ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
No bio...
User ID: 1012
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
11hr ago
Maybe a tangent, but I'm reading a novel set in post Roman Briton, and it got me thinking. Why was there slavery in tribal Europe, even after Christianization? They weren't capturing slaves to work on large plantations then. I think it was something like this:
- Your warband attacks and burns an enemy village. They kill all the fighting men and maybe capture a few who surrender.
- There are a bunch of women and children. You now have several options:
- Let them go. This was probably not actually very humane, you have just burned everything and killed all the strong laborers and ruined their dwellings and food stores. At best they will starve, at worse they will be prey for animals and men.
- Kill them all. But why? It's a bunch of extra work for nothing, killing them brings you no benefit, and it pisses off the enemy and invites retaliation. And it is considered kind of bad form even among non Christians AFAICT. You might do this if you are on a revenge mission or are just a sadist I guess.
- Capture them and take them with you. You can maybe sell them. And also, you can inflict psychological damage on the enemy while still appearing to be an honorable, rational enemy.
- You've brought them back to your towns and villages. Now they need somewhere to stay. You're a semi-settled tribe, so you don't have a big facility to house and feed them. So instead you parcel them out to your soldiers and their extended families. Now they have somewhere to sleep. But they don't get to eat for free, so they have to work. And now you've invented de facto slavery.
Edit: @Capital_Room beat me to it
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
11hr ago
You got a favorite gin? I was a big fan of Sakurao, great value for money. And Ki no Bi is great too.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
11hr ago
I finally quit for good 3 months ago after drinking heavily for 5 years. I'm in my late 30s. Best decision ever. Some folks were surprised because I was a champ at the bar, but luckily I'm old enough now that people are either indifferent or they're mildly impressed. My sleep is still bad, but I heard that goes away in the 3-6 month window. Anhedonia substantially cleared up too, I think. First six weeks were pretty awful, though.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
11hr ago
Two-thirds of the way through Excalibur, the last book in Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles. It's grim and a bit sad. It occurs to me that the entire series is told through the eyes of the protagonist as he writes what is essentially a memoir, and thus his stage of life colors events. The story is more exuberant, hopeful, and narrative-driven when he is young, but now in middle aged it is more reflective, world-weary, and burdened with the accumulated loss of friends and loved ones. Cornwell is an excellent writer, and I will certainly be reading more of his books. It's a shame he didn't finish his series set during the Civil War.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
11hr ago
Keep at it, it's excellent.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
16hr ago
I also find it odd. They call themselves 中国人 and 黄种人, literally "China-person" and "yellow-race people." Whitey didn't make it up.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
16hr ago
it is now much more widely accepted in society that insulting and abusing the disabled is a shitty thing to do and the status of the mentally retarded is better now than it used to be
Is this actually true? I don't think believe that insulting or abusing the mentally disabled was ever considered non-shitty. Like calling a gay guy a "faggot," or an obese person a "fatass" or "Michelin man" or something, it was probably seen as rude, unnecessary, and low-class in 20the century America before the language taboos were introduced. Also, I think most people have a visceral horror or revulsion towards signficant mentally and physically deformity. None of that has really changed IMO. The only difference is now is that somebody can pull out a phone a record you saying the no-no words and post it on Twitter or report it to HR, so people have learned to self-censor.
You did -- I removed it right after you left.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5d ago
Wow, that's mind blowing. I've been hearing about these surveys my entire life and never knew that they had this critical weakness. I now understand why Americans don't score that high -- the delta between American life as it is (pretty great) and as Americans imagine it could be (virtuous yeoman farmer utopia/fully luxury automated gay space communism) is massive. You don't mistrust social 'scientists' enough. You think you do, but you don't.
Mexico at #11 right behind the Nordics is interesting. I don't know enough about Mexico to guess how they rank so high. And Afghanistan ranked dead last is also interesting. I suspect that the bottom half of the rankings is marred by poor quality sampling; they probably emailed a bunch of professors at the University of Kabul instead of riding out into the desert to interview Taliban patriarchs, who are presumably quite happy.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6d ago
My parents have driving as a team sport. My mom will say "you've got green" if the light has been green for a moment and my stepdad hasn't hit the gas yet (probably because he was looking a bird), but it's a neutral tone and not a "you're doing it wrong" tone.
This is very sweet. I hope we are like this when we get old.
Book Review: The Enigma of Cranial Deformation: Elongated Skulls of the Ancients (and my own crackpot rant on the subject)
Now we're talking. This what keeps me coming back to this place.
Oprah apparently has a head so massive
I was shocked to discover this wasn't a pumpkinperson link
if half of what they say about ancient Malta is true I want to find a book just about that
You can't just drop this here and give us nothing!
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
12d ago
I always found this ridiculous. If you trip over a European history book and land face first on a random page your eyes will fall on a paragraph about a Catholic monarch with the title "Defender of the Faith" whose imperial regalia is festooned with crosses who rules a Catholic confessional state flagrantly ignoring direct papal orders and doing whatever he finds politically, socially, or sexually expedient. The pope is not nearly the boogeyman-puppetmaster he's made out to be. But I expect most educated people know that and are making these accusations in bad faith.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
12d ago
A USG-sanctioned breakaway hierarchy might be our only shot at getting real Catholicism back.
Saint Liebowitz, pray for us.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
14d ago
That sounds really interesting as well. I'm halfway through the last book, so I'll check it out next.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
14d ago
I have the same aesthetic aversions that you do, I think. There is no girlbossing, women are portrayed as either passive victims, clever manipulators of the egos of men, or wild eyed semi-feral holy women, all of which are (to me) very plausible and period accurate.
The author justifies his revisions by putting the story in the mouth of a narrator with a very specific POV. The narrator is a pagan, a warrior, and a commoner who by chance learns how to read a bit when young and who is at the right place at the right time to witness or participate in many of the greatest eventa of Arthurian legend. One of his best friends, a noble born Christian cavalryman ("knight") would have told the same story but with different emphases and interpretations, and it would sound much more familiar to fans of "Le Mort D'Arthur."
I get the sense that the author is both a fan of Arthurian legend and of 5th century British history and has done his best to reconcile the two without doing a disservice to either. It's gritty and real, but it's not "grimdark." And there is no projection of 20th century morality back in time.
I'm not a huge Arthuriana buff. He does change some characters I think, but in a way that leaves the door open for the later "canonical" interpretations of them to still make sense. Arthur, for example, has the air of confidence, nobility, and invincibility you've come to expect when leading men or speaking publicly. But in private, when confiding to the main character, he reveals that he is sometimes wracked with doubt or grief or barely-controlled anger. I think it's pretty clever. Instead of tearing down or subverting the Arthur you expect, or making him into the bad guy, the author shows the psychological toll that singlehandedly bearing the destiny of Britain on his shoulders takes on him.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
16d ago
Excalibur, the third and final book of the Warlord Chronicles. Enemy of God was even better than the first book. The author has already covered all the scraps of Arthuriana I'm familiar with, so I have no idea where the story will go next. 10/10 would recommend.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
17d ago
Sorry, might post might have been unclear. I was saying that European mockery of the US is analogous to NE or NW USians' mockery of Southeastern USians. In both cases, the mockery is rooted in an overestimation of one's understanding of the target of mockery, as well as a feeling of superiority that inoculates against any curiosity about the target.
As I said in another post, I think it's perfectly fair for Europeans to criticize American foreign policy, and I do not take it personally when I hear such criticisms.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
17d ago
I don't doubt that. I was speaking about my own IRL experiences. Social media is designed to maximize heat, and the lowest quality members of the new Right live there 24/7. I dont feel compelled to defend the opinions of those people, nor do I expect you to defend the opinions of Europeans who post nothing but "do Americans really?" tweets and posts all day.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
17d ago
I took an OCEAN quiz recently and scored low on agreeableness. This was bit shocking to me because as a child and young adult I was always very agreeable, sometimes almost a doormat. After reflecting a bit I concluded that the quiz was right and I really have become a less agreeable person. I think that the weight of responsibility and the limited amount of time I have now has just reduced my patience for pleasantries and circumlocution. I'm not an "asshole" (I think), I'm just direct and to the point.
My neuroticism also dropped from moderate to low. But everything else stayed the same.
How has your personality changed over your life?
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
17d ago
I suppose that as an American my problem with Europeans' opinions of "the path [America] has gone down" is that the average European really knows very little about what it's like to be an American, what America as a country is about, and why America does it what it does domestically.* But because they watch Hollywood movies or CNN they believe they understand America as well as (or even better than) the average American.
This isn't a unique phenomenon. As someone from the Southeast US, when I lived in the PNW, I would occasionally get knowing smirks when I mentioned my home state as my conversation partner assumed I was a refugee from "Jesusland" or "Dumbfuckistan" or whatever the popular slur was and would make some nasty remarks about the place my family comes from to try to ingratiate themselves with me. You see, they've seen Forrest Gump and Deliverance and finished the Grade 8 social studies unit on the Civil War and Jim Crow, so they know all about where I'm from. Have they visited? Well, no, they drove through once and cracked some jokes with their buddies at the time but they certainly never stopped to look around. Why bother? Everyone knows what those people are like.
*For the record I'm not irked by criticism of American foreign policy from Europeans. I'm not a fan of the GAE myself, so I just agree and shrug and say something to the effect of "if only votes mattered in the empire."
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
17d ago
You're right, I was mostly talking about white collar/upper middle class Europeans. The working class or lower working class Europeans I have met have been very chill and friendly. Good folks.
The seething contempt long predates Trump. It was like that in the 90s when I lived there.
Also, contrary to the European stereotype of Americans, we can tell the difference between good-natured ribbing and thinly veiled hostility. I have friends who rip on the U.S. in good fun. And I have acquaintances who clearly have a chip on their shoulder.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
17d ago
I am fairly confident that if circumstances were reversed - if the military and economic security of the US turned on the impulses of European voters, or we were staring down the barrel of an economic crisis because European leaders did something retarded - Americans would be at least as cool on Europe as Europeans appear to be on us right now.
Americans would probably be less anti-European than Europeans currently are anti-American. This is because there's an element of snobbish contempt and reflexive ego preservation in the European attitude that really doesn't exist in American attitudes towards Europeans outside of extremely online spaces.
Normie Americans think Europe is Notre Dame and Big Ben and Oktoberfest and Italian cafes, oh and don't they have some issues with terrorism? Still, beautiful place, would love to visit one day.
Normie Europeans think America is a country full of backward nouveau riche troglodytes who make houses out of wood and probably plastic and styrofoam and drive big stupid cars and kill each other with guns and eat nothing but McDonalds, Velveeta, and probably plastic and styrofoam and call it "cuisine," and worst of all they have the gall, the absolute gall to think they are equal or even superior(!!) to us and that they can tell us what to do! They won't say all that directly to your face, but 2 out of 3 Euros are unable to contain their seething contempt and will eventually have to get in a "witty" (passive-aggressive) dig about guns/racism/big cars/food/etc apropos of nothing in an otherwise friendly conversation.
Early Americans thought their political system was superior to European monarchy, but they copied European styles and imported European fine goods and high culture. Europeans have never had anything but contempt for American culture, and this contempt and wounded ego greatly amplifies their dislike for America.
To the extent that there is a distaff counterpart to "toxic masculinity"
Top-tier Freudian slip.
Edit: apparently this was intentional
From the owner's perspective, an African slave was a "buy it for life" tractor, while an indentured servant was a rented U-Haul. Indentured servant employers frequently tried to squeeze as much labor as they could before the servants' contracts were up, leading to a surprisingly high mortality rate.
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