RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
No bio...
User ID: 2051
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
2d ago
The Bronze Age Collapse gets some attention at the moment, and there have been quite a few interesting articles on it. WiP had one contender that it simply was Iron's higher availability and the resulting decentralisation of power. But it's hard to tell because we have relatively little direction documentation, it's mostly either archeology on one hand and indirect, mostly mythologized centuries-later stories on the other. These are IMO among the most interesting periods, just enough info to make informed guesses instead mere idle speculation.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
5d ago
What's the goal state for the war exactly? I have a hard time believing that the Africans get their shit together to a sufficient degree so as to cross the Mediterranean, dominate the air and systematically decimate the cities through bombing campaigns, let alone land and conquer in Europe. But at the same time, the insanely lopsided area and population size differences, together with often extremely difficult terrain, make it hard to believe that Europe stands a chance at conquering the whole of Africa in a meaningful way. Even if such a war somehow came to begin, and one side tried to conquer the other, my guess would be a quick stall somewhere early. Maybe the Europeans conquer parts of North Africa, but then struggle to advance past the Sahara. But most likely not even that.
Edit: Also, what's the international help situation supposed to be like? Africa is utterly dependent on outside help to survive, and large parts of that come from (modern) Europe.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
6d ago
All the easily accessible oil, coal, and metals would be used up. So once technology was lost, there'd be no way to restart it. A few million people would live on the ruins of a vast civilization, like the Dark Age barbarians who turned Roman amphitheaters into quarries.
But that's not how it works, certainly not for metals. The Dark Age barbarians used amphitheaters as Quarries precisely because those were so easily accessible. They lost the technological sophistication to support the kind of a large-scale system to build Amphitheaters, but jump-starting civilization from a trash-heap is imo most likely easier, not harder, than doing so from scratch.
There are resources that genuinely get used up like fossil fuel, yes, but since these are to my knowledge all about energy-generation, I'm quite hopeful that this will take so long that we will have a near-endless list of alternative energy sources, even if those may be less efficient pound-for-pound.
While I'm generally in the camp of having as little "smart" appliances as possible due to the obvious problems with hacking, currently I'm curious about going entirely the other way: IF your appliance is already smart anyway, why not run an oversight AI whose sole job is verifying that the appliance runs as intended and which just stops any weird behaviour like the extended defrosting here? Surely some companies will find a way to fuck this up and make the AI itself hackable, but at least in principle this would obviate the need to patch every possible exploit or weakness; As long as the AI is unaffected, it can just overrule obvious nonsense.
And you can go even further, at least once costs have crashed far enough: Imagine each AI just building a custom codebase for its particular appliance, which they only minimally expose to the outside, so that not only are no exploits reusable, even just finding exploits is a completely uneconomical Hacking Blind nightmare.
The future is going to be fucking weird, and scary.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
15d ago
I knocked out 3 suitors within a month of dating each because they didn't meet the bare minimum to me, and then once there was a guy who did meet the minimum, I went all in. Don't regret it for a minute.
I'll just say that this is IMO the way in general, regardless of being a man or woman. "Compatibility" is extremely overrated; You can make yourself compatible, and your partner can make themselves compatible, if necessary. Ideally, you find a way to split the difference. And most importantly, the process of finding ways to be more compatible is itself building a more stable kind of love than mere horny "love" at first sight.
What matters is whether the other person has the potential and the will to dedicate themselves to you. That's it, the rest is up to you, all left is doing the work.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
16d ago
Am I the only one who thinks it's no accident that Marcus Aurelius was literally the last of both the five good emperors AND the Pax Romana? He was the Merkel of Rome, a compelling and competent but fundamentally short-termist manager. He completely failed at imparting his ideology on his own son, who became an indisputably bad emperor. His reforms were largely centered around welfare and disadvantaged groups, a laudable goal, but not conducive to the long-term functioning of the state.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
19d ago
Several people have tried outing Arday before and had scurried away after pressure from his university, from lawyers Arday hired, from activist groups like Unia, or from courts after complaints were filed with them. Now the same groups are actually going through with trying to crush the guy who actually uncovered it, as opposed to merely threatening to crush people who investigated Arday, and your reaction is ... this?
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
21d ago
I used to think this as well, but nowadays I think it is not only wrong, but literally the opposite of reality, i.e. the tabooing of slut-shaming has made it much easier for predators to victimize more women.
The key point to realize about "sluttiness" is that it overwhelmingly describes a women who willingly puts herself into situations where it would be easy for men to take advantage of her. If you're a woman who mostly socializes with people she knows well, who goes everywhere with friends and acquaintances, who rarely gets drunk or otherwise blasted and if she does, only with close friends, who is only flirty if she has serious interest, who only has sex once in an actual relationship, and so on, then it is extremely hard for a predator to take advantage of you. If such a women makes an allegation, it will be taken serious even in a slut-shaming society.
On the other hand, if you get drunk in a club full of strangers, you're flirty with many of them, and you already had clearly consensual casual sex with one of them, you are easy prey. If I'm your friend, I can't protect you if I'm not present. Even if I'm around as a benevolent stranger, I lack critical information to discern whether you simply like whatever happens, or whether you got unduly pressured.
Modern "slutty" culture is basically optimized for two things: 1) Giving predators easy access to hapless women, and b) taking away any and all responsibility from women. Arguably, the former is merely the result of the latter. There is a reason "male feminist" has the connotations it has.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
22d ago
People frequently did do something about it, up to and including killing the rapist soldiers. Generally speaking, officers/generals who kept their soldiers from raping conquered women have often been portrayed as positive.
They also frequently didn't do anything about it, but AFAIK it has been a point of contention in many cultures. Definitionally, nobody can keep the conquerors from doing what they want in the moment (that's the whole point of conquering!), so the only thing you can do is portray benevolent conquerors heroically, and cruel conquerors negatively after-the-fact.
IMO the key difference to today is that it was overwhelmingly seen as one vice among many, not as that singular horrible crime that overrules anything else.
RenOS
They were indeed lame; they were also correct.
22d ago
My main gripe with arguments along these lines is that they're basically cope. "From the vantage point of the past" doesn't matter. From the PoV of the Aztecs, we are colossally fucking up. But who cares? The same goes, to a lesser degree, for catholic social conservatives.
The reality remains, the average young man is attracted to the average young women in a way that is not reciprocated. For literally all my acquaintances who are or were single for a sustained period of time, the problem was always that in their peer group, the single women do not judge the single men as worth it. The men are single because they got rejected; The women were single because they are rejecting.
Just to be clear, I even think the argument is largely correct! With the benefit of being a father and family man who has no interest in dating ever again, it seems obvious to me that most young modern women have an inflated image of self-worth, an excessively negative view of young men, and a serious problem with even just acknowledging that any perspective but their own might matter. And, to be further clear, the men aren't great, either; They're merely not worse.
True, but if I understand correctly, these are unedited flyers merely send to the wrong people. The group in question doesn't even claim that it disagrees with the content itself?
Anti-Rep ads on the other hand usually explicitly uses a Dem framing, like the planned medicare changes: Reps say they want to make access harder to make abuse more difficult, Dems say they just hate poor people (Btw, I'm against the medicare change).
That seems qualitatively different.
More options
Context Copy link