Cripple. History Major. Vaguely Left-Wing.
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Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 21st, 2023
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18·12 hours agoHe looks intense as fuck. The cat looks like they’d open the door high on catnip and invite you in for a glass of milk when you were just there to drop off the mail.
What do the X and Y Axis represent?
151·23 hours agoOkay but Alexander was pretty indisputably a prettyboy.
Like, we didn’t just invent twinks in the last century. I promise, they’ve been around.
2·1 day agoMost working-class voters I know are alienated by phrasing, but rarely by pro-LGBT positions alone. Trans rights are very viable for working-class support, you just have to find the right phrasing for it.
2·2 days agoI really didn’t know where to post this one, so I figured as a reconstruction it might go best here
2·2 days agoIn it, a BIA employee recalled clearing foliage in the irrigation canals at least 20 years earlier, when he sprayed at least one of the herbicides — but possibly both — that make up Agent Orange. The EPA banned one of those chemicals in 1979 because of its cancer risks.
US in 1970: “Woah, Agent Orange is actually too gruesome to be used even in this incredibly shitty war in Vietnam we’re waging.”
US in 1979: “Oh, okay, I guess we should ban it domestically too, huh?”
Fucking disgusting.
Explanation: Caesar, in his youth, was kidnapped and held for ransom by pirates. Amongst other curiousities of the story is that when Caesar, then a relatively unknown young man, heard he was being ransomed for 20 talents (620kg/1366bs) of silver, he demanded they INCREASE the ransom to 50 talents! A man has to know what he’s worth!
It’s not about winning or losing. It’s about s t y l e
11·2 days agoInbred toy dragon, very adorable
I adore these kinds of swords. There’s something so refined about them.
As the wiki article linked notes, most places in Africa didn’t have a sustained bronze age. This isn’t some ‘crude attempt’ or anything, it’s recognition that technological development is not always linear. Africa came out swinging on iron bloomeries before just about anyone else. The invention and spread of the bloomery in Africa meant that they never went through a sustained period, like Europe or China, where iron was hard to refine and work, but bronze could still be handled by more primitive furnaces.
Bronze is just not worth it, except for decorative purposes and the like, if you can smelt iron.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Age#Africa
Not sure what you find Eurocentric about this meme.
A while ago, I read a really fascinating article about how a lot of Africa’s infrastructure is higher-tech on average (though less extensive currently) than many developed countries’, because they’ve been putting in the ‘new’ stuff from the start, instead of having to tear up all the old landlines etc and replace it. Like how London was innovative in making gas lights, but because of that, ended up keeping them 'til the 1950s, when everyone else had swapped to electric.
The spread of technology is a fascinating thing!
Explanation: The Roman Empire had two prominent ‘successors’ after it fell - the Holy Roman Empire, and the Byzantine Empire.
The Holy Roman Empire was a continuation in name only - it was formed over 300 years after the fall of Rome, had no continuation of Roman institutions, and had its only real link in the approval of the Pope - who, in turn, only sought to legitimize the polity because the Byzantine Empire was being run by a woman at the time, and because the Byzantines didn’t recognize the Pope’s ultimate spiritual authority.
The Byzantine Empire was a continuation in more than name - the term ‘Byzantine’ is only a term of modern convenience. The Byzantines regarded themselves as simply the Roman Empire - ‘Basileía Romaíon’ (‘The Roman Kingdom’). But even though there was technically unbroken continuity from the Eastern Roman Empire of Late Antiquity, the Byzantines had very little in common with the Roman Empire of old - regarding their rulers as monarchs, Latin as a ‘barbarian tongue’, Christianity as the main identifier of ‘Romanness’, violation of traditional Roman norms, and controlling only the old Greek portions of the former Roman Empire. In the European West, they were simply known as the Kingdom or Empire of the Greeks.
I only recognize ONE brutal pre-modern Imperial autocracy, and that is the Roman Empire of antiquity!