of that Easy. Crowley was a grifter taking advantage of credulous people for his own ends. "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
    - _yb2s 2y ago

jfengel 2y ago

Faust himself didn't get tricked. He was offered the chance to get out of it until the very last instant. There wasn't any sneaky wording. There wasn't anything to outwit. At the beginning he somehow convinced himself that his soul didn't really exist, despite the presence of a literal devil in front of him, offering the power to do genuine magic. At the end he somehow just couldn't bring himself to repent. In between he uses his power for absolutely nothing of interest. The most earth shaking thing he does is that he plays a prank on the Pope. I'll be honest that I really don't get the point of the story. It's not about the devil being a trickster. If anything it reads kinda like a self critique by Marlowe, but that reading is also kinda shaky. It's more like people just wanted to see an academic get taken down a peg.

CobrastanJorji 2y ago
Even if the Devil was being honest with the terms, Faust did get tricked so long as he did not believe in souls, even if it was Faust tricking himself, and presumably the Devil was counting on that, knowing as he did that it was a bad deal. That's not unbelievable. It's human nature. I think a lot of real life businesses that work more or less the same way. It's a tragic tale about a pretty regular guy convincing himself to accept a shitty deal because the short term upside sounds pretty great, despite not even particular wanting or needing that upside.
- lazide 2y ago
  Have I mentioned that I’d be happy to loan you money for your startup’s cashflow issues, with deferred interest, secured only by your immortal soul?
  - lelanthran 2y ago
    > Have I mentioned that I’d be happy to loan you money for your startup’s cashflow issues, with deferred interest, secured only by your immortal soul? Well I'm atheist, so I don't believe in souls. I guess I'll ... take the deal?

Lerc 2y ago

Recently I encountered a piece discussing "The Prestige" as a counter to the opinion that science dulls the wonder of the world by removing magic from the equation. The idea is that the machine in The Prestige is stipulated as being science as a conceit to allow the audience to experience an unexplainable phenomenon as the people of the time of the film would have experienced to technology of today. The distinction between magic and technology is shown to be that the wonder goes away for magic tricks once you know how the trick is performed. Technology maintains wonder even after you know how it works, because the wonder is the appreciation of how the goal is achieved by known principles.

lazide 2y ago

Honestly? ‘deals with the devil’ aren’t dangerous because the devil is doing any of the enticing, we are to ourselves. The devil just gives us a glorious chance to be hoist on our own petard (long term) in exchange for short term glory/enjoyment. A temptation eternally present in humanity, no matter the environment. We’re more than happy to scam ourselves later.

ClumsyPilot 2y ago
You mean like burning oil and single use plastic?
- CatWChainsaw 2y ago
  No, no, we totally have an infinite number of technological tricks to pull out of a magic hat and will roll nat20 every time.
  - lazide 2y ago
    It’s crazy how often it’s actually true though, when it really comes down to it eh?
    - CatWChainsaw 2y ago
      I don't think climate breakdown, industrial pollution, and microplastic saturation count as nat20s, nor do I think that we'll find a replacement fuel source that can sustain energy demand where it stands right now much less what this civilization would demand between AI/blockchain/metaverse everywhere, for everyone, for everything. But for a brief period of time we generated a lot of value for shareholders.
      - lazide 2y ago
        Eh, that’s a rather myopic view though isn’t it? None of those issues you’re talking about seem intractable using the same tools that caused them, frankly, and are likely no harder to solve (if we want) than some of the things we’ve already successfully resolved quite thoroughly like; - world hunger from a technical/energy basis, as the only remaining hunger issues appear to be politically driven. - Smallpox, Cholera, Typhoid, Leprosy, and a large slew of other infectious diseases which have ravaged humanity since at least the dawn of recorded history, and probably earlier. Even Malaria is controllable/controlled, depending on the political situation. - Death by violence or accident is a rare and distant possibility for humans today compared to even 100 years ago. - Actual life impacting environmental pollution (comparing historical norms like open sewers, indoor wood burning stoves, dangerous fine particulates/dusts), etc. is at historic lows. - Real world quality of life for the population of the world is at the highest level globally we’ve seen, probably ever. And while there will be dips, that is not likely to materially change back. At least not without a lot of work to intentionally break things. Do we still have issues that need to be solved, and more upcoming? You bet. Some of them quite urgent. We also have more tools than ever at our disposal to solve them, if/when we use them. Currently, the biggest issue appears that it isn’t actually obviously critical that we use them, so people are holding back. Because it’s more fun to live their lives than make the sacrifices necessary to use many of those tools. I mean, just look back to what was going on 100 years ago vs now.

shostack 2y ago

If you like the structured nature of deals with Other beings and the intersection of that with magic, you might really enjoy the Pact web serial and its sequel Pale by Wildbow. They contain an exceptionally intricate and well thought through magic system in a modern "hidden world" setting. My favorite part is how litigious it all is. Power is gained, lost, and traded through deals practitioners make with Other beings, and these are mired in details and exploitation of nuanced language and such. It even features diabolist lawyers! https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/ https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/

throw7 2y ago

The devil never lies.

98codes 2y ago
Or so the devil would have you believe.

kstenerud 2y ago

The mark always believes he has an edge.

thimkerbell 2y ago

Are the persistent themes the outcome of generation via the authors' predilections, or of winnowing via the readers'? Ok I read it. More it served the interests of power, "Protestantism (and, of course, Christianity generally) had a need to enforce the discipline of delayed gratification". It has a heckuva closing sentence.

thimkerbell 2y ago
Interesting, the theme that "the dangers of knowledge (Pandora, Genesis) may be as old as humanity.". Did that one stem from power (and pesky upstarts) too? (Is nixtamalization (of cornmeal) an example or a counterexample?)
- thimkerbell 2y ago
  What is the field that studies or pontificates upon the historical? forces that led to various cultural themes?