• bedwyr@piefed.ca
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    1 day ago

    Off subject, but everyone else is using eagles and raptors, tigers, lions, bears, for mascots. Here we are the humble lemming.

  • ReCursing@feddit.uk
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    2 days ago

    This appears to be a picture of the two next to each other that’s not on reddit (not that OP’s is either)

    • bstix@feddit.dk
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      2 days ago

      Greek stuff. Their sloppy handwriting is also the reason why the world today still has two different letters for the musical note between A and C.

        • bstix@feddit.dk
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          1 day ago

          Just a joke. The Greek alphabet is different from the Latin alphabet which is used in the rest of EU. This is why the euro coin looks different.

          In music, the notes between A and C have different letters in different countries. English uses the series “A, Bb, B, C” while German uses “A, B, H, C”.

          It’s often said that the H is a type-o of a different shaped B symbol, but that’s not really the truth nor the cause of the problem.

          The issue is that the Greeks found the B/Bb note before notation was invented. They knew that the overtone series would result in his note and used it when describing their system.

          Much later when staff notation was invented and refined by munks in Italy/Germany, they still hadn’t figured out the full chromatic series of notes, so it was kind of a problem that there were 2 different notes where B was supposed to be. Briefly explained, they simply called one of them H.

          Some centuries later and with the invention of the equal temperament tuning it became clear that there is nothing special about the B note. Similar intervals exist between all other notes and they are better described as sharp and flat variations.

          To keep things interesting they chose to make the signs for sharps and flats look like H and b.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 day ago

        I think it was more about witnessing owls’ abilities to see in the dark and using that as a metaphor for understanding or whatever.

        I think crows were considered bad omens back then.

        Quote from Hegel from the wiki article (mentions the Owl of Minerva at the very end):

        Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready. History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counterpart to the real, apprehends the real world in its substance, and shapes it into an intellectual kingdom. When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.

        — G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right (1820), “Preface”; translated by S W Dyde, 1896

      • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        In Old Norse mythology Odin had two ravens as his informants. Odin was the god of wisdom, having sacrificed one of his eyes in the well of Mimer.

      • You@feddit.org
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        2 days ago

        Why am I not surprised to find you here… ;D

        Guess you’ll update our owl knowledge further with the BBC logo - I know we already covered the coin design in the superbowl community.

        • anon6789@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          The coins come up a lot, and I’m always curious to see what new comments will pop up. I usually walk away with some bit of new knowledge, like this cool logo.

          Owls being both an almost universally known and loved leads them to pop up in so many places I’d never expect.

    • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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      2 days ago

      This is part of why coin edges were milled or reeded:

      The ridges made it harder to counterfeit the coins, and it also made clipping or filing of the edges to collect some of the gold or silver very obvious. In Britain this was implemented by everybody’s favorite scientist:

      Some gold and silver coins were reeded to discourage clipping, i.e. scraping off the precious metals from the edge of the coin, to maintain its stated value in precious metal. This practice was made more difficult through the implementation of reeding by Isaac Newton in 1698, during his time as warden of the Royal Mint.

      It’s less relevant today, as few coins are minted with precious metals, though the varied edges also help people with visual impairments to identify different denominations by feel.

    • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      They did that back then. Its silver value determined by weight, so if you need to pay one and a quarter you’d (sometimes) cut it out of another. Greek coins were really well denominated though so they didn’t need to do that most of the time.

      This is not my specific area though so some Hellenist may correct me…

  • betanumerus@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    Hey that’s Athena’s owl and/or Bubo and/or classical Greece’s version of Artoo-Detoo.

  • Melchior@feddit.org
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    2 days ago

    It is actually somewhat bigger than that. Athens had a local silver mine at Laurion. That allowed them to mint a lot of coins, which they did in the same sizes for centuries. That standard was also used by a lot of other rulers most notably Alexander the Great. That ended up with that coin standard being used in Ptolemaic Egypt, by the Parthians and so on.