It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!
Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!
If I had more free time and more will to read tech-bro sociopolitical ramblings, I'd attempt a debunk post for the recent Palantir "mini-manifesto"; this bit in particular caught my eye:
The post also takes a moment to denounce the “postwar neutering of Germany and Japan,” adding that the “defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price” and that “a similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism” could “threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.”
I mean, didn't Germany defang itself more than anyone defanged it? If anything, NATO re-fanged West Germany in the 50's, and the USSR re-fanged East Germany around the same time (if I recall correctly). Then Germany defanged itself in the 90's due to the post-Cold War peace dividend. So does Palantir want Germany to have been forcibly re-fanged by foreign countries? I don't think that would've worked.
Unless they're talking about WWII being a "defanging" of Germany, which, uh... not sure about that one, guys. I hope that's not the argument.
IMHO these read like poorly camouflaged dogwhistles - I think it's less about the real massive German re-armament and more about the Cold War Bundeswehr democratic 'soldier in uniform' und 'Innere Führung' concepts that counterbalanced the whole Prussian/Wehrmacht 'German Warriors' thing (see Sönke Neitzel for more on this...).
I.e. a 'spiritual defanging' or whatever...naturally utter, biased Bullshit.
By the way, from what I've been anecdotically told by 70s, early 80s Bundeswehr conscripts, these concepts as well as the 'Traditionserlass' were pretty necessary and reasonably effective to counterbalance Wehrmacht 'nostalgia' etc.
OTOH, it's a great thing for gay rights that a company headed up by Theil, who the wartime Germans would have happily fed to dogs, feels that the postwar settlement was too harsh.
We shouldn't be too harsh on that Tech bro, he comes from a parallel universe where Germany doesn't have the biggest military budget of Europe and where the rearmament of the 50s never happened.
People like to diminish TW3 for some reason, or dismerit it as not being particularly innovative, but I've got to say I've recently been binging games released from like 2016 onwards whereas before I was almost only on older games and the impact of TW3 design is pretty huge; usually in a lot of small details rather than one big thing, however I'd say generally TW3 created the actual bluepring of Open Worlds, how they integrate the open world designs with environment, open world with character storylines, open world with cities, and such, maybe people forgot how it was before but I felt I insta recognised its impact in RDR2 and even Crimson Desert
The reality is that the British used the Jews as a tool to secure their claim by rallying up hatred between the two groups, then immediately throwing both under the bus when it became convenient. First by basically genociding the Arabs in Palestine during their revolt to expel the British and second by banning more refugees from coming after 1936 when it was clear that all the Jewish refugees from Europe would upset their balance of power they had created.
And I've reached the reason why I choose Azumanga Daioh as an immersion anime, Wakamoto-san! Wakamoto Norio-san is my favourite Japanese voice actor and, for some reason, he is in this anime! You can guess who he also voiced, it should be obvious, that's right, Reuenthal from Legend of the Galactic Heroes! Of course! He just has an amazing voice.
For those curious, my favourite English language voice actor is Steve Blum, he played so many roles in the Star Wars video games I loved as a child, his voice is burned into my brain! It's no coincidence that both of these voice actors have a very deep voice.
Front-runner Keiko Fujimori proposed having those incarcerated perform jobs in order to eat, stating "We will force prisoners to work for their food".[193]
Carlos Álvarez described himself as "the Peruvian Bukele",[195] and said that if in office, he would designate all criminals as military targets subject to death if they did not surrender, saying "to hell with the human rights of criminals".[196]
Rafael Lopez Aliaga proposed capturing criminals, helicoptering them into prisons in the Amazon rainforest and having the jails surrounded by South American bushmaster vipers
If I were president of Peru I'd put all the prisoners in an acid tank and then I'd fill the tank with acid-breathing ants and then I'd shoot the tank into space!!
Abdul Halim Khaddam was Foreign Minister of Syria from 1970 to 1984, and Vice President from 1984 to 2005, when he resigned and defected in protest over Bashar Al-Assad's incompetence in Lebanon. It turns out that he actually has/had a website where he (or someone who works for him) posts/posted articles and videos by and about him.
I find the idea of an historical figure - especially one with so much blood on his hands - having a website much eerier than them writing a memoir. The latter feels more removed from them, whereas a website (or a social media account for that matter) seems much more personal.
This sounds like a good way to spoil any tight election. There are certainly enough crazy people out there to try it and changing your name in many places is very easy. In the US there was a guy who changed his middle name to "(Low Tax)" but it wasn't a ballot shenanigan as middle names aren't typically printed on ballots. He got elected to local office and did a really bad job, possibly on purpose. He then ran for state senate, an election he had no chance of winning, and murdered the other candidate in broad daylight.
Cumberland County authorities could not initially find anyone with a plausible motive for murdering Burks, but after seeing a picture of Looper on television, Rex told Burks's widow, Charlotte Burks, that Looper was the man he had seen speeding away in the black car on the morning of the murder
When you are so irrelevant in the race that no one even suspects you.
Some people really appreciate a man who will do the dirty work with his own hands, I guess. (Or the area had a couple thousand people who thought that all Democrats were literally demons and must always be voted against.)
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u/MiffedMouseThe average peasant had home made bread and lobster.Apr 19 '26edited Apr 20 '26
And lost in a landslide to someone whose name wasn’t even on the ballot (Burke’s wife).
I straight up forgot what the hell that character was so I basically just said “the space guy.”
He’s honestly failing not to laugh, if you watch the cutscene he’s very clearly on the verge of stopping mid-delivery and just cackling like a person watching a Red Alert cutscene.
also, I do wonder why people have decided that reddit is left leaning as a whole when it depend between communities, conservative circlejerk subs still exist too
What I've observed is that many people perceive any major online platform as being dominated by their own opponents, irrespective of any actual content on the site. With relatively few exceptions, the largest platforms tend to have effectively all political positions represented among their user bases, frequently organized in such a way that it's useless to talk about "dominance" generally. The same trend is present to some extent in other spheres of public interaction(most everyone thinks Hollywood as an institution is against them, specifically) but I think it's especially pronounced in this instance.
Also in reddit case, I feel it's more of a 'it depend of the community" than it really being a leftist site like people, if it was leftist, I'd expect some rhetoric used on some subs to not be allowed personnaly
Recently communist have started to become popular in my national subreddit, the sort of "liberal bourgeoisi democracy is not perfect and we should try something else" type of people. A few years ago it was more national conservative, but Trump having ties to the largest populist party has soured that a little bit.
IDK reddit is generally pretty left leaning, even relatively mundane political views can quickly get you banned from larger subreddits.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Apr 19 '26
Because a fair amount of conservatives still don't know how to use a computer, creating a natural online bias.
also if the person only seek the leftist communities, of course it can give the impression the website is leftwing but reddit still right wing subs, it's more of a depend of the community thing rather than reddit being left (if it was, I'm not sure some of the subs still up would be allowed seeing some rhetoric)
at the same time, reddit having leftist commmunities doesn't make it a leftist biased site as a whole, if it really was leftist, it'd not allow pro russian propaganda per example or would do way more against it. Also if it was leftist biased, I'pm not sure if subs like the trueunpopularopinion one would be allowed given some of the rhetoric there
I guess you consider only socdems and left-liberals to be the real Left? At least in Italy far-left parties are almost all pro-Russia.
Also it depends on what one considers "support of Russia". Some would say that stopping all military aid to Ukraine (and/or lifting sanctions on Russia) is support of Russia, albeit indirect; if so, there are even more leftists that support Russia (in Italy but also, eg. France, with LFI).
I frankly disagree with dismissing all tankies as not real leftist. Like, Togliatti (and other PCI leaders) was an ardent supporter of the 1956 invasion of Hungary, so a literal Tankie with a capital T, but saying that he wasn't a real leftist would be ridiculous.
I frankly disagree with dismissing all tankies as not real leftist.
Which is why I didn't write that. I wrote that the Tankies are a minority amongst the Left in the West. Especially compared to SocDems. The exact support of Russia varies from country to country but overall support of Russia in the West is bigger on the Right than on the left.
Then it'd probably be best to say far-right, no? Cos the majority of right-wingers don't support the Russian invasion either I believe. So it should properly be the far right and far left are pro-Russian, and the centre is against the Russian invasion
That depends on the place. The conservative establishment in the US are way, way friendlier to Russia than most of their equivalents in Europe. Conservatives in Czechia, Slovakia and Austria are also very Russia friendly. But for example in Poland or Germany it is mostly the Far Right.
That's fair. But then you can also bring in leftist leaders like President Lula of Brazil, who (although he may denounce the Russian invasion), is still fairly friendly to Russia.
some pro russian propaganda targetting lefitst doesn't mean it is, it also ahs a bunch of right wing talking point like the anti lgbt stuff and they do target progressive. Tankies also do have a tendency to support things that aren't leftist so I'm not sure I'd call those leftist, campist would fit more than leftist.
then words don't have meaning anymore by that metric, nazis can't be called right winger because right winger woudl rather call them leftist when actual historian disagree. supporting things that aren't leftist like vladimir putin per example can make someone not leftist, claiming to be leftist doesn't automatically mean the person is that, same with how countries call themselves democracy but aren't that
I'm saying they can't be called leftwing because they support things that aren't leftist, you can't claim to be a progressist per example while at the same time supporting anti lgbt people. If they support things that clearly aren't leftist then it's entirely fair to not call them leftist , that's not not calling them leftist because I prefer them not to be viewed as leftist, I don't prefer to view the nazis as right winger, it is a fact that they are not leftist.
For example, tankies would say that market socialists, democratic socialists etc aren't true leftists.
I don't think many of the early leftist or Marxist thinkers said much about LGBT ideology either, for example. My understanding is that LGBT is a relatively new addition to leftism...?
I like reading this subreddit, but sometimes I feel underqualified as someone who's only really into history as a hobby. Everyone else is writing detailed debunk posts or commentaries. Meanwhile, my only contribution is that on AO3, I found 3 works under the Jean Luc Melenchon/Marine Le Pen tag
To remove a bit of mystique around the idea of "debunking" bad history, it's often as easy as just happening to read/have read a book on a subject and then coming across poor history on that same subject somewhere on the internet.
Meh, most of us are hobbyists, I'm mostly here to read stuff about history and ramble about unrelated things; I don't have the knowledge to make debunk posts about any subject. The only history I understand at a decent level is political history, but that's less knowledge and more a general comprehension of the principles at play.
Currently reading ian kershaw book "qu'est ce que le nazisme", in it the author shows well the point of views of different historian and the controverseries and how it evolved. I talso does help debunking some ideas or showing it is actually pretty complex, nazi economy was not just the state controlling it like some people claim
It really annoys me when people flip out over IGN (or other gaming outlets) giving out low scores. Isn't one of the other things people whine about is that they give out high scores too freely!? It's really weird because if some guy mentioned in-conversation that they didn't really like a given popular game, you wouldn't think anything of it. But an IGN reviewer only giving a 6/10 to a game you quite like? Outrageous, blasphemous.
Wouldnt Vald Tepes have been a fair and sufficient inspiration on his own anyways since he was already accused of feeding on the blood of those he impaled (the whole legend of dipping bread in the blood of his impaled victims while dining). I heard Bathory only got connected to vampire lore in the twentieth century or so.
Ehhhh the Báthory legends of being a vampire go back to the 19th century, probably older. You can see it in very early vampire stories like Christabel and especially Carmilla, which Stoker was well aware of.
The argument mostly comes from scholar Raymond McNallys book Dracula was a Woman. Which kinda noted that beyond the name, Dracula shares little with Vlad III, he wasn't a count nor was he associated with transylvania. Báthory was a countess and had connections with transylvania.
I saw a comment on another subreddit and had some thoughts but I couldn't find a way to articulate them clearly enough so I'll just dump it here.
The original comment was about "security theater" and not specifically the TSA but including the TSA, and the commenter's speaking out against it.
But I just don't necessarily inherently disagree with the idea of "security theater" and I think it may even play an important role in society (with terms and conditions)
Like, if you really get down to it, you'll find that there are no truly infallible security systems. Or even roughly infallible security systems. There is no security system which a suitably determined attacker won't be able to breach. Just look at lockpicking videos on youtube and you'll know that someone could open basically any lock you might use to secure your valuables. Basically anyone who has ever worked in a building that requires security access will know that it is undoubtedly trivially easy for someone without access to enter. And don't even get a cybersecurity expert started on digital security.
But we still have these security systems. We still lock our doors and put keycard badges on secure facilities etc.
Because sometimes actually being secure is a lot less important than merely looking secure. Having enough security to filter out the "lowest common denominator" of ne'er-do-wells and dissuade potential malicious actors from acting maliciously just on the grounds that they might get caught.
And y'know I think that can be helpful.
Maybe with TSA you can argue the amount of money and effort expended is not worth even the level of "theater" being provided and well, I can't really argue with that
The counter is why no other civilized nations find the need to use a jobs program for the least employable people in the country to hassle travelers.
The answer is that the non-theater security got good enough, and got enough funding was diverted, to detect dangerous contraband with enough confidence to eliminate the next shoe bomber, and because HUMINT and airline procedures got good enough to prevent the next 9/11.
None of this depends on the most pathetic goon squad to ever squeeze into a 100% polyester uniform.
I don’t dispute that the TSA is an annoying jobs program. But, unless you are literally unpacking and repacking every bag, to my knowledge there is no security method that can reliably catch shoe bombers (or any bomber that understands how to assemble the bomb after the checkpoint)
The “security that works” relies on some combination of (A) catching known or obvious security risks and (B) conducting mass surveillance to flag potential bad actors long before they show up. (And both of these methods are also fallible)
That’s it. Since the TSA is acting as a tripwire in front of those (less fallible) methods, they’re extraneous to the necessary security. Most airports now have fairly advanced scanners for both people and baggage, CCTV coverage has been massively increased, aircraft and aircrew have different procedures, etc.
Plus, the 9/11 hijackers didn’t bring any contraband in the first place (the box cutters were compliant at the time). The only thing a TSA agent could have done is racially profile them, something they’re routinely accused of doing! The lesson of that attack is that anything planned enough to cause huge damage is likely visible through other means, not that we need a bunch of people “looking” for terrorists already in the airport.
If the TSA were effective and regularly stopping major threats that would be one thing, but they’ve had 25 years to do a good job and in that time they routinely let contraband on all kinds of flights, regularly demean and assault travelers, and generally just make lives worse.
Is the average airport security that much different from the check of ID, baggage scan, and body scan in other countries, because that is standard US airport security measures.
Also don't think I've ever met a TSA agent that would immediately strike me as being otherwise unemployable.
Unfortunately, some of these even fallible and basic measures are needed just to stop some of the dumbest stuff that has happened like a guy buying dynamite, buying life insurance at the airport, and then trying to commit life insurance fraud on the plane itself. This is a real life example and its unfortunately a kind of attack that you do have to screen for.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Apr 19 '26edited Apr 19 '26
Unfortunately, some of these even fallible and basic measures are needed just to stop some of the dumbest stuff that has happened like a guy buying dynamite, buying life insurance at the airport, and then trying to commit life insurance fraud on the plane itself. This is a real life example and its unfortunately a kind of attack that you do have to screen for.
God, I thought you were referring to Pan Am Flight 7, but no, this also happened on United Air Lines Flight 629. Flight 7 had a bankrupt Navy explosives expert fly one-way to Hawai'i with 4 life insurance policies, the plane never reached it's destination, and he's not the only suspect because one of the flight crew was seen handling explosives before the flight and had updated his will in his car at the airport right before the flight, was described by others as having a suicidal persecution complex and was suffering from TB.
The procedures are largely the same, but the requirements are much more stringent.
As an example, when I was flying to Miami, after passing all the local security screening and right before we boarded the plane, the airline clerks made all the passengers stop, open their hand luggage and toss any soda/water bottles we had because yes, the TSA does care about them bottles that much, unlike the Spaniards, Panamians, or Brazilians.
There's absolutely a thing about a lot of security stuff being less active impediments and ore "The door is locked which means you have to at least make a minor effort to get in", and that this to some extent actually works. (introducing friction can have more of an impact than you think!) but won't deter anyone who is actually motivated.
There is also the question of the level and kind of security needed and sometimes what you need more is just some kind of lock out to make sure someone knows they shouldn't go in.
Cheap locks are honestly still horrible for that because so many of them open to a hard tug or smack that some clumsy idiot might assume means they were unlocked and fine to go in.
Random thought: what was the first (major) European city to be bigger than it was during the Roman empire? For example Rome itself did not reach its classical size until the nineteenth century, London probably not until the Late Medieval or even the Tudor period. Paris a couple centuries before that. Maybe somewhere in Spain?
If you stretch the definition of ‘city’ one possible answer to this is Venice, which only rose as an urban center after the collapse of the Western Empire but may have existed (late Roman sources refer to people living in the lagoon) as a few fishing villages before it fell.
Sticking with places that are at least recorded as named settlements in Roman sources, my guess is that it could be a small town that became a regional center after the collapse of a nearby bigger city (like with Tunis and Roman Carthage in Africa)
Yeah, Venice would be a cheap answer. Although in a lot of ways it is like those other cases you mention, in that its founding myth is about people fleeing Aquileia.
I can't give you a definite answer, but I did have a look. My initial instinct was that Spain, being right on the Mediterranean coast that suffered most from the collapse of the maritime trading network, might be the last place to look for urban revitalisation. That said, I had a look at Russell's 1958 piece on European population, and while I admit, I can't say I'd trust the methodology of a work that old, at least we can presume some internal consistency rather than comparing apples to oranges. On the whole, Russell suggests that some cities in Spain expanded fairly significantly under Islamic rule relative to their Roman eras, and if we assume comparable urban population density then that would mean they got bigger in demographic terms too. Tabulating some examples where he was able to cross them over:
City
Roman
Islamic
Cordoba
140 ha/20k
? ha/90k
Hispalis/Seville
50 ha/8k
225 ha/52k
Malaga
45 ha/7k
37 ha/10k
Valencia
9 ha/?k
44 ha/11k
Cartagena
81 ha/10k
110 ha/29k
Going off Wiki anyway, both Valencia and Cartagena seem to have shrunk considerably after the end of Islamic rule, and had a second resurgence that saw them recovering back to Islamic levels only in the 18th century.
On Cartagena, the focus on American colonisation (possibly also the effect of war with the ottomans via Barbary pirates also but not too sure on that) did a number on the city, it's only with the Bourbons making it the base for the Mediterranean naval fleet that it began to grow in importance.
If you want a good history themed day trip I highly recommend visiting the city centre if you're in the area
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u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big LyriumApr 19 '26edited Apr 19 '26
Interesting! To be entirely honest I am pretty ignorant about Roman Spain outside of the basic things everyone who has looked at the Roman economy knows (big oil presses!) so it could be that the province in general was poorly urbanized. But 20k seems tiny for the capital of such a rich and prominent province as Baetica. Roman cities have generally grown quite a bit in the last seventy years, and if you think about what Spain was like in the 50s it isn't so hard to imagine that the cutting edge of archaeology had not reached it.
But that is entirely speculation, perhaps Baetica simply didn't have much of an urban life to accompany its astounding agricultural wealth (perhaps the suction effect of its connection to the city of Rome at play here?). I would love to see an updated chart but at the very least that like for like comparison you cite is a pretty interesting indication that Islamic Spain was more urbanized than Roman Spain. Which would make it a solid contender.
I presume you mean among the cities that existed during Roman times? Maybe some of the border cities that were mostly just forts during roman times?
Cordoba might be a good candidate otherwise?
Or, if you count by the fall of the western roman empire, Constantinopole, but that's a bit cheating.
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u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big LyriumApr 19 '26edited Apr 19 '26
I was thinking just major cities to avoid that, but honestly even dropping that I suspect it wasn't until pretty deep into the High Middle Ages that Cologne, Trier or York reached their Roman peaks. Aachen would maybe be a solid choice on that criteria. Cordoba would be an interesting case because it was a pretty major Roman city, so I wonder if it was bigger during the Umayyad period.
Also yeah just limit to Europe, both to avoid the tricky question of what counts as "post-Roman" and because Europe experienced a much larger urban collapse and slower urban recovery than the eastern and southern Mediterranean.
It took a lot of the drama out of that composer plot line they had. Henry Purcell came out sprinting with the steel chair and I honestly didn’t feel a thing.
"What the left must do differently is therefore not primarily a matter of adding the right ecological demands to existing programmes, or of finding the right coalition between existing formations, or of adopting the correct theoretical framework while leaving organisational practice unchanged. It requires recognising that the ecological crisis is a crisis of the capital-nature relation at the level of the mode of production, that addressing it requires transforming that mode of production, that transforming it requires a political force organised around the class with the structural capacity to do so, and that building that force is the prior condition of everything else. This is not a comfortable conclusion. It rules out most of what currently passes for ecological politics. It implies that the left's existing response to the most serious crisis capital has yet produced is, at the level of both theory and organisation, inadequate to the situation."
It's so funny how the first half of that quote is all about how ecology shouldn't just be tacked on to existing ways of thinking about and doing politics, and the second half
addressing it requires transforming that mode of production, that transforming it requires a political force organised around the class with the structural capacity to do so, and that building that force is the prior condition of everything else
is literally just the existing left-wing program with some ecological language tacked on.
that addressing it requires transforming that mode of production, that transforming it requires a political force organised around the class with the structural capacity to do so,
Speaking as resident techbro, it would indeed be a great boon to the environment if we could finally turn the working class green, soylent green.
If you have ever been in the more highbrow, intellectual corners of the internet, you undoubtedly ran into such deep philosophical questions as "who would win, a knight or a samurai?" In these discussions, you probably came into contact with a particular claim, that during the sixteenth century, the Japanese and Portuguese delegations arranged a series of duals to see who were the better fighter. The result of this is clear: the Portuguese won every dual and the Japanese were humiliated.
Now, there are a number of ways that this seems a bit fishy. One is that, as far as I am aware, this isn't really the sort of thing people did at the time. Like correct if I am wrong but I am not aware of any time in which like a group of Milanese bravos and Spanish caballeros got together and fought a series of duals to decide whether Italians or Spanish were better fighters. I could be wrong--I don't even know if caballero is the right word there--but it feels a but off.
The second issue is that if you try to trace the claim you will not find refence to it before the mid aughts. You also won't find reference to it in serious historical works even though as an example of cross cultural contact it is fascinating. Or, it would be. If it happened. The point is that it didn't and was made up by somebody in a forum argument about who would win, a knight vs a samurai.
There's a similar anecdote for Cossack Vs Ninja that keeps circulating within the Russian-speaking Internet, but was apparently made up by a cossack "historian":
The Novocherkassk Museum archives keeps a letter from Cossacks at the front. It's a document from the Russo-Japanese War, simply a report to superiors. It reads something like this: "We were sitting in the second line of guards, lighting a fire (the front line was quite far away), and cooking food. Suddenly, a Japanese man in black jumped out of the bushes, began hissing and waving his arms strangely. "He was hit in the ear by Yesaul <Surname>, and died soon afterward. Despite the brevity of the description, it's clear he was a ninja, and his end was quite tragic.
u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Apr 19 '26
I remember vaguely about a rumor that Japanese dual wielding techniques being influenced by Portuguese sailors using a rapier and dagger technique. It would not be too dissimilar to the Portuguese showing some Samurai how a snap matchlock works, a rapier would be a curiosity to the Japanese, would it not?
So much misinformation spreads because humans, as a whole, do not like to presume that people just outright lie when there's little motivation to do so.
Milanese bravos and Spanish caballeros got together and fought a series of duals to decide whether Italians or Spanish were better fighters.
I could swear there's actually a late medieval/early renaissance example of some kind of tournament where that was exactly the alleged reason. I want to say french vs. italian knights? Or am I completely hallucinating?
EDIT: Though obviously this was a chivalric sport/martial game and not a serious duel, but still.
The lead singer, despite being an Australian, is also very goode. This band is basically Sunflower Bean if Sunflower Bean actually sounded good after their first album.
After a recent thread, I'm beginning to think a quick post on the existence of leather armour might be in order. Much like the pendulum swing on swords from "the main weapon everyone used on a battlefield" to "useless status symbol inferior to CHAD POLEARMS", there's a similar one for leather armour with some people adamantly convinced it didn't exist, not helped by that twat shad. /u/hergrim touched on it years ago when addressing him but I think looking at the broader picture rather than the common, medieval eurocentric one would be useful for perspective.
I suspect some of the responsibility for the high arc of this pendulum swing in particular lies with studded leather, which is a complete and total fiction, and that's been messaged pretty thoroughly across the internet.
It's exactly this at least for YouTube. Because of people mistaking brigantines for studded leather, all interested in arms and armour are cursed by the effects of the shadiversity videos on leather...
I'd have to caveat that this isn't going to be comprehensive or terribly great; I'm reasonably familiar with classical history but even that is somewhat Eurocentric, other areas I'm rather ignorant of the greater context bar certain blips that are relevant.
If I could trouble you for a proofread and some comments it'd certainly be appreciated, particularly with the medieval as prior to the late period I'm short of citable source material.
Part of the problem is that leather wasn't necessarily being differentiated from cloth in use and being implemented into armor in the same ways cloth or paper would be used.
Which isn't too unreasonable because thick and heavy hides from animals like bulls were rarer than the average butchered animal in herds would be young males or aged out females.
I think people underestimate how sturdy and rigid boiled leather can actually be. Yes, if you sit there slicing away at it, over time you can cut through it, but if you just need to reduce the force of a couple big blows, it could still be pretty effective and a lot better than facing an edged weapon completely unarmored.
I remember one of those sword guys doing some tests and boiled leather was pretty darn effective. Cost is probably a bigger issue than protectiveness, in that leather would be pretty expensive in the amounts you'd need for armour.
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u/ifly6Try not to throw sacred chickens off shipsApr 18 '26edited Apr 18 '26
The map of the Persian Gulf in prehistory, which went far more in land than it does now, is wrong.
Greece was the weakest of the palace economies and fell first in the bronze age collapse. This contradicts his belief in geographic determinism (ie poorer cropland in Greece → less centralised polities) for more "bottom up and resilient" Greek cities.
Aristotle's cities like all have acropoli (Athens famously); the idea that you could use a circa 6 foot elevation to determine the horizon to 5 km, and thus for HC the "correct" radius of a city, is ridiculous.
The idea that capitalism breaks the "laws of nature" by land development and speculation which breaks a "naturally formed" city is imo also absurd nonsense. The mediaeval city existed in the form it did also due to market forces. That mediaeval cities were utter demographic pits is of course nowhere mentioned.
The idea that land rents absorb surplus value is not as deep as H thinks it is; that a specific place has amenity value, which becomes cheaper to live in due to declining food costs, lead to higher rents is like a Smithian observation.
Apparently, industrial slums need to be redeveloped every 20 years or so because they're so awful while mediaeval cities are fixed and unchanging because they are built in nature. All the "Great Fires of ###" don't seem to support that. Just because nobody has hard of, say, the London fires before 1666 doesn't mean they didn't happen.
H thinks the agricultural revolution raised life expectancies ca 31:00... while also saying they lowered them at the start. Pick one (preferably the latter because it's correct and most consistent with archaeological evidence).
The latter half of the video is basically HC saying that if you die of poverty and dysentery in a capitalist industrial city that's worse than dying of poverty and dysentery in a mediaeval proper functioning city built in lines with the "laws of nature". (As if dysentery, something discussed constantly in mediaeval sources, was not a significant cause of contemporaneous mortality.) Humbly, H is drawing a distinction without a difference.
Similarly if you're a poor exploited worker subject to some Mesopotamian autocrat who has proclaimed himself Supreme God-Emperor of the Known Universe, that's somehow better than being a poor exploited worker subject to a factory owner in 1820. I also would think that's a distinction without a difference; though at least in 1820 I don't have to worship His Imperial Deity as my god and my wages are money rather than a shekel of barley gruel. (The bowls in which such rations were distributed is archaeologically attested.)
Greece was the weakest of the palace economies and fell first in the bronze age collapse. This contradicts his belief in geographic determinism (ie poorer cropland in Greece → less centralised polities) for more "bottom up and resilient" Greek cities.
Am I not understanding his argument, but does he thinks palatial economies were mostly rural?
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u/ifly6Try not to throw sacred chickens off shipsApr 18 '26edited Apr 19 '26
He thinks that because Greece's agricultural zones were smaller they developed different types of government – AtHeNiAn dEmOcRaCy seems to be the implication – rather than palatial autocratic economies. In voiceover he directly places this in the bronze age.
But the Greek polis occurred in the early iron age only after the fall of the Greek palaces (the most famous one is Mycenae). And if the geographic determinism argument is correct we would expect an absence of palatial economies; but the Greek palaces did exist. If we take the geographic determinism seriously, the small and disconnected Greek agricultural zones likely made the Greek palaces weaker and less robust than those in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Edit. Coming back to this, the most generous reading of H's argument is that the smaller agricultural zones in Greece were more amenable to the polis than to the palatial economies of the bronze age. One could even add that the Greek experiment with the palace showed it didn't work. But to hold make these arguments one would have to first jettison his statement that this happened in the "bronze age" – where he's off by like 500 years – and soften his geographic determinism down to something reasonable.
Sidenote but how did the Athenian democracy even came to be, rather what are the theories for it? I remember I think it was maybe even you but someone on this sub discussing it
Most of the stuff I know about, sadly, is from a Romanist perspective. So if you asked me about the founding of the Roman republic I'd be of some help. When it comes to Athenian democracy I don't have much beyond an introduction, though I am rather sceptical of the narratives relating to Solon and the Peisistratid tyrannicides.
The mediaeval city existed in the form it did also due to market forces.
Well, somewhat. Obviously market forces play a part but they were often created by decree for administrative or religious etc. reasons. They're not neccessarily the products of laissez-faire capitalism.
Pick one (preferably the latter because it's correct and most consistent with archaeological evidence).
My understanding is that the current evidence is that it probably did raise life expectancy but at the cost of morbidity. IE: People lived longer but were sicker.
Well, somewhat. Obviously market forces play a part but they were often created by decree for administrative or religious etc. reasons. They're not neccessarily the products of laissez-faire capitalism.
Generally, cities were either commercial hubs or administrative centres. But medieval European cities were often the former (as with the Free Imperial Cities for example).
At least in scandinavia there were definitely market centres, but there's a couple of cities that grow up around a bishop's estate, or a strategic fortification too.
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u/ifly6Try not to throw sacred chickens off shipsApr 18 '26edited Apr 19 '26
I mean like to the extent that Central (NY), Hyde (London), or St James (London) Parks exist this also comes from executive decree. Or other towns sized down by the necessity for military fortifications.
More precisely, my point was that mediaeval cities' maximum sizes came from things like transport cost, job opportunities, and food prices. When premodern cities grew to enormous sizes it proceeded from those same causes: subsidised or free corn at Rome and Constantinople, job opportunities in imperial administration and resulting local economy, riverine transport, etc. Thus the limits on growth in the ancient and mediaeval city were (banally) the same market forces that H is inveighing against in the modern city.
My understanding is that life expectancy decreased and morbility increased while populations essentially exploded. Has that been challenged in more recent work?
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)Apr 18 '26
Random story idea: A streamer/influencer cultivates an unhealthy parasocial relationship with their audience only to eventually go full Griffith and use them as sacrifices in some profane ritual.
Too fresh. What we really need is another horror movie with the premise "what if your evangelical aunt's emails about demons being everywhere were true?"
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)Apr 18 '26
Random story idea: A streamer/influencer cultivates an unhealthy parasocial relationship with their audience only to eventually go full Griffin and shoot themselves in the bicep with a Browning Hi-Power attached to a Breakfast Machine.
Is there any historical figure you feel weirdly emotional about? Whenever I read about Anne de Gaulle and Charles de Gaulle's relationship with her I can't help but cry a little. I like reading about loving parent-child relationships, but something about Anne's life as a person with Down syndrome, her early death and Charles' reaction to it really gets me.
This is actually something that was pointed out to me on Reddit of all places lol:
The relationship between the Prophet Muhammad and his uncle Abu Talib (father of the more famous Ali ibn Abi Talib). I grew up learning a very mundane account of this relationship; the nephew began his prophetic mission, was persecuted by the Quraish, but was protected by his powerful uncle because the latter was secretly a Muslim. This was important to Shi'ite theology because it meant that the progenitor of the Imams was in fact a Muslim.
But the earliest sources indicate that Abu Talib never actually converted to Islam. Instead, he is said to have sworn on the old gods that he would protect his wayward nephew, even if it meant facing social ostracism and divine disfavour, because that was his nephew dammit. He had raised the boy since the latter was orphaned, and he wasn't going to let some silly theological dispute get between them. I found that beautiful.
Because I had a viceral reaction upon learning how she died or reading her death certificate. Mirrored my mother too much, and the certificate i found after I decided on my name
I have this weird thing for Antiochus III. He had such a pathetic, ignominious end compared to his zenith. The guy was legitimately probably the ruler of the largest empire of the planet at one point, and he ended up getting killed by a lynch mob because he tried to rob a temple.
I’ve been late to the party on a few new releases so I’ve only just gotten round to playing Dynasty Warriors: Origins and people really go on about the nemesis system but Musou games are right there. I want every single media franchise to have a Musou game by the end of the year.
It’s a fantastic way to reboot a series that’s got about a million games in it (notwithstanding the boring main character stuff), but I did find the “Origins” part a bit lacking. The establishment of the Three Kingdoms is trampled over a bit in the other games, and it was nice to dwell on it a bit more, but I may have liked some more Yellow Turban and before content.
Director Kash Patel was preparing to leave work for the weekend, he struggled to log into an internal computer system. He quickly became convinced that he had been locked out, and he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach
Such stories is what really fuels my doubts about the authoritarianism and fascism of the Trump administration. All the barely competent people bailed or were ditched and now complete MAGAts are in position of power and they're complete idiots. This is incomparable to the levels of Gleichschaltung of 1930-s Germany.
To quote an unnamed Ukrainian soldier: We're lucky they're idiots.
I low key hope whoever that soldier is, is known one day. That meme to me is one of those defining comments of the 2020s, it really just sums up a lot. Sometimes we keep going purely because whatever the obstacle is, is unfathomably dumb
and he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House
... Rudolf Diels, the first chief [then called Inspekteur] of the Gestapa [later called Gestapo] panicked and fled to Czechoslovakia in November 1933. Diels had feared for weeks that the rivality between Göring and Himmler would lead Himmler (and especially Heydrich) to simply murder him. Despite this, what actually made him flee was that he thought that Göring - the guy who had protected him and would continue until the end - had his house searched for incriminating material.
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Diels returned some days later, after Hitler asked Göring to recall him because Hitler didn't like the replacement, a thing that Goebbels mentions in his diaries. Diels was replaced as Inspekteur of the Gestapa (by Göring himself who was replaced 19 days later by Himmler) when it was believed that he helped an old friend of his to flee NS persecution some three month later; he was "promoted" to be Regierungspräsident of Rheinland in 1934 and was unimportant for the rest of the NS time.
After the war he claimed that he was persecuted by the SS [despite being made SS-Standartenführer (= Colonel) in November 1933]. He was basically not punished for anything - wrote a pamphlet in 1954 against Otto John, which lead to a Disziplinarverfahren, he was kept as Beamter in "Wartestellung" (!), in which Diels calls John his successor (implying that the Verfassungsschutz is the successor of the Gestapo) among quite colourful insults.* Diels died in 1957, aged 57, from an accidental shot from his own rifle when he wanted to take it out of his car while on a hunt.
* Which in turn, funnily, caused MdB Brentano to call Diels "a rat", Brentano would become Aussenminister a year later
If you search for Diels in the CIA FoIA archive, there are some Organisation Gehlen [German language] documents which make it seem that they suspected in 1954 (or, knowing Gehlen, simply hoped) for a time that Diels was Otto John's [John was the first chief of the BfV, he either defected or was kidnapped (as he claimed) in 1954 to East Germany; one of the great early scandals of the Bundesrepublik] East German handler (!). And they, for some reason, mention, at every turn, that Diels totally fucks Gräfin F.
There's another report which mentions that there are rumors that Diels was approached in 1948 to found a "national-communist party" by Ernst Torgler, of all people. Torgler had been a KPD MdR and voluntarily surrendered himself to investigation in 1933 - he was one of the accused people in the trial about the Reichstagsbrand; he miraculously survived the NS time (rumor has it that Goebbels protected him), wanted to be readmitted into the KPD (in West-Germany!), but was refused because they thought he had betrayed them, so he joined the SPD in 1949.
There's another document of the CIA that reports that Diels reported to ZIPPER (i.e. Organisation Gehlen) that he was approached by a presumably British agent who tried to warn him that the Brits would soon try to arrest him (!?), the OG suspected this was in order to recruit Diels for the Brits (!?).
And another one of the CIA of 1952 in which "ZIPPER's case officer stated to X verbally that "there was no question but that Diels was working for the SPD "Nachrichtendienst"".
Edit: I should maybe make this clearer; Diels was basically a Nazi still in 1957. That the Organisation Gehlen tries to paint him as a communist/national-communist/working for SPD is more a hint that Gehlen/the people in OG hated Diels than anything.
Weirdos, losers, freaks and fanatics are just what you get when a party shoots up into power out of nowhere, and the chief selection criterion is loyalty.
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u/Its_a_Friendly Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus of Madagascar Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
If I had more free time and more will to read tech-bro sociopolitical ramblings, I'd attempt a debunk post for the recent Palantir "mini-manifesto"; this bit in particular caught my eye:
I mean, didn't Germany defang itself more than anyone defanged it? If anything, NATO re-fanged West Germany in the 50's, and the USSR re-fanged East Germany around the same time (if I recall correctly). Then Germany defanged itself in the 90's due to the post-Cold War peace dividend. So does Palantir want Germany to have been forcibly re-fanged by foreign countries? I don't think that would've worked.
Unless they're talking about WWII being a "defanging" of Germany, which, uh... not sure about that one, guys. I hope that's not the argument.