Mindless Monday, 25 May 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

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/ProudScroll]

I love government positions that look like they should be relatively small-scope and unimportant but actually wield incredible amounts of power.

As an example, the Texas Railroad Commissioner, a fairly unimportant post in any other state, is arguably more powerful than the Governor. Why? because in Texas the Railroad Commissioner is also responsible for overseeing the oil and gas industry.

What are some other examples?

[u/elmonoenano → u/ProudScroll]

In the western US, water districts are wildly important and basically hold their own state's economy and other state's economy in their hands. Stuff going on with the Colorado river right now is insane. Basically Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado are playing chicken with Arizona's entire sustainability b/c they're purposefully pretending they don't understand anything about California.

[u/MarioTheMojoMan]

The newest Tirk Tork history wisdom du jour is that cannibalism of slaves was widely practiced by American slavers. And like most progressive history wisdom du jour, if you push back on this, you are assumed to be denying the brutality of slavery. Love the era we live in

[u/elmonoenano → u/MarioTheMojoMan]

I kind of weighed in on this. There was a tik tok video where the idiot basically read the title off a book and nothing else. I had happened to read the book out of curiosity, it wasn't a history book or anything I'm really interested except about ideas of slavery. But like page 2 of the introduction the author says he doesn't mean iit literally. It's disappointing but I can't say it's any different than people getting their ideas about history from movies like the Patriot, except maybe as a sign of diminishiing attention spans.

[u/ProudScroll → u/MarioTheMojoMan]

My best guess is someone watched that one Atun-shei video and assumed that incident was standard practice on slave ships.

[u/Jazzlike_Bar_671 → u/MarioTheMojoMan]

I'm pretty sure that European taboos against cannibalism still applied even in American plantation slavery.

[u/MarioTheMojoMan → u/Jazzlike_Bar_671]

And they weren't shy about the brutality they did inflict on their slaves! They bragged about it in their diaries and personal correspondence. People like Thomas Thistlewood and William Byrd eagerly recounted the horrible things they did to the Africans they enslaved. If they did a little cannibalism, I don't doubt they'd have bragged about that too. We just don't find evidence of it.

[u/Aurelian369 → u/MarioTheMojoMan]

Ummm… dafuq? What is the point of making up fake atrocities when there are plenty of real ones to choose from? 

[u/MarioTheMojoMan → u/Aurelian369]

To paraphrase the inimitable Milo Rossi: "You don't need to make up some super slavery to be mad about, you can just be mad about actual slavery"

[u/Illogical_Blox → u/MarioTheMojoMan]

That sounds like someone half-reading a book about the use of slaves and human body parts in European medicine and completely misunderstanding the point.

[u/randombull9 → u/MarioTheMojoMan]

It is at least less offensively obvious white supremacist bait than buck breaking...

[u/histogrammarian]

Line 340 from Book 5 of The Odyssey in Emily Wilson's translation:

“Poor man! Why does enraged Poseidon create an odyssey of pain for you?”

I hope this line makes it into the film adaptation. Characters should always say the name of the film at some point. And then they should always put that line in the end of the trailer.

[u/Dirish → u/histogrammarian]

And they should look into the camera after delivering the line. I don't make the rules, I just judge people for not following them.

[u/Tiako → u/histogrammarian]

I was curious so decided to check what the original phrase was and god damn I forgot how awful a website Perseus is. It is the loadbearing pillar of Classics online it is practically non functional.

How has nobody fixed this?

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

[u/TylerbioRodriguez → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Glad to see its not just the United States who have stories of voters that makes one want to be permanently blind.

[u/tisto2 → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Claudine will be one of those elderly ladies with failing mental faculties who ends up in the news because she was driving the wrong way and caused a fatal accident.

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Compared to the median US voter these are like high information voters

[u/Federal_Gur_5488 → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

I feel sad for claudine. She seems like a character from a sixties new yorker short story

[u/Aurelian369]

A conversation between Nixon and Kissinger about the Vietnam War

Nixon: I’d rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that ready?
Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.
Nixon: A nuclear bomb, does that bother you?… I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christ’s sake! The only place where you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You’re so goddamned concerned about civilians, and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.
Kissinger: I’m concerned about the civilians because I don’t want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.

Something is wrong when Kissinger is the voice of reason

[u/jurble]

Vegans will forward you pictures of happy calves captioned "The dairy industry will slaughter me, you don't want that - do you?"

Pakistani uncles will forward you pictures of happy calves on Eid al-Adha (the eid of animal slaughter) with the caption "They don't know what day it is" with laughing emojis.

[u/histogrammarian]

"Strategic fiasco" is my current favourite term to describe the US intervention in Iran. As anticipated, Trump is trying to close a deal that will allow him to withdraw, but that will involve considerable concessions for Iran. Perhaps including sanctions relief sooner and nuclear disarmament later, but will certainly rewrite the strategic landscape in the region. Iran has demonstrated that it can hold the strait indefinitely and strike out against the Gulf States at its leisure - allowing it to rebuild proxy forces in the region without too much worry about reciprocal attacks. So the US and Israel have not only completely failed to achieve their strategic goals, they have gone backwards with more threats and uncertainty to worry about. But at least the fuel shortages have hit all the AI data centres right where it hurts - in their operating cost budget.

[u/Steelcan909]

So who here has some hot takes on the newest Papal encyclical? I was surprised to see formal(ish?) apologies for the Church's role in slavery and a pretty clear anti AI/technology stance in schools. The anti AI in warfare stance was also nice to see.

[u/yoshiK → u/Steelcan909]

\ 213. The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” [187]

This raises specific questions about the interactions of canon and canon law.

[u/AthsheanDream → u/yoshiK]

Chicago pope quotes Gandalf in encyclical. Incredible stuff

[u/pedrostresser → u/Steelcan909]

In the development of her doctrine, the Church has gradually come to a deeper awareness of the gravity of these issues. It is true that past events cannot be judged anachronistically, as though the moral criteria that matured over time had always been available. Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery. In antiquity and the Middle Ages many individuals and even ecclesiastical institutions had slaves. Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to requests from Sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, the enslavement of “infidels.” [174] It was only in the nineteenth century that a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated, notably under Pope Leo XIII. [175] This development offers a clear example of the Church’s growth in understanding the perennial truths of Revelation that she safeguards. Although there was not always consistency in practice — given that slavery was long tolerated before being unequivocally condemned — there has been a continuous affirmation throughout history of the dignity of every human being, created in the image of God, even if it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized. This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached. [176] It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord. For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.

how much more official can this get?

[u/Kool_McKool → u/Steelcan909]

Apparently, he quoted from Gandalf and that makes me happy.

[u/randombull9]

I've long thought AI could easily generate generic LinkedIn posts that are indistinguishable from the average post on the site. I have finally tested it and had ChatGPT generate a few LinkedIn posts, and I am happy to report that I was right. The average LinkedIn user is legitimately indistinguishable from a soulless machine.

[u/ProudScroll]

The other day I was talking about how the Railroad Commissioner was one of the most powerful people in Texas due to their oversight of the oil industry.

Well, here’s the guy that’s probably gonna be the next one:

[u/weeteacups → u/ProudScroll]

Last name is French.

Is not French.

Curious 🤔

[u/Sventex → u/weeteacups]

Any relation to Field Marshal French, hater of the French?

[u/kaiser41]

Me, after wasting the whole holiday weekend procrastinating: This 45 minute errand my dad asked me to run is the reason why I never get anything done.

[u/Zugwat]

Something I enjoy about cryptozoology is when people try to present potential explanations on what sightings of the Mothman/Jersey Devil/etc.with more "mundane" options and they're almost as fantastical and contrived as the initial cryptid.

Like yes, the Mothman could technically be a misattributed sighting of a Harpy Eagle in that Harpy Eagles do exist in North America. They're just 1600 miles away from Point Pleasant with their northernmost ranges being in southern Mexico.

Or that the Jersey Devil could possibly be an escaped exotic pet, like a hammerhead bat. Which, again, is from West/Central Africa. The Jersey Devil has a lot of different alleged dates assigned to when it first is mentioned but it seems to be early 19th century at the latest so who the hell was having an exotic bat as a pet in early America and not immediately becoming a suspect in this?

[u/truthisfictionyt → u/Zugwat]

I think "the person made it up" should be a more common explanation especially for fantastical paranormal stuff like the Jersey Devil

[u/Illogical_Blox → u/Zugwat]

To be fair, if anyone in any time period had an African bat as an exotic pet, a wealthy but very eccentric person in 19th century America would be high up on the list of probabilities.

[u/Ayasugi-san]

Are there Ramses II truthers? People who believe that the mummy we have identified as him is really an impostor, because the real guy was drowned in the Red Sea and it was covered up by an embarrassed Egypt?

[u/Sventex → u/Ayasugi-san]

Imagine finding Bigfoot in an Egyptian sarcophagus, wouldn't that just create total chaos?

[u/MarioTheMojoMan → u/Ayasugi-san]

You have no idea what you've done

[u/Ambisinister11 → u/Ayasugi-san]

There's one now, my friend

[u/ChewiestBroom → u/Ayasugi-san]

Harold Holt swam all the way to Egypt and then died in a tomb and was mistaken for a mummy decades later.

[u/subthings2]

I've been on a little dragon binge recently and there's something I just cannot explain

so, it's normal for any myth/folk creature to have a pile of science-y rationalisations to "explain away" their origins; ergot hallucinations, weird bones, rare medical conditions. People love doing this even though it is basically always nonsense. Normally this is kept to individual articles/essays/blog posts, if included in a book they're referenced but only for a small section.

For some reason, people are...really serious about this when it comes to dragons?

Adrienne Mayor wrote a book on classical myth coming from dinosaur bones, David Jones (and kinda Carl Sagan?) wrote a book arguing it's from an evolutionary memory of pre-historic predators, Robert Blust wrote a book arguing it's based on interpretations of rainbows, Martin Arnold wrote a book arguing it's always just a representation of culture vs nature.

Yesterday I tossed aside that last one part-way through because it was so shallow and poorly argued, and, like, what makes scholars keep writing these as books??? It's only dragons that get this treatment!

[u/Illogical_Blox → u/subthings2]

Dragons are cool, are very dominant in modern fantasy, and unlike other creatures, the word 'dragon' tends to refer to a specific creature in European mythology. A troll or pixie or fairy or goblin could refer to any number of creatures with any number of shapes and sizes, while dragons tend to be reasonably similar. That's my theory at any rate.

[u/matgopack → u/Illogical_Blox]

Additionally dragons are a wide enough category that the non-European ones are still considered to be the same (eg, European and Chinese dragons would both be recognized as dragons by a westerner, while something like a unicorn feels more distinct / different than, say, a kirin or qilin)

I think that that makes it easier for it to be seen as something universal rather than regional

[u/Ambisinister11]

Is there a snappy nickname for the thing where people blame events or trends on policies that weren't actually implemented? The refrain of "this is what you get for defunding the police" after every publicized criminal case is a good example. It feels like there should be a good name for it, but I don't know one.

[u/Tiako → u/Ambisinister11]

I don't know, but it probably exists because they stopped teaching formal logic in school.

[u/TheBatz_ → u/Ambisinister11]

I mean it's basically scapegoatism. The goat doesn't need to be real. 

[u/SkeletonHUNter2006 → u/Ambisinister11]

The Hungarian term for it would be shadow boxing (árnyékboxszolás), although this is more about fighting against things that don’t exist (making up shit to get mad about), as opposed to complaining about them. I haven’t seen it used in English though.

[u/Sventex → u/Ambisinister11]

'Truthiness' was a popular made up term over two decades ago, it has since died out.

[u/SenescalSilvestre]

I just began to read Blood Meridian (because popular Youtubers ordained it to me), and I can't help but notice how the protagonist is a disenfranchised violent young man with little purpuse or direction. That is convinced by a charismatic and violent man to follow him, this man hating every other race and the government that he sees as weak for being manly and fighting a war against their neighboring country. How funny the classics are.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

This below must be why people say the UK has no freeze peach (and btw I doubt tat it's the student's parent who posted it)

How serious is a referral to Prevent? My son was referred on Friday for memes he printed out on the school printer and posted up.

Not defending what he did. I've spoken to him about it and he won't be doing it again. I just want to know how worried I need to be about his future. Is this a life ruining thing? He's 15.

When explaining what happens:

He says that some other students had posted memes about the Green Party around school before the elections.
My son printed out ones of Kier Starmer with exaggerated muscles and a massive chin , some of them wearing WW2 military uniforms.
I think it was some kind of ironic pro-Starmer humour because he supports Labour.
The school wasn't amused by the fascist imagery of the memes which is why they have referred him.

Funny comment

If it’s genuinely the pro Labour posters you described then Prevent will not accept this referral and I’d expect some additional training for school staff. Being a mini centrist Dad is not radicalisation.

[u/Dirish → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

My son printed out ones of Kier Starmer with exaggerated muscles and a massive chin , some of them wearing WW2 military uniforms.

Please let it be British WW2 uniforms for a change. Pretty please with bells on it.

The school wasn't amused by the fascist imagery

Goddammit! it's always the same.

[u/TheBatz_]

Daniela Klette, an alleged ex-RAF member aged 67, was found guilty of aggravated robbery in six cases, aggravated extortion, attempted aggravated robbery, and violations of weapons law. She was sentenced to 13 years in prison. It could have been much worse for her, as attempted murder was also on the docket, which could have resulted in a life sentence. With this sentence, her age and the proceeding appeal/revision, she most probably won't see half of that time.

Like any alleged terrorist, she used her court proceedings as a platform to express her political views. I won't discuss them much because she's as intelligent as you would expect a supermarket robber to be. She didn't acknowledge the severity of her crimes, which included shooting at guards with an assault rifle, because robbery isn't that bad, and guards should be trained for such situations.

Much more interesting are some of the public's reactions. The very left-leaning people, up to 60 of whom were also present at the sentencing, chanted, "Free Daniela!". I'm curious about their logic. It's similar to the hype surrounding Luigi: he didn't do it; all the evidence is forged or inadmissible; and even if he did, it was justified, and he should be freed.

The most intelligent comment was "67" on an Instagram post about the case.

[u/histprofdave → u/TheBatz_]

I'm curious about their logic. It's similar to the hype surrounding Luigi: he didn't do it; all the evidence is forged or inadmissible; and even if he did, it was justified, and he should be freed.

In most cases I've seen of people truly wanting to see Luigi freed, the advocacy is for jury nullification. I don't think a lot of people think he didn't actually do it. Of course, the prosecution has already kind of fucked up the case, so who knows.

Couldn't tell you about this Klette person, as this is the first I've heard of her. In fact it took me a second to realize that RAF was "Red Army Faction" and not "Royal Air Force."

[u/gavinbrindstar → u/histprofdave]

I do think there's some hinky stuff around the Mangione case, but I believe it's on the order of "dipshit cops engaged in routine Constitutional violations before realizing this is the kind of case people are going to pay a lot of attention to." Same with Epstein's suicide.

[u/matgopack → u/histprofdave]

In most cases I've seen of people truly wanting to see Luigi freed, the advocacy is for jury nullification. I don't think a lot of people think he didn't actually do it. Of course, the prosecution has already kind of fucked up the case, so who knows.

Well there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek "he didn't actually do it" from people that clearly think he did it. But a good chunk of that is for "make the state prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, he's innocent until proven guilty" view.

[u/Steelcan909 → u/TheBatz_]

The very left-leaning people, up to 60 of whom were also present at the sentencing, chanted, "Free Daniela!". I'm curious about their logic. It's similar to the hype surrounding Luigi: he didn't do it; all the evidence is forged or inadmissible; and even if he did, it was justified, and he should be freed.

These are not serious people

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/Steelcan909]

Terrorists Are Inhuman Monsters Except If When Agree With Some Of Their Politics, Then They Have A Point And Are Being Mistreated

I say "some" because a lot of times their politics can be pretty contradictory and incoherent. For what it's worth that's also not really a specifically leftist thing. Furthermore both sides of that equation aren't really correct, but this gets into the whole "terrorist properly describes an act and not a person or organization" conversation.

Getting back to Klette: I was wondering how she was in RAF but also only 67, and I guess she's from a later generation, with most of her activities around 1999? That's just weird, ma'am. I think you're just doing crimes.

[u/carmelos96 → u/TheBatz_]

There is a similar sympathy towards former Red Brigades by a part of the Italian old left, especially among intellectuals (who are for the 90% either Marxists or former Marxists).

A few years ago when ex-BR Barbara Balzerani died, a pretty famous philosopher, Donatella Di Cesare, tweeted her goodbye saying that they had shared the same ideas while pursuing revolution in different ways. (I find it extremely weird that the same people have also a fetish for our soc-lib constitution, to the point you hear them saying or writing "I'm proud to be a communist because communists wrote the constitution" bro have you read it)

[u/carmelos96]

@realdonaldTrump hopes to achieve what Alexander, Genghis & other aggressors failed to do. Iranians have stood tall for millennia while aggressors all gone

Wait wasn't that India

[u/Ambisinister11 → u/carmelos96]

I guess they're suggesting that Alexander tried and failed to permanently destroy Iran? Otherwise, I just don't know. I feel like conquering Iran is like, the main thing Alexander did.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Everyone just needs to get laid more. In terms of human needs not being met, despite living in an era of abundance. Housing and Sex are becoming inaccessible despite demand if statistics are to be believed. We don't like to talk about the latter but I'm sure the abundance of porn compared to a relative lack of actual sex is definitely feeding into feelings of jealousy. Everyone thinks every other group is having way more sex than they are. Race is one of these. But another is height, and also increasing male body dystopia trends like Lookmaxxing. 

Things have been read

[u/Ambisinister11 → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

body dystopia

Crazy, but dibs on this for an album title

[u/Ayasugi-san → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

What about those of us who don't want to get laid?

[u/Illogical_Blox]

Obviously respiratory infections aren't limited to the cold months.

But it still sucks to catch a cold in the lead-up to the hottest bloody day of the year.

[u/Signal_Nobody1792]

Paul Graham:

Something I told 14 yo: There's a kind of politician who tells people "Your life is bad because <outgroup> stole what's rightfully yours. Vote for me and I'll get it back for you." They do it on both the left (Lenin) and right (Hitler), and they're invariably bad news.

Musk:

Hitler was also left, just a different type of left. Hardcore socialist.

I would pay to see Musks Twitter feed.

[u/Otocolobus_manul8 → u/Signal_Nobody1792]

It's probably 90% hentai or something

[u/Witty_Run7509]

Now Bret Devereaux is getting swarmed by people who are claiming that Achilles was a real person. Their entire argument seems to be "Well Alexander claimed Zeus was his father but he was a real person too!". Honestly, I'm getting really entertained just how much weirdos and idiots are coming out of the woodwork over Nolan's movie.

[u/TheUnfortunateMiaoZe]

I blame the failure of Russia as a nation on the fact they went along with the Byzantine schism, to this day they are still being punished. Also if Pius XII had concecrated Russia to the Immaculate Heart, like Our Blessed Lady asked in Fatima, Russia would have been restored in glory, but he didn't do it and communism destroyed it forever. Russia is a cursed land now.

[u/Ambisinister11]

Employment addicts will really tell you that it's normal to spend a third of the day getting their fix smh

[u/TheBatz_ → u/Ambisinister11]

It's fine, I can stop whenever I want to.

[u/BigBad-Wolf → u/TheBatz_]

He says, but whenever he tries to quit he gets withdrawal symptoms and can't eat.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

The split between Right Hegelians and Left Hegelians was resolved at the battle of Stalingrad

[u/carmelos96]

Man, you folks really are desperate for a new pandemic. Hantavirus didn't quite pan out like you wanted it to so now you've moved onto Ebola in hopes that this will be the "one"

I couldn't tell if "you folks" refers to the WHO or journalists or doomers

[u/Tiako → u/carmelos96]

My entire conscious life (so undoubtedly longer) there have been pop up disease scares, from SARS in the early aughts to bird flu to swine flu to Ebola in 2014. Donald Trump was a massive Ebola fearmonger back in the day.

[u/Aurelian369 → u/carmelos96]

Bro, I know someone who claimed Hantavirus was a plot for “them” to take control

I asked who are “they,” no answer 

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/Aurelian369]

South American long tailed pygmy rice rats 

[u/carmelos96 → u/Aurelian369]

Wait, didn't they already take control with Covid? How many pandemics do they need? More importantly, weren't they already in charge since, like, always?

[u/TheUnfortunateMiaoZe]

Reddit suspended my account for three days for this comment, but reversed on appeal

https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/1tn7dtq/mindless_monday_25_may_2026/oo3dpuf/

[u/fabiusjmaximus → u/TheUnfortunateMiaoZe]

it's the AI moderation

[u/gavinbrindstar → u/TheUnfortunateMiaoZe]

Props to you for getting it reversed, they never did for mine.

[u/SenescalSilvestre]

Also, how much of these responses to westerns that show, presumably, the horrible parts of reality are actually real?

Like how "realistic" medieval stories like Game of Thrones work best as a response to other fantasy stories and not to reality. As they add their own misconceptions and end up going toi much in the other direction of things being horrible. Both the idealized and grim dark sides of things react to each other, ratter than to any historical reality.

[u/randombull9 → u/SenescalSilvestre]

If you haven't read it yet, try Lonesome Dove after you finish Blood Meridian. They were published in the same year and both were intended to puncture the romanticism of the western, with LD being structured around the actual diary of a late 19th century cowboy. While Lonesome Dove is a great book, Cormac McCarthy didn't have to write a forward about how strange it was that nobody seemed to realize his book wasn't intended to be the typical romantic take on the genre but was actually a more critical work.

That said, apparently Blood Meridian was inspired by a bit from a memoir of a Mexican-American War veteran who fell in with a gang of scalpers for a short while, and the far more intense violence of that book might not be as exaggerated as it seems.

[u/AthsheanDream → u/randombull9]

Lonesome Dove is interesting because before reading I knew it as the favorite book of every boomer redneck that doesn't read much. I've met plenty of dogs named after characters from LD. I assumed it'd be a straightforward Louis L'Amour style tale. But yeah I read it a couple years ago and it seemed clear to me that those rangers had cut their teeth carrying out the genocidal violence of Blood Meridian and were broken and left by the wayside by the American colonial project they'd enabled. The "we hang Mexicans"/we're rustling Mexican stock dynamic is very clear in the text!

And for a more modern diptych about Texas cops struggling with their place in the world I'll recommend McCarthy's No Country for Old Men (the movie is better, but it's about Llewelyn rather than Sheriff Bell) and Larry McMurtry's son James McMurtry's song South Texas Lawman.

[u/randombull9 → u/AthsheanDream]

I find one of the fun things about the book is that the one ranger explicitly says he has more in common with the Mexican bandits and the Comanche braves they spent their youth fighting than he does with the society he's enabled and to some extent even created. It's not exactly a subtle book. Maybe McMurtry has a point when he says that Basil Poledouris' score for the miniseries changed the character of the story.

[u/Arilou_skiff → u/SenescalSilvestre]

I often feel like people are a bit weird about ASOIAF. (I have not watched GOT) in that while there's obvious problems George has with his writing (the Dothraki in particular) I honestly think the people react a bit weirdly to it. Most of the things he describes are either, yeah, the kind of background "noise" you get in historical stuff, or the kind of stuff that is in universe shocking breaches of decorum brought on by y'know, a civil war. There's a few exceptions, and obviously there's a bunch of other problems George has (in a basic "No society worked like this kind of way").

But then you read one of those slave-owner diaries, or even that diary (whose name I can't remember) of that sex-pest guy in 18th century Stockholm and you're like... Yeah, it's not that far off?

[u/Jazzlike_Bar_671 → u/Arilou_skiff]

There's a few exceptions, and obviously there's a bunch of other problems George has (in a basic "No society worked like this kind of way").

The core problem is failing to recognise that most societies pretty strongly distinguish between "what is acceptable amongst ourselves" and "what is acceptable to commit against outsiders".

[u/TheBatz_ → u/Arilou_skiff]

I think calling Martin a fantasy writer is often simply a misnomer. He writes tragedies and is especially good at writing characters.

Imo this is why in my opinion out of the main plot lines in the books, Danaeris' one is the weakest. 

[u/TheBatz_]

The Bulwark coming in with some "drones are the be all, end all of modern warfare". It's really impressive how short videos of quadrocopters with dropping grenades down abandoned tanks' open hatches have built the image of modern war.

I really want people to think a bit: would the US have found greater success in the war if they had replaced their carrier groups and long range precision munitions with Shahed-like drones? Here's a very hot take: a Shahed is simply a very cheap cruise missile.

Honestly it reminds me of how people thought about strategic bombing in the 1930's.

[u/passabagi → u/TheBatz_]

There are two directions in which you can misjudge a technology, though. Consider people in the interwar period that thought that tanks were a specific innovation limited to the battlefields of the western front, or people who observed the battle of Port Arthur, and still didn't grasp the power of artillery, wire and machineguns.

I don't know how the whole drone thing will shake out, but I think it's pretty unarguable that drones will absolutely change the face of war. Just from the economics side, making airforce-style effects so cheap a non-state actor can afford them is crazy.

[u/jonasnee]

I like total war, esp. when the games hit a high like shogun 2.

But man is this franchise ever the most bizarre one, its the only one i know where people will openly describe being bad at the game, demand being taken serious for balance discussions and be celebrated for it.

Like if you dont wanna play a game then just play 1 of the 100s mods that slow the gameplay to a crawl and let you spend 90% of the battle zoomed in - don't impose that on other players, esp. the MP community. This is what got us the godawful emperor edition patch.

[u/elvenmage24 → u/jonasnee]

I used to like total war but the whole fandom now is just warhammer fans who get mad when they don’t get new content every week

[u/Bawstahn123 → u/elvenmage24]

I've accepted that Total War is no longer for fans like me.

Even when we go back to "historical" games in the future, things are going to be Warhammer-ified to hell and back.

I can't fault TW, they need to do what works monetarily, but... man, that hurts.

[u/TylerbioRodriguez → u/Bawstahn123]

Would have liked an American Civil War themed TW after how well Fall of the Samurai was.

[u/jonasnee → u/elvenmage24]

That is certainly also very annoying, esp. how the subreddit is ran and how obscure Warhammer content and memes are allowed even if they aren't really related to the games. Imagine people just started posting napoleon memes.

As a historical player we've been starving, no new mainline title in 7 years, and yet I'm suppose to care about 40k - i just don't. I miss when moral worked.

[u/Infogamethrow → u/jonasnee]

I agree with you on your other points, but as the resident Pharaoh Dynasties apologist, I would urge to give it a shot if you can. It´s not the same exact feeling as the old historical titles, but it feels more like them than Warhammer IMO.

[u/Arilou_skiff → u/jonasnee]

TBH the slower pace is often less of a balance thing than a preference thing, a lot of people want slower battles either because it's a bit more "realistic" or because they've got their nostalgia goggles on.

[u/PsychologicalNews123]

Looks like we've hit the UK's annual barbaric heatwave. I could never live in a hot country, I often need sleeping pills just to keep my sanity during nights like this.

[u/weeteacups → u/PsychologicalNews123]

Time for the yearly “England’s toughest head mistress Mrs Trunchbull forces kids to wear blazers and trousers in 35c weather” news stories.

[u/randombull9]

Decided to try making switchel. It smells overpoweringly, perhaps to the point of offensively, of molasses but tastes pretty nice. If I make it again I'll probably try it with honey.

[u/xabarin_da_xente]

A semi-regular trope in modern online alternate history is an union of Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia called "Zapadoslavia". Is there any actual historical precedent for this name? Every mention of it I could find in Google were althis scenarios, and the IRL proposal of uniting Poland and Czechoslovakia after WW2 was called... the "Polish-Czechoslovak Confederation".

[u/matgopack → u/xabarin_da_xente]

I guess 'West Slavs' / west slavic languages + using the Yugoslavia naming convention would be the driving precedent rather than an IRL proposal.

[u/MarioTheMojoMan]

Do you think future linguists could reasonably accurately reconstruct modern English's pronunciation?

[u/Ambisinister11 → u/MarioTheMojoMan]

That's a very broad question, but I'd find it hard to make the answer negative. Even if we assume very little audio or explicit pronunciation information survives, the contemporary corpus of both formal and informal writing is so enormous that a broad reconstruction should be leagues better than any current reconstruction of an equivalently distant past chronolect.

Now, that does also create some interesting potential traps. For example, the corpus of writing by partially proficient non-native users is almost certainly proportionally much larger than in previous periods, and increased global integration could make that more difficult to distinguish. Also, there's a lot of eye dialect that doesn't actually match the speech it's supposedly written to imitate(most obviously from outright racists and the like). Any attempt to discern dialects from each other could run into problems of unclear origin for a large fraction of texts. These could very much be dealt with, and shouldn't change the overall outcome, but like I said, potential traps.

Overall, assuming that there are linguists studying our contemporary English in 500 years, it's almost unimaginable that they won't have a significantly better handle on our pronunciation than we do for 16th century English. That's true even if preservation of digital material goes very, very badly.

[u/TanktopSamurai → u/MarioTheMojoMan]

They'd have poems and songs. That would give them a head-start on pronounciation. Mistakes in spelling will help them as well.

[u/Syn7axError → u/MarioTheMojoMan]

Yes, through a lot of the same methods. For example, the amount of people confusing they're, their, and there tells you they sound the same.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Best youtube AI Slop channel yet

RADIO GISCARD
— Episode #04

1 hour of French library music inspired by the golden age of French cinema (1973–1982)

[u/Tiako]

Finished India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent, a few thoughts:

1. Despite certain reservations I have voiced in this thread, very good book and a strong recommendation as an intro to the topic.

2. One of those reservations is her decision to basically not discuss historiography. She lays out her reasoning in the appendix and I understand her reasoning but think she is wrong.

3. Apparently the south Asian diaspora is only 40 million people? I would have guessed like twice as many. Also apparently there are almost twice as many desis in the US than in the UK, which again I would simply never have guessed.

Incidentally at the end of the book she (very briefly) touches on the Ram Mandir, which reminded me of a very nice Indian-American college student who volunteered at my work. One day we were chatting about summer plans and he said his family was going to India, and one of the things they were doing was going to the new temple. I didn't ask because that wouldn't exactly be appropriate, but I am very curious what exactly their thinking was on that. Do most people (or at least most diaspora members) just kind if view it as a grand new temple, maybe another sign of India's rise? Or are the politics of it widely understood?

[u/Defiant_Shoe3053 → u/Tiako]

A lot of even nominally secular people are very pro the ram temple...it's a sign of the conservative brain rot that's become endemic in desi communities

[u/Arilou_skiff → u/Tiako]

Apparently the south Asian diaspora is only 40 million people? I would have guessed like twice as many. Also apparently there are almost twice as many desis in the US than in the UK, which again I would simply never have guessed.

TBH, considering the US population is almost five times as large...

[u/Tiako → u/Arilou_skiff]

Oh sure, and I think the UK desi population is much more concentrated. But given the levels of cultural visibility I just sort of assumed it was a lot bigger than that.

[u/YIMBYzus]

[u/Conchobair-sama]

so called high-trust society:

- guy rushes to sit down at bus stop, cutting in front of old man with cane. old man calls him chinese, and other seated people agree but do not offer him a seat either

- a couple of grade school kids dangling their legs over the edge of the platform a minute before the train is due to arrive. woman grabs them and tells them that's not allowed. children call her bitch. station attendant who was watching the whole time tells woman she is not allowed to scold other people's children.

- friend slips and falls down a flight of stairs at busy train station on her way home from work. ignored into oblivion despite bleeding and limping for several minutes. catcalled by two men who do a 180 when they realize she's injured.

[u/Sventex → u/Conchobair-sama]

In 90's China, riding your bike home from school or work, common occurrence to have someone running behind you stealing shit from your backpack while no one says anything in a crowded street.

[u/Sventex]

" I think there’s strong alignment and agreement on what a preliminary draft should look like" - Rubio

I'm reminded of the Darth Plagueis book where a young Palpatine was learning politician speak, where you sound encouraging while not actually saying anything at all.

They got a alignment on what a preliminary draft should look like, they were negotiating with Iran about the uranium stockpile in February before the war even began so they've may or may not have made any progress since February, or maybe they've gone backwards at this point. Who knows, maybe peace is right around the corner, although Iran is laying more mines in the Strait today.

[u/weeteacups → u/Sventex]

Notwithstanding the fact that your proposal could conceivably encompass certain concomitant benefits of a marginal and peripheral relevance, there is a countervailing consideration of infinitely superior magnitude involving your personal complicity and corroborative malfeasance, with a consequence that the taint and stigma of your former associations and diversions could irredeemably and irretrievably invalidate your position and culminate in public revelations and recriminations of a profoundly embarrassing and ultimately indefensible character.

[u/gavinbrindstar]

Israel issues evacuation warning for Tyre in southern Lebanon

As an American, always wild to be reminded that some things from antiquity are still around.

Also, what's the strategy here? IIRC Israel tried the "buffer zone on Lebanese soil" strategy before and it didn't work. Is the message supposed to be "look at what Hezbollah made us do to you, get rid of them?" If so, what are the odds that turns into "Hezbollah are the only people fighting back against the guys who killed Grandma last week "

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/gavinbrindstar]

So I don't think it's a strategy that will work, and the Israeli government really doesn't have much of a strategy any more, but the difference between this and what happened in the South Lebanon occupation is that in the previous version it was nominally a region under the control of (pro-Israeli) Lebanese Christian militias that the IDF just happened to be doing permanent peacekeeping in, and now they're just shedding with that pretense and demanding that all Lebanese self-deport from the territory.

[u/histprofdave → u/gavinbrindstar]

The "strategy" is for Greater Israel enthusiasts who fill Bibi's cabinet to continue their agenda. There will never be a "buffer zone" big enough for an aggressive state.

[u/Sventex]

Does anyone know if Billy Mitchel really did say aircraft carriers would be “quickly swept off the sea in case of war against a great air power."

[u/Aethelredditor → u/Sventex]

From Will Japan Try to Conquer the United States? by General William Mitchell, published in the 25 June 1932 issue of Liberty:

Our Hawaiian Islands should be organized with airways from Honolulu and the larger islands all through the smaller ones to Midway Island. Midway Island is the same distance from Yokohama, Japan, as Honolulu is from San Francisco. Wherever vessels have to operate, whether submarines or surface vessels, aircraft will have to protect and assist them. These will have to fly from land bases, because not only are airplanes based on surface vessels—so-called airplane carriers—unable to act in any considerable numbers, but the carriers themselves are so vulnerable that they will be quickly swept off the sea in case of war against a great air power. carriers are largely a delusion and a snare.

[u/Ambisinister11 → u/Sventex]

Twin Galaxies will hear about this

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

A primary school in Soustons, southwestern France, will close these Thursday and Friday afternoons after the main building's glass roof made the indoors temperature climb to 53C during the heatwave, leading to children passing out and vomiting
The windows of this school designed in 1984 only are ‘insulated with single glazing’.

[u/Tiako → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Europeans deciding whether to pass out and vomit or install AC in public buildings:

[u/Steelcan909 → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

RETVRN

To climate appropriate methods and materials for construction.

[u/dandandanno]

Do you think if I go back in time I can convince Linda Hamilton from Terminator 1 and Linda Hamilton from Terminator 2 to have a threesome with me?

[u/yoshiK → u/dandandanno]

Is that a threesome when it's just two different points on her trajectory?

[u/dandandanno → u/yoshiK]

Let me have this

[u/weeteacups]

Mature cheese-roller beaten by young, YouTubing upstart Tom Kopke from Germany out-tumbles local hero Chris Anderson on a meltingly hot day in Gloucestershire

Letting a bunch of bloody foreigners compete in our native British cheese rolling contests 😤

[u/WillitsThrockmorton]

My spouse has/had endometriosis and after 10 years of "???" Diagnosis found a doc who diagnosed it as such and had surgery that removed 8 pounds of tissue. So now she has scarred to hell interior tissue in her torso.

Anyway, she was walking around that evening. It appears to be an extremely rare US healthcare W where once the diagnosis was made surgery was within a month and was very easy. According to her it is a consistent theme in other countries where they don't use a Da Vinci robot for it so you end up bedridden for a week after, and there are like 2 doctors in the entire NHS that do the surgery and it's a 4 year wait. She reported a thread where someone claimed a previous surgery went long the day of so the clock reset on her wait period for a surgery.

Anyway went in for a different procedure today and so back to a true US healthcare L fashion they required a kiosk to check in. The process went like this:

Hey the kiosk isn't letting me proceed without paying $900. We're on a payment plan.

"Oh...well you have to use the kiosk"

Stares blankly

So....

Stares blankly

I...guess I'm paying $900 unexpectedly

[u/randombull9 → u/WillitsThrockmorton]

It's such a shit show. My dad gets his medical treatment on base through TriCare so it takes months for him to get any dental treatment done. I had a root canal recently, and from my tooth aches to permanent crown placed all dental work complete was like 3 weeks. It just cost $3.5k or so...

[u/WuhanWTF]

Holy shit the footage from the upcoming Modern Warfare game looks peak as fuck.

In the campaign, you play as a squad of Korean conscripts. This is probably the first time we’re seeing line infantry as playable characters (as opposed to SOF) in CoD since CoD3, which was 20 years ago.

[u/Shady_Italian_Bruh]

On a whim, I rewatched Gangs of New York for the first time since maybe high school last night. As I remembered, the movie is more interesting for the vibe it captures through its costuming, production design, and dialogue than the actual plot and characters. However, I noticed a lot of fraught, if not outright bad, history throughout. The most obvious is perhaps the anachronism of having Know-Nothings still be a major political tendency by the time of the Civil War.

They also seem to combine Know-Nothing-ism with Copperhead Democrats as Danial Day-Lewis’s nativist character also hates Lincoln, supports slavery, and wants NYC to secede from the union. This is somewhat bizarre as Know-Nothings were mostly Whig offshoots that eventually folded into the Republican Party. There’s even a scene where Know-Nothing rally attendees hold up signs for the Wide Awakes, the Republican paramilitary organization.

[u/Sventex]

Not fake apparently

In Texas and Florida, multiple highways are being proposed to be named the Donald J Trump Highway.

[u/Tiako → u/Sventex]

It is a bit odd to me that Texas and Florida are always the states getting up to this shit, not the actual most red states.

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/Tiako]

Their proximity to liberal power and their relative vulnerability has a radicalizing effect on their politics and self-identity. The tribe is everything.

[u/ProudScroll → u/Tiako]

The Texas Republican Party are arguably the most culture war poisoned freaks in the country, the Florida Republican Party isn't far behind them.

Part of it I'm certain is both those states have the strongest conservative "vibes" and attract a certain kind of ultra-annoying guy who moved to those states specifically for those vibes and loves shit like this. A ton of them moved there during and after Covid in particular but this was happening before then. Texas would be a lean-blue swing state if only people born in Texas could vote.

[u/Steelcan909 → u/Sventex]

I understand the Roman impulse for Damnatio memoriae more and more with each passing day.

[u/histogrammarian]

I don’t know why scholars are so confused by the phrase “wine dark sea” in Homer. “Maybe they couldn’t see the colour blue.” Evo psych nonsense. “Maybe they didn’t have the word for blue because the colour doesn’t occur much in nature.” Um, heard of the sky, geniuses? “Maybe Homer was colourblind.” Clearly not, he knew his colours. It’s rosy fingers of dawn, not daffodil fingers of dawn.

Educated people can be so stupid sometimes. The answer is obvious. The Greeks of antiquity must have made their wine from blue grapes. Smh.

[u/TheBatz_ → u/histogrammarian]

Please consult my user flair for response. 

[u/ChewiestBroom → u/histogrammarian]

rip Homer you would have loved Four Loko

[u/SkeletonHUNter2006 → u/histogrammarian]

I accept testimony from the blind, but I draw the line at the colourblind.

[u/TylerbioRodriguez]

Update on the great Anne Bonny tit scandal.

Yep they are still complaining. Some are transvestigating her. Others are mad she has paler skin. Quite a few noticed they gave her less of an upper lip and are mad.

To put it mildly i have my arms crossed and lips pursed to the side. In oh so many words, I think so little of these people.

[u/TheBatz_ → u/TylerbioRodriguez]

When you're at the historically accurate goon sesh and someone pulls out the small breasted Anne Bonnie image. 

[u/kaiser41 → u/TheBatz_]

When you're deathly afraid of accidentally jacking it to something gay, so you only go for women with titties the size of beach balls, just to be safe.

[u/dutchwonder → u/kaiser41]

The venn diagram of drawn porn that includes giant tits and ginormous dongs on the same character are way closer to being just a circle than not.

[u/100mop → u/TylerbioRodriguez]

Transvestigating her? Do people think she was a guy with a beer belly pretending to be pregnant?

[u/HandsomeLampshade123]

Great article on substack that describes the relationship between expertise and prediction-making, in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

https://hegemon.substack.com/p/the-expert-trap-and-the-next-war

These are textbook illustrations of what the forecasting literature calls the expert paradox. In both cases, the depth of knowledge produced the wrong answer. We’ve seen this before: Tetlock’s Expert Political Judgment found that area specialists often underperformed generalists, and this effect was strongest when forecasting discontinuous change in their own domain.

There are several good reasons for this. The first is base rate capture. If you’ve been studying Russia for twenty years and it hasn’t launched a major ground invasion, your intuitions are anchored to that pattern. The intelligence community, working from real-time signals and imagery, wasn’t anchored to their beliefs the same way.

Relatedly, there’s the nothing-new-under-the-sun heuristic. Experts have seen many false alarms, and correctly dismissing them is how they built their reputations. This breeds an appropriate but occasionally costly skepticism toward this-time-is-different claims.

The Soviet collapse is the classic parallel. Sovietologists were famously blindsided, while some generalist forecasters and dissidents saw the fragility more clearly. The Arab Spring caught Middle East specialists similarly flat-footed.

A final factor is paradigm lock-in. Professional communities develop shared frameworks. The “Putin is coldly rational and risk-averse” model was the respectable consensus. It’s one I followed as well. Dissenting meant concluding your colleagues had fundamentally misread the subject of their careers.

[u/Arilou_skiff → u/HandsomeLampshade123]

What is interesting is i remember a bunch if people going ” This is a bluff there is not enough preparation/logistics to do a proper invasion” and then it turned out this was true, Putin just went ahead anyway.

[u/Zennofska → u/Arilou_skiff]

It's also funny how the Putin apologists went from "It is impossible" to "It was inevitable" overnight.

[u/ottothesilent → u/Arilou_skiff]

“Only a dangerous idiot could do this”

Dangerous idiots:

[u/TarkovskyisFun → u/HandsomeLampshade123]

There are several good reasons for this. The first is base rate capture. If you’ve been studying Russia for twenty years and it hasn’t launched a major ground invasion, your intuitions are anchored to that pattern.

This is what you get for not reading Hume.

[u/Conchobair-sama → u/TarkovskyisFun]

humean foreign policy expert who thinks it is only by habit that we say russia caused the war

[u/SellsLikeHotTakes]

Here's a question, what do you think are the most notable political and or protest songs are from your country? I specifically mean songs by professional artists that were typically written by them and were released for sale so not pre-modern recording folk songs or government anthems etc. I know of some songs from the US but not everything charts here. For Australia I would probably say they include

Midnight Oil - Beds are Burning (Midnight Oil get a single mention otherwise I would list about 90% of their songs that ever charted in Australia)

Goana - Solid Rock

Yothu Yindi - Treaty

Redgum - I was only 19

Considering Australian history, it's not exactly surprising that songs about how Australia has treated its Indigenous peoples are strongly represented.

[u/Tiako → u/SellsLikeHotTakes]

In terms of songs with a specific origin, maybe "The Times They Are A-Changin'". A song written more or less entirely cynically, and ending up as the official anthem of corporate rebrandings, in the middle there it had a real moment as a political statement.

"We Shall Overcome" for ones with a less clear origin, if for no other reason than for how far it has traveled around the world.

There is obviously a huge library of American protest songs but those two jump out at me first.

[u/Tiako]

There is a famous-in-its-field books called The Retreat of Elephants that is basically a history of the human impact on the environment in China, and I feel like it could have been spun off into a series about different areas of the world. The Retreat of Wolves about Europe, The Retreat of Tigers about India, etc.

[u/Aurelian369]

This is random but I’m genuinely curious, what is the average age on this subreddit 

[u/Herpling82 → u/Aurelian369]

I'd think mid 20s. I'm 28 myself, though I have the excitability (is that the right word?) of a 9 year old boy with autism, as is perfectly clear when I talk about something that interests me.

[u/randombull9 → u/Aurelian369]

My entirely perfectly accurate guestimate is mid to late 20s.

[u/forcallaghan]

I've been playing Fallout: New Vegas a lot recently (currently on like my 3rd playthrough in so many months). Currently doing a full-send melee build, which has been fun, though it is a little silly how you have to just gormlessly waltz up to the enemy you want to attack while they have free reign to blast you full of lead, but I guess that's just how it be sometimes.

Anyway I say this to make it clear that I am a Fallout: New Vegas fan. And yet I am growing increasingly tired by breathless youtubers and other people on social media making rant after rant and video essay after video essay about how New Vegas is god's gift to gaming and every other fallout game just sucks and it's just like oh my god shut up.

[u/WillitsThrockmorton]

So, the Battleships are being built at Newport News and will be nuclear powered. It looks as if they are going use modular construction, similar to how the QEs were bolted together, which allegedly will minimize drydock usage.

The obvious problem here is that even if assembly was 100% not in a drydock, once they are all bolted together and you complete sea trials, the odds are good you will need to take it out of the water if significant problems are discovered. So, that means some drydock intended for CVN work will be taken up for maintenance for the BB. In other words, probably we'd see some slippage in CVN maintenance/construction.

[u/TheBatz_ → u/WillitsThrockmorton]

"I wish the US Navy could finally design, build and deploy a new ship class"

Monkey's paw curls. 

[u/Sventex → u/WillitsThrockmorton]

So, the Battleships are being built at Newport News

Shit man, you had me checking if they were already laid down.

[u/Saint_John_Calvin]

Reading Anti-Oedipus and I understand why Foucault fell out with this dude later on what the fuck does any of this mean (don't explain it to me I am reading both Protevi's notes and Buchanan's reader's guide and I understand what it means)

(Its not like he has to write like this either. I have read his work on Cinema and its a model of clarity compared to this)

[u/Conchobair-sama → u/Saint_John_Calvin]

unfortunately my francophobia prevents me from enjoying Deleuze, regardless of how clearly or unclearly he writes

[u/Tiako → u/Saint_John_Calvin]

I always thought it spoke rather poorly of Sokal that he basically needed to lie and commit light academic fraud to score points on these guys.

[u/DerKlugeHans]

I hate how despite knowing very well the difference between their there and they're, I will sometimes just automatically use the wrong one. Same with adding an apostrophe to mark something as plural, even though that's not a thing in English, but I do it sometimes anyway. Why???

[u/TJAU216]

u/jaded-professional84 I got the book. The Zhdanov's note is apparently a hand written note about the schedule of political actions to start the Winter War. The steps are:

1) NKVD Battalion

2) Shooting

3) Meetings

4) People

5) 30,000 leaflets

6) Molotov's Speach

At 6 to 7 in the morning: radio broadcast of the Finnish communist party to the workers of Finland.

Then the note goes on to talk about the establishment of the Finnish Red Army.

So this note on its own is pretty much worthless. These steps do match the Soviet actions just before and during the start of the hostilities. The Red Army unit in Mainila was replaced with an NKVD battalion before the incident. All the units held meetings to discuss it and vent their anger afterwards. What Zhdanov ment with "People" is unclear. The Mainila shelling was a false flag, but this is not good proof for that.

[u/Herpling82]

Do you guys ever misswallow, so to speak? I don't mean choke, which in Dutch is "verslikken" (literally misswallow), but more like you try to swallow something, even nothing, and you just "miss", and your entire oesophagus cramps up. I use the word "miss" because it really feels like I missed, initially it feels like I've failed to contract the right muscles, like it only contracts like half of the intended muscles in the throat, and then it spasms out and the cramp travels down the oesophagus. If I have food or drink in my mouth, it doesn't get swallowed either, it just stays behind.

Anyway, it really hurts, I sometimes get the same pain from the sumatriptan when I need more than 1, but it's something that also pops up every so often when I don't take meds. It's apparently a stress thing, because why not? Why not another strange problem caused by stress!? It's not dangerous but apparently feels really similar to heart attacks, which I cannot confirm because I've never had a heart attack, only tachycardic episodes, which don't hurt so much as make you feel very light headed and uncomfortable.

Might also be a DCD thing, I have a coordination disorder, it wouldn't be strange if this is related to that; DCD is an extremely broad diagnosis. It doesn't pop up often, and I've had it a lot more with the sumatriptan. It usually lasts like 20 minutes or so, I think, it's a lot of pain but I know it's going to end soon so its manageable. Eating or drinking something also lessens the pain slightly for a moment.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

Saw these maps

I do in fact doubt that either country had regions with $1200 (in 1990 value) per capita.

[u/Ambisinister11 → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

I need the methodology. Honestly if it doesn't involve the price of silver at some arbitrary point in the 19th-20th century I'd be pleasantly surprised.

[u/gavinbrindstar]

I dunno why WARNO has such a hold on me, but it's funny that I'll be playing it and go "wow, it kinda sucks that my expensive tanks are so vulnerable to cheap and stealthy ATGM teams and carriers," then realize that's why they build them in real-life. Makes me feel like one of these Vicky players who complain about the landowners being a regressive force.

Also, I joked about a "war crimes" unit, but the new Caribbean DLC includes a Colombian-deployed CIA sniper team, so it's probably not a joke anymore.

Finally, it looks like the new divisions will be fun to play with, but I'd be interested in seeing how they hold up in multiplayer. Something tells me the Colombian army's M-8 Greyhounds might have trouble against T-80s.

[u/TylerbioRodriguez]

On this day ten years ago, I met my angel. Paige O'Hara is the voice of Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I met her in Atlanta. She remains the kindest person I've ever met and while I'm older and probably not wiser, I'll always fondly remember it until my last hour.

[u/Herpling82]

The neighbours are celebrating a 50th birthday, and they have hired a live singer, for Dutch language pop music, now, as usual I have a migraine, so this is not going to be fun. I don't begrudge them their fun, they shouldn't have to account for me, but that doesn't make it easier to deal with. I have noise cancelling headphones, which I'll switch on, but they probably won't be able to cope with that much. I have paracetamol available should it get really bad, that does mean that if the sumatriptan fails at more than 1 of the 3 coming days, I won't be able to take paracetamol. Not likely, just really bad if it happens.

---

In more positive music news, Yousei Teikoku released a new song, 星屑ノ摩天楼 (hoshikuzu no matenrou, Stardust skyscraper), it's a song made for some kind of gaming machine, I don't know what exactly, but they released a teaser some time ago, and now the song has been fully released. It's good, not my favourite, still good.

They have, however unleashed a 3rd Yousei Teikoku on Spotify now, as this was uploaded under a new artist, oops, Stigma Recast and Hades: The Resurrection were also uploaded on a different artist account than the previous music.

[u/DFS20]

Good news: I'm playing Chris Redfield's campaign and the game is still great.

Bad news: I ran out of ink ribbons and I keep dying.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

People who blame the Kosygin reforms for being too capitalist vs people who blame them for being too socialist still vs people who blame aggregate demand for increasing

[u/TheBatz_ → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

If you unironically hold any of the opinions above I beg you please go touch grass.

[u/TanktopSamurai]

Small thing about the leadership changes in Turkey's CHP. It had been a year in the making. As such, some surveys did ask who would people vote if the previous leader came back, and the new one founded their own party. The new party gets 30% while CHP falls down to 10%.

EDIT: AFAIK Özel isn't banned from founding a party. MP and mayors are also allowed to change parties. Given how disliked Kılıçdaroğlu is, Özel might be able to convince a lot of people to join. But that also depends when the new party congress happens. Because Kılıçdaroğlu is supposed to be temporary until new party congress.

[u/agrippinus_17]

I'm translating some Alcuin stuff for a paper. I feel like I will never get the hang of translating Latin into English. I mean, the grammar is correct (hopefully) but the flow of the sentence is dreadfully clunky. I really can't help it because I'm translating a "mathematical" letter and I'm having a hard time just following the silly little calculations, if I get fancy, I lose track of what the heck I'm supposed to add or divide.

[u/Crann6789]

What do you call a gathering of groypers?

A groypchat!

[u/GreatMarch]

Why the hell is it so expensive to build stuff in the U.S.? 

[u/MarioTheMojoMan → u/GreatMarch]

Lots of reasons and everyone will have their own bugbear that conveniently justifies all their priors, but some factors are:

• Laborious and burdensome environmental review requirements

• Lots of litigation suing to stop, redirect, or demand compensation from projects

• High labor costs (due less to unionization and more to Baumol's cost disease)

• Outsourcing of key governmental functions, driving the costs up for contractors' revenue (even for nonprofits)

• Extensive (or excessive) use of consultants at every stage of the project

And many more.

[u/yoshiK → u/GreatMarch]

China has a medium wage of $4/h or thereabouts.

[u/weeteacups → u/GreatMarch]

You haven’t encountered the unmitigated pettiness of the average British local council planning department.

[u/elvenmage24]

Maybe I need to stop being rage baited on twitter but it does annoy me when far leftists act like anyone slightly to the right of them are evil but then get confused when soc dems and the like don’t want to support them

[u/RussoSwerves → u/elvenmage24]

 Maybe I need to stop being rage baited on twitter but it does annoy me when far leftists everyone acts like anyone slightly to the right [and left] of them are evil but then get confused when soc dems and the like everyone don’t want to support them.

Say it with me: there is no such thing as good representation on twitter.

[u/xyzt1234 → u/elvenmage24]

Why do they even want the soc dems to support them given their firm belief in the "scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds" motto as well as soc dems being firm capitalists which they hate on the same level as fascists and feudalists anyways.

[u/tisto2 → u/elvenmage24]

It is weirder in France as the populist left (LFI) is currently by far the biggest party on the left wing. The LFI fanboys act like if any "true" left-leaning people already vote for LFI, while getting angry at other left-leaning parties "stealing" the votes they need and they deserve for being the True Left. That said, not much different than the liberal "far-centre" acting like they deserve being in charge just for being moderate and not populist.

[u/Kochevnik81 → u/elvenmage24]

This is just following tradition going back to at least the French Revolution.

[u/Bawstahn123]

Holdfast: Nations at War (a Napoleonic Third Person Shooter(?) descended from Mount and Blade: Napoleonic Warfare) is coming out with an American Revolution update in June.

In spite of my gripes with the game, both community (it sucks) and mechanically (they suck), I can't help but be cautiously optimistic. I just wonder how they are going to make the American forces "work", especially for the Boston and Bunker Hill maps, the early war long before the Valley Forge reforms.

Knowing the Holdfast devs, they are just going to make the Americans a palette swap with the Brits and give 1775 Americans uniforms and bayonets. Oh, and rifles, even though at Bunker Hill there were, basically, no Americans with rifles (riflemen came up with George Washington, were wowed over, then basically sidelined in the Siege of Boston when they didn't actually do much meaningful)

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

I am from Edmonton county and I can say that the UCP has done nothing for me and has trampled on my second amendment rights. I will vote for the Alberta Republican Party in the next midterm elections so we can have a State Legislature that truly defends the interests of us true Canadians.

[u/Conchobair-sama]

woke socialist analytic philosophy (carnap, neurath, hahn) vs. racist conservative continental philosophy (schmitt, heidegger, arendt)

[u/Steelcan909]

Another ME2 hottake:

Playing through the game again after some time away, it is really rather apparent how much of the conversations (for which the game is rightfully praised!) are paced deliberately to make sure you don't exhaust them too quickly. While I think this points to a strength, the game's character writing is on point, it can make it feel very rote with a cycle of mission, check conversation, loyalty mission, check conversation, etc... I think that ME3 and susbequent RPG's, BG3 notably, have done a much better job making sure that the companions always have something going on.

[u/WuhanWTF]

Poop jokes are the Rolls-Royce of humor.

[u/SellsLikeHotTakes]

Jar of Oil

A ceramic jar filled with oil made from the pressed flesh of the Green-nut. The plaster seal on the lid depicts a tattooed man and a sea eagle which represents the demi-god who first mastered the waves. This symbol of the Ocean Men is widely imitated in other lands, shorn of its sacred meaning. The oil itself highly flammable, one can surely make use of that.

“I have here true, pure oil from the Islands on sale today! You can use it for cooking, soap, cleaning metal, lamp fuel, cooking fuel and many more uses! Make sure you get some now before the sale ends!” you remember shouting over the throng in the market. The sale never seemed to have ended though, did it?

[u/EntertainmentReady48]

One thing I’ve noticed about AI generated comments is that they all read like something Tommy Wiseau would write.

[u/Sventex → u/EntertainmentReady48]

I don't know, Tommy Wiseau has a certain accent even in his writing that are unmistakably Tommy Wiseau. When people says "this feels like it was written by AI", they certainly aren't comparing it to The Room.

[u/LateInTheAfternoon]

Sometimes typos create poetry:

What’s wring with Lindybeige?

[u/TarkovskyisFun → u/LateInTheAfternoon]

Something something death of the author

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

[u/agrippinus_17]

What bothers me about Alcuin's letter n. 145 is that at no point he says anything reliable about what his opponents at the palace actually did or did not do in respect to the leap of the moon. So according to him those guys had convinced Charlemagne that he was wrong about placing the leap of the moon in Novemeber. He does not say when they themselves have placed it. He bangs on about how stoopid they are in following the Egyptian customs, but only because he says they are starting the reckoning of the year in September. Is it a reasonable inference that he thought that they placed the leap in July, as Bede says the Egyptians did, and as later Carolingians actually did? Yes it is! Is it what he says in the letter? No! I'm not sure:1) if Alcuin's giving an honest picture of his opponents 'practices 2) if these opponents knew about Bede and the July leap of the moon. I also think that Alcuin was being an ass because he was afraid someone else at court was going to replace him in leading the charge against adoptionism. As far as computus is concerned, he stirred the pot himself writing to Charlemagne in letter 126 that the leap must occur in November or else the world was going to fall!

Yeah sorry. I know no one is going to care about this. This has been bottled up for a couple of months. I don't have anyone to talk about this stuff anymore. When I was doing the PhD I could pester my peers all day. Now I feel so enormously guilty anytime I send something for them to proofread and I can't just pick their brains. They have actual careers, unlike me.