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<blockquote style="position: relative; padding-left: 55px;"><section><a href="https://mastodon.social/users/mhoye/statuses/115260979591170142">mhoye (temporarily spooky) (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 25-Sep-2025 06:43:48 JST</a><a href="https://mastodon.social/@mhoye" title="mhoye@mastodon.social"><img src="https://gnusocial.jp/avatar/9256-48-20240425145904.webp" width="48" height="48" alt="mhoye (temporarily spooky)" style="position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0;">mhoye (temporarily spooky)</a><div><a href="https://mastodon.social/@mhoye/115260927901105502" rel="in-reply-to">in reply to</a></div></section><article><p>"Potemkin Villages" are apocryphal, but: too good a metaphor not to keep to hand.</p><p>"As soon as the barge carrying the Empress and ambassadors arrived, Potemkin's men, dressed as peasants, would populate the village. Once the barge left, the village was disassembled, then rebuilt downstream overnight."</p><p>(aside: Imagine having a story like that completely overshadow your life's work? It's like finding out the Earl of Sandwich invented the appendectomy and nobody cares.)</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village</a></p></article><footer><a rel="bookmark" href="https://gnusocial.jp/conversation/5679778#notice-11149228">In conversation</a><time datetime="2025-09-25T06:43:48+09:00" title="Thursday, 25-Sep-2025 06:43:48 JST">about a month ago</time> <span>from <span><a href="https://mastodon.social/@mhoye/115260979591170142" rel="external" title="Sent from mastodon.social via ActivityPub">mastodon.social</a></span></span><a href="https://mastodon.social/@mhoye/115260979591170142">permalink</a><h4>Attachments</h4><ol><li><article><header><div>Domain not in remote thumbnail source whitelist: upload.wikimedia.org</div><h5><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village">Potemkin village</a></h5><div></div></header><div>In politics and economics, a Potemkin village (Russian: [pɐˈtʲɵmkʲɪn]) is a construction (literal or figurative) the purpose of which is to provide an external façade to a situation, to make people believe that the situation is better than it actually is. The term comes from stories of a fake portable village built by Grigory Potemkin, a field marshal and former lover of Empress Catherine II, solely to impress the Empress during her journey to Crimea in 1787. Modern historians agree that accounts of this portable village are exaggerated. The original story was that Potemkin erected phony portable settlements along the banks of the Dnieper River in order to impress the Russian Empress and foreign guests. The structures would be disassembled after she passed, and re-assembled farther along her route to be seen again.OriginGrigory Potemkin was a minister and lover of the Russian Empress Catherine II. After the 1783 Russian annexation of Crimea from the Ottoman Empire and "liquidation" of the Cossack Zaporozhian Sich (see New Russia), Potemkin became governor of the region...</div><footer></footer></article></li></ol></footer></blockquote>

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mhoye (temporarily spooky) (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 25-Sep-2025 06:43:48 JST mhoye (temporarily spooky)
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"Potemkin Villages" are apocryphal, but: too good a metaphor not to keep to hand.
"As soon as the barge carrying the Empress and ambassadors arrived, Potemkin's men, dressed as peasants, would populate the village. Once the barge left, the village was disassembled, then rebuilt downstream overnight."
(aside: Imagine having a story like that completely overshadow your life's work? It's like finding out the Earl of Sandwich invented the appendectomy and nobody cares.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village
In conversationabout a month ago from mastodon.socialpermalink
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1. Domain not in remote thumbnail source whitelist: upload.wikimedia.org
  Potemkin village
  In politics and economics, a Potemkin village (Russian: [pɐˈtʲɵmkʲɪn]) is a construction (literal or figurative) the purpose of which is to provide an external façade to a situation, to make people believe that the situation is better than it actually is. The term comes from stories of a fake portable village built by Grigory Potemkin, a field marshal and former lover of Empress Catherine II, solely to impress the Empress during her journey to Crimea in 1787. Modern historians agree that accounts of this portable village are exaggerated. The original story was that Potemkin erected phony portable settlements along the banks of the Dnieper River in order to impress the Russian Empress and foreign guests. The structures would be disassembled after she passed, and re-assembled farther along her route to be seen again. Origin Grigory Potemkin was a minister and lover of the Russian Empress Catherine II. After the 1783 Russian annexation of Crimea from the Ottoman Empire and "liquidation" of the Cossack Zaporozhian Sich (see New Russia), Potemkin became governor of the region...

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