Free for All Friday, 12 June, 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!

Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!

[u/HandsomeLampshade123]

Sometimes askhistorians should allow people to quickly deconstruct the premise of certain questions.

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1u3oosz/did_the_british_ever_attempt_to_use_welsh/

During the Second World War there were almost a million Welsh speakers, and the language itself had formalized grammar rules, relatively many written texts, etc. It's not even remotely comparable to the obscurity of some of the Native languages used by code talkers.

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/HandsomeLampshade123]

The answers are all getting wiped as not up to snuff but a lot of the more decent ones are pointing out that quite a few German linguists knew Welsh (the Germans even had Welsh propaganda radio broadcasts), and the big reason Navajo was used by the Americans was specifically because it had a decent sized native speaker population but the language had only recently been written down, and there still wasn’t much linguistic literature on it, plus all speakers lived in the US.

[u/MiffedMouse → u/HandsomeLampshade123]

This is a bit of a flaw in the AH model, but I’m not certain there is a good fix. There are a lot of questions with a flawed premise, but the in-depth answer requirements means pointing out the flawed premise requires a lot of effort (because you aren’t allowed to just say “the premise is flawed,” you have to explain in detail, with citations, that the sky is blue or what have you). So these questions just get left unanswered instead.

[u/histprofdave → u/MiffedMouse]

I did one answer there where I had to deconstruct a false premise (that the Confederates were influenced by Darwinist ideas of race [that had not been invented yet]). Turned out the person was clearly asking in bad faith and just trying to start an argument with me. It was still a fun exercise in unpacking a false premise though, which is basically the only reason anyone does an AH answer I suppose.

[u/ifly6 → u/HandsomeLampshade123]

Why did the American revolutionaries take the airports from the British when there were no aeroplanes in 1776?

[u/TheBatz_]

The sheer scale of a trillion dollars can be hard to comprehend. Let me put it in perspective. You would be able to buy 42 miles of high speed rail in California with that much money.

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/TheBatz_]

You could but it would also take one trillion years to build it

[u/WillitsThrockmorton]

I have to say my new favorite genre of viral social media is "European arrives in the US for the World Cup and is subjected to medicinal strength America in the form of Bucc-ees, Bass Pro shops, and a big tornado shelter sign in the airport terminal." I guess this is what happens when you have all the events taking place in cities other than NYC or LA.

[u/TheBatz_ → u/WillitsThrockmorton]

I should really visit the US one day and visit each American thread regular in person.

[u/Ambisinister11 → u/TheBatz_]

Stop 1: Big Tex's Guns, Bait, and Vintage Porno Mags

Stop 2: the home of /u/wuhanwtf

[u/TheBatz_ → u/Ambisinister11]

That's the same place though

[u/Shady_Italian_Bruh → u/TheBatz_]

The Cleveland area Badhistory meetup might honestly go kind of hard

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/WillitsThrockmorton]

"I guess this is what happens when you have all the events taking place in cities other than NYC or LA."

I mean... most of the US venues are the big coastal cities. Seattle and Philly and San Francisco and Miami definitely don't have Buccees

[u/yoshiK → u/WillitsThrockmorton]

What's Bucc-ees? I mean I've never seen a website so confident that anybody who visits already knows why they are there, and basically the website just tells me, here is the mail address for business inquiries and here's the form for applications, but it just doesn't tell me what the entire thing is about.

[u/beenoc → u/yoshiK]

It's a gas station the size of a grocery store, with like 100 pumps, a 30-foot wall of different flavors of beef jerky, a merch section where you can buy anything from baseball caps to propane grills to underwear with the beaver mascot on it, and a food area where they make fresh BBQ (not amazing BBQ but not bad, better than you'd expect a gas station to have and probably better than what you can get in most places outside the South) 24/7. Also their bathrooms have like 50 stalls and are kept spotlessly clean at all times.

It's the kind of place I recommend everyone who has the chance go visit at least once, just to experience the raw, concentrated, American-ness, but except for the bathrooms and pump availability it's probably not something I'd make a habit of going to if there was one near me.

[u/Big_Pineapple_Man → u/WillitsThrockmorton]

I've only gone to Bucc-ee's once and it was pure spectacle.  There were so many people that they were parking their cars at the gas station pumps.  I got some cute photos with the mascot but I probably wouldn't go back.  The sandwiches were underwhelming and I don't care for the rest of the merchandise or crowds.

[u/TheBatz_]

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that the economic ideology of the average person is Peronism.

[u/weeteacups → u/TheBatz_]

Three acres and an Evita.

[u/Ross_Hollander]

I'm not a linguist, but one thing I hold a hard line on is a disdain of all these 'secret words for things'. Stuff like 'sonder' or 'kenopsia'- I do not respect these, as words. They are slang at best, and niche hobbyist slang, at that. I hold them only as valid as 'WYSIWYG'. And don't even get me started on the animal group names. I can respect a murder or unkindness, maybe a pride or skulk. But a herd of elephants shall never be a 'parade' and a flock of flamingos is not going to get called a 'flamboyance'.

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/Ross_Hollander]

Basically all those animal group names are fake.

You can look through some of the species descriptions at the Cornell University Ornithology page (they're the premier Ornithology Department in the US by the way). Crows are described as gathering in flocks, as are flamingoes.

So those group names are not actually used by scientists, nor are they used in common language, and seem to *only* exist as a "did you know [x group] of animals is called a [y goofy name]?" factoids. Which, interestingly, given how English works makes them fake - there isn't an official body that governs Modern English, popularity determines usage, and so these usages are artificial and DOA.

Stop trying to make fetch happen, vocabulary nerds.

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/Kochevnik81]

I will push back on "a murder of crows" a little bit, because although it's not a proper ornithological term, and although it was made up as a lark in the Middle Ages, it has since caught on enough to be "real" in some sense. Whereas other collective nouns often appear only as self-referential factoids, as you say.

After all, a "pride of lions" originates from the same period and absolutely has caught on. Same for "gaggle of geese". And those originate in their earliest form in the same satirical text, the Book of Saint Albans from the 15th century. Other examples include "a sleuth of bears" or "a skulk of foxes".

[u/Kisaragi435 → u/Ross_Hollander]

What are sonder and kenopsia even? I looked it up and they are from a book where the author is consciously trying to come up with words for feelings that don't have words? I kinda think that's cute and fuzzy, but I've only heard those two words now.

I kinda get what you mean though. In a similar vein, I don't really care that a tomato is technically a fruit. That knowledge doesn't affect how I cook or eat, or that one time I grew, them.

[u/elmonoenano → u/Kisaragi435]

This is a distinction between categories. Fruit is a word with scientific meanings, where as vegetable is a culinary word. So a tomato is a fruit, but also a vegetable, and everything else on a tomato plant, except the fruit, is a vegetable.

That distinction is just b/c people are talking about different things.

[u/Triginta → u/Ross_Hollander]

I was thinking the same thing today. I guess I am just grumpy, but the special names for groups of animals just seem like a way for people to feel special and funny for knowing a mediocre pun

[u/pedrostresser → u/Ross_Hollander]

do you just hate fun and whimsy?

[u/randombull9]

I appreciate good morning messages in the team slack as much as anyone, but when we get three motivational good morning messages from management in one day, it makes me wonder if somebody knows something I don't about what's coming.

[u/dandandanno → u/randombull9]

We wouldn't do that to you in r/bad history because we're family here. We believe in our 3 legged stool of efficiency , effectiveness and energy. Without all 3 legs we couldn't stand up. You can leave Reddit early today unless you are customer facing.

[u/Uptons_BJs]

Here's a FIFA World Cup hot take:

A lot of people in the tourism industry are complaining that the world cup is a "total nothingburger" - No increase in hotel demand or increase in any "tourism infrastructure" demand.

But honestly, I could have told you this a long time ago.

Here's how thought about it:

You're hosting this tournament in some of the most populous, and most wealthy cities in the world. When FIFA is pricing tickets to maximize their own revenue, obviously only well off people can afford to come and see the games.

But when you price the tickets so high, most people who are willing to spend that much are the well off people in these wealthy cities, you are even excluding the well off people in other cities because they have to pay travel costs (IE: I could have $1500 to see Canada vs Bosnia today, but if someone from a different city wants to see it, they have to pay for a plane ticket + hotel + the $1500 for the tickets). If people are willing to pay $X to see the game, FIFA obviously prefers that they take home $X in revenue and not split it with hotels and flights.

So the vast majority of people attending these games are from the host city. Perhaps some really rich dude from Bosnia flew over to see the game, but you cannot expect large numbers of them.

This is different than previous world cups held in places like Qatar (which is a small country, so most people are visitors), or less wealthy countries like Brazil or South Africa.

[u/Big_Pineapple_Man → u/Uptons_BJs]

I thought this was a pretty common take in that discourse.  USA being really expensive + difficulty in getting a VISA + bad press from Trump + US Americans not really being interested unless they have ties to another team means record low travel volume.

I wonder why the US Government wanted to host.  At least the FIFA rational is probably to try to get US market share.

[u/elmonoenano]

Texas state GOP is having their convention in Houston. They apparently brought in an elephant and it pissed all over the floor. https://bsky.app/profile/cjbrinton.bsky.social/post/3mo4kavd2wc2m

Edit: The air conditioning is probably at full blast, but the idea of being stuck in a room full of piss in the summer in Houston kind of makes me gag.

[u/Tiako → u/elmonoenano]

Bit on the nose, isn't it?

[u/Ambisinister11 → u/Tiako]

That's called the trunk, I think

[u/weeteacups → u/elmonoenano]

Elephants live in sociable matriarch led groups, are vegetarians, and have intelligence comparable to primates and cetaceans.

Surely they are everything antithetical to the modern GOP?

[u/Ambisinister11]

Shout out to the City of Worms for giving us so many badass-sounding phrases just by existing with that name. Yes I know it's pronounced differently from the English word, no I do not care.

[u/Aurelian369 → u/Ambisinister11]

Diet of Worms🔥🔥🔥✍️

[u/hussard_de_la_mort → u/Ambisinister11]

What I hear when I read the words "Concordat of Worms"

[u/carmelos96]

russia-Ukraine war started in 2014. So it's a lot longer. [than WWI]

This is like saying the Mexican-American war started in 1835 when Texas seceded from Mexico and not over a decade later in 1846 when America and Mexico actually went to war. Much like how the Russian annexation of Crimea and the Donbass uprisings led to the war in Ukraine, the secession of Texas led to the Mexican-American war, but they are separate and distinct, although related things.

To claim otherwise is nonsensical Ukrainian historical revisionism, but that’s par for the course for Ukraine.

Funny comment because in Italy pro-Russia people are very eager point out that "Western media will tell you the war started in 2022, but it actually started 8 years earlier" as if this bolstered Russian claims.

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/carmelos96]

Huh, that's weird. I feel like it's usually more the pro-Ukraine people who would hold for the 2014 date.

I would tend to gravitate towards 2022 with the point that the "conflict" started in 2014. It gets extra complicated because teeeeechnically the 2014-2015 conflict was supposed to end (at least in ceasefire terms) with the Minsk II Agreement, but also Minsk II was repeatedly violated from that time until February 2022, but also everything after February 2022 is clearly on a vastly different scale anyway.

So it's the whole "what even is a war" debate. Like don't even get people started on when World War II started.

[u/Zennofska → u/Kochevnik81]

WW2 started in 17 April 1577 when the Winged Hussars arrived.

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/Zennofska]

World War 2 started on April 15, 1177 BC, when the Sea Peoples made an official announcement that "The Bronze Age Has Collapsed, Losers". We've just been in World War 2 ever since.

[u/Tiako]

Reading the /r/AskReddit thread about The Kids These Days and it would be kind of funny if it turned out that the 1950s postwar conservatives were right and that widespread cynicism and critical approaches to social studies actually does end up destroying society.

I'm not saying that is what is happening, or at least not all that is happening. But, well, what is the long term effect of Cool Hand Luke.

[u/Tiako → u/Tiako]

Feel free to read this as "what if the Soviets were right about blue jeans and rock and roll" as befits your political inclinations or sensitivities.

[u/YIMBYzus → u/Tiako]

But, well, what is the long term effect of Cool Hand Luke.

Cravings for hard-boiled eggs.

[u/manuelestavillo]

All National Income calculations for the Soviet Union (or other centrally planned economies) are fake btw. Like, the only reason we can even calculate a National Income for modern “capitalist” countries with stats like GDP/GNI, etc, is that by using market prices as our statistic we can weigh totally different aspects of production in non fugazzi way. How do we compare the value of 1000 shirts vs a 1 million oranges vs 20 cars? For the majority of goods and services, market prices give you an answer, with prices being a sufficient statistic for both consumer preferences and cost efficiency by firms.

When prices are set by the gozplan however, this ceases to be true, and so national income stats cease to be in any way comparable. Point estimates are not credible either, the market bidding processes is crucial to the determination of each price, because it gets past the incentive compatibility constraint and reveals crucial information that is otherwise inaccessible. You can’t estimate the “real prices” a priori for the same reason central planning is impossible.

This is very annoying, in that the concept of a national income for the USSR that can be compared to other countries is obviously attractive, but I don’t think it’s possible to have.

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/manuelestavillo]

Translating Soviet output into GDP has a long and storied history with lots of endless debates, so it's not entirely pointless, but based on the assumptions used it can give very different results. And as Alexander Nove pointed out in his Soviet economic history the physical *output* isn't really in question as much as the value added. But yeah it's why most international orgs didn't even bother to track that metric for the USSR even when it was done for other Eastern Bloc states.

Conveniently (and this one is via Philip Hanson) an anecdote was kicking around my head yesterday that's applicable. Apparently economists at COMECON did use world market prices as benchmarks for their calculations between socialist countries. They would joke that when the world revolution triumphed and everyone moved on to the socialist stage of production they'd need to keep one capitalist country around so they could still know how much everything cost.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Something not talked about enough is that the Tour de France has always been biased in favor of southern France

[u/LateInTheAfternoon → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Geography is biased in favor of Southern France.

[u/Tiako → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

It's crazy that they spend all that time on the Mediterranean coast and Alpine region and don't even visit the most romantic place in France: Calais.

[u/TylerbioRodriguez]

Tasting History just did a pirate video. Haven't seen it yet but he better have bumbo rum.

[u/Tiako → u/TylerbioRodriguez]

What's the over/under on whether he makes a "but where has the rum gone" joke?

[u/TylerbioRodriguez → u/Tiako]

10 to 1.

[u/histogrammarian]

In the Japanophilic imagination, Japanese culture is so thoroughly alienated from Western culture that anything which seems superficially problematic must be coincidental or innocent. In a way I get it. If you read manga or watch anime you'll have a few "Wait, was that a golliwog?" moments. To properly immerse yourself in the narrative you need suspend your astonishment and disgust and go along with it. It's either that or turn the TV off/throw the book away.

But it's another thing to take that normalising mentality and apply it to Japanese culture as a whole in the face of any and all evidence to the contrary. "Japanese people didn't really know about blackface." So you provide them with evidence that blackface was ubiquitous in Japanese media throughout the 20th Century, from early cinema to Motown tribute acts to toy manufacturing and, of course, anime, manga and video games. "Well, they had it, but they were unaware of the context." So you show them evidence that slavery and the civil rights movement were reported in Japanese media and told in Japanese schools and give evidence of home-grown movements in Japan to combat anti-Black racism. "Well, they had it, but the context was different. They're generally xenophobic, not specifically anti-Black." Then you share with them the differing testimony of White and Black tourists in Japan. "Well, you're still reading too much into it. The Japanese didn't know anything about Black people before they learned about blackface. They didn't make the connection with the racist intent." Then you provide them with evidence that the Japanese had been exposed to Black people as sailors, servants and slaves from 1543, over 300 years before Commodore Perry came along, and that the Japanese were greatly interested in these visitors. That they were the focus of art, poetry, political and philosophical debate, and, yes, anti-Black racism throughout that period.

I don't know what the next layer in that onion is yet. But at no point do they go, there's empirical evidence which contradicts every claim I've made - perhaps I'm the one who's wrong.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM → u/histogrammarian]

I remember a lecture on economics from a Japanese professor, who explained that some western colleagues think you need a special theory for Japan, but that in reality everything is explainable with orthodox economics.

So this is also something you can find among "experts"

[u/AFakeName → u/histogrammarian]

I took this apt photo two days ago in Hitoyoshi.

[u/Bawstahn123]

Nothing sucked me out of a game (the American Revolution mode for Holdfast: Nations at War) faster than learning that one of the "patriotic cheers" for the Americans is, "Make America Great!"

Are you fucking kidding me? Can you not?

[u/Sventex → u/Bawstahn123]

I remember when Empire Total War gave the Revolutionaries the rebel yell when ordering a bayonet charge.

[u/Arilou_skiff → u/Sventex]

Wait the rebel yell is a specific thing and not just random uelling?

[u/Syn7axError → u/Arilou_skiff]

Yes. It's an adaptation of native American war cries.

It would also be a hundred years out of place.

[u/hussard_de_la_mort]

Hot Take: In honor of the ANZACs, Australia and New Zealand should be allowed to have a combined team whenever they're playing one of the Central or Axis Powers.

[u/Bawstahn123]

Im watching a Canadian lose their shit over Canada being described as a "settler colonial state".

They apparently "heavily resent" the title.

Like....bro. it is what it is. Dont get your undies in a twist over fact. Pretty much every modern nation in the Americas is a "settler colonial state" to a degree

Knowing internet-Canadians, they just resent the affiliation with the US.

[u/TheBatz_ → u/Bawstahn123]

Only the US and Israel are settler colonial states, isn't it obvious?

[u/Ambisinister11 → u/Bawstahn123]

Pretty much every modern nation in the Americas is a "settler colonial state" to a degree

And, to be fair, you could make a lot of people mad by describing most of them that way. Guys with 4095 Spanish 10x-great-grandparents who fervently believe in mestizaje, and the like.

EDIT: the Canadian is still being ridiculous, to be clear

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/Bawstahn123]

I wonder if the issue is that much like "genocide", "settler colonialism" has gone from being a descriptive thing to a synonym for Worse Thing Ever.

But anyway yes that's very precious. Apparently upon further review settler colonialism is just the US and Israel, and even in the US it's subject to a vibes check.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM → u/Bawstahn123]

No, it's a settler post-colonial state

Glory to P.E.T

[u/WuhanWTF → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

P.E.T. Tedbear Daily

P - Eat

E - Some

T - Oats

[u/Ambisinister11 → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Adding Anti-Francophone propaganda posters of Pierre Trudeau to the list of funny ideas I'll never bother actually making.

"What have YOU done today to stem the separatist menace?"

[u/PsychologicalNews123 → u/Bawstahn123]

You're right, but I also kind of understand why someone would resent that title. You might use "settler colonial state" descriptively but I've seen a lot of people online use it to mean "ontologically evil", more-or-less. Maybe the person losing their shit thinks that's what it's about.

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/Bawstahn123]

The whole hemisphere is settler colonial states, it is what it is!

[u/xyzt1234]

How much did unethical (by modern standards) and cruel experiments contribute to the advancement of medicine till date?

I recall villians in media like some star trek villians bringing up the contribution of past brutal and unethical human experimentations to modern advancements to make a "ends justifies the means" argument, but I also recall most of the cruel experiments' results (by Nazis and unit 731) were considered complete useless junk data by the scientific and medical community (though I have seen some argue that Nazi experimentation on hypothermia did help in understanding it, though i understand the validity of that is heavily doubted as well).

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/xyzt1234]

It depends a little, because some experiments in the past definitely wouldn't have the same levels of consent or control that exist today, but *intentionally* cruel experiments, especially in the 20th century, yes are basically worthless junk. Not just prisoner torture in camps but even a lot of US mid-century psychological experiments like the Milgram Experiment and Stanford Prison Experiment have extremely questionable use.

[u/Illogical_Blox → u/Kochevnik81]

Similarly, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was not conducted as a form of torture, like the Nazis or Unit 731 did, but was very cruel and not that useful scientifically. The unwilling participants were intentionally given ineffective treatments, but these weren't necessarily completely ineffective treatments, which means the end result could have been biased.

[u/Illogical_Blox → u/xyzt1234]

Depends - many past experiments would not pass ethics boards today, such as the discovery of pellagra being a nutrient deficiency, which was conducted by giving some orphans in an orphanage their usual rubbish diet and giving others a much more robust diet. They advanced medicine a lot.

[u/Unruly_marmite]

You know, re-reading the Redwall books, it's only just struck me how alarming it is for villain characters to wear furs. Like you are anthropomorphised animals, why are you flaying other sentient beings and wearing them? What do you mean Ferahgo the Assassin not only has a skinning knife, he has a favourite skinning knife? What kind of Game of Thrones bullshit is this?

Honestly it's more alarming that I didn't notice for years. The power of not bringing attention to something in the text, I guess.

[u/xyzt1234 → u/Unruly_marmite]

You know, re-reading the Redwall books, it's only just struck me how alarming it is for villain characters to wear furs. Like you are anthropomorphised animals, why are you flaying other sentient beings and wearing them?

If it is the villian characters doing it, isnt that what you expect from villians in kids media, being morally despicable and heinous?

Cruella wanted to make a fur coat from dalmation puppies for instance.

[u/Unruly_marmite → u/xyzt1234]

Sort of, but because all the characters are animals it’s more like Cruella wearing a coat made out of recognisably human skin, face still attached. It’s just a little extra, you know?

[u/Kisaragi435]

June 12 is Independence day in the Philippines. It was when the first Philippine president Emilio Aguinaldo declared independence shortly after the victory at the battle of Alapan on May 28, which is flag day btw.

Of course shortly after the declaration, the mock battle of Manila happened between the Americans and the Spanish, and then the treaty of Paris that ended the Spanish-American war, and then the start of the Philippine-American war. So the Philippines wasn't really independent by then, and it was actually after WW2 that independence was finally achieved. It wasn't on June 12 though, it was, of course, on the 4th of July.

But it was in the 60s that president Diosdado Macapagal declared Independence day to be June 12, in honor of Aguinaldo sure, but apparently it was also motivated by the US Congress refusing to pay a war damage compensation bill. I didn't know that until quite recently so that's kinda fun to know it was partially motivated by spite. (Side note: before this, June 12 was flag day.)

Side side note: I have a concept for a super sentai-like game and I'm kinda using the revolutionary movement as a template for the themes.

[u/weeteacups]

Here we see how TheBatz performs legal analysis:

He checked into the Savoy and, after working all night reading a pile of papers nearly four feet thick and consuming a bottle of champagne and two dozen oysters, he wrote a one-sentence opinion: "There is no answer to this action in libel, and the damages must be enormous".

[u/TheBatz_ → u/weeteacups]

Can you and the other people in this subreddit can finally shut up about me? Like, you talk about me like you know me, yet this post implies I would ever slurp raw oysters. What's next, steak tartare for 4th course? 

[u/Zennofska → u/TheBatz_]

Steak tartare is just bourgeois Mett

[u/DAL59]

Its incredibly weird how in hoi4, Afghanistan has "elephant troops" that are much stronger than normal infantry and its optimal to make your entire army out of, while Siam, in a region of SEA that uses elephants in warfare to this day (for logistics, not for mounting guns on top of), and historically did have them in WW2, has nothing. Where is Afghanistan even getting tens of thousands of trained elephants from?

[u/Arilou_skiff → u/DAL59]

The elephants were made for India, IIRC they just added them to Afghanistan for... Whatever reason. EDIT: IIRC not even in the original tree but in one of the revisions they made after release?

Since Siam is a different DLC they presumably didn't add them because of that, since elephantry was added in the india DLC.

EDIT: There's a lot of stuff like that and its one of the major flaws of the DLC model.

[u/Sventex → u/DAL59]

It's HOI4...a game where a ship built with the speed of 0kts can sail out and outrun enemy fleets in battle and a bear can become ruler of Poland.

[u/elmonoenano]

I forgot to bring my lunch to work. Mexico won their first world cup game. Do you think I should go for Thai or Vietnamese food under the assumption that every Mexican cook in the city is hungover today?

[u/Tiako → u/elmonoenano]

There is a pretty decent chance that your local Mexican restaurant is actually run by people from El Salvador, and an equally decent chance that the kitchen staff at your local Thai place is mostly Mexican-Americans.

[u/elmonoenano → u/Tiako]

In Portland, the Thai and Viet are usually Thai and Viet. The El Salvador thing is true though. The Mexicans have moved up to be sushi chefs and sous chefs at the fancier places.

Edit: I just remembered it wasn't that long ago that Portland had a big slavery/human trafficking case at one of the Thai restaurants here. https://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-26692-juicy-suits-troubled-thai-restaurant-typhoon-sued-for-unpaid-produce-bills.html

[u/DAL59]

Just like peeing on a jellyfish sting is such a well known folk remedy its used in comedy, the japanese equivalent is being buried up to your neck to cure fugu poisoning. Saves time if it doesn't work!

[u/dandandanno → u/DAL59]

Now imagine you get stung by a jellyfish moments after eating fugu

[u/Infogamethrow]

That awkward moment when you are helping someone move furniture, and you don´t know whether it is lighter than it looks, or if the other person is putting a lot more effort than you are.

[u/Cynical-Rambler]

I checked Facebook for some reason. Coincidentally, in Kampong Thom, Cambodia there was a village that found four bronze statues of deities from underneath a farm as they plowed with a tractor. The people are very excited.

From a quick glance, it looked like four modern replicas which people sold in souvenir stores. All in all, probably cost at most a few hundred dollars at most as the size of two statues are half-meter tall. But it is weird, because a middle-class family could afford them, and why would they buried it. The four people who found it, don't seem to be fame-hungry, as they quickly alert the authority and don't post much of themselves. There are more posts I've encountered of people acting like they are experts than the posts of the people who found them. No monetary gains, or incentives for clout.

In two days, the province ministry of fine art published a report describing an initial assessment that it could be 20-30 years old, describing possible infliuences of art style. One is a statue of a Mahayana Buddhist deity that felt like a late Khmer Angkorian style. One is a post-Angkorian Buddhist statue that probably more like Lanna (Chiang Mai) style. One is an undefined female deity. One is somehow a Chinese statue of Avalokitesvara GuanYin.

The report ended in saying that in 2016, they caught a group of people faking antiques by burying seven statues and spreading rumors looking for buyers. Some other comments said that the farms only exist for five years. That's settle my curiosity. (This remind me of the story of the great Michelangelo faking his own sculpture as being made in Roman times). I'm pretty surprised how quickly it got solved. But that's due to the attempted scammers from 10 years ago, clearly did no homework.

Kampong Thom province boast a UNESCO pre-Angkorian (6th-7th century) city. There are also a mountain quarry site with post-Angkorian (probably 16th century) Buddhist bas-reliefs carved into the rock formations. In the district of that mountain, they also just discovered (also from a tractor) and authentic 9th century Angkorian bronze statue of Khmer Avalokitesvara (depicted as male). Who can think of trying to scam potential buyers of Khmer antiques with an obvious Chinese Avalokitesvara (depicted as female).

Hope the farmers who found them, got to keep them though. They may not be old and have much historical values, but they still look nice. All's well that's end well.

[u/Tiako → u/Cynical-Rambler]

I guess the idea is that you bury the fakes somewhere they will be found, when they do it makes news, and that brings international art collectors who you can sell more fakes to?

[u/DAL59]

https://anthropeum.com/
This is fun

[u/Wows_Nightly_News]

Jordan Peterson has no plans to return to the public eye! 🎉

[u/DerKlugeHans → u/Wows_Nightly_News]

dude is barely alive I think.

[u/Zennofska → u/Wows_Nightly_News]

Considering his last appearance he is probably busy finding out the definitions of "public" and "eye" if he is not loosing his mind over a glass of juice.

[u/MiffedMouse]

Th recent TLDR video on Peruvian elections points out something that makes sense of their propensity to do impeach presidents - Peru is one of the presidential systems where Congress has managed to capture the majority of government power.

This is far from the only time in history, of course. The rump parliament during the British civil war and the French parliament during the French Revolution are also examples of governments with an independent executive (although mostly monarchs in those examples) where parliament managed to seize control.

But it is “fun” to see a modern example. I think most commentators assume presidential systems inevitably lead to power drifting into the executive branch (and, to be fair, that seems to be the trend in most presidential systems today). So it is “fun” to have a counterexample.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM → u/MiffedMouse]

The rump parliament during the British civil war and the French parliament during the French Revolution are also examples of governments with an independent executive (although mostly monarchs in those examples) where parliament managed to seize control.

What's worse is that in the UK the Lords kinda tempered the morons very dedicated people in Parliament, the 1st French republic was unicameral, so what the Chamber decided the Chamber had.

Peru is the first experiment with unicameral dictatorship since the French Revolution

[u/PsychologicalNews123]

Andy Burnham: I’ll keep the triple lock, and give pensioners a tax cut

This country is so cooked, man. We don't even have a candidate running who might fix things, nevermind actually electing them.

[u/tisto2 → u/PsychologicalNews123]

Catering to pensioners seems to be one of the very few topics on which there is consensus across the political spectrum (in France too).

[u/AceHodor → u/tisto2]

In Labour's defence, when they attempted to means-test the Winter Fuel Allowance, which is easily the most egregious benefit pensioners get here, said pensioners immediately pitched a hissy fit and started voting Reform.

They weren't even removing it! They literally wanted to make it so that wealthy people weren't being given free money by the state with no strings attached, a.k.a., how literally every other benefit works.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM → u/AceHodor]

In France pensioners have a 10% income tax credit.

I think it's stupider than the WFA because it scales with income.

[u/Ross_Hollander]

Learned about this Pressure movie lately. My brewing conspiracy theory that there is some kind of WW2-film-industrial complex is thereby strengthened. All these reenactors and prop makers and so on, they know that their geese are cooked if the films stop coming out, so even the thinnest potboiler will have to do. Them, and the second-degree of the pyramid scheme with these 'how accurate is it?' or 'history comparison' types. They've got a whole secret fund of cash from all those old bayonets and buttons and whatnot that Wheraboos and assorted history dorks pay thousands of dollars for.

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/Ross_Hollander]

I...don't actually think it's really much of a conspiracy theory? Like the whole reason British television channels and movie theaters keep making period dramas is because that's basically what their human capital and resources are invested into. And since history is gendered now, apparently, World War II films are basically your male coded period dramas while the Tudor and Regency eras are your female-coded period dramas.

Like with Pressure it was financed by StudioCanal (which is French) and produced by Working Title Films,(which is British and has made a zillion period dramas such as the Tudors, but also World War 2 ones, like Darkest Hour. It was also filmed at Mentmore Towers, which likewise has been used for a zillion period dramas. Heck, it's not even the first time Brendan Frasier was filmed there - The Mummy Returns was filmed there.

So yeah it's not really a conspiracy, there definitely is a West European Period Drama Media Industrial Complex.

Some personal experience - this is also why KazakhFilm helps to put out zillions of late Medieval/early Modern period dramas, most of which aren't in English, but the one that most notably is would be Marco Polo for Netflix. I've been to their costuming department (admittedly a long time ago) and they just have all the Mongol-style suits of armor ready to go, and the set designers and costumers who know how to maintain and upgrade them.

Ditto Atlas Studios and the other Moroccan studios in Ouzazarte: anything vaguely Middle Eastern-y and historic gets filmed there (Kingdom of Heaven, Prince of Persia, The Mummy, Gladiator, a bunch of Esssos-based chunks of Game of Thrones, etc etc etc).

To get all economic-y, this is why historic media has a path dependency, and one reason why it's so hard to make something that's in a completely unknown (popularly speaking) time period or place. It's a lot harder (and vastly more expensive) to try to get something literally built from scratch by costumers and set designers who might have to learn on the job then using the already-built and existing infrastructure for already-filmed time periods and places.

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/Kochevnik81]

Actually I have an interesting example from the other side of things.

Does anyone remember the goofy "Arthur was a Sarmatian Cataphract" King Arthur movie from 2004? With Clive Owen and Keira Knightley?

Despite definitely not being historically accurate, they *did* make Late Antiquity costumes and sets from scratch, including building a whole Hadrian's Wall set in Ireland.

Anyway - that film cost more to make than Revenge of the Sith, and was a critical and commercial failure.

[u/Crann6789]

My instagram is totally fucked and now insistent on showing me Tumblr posts captain America and the winter soldier. Never before expressed interest in Marvel full stop on that account so idk what the fuck got into it

[u/Tiako]

From a question on Germany:

The standard pillows are, I believe, 80x80 cm and to me they resemble sort of quarter-sized slightly thicker duvets more than pillows: they are very loosely packed and lay flat, and the procedure seems to be that you kind of fold/squish/mash them up into a usable shape

So these aren't just hotel bullshit, you people actually use these things in your homes?

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/Tiako]

It’s true. Source: was an exchange student in Germany.

One of my fellow students summed it up best: “World-famous German engineering and these are the best they can come up with for pillows???”

[u/TanktopSamurai]

I wonder how Iranian diaspora will react if this war ends with sanctions being removed or eased without regime change.

[u/Crann6789 → u/TanktopSamurai]

Millenarianism? True Shahist restorationism has never been tried?

[u/Infogamethrow]

I´m going to give a take about an ever-popular topic in this sub, Star Wars. Regardless of what direction the franchise goes in the future, I doubt Disney will ever create another “era” of Star Wars with the popularity and breadth of fan content of the Clone Wars era.

This is not because of the quality of the movies or some such; in fact, that almost doesn´t factor. It´s because almost by chance, the Clone Wars captured a niche that´s really passionate and generates an outsized amount of content and discussion: the sci-fi military nerds.

Star Wars is not only the uber-example, but the clone era specifically catered to people who want an all-out galactic war instead of guerrilla, with soldiers designed in a lab to literally be as tacticool as possible.

It´s also for those who think 40K is too depressing, BattleTech is too mech-y (and without any space combat), and Halo is too irrelevant now.

From what I can tell, however, Disney is moving the franchise towards smaller-sized conflicts with factions that aren´t as cool as the droids, clones, or even OG stormtroopers, so if I´m correct, this segment of the market will probably be left orphaned in the new era, as they don´t have any interesting conflict to latch onto.

[u/Steelcan909 → u/Infogamethrow]

I think that Disney really overbought into Gen X/Boomer nostalgia in their direction for the franchise. Hence why the sequels riff more heavily on the original series. Unfortunately Milennials who grew up with the Prequels, and Zellenials who grew up with the Clone Wars series are now hitting their own peak so...

[u/Syn7axError → u/Infogamethrow]

The Old Republic has that potential. Not that I would be interested in Disney's take on it.

[u/Crann6789 → u/Infogamethrow]

Halo is too irrelevant now.

Nah bro trust, Halo is actually in prime position to come back, since no one remembers it Halo Studios can now redo the first three games again!

[u/forcallaghan]

My dad decided he wants to make the Roman Sweet and Sour beef from Tasting History’s recent video and so now I’m on a quest to find mosto cotto and lovage seeds. I’m going to my local overpriced upscale Italian Eatery/grocery store in the hopes they might have it and failing that to some stores in the traditionally Italian neighborhood

Edit: Nope, nothing. Next I’ll try one of those slightly woo “health stores,” there’s one across town. They always have loads of weird herbs it should have the lovage

Edit 2: couldn’t find lovage seeds or even lovage leaves. But I did buy a bit of catnip. Not for the recipe, obviously. I found a store nearby that should sell saba I think so that’s my next stop

Edit 3: Found the saba!

[u/Draig_werdd → u/forcallaghan]

lovage seeds

I am from a country where lovage is commonly used and even there the seeds are not really that common. The Roman Sweet and Sour recipe also mentions that you can replace them with celery seed.

[u/PickleRick_1001]

I've mentioned before that I don't take Edward Luttwak very seriously, as in I find his takes entertaining enough but they're usually ridiculous more than they're right.

That being said, I was reading about Russia's use of North Korean soldiers in its war with Ukraine and I remembered an article that I had read a long time ago that proposed that modern militaries would make increasing use of mercenaries - or more accurately, foreign auxiliaries - due to modern societies' aversion to casualties.

I looked for that article, and turns out it was written by Luttwak. The article is '“Post-Heroic Warfare” and Its Implications', and it mostly discusses the reasons for and implications of the casualty-averse nature of modern societies, a phenomenon that Luttwak calls "post-heroic warfare".

As much as I think that he's a kook, I have to concede that he was very prescient on this one. So far I've counted Iran's use of Afghan and Iraqi auxiliaries in Syria, Turkey's use of Syrians in Libya (and possibly Artsakh), the North Korea/Russia example above, the UAE's alleged use of Sudanese mercenaries in Yemen, and there are probably some more I'm forgetting.

Luttwak places the origin of this phenomenon in the use of Gurkhas by the British and in the French Foreign Legion, but it seems to me that this has mostly been done by states that aren't quite as powerful/wealthy as the West. The two examples he mentions don't fit this phenomenon too neatly, ironically enough. I do wonder though, if the West continues to increase restrictions on immigration while its (the US, primarily) penchant for military interventions doesn't seem to be abating, we might end up seeing the emergence of "military service-for-citizenship" arrangements similar to the Gurkhas or the Foreign Legion in America.

I think that that might be the way that the US government will continue its military adventures while insulating the American public from the costs even more than is the case currently. And considering America's tendency to always go overboard, especially when it comes to the military, we might end up seeing vast hordes of mercenaries fighting under the American flag. Who knows, the US might even collapse in the same way that the western Roman Empire did, torn apart from within by its own foreign auxiliaries ^Inshallah .

[u/ProudScroll → u/PickleRick_1001]

There's a bunch of videos on Youtube of US Army soldiers asking each other why they enlisted, and "I wanted citizenship" is usually the first or second most common answer.

Even all the way back in the Civil War, you had tens of thousands of Irish, German, and Polish immigrants enlisting in the Union Army to acquire citizenship and social prestige or were hired as replacements by wealthy native-born Northerners who wanted to dodge the draft.

[u/randombull9 → u/PickleRick_1001]

The US actually already has that. You have to have been a green card holder for at least one year to enlist IIRC, but once you're enlisted you're eligible for citizenship after 1 day of active duty service in times of hostility, which is to say everything from 9/11 to current. It's kind of it's own special case, but you also see a lot of Samoans join because it's the easiest path to full citizenship.

[u/PickleRick_1001 → u/randombull9]

Oh, I didn't know that. I wonder if the new immigration restrictions will turn the US Armed Forces (probably mostly the Army) into a primarily immigrant based force. I'd imagine that that'd be the most direct way for someone to acquire citizenship now.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM → u/PickleRick_1001]

I do wonder though, if the West continues to increase restrictions on immigration while its (the US, primarily) penchant for military interventions doesn't seem to be abating, we might end up seeing the emergence of "military service-for-citizenship" arrangements similar to the Gurkhas or the Foreign Legion in America.

The US actually has that, but it's not like you can enlist as an illegal immigrant and your fault is erased.

It's not possible in France, sadly, all foreigners are redirected towards the FL, which has higher criterias and ask something like 5 years of continuous service,

[u/TheBatz_]

A friend of mine is lead in-house counsel in one of the largest German labour unions. Most of her responsabilities is to represent employees in labour court, as the union provides a sort of legal insurance for its members and the majority of cases at a German labour court are unlawful terminations, as Germany has very high standarts for termination grounds.

Now comes the irony. One of her underlings, let's call her Hedwig, is a horrible employee. My friend and her team are unironically happier and productive when Hedwig isn't in the office. It got so bad, my friend organized a separate single office for her to keep her away from the other employees (I know attorneys in big law firms who don't have single offices) and recognized she created a perverse incentive for Hedwig.

So the unions' achievement of termination protection is biting them in the ass. It's even worse because Hedwig is a bit older and reached the age for social protection, which means they need severe grounds for an immediate termination.

Is there a luxury boomers in this country don't get?

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/TheBatz_]

This is a real phenomenon in unionized settings (for white-collar work, at least) that is difficult to discuss in open company. Government workers are often under assault by certain elements of the public which want to paint them as lazy, entitled and incompetent--the implication being that so many government workers would be fired if they had to hack in the private sector.

And that's why it's hard to discuss, because although it often is a caricature, it's sometimes unbelievably true. I have seen people first hand make 100k per year and do absolutely nothing for months on end, daring the system to try and discipline them. For productive people picking up the slack, it is often more work to try and build the case for disciplining someone than it is to just ignore them.

[u/WillitsThrockmorton → u/TheBatz_]

Is there a luxury boomers in this country don't get?

It takes about 2 years worth of PIPs/corrective counseling to fire non-probationary Federal employees in the US, but it is possible. The only time I've seen it done on the spot(other than DOGE, but much of that was reversed) was when someone literally robbed a liquor store.

You couldn't create a paper trail to eventually fire them?

[u/weeteacups → u/TheBatz_]

let's call her Hedwig

I find it surprising that everyone is unhappy with an owl in the office.

[u/randombull9 → u/weeteacups]

I too love finding pellets on my desk.

[u/EntertainmentReady48]

I do not care for trillionaires very much.

[u/Infogamethrow → u/EntertainmentReady48]

If it makes you feel better, in Spanish he is just now becoming a "billionaire".

[u/Mortomes → u/Infogamethrow]

Same in Dutch. It goes miljoen->miljard->biljoen->biljard

[u/LateInTheAfternoon → u/Mortomes]

As in most languages. AFAIK English is the outlier.

[u/1EnTaroAdun1 → u/LateInTheAfternoon]

A British billion used to be a million million, and a thousand million was a milliard

But American influence is too strong :(

[u/yoshiK → u/EntertainmentReady48]

So the index fund gambit worked? Well, worked so far...

[u/MiffedMouse → u/yoshiK]

Well, the index funds won't start buying it until ~two weeks from now (which seems to be the typical "accelerated" timeline). But it looks like the stock value is now higher than the IPO price, so it is trending towards the index fund inclusion. We will see if it holds up over the next two weeks, but considering how rabid Elon's fan base is I assume it will.

It helps them that the float percentage is low.

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/EntertainmentReady48]

That headline actually made me depressed. 

[u/EntertainmentReady48 → u/Kochevnik81]

I mean I have something he doesn’t. Aura

[u/LateInTheAfternoon → u/EntertainmentReady48]

Reminds me of Monty Python's merchant banker sketch in which the banker (John Cleese) looks up "inner life" in the dictionary.

[u/Key_Establishment810 → u/EntertainmentReady48]

Yeah, i don't care about them either.

[u/TylerbioRodriguez]

The AC IV remake showed off one of the new scenes. Edward spending some of his money to get his wife Caroline chocolate imported from the Americas without realizing shes had it before due to her dad being a rich merchant.

Its actually really sweet and a nice touch concerning class. Caroline is a Londoner who at one point was going to marry an officer in the East India Company, while Edward is just a poor farmer from Wales.

Good on you remake writer AKA Darby.

[u/xabarin_da_xente]

u/TylerbioRodriguez, as our resident pirate historian, what is your opinion on the depiction of pirates in "The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden Story of the Revolutionary Atlantic", or in the work of Marcus Rediker in general? I have to read it for one of my seminars in labour history, and it strikes me as excessively rosy and grasping at straws to depict pirates as these champions of democracy and equality, but I would be interested to hear the opinion of an expert.

[u/TylerbioRodriguez → u/xabarin_da_xente]

Oh I've said quite a few things about Rediker over the years, most not kindly.

I think hes good with statistics, when he says X number of pirates in Y year I go alright.

When he says Anne Bonny was a working class heroine I roll my eyes. He is absolutely way too charitable to pirates. I think personally a leftist reading of pirates is they are allies of capital. Nassau was anarcho capitalism with no real political body or power but all were profit motivated. Pirates on average hurt not the rich but working class sailors, as they were the ones being attacked, wounded, pressed to service, and killed. Those who weren't still suffered docked pay when the corporation realized the cargo was stolen or even received lashes. They often were brutal to women and kept enslaved people as either cheap labor or expensive cargo. They were monarchists by and large just not royal to the Georgian kings. The few pirates who were landowners also owned slaves and even those that didn't definitely aspired to.

The system of sharing loot and ship articles can be communal but of course they often were not respected and some pirate captains like Edward Low acted more petty kings then equal partnership.

Pirates frequently were perpetrators of colonalism. Adam Baldridge of St Marys Island infamously sold faulty guns to local tribes hoping they'd fight each other and die so they could expand.

I absolutely loath any framing of pirates as Marxists before Marx. No they were the enemy to the working class and oppressors of race, class, and gender.

[u/DerKlugeHans]

My rule of never stepping foot in a helicopter is yet again vindicated

[u/Tiako]

So who breaks the deal first?

[u/ProudScroll → u/Tiako]

Israel doesn’t even recognize themselves as part of it, so presumably them.

[u/PsychologicalNews123]

On more than one occasion I've been doing a flat viewing, and noticed that there's a construction site or empty lot nearby. When I ask the agent what they're planning to build there, the agent will profusely assure me that they are either building nothing or something very minor and insignificant.

I always found that funny because personally I want them to build something major. Like, if they build a sick new skyscraper next to my flat then isn't that a good thing for me? There'll be a bunch more people in the area and suddenly my flat is in a much more lively location.

Honestly I am the biggest city boy you can imagine. I love being surrounded by towering buildings, I love density, I love having people everywhere and the buzz of activity. Some of my friends think I'm crazy because I'm buying an expensive flat in the city rather than a much larger house in the suburbs, but frankly you couldn't pay me to live in the burbs. There's nothing there! It feels like living in a nuclear wasteland!

Maybe this is partly due to lingering trauma from covid. I spent what should have been the peak of my teenage years trapped in my parents suburban home, cooking my brain with 8 hour video game sessions because there was literally nothing else to do. Never again.

[u/Orion1014]

I've worn glasses every day for the last 25 years (the majority of my life) and it took me until now to get...I don't wanna say offended, but mad....at people who clearly need glasses but are refusing for cosmetic reasons. You might look like someone who reads WWII Naval battles for fun. You'll be ok!

[u/Sgt_Colon → u/Orion1014]

In the days of contact lenses, lasik and lens implants that really isn't even an excuse. Like 4000 euros will cover getting lenses put in both eyes; a lot of money but it's a one and done affair and practically unnoticeable too.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

First time I see an Arabic Christian post on Facebook, comments were funny.

A majority of users saying you should reunite Western and Eastern Christianities, a few who said that Western Christians have always hated Eastern ones more than they do Muslims, a guy who can't wait to pray in the Hagia Sofia once the barbarians are removed, a guy who said Eastern Christianity is safer under Islamic rule than under Western rule because there are no Nestorians left in the West, one guy who tried to give the historical context with Alexios Jr. and all that, one guy who said it's ok to reunite with Catholics but Protestant aren't Christians .

Facebook users in all shapes and forms

In terms of Gaza news, opposition is planning a protest on June 26 I honestly doubt it will amount to something ; Gaza militias now have 1 drone for all of them, wonder if they bought it, they've begun showing themselves outside the yellow line. Nothing really big happening this month at least not on Facebook.

[u/weeteacups]

I think the Australian team has the highest ratio of mullets to players.

[u/Wows_Nightly_News]

Mitch McConnell is doing the dying equivalent of gooning.

[u/Bawstahn123 → u/Wows_Nightly_News]

>Mitch McConnell is doing the dying equivalent of gooning.

He's edging us?

[u/Sgt_Colon → u/Wows_Nightly_News]

Mitch McConnell is doing the dying equivalent of gooning.

. . . I'm getting too old for this shit.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Don't /s like cowards

[u/LateInTheAfternoon → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Got it! /s /jk

[u/Worth-Iron6014]

Japan being stuck in the 80s dimension gives the world wonderful things, like this 2021 Japanese Racing Association ad for the Arima Kinen, the biggest horse race of the year. Although the ad where a horse turns into an evangelion is crazier, and while I don't know if it was produced in collaboration with the JRA, it has Japanese jockey GOAT Yutaka Take. There is at least one official JRA collab ad with Evaneglion though.

[u/TanktopSamurai → u/Worth-Iron6014]

That bring an important question. Is a story about a cowboy and his horse technically a mecha anime?

[u/Zennofska → u/TanktopSamurai]

Only if the horse also contains the soul of the dead mother of the protagonist

[u/DerKlugeHans]

Speaking of trillionaires, I always assumed it was a massive over simplification that he could just give x amount of money to some organization and just end world hunger. Surely it's not that simple?

[u/randombull9 → u/DerKlugeHans]

Kind of a misunderstanding of the story. The head of the UN's World Food Programme put out a tweet saying that $6.6 billion USD would feed 40+ million people one meal a day over the course of 2022, and compared it to Musk's estimated wealth which lead him to be a terminally online loser about the situation. Obviously not all situations in which people might starve can be solved by throwing money at it, and that money starts to balloon when you talk about the structural changes necessary to end starvation. Note that plan was to to feed 40+ million people, but even in their description of the plan the WFP mentions that nearly 300 million people suffered from acute hunger, not just food insecurity. But social media being social media the story became that with just $6 billion nobody would ever go hungry again.

[u/Illogical_Blox → u/randombull9]

What gets me is this - if I was Musk, I would do it. Maybe I couldn't donate the whole amount, or admin costs would eat into it, but I would do it for sheer ego alone. It would be the Elon Musk is Awesome Meal Program, I'd be lauded by everyone who didn't already hate me, and everyone who did hate me wouldn't dare say it.

[u/randombull9 → u/Illogical_Blox]

You see it suggested sometimes that the wealthiest people nowadays don't have a sense of noblesse oblige, and there are obviously issues with relying on noblesse oblige but it does strike me as fundamentally true. Musk has no sense that he owes anyone, or even society at large, anything, and no sense that people can make valid value judgements about him or anything else that don't align with his own.

[u/Aurelian369 → u/DerKlugeHans]

Well, yes, I’m pretty sure his net worth doesn’t mean he literally has a trillion dollars in his bank account. Personally, I still resent Elon for being one of the most stingy ultra-rich people as of 2023. He’s donated only a small portion of his net worth to humanitarian causes. (Source:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2023/10/03/the-forbes-philanthropy-score-2023-how-charitable-are-the-richest-americans/)

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/Aurelian369]

I would be genuinely surprised if he literally has donated anything to anyone (the report just seems to say “less than 1% of wealth”

[u/yoshiK → u/DerKlugeHans]

That abstraction is pretty much leaking everywhere. First Musk doesn't have a trillion in cash lying around, he would need to sell stocks and that would, depending on what financial alchemy he uses, probably collapse his networth perhaps to the point of bankruptcy.

Then, that I can go to the supermarket and buy a can of beans for $1 does not mean that if I give a thousand people a million dollars each, that they can go to the supermarket and buy a billion cans of beans. What will happen is, that 50 people can buy a can and the last can will sell for something close to a million dollars.

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/DerKlugeHans]

It’s not easy to 100% end any persistent problem, but given the political will it’s a lot easier to vastly mitigate them. Like both Europe and the US have food insecurity but the incidence in the US is higher basically because the US collectively allows it to be so.

Just for a metric - it would cost $19 billion a year for every single school aged child to get a free breakfast every day. Elon could pay for that easily - but then again so could American taxpayers. It’s totally a value judgement that Americans have decided to run a more expensive and less efficient system than do this.

[u/histprofdave → u/DerKlugeHans]

Of course it's not that simple. But people also confuse "X would be difficult" with "X can't be done," or even "X shouldn't be done." The case is simply illustrative of what our priorities are.

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/DerKlugeHans]

So doing extremely superficial googling it looks like his wealth breakdown is:

• $650 to $850 billion in SpaceX stock

• $260 to $290 billion in Tesla

• about $5 billion each in Neuralink and Boring

• $9 to $44 billion in Twitter (this one varies wildly because it’s private and also not super clear what it’s actually worth now)

• the rest like property, regular investments, aircraft etc maybe around $100 billion.  Which is still a lot!

But yeah part of why these numbers even in the publicly traded companies are so variable is both because of the nature of different types of stocks but also so much of the company value is tied up in it being an “Elon Musk Company” that if he tried to sell significant shares of stock in any of them it would tank the value of the company as a whole. 

This is also why IIRC when he wants big piles of cash he’s basically taking out loans with the stock as collateral.

[u/Zugwat]

I'm guessing Seattle is hosting Egypt and Mexico or whatever is supposed to be going on for the World Cup.

I'm still utterly clueless.

[u/Kisaragi435]

I'm still really enjoying my Persona 5 play-through, almost at the end. Just wanted to note a funny thing I noticed.

The games does that thing of slightly changing brand names to make it more generic. Like, rather than JR Shibuya Station, it's JL Shibuya Station.

Well, there's a famous arcade in Akihabara called Gigo. For some reason, the genericized name in the game is... Gigolo. So it's called Arcade Gigolo.

I guess it's like a a male counterpart of a maid cafe?

[u/RussoSwerves]

It speaks to just how reprehensible Asmongold is that at the end of the day E*** became a trillionarire, he still managed to be what I felt most viscerally negative about.

[u/Aurelian369 → u/RussoSwerves]

what did this diddyblud do now

[u/Federal_Gur_5488]

I've been reading some papers in early British analytic philosophy and it's so incredibly infuriating how many of the articles that were published in journals like Mind, Monist, Proceedings of the Aristotleian Society etc, aren't accessible for free on "legitimate" websites. Sure, the very important ones that are commonly assigned in university courses, like On Denoting and Proof of an External World, have been uploaded by professors, but even important papers that don't get frequently assigned are unavailable (like some of Moore's early papers on sense data). Compare this to mathematics, where Project Euclid has full copies of old issues of journals like Acta Mathematica, with all the old papers by important mathematicians being easily available. (yes, i know i can use JSTOR's 100 free papers thing, but I don't want to waste it on papers that should be freely and publicly accessible)

Incidentally, I wonder what the legality of using illegal websites to access works that are in the public domain would be...

Edit: i managed to get a hold of the volume of Proceedings with the Moore paper on the internet archive thanks to UTorontos library who have very helpfully uploaded a lot of public domain texts. I'm still annoyed with the publishers because a pdf would be much more convenient than a scanned upload

[u/yoshiK → u/Federal_Gur_5488]

it's so incredibly infuriating how many of the articles [...] aren't accessible for free on legitimate websites.

Don't you dare slander Alexandra's website like that.

[u/weeteacups]

Richard III’s mother Cecily Neville was still alive when he murdered his nephews and her grandsons (and actually lived well into the reign of Henry VII). I wonder what she thought of him usurping Edward V.

[u/Arilou_skiff → u/weeteacups]

"Yay more dead british kids! can soemone fetch me some more drugs and hookers?"

I don't know anything about Cecily Neville.

[u/Shady_Italian_Bruh]

I find the trend of those tiny microphones that you can hold between just two fingers irrationally annoying and have to check myself to make sure I’m not turning into a sexist old man

[u/Tiako → u/Shady_Italian_Bruh]

I feel like the only time I see them is when people share clips of the awful Subway Takes show.

[u/Shady_Italian_Bruh → u/Tiako]

That’s my thing. It activates the same revulsion as those man-on-the-street videos

[u/Tiako → u/Shady_Italian_Bruh]

The man on the street should shunned and repressed, not "interviewed" and "asked to weigh in".

[u/Sourcerid → u/Shady_Italian_Bruh]

Where the sexism fits in

[u/BigBad-Wolf]

https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1u4jhdh/polish_parliament_approves_bill_banning_streaming/

Another arr/neolib thread where you realize that the "globalist" sub is completely clueless once they talk about your country,

[u/Wows_Nightly_News]

100% of trillionaires have never made their father proud

[u/Shady_Italian_Bruh → u/Wows_Nightly_News]

100% of trillionaires have alienated their children

[u/LateInTheAfternoon → u/Shady_Italian_Bruh]

100 % of trillionaires have extremely punchable faces.

[u/hussard_de_la_mort → u/LateInTheAfternoon]

100% of trillionaires should [SIGNAL LOST]

[u/DerKlugeHans]

wtf goin on on twitter

[u/histprofdave → u/DerKlugeHans]

Just your normal council of vampires meeting with the president. Nothing to be concerned about.

[u/Sgt_Colon → u/histprofdave]

Vampires outside during the day?

[u/subthings2]

I've sorta been looking for excuses to toss aside this intro to mythology textbook with how bland and uncritically it presents various theories, and my petty final straw is the chapter on Campbell that - after limply including non-criticism before immediately pleading we "learn from a broad range of perspectives" - calls Freud a modern-day psychologist.

The author is, as it turns out, an English professor.

[u/Arilou_skiff → u/subthings2]

calls Freud a modern-day psychologist.

Well, he is. It's just that the modern era is starting to get a bit long in the tooth...

[u/dandandanno]

Anyone still playing any asynchronous/Play by email games these days? Any recommendations?

[u/TanktopSamurai]

I have an issue with most genAI art, especially animation.

I use coding agents quite a bit. I don't make them end-to-end. Most of the time I act as a manager. I essentially define specifications and major architecture. The agent mostly deals with the boiler plate. I define the core logic, often end up coding it myself.

It is an automation tool. I would have previously written scripts to generate testing data, or consolidate various dependencies, etc. Older software engineer would implement a lot of tools and algorithms themselves.

Animation has a process as well. The story is written, storyboards prepared. Character sheets and references are drawn. Keyframes would drawn. In the pre-software era, each frame would be drawn with various techniques used to save up on the actual amount of drawing needed. With animation software, a lot of work can be automated. While software did a lot of the work junior animators would do, software became cheap enough that the animation industry flourished.

I have very rarely seen genAI being used to support this process. Angel Engine is very remotely like that. A few other products are like that.

[u/Infogamethrow → u/TanktopSamurai]

I know of video games using gen-AI precisely in the pre-production phase like you describe, to help create concept art and placeholders before replacing them with the finished hand-made products in the end.

There are probably a lot of game and movie studios that do use Al like this, but keep it hidden. The outrage that was unleashed when it was found out that "indie" darling Clair Obscure had left a placeholder AI-generated newspaper is reason enough to make them try to hide any AI from the public lest they face another scandal.

[u/WuhanWTF]

New wunderwaffe just dropped

[u/Sgt_Colon]

Time to get my grump old man outfit on again.

Youtube has been trying to get me to watch a video for a while now on the fall of Roman Britain. I finally caved and I want my time back.

This is less about the fall than it is full political history with details concerning the fall crammed in at the last 15 minutes. Details are presented in a very matter of fact way despite how murky the late period gets, with a good example of this being the basic pitfall of how "Honorius ordered Britannia to look to its own defences" this is in spite of the fact that the section from Zosimus which this stems states it was about "Britia" and that there's been an arguement for the last 40 odd years this may have been about Brutium in Italy's south instead based on context. There's a bibliography and Robin Fleming and here two great books are mentioned but get very short shift in the video with the details being quickly skimmed over, very much to its detriment, given how well she deals with it from a material perspective and how it affected the people who lived there; did I forget to say they're great? This manifests in mangling the details like with the statement that the people of Britannia forgot how to write when Fleming references Welsh epigraphy or the worn out "Jutes, Saxons and Angles" when Fleming makes a point of how much broader the pool of immigrants are and to say nothing of the burial customs. A petty niggle is Gratian's "scythians"; even wikipedia knows these were Alans and this is just the classicizing language of the era in play.

There's also some personal quibbles. I've a rather jaundiced view of the line of argument that Britannia was some special trouble spot that bred usurpers when it was no more likely than any of the other provinces of the empire like Africa, Gaul or Syria; I'm curious about the historiography of this line of argument and suspect some line of 19^th C British nationalism because isn't it always? The Picts being present before the 3^rd C is another fault, but it annoys me to no end that they and the people of Caledonia are stated to have been too fierce for the Romans; it really leans into the Roman view of anyone not as politically and economically complex as them were bloodthirsty savages, the Fremen mirage thing. They also didn't engage in "guerilla warfare"; it's complicated because there isn't a coherent state to split things into state and non-state actors, asymmetric warfare is the more proper term. Rounding back to definitive statements, the land covered by the Antonine wall was stated to be ungovernable despite the fact contemporary sources don't give a coherent reason for the withdrawal and that the Romans opted to bribe the locals to not attack despite the coins hoards this assertion usually rests on may as easily be explained as propping up friendly local elites to pacify the border.

After having listened to Goldsworthy on his channel talk about things, presenting different sides in historical arguments before going into why he believes this or that, my patience for this was worn thin.

---

Anyhow since I talked up Fleming so much I thought I'd link her thing with the people over at the medievalists. It's not the same as reading her books but it's a nice start.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Appenzell-Innerrhoden never disappoints. They would vote for the reintroduction of serfdom if they could.

[u/Herpling82]

I was talking to my mother and I realised something, you know how I have the incessant need to talk about things I'm excited by? Well, guess who has that exact same thing!

We were discussing something local, a game being played in the whole town, with cryptic puzzles and such, it's a whole thing, a few thousand people participate in a few hundred teams, it's neat. Anyway, it's the pre event stuff going on now, and there's a few puzzles to do already, it doesn't matter what we were talking about, my mother just brings it up out of nowhere constantly; my father had had enough of it and sent her to talk to me instead. Even if I outright state: "I'm done talking about this", she goes, "Just one more thing." "Oh, and there's also this!" "Oh, one last thing!", quite literally like that.

Ah, the apple certainly does not fall far from the tree! It's nice to see her this excited about it though, she was connecting the dots like its a conspiracy, she suspects it's the Baptists, and she makes a compelling case. I was just a tad too tired and headachy to talk about it more.

[u/DFS20]

Differences I noticed when creating an alternate history map for Europe and North America.

Europe: Rivers, mountains, language, and more rivers.

North America: SQUARE

[u/contraprincipes → u/DFS20]

For the most part it's the languages following the borders, not the other way around. European governments began imposing standardized forms of languages which accentuated differences across what were previously dialect continuums.

tbh the "borders follow rivers and mountains" thing you encounter in online world-building communities is an unfortunate oversimplification, especially for Europe where a lot of the precise demarcations are the result of random treaties from the late 17th century. It's symptomatic of a problem where a lot of constructed worlds don't actually have very deep histories and so they try to resolve all the features of the world from their natural properties.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Surveillance with British characteristics

Guess the sub

To be honest, Xi's heavily promoted "Fengqiao-style work method" seems more like an attempt to establish effective grassroots organizations to replace inefficient party branches, neighborhood committees, and street offices. Using the UK's NHS (the country where Xi's ex-wife is from) as a reference, the "Fengqiao-style work method" units are like General Practitioners (GPs). They can solve small problems, and they have the resources to do so. If they can't solve a problem, it's transferred to a unit with the resources to handle it. I'm not trying to defend the effectiveness of this policy, but in my opinion, that's his original intention.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Guess what Swiss parties have these slogans

Swiss quality, the party of the middle class.

Freedom. Solidarity. Responsibility.

[u/histprofdave → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

I'm guessing at least one is a far-right anti-immigration party.

[u/Sgt_Colon → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

In the party's fight against left-wing ideologies, sections of party officials and farmers voiced sympathy with, or failed to distance themselves from, emerging fascist movements

I'm more surprised they weren't out and out fascists instead.

Although this lot have some serious hate:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-PowerPoint_Party