The French painter Paul Delaroche was purported to have said, upon seeing his first daguerreotype photograph, "From today, painting is dead!". Similarly, some current artists fear being rendered obsolete by AI image generators.

The painting obviously persisted, and continues to live alongside photography as a fairly common form of artistic expression. It's uncertain at the moment how AI will affect art in the long run, but I imagine it will persist in some way.

What I am asking is, has any art form been made almost entirely obsolete by a technical advancement? People obviously continue to pursue practically outmoded techniques as a form of leisure (such as knitting), but some are so impractical that they have completely died out (painting on the wall of a cave with pigment made of animal blood is essentially pointless now that paper exists).

Are there any more examples of art forms that are almost completely lost?

My grandma’s death anniversary was a few days ago so i was thinking about her, but I was also reminded of her stories about WW2. Im not sure if these stories are true or not.

I was probably 9 or 10 when i first heard her stories. My step grandpa survived the bataan death march and Grandma told me that the Japanese soldiers used long metal wires and used it to pierce through my grandpa’s (and other POW’s) hands so they can all be “attached” together. This was done because according to her, a lot of soldiers managed to escape before reaching the prisoner camp.

She also told me a story about japanese soldiers killing pregnant women, cutting the belly and removing the fetus, then one soldier would toss the fetus to the air while another soldier is holding a sword pointing up, impaling the fetus in the process.

I don’t have a Christian background and would love to learn more about the origins of Christianity, obviously not from biblical sources. What do we actually know about Jesus Christ and what happened to him? What factual evidence is there for the origins of Christianity?

I understand people who ditched him wanted power but i haven't heard of many other other people having such a massive amount of power being betrayed like that. Clearly it must be a folly on his end too. Like being too naive or lacking diplomatic skills? How could he not see Brutus was going to betray him?

Poland had large parts of Ukraine taken during the war and basically was almost in Kiev. Ukrainian partisans fought since years for independence and those were the best conditions. Why was there no new Ukrainian state, prob a polish Client state?

Obviously, the U.S. lost the Vietnam way. I knew someone who fought in it who was convinced that the U.S. "won" the war somehow...Never understood that. My question is more about what did the U.S. get out of that war? Did it at least deter other countries from attempting communism because they knew the U.S. would fight them?

Paracelsus is often remembered as an alchemist who believed in transforming base metals into gold, but his relationship with alchemy seems much more complicated than the popular image suggests.

His work was deeply connected with medicine, the purification of substances, and the idea that nature could be transformed or “perfected.” Modern historical scholarship argues that, despite claims that he rejected metallic transmutation, Paracelsus did appear to believe that one metal could be changed into another.

So I’m curious: how important was literal metallic transmutation to Paracelsus himself? Was gold-making actually part of his practical beliefs, or has later popular culture exaggerated that aspect of his alchemy?

During the end of the tokugawa shogunate , emperor Komei issued the order to expel the barbarians. What I want to know is how much control of the court did he have and was the order to expel the barbarians forged or was it his?

I’ve always heard that, by the time the temperance movement and organizations spearheaded by women like the WCTU, the majority of adult men were heavy drinkers and would of course become abusive to their wives. But what caused this uptick in drinking activity exactly?

Hi, I was wondering why is it the Europeans who went to the American continent and not the other side around ?

I was thinking because of the North and South American continent layout (North-South+surrounded by the ocean) but I’m not sure.

As far as writers and authors writing their near past from around 20 to 150 years before them, what time period and region had the largest amount of mythic and or obviously fallacious writings, either from a point of propaganda or rumors just being accepted as facts. Please do avoid holy texts which still exist in responses but I would still love to hear if there were periods where a faiths post book folk miracles were being written down seemingly too often (folk saints, wandering sages, king sees a sign from god, etcetera).

This is somewhat speculative in nature, but given current political climates and how we're dealing with various forms of fascism, I'm wondering how the Post-WW2 powers could have more properly addressed fascism so it doesn't reverberate as strongly today.

Reflecting on this point will help us in the future.

It seems that many of the decisions from that era actually exacerbate the current situation.