• pimento64@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    1 year ago

    If you want even worse, I know somebody who needed a manuscript that wasn’t digitized, so he had to actually fly to the UK and go to the small university that had the manuscript. As if that isn’t enough of a pain in the ass on its own, the actual research consisted of carefully leafing through a moldy 700 year old book written in medieval Latin, analyzing the handwriting to decipher certain nonsense words that it turned out were actually just spelling mistakes, and shining special lights at weird angles to read faded ink. And then in the end, he found out the part wanted to cite (about a clergyman burning a granary to punish a village for their sinfulness) was was actually just a passage about tax levies that was deliberately mistranslated by one of those charlatan gentleman archaeologists from the 19th Century who wanted to discredit the Catholic Church.

    • ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      And then in the end, he found out the part wanted to cite (about a clergyman burning a granary to punish a village for their sinfulness) was actually just a passage about tax levies that was deliberately mistranslated by one of those charlatan gentleman archaeologists from the 19th Century who wanted to discredit the Catholic Church.

      This is a great example of how much effort it can take to pick apart bullshit, damn. Thanks for these comments, they’ve been really interesting to read!