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Cake day: July 22nd, 2024

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  • They are probably meant to be mean, because the people described had a very low social status in society.

    The primary dichotomy of ancient Roman sexuality was active / dominant / masculine and passive / submissive / feminine. Roman society was patriarchal, and the freeborn male citizen possessed political liberty (libertas) and the right to rule both himself and his household (familia). “Virtue” (virtus) was seen as an active quality through which a man (vir) defined himself. The conquest mentality and “cult of virility” shaped same-sex relations. Roman men were free to enjoy sex with other males without a perceived loss of masculinity or social status as long as they took the dominant or penetrative role. Acceptable male partners were slaves and former slaves, prostitutes, and entertainers, whose lifestyle placed them in the nebulous social realm of infamia, so they were excluded from the normal protections afforded to a citizen even if they were technically free. Freeborn male minors were off limits at certain periods in Rome.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Rome




  • The wiki page on chocolate is not so sure about that one:

    Despite a popular belief that chocolate derives from the Nahuatl word chocolatl, early texts documenting the Nahuatl word for chocolate drink use a different term, cacahuatl, meaning “cacao water”. Several alternatives have therefore been proposed. In one, chocolate is derived from the hypothetical Nahuatl word xocoatl, meaning “bitter drink”. Scholars Michael and Sophie Coe consider this unlikely, saying that there is no clear reason why the ‘sh’ sound represented by ‘x’ would change to ‘ch’, or why an ‘l’ would be added.[4] Another theory suggests that chocolate comes from chocolatl, meaning ‘hot water’ in a Mayan language. However, there is no evidence of the form ‘chocol’ being used to mean hot.[4] Despite the uncertainty about its Nahuatl origin, there is some agreement that chocolate likely derives from the Nawat word chikola:tl.[5]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate#Etymology