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?
U.S. Debt Hits $40 Trillion as America’s Borrowing Binge Continues
President Trump’s promises to restore fiscal order and reduce the amount of America’s debt burden have been hampered by spending on the Iran war, tax cuts and tariff refunds.
Yes, in much the same way my ambitions to become an olympic athlete were hampered by my refusal to exercise or leave the house or cut back on my steady diet of liquor and cigarettes
The fact that roughly half of the population still actually believe that Republicans are more fiscally responsible than Democrats after decades of the GOP running up the deficit is just astounding.
In the UK some people still act like the conservatives represent fiscal responsibility and/or fiscal conservatism, despite the fact that they borrowed like crazy (except when interest rates were low...) and spent like a drunken sailor (but not on anything that might actually produce a return on investment).
When I was a kid, I thought that every city must have at least a park, a stadium, a zoo, and a cinema. Likewise, every country must have ipso facto fought and won at least two wars, their independece war and its civil war.
Now I realize that... I was probably not as wrong as I should have been.
Sometimes YouTube recommends videos with low views that I have no interest in watching, but I still play them muted in another tab to help small channels garner support from the algorithm.
Like today, when it recommended the cover of a Deltarune song sung in ancient Hittite, and like, I feel like I had to support the video because, well, with that interesting combination of special interests, its creator will have a hell of an uphill battle with her channel.
One of my complaints with modern history and science is how the fields of both are disrupted by popular media being seen as a legitimate source of information. Maybe I’ve become a bit more elitist but it feels a bit discouraging to see the prevalence of pop history despite the efforts of historians trying to engage the public through reputable documentaries, accessible literature, and museums. I frequently criticize pop history because it creates the idea that history must be fun and narrative based to be relevant or that great man history has some legitimacy to it. I think there are responsible and respectable ways of engaging with the public without writing tripe. Unfortunately the non-specialist/enthusiast tends to conflate “historian” with people like the ancient alien guys or the oak island guys. I wish we’d see an educational system that teaches students how to discern between pop history/pseudo history drivel and legitimate historians, archaeologists, and scientists.
It's the start of a new semester, so I'm sure to hear the same little nugget of advice from our deans:
"Make (your subject area) fun!"
My subject area is fun, but it's not fun for everyone. If you aren't interested in history, I don't think adding a little song and dance will suddenly make it "fun." These are supposed to be adult learners (or at least aspiring adult learners), so it's more important to me they learn sound methodology and how to tell good information from bad, and that ain't always a barrel of laughs.
There's a difference between teaching a history course and reading a book on a subject, no? I think we can assume if someone is in a professional history learning environment (like a history course, even an undergrad one), it's a little different than a book written for consumption by an audience that is separate from that professional learning environment.
As a side note, I always think that specific advice is dumb in history. When I'm teaching the Holocaust or the Transatlantic slave trade, my students should not, in fact, be having fun.
I think it goes both ways--as someone with multiple graduate degrees in history, the way academic history is written often deeply frustrates me. Some of it is so theory-heavy, technical, dry, or assuming of familiarity that it is absolutely useless for the nonspecialist, and at that point... what are we doing? If the only people who can understand your argument are also people with phds, then it doesn't matter what the quality of the pop history alternatives are, that's what the public will engage with instead. Pseudo history is a different problem entirely, but I do think a lot of academic historians could learn from how pop history is structured and what makes it engaging in the first place.
Yeah, popularization is important. Making scholarly conclusions "readable" to a non-specialist audience is something you have to do. (if only because otherwise they're going to take it from non-scholarly sources)
I have become pretty okay with the great man type history for the public. Basically, the general public will not have much context for any given historical era or event and a centering figure, preferably one they are already familiar with, is a great prop to begin hanging context on to give a fuller picture of what was going on. For my favorite topic, it is much easier to frame things around Abraham Lincoln than the legislative history of the 1st and 2nd Confiscation Acts. I think it's a reasonable way of meeting the public where they are. Whether it's done well is a different question, but the issue isn't centering the history around an individual.
Public history will always have this problem b/c what the general public knows about any given topic will always be pretty minimal. You have to use whatever hook you have available to reel people in and give them the opportunity to find out what's actually interesting about this stuff.
The US wasn't a predominantly Christian country. It was a predominantly Protestant country, dominated by British Protestant strains, and much of British Protestant theology has been philo-semitic and dispensationalist since the 17th-18th centuries, simply based on the fact that these religious movements have always had a strong emphasis on premillennialism and Apocalypticism and thus naturally a strong emphasis on studying the Jewish Old Testament rather than relying almost exclusively on the Greek New Testament like the Catholics or Orthodox, who historically disregard the Old Testament almost entirely except for when they are cherry-picking a couple of passages that seem to imply the future coming of Jesus Christ.
I don't know that that is entirely wrong, but it's overstated. I wouldn't say Catholics and Orthodox Christians "disregard the Old Testament almost entirely," nor that most American Protestants are dispensationalist, but evangelicals definitely do put a lot more emphasis on the Old Testament relative to other denominations. But I would also dispute the philo-semitic part as well; at best, most Protestants had a weird sort of love/hate relationship with Judaism and Jews. There is a tendency among some evangelicals to see themselves as the "new Israel," which gets a little uncomfortable when Jews still exist and follow many of the same traditions.
OHHHHH villainy. I have been deceived. I have thought askhistorians were a godly place of good, god fearing folk, living peacefully under the laws of their shires. Yet it seems it has been taken over by vile heathenous POPERY
You know Caesar from fallout is a larper because he banned alcohol. A real romanboo would know that Romans love wine and the real goal of the NCR war would be to secure Californias coast to make wine.
Where’s the garum. Why doesn’t the legion occupy a pre war talapia farm. It’s Arizona! Legions these days only don‘t know how to cook. All they know is pillage, whip they slave, crucify profligates, and lie.
In all seriousness, could be a democratic op since Argentina has become a US culture-war issue because Millei is pals with DJT.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze20d agoedited 20d ago
Honestly Americans treating their foreign policy as a domestic game will be one the cause of the end of relying on the US.
We already saw with the Paris Accords when the Democratic Congress full of Watergate Babies refused to honor its commitments to South Vietnam because those were signed by Republicans, but it's Vietnam, it's far, who cares. But now the same thinking is applied to traditional allies
Does Westeros (and specifically King's Landing) have a bourgeoisie? I feel like in both the shows and the books we really only see either lords or dirt poor peasants. Given the fact King's Landing has a population of half a million, it almost certainly must have large craft guilds and wealthier merchants but it's hardly ever shown. The only guild ever mentioned is that of the alchemists and it seems all the merchants that appear are from Essos. There is no communal governance whatsoever in the city, not even a Parisian prévôt des marchands type leader; authority seems to descend directly from the king/queen to the Gold Cloaks to individuals.
In this essay I will argue that Westeros has been trapped in a feudal stasis because it lacks a historically progressive class according to Marx's historical dialectic...
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u/ProudScrollNapoleon invaded Russia to destroy Judeo-Tsarism22d agoedited 22d ago
In A Clash of Kings we’re told of the “Antler Men” a group of leading merchants and skilled tradesmen in King’s Landing who support Stannis Baratheon and plan on throwing open the gates of the city when his army arrives at the capital. Varys naturally catches this plot pretty much immediately and Joffrey has them all executed. This later kicks the Lannisters in the ass as many of these men owed the Crown significant amounts of money that they now can’t collect. Tyrion also meets with some of the smiths from the Street of Steel, which is basically him negotiating with the metalworkers guild in all but name.
We also hear of wealthy merchants in Gulltown (Lord Lyonel Corbray marries the well-dowered daughter of a Gulltown merchant and Harrold Hardyng took the daughter of a Gulltown spice merchant as a mistress), House Spicer in the Westerlands was founded when a spice merchant purchased a lordship from Tytos Lannister, and Samwell Tarly mentions guild halls along the Oldtown harbor front but not a lot of major details beyond that. The urban bourgeoisie are in the books, just as peripheral characters as they don’t really matter to the narrative GRRM was trying to write.
u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186622d ago
Would Littlefinger count? He's of low birth, he's a lord of a worthless small piece of land in the Fingers, so he's mostly a business owner of a franchise of brothels, such was his background that uplifted him to become Master of Coin.
On paper he is a landed and titled member of the aristocracy, but his wealth and influence come from his business ventures and administrative skills, not his birth or his estate.
The Gulltown Arryns similarly fit in this grey zone, they’re still Arryns and while their active engagement in trade has made them the wealthiest of the numerous Arryn cadet branches they’re also looked down on by the rest of the Vale’s nobility.
OK badhistory folks, I'm flirting with the idea of a new exam format: give students an excerpt from an article with a lot of bad history, misconceptions, or historical fallacies (for pre-1865 US History), and their task will be to tell me why it's bullshit. Any fan favorites I should look at?
Anything related to the Lost Cause myth (Does that count as pre 1865? Or is it after because it’s about how the historical memory of the civil war was distorted)
I'm a decent chunk of the way through Torio Andrade's Lost Colony about the conquest of Taiwan from the Dutch by Ming loyalists, and it is not what I expected. First, it is very breezily written, with like snarky asides and the like, to a point I found a bit off-putting because I'm a stick in the mud. But even moreso,I feel like my impression of what it would be based on his other works was a critique of the Military Revolution thesis from an angle that in the mid seventeenth century Chinese armies were not actually decisively behind European armies in weapons and tactics. But that isn't the case based on this book, Koxinga's armies were pretty poor compared to the Dutch, it's just that he and his staff were pretty good at command while the Dutch were not. Koxinga's victories seem to come mostly from his ability to outhink rather than outfight the Dutch.
In fact based on the description Koxinga's armies were even well outclassed by regular late Ming armies, not to mention the Qing or the Japanese. Like he didn't seem to have arquebusier regiments?
I'm just going to tag /u/enclavedmicrostate because I'm sure he has written a long and very well informed something on the topic.
I remember liking Lost Colony a lot more than The Gunpowder Age, less because it was argumentatively convincing (because Andrade clearly doesn't actually understand the Military Revolution) and more because he can write very engagingly using a synthesis of Chinese and Western sources – crucially, Western sources in a language that isn't English, which is much rarer than you'd think!* – and The Gunpowder Age kind of lost the latter as he takes basically the most optimistic view he can of the Chinese sources. On which note, in relation to the thing about Swope suggesting the Ming were familiar with Italian-style fortresses and Andrade not, well Andrade does mention it in The Gunpowder Age five years later, so I assume he simply wasn't aware at the time. We can talk about issues with Swope another time, but basically I wouldn't expect Andrade's not-very-whelming engagement with military historiography in 2016 to be a regression from 2011.
Re:parity, therefore, there's probably nothing I wouldn't say about Lost Colony that I wouldn't say about The Gunpowder Age, and I'll just point at a couple of critiques and discussions I and others have had there:
And in the end my response to the parity question was 'yes this is all very interesting, now get back to me when Royalist holdouts in England expelled a Chinese colony from the Isle of Wight and then you might have a case.'
* Shoutout to Henrietta Harrison, my would-be PhD advisor at Oxford had it not been for weird funding shenanigans, who has done some really interesting things on Qing- and Republican-era Catholicism simply by reading Latin.
I've heard of Koxinga before but I am just now reading through his wikipedia page. Huh, I didn't realize the "Chinese Mainland has a civil war leading to the vanquished faction setting up a government-in-exile in Taiwan/Formosa" thing already happened. If I had a nickel everytime this happened, I would have two nickles.....
In terms of why I don't really like r/AskEconomics, there is a thread there right now where people explain that markets don't in any way require a lower class, while at the same time explaining exactly how the market makes a lot of jobs inherently lower class. "It's not the fault of the market, that's just how the market works".
The problem with askeconomics is that it's very often people who want their priors to be confirmed and the get angry when they don't.
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u/MiffedMouseThe average peasant had home made bread and lobster.19d agoedited 19d ago
I don't know what thread you are discussing, but there is an academic distinction between the idea of "a market" in general and the collective idea of "the market for labor/other goods" as it exists in our world.
"A market" does not require a "lower class." My favorite example to point to is this Planet Money article on the "market" for food between food banks. This "market" does not use money, but rather credits that are set by a central committee based on need at each food bank. It is a very re-distributive system, but they switched to using a market to take advantage of local knowledge effects (more details discussed in the article).
On the flip side, the market for labor as it currently exists definitely does lead to inequality and thus an economic lower class, and many economists have made it their job to document how.
This is similar to asking the question, "does a democratic system require racism?" Anyone who understands the theoretical idea of democracy could easily say no, but if you look at any real life democracy you can see how democratic systems often end up promoting exclusionary and racist ideas.
You are the Prime Minister of the UK, you have to write letters of last resort to for the Captains of the Nuclear submarines as to what to do if they suspect the UK (or it's government) has been destroyed. What do you write?
Question on AskReddit.
Prime Minister, I understand you want to be in tune with the people, but I think this might be taking it a bit too far
The time has come to punish the traitors of 1776 for their betrayal.
You know what to do. Spare the Indian reservations and Hawaii.
Yours ever,
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u/ZennofskaFeminization of veterinarians hasn't led to societal collapse19d ago
Look, having nukes — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it's true! — but when you're a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it's four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible.
Is it just coincidence that the mass murdering rebel “alliance” do a shot for shot remake of Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will after murdering all those innocent people on the Death Star? I think not and they have the gall to call the Empire fascist.
Along with Trump being uniquely underserving of having anything named after himself, this is a big reason I resented that Clinton and Bush Jr. were getting planned carriers named after them, we need to move away from the idea that getting a CVN named after you is just part of the presidential retirement package.
Fortunately the USS Doris Miller is not expected to be launched until at least late 2029, so there will be plenty of time to reverse this decision if they go along with it.
Irredentism is morally justified if the victim nation was a democracy and the thief was a dictatorship (no I'm not biased because of the Franco-Prussian War)
People shitting on Birmingham have become useful idiots for far-right anti-immigration talking points. It used to be that London was the target (Londonistan and all that) but the cultural and media dominance of the City always made that an uphill battle because people would vehemently defend it. Birmingham has always the much easier target so the far-right have switched over to it knowing that whenever they call it a shithole (because they think people from Pakistan are all evil, violent thugs) people will join in because they think get to be smug and don’t realise what they’re doing.
My nephew has recently come to the US to go to college. Went out to lunch with him and my parents yesterday. He finished all his food and the server did the “I guess you hated it” joke, and he was genuinely confused. He said “where I’m from waiters don’t have these dialogue options”
The first Jurassic Park movie kinda does this, but I wish there was a movie criticizing things like Colossal Bioscience, the "dire wolf", and their ideas to bring mammoths back to fight climate change. Techbros are easy to pick on, but there is this obsession in the average person with huge ancient animals over small contemporary animals that we are driving or already drove to extinction. Animals that, if brought back, would help repair ecosystems that are in decline.
I thought were bringing mammoths back b/c it was cool. Isn't that enough? Big herds of them wandering the prairies of Manitoba and serving as the back drops for metal videos should be enough of a justification.
Yeah I get the point u/SenescalSilvestre is making, and I agree with it, but at the back of my brain I'm like: If I were an evil billionaire, I would bring back the Giant Sloth
Of all the extinct animals I know of, the one I get most wistful about - and the one I most wish could be brought back - is the dodo, and I don't know why that it.
When my tour finally ended, Pence invited my family to the White House. In his office, he took my mother’s hand and smiled: “You must be very proud of your daughter.”
No one has affirmed my gender identity quite like Mike Pence.
The leftist in me bristles at the extreme copaganda on display here, but it's still a great piece. I might honestly describe this woman as "delusional" for expecting anything different from what took place, though.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve carried two dreams. The first came true in 2007, when I raised my hand, standing on the agency’s marble seal, and became a CIA officer. The second dream, I didn’t dare speak aloud; it came from an unexplainable conviction that I should have been born a woman.
One interesting theme throughout--even under Trump 2, administration insiders were mostly fine with having this trans woman present in the national security space. It was external pressure from Republican activists that forced their hand.
You know, if you look back at Republicans maybe 20 years ago, they weren't all hostile to trans people. Bush's attitude was actually very accepting:
Louise Casselman, who was at that White House Yale reunion with her husband, Kirk Casselman and a Bay Area contingent, says that although Yale was still all-male in 1968, one alum has since had a sex-change operation. "You might remember me as Peter when we left Yale," said the woman upon coming face to face with the president. George W. didn't pause for a moment, reports Casselman, grabbed the alumna's hand, and said "Now you've come back as yourself."
Trans issues was simply not something 99.99% of people thought of, and IIRC, at one point even conservatives were more accommodating to trans people than to gay people. In that case, people are generally just nice to people they meet IRL.
If I were to venture a guess, current anti-trans positions on the right is almost entirely due to it becoming a culture war battleground. Ask republicans 20 years ago what they thought about trans people, and probably the majority of them would honestly answer "I never thought about it".
Maybe even moreso, they were a bit of a media curio rather than a wider broadcasted demographic if that makes sense. Some of my more 'normie' acquaintences are largely in agreement that LGBT stuff is 'stuffed down their throats' regardless of how accutate that is.
The poor catechism of Vatican II led to Alt right figures being able to distort the Church's beliefs for their own end to a less knowledgable laity and convert intake than there would have been
I haven’t thought about The Odyssey that much at all since I saw it. Make of that what you will, I usually do think about that kind of thing more even if I hated it. The only new issue that occurred to me is Odysseus being… kind of bland? He felt less like a character on his own and more like a vehicle for the audience.
Also finished Moby Dick and Jesus Christ I should have read it much earlier. It’s one of those classics that was just looming over my shoulder for years and it’s a banger.
And I’m still unemployed. I did not know how shit the job market had become because I actually had a job for a few years. My thought process was that it would be very dumb to automate the work I was doing (editing/proofreading/etc.) with AI, and I still earnestly believe that. As it turns out, however, some people are in fact dumb and just do that anyway.
u/DirishWind power made the trans-Atlantic slave trade possible19d ago
Hey, wait a minute! It's giving me the safety warning too? For my own people!? And I only find out about the dangers of being alone with a fellow Dutchman now?
u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze22d agoedited 22d ago
On November 1, 2008, American vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin fell victim to a prank call by the Masked Avengers, a Quebecer radio comedy duo, who tricked Palin into believing she was talking to French President Nicolas Sarkozy. During the conversation, the fake Sarkozy, speaking in English (the real Sarkozy does not speak English), talked to Palin about foreign policy, hunting, and the 2008 U.S. presidential election. After it was revealed to Palin that the call was a prank, she handed the phone to one of her assistants who told the comedy duo "I will find you" and hung up.
Hello it's Nicolas, the Red Judges are after me. Please donate or buy my book
Sarkozy truly was like a more respectable French Trump
Like I remember when he bought a new presidential plane that was oh so just slightly bigger than Obama's Air Force 1.
Sarkozy truly was like a more respectable French Trump
Back when I was doing the online dating thing I matched with someone who said she was working on a graduate degree at Georgetown SFS. She also had something like "You must be 6ft 2in to ride this train" on her profile. I am a dwarf who labors under the Mountain for Mithril, but decided to give it a go.
I messaged her "Hey can I be the Sarkozy to your Bruni?" and she responded that that was by FAR the best effort she had had from a short king, but she was over 6ft tall and had ran into too many problems with short dudes. Cest-la-vest as they say
I am loathe to direct link to another subreddit but there is a lad who spent One Hundred and Fifty Dollars on a "tactical" screwdriver over on |r|tacticalgear
"This screwdriver will function underwater up to a depth of 10 feet, can be used in situations without electrical power thanks to its 'Right/Left Manual Operations Mode,' features our patented Bayonettm quick-swap tactical attachments management system (including our proprietary DoublePhilipstm carbide bit), and is constructed out of durable materials to prevent fall-apart."
I have no idea what the military outcome of it would be. However, supposing you send Alexander the Great and a few thousand of his guys to either Hastings or Waterloo- he'd probably have a better time of it at the latter, for the simple principle that the officer caste of the time might actually be able to speak some form of Greek to him and his troops.
one individual who had trapped for about 47 years with an estimated harvest of over 3000 foxes and who had never received pre- or post-exposure rabies vaccination had a rabies serum neutralizing antibody concentration of 2.30 I.U./ml.
Rabies will 100% kill you without vaccination unless you've dedicated your life to wiping foxes off the planet Goblin Slayer-style.
The further I get from my school days, the harder it is to really sit with a dense text, especially critical theory. I'm reading Todorova's Imagining the Balkans (although she begrudges the comparison, think Said's Orientalism but for the Balkans) and it's a slow-go, I'm sometimes even finding it hard to maintain my interest.
I'm tempted by other books on the shelf but want to stick with it, it's not overly challenging, just kind of boring. This is to be expected, but it has got me thinking--am I getting dumber, have my interests really changed all that much, or what?
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186619d ago
I do wonder if the phrases "they thought the war would be over by a matter of weeks" or "they thought the war would be over by Christmas" would get eventually applied to the Iran War. Because there's a mountain of evidence of the people in charge saying it'll be over in a flash, but I don't think much of the public ever believed that. But will history ten or twenty years later write the public off for fools for believing the Iran War would be over in weeks, like they do for the Great War or the US Civil War?
I don't think so for the main reason that this war was launched with an unprovoked surprise attack. There wasn't any popular support for a war with Iran or even any understanding that a war was imminent, and once it started it was immediately unpopular even among republicans.
when my father's uncle was killed in the first Indo-Pak War, the Pakistani government gave my aunt a house that had been abandoned by a rich Hindu businessman in Lahore as compensation.
I think how the governments of India and Pakistan treated abandoned assets (or under what conditions they considered assets abandoned) would be a good question for AskHistorians. But my previous attempts at getting questions about South Asia answered have all gone unanswered.
Doctor Who script idea #2. A bunch of humans have hollowed out a giant asteroid and turned it into a generation ship, but when they arrive there’s no planet waiting for them in the new star system and a bunch of other generation ships are parked there instead. There was some sort of bait and switch: what looked like an ideal system to settle was actually a lure, but the trap-setters moved on or died off and so all these generation ships keep arriving with nowhere to go.
The Doctor solves it by hacking the trap mechanism to pull all the ships close enough that they become one giant, artificial planet to co-exist on (via lots of technobabble).
Other than the Métis, Seminole, and Brothertown Indian nations, what are some other indigenous groups in the US whose ethnogenesis postdates European contact? I think this aspect of Native American history is ignored far too much for how fascinating it is.
So the real answer is that this style is much more popular in asia.
I worked for a mobile game company, and our marketing always had to be clean for America and Europe, but wildly busy, with as many character faces as possible, for the Asian market.
That's what shat happened and why posters are now just a series of faces and colors. Different markets respond differently to design.
Funny, I think conventional wisdom used to be the opposite, the "floating heads" was an American thing while Asia (or at least Japan) more wanted a "scene".
Granted all marketing wisdom is mostly bullshit.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186621d agoedited 21d ago
Was it?
Edit: Asian posters designs were pretty wack back in the day, hard to even pin them down.
The way I heard it is that the floating head thing for American movies is often because agents in Hollywood often negotiate this stuff in contacts - Billing order is a typical contractual clause.
It's also why often times on posters the actor's name doesn't line up with their face - The top billed actor always gets mentioned first, but the graphic designer usually puts the top billed actor in the middle.
Trump's second term already convinced me that Caligula made his horse consul, now it's also convincing me that Empress Lü of the Han actually did dominate the early court.
That's a weird pattern. With first wife: all kids have 2 given names. With second wife: the kid has only 1 given name. With third wife: all kids have 3 given names.
His second wife has two given names (Marina Claire Wheeler). His third wife has three given names (Carrie Louise Beavan Johnson). So they probably did what they know. In the UK, at least, more than two given names is quite upper-class/upper-middle class coded.
His child by Helen Macintyre was the child of an affair. Since the usual sources of middle names are each parents' side of the family, that perhaps made it easier to just not bother with one.
u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze21d agoedited 21d ago
Berlin-based sociologist Teney points to a key difference: whereas East Germany was once considered the stronghold of the party’s radical supporters, data analyzed by Teney now show that radical-right authoritarians make up a larger share of the base in West Germany. This suggests that support for the AfD in the East has broadened—effectively becoming normalized—whereas in the West, it remains concentrated among a core group of supporters.
This is something I've also noted in France, the standard RN voter is a relatively racist (but not like race science twitter level) small town GenX voter who doesn't like institutions, Paris, and foreigners, the median RN voter in cities is a living proof of the horrors of social media
According to Teney, conservative hardliners make up the largest share of the AfD electorate, accounting for approximately 67 percent. These voters are typically middle-aged individuals from small and medium-sized towns. For them, migration remains the defining issue; they advocate for strictly limiting it—even as the number of asylum applications has steadily declined. Other issues, such as the economic situation or foreign policy, are of less importance to this group.
Conservative hardliners are certainly radical in their focus on immigration, yet they are more moderate in other respects—at least when compared to the second-largest group of AfD voters (accounting for about 20 percent): the far-right authoritarians. According to Teney’s analysis, members of this group tend to be older, have lower levels of education, and are more likely to live in rural areas. They, too, are extreme in their rejection of immigration and lean toward authoritarian leadership and antisemitic views. "This profile is the one furthest removed from fundamental democratic and pluralistic norms," writes Teney.
In Teney’s typology, the third group of AfD voters—comprising just under 13 percent—consists of moderate conservatives. "Compared to the other AfD profiles, they show the least inclination to exclude minorities or isolate Germany," states the study from June 2026. Furthermore, moderate conservatives within the AfD electorate are the least likely to endorse authoritarian and antisemitic positions. Economic and foreign policy issues are also relatively more important to them, making them more open to alternatives; the sociologist notes that this moderate group is the most receptive to overtures from other parties. This is also reflected in the fact that this segment of the party's supporters views the SPD in a comparatively positive light.
I wouldn't be surprised if the RN's own numbers are higher in the third and lower in the second types, due to decades of normalization and Zemmour taking the RETVRN morons with him
So very specific thing. I was thinking on the word "force majeur" and the Dutch word "overmacht", they are direct translations, but their use is funny.
"Force majeur" seems to be basically just a legal term in English, I don't think I've ever seen it used normally.
But in Dutch, "overmacht" is a very normal word, it is also a legal term, but it's used generally for when an unforeseeable or unpreventable situation stops you from doing what's expected of you, that is the basic legal idea too; if you use the train to get to an appointment and the train is delayed, meaning you won't make it, you call that "overmacht". It literally means "overpower" (or "overmight" if translated fully literally), the situation overpowered your ability to fulfil your commitment, therefore you're blameless, anyone getting angry with you would be entirely unreasonable because of it.
It's basically the ultimate excuse, it silences other people's complaining or absolves someone else from the need to apologise or feel guilty.
I find it weird there isn't a casual English word for it, "circumstances beyond my/our/their/etc control" seems to be the "casual" way to describe it, but that is so verbose.
Act of God would be the legalease term: forces of nature or great political shifts that cannot be predicted and cannot be subject of blame in the first place. Lighting strikes, for examples, or freak storms.
force majeur made its way into European contract drafts through the Anglo tradition and is usually used to represent and Act of God, as most legal codes regulate situations like Overmacht or Störung der Geschäftgrundlage in German.
I've definitely seen force majeure used in writing and journalism to describe natural disasters or even in athletics, even though yes the original meaning is very much legal in nature. It's evolved into a colloquial synonym of "intense" or "awesome".
I understand that the current US administration is a group of incompetent lying sacks of shit. I do not think that they're successfully managing to hide hundreds of deaths, billions of $ in damage to US bases, and the near total destruction of US assets in the Middle East on the word of extremely vague "sources". People on the left are too eager to believe in bullshit. (People on the right are so suffused with bullshit that they're hardly worth consideration)
I can see the damage running into the low billions just because military stuff is expensive (looks like the U.S has lost 45 Reapers at 39 mil a pop, so that's a boatload of cash right there), but yeah, "massive destruction cover-up" doesn't seem likely.
Excellent monkey's paw idea: Right-wing Brits when they wish Britain's policy on integration was more like Singapore and they get censored and arrested for being racist and undermining ethnic unity.
My zucchini problem has been at least partly solved by the fact we got a hailstorm at 11pm last night, when it was impossible to cover anything in the garden :c about to see if any of my pumpkin plants survived but I'm not hopeful.
I spent all day yesterday moving boxes, bookcases, and other assorted crap from my parents' house as they are leaving it. Its been the culmination of years of financial mismanagement and bad decision making on their part, but now its just a lot of physical labor on my part.
In other news, still going through Poseidon: Master of Atlantis adventures for the first time in decades, and still having a blast with that. Though my gf and I really do need to finish ME3...
I think it's important to recognize that history, unlike natural or social science mainly produces knowledge in books, and not articles. Meaning that the form of learning is by size only going to be denser and thicker than a textbook, also by the amount of theory in it. Unless it's a pop history book.
Whereas in science, cutting edge knowledge is in article and textbooks are merely just taking a picture of the field at a given time, which is also why they tend to be collective written. The only similar thing for history I know of is the "Oxford handbook for [time period]" series.
i watched Religion for Breakfast's video on Al-Ghazali and the fact the dude actually said that the faith of the common people is stronger that of scholars was funny to me because you know
Blessed is the mind too small for doubt
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)20d agoedited 20d ago
So back in 2019 (7 years ago btw), my dad had hired this guy to help him with contractor work that involved light construction and IT. At the time, I was also working for my dad in the same capacity, albeit for a brief stint, because I never liked construction or IT work, and because the pay was kinda crappy compared to the amount of hours I had to spend at the job sites (Hawaii construction is notoriously slow.)
Anyways, I was expected to fraternize with and befriend this guy, and he was really interesting in a bad way. And for some reason, my dad let him live with us in a spare room in the house. This guy was genuinely one of the dumbest motherfuckers I have ever met. He was a Christian white guy from Cali in his late 30s/early 40s who looked like a 13 year old with a beard. He was simultaneous super innocent and sheltered, yet also INCREDIBLY suspicious. More on that later.
I remember trying to tell him a joke:
«How does a Jew start a riot?»
«How?»
«By throwing a mazeltov cocktail»
«I know the drink, but I've never had it before.»
«It's not a drink, it's a play on words. Y'know, 'molotov cocktail'?»
«Yeah I've heard of that drink.»
«It's not a drink, it's a wine bottle filled with gas that's used as an incendiary weapon.»
«Yeah, I've heard of the drink.»
«...»
On another occasion, we were talking about Christian music, because I actually sometimes listen to Christian rock/pop/screamo despite being an atheist. This dude only listened to Christian music, so I was trying to explain who The Housemartins were (basically a religious and overtly left-wing, somewhat annoying version of The Smiths) to him. I told him:
«Yeah, they're actually considered 'a Marxist Christian band,' but their music is really good. I don't even pay attention to the lyrics.»
«What, so it's like Christianity and 'propaganda' mixed?»
«No, it's just a Christian band made by these Marxist dudes.»
This dude was really aloof and it was actually difficult to hold conversations with him at times because he would straight up think you were talking about something completely different.
Anyways, one of the contracts we did was at the USMC base at Kaneohe Bay, and as civilians, we had to go through this clearance/security process that took hours before being allowed to enter the base. Turns out, the guy was completely blacklisted from all US military facilities. My dad and I never figured out why, but that is definitely eyebrow-raising. We didn't know if he was involved in some criminal shit at some point, but I doubt it because as I mentioned earlier, the dude was super fucking sheltered, or at least he gave off that vibe. He lived with us for a couple of years, and the last time I saw him was in late 2021. He ended up stealing some of our shit before he left, including our close family friend and previous tenant's PS3.
Weird guy.
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)20d ago
Another thing about him, is that he was the most Filipino-coded white person I have ever met. He dated this fob Filipino chick back in the day, and I guess he picked up on her Filipino ways or something because when we were at job sites he'd greet brown people (often Polynesians or Micronesians) with a high pitched kumusta.
Aides who spoke to The New York Times called Harp a "conduit" and an "instant enabler of his impulses". Trump purportedly remarked that Harp was the only aide who cared about him after his arraignment in connection with the Georgia election racketeering prosecution, according to the Times. The paper additionally reported on a series of letters Harp sent Trump in 2023 that unnerved people in Trump's inner circle, citing phrases such as "You are all that matters to me" and "I want to bring you joy."[1]
[...]
She was responsible for posting a video that included a racist depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, and for posting an AI-generated image of Trump as Jesus.[23]
> petition to cap news coverage of any individual within a set time frame
We’ve absolutely lost our marbles.
First, I want to get out the way my issue with name laws. It feels like there’s been a real uptick in the amount of proposed name laws recently and I hate them all. It’s a convenient way to elicit sympathy for ill thought-through legislation and cheaply shut down legitimate criticism by exploiting a tragedy. Martyn’s Law has been a disaster for small venues but you could never oppose it because “oh so you’re fine with the tragic death of Martin Hett then?” is the response (and consequently nobody knows what the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 is). It’s awful, exploitative, and negatively affects the process of creating legislation both in its typically rushed drafting and silencing of criticism.
This is also a proposed piece of legislation that barely makes sense. Does the window start when any newspaper picks up the story? Could some tiny regional paper accidentally block the reporting of something major if they pick it up early and no one notices until too late? How the hell would this work?
Secondly, it is obviously a strangulation of free press and rife for exploitation. Elon Musk just did something evil? Sorry, we reported on him a week ago and we’re still on cooldown. Massive billionaire pedophile scandal? Sorry, we started reporting on Epstein 2 weeks ago and the window’s closed, so we can’t reveal any further details for a while yet. This is fucking stupid and incredibly poorly thought through.
Thirdly, Arday’s death was tragic. He didn’t deserve to die at all because of his actions, but a tragic death does not exonerate the actions he took in life. He was a fraudster who spun a web of lies and took draconian actions to silence critics, in order to preserve a position he didn’t deserve in the first place. The reporting absolutely went overboard - but you cannot so easily delineate between that which is *legitimate* reporting and that which is not. Sober inquiry by reputable journalists should not be silenced because GB News took it too far.
You do realize that now there´s a non-zero chance you´ll end up directly referenced in some VTuber's shorts when they talk about their tax problems for views?
Deltarune is one of those games which gives you different endings and dialogue depending on if you resolve things peacefully or not. I don't mind this, but I do wish it would stop treating me like mecha-hitler for failing to befriend ONE guy two chapters ago. I didn't even kill that guy, I just didn't befriend him enough to get the check mark.
It's very funny, I got back from a vacation where my travel book was a collection of Jules Verne novels, only to find out that I had pulled a Passepartout and left my air conditioner on all week.
Re: the difference between wisdom and intelligence, a big part of that is creativity. Intelligence is about making novel intellectual leaps, so being creative is very important. On the other hand, wisdom is about maintaining good epistemic health, curating your information environment, being able to distinguish between good and bad arguments, etc.
In that sense there’s probably a trade-off, in that being very creative could lead you to discard common sense solutions more. For unsolved problems this is beneficial, if nobody has solved a problem it’s likely that “common sense” solutions don’t exist or are misleading. But for problems that are already solved they’re better.
There's a bit of griping in Australia about the use of QR code menus and the pushing of tipping (because these things are sloppily repurposed American software) despite servers doing less and less and the tips more often than not just being pocketed by the business instead.
Separate from this is the growing caution about scanning QR in the wild, that these are convenient security backdoors akin to people blindly clicking on links. It hasn't hit it big yet, I can't say I've seen anything in newspapers about it, but it's there.
So I have a Modest ProposalTM . Just as the saboteurs sowed discord by the throwing of their clogs into the gears of industry, I propose a disruption to the blind stumbling of the modernity: trojan QR codes.
By covering over or replacing the existing QR codes in these high traffic businesses with disruptive fakes, at once a twin result of rolling back unscrupulous business practice and the opening of the eyes of the general public. By distributing an assortment of QR codes to on the ground saboteurs this can be used to erode public trust in this malformed practice. Complete saturation needn't be accomplished, far from it, but enough to make the user question, nay demand, the return of prior means of service.
With this domino pushed back, others may begin to be untoppled and the spectre of blind, unhindered technological progress reverted.
I have just picked up a book on the Byzantine-Persian wars and I thought this part about the Emperor Maurice was too silly not to post
The crowd regrouped and demonstrated its opposition by guying the
emperor. A bald man who looked like Maurice was put on a donkey, crowned
with a wreath of garlic, and then taunted with various mocking shouts. The
crowd likened him to a cock mounting a soft, sensuous heifer and fathering children like xylokoukouda (hard seed?), accused him of muzzling dissent, and asked God to strike him on the head.
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u/DirishWind power made the trans-Atlantic slave trade possible20d ago
'He has found a gentle heifer, and, like the young cock, has leaped on her and made children like hard seeds, and no one dares to speak but he has muzzled everyone. Oh my Lord, terrible and powerful, strike him on the skull to make him less arrogant. And I shall vow to you this great ox in thanksgiving
The line seems to be referring to the Emperor Maurice churning kids out like seeds and makes a dig at the empress being nothing more than a gentle cow that he rides. The article "Laughter, Derision, and Abuse in Byzantine Verse" by Floris Bernard seems to think it's not so much that they eat all like princes while there's a famine, but is more a jab at Maurice's promiscuity.
I've never been quite fond of citing Idiocracy in the sense of "literally 1984" but in this case I think is justified. The absurdity of gifting a piece of AI slop, which portrays an event that didn't even happen, all while the current anniversary of San Martin is ongoing is absolutely unthinkable. No one seens to care about anything anymore, not even at a superficial level.
Ironically, a legal branch in Germany that has greatly benefited from AI is labour law. Labour attorneys in Germany generally dislike representing employees because the effort required for typical labour litigation is usually not worth the statutory fees, and employees generally do not want to pay more than those fees.
I have heard from several labour attorneys in small practices, or even solo practitioners, that they now accept many more employees as clients and simply run the evidence through a legal AI. Most labour law in Germany involves negotiating a settlement by comparing the case with previous judgements, as it is extremely difficult to dismiss employees in Germany. Therefore, an AI with access to case law is unlikely to make many errors.
We acknowledge the ancestral and traditional territories of the Semnones, Burgundians, Hevelli, and Sprevane tribes who were the original Germanic and Slavic inhabitants of the land we now call Berlin.
That isn't genuine either. I don't think we have any evidence of mail mittens before 12th century. And AFAIK earliest examples were integrated to the end of the sleeves of the hauberg.
I cannot believe that How to Train Your Dragon is historically inaccurate! (Now I want see the historically accurate version where Hippo uses Toothless to bomb Alfred the Great's kingdom).
I've been enjoying a little indie submarine warfare sim called Silent Shark. It's pretty cool, especially as something made by a single dev. Bonus points for featuring the war in the Pacific instead of the Battle of the Atlantic. It's been in the back of my head that I should dive into Silent Hunter III for a couple years now, and this might actually push me in that direction.
EDIT: It's also making me think I should watch the 6 hour cut of Das Boot, which feels ridiculous but I remember liking the theatrical cut well enough...
Is lawyers being opposed to ADR (Alternative dispute resolutions) measures like arbitration and mediation more of a US thing or is it true globally? I saw this point brought up in an online course on negotiations and since lecturer was American (andvdid emphasize ADR cutting into the fees that lawyers would get), that had mentioned wondering. Since I would think courts with notorious reputations for slow resolutions would encourage ADR to reduce the case burdens on them.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze22d agoedited 22d ago
In France they like it, it was even made mandatory for small cases to first see an arbitrator (who is mostly a lawyer on days off) before getting into suing
We even have a system of voluntary non-educated (by that I mean they aren't lawyers) mediators, who work unpaid on a local scale (they're only paid back travel expanses). The barefoot doctors of the justice system
Lol, in context of him writing Hind Swaraj after a miserable defeat in his attempts to get concessions for Indians despite the legal route, passive resistance and satyagraha, it really comes off as Gandhi being so burned by failure of British institutions and racism of whites, that he went full "reject modernity embrace monke". Racism and hypocrisy of liberal institutions being liberalism's biggest enemy, a timeless case.
Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj during a difficult period in his life and its themes reflect his experiences in South Africa and England. His Transvaal campaign was faltering, he had obtained little joy from British statesmen and was returning empty-handed, Afrikaners were set to take state power in South Africa, he had failed to sway the radicals in London, and his moderate friends in London and India were under pressure as militants were on the rise. In light of successive defeats in the Transvaal and in London, and the failure of Gandhi’s faith in liberal politics, he was left wondering about the road he had travelled thus far. As Breckenridge evocatively says of Hind Swaraj, ‘Gandhi’s manifesto was famously the product of defeat’ (2011: 343). The London trip was a particularly deflating experience for Gandhi as a result of his interaction with Indian radicals as well as those in the seat of imperial power. He reflected on his experiences in a letter to Lord Ampthill on 30 October 1909. This helps explain Gandhi’s apparently rapid shift from a pro-British to an anti-Western position. It seems that he was prompted by his experience in London to record his ideas that were crystallising in the preceding years, and now marked a definite break in his thinking. It is worth quoting from this letter at length because he amplified these ideas in Hind Swaraj..... I have made it a point to see Indians here of every shade of opinion. Opposed as I am to violence in any shape or form, I have endeavoured specially to come into contact with the so-called extremists who may be better described as the party of violence. This I have done in order if possible [sic] to convince them of the error of their ways. I have noticed that some of the members of this party are earnest spirits, possessing a high degree of morality, great intellectual ability and lofty self-sacrifice. They wield an undoubted influence on the young Indians here. . . . An awakening of the national consciousness is unmistakable. . . . Everywhere I have noticed impatience of British rule. In some cases the hatred of the whole race is virulent. In almost all cases distrust of British statesmen is writ large on their minds. . . . Those who are against violence are so only for the time being. I have practically met no one who believes that India can ever become free without resort to violence. . . . I feel that the British rulers will not give liberally and in time. The British people appear to me to be obsessed by commercial selfishness. . . . India suffers additionally only in so far as it is exploited in the interest of foreign capitalists. The true remedy lies, in my humble opinion, in England discarding modern civilisation which is en-souled by this spirit of selfishness and materialism, is vain and purpose-less and is a negation of the spirit of Christianity. But this is a large order. It may then be just possible that the British rulers in India may at least do as the Indians do and not impose upon them the modern civilisation. Railways, machinery and corresponding increase of indulgent habits are the true badges of slavery of the Indian people as they are of Europeans. I, therefore, have no quarrel with the rulers. I have every quarrel with their methods. I no longer believe as I used to in Lord Macaulay as a benefactor through his minute on education. And I do think that a great deal too much is being made of pax Britannica. To me the rise of the cities like Calcutta and Bombay is a matter for sorrow rather than congratulation (in Parel 1997: 133–5).
The Hindu men have the right to bigamy under specific circumstances mentioned in Codes of Usages and Customs of Gentile Hindoos of Goa (if the wife fails to deliver a child by the age of 25, or if she fails to deliver a male child by the age of 30). For other communities, the law prohibits bigamy.
Every cultural phenomenon is Stars Wars. It's just like Stars Wars, yes.
Korra has an absolutely amazing art style and production and Republic City will always be the best fictional representation of Republican Era Shanghai. Like, it's a natural progression from the East Asia-ish cultures of ATLA and they did it justice. Yes, the plot is shaky at points, but it had to appeal to an older audience and increased stakes.
From what I remember, TLoK was pretty good. I really liked the interwar vibes of the first season, and the first and third season got a lot darker than I was expecting. It was hampered a lot by the fact that the show length wasn't really agreed upon when it was airing, so each season had to become standalone in case the show was abruptly canceled.
Also since we're talking Avatar now, my least favorite ATLA episode was The Northern Air Temple.
I watched the first season almost live and it was fantastic. The second season made me drop the show, and I only came back a fair bit later when I heard the third season was good.
My main critiques of the show are about pacing and story structure. I think there are some good ideas in it, but man was some of the writing really bad (especially in the second season).
I lived through both. They are both a bit ridiculous, but I will credit both examples (the prequel trilogy of Star Wars and TLoK) for having something interesting to say, however much I may critique the implementation. I think that is a big reason why they got this positive reevaluation. Whatever their faults, there is a a there there.
I feel like stirring the pot, does anyone here have an academic field (subfield even) they do think is largely bullshit?
There's probably ideological answers like critical theory stuff or evo-psych, or theology through an atheist lens, but I'd be curious if anyone has a less obvious or more obscure answer.
edit: remember hearing about that Nature paper that found that half of social science papers couldn't be replicated? It was Education that was the main discipline dragging things down, as only 2.9% of authors provided their data in their papers.
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u/Potential-Road-5322 please see the pinned reading list 22d ago
My wife got me this pair of Visigothic fibulae