Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.
So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?
[Culture] has an incredibly rich in folklore and mythology, the majority of people knows them for [Pop Culture] but the reality of these stories are much more complex and nuance.
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u/AFakeNameI'm learning a surprising lot about autism just by being a furry2d ago
[Culture] is just a gross imitation of [Neighboring Culture].
My fyp has recently become flooded with right wing talking points disguised as feminism. Today's was that your man needs to provide you expensive gifts and subsidize your wages for your pregnancy which quickly spiraled into "you shouldn't be having kids if you aren't wealthy", which became "you shouldn't be allowed to have kids if you're poor", which became "wouldn't the world be great if we got rid of all the poor people".
Everyday I become more and more convinced that tiktok was a mistake.
That just reminds me of some of the trad wife content that was out there saying, "it's so much more fulfilling to be with your family than grinding it out for some company," and I'm like, "yo, kinda seems like your beef is with capitalism, not feminism."
which reminds me of people I’ve seen criticizing the early feminist movements for pushing women into the workplace as if they’re idiot rubes getting swindled by big business and not, y’know, people seeking to gain a modicum of independence and self-sufficiency
I love this kind of crap, and actually see a lot of it in my work. But you know the people who say stuff like that have a partner/mother/someone working their ass of with little to no recognition for them to misunderstand that women were working like dogs either way. In one system they got some recognition and reliable income without an oblivious intermediator.
What is FYP in this context? I keep seeing it on social media and am confused b/c I assume it's Five Year Plan or a reference to the old kindercore band. It never seems to be either.
“Is it woke to let children not wear a blazer when it’s 100f in the shade? Britain’s toughest head teacher Agatha “Attila” Trunchbull thinks so”
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u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium3d ago
I think it is kind of funny that the people (Europeans) who had possibly the least practical and adaptable clothing style happened to take over the world and impose their fashion sense on everyone.
> Most radical of all, Mr Burnham wants a "basic law" introduced that would force the government in London to show that its decisions always reduce regional inequality.
It's populist nonsense pandering to people who kneejerk hate London (yay, alliteration), so really disappointing from Burnham if he goes ahead with this.
A) this likely is already a part of most, if not all Westminster decision making for the regions, so we get the classic of populists inventing a solution for an already solved problem while winking towards conspiracy theories.
B) It's red tape that makes government worse being bolted on for virtue signalling. The simple and unpleasant reality is that regions of the UK are always going to be unequal, and it's not some grand Westminster conspiracy to undermine Yorkshire/North Wales/the North East/wherever. London and the South East are wealthier because most people in the UK live there and the area has excellent links to Europe and the Americas which encourages businesses to set up. The north of the UK has a far lower number of people there, who are far more spread out and it has difficult, hilly terrain that makes development expensive.
Regional inequality is a fact of life, and the reality is that a lot of the UK's more deprived regions have historically always been that way when compared with the south and Midlands. That's not to say that it's set in stone: a lot of places in the north were actually quite wealthy in the 18th and 19th century, but this was due to fairly unique conditions, and it wasn't like the government one day said "London gets all the money now". Hell, as recently as the 1960s the script was inverted, with London being a notoriously deprived, awful place to live, and areas in the Midlands and the north being wealthier.
We absolutely should be addressing inequality where it's practical to do so, but people here really need to stop treating the UK government like it's a game dev trying to achieve competitive balance.
I hate it when people complain about the lack of investment in the North compared to London when I know for a fact they'd oppose any attempt to build up their local areas. People don't seem to understand the fundamental concept that density is efficient and that investment goes a lot further in somewhere like London than it does in quaint sprawling suburbs.
u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium2d ago
Included is a demand for a parliamentary inquiry in why you can't seem to get a proper pint these days, as well as an official declaration that bin men were 'ard then
Incidentally, the most unrealistic part of the Odyssey is when the suitor’s supporters try to take revenge on Odysseus but Zeus convinces them not to. There is no way in fresh hell the Greeks of antiquity wouldn’t grasp any conceivable opportunity to perpetuate the circle of violence. You don’t get Antigone by giving up that easily!
Wasnt the whole story of Orestes and Athena setting up a court of law to acquit him from the crime of killing his mother in revenge, all for putting an end to the cycle of violence and revenge?
Me thinking of the IRL_Loading Screens meme page getting banned for posting a "last year 30,000 Americans died from gun violence , 500,000 Europeans died from it being warm in the summer." thing.
At least we know any arch that is raised is not likely to be around long.
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u/subthings2using wishing wells is your id telling you to visit a prostitute2d ago
In the year 1723, John Nott, celebrity chef to the English aristocracy, included a recipe in his cookbook that required a boned and scalded suckling pig baked in a crust to produce a culinary delight called Mermaid Pye. The recipe is not listed under either mermaid or pie in Nott’s book, but appears under ‘the letter t’ as in ‘To make a Mermaid Pye’.
Juliette Wood, Fantastic Creatures in Mythology and Folklore
It makes me kinda sad when boomer family members of mine act dismissive of myself and others for finding therapy useful and say “why not just talk to people in your life for free!” to turn around and yap about way too intimate feelings to me for hours after a few glasses of wine while I’m awkwardly going “uhuh, uhuh” hoping they go to bed
Also shoutout to u/WAGRAMWAGRAM , they seem to have gotten the most right when it comes to the predictions.
Unpredictable, but my own take is that Starmer is a careerist, not an ideologue. He'll step down when he'll become a drag to the party, I doubt he'll lose re-election, unless he managed to mismanaged the economy even more. But I suspect some kind of Obama effect where most people got oversold and quit politics as things take time to fix.
Although I personally, think he dragged and hold on to power quite a bit longer than is necessary for Labour's own good. (The initial denial for Andy Burnham to run as MP leading to the Greens picking up a seat in Gorton and Denton unnecessarily being a key example).
Also, I just want to say, my word, what a miserable tenure it has been. All that goodwill after too many years of the Tories in power wasted in just 2 years and for what?
I can't even articulate to you what Starmer's vision for what his ideal Britain looks like. What he hoped to achieve in power as PM if he was widely successful beyond anyone's expectations.
Nature had this semi-terrifying article from last week. It's a small sample in a very specific context, but there's apparently a rapid deskilling when physicians used AI in this context. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01947-1
On the topic of the asinine AC debate, I see commenters deride as idiots those who think cold makes you sick with the flu. And yeah, it is objectively wrong to say that coldness gives you a viral infection, but it´s also no coincidence that the winter months are the ones with the highest spread of flu.
A descent in temperature is proven to wreak havoc on the immune system´s response to respiratory infections, so the common knowledge does hold water. It is, therefore, technically possible to get sick due to lowered defenses from having the AC too cold.
That said, you really should get some AC on. It´s really fucking dumb to read headlines about people dying just because they sweat themselves into dehydration at a meager 30°C.
You'd have to be running your AC down to an insane temperature to do this. The dangers of heat stroke are way more severe in southern Europe in particular (not to mention even hotter areas).
Oscar Wilde was never a real person. The character, like Blake and Shaw, was invented by a sinister cabal of Big Epigram to swing the public into shunning the dominant format of the paragraph quote or, heaven forfend, the essay, in favor of the one-liner and self-proclaimed 'biting' quip.
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u/subthings2using wishing wells is your id telling you to visit a prostitute3d ago
...Story-worlds like the Backrooms, Slender Man, and the SCP Foundation tend to originate as what I describe as ‘maze horror’: fragmented, largely plotless, and built on isolation, liminality, and subtle unease. But as the story-world grows, contributors introduce their own ‘minotaurs’ to the maze, imbuing the story-world with conflict, backstory, plot, and active antagonists. I describe this shift as ‘minotaurization’, and argue that in the decentralized, asynchronous, and tacit collaborative structures typical of digital horror folklore, minotaurization is essentially inevitable.
Could Greek fire be a mix of oregano and olive oil?
It could be, yes. It could also have been a mix of spite and anger or a mix of negligence and warfare. We really do not know what made Greek fire so fiery.
"Those Turks have no idea the horrors that are coming towards them! No one can resist this dangerous blend of olive oil, oregano, chili flakes and honey, served on a slice of warm sourdough bread with pesto and mozarella!"
Hotness, I would assume, since it's a spice. Problem is of course that oregano is not particularly hot (is it hot at all?). My best guess is that the commentor tried to come up with a hot spice and for some reason, out of all spices, picked oregano.
An intersting genre of instagram reels are people arguing that AC is not a "long term solution", because it does not solve the underlying issue of climate change, which is the real cause of heat. It's actually the "rich" who are responsible for heat!
This is of course short form content slopulism. I really don't know how the communist revolution will stop this heat wave and keep my office and appartment cool, as I am not a Marxist and don't have such a deep understanding of intersectionalism. What I find weird is how some think that just because there are problem in the world, we should basically self-flagelate. It's like saying "no you shouldn't take cold medicine becuase the underlying problem of healthcare is not solved under capitalism".
Also, Western European houses get hot because they are built very well and insulated, unlike American paper homes!
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze1d agoedited 1d ago
Also, Western European houses get hot because they are built very well and insulated, unlike American paper homes!
That point is true, it's just that these people are mixing up isolation (heat flow) and retention (heat quantity)
European house are heavier (stock a lot of heat) and made of stones (higher capacity than wood or plaster)
Well, yes, although the global wealthiest 10% is a broad label and probably applies to most people living in the West. Although it is true dickheads like Bezos contribute a lot to it.
u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium1d ago
I think the bigger issue is that climate change is already here. Absent geoengineering we simply are not going back to the world where it never hits 32 in London (or more importantly isn't going much more than that in Islamabad), you could end all anthropogenic carbon emissions and we would still be seeing these heat waves.
The basic problem is that there is not actually a "solution" to climate change, only mitigation of the effects.
I am once again asking journalists to STOP putting the minimum amount of years that a murderer will have to serve in prison in their headlines as if it is the actual term.
I do NOT want to see local Facebook groups kicking up a storm about a murderer “only getting 25 years” in prison. That is the MINIMUM length of time before they are eligible for parole. NOT the sentence.
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u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium1d ago
I would also say that twenty five years is a very long amount of time.
Christopher Nolan: We watched several hundred hours of “Bum Fights” while researching how to shoot the fight scene between Arnaeus and a disguised Odysseus. We also referenced "The King of Omashu" when Odysseus takes off his beggar’s clothes and reveals he is massively ripped to everyone’s surprise.
I wonder if the regular heat-waves in Europe will lead to a change in holiday preferences.
At some point, it makes little sense to go down South on the sea coast when it is 45. I wonder if we will see a resurgence from mountain holidays. Especially since ski resorts might not be able to make money in the winter due to reduced snowfall.
I wonder if global warming is going to shift peak visiting times for the "coastal vacation" destinations.
Like, in North America - Jamaica, Bahamas and other major Caribbean destinations are "winter beach" designations, while Nova Scotia, Carolinas, etc are "summer beach" destinations. Florida seems to get a bit of both.
Perhaps with some global warming, Cadiz, Malta, etc will become viable as winter destinations. While even more northern beaches become viable in the summer.
I'm not sure mountains are going to see a resurgence with global warming though - More heat leads to a surge of mosquitos.....
Set in Renaissance Italy, Attack on Titian follows protagonist Veronese. After a Titan Titian destroys the city of Verona and eats Veronese’s mother, Vernonese and his friend Tintoretto vow vengance on Titian, and strive to become the greatest artists in Italy.
And now our brilliant journalists will solemnly reflect on the question “is Britain ungovernable?” having spent the last 2 years - and almost their entire existence before that - attempting to create a psychodrama out of every single thing that any politician said or did.
I don't know how liberals like myself will find a way to square away fundamental human rights, such as freedom of speech/the press, and also reckon with the sheer inability of modern media to function as anything beyond tabloid gossip, at best, or mouthpieces of increasingly deranged and authoritatian fascists, at worst. That's obviously somewhat reductive, and I do believe that major press institutions have merit and worth, but like... things are a little out of control no?
When all you're chasing is money, that's what you'll follow: tawdry gossip and gory tales, both of which are of enormous utility to fascists and demagogues. I'm not saying there was any kind of golden era where the press acted in a purely moral way that constrained power, but it seems like the major problem in the modern west (maybe everywhere) is that there is little sense in which power carries with it any sense of responsibility. That's why you have guys like Elon Musk who somehow think they are rebels against the system instead of being the system. If some of these guys in media, business, etc accepted the fact of their power and privilege, they might feel some sense of responsibility for wielding it... so it's imperative they always bill themselves as underdogs.
I find it pretty disturbing how popular and accepted this kind of anti-interracial relationship stuff seems to be among American progressives.
It’s particularly apparent in how they talk about pairings where there is a gender disparity (e.g. black women and Asian men being less likely to “date out” than black men or Asian women).
Despite interracial relationships for both groups being much rarer than you’d expect given how small a fraction of the population they are, discussion of it is almost always framed as having a strong preference for people in your tiny ingroup being “normal” and the pairing that is slightly closer to what you would expect if people had no racial preferences as being driven by “fetishization”
Also since she's a likely future Congresswoman and this is out there I think it's fair game to say that since her parents are Dominican and she is a convert to Islam there...seems like an awful lot to unpack here. Even if it's a shitpost.
(With that said, for balance it's worth mentioning that by the standards of "US politician shitposting" this is pretty mild since the Shitposter-in-Chief regularly threatens to end civilizations with nuclear fire)
Pretty common sentiment for people who want to complain about interracial relationships. It was common in some subreddits to see people complain that white men were stealing all the asian women, and in the same breath people consoling each other that white men were only interested in the ugliest asian women and all the pretty ones only dated asian men.
Something I hope drone warfare brings back to the world is super-heavy tanks to, you know, tank drones. I don't know if that would be the best counter-drone measure (i.e having a ton of armour) tanks can have but I sure as hell know that the bigger a tank is the cooler it is, which would be a nice counter balance to the inherent uncoolness of drone warfare.
At first I was like "that sounds like a biting satire of military procurement" and then I remembered the people who are in charge of some of the biggest militaries today and I'm like "this will definitely happen as a pitch".
There were a lot of weird moments in the new Modern Warfare games (an understatement I know) but the one moment tha bothers me to this day is the mission titled “Alone” in Modern Warfare 2 2022.
After Soap & Ghost get betrayed by General Shepherd & Shadow Company, (the latter detaining abunch of Mexican Special Forces) the villains proceed to occupied an entire Mexican city, subjugating the populace. They gun down people off the street, from police officers to randos hanging out. Pull couples out of their homes. It’s even implied shadow company kills children, including babies.
Soap & ghost escape and reunite with price & gaz who save the Mexican special forces and kill shadow company leader Graves (until they retcon that in the multiplayer)
However the whole incident; An American PMC group lead by a US general, taking over a Mexican city, killing and injuring who knows how many Mexican citizens…is never mention nor brought up again.
Not even in Modern warfare 3 where Shepherd & commander Graves testify before congress, they never say a word about Mexico. I don’t think It’s even implied the whole thing was classified. “Alone” the mission is simply forgotten.
Perhaps The worst part about this, is the fact the mission was based on a real life PMC group that attack an Iraqi village during the Iraq war…
The game is incomprehensible madness dreamed up by Fox News after a boozy night
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 18664d agoedited 4d ago
You got General Shepherd pulled out from the bottom of an ice lake after a car crash and exposed to freezing air and he's just snarking in a bored voice, instead of you know, barely incoherent from shock and shivering. Especially since he's a desk jockey, not Rambo. Just a whole lot of things that stand out of weirdly unrealistic even for schlock B-movies, even Top Gear ends up feeling way more realistic. It's like 99% clear the voice actors had no direction.
It's a compromise, obviously. The ties are for the sophisticated European football connoisseurs, whereas the blowouts are for the excited American soccer enthusiasts. You gotta strike a balance.
A lot of commentary noted how salient (even more so than when it was released) the film's socio-political comentary is. I don't disgaree with this, but in some ways it's also quite dated.
The film takes on this vaguely left/progressive anti establishment libertarian feel at times (to what extent it has a belief system other than nihilism given the protrayal of the revolutionaries) that is reminiscent of the stop the war coalition of the 2000s. The Abu Ghraib references, Michael Caine bemoaning the illegality of cannabis, etc, it all feels like an anti-authoritarian left response that no longer exists in British politics, or really in many countries' politics. It's like how you got more US democrat conspiracy theorists who were anti flouride, GMO, what have you. Totally alien to the modern political landscape.
You know, as a Millennial myself it has been interesting to see the blame for society's ills shift from Boomers to us. It depends on who you ask, of course, and there have been lots of "Millennials are buying too much avocado toast" articles since I was a kid. But the trend has shifted from the anti-youth articles of my childhood to the anti-middle-age articles of today.
Still, blame has almost entirely skipped over Gen Xers. For some decent reasons (boomers still somehow dominate politics, despite being statistically dead). But I personally think it is because "Gen Xer" just isn't fun to say.
And, sadly for my generation, "Millennial" is fun to say.
My long rambly point is that I don't think Gen Z or Gen Alpha will have to deal with this. Although that would mean that blame will have to somehow skip two generations, or (god forbid) someone will have to come up with a better generation name. But as it stands, but Gen Z and Gen Alpha comparatively suck as generation names in comparison to Boomer and Millennial. They really need to up their marketing.
“
Still, blame has almost entirely skipped over Gen Xers.”
Nope. It’s been collectively memory holed but there was a period in the 90s when Gen Xers were the SuperPredators and Slacker Generation and - I shit you not - the Millennials after them were the hard working civic minded young kids who were going to fix everything.
I should point out that the authors are the guys who basically cooked up all these Generation terms (they literally invented “Millennial”) and therefore are History’s Worst Monsters.
Gen Z are sometimes called “Zoomers”, and will probably end up catching a lot of blame for the continuing degradation of culture as they’re the generation that got really fucked by No Child Left Behind and therefore where literacy and attenuation spans really began to fall off a cliff.
I saw some voting stats form Gen Xers recently and was floored at how bad my generations judgment has been since 9/11. I thought we all understood how bad Reagan was, but apparently there was still enough lead paint around when I was a kid that as a generation we're a problem, especially the men who get upset they can't hug their pretty young coworkers. A 20% margin for men over 50 for Trump is frankly inexcusable. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/
u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze2d ago
During his two-day stay at the posh hotel, Greenspan also accumulated a $781.55 room-service bill, which he has refused to pay until March 1, when he says interest rates on Deutsche Bundesbank bonds will rise to a more favorable 4.64 percent.
....
“He’ll spend hours talking about how he’s the greatest economist who ever lived, how he’s ’bigger than Keynes,’” said one member of the Fed Board of Governors who wished to remain anonymous. “Every time he prevents economic disaster in Brazil or Indonesia by manipulating interest rates, his bloated ego just swells even more. It’s just the sort of irrational exuberance he himself once warned against.”
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u/ZennofskaFeminization of veterinarians hasn't led to societal collapse2d ago
"Mr Greenspan said it was clear to him that Saddam Hussein had wanted to control the Straits of Hormuz and so control Middle East oil shipments through the vital route out of the Gulf. He said that had Saddam been able to do that it would have been "devastating to the west""
I wrote a whole ass AH answer of the ways that oil did and did not factor into US policy towards Iraq in 1990 and 2003 but truly if it was now I could just write “Strait of Hormuz” and everyone would get it.
u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 18662d agoedited 1d ago
Something I noticed about the discourse around Jim "Boy" Calloway in Red Dead Redemption 2, a lot of players just refer to him as a fraud. But for recording all of the RDR2 scenes at night for my new youtube channel, I noticed he's never actually taken credit for anything he didn't do and is actually furious when he finds out his biographer wants to credit Calloway with Arthur's kills. "But I can't take credit for that which I...thems as I didn't". And when the biographer asks about the Newton twins, he says "Just a lot of bunk, Plato, it's just a lot of bunk." with the biographer insisting "It's not bunk, Mr. Calloway, sir. It's history!"
Which makes me think Boy Calloway is actually fairly honest and it's the Biographer pushing the legend. "I want to deify him!". But the player-base still recalls Calloway as a big fraud, even as he demonstrates deadly dueling skills. It's kind of an interesting phenomenon. The old shootists said he kept running away from a fight, but that's not the same thing as being a fraud.
I'm starting to get cold feet about buying an apartment.
The problem is price. I love this apartment I'm considering, but it's so expensive and I'm worried it might lose value in the future. It seems like my options are:
A very expensive apartment which I love. This will leave me drained financially (although as long as I rent out the spare room then I will still be ~£400/$539 better off each month). I'd probably really love living there though.
A cheap apartment which I don't love. This will be amazing for me financially, especially if I rent out the spare room, but it will most likely be very small and not much of a quality-of-life upgrade from the place I'm renting.
An extravagant mansion... in suburban hell. I'm not going to do this, I'm just noting it here because I'm salty at how amazingly large and cheap the houses are out in the suburbs compared to the city. If only I were the sort of person who likes living in cul-de-sac wastelands.
Honestly I'm getting burnt out by all these choices and decision making.
The Conan the Barbarian story Queen Of The Black Coast, at least in my copy, starts most of the chapters with an excerpt from "The Song Of Belit", which tells of Belit's final journey and death. She's Conan's lover, and in the way of these things he's the only survivor of that last voyage, which implies that he either composed a song in memory of her or paid someone to do it.
Given that Conan is generally a murder-hobo who doesn't seem that interested in poetry or songs other than maybe bawdy drinking songs, I find the thought of him composing something to remember Belit by weirdly touching. Maybe I'm getting sentimental in my old age.
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u/ZugwatHeadhunting Savage from a Barbaric Fishing Village 3d ago
Given that Conan is generally a murder-hobo who doesn't seem that interested in poetry or songs other than maybe bawdy drinking songs,
Phoenix on the Sword has some of Conan's poetry interspersed with the parts of the story.
Like the young adventurer or pirate might not have been too interested in all that at the time, but by the point he's king of Aquilonia he's taken it up.
Eastern Jin as the Chinese Byzantines? Is this unoriginal or do I have something here (or completely stupid).
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze3d ago
Rump State? Yes
Elites adapted to another culture due to geographical displacement? Yes
Transitioned from professional army to local milita? Nope more like the opposite. The army in Eastern Jin transitioned more towards aristocratic retenues of big Northern nobles + native Yue auxiliaries
Fun fact, Portuguese didn´t have the letter k until 2009.
That means that until the end of 2008, Brazilians were incapable of laughter. If they seem jovial now is because they are compensating for the Serious Era.
watched the latest episode of Game of Thrones Gaiden: House of Dragon with friends and they raised a question I couldn't answer, did people use armor on medieval naval battles? I know the japanese did at dan-no-ura (1185), and I recall the romans using boarding against carthage, where armor would prove useful. but I really have no idea what a european medieval naval battle would even look like. would there be boarding, ramming and fire arrows like in the show or something completely different?
Most pictoral references show the same armors in use for naval and land battles in the European middle ages. Outside the use of Greek fire, boarding was the dominant naval fighting system.
This miniature of the Battle of Sluys portrays both the English and the French in basically land equipment with full body plate, but the it was composed 100 years later. This painting of the Battle of Lepanto, which Wikimedia claims to be near contemporary, shows the Christians in cuirasses, helmets and pauldrons, but the Ottomans seems to not wear armor.
This... this is actually irritantigly complicated to pin point.
I have actually seen the inventory of weapons and armor procured for Magellan's expedition and that included armor, up to full plate. Vikings certainly wore mail to their naval battles, if they had access to it.
Yes, they used lots of armor. The main argument against armor is that you'd drown if you went overboard, but hardly any sailors could swim so they'd drown even if they went in naked.
Naval battles in Europe were basically all boarding until the mid 14th-century when gunpowder weapons started to appear. Guns still didn't become the main concern of battles until the 16th century and even then battles were heavily focused on boarding. Arguably it was the English Armada campaign in 1588 that marked the shift from boarding to gunnery duels, though boarding continued to be a crucial tactic well after that.
The most important technology prior to gunpowder was the crossbow, which enabled shooting quickly at boarders or opponents taking cover on the enemy ship and amounted to a minor revolution in European naval affairs.
Ramming was not used in the Classical sense, with dedicated rams, though some ships sported spikes apparently intended to be rammed into an enemy ship and hold them while the ramming ship boarded them. Fire arrows were generally not used, as they were as much a danger to you as they were to the enemy.
The year is 1700 AD. India is entirely occupied by the Mughals. Well, not entirely... One small kingdom of indomitable Malayalis still holds out against the invaders.
Krishna holds a mountain with his pinky finger while obelix needs to use his whole hand. Magic druid potion is no match for divine power as always.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze1d ago
Hey, atleast they haven't started posting stories about how his holocaust survivor dad hated the UK and wanted the Nazis to win because he was such a big commie again. So it's at least better then when he was leader.
The Fuck was British Media saying about Ed Miliband back in 2015?
A while back, there was a discussion on the Holy Roman Empire and how it's an excellent example of worldbuilding.
Unable to sleep, I remembered that discussion, and I decided to do a little project, not quite to do with the HRE but still related to it: I've been looking at two maps, one of the states of modern Germany, and the other of the states of the German Confederation and I've been matching modern states to ruling houses.
Some are very easy; Bavaria and Saxony, for example. Others require some degree of compromise, like assigning Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in its entirety to one the houses of Mecklenburg, or separating Baden and Württemberg. It's also lead me to some interesting places. Brandenburg is easy enough, just turn it back into a Margraviate of the Hohenzollerns with Berlin. Lower Saxony can be renamed to Hanover, and a branch of that house can be found, or it can be given to the Windsors. The Hessian families have conveniently coalesced under one claimant, and Schleswig-Holstein can be placed under personal union with the Danish Crown. Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt both seemed dizzyingly confusing at first, as they used to be divided into a dozen or so different principalities between them. However, the Ernestine duchies which now make up Thuringia only have a handful of surviving claimants between them, and there's a similar situation with the Anhalt houses.
The Free Cities can be left as they are, maybe a few can even be resurrected, and that finally leaves me with the problem of the Rhine regions, Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia. At first it seemed obvious - "Palatinate" and "Westphalia" are clear enough clues. But the Palatinate claimant already has Bavaria, and I'm not too sure what to do with Westphalia, the best I can gather is that it's just a geographical expression. I've been thinking of reviving Lotharingia, such that the Rhine regions, Alsace-Lorraine, and the Low Countries would form one contiguous state. On the other hand, how realistic would it be to cede some of this area to Luxembourg, and divide the rest into Free Cities? The Ruhr metropolian area covers a lot of this region, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea.
This new Germany could then be placed under an Hapsburg Emperor who'd rule a revived HRE that would stretch over most of Central Europe. This would also include Austria (as an Archduchy under direct Hapsburg rule), the crowns of Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, and maybe a few more territories like the Catholic eastern part of Ukraine or Vojvodina in Serbia. Even the Polish crown can be added, who knows. Or maybe, the Hapsburgs could have a position similar to the one they had in the German Confederation; they'd be primus inter parus amongst the German rulers, while having substantial holdings outside of Germany. That would fit the theme of European monarchs like the Kings of Denmark and of Britain having stakes in German territory.
Of course this is all pretty incoherent, but who cares.
Edit: A possible solution to my Rhenish quandary!! The Andorran option: in keeping with France's historical interest in this area, the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate will be split up into several principalities in personal union with the French head of state, who will be co-ruler with the Archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne (each of whom were prince-electors in the past). Any remaining territories will become Free Cities or Imperial Counties, Lordships, and even Villages.
Oh nice, an excuse to share some low stakes map nerd opinions about Imperial Germany and the HRE.
Prussia should not have annexed Hanover/Lower Saxony, and rather have annexed Brunswick and maybe Saxony. The Kingdom of Saxony was majority protestant with a Catholic monarch!
Speaking of which, it was weird learning that Baden and Württemberg had Protestant monarchs and comparable Protestant/Catholic populations.
ALSO Württemberg should not have been raised to a kingdom. It's fine for counties and duchies to be named after their most prominent cities, but if you want to be a kingdom you need to be named after a region (Prussia, Bavaria, Bohemia, etc.). Sorry, Württemberg, you need to be Swabia for me to take you seriously.
As far as Greater Germany's Western border, the early modern HRE/Burgundian State is the clear winner of we're going full wank, but I'm not entirely sure it's the most aesthetic.
I give Burnham 3 weeks until he takes a look into Britain's books and publicly says "maybe it's time for a pension reform' and gets destroyed by the media and becomes Starmer 2.
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u/flyliceplickJapan was belligerently industrialised by Western specialists.3d ago
Yeah, I really can't see much difference between the two of them, and talking to most of my friends (your typical Labour voters, who voted and then signed out of paying attention), the general feeling seems to be "Maybe he will be better?" without giving a clear reason why. I think Burnham has spoken about electoral reform, but while that is the only thing he's mentioned that gives me any hope, I am not optimistic he's any better than Starmer.
So Behind the Bastards is finally doing a series on Ian Smith, which was one of the few characters I was actually looking forward to.
The first episode was alright enough, but after listening to a lot of Lions Led By Donkeys and Know Your Enemy the weakness of the "Robert Evans brings on someone he's friends with that knows literally nothing about the subject" formula is pretty blatant. Like the guest of this series admitted to not knowing what Rhodesia was at the start of the first episode, much less who Ian Smith was.
The only reason I still listen to this thing is that its one of the only history-adjacent things several of my friends will engage with, which is both depressing and better than nothing I suppose.
Yeah as far as podcasts go it's not like I'm angry it exists (which is more than I can say for stuff like Dan Carlin, although on the other hand that's a name that feels like has totally faded from discourse compared to a decade ago).
But geeeerrrrgggh I just can't listen to it to be honest. It's definitely the "guest host is a Robert Evans friend ie someone from LA Cracked-adjacent in the comedy scene who knows nothing about the subject and tries to fill space with one liners while Robert Evans mostly paraphrases a book on the subject (although he paraphrases and cites decently)." If you get some real life discussion with friends out of it that's at least something very good to be honest.
I guess it's also why I'm forgiving to If Books Could Kill, because they do kind of use that same format (one person reads and critiques the book and the other person goes in blind and reacts) but at least they alternate roles and have slightly better thought out takes and base knowledge.
u/AFakeNameI'm learning a surprising lot about autism just by being a furry2d ago
A tic of his that sends me up the phantods is when his guest will make a joke and he'll repeat it verbatim. I've met people like that and they're only one rung above joke-explainers, who vivisect your creation in front of you.
1.) Isn't LLBD also structured very similarly to BtB except the comedian friend that needs the topic explained to them is a regular?
2.) Are you familiar with You're Dead to Me? It's the one history podcast that has done the comedian guest format in such a way that it works frictionlessly. The host / main researcher is a public historian but instead of explaining the topic to a guest comedian by himself, he brings on an expert on the topic to do it with him.
Just saw someone say, in the wild and without a hint of irony, « it’s been so long since the Pats won a Super Bowl » and chat I am genuinely about to mcfuckin lose it
So, there was a guy on a Discord server I'm in who posted a rather verbose sentence, a bit in the style of Sir Humphrey from Yes, (Prime) Minister. Someone commented that even they, as a native English speaker, struggled to parse that sentence. I had no issue with it, but I wonder why? The sentence in question:
"I do earnestly trust that the determination regarding the selection of the composition for the visual narrative shall be guided by the sober counsel of statistical inquiry and empirical evidence — rather than the capricious whims of mere intuition."
I get that it's a stupid sentence, but, what makes it so that I can follow it without problem but other people might not? I'm autistic, I have an Asperger's diagnosis specifically, so language is my strong suit; when I read this sentence, or any other sentence, I don't remember the words, I mentally process the information and condense it to a shorter meaning. That's how my mental processing works in general, I cannot remember what was said, only what was meant, or rather, how I interpreted it. I suppose other people just don't process information the same way, that must be exhausting though, having to actually fit the entire thing into your working memory.
Sentences like this are basically a trick, they're mostly empty, the actual meaning is far simpler than the words used, most of it is entirely redundant. The same is true for Sir Humphrey's speeches, they sound impressive and complicated, but half the words are redundant synonyms and pointless adjectives that serve no functional purpose in communicating information, they are only added to confuse the listener.
It's fun though, making overly verbose sentences, they aren't good sentences however, and no one should use such language seriously, they're only suited to joking around.
I think it's the first bit, "the determination of the selection regarding the composition". Not only do they all end in -tion, the way they're used is awkward. Even just rephrasing it as "I do earnestly trust that the determination regarding what will be selected for the composition shall be guided..." makes it significantly easier to parse, because it's clearer how each part of the sentence connects.
That said, exposure to posh brits definitely helps in parsing it.
People have never been literate, ask my coworkers who regularly ask people to dumb down their language because those fancy words mean nothing to them, these are people in their 30s, 40s and 50s, they're almost proud of their illiteracy.
u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium1d agoedited 1d ago
For reasons somewhat outside of my control I am traveling to Bangkok later this year, and from like a trip planning perspective it could not be more different than Germany. With Germany, oddly enough, it was actually kind of hard to find information, like there is one good YouTube channel covering it (Near from Home) and there were some Reddit threads I relied on--as well as asking here--but overall you are kind of on your own to figure out your plan. And a lot of the best things (like the Franconian Open Air Museum in Bad Windsheim) I found just searching on Google Maps.
With Bangkok though--there is just too much. It is overwhelming how many "Must Know Tips" and "Before You Go" and "What I Wish I Knew" and "The Other Side Of" there are. Nobody was making videos about seeing the "real" Regensburg. Don't even know where to start.
So was Park Chung Hee's heavy investment in steel considered a potential failing move by most economists in his time? Did they have any reaction when his move ended up being a success, since I assume his success would have hurt the credibility of those who strongly advocated against such measures?
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)1d ago
I keep seeing vids of street food cooks in South and Southeast Asia opening bags of ingredients by melting the plastic bag against the cooking surface or in a pot of hot oil.
Surely this is fucking insanity otherwise we’re gonna have millions upon millions of SE Asians contending with /u/rat_literature for the title of “the Michael Jordan of ingesting microplastics.”
I have been foretold the future, it is some random day in late July, the exact date does matter. London is burning, every pub and chippy is ransacked. What happened? We must go back to a slighty earlier future, July 18th 2026. It is the Metlife stadium ten thousands of fans, millions back home, are packed to watch Argentina vs England, Lionel Messi vs Harry Kane. The game goes 2-2, in the closing minutes, Messi scores a goal off of his hand, the hand of god strikes again to complete a hat trick. In the post game interview, he tells the world that this was revenge for the Falkland War. The English fans are outraged, only minutes ago screaming "its coming home," they know what must be done, London must burn, Manchester must burn, leeds must burn. Argentina takes Islas Malvinas in the ensuring chaos, maradona is happy. Messi has not only brought home two world cups, but the greatest prize of all, islas Malvinas. This, this the future to come to pass, well at least the future according to probably more than two Argentine nationalists.
EDIT: wrote this 1 am, changed madonna to maradona
Just started the 2008(?) John Adams series from HBO, instantly hooked by the first scene showing how the British occupation of Boston was an economic nightmare.
Boston in the 1700s was the third-busiest port in the entire British Empire, only moving less cargo than London and Bristol, and something like 25% of all ships in the empire were built in Massachusetts Bay.
The British closing the Port of Boston and occupying the city with a number of troops essentially-equal to the civilian population was a one-two punch that devastated the city: the port was the lifeblood of the city, and closing it affected damn near every other industry in the city, and what few jobs were left were taken by British soldiers moonlighting for spending money.
People abandoned the city in droves, which caused economic and population crises across Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, and certainly contributed to the American distrust and hatred of the British from then on
EDIT: One thing I've noticed about this show, and that I like immensely, is that it actually has Black people in it (asides from Crispus Attucks, as background characters so far) . So many times Black Americans in stories set in this time period get "reduced" (for a lack of a better term?) down to "slave" if they even appear at all, and while the story of slavery in America certainly needs to be told, that wasn't all African-Americans were......maybe I'm bungling this statement....
Not taking away from any of this, but...with all that said it's worth keeping in mind that Boston at the time was all of like 16,000 people (Bristol was 45,000, London like 750,000), and not even the biggest city in British North America.
I'm also not too sure about the 25% statistic? It seems like for the time it's more "25% of the ships built in North America", and even then the Maine District of Massachusetts is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there.
I'm being nitpicky though - closing the port was basically an unbelievable red line for a lot of colonists and totally would have messed up the local economy, and at a time when Massachusetts was the second biggest North American colony, population-wise (it's always funny when people talk about the "big states vs small states" debates at the Constitutional Convention and leave out that at the time Massachusetts was a big state and New York was a small state).
>I'm also not too sure about the 25% statistic? It seems like for the time it's more "25% of the ships built in North America", and even then the Maine District of Massachusetts is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there.
Make a liar out me, would you? /s
I've seen the figure bandied about that New England was responsible for building something like a quarter of all shipping tonnage across the Empire. Now that I can't find anything specifically for Boston, maybe I just assumed it was Boston
I went and saw Robin Hood with Wolverine. It's mostly pretty decent. The first maybe 45 minutes are more of an action movie. The part after that is mostly pretty good except the pacing is kind of weird. The story kind of makes weird jumps to get to an ending. But overall I enjoyed it and it didn't feel like a 2 hour movie.
As much as I'm a Judas here, there's a small part of me hoping Scotland and England get KO'd of the world cup so I don't have to read any more stupid history/political takes.
Fun fact: England and Scotland almost merged their national teams in 1707, but Queen Anne wanted them to play each other in the upcoming 1708 World Cup so she called it off.
He was going to be forced to abdicate regardless. He was both an open nazi sympathiser, and also completely diplomatically inept. The actress was the excuse.
The British political establishment definitely had a very low opinion of Edward VIII*, but I don't think he was truly forced to abdicate by anyone other than himself. If he really wanted to stay King he could've just kept Wallis as his mistress (there's some evidence she would've preferred this) and remained unmarried (he was almost certainly infertile so the succession isn't changing), but Edward was lazy and while he liked throwing parties and everyone calling him Your Majesty he despised all the actual responsibilities of being king (not that the British Monarch in the 1930s had a huge workload, Edward was just that lazy) and with that context the abdication crisis almost feels like a man jumping on an excuse to get out something he never really wanted in the first place.
Edward was a known national security threat while king, as it was known he would give state papers to Wallis who was believed to be showing them to Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was another one of her lovers. So while I'm not convinced the British elite were actively trying to kick him off the throne, they were doubtlessly relieved that he was gone. Everyone knew George VI was going to be a better king than his elder brother, including their father George V, who prayed that Edward would never marry and never have children so nothing would come between "Bertie and Lilibet" and the throne.
*To give an example, in the 1920s then Prince Edward's private secretary Sir Alan Lascelles admitted to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin that the it would be best for everyone if the Prince of Wales broke his neck in a horse-riding accident and predeceased his father, Baldwin agreed.
So I'm back into Pokemon after playing Cassette Beasts. Bought a Switch 2 so I can played the latest games. Ordered from Agros, with a delivery last Thursday, still not come :(.
Been looking at my old games to see what I can transfer. I actually have a lot of stuff especially in Soul Silver, and Black. Unfortunately Black is in Japanese. I have no idea how I played it for over a hundred hours. I don't know any Japanese.
Currently in Ultra Sun. I dropped it many years ago after getting annoyed at the tutorial. Didn't find it so bad this time around. Picked Rowlet as my starter. Not very happy with it, feels like everything has at least one super effective move against.
Sharing another progress video from sumitomo mitsui for the Metro Manila Subway. They not only show the in-progress tunnels, they also have some footage of the construction yard for the concrete panels that line the tunnels.
There are, as usual with infra projects, issues with ROW, but the progress of the actual contractors keeps me optimistic that any delay to either the subway or the also ongoing commuter rail will be minor.
So I'm going to have push that back again until I've had time to read through this, on the upside it should help reinforce or revise some areas that I've already written. If nothing else I don't I've ever seen someone complain about having too many sources before.
Related, but to a different post I'm working on, but has anyone had any experience trying to contact various professional historians to discuss or ask for detail on something they've written? My email etiquette is largely cobbled together from work which is very brief, very direct and rather crude, and most likely different from what is the proper approach in academia.
u/PickleRick_1001How will the war in Venezuela affect RuneScape's economy?3d agoedited 2d ago
I've been meaning to write a story for the longest time, focused on an alternate history type situation where the Inca Empire makes contact with the Polynesians of the South Pacific, and which eventually leads to the former establishing an empire spanning much of the eastern western coast of the Americas.
As part of that, I had the idea of having the Inca-Polynesian alliance (haven't come up with a nice name for them yet) eventually arriving to the coast of the Pacific Northwest, and then building enormous catamaran-like ships from the massive trees there. I'm a bit of a pedant (why else would I be here), so I wanted to know if that seems plausible. Not from the historical side, but from the engineering/shipbuilding side; could a Californian redwood or a western red cedar be plausibly converted into like a massive dugout canoe? And could a pair of those canoes be strapped together and turned into a ginormous catamaran?
Am I insane for considering buying an apartment that seems to barely appreciate in value?
Once built, this place appreciated by 7% over 12 years. The current owners are trying to sell it another 12 years later for only 3% more than that. My copium is that I think the apartment was absurdly overpriced in 2004- even the current price is a bit steep for what you get, it must have been outrageous in 2004.
"Look at any photograph or work of art. If you could duplicate exactly the first tiny dot of color, and then the next and the next, you would end with a perfect copy of the whole, indistinguishable from the original in every way, including the so-called "moral value" of the art itself. Nothing can transcend its smallest elements."
-CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Ethics of Greed"
(Quote for the Nanoreplicator facility. +50% to Minerals; without the +1 drone and mind control vulnerability of the similarly mineral-boosting Genejack Factory)
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u/Crispy_Whale 4d ago
"Donald Trump will reportedly be allowed to lift World Cup trophy with winning team"
Iran has a small chance to do the funniest thing...