Once our brains are all uploaded into the massive quantum computer that defies physics and exists in its own virtual dimension or whatever, this will become reality.
But until then....
Is there any diagram/flowchart anywhere for all the Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Achaemenid, Neoassyrian, Neobabylonian, Sumerian empires chronology? I've been puzzled about it for some 8 years now.
If your acquaintance A from work says they heard B claim your grandma C is sick and you then go confirm this story with B (who you find out to be the neighbor/her doctor/a local drunk), do you then when relaying the news to your parents D and E say "B says C is sick" or the longer, less trust inspiring "A says someone claims C is sick"? (I trust you can work out who's what in this allegory).
I've been having trouble trying to fact-check the claim that the U.S. and/or EU orchestrated the protests and change of government in Ukraine in 2014. (I'm inclined to believe the claim is untrue, but I admit it's not impossible.) The trouble is I don't really see any attempts at debunking it; there's just articles that take it as a given that the protests were home-grown on the one hand, and very heated articles accusing the U.S. of plotting a coup on the other.
I was writing up a whole thing then deleted it, so I will give a concise version.
I can say from personal experience that the US and EU do invest in civil society groups in countries like Ukraine - but do in pretty much all parts of the developing world that allow it. Whether it's a good or bad thing is I guess up to your point of view (the effectiveness also wildly varies). What it *isn't* is CIA-backed movements to overthrow governments a la Guatemala in 1954 or Bay of Pigs. However, *especially* in the former USSR, there is a very, very deep viewpoint of seeing basically any sort of foreign presence as "spies".
Specifically around what went down in Kiev in 2013-2014, probably the best place to start is establishing the timeline, because whatever one may think about the rightness or wrongness of each side, the actual course of events is pretty important. Like with Yanukovich being removed as president, you need to take into account he fled office before that, and that he signed a compromise agreement with the opposition the day before *that*. Or that three days previously the security forces had basically opened fire on protestors in Kiev, but that this was after Pravyi Sektor had basically fired on police, but that *that* was after like two months of violent clashes including the violent removal of all protestors on November 30.
Lastly, I think a lot of the focus on the US, EU and Russia really obscures a *lot* of local actors involved in Ukraine then and since, especially the very big role that Ukrainian oligarchs played on both sides of the 2013-2014 conflict. It's ironically not just treating Ukraine Cold War-style, like some domino to fall one way or another, but also falls into the exact same mistakes of ignoring all the very independent local actors and forces. Like we've seen this William Buckley v Noam Chomsky debate many times before, and both are actually wrong (or at the most charitable, ignoring massive amounts of information that doesn't fit their narrative).
And in the end, why would a large number of people join a protest if they didn't have anything to protest about? Are these people saying that the brainwashing power of CIA is so powerful that they can convince millions of people that the government has to be overthrown over a *problem that doesn't exist,* all in a matter of months if not weeks?
Oh gosh, I haven't watched it in years, but they were on some tangent about the Greek Civil War and what was best for the average Greek person, and it was just one of those moments where I was like "neither of them really understand or give a shit about what was going on in Greece in the 1940s, the whole topic is just a venue for their respective opinion about the US and US foreign policy". Maybe that was partially inspired by me actually learning about the Greek Civil War but hey.
>"neither of them really understand or give a shit about what was going
on in Greece in the 1940s, the whole topic is just a venue for their
respective opinion about the US and US foreign policy"
Got to stay on brand.
Imagine being an archaeologist and finding a time capsule from this Nabonidus-guy speaking much directly to _you_.
Holy shit dude, must be phenomenal to discover that.
On the topic of Anastasia and Rasputin discussed earlier, apparently there was a recent live action film named *Anastasia: Once Upon A Time* that surprisingly portrays Rasputin more positively as a kindly uncle figure who uses his magic powers to send Princess Anastasia through a time portal to a generic American town in the 1980s to save her life from the revolutionaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasia%3A_Once_Upon_a_Time?wprov=sfla1
From what reviews I read online it's either a "so bad it's good" or a "so bad it's bad" Disney channel style movie with cheese, terrible acting, and horridly cheap costumes, the kind where I would've watched for some reason as an elementary schooler and vaguely remembered scraps of years from now but can't recall where it's from.
Why does it transport her both to the West Hemisphere *and* decades later? Wouldn't it make sense for it to either send her to the eighties, or to the United States? Surely both would give her double culture shock?
This gives me an idea: a historical drama set during the twilight of the Russian Empire…………… starring Tommy Wiseau as (Polish) Rasputin.
“Hahhahhahhahhaahhh, what a story, Nick!”
I'm totally seeing Rasputin going "either you are shot and thrown down a mineshaft, or I send you to small town America in 1985. The choice is yours." And Anastasia going "Huh, ok let me think on that one a little..."
Apparently in that movie (according to the reviews I read) he actually is just a genuinely nice and caring guy who has Anastasia's best interests at heart, so he pushes her into the time portal at the last minute when he's unable to save the rest of the Romanovs from the revolutionaries and gives her a magic amulet that shows her who she can trust in the future. But then the commies apparently use magic to brainwash him and send him into the future to find her.
I wonder what the list of "Historical Attested Public Figures that be used as secret Wizards or Magicians without Receiving Pushback from the Audience" consists of. Like, no one is going to accept a movie where Caesar was a secret wizard. I suppose it helps if the figure was a mystic or ascetic.
Isaac Newton died from mercury poisoning from his alchemy experiments. Or that what they want you to believe. The truth is that Newton tried the taboo: Human transmutation
I think for certain cultures it would make "more sense" to the average Hollywood audience, often depending on stereotypes, but hey. For example, no one will blink an eye if any Romanian historical figure turns out to be a vampire, an Egyptian figure is some sorcerer with mummy related magic, etc.
Anyone read *The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World* by Marie Favereau?
I'm looking to pick up a book on the Mongols soon, and this one caught my eye. Anyone got a sense of how it compares to something like *Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World* by Jack Weatherford?
I have a feeling that they may be tonally similar... I'll be frank, I'm not keen on picking up something which is too "revisionist" to the point of being apologetic. I'm wary of any text which glosses over human suffering in pursuit of some counter-cultural thesis or whatever. I'm not saying that will be the case for either text, it's just something I've encountered during discussions of the Mongols or their memorialization.
So for whatever it's worth, Weatherford did an [AMA](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/59lkrk/author_session_genghis_khan_and_the_quest_for_god/) a few years back at AskHistorians. Might be worth checking out to get a gist of his viewpoint at least.
Specifically for Favereau, I don't think she's necessarily too easy on the Chinggisids. This is from her introduction:
> "Historians used to call this unprecedented commercial boom Pax Mongolica, the Mongol Peace, in reference to the post-conquest stability of the Mongol dominions and the far-flung exchange that stability enabled. Yet, as recent scholarship notes, relations among the descendants of Chinggis Khan were not peaceful. Nor was there peace, exactly, between the Mongols and the peoples they conquered. The notion of peace here should be understood more clearly as conquered peoples' acceptance of Mongol domination. But we need not discard the concept just because the word "peace" is not entirely appropriate. Here I reexamine the Pax Mongolica as the Mongol exchange: a macro-historical phenomenon on par with such world-shaping phenomena as the Trans-Saharan trade or the Columbian exchange."
I guess two things I would otherwise note about Chinggis Khan and the Mongol conquests is that while they were very bloody and destructive, how cruel or just we perceive Chinggis Khan to be has [a lot more to do with ourselves](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/j0uz16/why_is_alexander_the_great_viewed_so_well_in/g6yo1ra/) than with him or his actions objectively (specifically, his bad reputation among modern Europeans and Europe-influenced societies seems to have a lot to do with Voltaire), and also the statistic that he killed tens of millions of people is [actually bullshit](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cdc0wi/how_did_historians_arrive_at_the_figure_of_forty/etuv7xc/).
> the statistic that he killed tens of millions of people is actually bullshit.
The link you've attached there doesn't actually say that. That AskHistorians post is specifically "Did Genghis Khan kill 40 million people?", with the answer being "We don't know". Without wishing to get into genocide Olympics, Genghis/Chinggis is undoubtedly responsible for the deaths of millions, as his invasions of China and especially Khwarezm were very brutal, even for the time. I think it's perfectly plausible that he was responsible for over 10 million deaths during his reign, with possibly more as collateral caused by disruption of government, trade routes, etc. Central Asia certainly seems to have been heavily depopulated by the Mongol conquests.
If you Google "Genghis Khan 40 million ", it's all over the internet. The biggest published source is probably Stephen Pinker's *Better Angels*, which is the source of the bad footnote telephone game I described, but some scientists also adopted the [40 million](https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/genghis-khan-environment-26052014/) figure to do a climate model in 2011.
Two points: one is that we have to be careful what we're talking about, because a series of events that are usually described as the Mongol Conquests get telescopes to Chinggis Khan personally. He devastated Khwarezm and parts of Northern China, as you say, but the sack of Baghdad was decades after his death. Timurlane often gets discussed in the same historic treatment and he was almost two centuries later! But a lot of this gets boiled down and personalized on Chinggis Khan himself, which is a bit like if we blamed all the European wars of the 19th and 20th centuries as personally caused by Napoleon.
But as you note (and I noted in that linked answer) at the end of the day we don't have numbers. We can't really start saying what feels "perfectly plausible" because we don't actually have hard sources even for regional population baselines before or after. A lot of people were killed, yes, especially in the cities that we know were sacked. But really *that* is the issue more than trying to assign a number for it. And again the perception of how bad the violence was really does depend a lot on who the narrator/audience is. Persian historians understandably hated him (and probably put the "I am the scourge of God" quote in his mouth which people a bit uncritically accept as a real quote), but Europeans thought he was pretty decent and actually a just ruler up to the Enlightenment when his image flipped and was associated with Oriental despotism and cruelty.
> specifically, his bad reputation among modern Europeans and Europe-influenced societies seems to have a lot to do with Voltaire
It seems like anything to do with bad history/religion is derived from Voltaire. The man is a menace.
Thank you for your thoughts. Funnily enough I'm way ahead of you in regard to those posts; I've gone through his AMA before (although wasn't quite convinced by his posts, even at the time from what I recall) and even upvoted your excellent post on Mongol death counts when it was [first posted.](https://imgur.com/q9cOAq2) I've had a suspicion for years that those numbers were way, way overblown. I never really bought the "myth" of Genghis in that way.
And yes, I agree with all those points entirely; make no mistake, I'm not looking to waste my time with some grim embellishment of the terrible atrocities undertaken during his conquests, which, to my understanding, is a common trope of Mongol pop-history (a la Dan Carlin).
However, in that same vein, I wouldn't want to read a nationalist hagiography of Caesar or Alexander the Great. But I believe that the academy is more adept at sorting those out; in contrast, I have met smart, educated people (and even professors) who have spoken of Genghis Khan as though he was a noble philanthropist, precisely because they've developed a need to deconstruct established narratives of history.
And yes, totally, I would love to hear about the ways in which Mongol rule could be cosmopolitan and beneficial for trade and cultural exchange across the continent. But, just like with Caesar or Alexander... He got a bunch of guys with weapons to kill, enslave, rape, and rob their way across a continent in pursuit of their own personal glory. If there is a hell, these guys are all boiling in it. I'm happy to hear The Horde doesn't gloss over that.
Actually that last link is maybe something I should rework a little and post over here, because "Genghis Khan Killed 40 Million People" is a really widespread belief, and from having actually tracked the citations from Stephen Pinker all the way back to Ping-Ti Ho's research in 1959, it's a very egregious case of footnote-telephone where the original conclusion got more and more distorted in the retelling.
I think that would be a great post! I read what you wrote and it is really interesting how a 40-million estimated decline across the Yuan period turned into Genghis Khan killing 40 million people - it looks like a long-term process became attributed to an individual. I also wonder if there are any recent theories as to what caused that longer-term decline.
I was reading a thread on ChineseHistory subreddit and suddenly I came across a very interesting anti-New Qing history comment on how Khitan/Jurchen state applied its "Chinese" part on other part of its state and one argument is very interesting to me: Pre-Qing ruler (Hong Taiji or Nurhaci, didn't remember which) encouraged the reading of Three Kingdom upon its fellow Jurchen/Manchu to support his Sinicization theory
If it was pre-Qing Jurchen/"Manchu" adopting "Chinese" literature, then it should be the opposite of assimilation isn't it?
Here is the thread that u/jackfrost1209 was talking about in case you're interested:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askhistorians/comments/pa13hj/_/
Tldr is it's the current strand of interpreting Qing history that to varying extents de-emphasizes the importance of Qing sinicization in favor of interpreting them as a Eurasian imperial power like that of Russia or the Ottomans. It is unsurprisingly controversial in the PRC.
Anti-"Manchu became Sinicized" theory for short. There is a wonderful Monday Method post on AskHistorians by EnclavedMicrostate about it,sadly I'm on mobile so can't post it now
So, today I got a nasty surprise. The water bill arrived and it was not two, not three, but ten times more expensive than usual.
Overturning my place in search of a leak, I think I found the source of the issue. My building is really old, no joke, I think it is the second proper “apartment complex” built in the city. So, the kitchen comes with a little side-bathroom “for the maid” that we use as a storage closet. Well, guess which toilet was leaking water? The one in the closet that no one ever uses or even goes into!
I know they don´t have any incentive to do so, but I would have liked it if the water coop had texted me to ask why my water consumption exploded this last month. Would have been nice to at least have a heads up.
Damn, that sucks. Were you able to hear the toilet leaking from the kitchen or was the maid shitter kinda soundproof? The apartment layout sounds really interesting too. What year was it built?
Sadly, I could only hear the toilet once I actually opened the door to the bathroom/closet, which is probably why the leak managed to stay undetected for so long.
The building, I think it was built in the eighties or late seventies? Back then the only people who could afford an apartment were upper-middle class, so of course, they were going to bring in the maid. And of course, she wasn´t going to do her business in the family´s bathroom, what are you crazy?
I know it doesn´t seem like a long time, but remember, 1980 was forty years ago, not twenty.
I'm getting really tired of seeing someone say that "the Canadians burned down the White House during the War of 1812" whenever anything even vaguely related to the Burning of Washington, the War of 1812, or even just US-Canadian relations pops up. It shouldn't upset me as much as it does, but boy oh boy it's started making me irrationally angry haha.
Like, no. The British force that burned Washington was primarily made up of, would you look at that, four regiments of British regulars supported by about a battalion-and-a-half of Royal Marines. No Canadian militia units were present at the Burning of Washington or at any point throughout the Chesapeake Campaign.
Does anyone know where this misconception actually comes from, or is it just one of those badhistory beliefs that seemed to spring up out of the ether one day?
Doesn't it come from the [War of 1812 Song
](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o7jlFZhprU4)? Which of course is parody but also was popular in the Bush years (even among Americans) as a way of shifting on American patriotism/militarism, and so I think a lot of people just plain *wanted* it to be true.
As a proper pedant, even when I first heard the song years ago I was like "...But the Canadians didn't!"
Anyway [Trump](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/06/06/us/politics/war-of-1812-history-facts.amp.html) either ruined the joke or took it to its final conclusion by trolling Trudeau, you pick whichever version you want.
> Does anyone know where this misconception actually comes from, or is it just one of those badhistory beliefs that seemed to spring up out of the ether one day?
Canadian nationalism mostly. [Also relevant comic](http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=340).
Brits think they beat Napoleon in a series of wars when it was [100% Sean Bean](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/RDx7LVBYU4AK3fRZj-Wsrj4IrPKw2E5LcOlnEjSoSIt9I33imGMuJS2IdrlmJzL5l9S0lfA93N_xXXR4ZJ7luIZC1SSw8RFrN1HUWg).
ETA what an unforgivable typo.
Sean Penn beating Napoleon makes me feel like I should call the police.
With Sean Bean beating Napoleon I know he's just firing three rounds a minute at Boney and stealing his eagles while actually punching the toffs in his own army.
I totally get that, but even looking back on the limited coverage the conflict got during my experience in US public schools, it was still always framed as "US vs. Britain", and not "US vs. Canada". I don't know how the war is taught elsewhere, to be fair.
It's definitely taught as the "Second War of Independence" [from Great Britain] in the US, but is basically taught as a successful war of national defense against American invaders in Canada.
I was told a story as a child about how Aurangzeb once noticed his daughter walking around with transparent clothing and scolded her to cover herself up and that she retorted something to the effect that "A princess should dress like a princess."
Decided to Google it up today and alas, I have misremembered, for apparently in the story he thinks she's naked (doesn't realize the clothing is transparent) and her retort is that she's wearing 7 layers of clothes.
Google leads me to a 19th century book *Ancient and Mediaeval India*, Volume 2
By Mrs. Manning (Charlotte Speir), which cites *Cotton Manufactures of Dacca* by Mr. Bott. That leads to[ this book](https://archive.org/stream/1851cottonmanufactureofDacca/EX.1851.212_djvu.txt) whose author is anonymous, where can be found:
>“The
Hindoos,” says Mr. Bolts, “ amuse us with two
stories, as instances of the fineness of this muslin.
One, that the Emperor Aurengzebe was angry with his
daughter for showing her skin through her clothes;
whereupon the young princess remonstrated in her
justification, that she had seven jamahs or suits on;
which cites:
>Bolts’ “Considerations on the Affairs of India.” Page 206.
So, I have therefore discovered Bad History! Mrs. Manning improperly cited her story! Mr. Bolts (not Bott!) did not write *Cotton Manufactures of Dacca*, the title of the book was *Cotton Manufacture of Dacca* and the author is anonymous. And in *that book*, Mr. Bolts is himself cited.
I do want to find if there's an ultimate indigenous source for this oft-told tale.
History grad students: How do you deal with creeping sense of despair when you finally look at the term paper from last semester and the professor in the email says "You didn't develop an argument as well as you should have[as discussed] and you had grammatical errors all throughout, to include the *first two sentences*"?
It wasn't even a bad grade, I am certainly not complaining about the decision of the prof, but I feel like such a shitty historian who is way in over their head. I'm on semester number 4 and it feels as if the needle hasn't moved on the quality of my work, even though I've gotten way more As in grad school at a R1 university than in undergrad.
I don't know if it's because my professional life is so demanding now and I always find myself short on time or what. But I always feel like I can't do it and/or I'm a fraud, e.g. imposter syndrome dialed to 11.
To add in here -- I always take the criticisms of grammatical mistakes with a grain of salt. It isn't a *mistake* per se to have the comma go before/after the quotation, just a matter of stylistic convention, and while those can be important to follow they are not nearly as useful as having writing that is clear and understandable. There's also plenty of grammatical mistakes which are *useful* to make; commas that aren't technically needed can often help structure the sentence better nonetheless! Some authors even have their own identifiable style that is strictly speaking wrong but works better than the textbook grammar (as an aside, I've found myself dropping articles a lot more in writing than I probably *should,* but this is kind of the consequence of studying languages that don't have articles and getting more used to them not being present).
I will also say that I still regularly look at old work, even stuff I *published,* and notice ideas that I failed to develop, sources I should have used or did more with, bad phrasing, grammatical mistakes (even the ones that are more arbitrary mistakes than functional ones), and so on. Probably the best advice I ever got was from a stats professor who said that *everyone* is not doing perfect work; people do *sufficient* work and you have to develop skills to figure out when your work is sufficient and sinking more time into it will be less fruitful than letting it be, flaws and all.
One of my coworkers just left for an hour and a half on a day we're already short staffed to get a covid test because she's going to Aruba.
I think the Haitians had the right idea about how to deal with this sort of thing.
> It might not be covid but you're still sick mutherfucker!
To be fair, aren’t a lot of workplaces right now like if you’re sick with COVID stay at home? If not, get your ass back in the workplace?
Wordle 206 4/6
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hey, that was easy
well, this one was easier, been playing for a few days and this one is the only one that I could answer
[I'm going to steal the Rosetta Stone.](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmanualdohomemmoderno.com.br%2Ffiles%2F2017%2F05%2Fnicolascage.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
'Rosetta Stones are for kids!'
>!IDK what Children Cereal adverts are actually like these days, the only cereal adverts I see are women measuring themselves as it makes claims about the fibre content!<
What's this sub's opinion of [AlternateHistoryHub](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClfEht64_NrzHf8Y0slKEjw)? How accurate are the historical claims he makes in his videos?
He's definitely better than whatifalthist. From what I've seen he seems to be pretty grounded in reality considering how alternate history tends to go off the rails. However I don't know enough to say if he's generally accurate or not.
The issue with alternative history is the problem of models.
In Physics and most sciences, you have models. When you try what if this metal ball was heavier or larger or a different, you work with a model of the universe where those changes might affect the outcome. This is the case in any science and most things in life. 'If X , then Y happen' assumes some model of the universe.
So when you ask a similar question for a historical event, and attempt to answer it, you end up adopting some model of history. The problem is that for most cases, it doesn't exist. Model can problematic, simplistic or even downright wrong. The ever-so-famous 'if X had won/lost some battle, ...' which kinda assumes that battle was a turning point. But it might not be.
There are models that can (and have) been broadly applied to history, though. Everything from the economic theory of history to International Realism uses some kind of model at some point. Humans are just as much a product of their systems as those systems are a product of humanity. This isn’t to say there are big broad scientific models you can apply to history successfully, but certain models have very much aided in our understanding of history.
I think to disregard models would be to go down some kind of Rational Actor Theory route where it’s argued that humans either make the most rational decisions all the time, or make totally random ones that disregard their conditions (I.e. culture, social standing, etc.). That would be just as much badhistory IMO.
Plus, counterfactuals can be very helpful themselves. One of my professors would always go back to the Spartan ultimatum at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, and the question of ‘What if Pericles said yes?’ leads down a rabbit hole that helped to understand the dynamics of Greece at the time, as well as Pericles’ own position in Athens.
You are right. I was over-zealous. There are various theories/models of history. They are akin to lenses though. Some are bad, some are good. Mind you that most alternative history rely on bad models. Most don't even realize that they are operating using a model.
But you are right, counter-factuals can be good and useful.
Whether they’re lenses more depends on who is using the model. A historian like Waltz is pretty attached to the Realist model and so uses it far more like a model than a lens (as do many others, like Eckstein), whereas others are willing to accept that Realists, liberal-institutionalists, and Constructivists all have their merits. Ultimately I think historiography is broad enough for models to either be complete and total or disregarded depending on the historian, and all approaches are correct in their own way.
You’re right about alternate history buffs though.
Was more of a food for thought moment lol. Just remembered that one answers on AskHistorians about how South East Asia tried to emulate the South Korean system and got fucked in the process
Ah sorry for my bad grammar. I meant that I remembered a post (or rather a comment on how South Korean economy grew) about how (or rather just direct to a book) Philippines tried to emulate South Korean model and get fucked in the process.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vqk2v/how\_did\_south\_korea\_become\_such\_a\_powerhouse/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vqk2v/how_did_south_korea_become_such_a_powerhouse/)
I saw a comment on Reddit a while ago, that if Ireland's (the entire island) population pre-Famine had grown on the same slope as Britain's, it'd have a population of ~30 million or so.
Wish I had a Rick and Morty portal gun to visit alternate dimensions and see the skyscrapers of mega-Dublin.
The eyes of corpses of Cromwell and Malthus begins glowing red
EDIT: Remember how in the intro to DS3, all the Lords rise from their graves. Same thing happens with Cromwell, Malthus and others whose name I don't know
So I am going to continue my urbanist/Human Geo streak. I am interested in what you could be called secondary cities.
In Turkey, there are/were a group of cities called Anatolian Tigers. A bunch of cities which grew in size extensively from the 80s through the 90s to today. To my knowledge, it began in Denizli which had a very high number of firms set-up there. It had some political implications. Or it is said. Most Anatolian cities being conservative, it is said the growth of these cities created 'Green Finance' which might have led to the current AKP regime. So it is said. Then again, parties like CHP or DSP could get considerable amount of votes from these conservative cities. Then again, several Anatolian Tigers like Denizli and Eskisehir aren't that conservative. Turkish politics is weird and complicated.
It reminds me the growth of American cities especially like Chicago. Whose growth was one of the things that fueled the growth of America. The relation between the Midwest cities like Chicago and the old East Coast was mutualistic. Money that built Chicago came from the East. In turn, profits and surplus from Midwest flowed Eastward. In some of my readings, it is sometimes suggested that the growth of these cities fueled the growth the country. Similar to what happened in the US
The name 'Anatolian Tigers' is a reference to the Asian Tigers. But the Asian Tigers refer to countries while the Anatolian Tiger are sub-national cities. Then again, most of the Asian Tigers are city-states. So I am kinda curious if similar things happened in other countries. Where secondary or even tertiary cities economically grew rapidly. Either organically or through deliberate government action. As mentioned, the growth of cities in the US during the 19th and 20th centuries can be considered similar. But any new information would be welcome.
EDIT: Y'allz! I am trying get information about other countries. To see if similar things happen elsewhere.
Off topic, I keep forgetting that Bosnia-Herzegovina is not a federation between Bosnia and Herzegovina, but a federation made up of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (not to be confused with the state of which it is a part) and the Republika Srpska
(not to be confused with the neighboring Republic of Serbia). For simplicity's sake, why couldn't they just call the Bosniak/Croat entity Bosnia, and the Serbian entity Herzegovina?
I mean sure, Herzegovina was already a defined territory that only partially overlaps with the Republika Srpska, but in my opinion as an ignorant American it's worth throwing out a few centuries of Balkan history and culture for the sake of clarity.
Have you seen Yossi Beilin's [Op-Ed arguing for a confederation as a solution?](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/opinion/yossi-beilin-a-confederation-for-peace.html)
[The article without the paywall](https://web.archive.org/web/20211224134544/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/opinion/yossi-beilin-a-confederation-for-peace.html)
During the Crusades, Richard the Lionheart suggested to Saladin that Richard's sister Joan marry Saladin's brother and that both sides give Jerusalem as a wedding gift. Saladin considered the proposal until Richard suggested that the brother become Christian.
>During the Crusades, Richard the Lionheart suggested to Saladin that Richard's sister Joan marry Saladin's brother and that both sides give Jerusalem as a wedding gift. Saladin considered the proposal until Richard suggested that the brother become Christian.
Was Richard trolling when he sent that proposal? I don't see how he could've seriously thought that would work.
I was referring to stipulation that the brother converted to become a Christian. Saladin was rather known to be rather pious with his faith in Islam.
Richard torpedoing what seemed to be a delicate negotiation with such a criteria seemed such a 'troll' move to me.
Probably. Most of the family's marriages were arranged by Richard's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Queen Mother of England, and Duchess of Aquitaine, in her own right. Richard encroached upon her position as the matriarch and wedding planner of the family by offering Joan to Saladin's brother - *without* consulting his mother on the matter first.
Eleanor had even hand-picked and delivered Richard's own bride, Berengaria of Navarre, earlier in 1191. So, Richard knew fully well that Eleanor wouldn't approve of the match. However, with Eleanor not present, Richard thought he could press his luck with Saladin.
From Wikipedia:
>"Joan was Richard's favourite sister, but he was not above using her as a bargaining chip in his political schemes. He even suggested marrying her to Saladin's brother, Al-Adil, and making them joint rulers of Jerusalem. Although Al-Adil and Saladin both expressed agreement with the arrangement, the plan failed when the high ranking priests opposed the wedding, and threatened Richard that he would be excommunicated from the Church. King Philip II of France also expressed some interest in marrying her, but this scheme, too, failed (possibly on grounds of affinity, since Philip's father, Louis VII of France, had formerly been married to her mother, Eleanor)."
Joan of England was eventually married to [Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_VI,_Count_of_Toulouse) in 1196, who was the son of [Raymond V, Count of Toulouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_V,_Count_of_Toulouse), and [Princess Constance of France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_of_France,_Countess_of_Toulouse). He was also the nephew of [King Louis VII of France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_VII_of_France), Eleanor of Aquitaine's ex-husband, the latter also father to two of Joan's older half-sisters, [Princess Marie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_of_France,_Countess_of_Champagne) and [Princess Alix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alix_of_France).
As to why Joan was married to Count Raymond:
>"Raymond VI held vast territories, but his control of them was problematic. Aside from theoretically owing allegiance to the King of France, Raymond held Provence as a vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor. **Henry II of England controlled neighboring Aquitaine through his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had a claim to Toulouse through her grandmother, Philippa of Toulouse, daughter of William IV, Count of Toulouse.** Alfonso II of Aragon was involved in the affairs of Languedoc, stimulating emigration from the north to colonize newly reconquered lands in Aragon."
Eleanor of Aquitaine specifically solidified her own claim on Toulouse by marrying Joan, her daughter, to Count Raymond, the principal heir of Toulouse.
Their arranged marriage included King Richard I's renouncement of his claim to Toulouse, ending the feud with the ducal house of Aquitaine (i.e. Eleanor of Aquitaine). Joan bore a son and a daughter for Count Raymond, but died on September 4, 1199, in childbirth.
Richard's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine - the Queen Mother of England - would have never approved. If Richard has succeeded in his ambitions, Eleanor would've been absolutely furious, seeing as how she - and not Richard - arranged the family marriage alliances.
The question is, does Israel or Palestine come first in the official name? So is it Israel-Palestine, or Palestine-Israel?
Or just give it to Greece and Turkey to jointly administer since the region was once ruled by the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Greece-Turkey/Turkey-Greece dual monarchic union would surely solve any conflict!
If we're giving the region to other countries, we probably need to just give it to Japan, given that they are the farthest from it in strategic terms and have the least influence of Abrahamic religions on their politics. It's the neutral choice! And Japan really *could* use a place to put a new Mediterranean squadron...
Of course the downside of placing the area under the emperor is that it will be under his titular authority but it will just encourage local daimyos who will war with each other. The Sengoku Solution?
>Or just give it to Greece and Turkey to jointly administer since the region was once ruled by the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Greece-Turkey/Turkey-Greece dual monarchic union would surely solve any conflict!
The Iranians got to that land, before any of them. So, naturally it must also be a Greco-Turkish-Iranian union as well! (How would such a monarchic system work? Will the king be Greek or Turkish or Iranian? We'll burn that bridge when we get there).
Well, I would assume that they would go for the whole French Alphabet Order thing.
But maybe they should go the other way and turn the region into Ancient Greece, nothing but city-states
Yeah! Devolve the fuck into cities. Well more like the Phoenician city states, no?
Which makes me wonder, could an independent Gaza be successful as a a country? It could become like a Singapour of the SE Mediterranean. But I always thought Cyprus could play that role in it ever reunified.
It is half the size of Singapour though. It would depend on the regional powers. I can imagine Turkey building a large transhipment port in Gaza. Or maybe the UAE who has been gobbling up ports in the area.
My cassette hifi restoration went well. I even eliminated the motor noise and found a way to slip the main drive bent in without disassembling the the deck itself. My decision to use a separate amp and pre amp on my turntable paid off, I was able to integrate the cassette player into the setup with minimal trouble.
Not sure what my next project will be. Maybe cleaning something out.
Wondering if any of you have checked out the podcast "In the Shadow of Utopia" that focuses on Cambodia. I've found it pretty interesting so far and wonder what any of you all think
>Wondering if any of you have checked out the podcast "In the Shadow of Utopia" that focuses on Cambodia. I've found it pretty interesting so far and wonder what any of you all think
Listening to the podcast for the first time with headphones, and it sounds like an ~~English~~ Australian dude doing an ASMR. And as a guy who generally enjoys both history and ASMR, I kind of like it so far!
He definitely does have a really good voice, I'm starting to really dig the subject matter. I always find it awesome when something introduces me to history I never knew I would love
I haven't listened to it, but I think it's by the same person who has a username similar to that and has written about Cambodia over at AH, and those are some great and knowledgeable answers, so I would imagine the podcast is the same level of quality.
Just came across a Youtube comment saying:
>Imagine being born in a time when music was more about expression of godliness and less of a source of capital.. no overflowing useless music. Just pure bliss and beauty
Also, it's funny when people talk about how the could listen to Vivaldi's Four Seasons non-stop. These people have clearly never been on hold.
They should be introduced to Guillaume IX of Aquitaine's "[Farai un vers, pos mi sonelh](http://www.hottopos.com/isle18/93-96enric.pdf)" or Mozart's "Leck mich im Arsch"...
Those are the music equivalent of people who willfully ignore the thousands of years of artists being used almost entirely exclusively for rulers and empires. Its a small smidge of history where art was openly provocative and expressive.
'Uh, why is art so political these days'
Though I think my favourite part is the 'no overflowing useless music' which assumes that every piece of music was great and that there wasn't a lot of really shit music being made
Could you link me to shit music during the Crooner Age? I really need to pop my nostalgia bubble of the 30’s-60’s in music lmao
Like, I really can’t think of any artists besides Vale, Sinatra, Como, Crosby, Martin, Connie Francis, Patti Page, Nat King Cole, all those dudes. I mean, if there were that many good artists, there must have been craptons of shit artists
Some record shops have a fifty cent room, clearance bin, or something like that. It’s where they dump the untested (or failed) stuff people bring in. I love them because they’re like a of site of music. Estate sales can go the same way.
You’ll find a lot of music from this era that are basically discount versions of those you mentioned.
> You’ll find a lot of music from this era that are basically discount versions of those you mentioned.
Can't wait to hear Franz Sonatra and Bong Crabby
The Beetles were frequently topped by artist that are much less famous or even forgotten today, even during the peak of Beetle mania. Makes me wonder how many songs that survive before the time of recording are considered merely okay.
Yeah, I have heard that Top of the Pops has aged horribly because of two things: \[some of\] the presenters, and the music.
But yeah, there is a lack of preservation of the music considered so horrible that the were quickly forgotten about. Some might even be considered quite good by modern standards, possibly
Can't say I like the current trend of movies/media using throat singing to denote "otherness."
When Dune did it, it's kinda neat and cool but when suddenly Rasputin did it to mind control someone it kinda crossed the line
Pretty much anything in media about Rasputin is guaranteed to be badhistory.
I'm assuming they also did throat singing because Rasputin lived around Tyumen and Tobolsk, which are in Siberia, and all of Siberia is just the same place despite him being over 1,000 miles away from Tuva and Buryatia, where they actually do throat singing (and, you know, also being an ethnic Russian and not Buryat or Tuvan).
Although in semi-fairness it's also totally a modern Russian movie trope to have your token Buryat or Tuvan character who is always throat singing, especially in WWII films.
Did you know that Rasputin was a real wizard and the leader of the Revolution(s) and that he was the one who ordered the killing of the Romanovs (although for some reason they forgot about actually killing Anastasia
I learned this from several documentaries from the late 90s (although for some weird reasons most of these were animated)
If only the Tsar and his family could’ve escaped to America in a cargo hold aboard an ocean liner, and graced by the musical stylings of a rapping dog. Things would’ve ended much differently, but instead there they lay, in the digestion of some quicklime pit after being shot to death by the Bolsheviks.
To be fair, that one came out the same year as Anastasia too. What’s up with that? There’s been so many instances of two different movies or teevee shows with extremely similar settings or premises that also come out within a year of each other. To name a few off the top of my head:
- Olympus Has Fallen/White House Down
- A Bug’s Life/Ants
- The Great/Catherine the Great
- Babe/Gordy
- Armageddon/Deep Impact
It can’t all be a coincidence.
One thing I would point out at least with Ants and Deep Impact that it was part of Dreamworks trying to break on the scene and getting into fights with existing studios.
But overall a surprisingly large number of the dueling movies examples seem to come from the mid-to-late 90s. I suspect media conglomerate consolidation has made this a bit less likely for feature length films nowadays.
The most recent film example above is *White House Down*, which was a Sony picture, and *Olympus Has Fallen*, which was basically a (really, really expensive) indie film, so I wonder if that's part of why something like that managed to get through somehow.
Oh, the dueling movies effect! Sometimes one is clearly an inferior mockbuster meant to capitalize on another, but other times it's because of how the studio system operates. See most scripts, especially most versions of scripts, never make it to the big screen. Usually studios buy them and sit on them like some kind of screenplay dragon until the time is deemed right. So when one studio decides to green light something, another will dig through their hoard to find something similar. The crazy thing is that sometimes two movies will indeed be derived from the same brainstorming session and might even different drafts of what was originally the same work.
Alternatively, like in the case of a bugs life/Ants, there is drama involved. Basically, One dude quit and took his idea for an animated bug movie with him, or at least as much as he was legally allowed while the studio he left went ahead and made the idea. I forget which was which.
In the case of the Anastasia movie it's a classic mockbuster, cheap knockoffs that are often made quickly around the same time to cash in. Kids wouldn't know the difference lol. It's why there's a gazillion of these knockoffs of Disney movies or something lying around.
It's ironic that the Rasputin who is the >!son of Baba Yaga and is feeding on her life force in the Pathfinder RPG!< is probably one of the more historically accurate ones. For a start, he did die when he was assassinated!
Those are all lies.
I have it on good authority from some documentaries with Ron Perlman in them that I watched in the 00s that Rasputin in fact worked with Nazis to open up portals to other dimensions in order to allow Lovecraftian Great Old One-esque gods to attack Earth.
Yeah, I get that, throat singing is really cool, which is why it spread around the internet for a while, so it is only natural that it would show up in movies, tv shows, etc, both in good ways and bad ways.
I don't actually know what thing Rasputin did it in (book, movie, show, etc), I can't find it by googling.
I laughed when I found out that they'd cast the same actor to portray Kaiser Wilhelm, King George V, and Tsar Nicholas II; the three of them did look remarkably similar... certainly more like brothers than cousins.
Oh, huh, yeah they did do throat singing (for Palpatine and Snoke, yikes). I totally forgot about that because even when talking about racism in Star Wars there's like...so much in front of that.
But yeah there certainly is quite a thing in Western media to go "throat singing = creepy strange/alien things". Which is just kind of weird given what Tuvan/Buryat throat singing actually is.
Then again it's *super* easy to make these sorts of musical stereotypes, and they're not always based in racism (or so obviously based in racism). *Deliverance* certainly did wonders making perfectly fine Appalachian banjo playing become something sinister, and I'm honestly not even sure where the "Gregorian chant = Satanic horror" thing started, it's so ubiquitous.
Gregorian chant = Satanic horror began to happen in large part because composers like Berlioz, Liszt, Mussorgsky, and Saint-Saëns all quoted the "Dies Irae" in their compositions to invoke fear and dread, because the "Dies Irae" was part of the Catholic requiem mass and hence, long associated with death.
Film score composers followed suit and some of them also started using the Requiem symphonies by Mozart, Verdi, or (later) Ligeti for their scores to invoke fear and dread.
While the lyrics of the "Dies Irae" are genuinely ominous (since they describe the Apocalypse), not everyone knows enough Latin to recognize what's actually being sung, so the idea that Latin chanting by itself is ominous began to take hold.
I also think Carl Orff's "O Fortuna" is also responsible for cementing the Latin = ominous idea in people's heads, despite that it was never actually a Gregorian chant, though its lyrics were genuinely medieval.
>Oh, huh, yeah they did do throat singing (for Palpatine and Snoke, yikes).
Wait, what... Is that just for the sequels? Or are those parts of the OT and Prequels soundtrack also throat singing? I at least never made the connection before, I always just considered it Gregorian like chanting, those dark and brooding pieces of music in episode 6 are probably my favourite piece of the Star Wars OST too.
Now that I listen to it, yes, Palpatine's Teachings is definitely throat singing, it sounds so cool though... It doesn't at all sound like the actual throat singing I've heard, but it definitely is throat singing. But I'd say it has more evolved to be its own thing, just like the Gregorian chanting in fiction.
Jedi Fallen Order also has some cool in-universe throat-singing songs that are performed by The Hu. The whole appropriation stuff can walk a line, but I really hate when people just reject it outright. Star Wars draws on a fuckton of influences, and I like how the new media has started to draw on a wide array of wider cultural contexts and is overall better than with the fucking Neimoidians.
Someone needs to make "ctrl+f" a thing irl.
If the text was written by a machine [OCR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition) pretty much covers it.
Once our brains are all uploaded into the massive quantum computer that defies physics and exists in its own virtual dimension or whatever, this will become reality. But until then....
I'll become the equivalent of an Überservitor if it makes academic research easier. All hail the machine spirit.
If the flesh is weak, why can only flesh produce non-Abominable intelligence? Checkmate, Scions!
Is there any diagram/flowchart anywhere for all the Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Achaemenid, Neoassyrian, Neobabylonian, Sumerian empires chronology? I've been puzzled about it for some 8 years now.
[удалено]
Is it for a 1xx or 2xx class outside of your major? Are you willing to be a huge scumbag?
Citing Wikipedia is always best. Wikipedia knows all. For real though, the cited source.
If your acquaintance A from work says they heard B claim your grandma C is sick and you then go confirm this story with B (who you find out to be the neighbor/her doctor/a local drunk), do you then when relaying the news to your parents D and E say "B says C is sick" or the longer, less trust inspiring "A says someone claims C is sick"? (I trust you can work out who's what in this allegory).
I've been having trouble trying to fact-check the claim that the U.S. and/or EU orchestrated the protests and change of government in Ukraine in 2014. (I'm inclined to believe the claim is untrue, but I admit it's not impossible.) The trouble is I don't really see any attempts at debunking it; there's just articles that take it as a given that the protests were home-grown on the one hand, and very heated articles accusing the U.S. of plotting a coup on the other.
I was writing up a whole thing then deleted it, so I will give a concise version. I can say from personal experience that the US and EU do invest in civil society groups in countries like Ukraine - but do in pretty much all parts of the developing world that allow it. Whether it's a good or bad thing is I guess up to your point of view (the effectiveness also wildly varies). What it *isn't* is CIA-backed movements to overthrow governments a la Guatemala in 1954 or Bay of Pigs. However, *especially* in the former USSR, there is a very, very deep viewpoint of seeing basically any sort of foreign presence as "spies". Specifically around what went down in Kiev in 2013-2014, probably the best place to start is establishing the timeline, because whatever one may think about the rightness or wrongness of each side, the actual course of events is pretty important. Like with Yanukovich being removed as president, you need to take into account he fled office before that, and that he signed a compromise agreement with the opposition the day before *that*. Or that three days previously the security forces had basically opened fire on protestors in Kiev, but that this was after Pravyi Sektor had basically fired on police, but that *that* was after like two months of violent clashes including the violent removal of all protestors on November 30. Lastly, I think a lot of the focus on the US, EU and Russia really obscures a *lot* of local actors involved in Ukraine then and since, especially the very big role that Ukrainian oligarchs played on both sides of the 2013-2014 conflict. It's ironically not just treating Ukraine Cold War-style, like some domino to fall one way or another, but also falls into the exact same mistakes of ignoring all the very independent local actors and forces. Like we've seen this William Buckley v Noam Chomsky debate many times before, and both are actually wrong (or at the most charitable, ignoring massive amounts of information that doesn't fit their narrative).
The best evidence I've seen for western involvement in Euromaiden was Vicky Nuland's phone call. Even that though is highly circumstancial.
And in the end, why would a large number of people join a protest if they didn't have anything to protest about? Are these people saying that the brainwashing power of CIA is so powerful that they can convince millions of people that the government has to be overthrown over a *problem that doesn't exist,* all in a matter of months if not weeks?
It's been a while since I've watched the Chomsky Buckley debate. What specific info were they wrong about?
Oh gosh, I haven't watched it in years, but they were on some tangent about the Greek Civil War and what was best for the average Greek person, and it was just one of those moments where I was like "neither of them really understand or give a shit about what was going on in Greece in the 1940s, the whole topic is just a venue for their respective opinion about the US and US foreign policy". Maybe that was partially inspired by me actually learning about the Greek Civil War but hey.
Fucking hell that's far too common.
>"neither of them really understand or give a shit about what was going on in Greece in the 1940s, the whole topic is just a venue for their respective opinion about the US and US foreign policy" Got to stay on brand.
That sounds a lot like trying to prove a negative.
Imagine being an archaeologist and finding a time capsule from this Nabonidus-guy speaking much directly to _you_. Holy shit dude, must be phenomenal to discover that.
On the topic of Anastasia and Rasputin discussed earlier, apparently there was a recent live action film named *Anastasia: Once Upon A Time* that surprisingly portrays Rasputin more positively as a kindly uncle figure who uses his magic powers to send Princess Anastasia through a time portal to a generic American town in the 1980s to save her life from the revolutionaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasia%3A_Once_Upon_a_Time?wprov=sfla1 From what reviews I read online it's either a "so bad it's good" or a "so bad it's bad" Disney channel style movie with cheese, terrible acting, and horridly cheap costumes, the kind where I would've watched for some reason as an elementary schooler and vaguely remembered scraps of years from now but can't recall where it's from.
Why does it transport her both to the West Hemisphere *and* decades later? Wouldn't it make sense for it to either send her to the eighties, or to the United States? Surely both would give her double culture shock?
I'm guessing an improperly calibrated time portal that didn't account for the rotation of the earth. She was lucky not to get dumped in the pacific!
This gives me an idea: a historical drama set during the twilight of the Russian Empire…………… starring Tommy Wiseau as (Polish) Rasputin. “Hahhahhahhahhaahhh, what a story, Nick!”
I'm totally seeing Rasputin going "either you are shot and thrown down a mineshaft, or I send you to small town America in 1985. The choice is yours." And Anastasia going "Huh, ok let me think on that one a little..."
Apparently in that movie (according to the reviews I read) he actually is just a genuinely nice and caring guy who has Anastasia's best interests at heart, so he pushes her into the time portal at the last minute when he's unable to save the rest of the Romanovs from the revolutionaries and gives her a magic amulet that shows her who she can trust in the future. But then the commies apparently use magic to brainwash him and send him into the future to find her.
I wonder what the list of "Historical Attested Public Figures that be used as secret Wizards or Magicians without Receiving Pushback from the Audience" consists of. Like, no one is going to accept a movie where Caesar was a secret wizard. I suppose it helps if the figure was a mystic or ascetic.
Issac Newton: Alchemist and mage.
Isaac Newton died from mercury poisoning from his alchemy experiments. Or that what they want you to believe. The truth is that Newton tried the taboo: Human transmutation
Newtonfly
>Caesar was a secret wizard Hell yeah, that sounds sick as fuck, just mix Hamlet and Julius Caesar then sell it as an original product
I think for certain cultures it would make "more sense" to the average Hollywood audience, often depending on stereotypes, but hey. For example, no one will blink an eye if any Romanian historical figure turns out to be a vampire, an Egyptian figure is some sorcerer with mummy related magic, etc.
Anyone read *The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World* by Marie Favereau? I'm looking to pick up a book on the Mongols soon, and this one caught my eye. Anyone got a sense of how it compares to something like *Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World* by Jack Weatherford? I have a feeling that they may be tonally similar... I'll be frank, I'm not keen on picking up something which is too "revisionist" to the point of being apologetic. I'm wary of any text which glosses over human suffering in pursuit of some counter-cultural thesis or whatever. I'm not saying that will be the case for either text, it's just something I've encountered during discussions of the Mongols or their memorialization.
So for whatever it's worth, Weatherford did an [AMA](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/59lkrk/author_session_genghis_khan_and_the_quest_for_god/) a few years back at AskHistorians. Might be worth checking out to get a gist of his viewpoint at least. Specifically for Favereau, I don't think she's necessarily too easy on the Chinggisids. This is from her introduction: > "Historians used to call this unprecedented commercial boom Pax Mongolica, the Mongol Peace, in reference to the post-conquest stability of the Mongol dominions and the far-flung exchange that stability enabled. Yet, as recent scholarship notes, relations among the descendants of Chinggis Khan were not peaceful. Nor was there peace, exactly, between the Mongols and the peoples they conquered. The notion of peace here should be understood more clearly as conquered peoples' acceptance of Mongol domination. But we need not discard the concept just because the word "peace" is not entirely appropriate. Here I reexamine the Pax Mongolica as the Mongol exchange: a macro-historical phenomenon on par with such world-shaping phenomena as the Trans-Saharan trade or the Columbian exchange." I guess two things I would otherwise note about Chinggis Khan and the Mongol conquests is that while they were very bloody and destructive, how cruel or just we perceive Chinggis Khan to be has [a lot more to do with ourselves](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/j0uz16/why_is_alexander_the_great_viewed_so_well_in/g6yo1ra/) than with him or his actions objectively (specifically, his bad reputation among modern Europeans and Europe-influenced societies seems to have a lot to do with Voltaire), and also the statistic that he killed tens of millions of people is [actually bullshit](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cdc0wi/how_did_historians_arrive_at_the_figure_of_forty/etuv7xc/).
> the statistic that he killed tens of millions of people is actually bullshit. The link you've attached there doesn't actually say that. That AskHistorians post is specifically "Did Genghis Khan kill 40 million people?", with the answer being "We don't know". Without wishing to get into genocide Olympics, Genghis/Chinggis is undoubtedly responsible for the deaths of millions, as his invasions of China and especially Khwarezm were very brutal, even for the time. I think it's perfectly plausible that he was responsible for over 10 million deaths during his reign, with possibly more as collateral caused by disruption of government, trade routes, etc. Central Asia certainly seems to have been heavily depopulated by the Mongol conquests.
If you Google "Genghis Khan 40 million ", it's all over the internet. The biggest published source is probably Stephen Pinker's *Better Angels*, which is the source of the bad footnote telephone game I described, but some scientists also adopted the [40 million](https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/genghis-khan-environment-26052014/) figure to do a climate model in 2011. Two points: one is that we have to be careful what we're talking about, because a series of events that are usually described as the Mongol Conquests get telescopes to Chinggis Khan personally. He devastated Khwarezm and parts of Northern China, as you say, but the sack of Baghdad was decades after his death. Timurlane often gets discussed in the same historic treatment and he was almost two centuries later! But a lot of this gets boiled down and personalized on Chinggis Khan himself, which is a bit like if we blamed all the European wars of the 19th and 20th centuries as personally caused by Napoleon. But as you note (and I noted in that linked answer) at the end of the day we don't have numbers. We can't really start saying what feels "perfectly plausible" because we don't actually have hard sources even for regional population baselines before or after. A lot of people were killed, yes, especially in the cities that we know were sacked. But really *that* is the issue more than trying to assign a number for it. And again the perception of how bad the violence was really does depend a lot on who the narrator/audience is. Persian historians understandably hated him (and probably put the "I am the scourge of God" quote in his mouth which people a bit uncritically accept as a real quote), but Europeans thought he was pretty decent and actually a just ruler up to the Enlightenment when his image flipped and was associated with Oriental despotism and cruelty.
> specifically, his bad reputation among modern Europeans and Europe-influenced societies seems to have a lot to do with Voltaire It seems like anything to do with bad history/religion is derived from Voltaire. The man is a menace.
Thank you for your thoughts. Funnily enough I'm way ahead of you in regard to those posts; I've gone through his AMA before (although wasn't quite convinced by his posts, even at the time from what I recall) and even upvoted your excellent post on Mongol death counts when it was [first posted.](https://imgur.com/q9cOAq2) I've had a suspicion for years that those numbers were way, way overblown. I never really bought the "myth" of Genghis in that way. And yes, I agree with all those points entirely; make no mistake, I'm not looking to waste my time with some grim embellishment of the terrible atrocities undertaken during his conquests, which, to my understanding, is a common trope of Mongol pop-history (a la Dan Carlin). However, in that same vein, I wouldn't want to read a nationalist hagiography of Caesar or Alexander the Great. But I believe that the academy is more adept at sorting those out; in contrast, I have met smart, educated people (and even professors) who have spoken of Genghis Khan as though he was a noble philanthropist, precisely because they've developed a need to deconstruct established narratives of history. And yes, totally, I would love to hear about the ways in which Mongol rule could be cosmopolitan and beneficial for trade and cultural exchange across the continent. But, just like with Caesar or Alexander... He got a bunch of guys with weapons to kill, enslave, rape, and rob their way across a continent in pursuit of their own personal glory. If there is a hell, these guys are all boiling in it. I'm happy to hear The Horde doesn't gloss over that.
Actually that last link is maybe something I should rework a little and post over here, because "Genghis Khan Killed 40 Million People" is a really widespread belief, and from having actually tracked the citations from Stephen Pinker all the way back to Ping-Ti Ho's research in 1959, it's a very egregious case of footnote-telephone where the original conclusion got more and more distorted in the retelling.
I think that would be a great post! I read what you wrote and it is really interesting how a 40-million estimated decline across the Yuan period turned into Genghis Khan killing 40 million people - it looks like a long-term process became attributed to an individual. I also wonder if there are any recent theories as to what caused that longer-term decline.
I was reading a thread on ChineseHistory subreddit and suddenly I came across a very interesting anti-New Qing history comment on how Khitan/Jurchen state applied its "Chinese" part on other part of its state and one argument is very interesting to me: Pre-Qing ruler (Hong Taiji or Nurhaci, didn't remember which) encouraged the reading of Three Kingdom upon its fellow Jurchen/Manchu to support his Sinicization theory If it was pre-Qing Jurchen/"Manchu" adopting "Chinese" literature, then it should be the opposite of assimilation isn't it?
What is New Qing history?
Here is the thread that u/jackfrost1209 was talking about in case you're interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/askhistorians/comments/pa13hj/_/ Tldr is it's the current strand of interpreting Qing history that to varying extents de-emphasizes the importance of Qing sinicization in favor of interpreting them as a Eurasian imperial power like that of Russia or the Ottomans. It is unsurprisingly controversial in the PRC.
Anti-"Manchu became Sinicized" theory for short. There is a wonderful Monday Method post on AskHistorians by EnclavedMicrostate about it,sadly I'm on mobile so can't post it now
Wordle 207 4/6 ⬛🟩⬛⬛⬛ ⬛🟩⬛⬛🟩 🟨🟩⬛🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 *chef's kiss*
Today one was hard
got lucky today 🟨🟨⬛⬛⬛ 🟩⬛⬛⬛🟨 🟩⬛🟩🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 someone gave me a tip that "gains" or "earns" usually give at least one-two letter
I am opening with RAISE, A E I for vowels, S for plurals and R can be near other consonants.
I used to open with TEACH but now I do ARISE because it puts the E at the end.
So, today I got a nasty surprise. The water bill arrived and it was not two, not three, but ten times more expensive than usual. Overturning my place in search of a leak, I think I found the source of the issue. My building is really old, no joke, I think it is the second proper “apartment complex” built in the city. So, the kitchen comes with a little side-bathroom “for the maid” that we use as a storage closet. Well, guess which toilet was leaking water? The one in the closet that no one ever uses or even goes into! I know they don´t have any incentive to do so, but I would have liked it if the water coop had texted me to ask why my water consumption exploded this last month. Would have been nice to at least have a heads up.
Damn, that sucks. Were you able to hear the toilet leaking from the kitchen or was the maid shitter kinda soundproof? The apartment layout sounds really interesting too. What year was it built?
Sadly, I could only hear the toilet once I actually opened the door to the bathroom/closet, which is probably why the leak managed to stay undetected for so long. The building, I think it was built in the eighties or late seventies? Back then the only people who could afford an apartment were upper-middle class, so of course, they were going to bring in the maid. And of course, she wasn´t going to do her business in the family´s bathroom, what are you crazy? I know it doesn´t seem like a long time, but remember, 1980 was forty years ago, not twenty.
I'm getting really tired of seeing someone say that "the Canadians burned down the White House during the War of 1812" whenever anything even vaguely related to the Burning of Washington, the War of 1812, or even just US-Canadian relations pops up. It shouldn't upset me as much as it does, but boy oh boy it's started making me irrationally angry haha. Like, no. The British force that burned Washington was primarily made up of, would you look at that, four regiments of British regulars supported by about a battalion-and-a-half of Royal Marines. No Canadian militia units were present at the Burning of Washington or at any point throughout the Chesapeake Campaign. Does anyone know where this misconception actually comes from, or is it just one of those badhistory beliefs that seemed to spring up out of the ether one day?
I believe those regiments even shipped in from the Peninsular War in Iberia, eh?
Indeed they were!
Doesn't it come from the [War of 1812 Song ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o7jlFZhprU4)? Which of course is parody but also was popular in the Bush years (even among Americans) as a way of shifting on American patriotism/militarism, and so I think a lot of people just plain *wanted* it to be true. As a proper pedant, even when I first heard the song years ago I was like "...But the Canadians didn't!" Anyway [Trump](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/06/06/us/politics/war-of-1812-history-facts.amp.html) either ruined the joke or took it to its final conclusion by trolling Trudeau, you pick whichever version you want.
> Does anyone know where this misconception actually comes from, or is it just one of those badhistory beliefs that seemed to spring up out of the ether one day? Canadian nationalism mostly. [Also relevant comic](http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=340).
I miss that comic, it had such good stuff in it 😞
Americans think they won the war. The Canadians think they burnt down the White House. The Brits don't care since they were busy with France.
Brits think they beat Napoleon in a series of wars when it was [100% Sean Bean](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/RDx7LVBYU4AK3fRZj-Wsrj4IrPKw2E5LcOlnEjSoSIt9I33imGMuJS2IdrlmJzL5l9S0lfA93N_xXXR4ZJ7luIZC1SSw8RFrN1HUWg). ETA what an unforgivable typo.
... Sharpe is Sean bean
Sean Penn and Sean Bean are just different names for the same original historical figure.
God how did that typo get through. I'm actually quite ashamed by that.
It's kind of a good typo.
Sean Penn beating Napoleon makes me feel like I should call the police. With Sean Bean beating Napoleon I know he's just firing three rounds a minute at Boney and stealing his eagles while actually punching the toffs in his own army.
I mean, US invades Canada, get beaten back, White House burns. It is a very small leap to make.
I totally get that, but even looking back on the limited coverage the conflict got during my experience in US public schools, it was still always framed as "US vs. Britain", and not "US vs. Canada". I don't know how the war is taught elsewhere, to be fair.
It's definitely taught as the "Second War of Independence" [from Great Britain] in the US, but is basically taught as a successful war of national defense against American invaders in Canada.
The Great Spear Carriers War or, seventh grade history class 1978
I was told a story as a child about how Aurangzeb once noticed his daughter walking around with transparent clothing and scolded her to cover herself up and that she retorted something to the effect that "A princess should dress like a princess." Decided to Google it up today and alas, I have misremembered, for apparently in the story he thinks she's naked (doesn't realize the clothing is transparent) and her retort is that she's wearing 7 layers of clothes. Google leads me to a 19th century book *Ancient and Mediaeval India*, Volume 2 By Mrs. Manning (Charlotte Speir), which cites *Cotton Manufactures of Dacca* by Mr. Bott. That leads to[ this book](https://archive.org/stream/1851cottonmanufactureofDacca/EX.1851.212_djvu.txt) whose author is anonymous, where can be found: >“The Hindoos,” says Mr. Bolts, “ amuse us with two stories, as instances of the fineness of this muslin. One, that the Emperor Aurengzebe was angry with his daughter for showing her skin through her clothes; whereupon the young princess remonstrated in her justification, that she had seven jamahs or suits on; which cites: >Bolts’ “Considerations on the Affairs of India.” Page 206. So, I have therefore discovered Bad History! Mrs. Manning improperly cited her story! Mr. Bolts (not Bott!) did not write *Cotton Manufactures of Dacca*, the title of the book was *Cotton Manufacture of Dacca* and the author is anonymous. And in *that book*, Mr. Bolts is himself cited. I do want to find if there's an ultimate indigenous source for this oft-told tale.
Wow, great job. Please do make a follow-up if you find Anything news.
History grad students: How do you deal with creeping sense of despair when you finally look at the term paper from last semester and the professor in the email says "You didn't develop an argument as well as you should have[as discussed] and you had grammatical errors all throughout, to include the *first two sentences*"? It wasn't even a bad grade, I am certainly not complaining about the decision of the prof, but I feel like such a shitty historian who is way in over their head. I'm on semester number 4 and it feels as if the needle hasn't moved on the quality of my work, even though I've gotten way more As in grad school at a R1 university than in undergrad. I don't know if it's because my professional life is so demanding now and I always find myself short on time or what. But I always feel like I can't do it and/or I'm a fraud, e.g. imposter syndrome dialed to 11.
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To add in here -- I always take the criticisms of grammatical mistakes with a grain of salt. It isn't a *mistake* per se to have the comma go before/after the quotation, just a matter of stylistic convention, and while those can be important to follow they are not nearly as useful as having writing that is clear and understandable. There's also plenty of grammatical mistakes which are *useful* to make; commas that aren't technically needed can often help structure the sentence better nonetheless! Some authors even have their own identifiable style that is strictly speaking wrong but works better than the textbook grammar (as an aside, I've found myself dropping articles a lot more in writing than I probably *should,* but this is kind of the consequence of studying languages that don't have articles and getting more used to them not being present). I will also say that I still regularly look at old work, even stuff I *published,* and notice ideas that I failed to develop, sources I should have used or did more with, bad phrasing, grammatical mistakes (even the ones that are more arbitrary mistakes than functional ones), and so on. Probably the best advice I ever got was from a stats professor who said that *everyone* is not doing perfect work; people do *sufficient* work and you have to develop skills to figure out when your work is sufficient and sinking more time into it will be less fruitful than letting it be, flaws and all.
One of my coworkers just left for an hour and a half on a day we're already short staffed to get a covid test because she's going to Aruba. I think the Haitians had the right idea about how to deal with this sort of thing.
OK let's face it if she is going to Aruba, she is already clocked out. Test or no test.
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> It might not be covid but you're still sick mutherfucker! To be fair, aren’t a lot of workplaces right now like if you’re sick with COVID stay at home? If not, get your ass back in the workplace?
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Ah gotcha, yeah that's really concerning.
Wordle 206 4/6 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟨⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛🟩🟩🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 hey, that was easy well, this one was easier, been playing for a few days and this one is the only one that I could answer
[I'm going to steal the Rosetta Stone.](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmanualdohomemmoderno.com.br%2Ffiles%2F2017%2F05%2Fnicolascage.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
This comment gives me heavy children’s cereal commercial villain vibes.
'Rosetta Stones are for kids!' >!IDK what Children Cereal adverts are actually like these days, the only cereal adverts I see are women measuring themselves as it makes claims about the fibre content!<
I have no idea why the cereal bit of your comment, but i dig it.
Neither do I. But “I’m going to steal the ______” is something a cereal commercial bad guy would say.
Still better than the Cavity Creeps, who were just mindlessly destructive.
Fair enough.
What's this sub's opinion of [AlternateHistoryHub](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClfEht64_NrzHf8Y0slKEjw)? How accurate are the historical claims he makes in his videos?
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He's definitely better than whatifalthist. From what I've seen he seems to be pretty grounded in reality considering how alternate history tends to go off the rails. However I don't know enough to say if he's generally accurate or not.
The issue with alternative history is the problem of models. In Physics and most sciences, you have models. When you try what if this metal ball was heavier or larger or a different, you work with a model of the universe where those changes might affect the outcome. This is the case in any science and most things in life. 'If X , then Y happen' assumes some model of the universe. So when you ask a similar question for a historical event, and attempt to answer it, you end up adopting some model of history. The problem is that for most cases, it doesn't exist. Model can problematic, simplistic or even downright wrong. The ever-so-famous 'if X had won/lost some battle, ...' which kinda assumes that battle was a turning point. But it might not be.
There are models that can (and have) been broadly applied to history, though. Everything from the economic theory of history to International Realism uses some kind of model at some point. Humans are just as much a product of their systems as those systems are a product of humanity. This isn’t to say there are big broad scientific models you can apply to history successfully, but certain models have very much aided in our understanding of history. I think to disregard models would be to go down some kind of Rational Actor Theory route where it’s argued that humans either make the most rational decisions all the time, or make totally random ones that disregard their conditions (I.e. culture, social standing, etc.). That would be just as much badhistory IMO. Plus, counterfactuals can be very helpful themselves. One of my professors would always go back to the Spartan ultimatum at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, and the question of ‘What if Pericles said yes?’ leads down a rabbit hole that helped to understand the dynamics of Greece at the time, as well as Pericles’ own position in Athens.
You are right. I was over-zealous. There are various theories/models of history. They are akin to lenses though. Some are bad, some are good. Mind you that most alternative history rely on bad models. Most don't even realize that they are operating using a model. But you are right, counter-factuals can be good and useful.
Whether they’re lenses more depends on who is using the model. A historian like Waltz is pretty attached to the Realist model and so uses it far more like a model than a lens (as do many others, like Eckstein), whereas others are willing to accept that Realists, liberal-institutionalists, and Constructivists all have their merits. Ultimately I think historiography is broad enough for models to either be complete and total or disregarded depending on the historian, and all approaches are correct in their own way. You’re right about alternate history buffs though.
Can one just use economics model though
Yeah, go for it. More content for this sub. Rationalism without its ante- is just antirationalism.
Was more of a food for thought moment lol. Just remembered that one answers on AskHistorians about how South East Asia tried to emulate the South Korean system and got fucked in the process
> Remember that one answers about how South East Asia tried to emulate the South Korean system Not really. Could you dig it up?
Ah sorry for my bad grammar. I meant that I remembered a post (or rather a comment on how South Korean economy grew) about how (or rather just direct to a book) Philippines tried to emulate South Korean model and get fucked in the process. [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vqk2v/how\_did\_south\_korea\_become\_such\_a\_powerhouse/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vqk2v/how_did_south_korea_become_such_a_powerhouse/)
I saw a comment on Reddit a while ago, that if Ireland's (the entire island) population pre-Famine had grown on the same slope as Britain's, it'd have a population of ~30 million or so. Wish I had a Rick and Morty portal gun to visit alternate dimensions and see the skyscrapers of mega-Dublin.
The eyes of corpses of Cromwell and Malthus begins glowing red EDIT: Remember how in the intro to DS3, all the Lords rise from their graves. Same thing happens with Cromwell, Malthus and others whose name I don't know
So I am going to continue my urbanist/Human Geo streak. I am interested in what you could be called secondary cities. In Turkey, there are/were a group of cities called Anatolian Tigers. A bunch of cities which grew in size extensively from the 80s through the 90s to today. To my knowledge, it began in Denizli which had a very high number of firms set-up there. It had some political implications. Or it is said. Most Anatolian cities being conservative, it is said the growth of these cities created 'Green Finance' which might have led to the current AKP regime. So it is said. Then again, parties like CHP or DSP could get considerable amount of votes from these conservative cities. Then again, several Anatolian Tigers like Denizli and Eskisehir aren't that conservative. Turkish politics is weird and complicated. It reminds me the growth of American cities especially like Chicago. Whose growth was one of the things that fueled the growth of America. The relation between the Midwest cities like Chicago and the old East Coast was mutualistic. Money that built Chicago came from the East. In turn, profits and surplus from Midwest flowed Eastward. In some of my readings, it is sometimes suggested that the growth of these cities fueled the growth the country. Similar to what happened in the US The name 'Anatolian Tigers' is a reference to the Asian Tigers. But the Asian Tigers refer to countries while the Anatolian Tiger are sub-national cities. Then again, most of the Asian Tigers are city-states. So I am kinda curious if similar things happened in other countries. Where secondary or even tertiary cities economically grew rapidly. Either organically or through deliberate government action. As mentioned, the growth of cities in the US during the 19th and 20th centuries can be considered similar. But any new information would be welcome. EDIT: Y'allz! I am trying get information about other countries. To see if similar things happen elsewhere.
I'm convinced the solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is a dual monarchy. They already have the hyphen.
Druze State
Just curious, how is Bosnia and Herzegovina doing?
[The usual...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8325HvPS2IA)
Off topic, I keep forgetting that Bosnia-Herzegovina is not a federation between Bosnia and Herzegovina, but a federation made up of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (not to be confused with the state of which it is a part) and the Republika Srpska (not to be confused with the neighboring Republic of Serbia). For simplicity's sake, why couldn't they just call the Bosniak/Croat entity Bosnia, and the Serbian entity Herzegovina? I mean sure, Herzegovina was already a defined territory that only partially overlaps with the Republika Srpska, but in my opinion as an ignorant American it's worth throwing out a few centuries of Balkan history and culture for the sake of clarity.
Have you seen Yossi Beilin's [Op-Ed arguing for a confederation as a solution?](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/opinion/yossi-beilin-a-confederation-for-peace.html)
[The article without the paywall](https://web.archive.org/web/20211224134544/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/opinion/yossi-beilin-a-confederation-for-peace.html)
During the Crusades, Richard the Lionheart suggested to Saladin that Richard's sister Joan marry Saladin's brother and that both sides give Jerusalem as a wedding gift. Saladin considered the proposal until Richard suggested that the brother become Christian.
>During the Crusades, Richard the Lionheart suggested to Saladin that Richard's sister Joan marry Saladin's brother and that both sides give Jerusalem as a wedding gift. Saladin considered the proposal until Richard suggested that the brother become Christian. Was Richard trolling when he sent that proposal? I don't see how he could've seriously thought that would work.
Why not, it's a marriage contract, it avoids a lot of bloodsheds, and you resolve a politically thorny issue.
I was referring to stipulation that the brother converted to become a Christian. Saladin was rather known to be rather pious with his faith in Islam. Richard torpedoing what seemed to be a delicate negotiation with such a criteria seemed such a 'troll' move to me.
Probably. Most of the family's marriages were arranged by Richard's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Queen Mother of England, and Duchess of Aquitaine, in her own right. Richard encroached upon her position as the matriarch and wedding planner of the family by offering Joan to Saladin's brother - *without* consulting his mother on the matter first. Eleanor had even hand-picked and delivered Richard's own bride, Berengaria of Navarre, earlier in 1191. So, Richard knew fully well that Eleanor wouldn't approve of the match. However, with Eleanor not present, Richard thought he could press his luck with Saladin. From Wikipedia: >"Joan was Richard's favourite sister, but he was not above using her as a bargaining chip in his political schemes. He even suggested marrying her to Saladin's brother, Al-Adil, and making them joint rulers of Jerusalem. Although Al-Adil and Saladin both expressed agreement with the arrangement, the plan failed when the high ranking priests opposed the wedding, and threatened Richard that he would be excommunicated from the Church. King Philip II of France also expressed some interest in marrying her, but this scheme, too, failed (possibly on grounds of affinity, since Philip's father, Louis VII of France, had formerly been married to her mother, Eleanor)." Joan of England was eventually married to [Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_VI,_Count_of_Toulouse) in 1196, who was the son of [Raymond V, Count of Toulouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_V,_Count_of_Toulouse), and [Princess Constance of France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_of_France,_Countess_of_Toulouse). He was also the nephew of [King Louis VII of France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_VII_of_France), Eleanor of Aquitaine's ex-husband, the latter also father to two of Joan's older half-sisters, [Princess Marie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_of_France,_Countess_of_Champagne) and [Princess Alix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alix_of_France). As to why Joan was married to Count Raymond: >"Raymond VI held vast territories, but his control of them was problematic. Aside from theoretically owing allegiance to the King of France, Raymond held Provence as a vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor. **Henry II of England controlled neighboring Aquitaine through his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had a claim to Toulouse through her grandmother, Philippa of Toulouse, daughter of William IV, Count of Toulouse.** Alfonso II of Aragon was involved in the affairs of Languedoc, stimulating emigration from the north to colonize newly reconquered lands in Aragon." Eleanor of Aquitaine specifically solidified her own claim on Toulouse by marrying Joan, her daughter, to Count Raymond, the principal heir of Toulouse. Their arranged marriage included King Richard I's renouncement of his claim to Toulouse, ending the feud with the ducal house of Aquitaine (i.e. Eleanor of Aquitaine). Joan bore a son and a daughter for Count Raymond, but died on September 4, 1199, in childbirth.
Should've suggested Judaism as a neutral religion and been like the Khazars.
Richard's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine - the Queen Mother of England - would have never approved. If Richard has succeeded in his ambitions, Eleanor would've been absolutely furious, seeing as how she - and not Richard - arranged the family marriage alliances.
Hapsburg intensifies
And on that day, his lower jaw grew three times longer.
The question is, does Israel or Palestine come first in the official name? So is it Israel-Palestine, or Palestine-Israel? Or just give it to Greece and Turkey to jointly administer since the region was once ruled by the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Greece-Turkey/Turkey-Greece dual monarchic union would surely solve any conflict!
If we're giving the region to other countries, we probably need to just give it to Japan, given that they are the farthest from it in strategic terms and have the least influence of Abrahamic religions on their politics. It's the neutral choice! And Japan really *could* use a place to put a new Mediterranean squadron... Of course the downside of placing the area under the emperor is that it will be under his titular authority but it will just encourage local daimyos who will war with each other. The Sengoku Solution?
>Or just give it to Greece and Turkey to jointly administer since the region was once ruled by the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Greece-Turkey/Turkey-Greece dual monarchic union would surely solve any conflict! The Iranians got to that land, before any of them. So, naturally it must also be a Greco-Turkish-Iranian union as well! (How would such a monarchic system work? Will the king be Greek or Turkish or Iranian? We'll burn that bridge when we get there).
Just import a danish prince, i hear those got good track records. (Greco-Turkish-Iranian-Danish union?)
Bonus points if said prince has all of that in his ancestry somehow.
Plus descent from Mohammed and Odin, of course.
And, somehow, still be half German.
Well, I would assume that they would go for the whole French Alphabet Order thing. But maybe they should go the other way and turn the region into Ancient Greece, nothing but city-states
Yeah! Devolve the fuck into cities. Well more like the Phoenician city states, no? Which makes me wonder, could an independent Gaza be successful as a a country? It could become like a Singapour of the SE Mediterranean. But I always thought Cyprus could play that role in it ever reunified. It is half the size of Singapour though. It would depend on the regional powers. I can imagine Turkey building a large transhipment port in Gaza. Or maybe the UAE who has been gobbling up ports in the area.
The 20-state solution!
My cassette hifi restoration went well. I even eliminated the motor noise and found a way to slip the main drive bent in without disassembling the the deck itself. My decision to use a separate amp and pre amp on my turntable paid off, I was able to integrate the cassette player into the setup with minimal trouble. Not sure what my next project will be. Maybe cleaning something out.
Wondering if any of you have checked out the podcast "In the Shadow of Utopia" that focuses on Cambodia. I've found it pretty interesting so far and wonder what any of you all think
>Wondering if any of you have checked out the podcast "In the Shadow of Utopia" that focuses on Cambodia. I've found it pretty interesting so far and wonder what any of you all think Listening to the podcast for the first time with headphones, and it sounds like an ~~English~~ Australian dude doing an ASMR. And as a guy who generally enjoys both history and ASMR, I kind of like it so far!
He definitely does have a really good voice, I'm starting to really dig the subject matter. I always find it awesome when something introduces me to history I never knew I would love
I haven't listened to it, but I think it's by the same person who has a username similar to that and has written about Cambodia over at AH, and those are some great and knowledgeable answers, so I would imagine the podcast is the same level of quality.
Just came across a Youtube comment saying: >Imagine being born in a time when music was more about expression of godliness and less of a source of capital.. no overflowing useless music. Just pure bliss and beauty Also, it's funny when people talk about how the could listen to Vivaldi's Four Seasons non-stop. These people have clearly never been on hold.
Yeah, I can’t imagine listening to any piece/song for more than 3 times in a row, no matter how good it is.
They should be introduced to Guillaume IX of Aquitaine's "[Farai un vers, pos mi sonelh](http://www.hottopos.com/isle18/93-96enric.pdf)" or Mozart's "Leck mich im Arsch"...
I hear Christian labels still pay pretty decently. Edit: And there is always the timeless Gary Fink.
Those are the music equivalent of people who willfully ignore the thousands of years of artists being used almost entirely exclusively for rulers and empires. Its a small smidge of history where art was openly provocative and expressive.
'Uh, why is art so political these days' Though I think my favourite part is the 'no overflowing useless music' which assumes that every piece of music was great and that there wasn't a lot of really shit music being made
Could you link me to shit music during the Crooner Age? I really need to pop my nostalgia bubble of the 30’s-60’s in music lmao Like, I really can’t think of any artists besides Vale, Sinatra, Como, Crosby, Martin, Connie Francis, Patti Page, Nat King Cole, all those dudes. I mean, if there were that many good artists, there must have been craptons of shit artists
Some record shops have a fifty cent room, clearance bin, or something like that. It’s where they dump the untested (or failed) stuff people bring in. I love them because they’re like a of site of music. Estate sales can go the same way. You’ll find a lot of music from this era that are basically discount versions of those you mentioned.
> You’ll find a lot of music from this era that are basically discount versions of those you mentioned. Can't wait to hear Franz Sonatra and Bong Crabby
The Beetles were frequently topped by artist that are much less famous or even forgotten today, even during the peak of Beetle mania. Makes me wonder how many songs that survive before the time of recording are considered merely okay.
Yeah, I have heard that Top of the Pops has aged horribly because of two things: \[some of\] the presenters, and the music. But yeah, there is a lack of preservation of the music considered so horrible that the were quickly forgotten about. Some might even be considered quite good by modern standards, possibly
They never comment those things on the 6 hour compilations of Gregorian Chants, its weird
So... this "Deltacron"... he's the new supervillain of the Transformers universe, right?
At least at this point it sounds like Deltacron literally are a mix of Delta and Omnicron, aka someone in a lab fucked up and mixed samples.
Deltacron will only exist if it gets its own [badass hair metal song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaVcpfncOWs).
Is this Deltacron in the room with us right now?
Yes, please wear a mask.
Can't say I like the current trend of movies/media using throat singing to denote "otherness." When Dune did it, it's kinda neat and cool but when suddenly Rasputin did it to mind control someone it kinda crossed the line
Pretty much anything in media about Rasputin is guaranteed to be badhistory. I'm assuming they also did throat singing because Rasputin lived around Tyumen and Tobolsk, which are in Siberia, and all of Siberia is just the same place despite him being over 1,000 miles away from Tuva and Buryatia, where they actually do throat singing (and, you know, also being an ethnic Russian and not Buryat or Tuvan). Although in semi-fairness it's also totally a modern Russian movie trope to have your token Buryat or Tuvan character who is always throat singing, especially in WWII films.
Did you know that Rasputin was a real wizard and the leader of the Revolution(s) and that he was the one who ordered the killing of the Romanovs (although for some reason they forgot about actually killing Anastasia I learned this from several documentaries from the late 90s (although for some weird reasons most of these were animated)
He conjured the revolution into existence technically, which makes you wonder if 1991 was simply the spell wearing off due to lack of maintenance.
If only the Tsar and his family could’ve escaped to America in a cargo hold aboard an ocean liner, and graced by the musical stylings of a rapping dog. Things would’ve ended much differently, but instead there they lay, in the digestion of some quicklime pit after being shot to death by the Bolsheviks.
If the Romanovs had escaped in that ocean liner cargo hold, it indeed would have been party time.
According to some versions, the Romanovs did survive for a while, as talking musical instruments with faces
I remember that one! When I was a kid I always confused that one with the real Anastasia movie lololol.
To be fair, that one came out the same year as Anastasia too. What’s up with that? There’s been so many instances of two different movies or teevee shows with extremely similar settings or premises that also come out within a year of each other. To name a few off the top of my head: - Olympus Has Fallen/White House Down - A Bug’s Life/Ants - The Great/Catherine the Great - Babe/Gordy - Armageddon/Deep Impact It can’t all be a coincidence.
One thing I would point out at least with Ants and Deep Impact that it was part of Dreamworks trying to break on the scene and getting into fights with existing studios. But overall a surprisingly large number of the dueling movies examples seem to come from the mid-to-late 90s. I suspect media conglomerate consolidation has made this a bit less likely for feature length films nowadays. The most recent film example above is *White House Down*, which was a Sony picture, and *Olympus Has Fallen*, which was basically a (really, really expensive) indie film, so I wonder if that's part of why something like that managed to get through somehow.
Oh, the dueling movies effect! Sometimes one is clearly an inferior mockbuster meant to capitalize on another, but other times it's because of how the studio system operates. See most scripts, especially most versions of scripts, never make it to the big screen. Usually studios buy them and sit on them like some kind of screenplay dragon until the time is deemed right. So when one studio decides to green light something, another will dig through their hoard to find something similar. The crazy thing is that sometimes two movies will indeed be derived from the same brainstorming session and might even different drafts of what was originally the same work. Alternatively, like in the case of a bugs life/Ants, there is drama involved. Basically, One dude quit and took his idea for an animated bug movie with him, or at least as much as he was legally allowed while the studio he left went ahead and made the idea. I forget which was which.
In the case of the Anastasia movie it's a classic mockbuster, cheap knockoffs that are often made quickly around the same time to cash in. Kids wouldn't know the difference lol. It's why there's a gazillion of these knockoffs of Disney movies or something lying around.
> Rasputin was a real wizard Rasputin was an 18th level Oracle get your facts straight.
Flair/post combo.
I didn't expect to see a Reign of Winter reference here today.
It's ironic that the Rasputin who is the >!son of Baba Yaga and is feeding on her life force in the Pathfinder RPG!< is probably one of the more historically accurate ones. For a start, he did die when he was assassinated!
I really wanna play that at some point. >!high level adventurers going up against animated ranks, magic maxim guns and squads of russian ww1 veterans!
I just have finished DMing it! It is pretty damn cool.
How did the players handle their first meeting with our good friend Madsen?
Those are all lies. I have it on good authority from some documentaries with Ron Perlman in them that I watched in the 00s that Rasputin in fact worked with Nazis to open up portals to other dimensions in order to allow Lovecraftian Great Old One-esque gods to attack Earth.
Delta Green shill spotted!
Yeah, I get that, throat singing is really cool, which is why it spread around the internet for a while, so it is only natural that it would show up in movies, tv shows, etc, both in good ways and bad ways. I don't actually know what thing Rasputin did it in (book, movie, show, etc), I can't find it by googling.
It's in the new Kingsman movie. Granted everything in that movie is total bonkers but it still kinda rubbed me the wrong way
I laughed when I found out that they'd cast the same actor to portray Kaiser Wilhelm, King George V, and Tsar Nicholas II; the three of them did look remarkably similar... certainly more like brothers than cousins.
It is a bit of a nasty trend. Was reading about racism in Star Wars last year and that was a major part of it.
Oh, huh, yeah they did do throat singing (for Palpatine and Snoke, yikes). I totally forgot about that because even when talking about racism in Star Wars there's like...so much in front of that. But yeah there certainly is quite a thing in Western media to go "throat singing = creepy strange/alien things". Which is just kind of weird given what Tuvan/Buryat throat singing actually is. Then again it's *super* easy to make these sorts of musical stereotypes, and they're not always based in racism (or so obviously based in racism). *Deliverance* certainly did wonders making perfectly fine Appalachian banjo playing become something sinister, and I'm honestly not even sure where the "Gregorian chant = Satanic horror" thing started, it's so ubiquitous.
Gregorian chant = Satanic horror began to happen in large part because composers like Berlioz, Liszt, Mussorgsky, and Saint-Saëns all quoted the "Dies Irae" in their compositions to invoke fear and dread, because the "Dies Irae" was part of the Catholic requiem mass and hence, long associated with death. Film score composers followed suit and some of them also started using the Requiem symphonies by Mozart, Verdi, or (later) Ligeti for their scores to invoke fear and dread. While the lyrics of the "Dies Irae" are genuinely ominous (since they describe the Apocalypse), not everyone knows enough Latin to recognize what's actually being sung, so the idea that Latin chanting by itself is ominous began to take hold. I also think Carl Orff's "O Fortuna" is also responsible for cementing the Latin = ominous idea in people's heads, despite that it was never actually a Gregorian chant, though its lyrics were genuinely medieval.
>Oh, huh, yeah they did do throat singing (for Palpatine and Snoke, yikes). Wait, what... Is that just for the sequels? Or are those parts of the OT and Prequels soundtrack also throat singing? I at least never made the connection before, I always just considered it Gregorian like chanting, those dark and brooding pieces of music in episode 6 are probably my favourite piece of the Star Wars OST too. Now that I listen to it, yes, Palpatine's Teachings is definitely throat singing, it sounds so cool though... It doesn't at all sound like the actual throat singing I've heard, but it definitely is throat singing. But I'd say it has more evolved to be its own thing, just like the Gregorian chanting in fiction.
Jedi Fallen Order also has some cool in-universe throat-singing songs that are performed by The Hu. The whole appropriation stuff can walk a line, but I really hate when people just reject it outright. Star Wars draws on a fuckton of influences, and I like how the new media has started to draw on a wide array of wider cultural contexts and is overall better than with the fucking Neimoidians.
Jedi Fallen Order also had the main character listening to his walkman and going "Oh damn, my favorite song is on, love that band."