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MMM Whatchya Say posted:I'd vaguely heard that Mongol's did some decent and fair ruling in some of their conquering, at least in terms of religious liberty. Did they gently caress up some areas worse than others? (Although I guess also every place that got invaded by mongols didn't get invaded by the same mongols at the same time, so there has to be some level of variation.) The way ~♡~♡Dan Carlin♡~♡~ describes it, the Mongols embraced just about every religion as a sort of afterlife insurance policy. It was less an enlightened view of religious freedom and more of a way to cover all of their bases.
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Apr 15, 2016 23:56
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The crusades were also kind of a lovely thing to do because the Muslims controlling the area at the time didn't really care if Christians wanted to visit Jerusalem. For the most part Christians were a largely ignored minority in the area, as were the Jews. Pilgrims were welcome to come in whatever numbers they wanted so long as they didn't cause problems. Non-Muslims could live in the area and get mostly left alone. Merchants could do their thing too. lol
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Apr 16, 2016 00:06
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If memory serves the people that just rolled over and said "OK Genghis, you own us now" didn't do so bad so long as they kept paying the tribute and were OK with being looted. The peoples that resisted got hosed up something fierce and the loving up increased the harder they resisted. The Mongols were also, you know, the Mongols and would sometimes burn down your kingdom for no other reason than "yeah gently caress you, dude."
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Apr 16, 2016 00:07
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steinrokkan posted:"Mongols had some good ideas re. religious liberty" is pretty much the same as "The Nazis were right about the autobahns". It's tangentially related to their politics at best. They may have tolerated Christianity and other faiths, but they were genocidal towards Christian peoples who didn't submit nonetheless. The supposed religious tolerance was a thing only because the Mongols didn't feel constrained by theology in enacting their goals, and violated basic religious tenets in order to fulfil their ambitions.Their rule opened up new avenues in the Silk road for a while, but this stability was entirely dependent on the terror they were able to exact upon their subjects. As soon as their elites lost their "touch", everything came crushing down and became worse than it was prior to their rise in power. ToxicSlurpee posted:If memory serves the people that just rolled over and said "OK Genghis, you own us now" didn't do so bad so long as they kept paying the tribute and were OK with being looted. The peoples that resisted got hosed up something fierce and the loving up increased the harder they resisted. Makes sense
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Apr 16, 2016 00:28
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Going back to Crusader chat, the way the Crusaders managed to grab Jerusalem the first time was Nothing short of a miracle. And then they put every inhabitant of Jerusalem to the sword - Muslims, Jews, Christians. When Saladin captured Jerusalem about a hundred years later, he was much nicer and let the Christian inhabitants flee with their lives and property.
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Apr 16, 2016 01:51
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I think I read somewhere that around the time the first Crusade was happening Christians were still the majority in the Holy Land but they were mostly from sects that were considered heretical by European Christians and/or they were simply indistinguishable from the Muslim to an outsider so they got put to the sword anyway.
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Apr 16, 2016 02:23
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A White Guy posted:When Saladin captured Jerusalem about a hundred years later, he was much nicer and let the Christian inhabitants flee with their lives and property. A wrinkle here, when Saladin captured Jerusalem there was much less of a fuss over it - the siege lasted like 2-3 weeks and ended through negotiation. The city capitulated with supposedly ridiculous foodstores, supplies and equipment - everything needed for a prolonged siege. The city didn't immediately surrender but resisted briefly inflicting lopsided casualties on Saladin's forces, even after a wall went down. The writing, however, was on the Not saying Saladin wasn't nice as far as conquerors go though, after paying the meager negotiated ransom the better off Christians left with an absurd amount of wealth unmolested with full escort. A large number of the unramsoned people left behind were simply freed if they were too young, too old or wretchedly poor (a lot of people still did get sold to slavery tho) and Christians of local descent were allowed to remain - in some cases their lives improved if they belonged to a sect condemned by Catholicism. They weren't treated as vile heretics anymore, just as generic non-Muslims with some rights. As an aside, to me the most vivid description of how bad the massacre of Jerusalem was during the first crusade was its aftermath still apparent years later. During rainfalls the streets were still hazardously slippery from dissolved fat. Not exactly a fun historical fact 
hard counter has a new favorite as of 07:05 on Apr 16, 2016 |
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Apr 16, 2016 04:32
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FreudianSlippers posted:I think I read somewhere that around the time the first Crusade was happening Christians were still the majority in the Holy Land but they were mostly from sects that were considered heretical by European Christians and/or they were simply indistinguishable from the Muslim to an outsider so they got put to the sword anyway. It's been said in this thread before, but "You are being Christian wrong" has been a super common reason for war in Europe. Makes sense that it'd stretch to the Crusades as well.
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Apr 16, 2016 05:27
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Balian of Ibelin was a seriously crafty guy and is way more interesting in real life than the Orlando Bloom character from Kingdom of Heaven.
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Apr 16, 2016 06:12
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On the subject of Mongol Chat, we have to remember that some of the "Mongols" who sacked Baghdad had most likely never actually seen Mongolia. It was the succesor states to Ghengis and his immediate heirs who tried to expand to such a ludicrous degree that "universal conquest" seemed like more of a prediction and less of a goal. The Mongolian rule of China was also not "wholly negative" because it implies that the bat poo poo insanity of the Song's "lets all get back to how great Confucius really is" crusade was the right thing to do. The implication that it was simply Chinese people who stopped the Mongols from utterly burning down the entire country and turning it into grasslands is also a tad silly, it's likely that some areas were planned to be burned and it was turned down based off of logistical concerns. The best example of the whole "Stupid barbarian horselords can't rule a drat thing" being incorrect is that three of the largest and longest lived Chinese Dynastic houses have come from the steppe peoples, in particular the T'ang, the Yuan and the Qing. The first of whom is one of the better Chinese dynasties even in native records. Josef bugman has a new favorite as of 07:02 on Apr 16, 2016 |
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Apr 16, 2016 06:55
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A White Guy posted:And then they put every inhabitant of Jerusalem to the sword - Muslims, Jews, Christians. This is also supposedly where the phrase "Let God sort them out." was born. The commander ordered that everyone be slaughtered and when questioned, he responded that "God will know his own."
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Apr 16, 2016 21:11
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Canemacar posted:This is also supposedly where the phrase "Let God sort them out." was born. The commander ordered that everyone be slaughtered and when questioned, he responded that "God will know his own." I don't have a source on hand, but I'm 99% sure that quote is actually from the Albigensian Crusade.
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Apr 16, 2016 21:38
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CARL MARK FORCE IV posted:I don't have a source on hand, but I'm 99% sure that quote is actually from the Albigensian Crusade. That's also my impression.
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Apr 16, 2016 21:49
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CARL MARK FORCE IV posted:I don't have a source on hand, but I'm 99% sure that quote is actually from the Albigensian Crusade.
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Apr 16, 2016 22:00
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The word "molotov cocktail" was originally a joke. During the winter war Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov claimed that the bombs they were dropping on the FInns were actually airborne humanitarian food deliveries. The Finns called these bombs for "molotov bread baskets". When they hurled the homemade firebombs at the Soviet forces they called them "molotov cocktalis", a drink to go with the "food".
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Apr 16, 2016 22:15
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Apr 28, 2016 02:58
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According to the historical-walk video I watched on the treadmill today, the French cut the lift cables to the Eiffel Tower during WW2 at one point, just so Hitler couldn't get to the top of said tower himself. If he wanted to, he'd have to climb the thing himself.
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Apr 28, 2016 06:11
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It's always good when the French use their national superpower of being total dicks for good.
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Apr 29, 2016 03:39
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The WWII U.S. Army booklet 112 Gripes About the French is good reading. Yeah, we know the French are dicks, but there are some mitigating circumstances. Please put up with them.
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Apr 29, 2016 05:12
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Platystemon posted:The WWII U.S. Army booklet 112 Gripes About the French is good reading. Haha, most are pretty reasonable, but then there's this one: quote:48 "I'd like the French a lot better if they were cleaner."
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Apr 29, 2016 08:49
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 Going back to the Mongols, this is a photograph of Said Mir Mohammed Alim Khan, the last direct descendant of Genghis Khan, in the city of Bukhara in 1911. Bukhara was taken by Genghis Khan toward the end of his reign when he was about 60, and it fell from Mongol rule when the Soviets invaded in 1920. Looks like one of those black and white photos that's been colorized, right? It isn't. The photo was taken by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, a pioneer in color photography who took three black-and-white photos, each with a different color filter - red, green, and blue. The result could be projected through filters of the same colors and superimposed on a screen, thereby synthesizing the original range of color. Edit - Here's what the technique looked like. The photo I posted above is actually a touched-up version. Still, very remarkable for the time: 
MeatwadIsGod has a new favorite as of 20:58 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 20:07
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The effect black and white has on your perception is amazing. Old, colorized pictures look so much more real, for the lack of a better word.
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Apr 29, 2016 20:37
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Strangely enough back in the day movies in color were seen as being less realistic than black and white films because since color was quite expensive it was mostly reserved for epics and musicals while more realistic, and cheaper, films usually used black and white. Battle of Algiers(1966) even purposefully used the grainiest black and white film they could find to imitate raw newsreel footage. The film starts with text telling you that not a single shot of news or stock footage was used for the film, it really is just that realistic. Everyone should watch Battle of Algiers, it's fantastic and also deals with the dickishness of the French. Also some of the heroes are literally Muslim suicide bombers. FreudianSlippers has a new favorite as of 20:46 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 20:42
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Also, Technicolor & its predecessors are pretty far off from the colors you'd see with your eyes looking at the same scene. Actually, modern films are tinted as hell too (cf. The Matrix being intensely green-tinted in the matrix scenes). The "language" of color in photos & cinema takes learning. Saw this thing about how color film was developed by white people & optimized to capture white skin tones. Black skin tones were ignored for decades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d16LNHIEJzs
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Apr 29, 2016 20:49
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e X posted:The effect black and white has on your perception is amazing. Old, colorized pictures look so much more real, for the lack of a better word. Old pictures were also taken with a really,really good resolution. We use old, high altitude camera shots to study topograhpy because their resolution is so good.
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Apr 29, 2016 20:56
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A White Guy posted:Old pictures were also taken with a really,really good resolution. We use old, high altitude camera shots to study topograhpy because their resolution is so good. It was only very recently that digital cameras were able to match film in resolution, and it took even longer to sufficiently match plate photography. Old daguerreotypes have a surprisingly high resolution for pre-Civil War photography:  This is a Revolutionary War veteran, photographed 70 years after the end of the war. Plate photography may have been superseded by film around the turn of the century due to its convenience and light weight, but astronomers continued using plates for extremely high resolution photography until the last few years. Holography still required plates as of 2014 because even the largest digital sensors couldn't match their resolution. I actually have a Kodak No. 2 Brownie from the 1907-1910 production range, a derivative of the camera that introduced film to the masses. This is the Kodak No. 1, the later variation of the first Kodak camera to use paper film. The shutter had to be cocked by a string and tripped by a button. It was pre-loaded with a roll of 100 round frames and cost $25. It cost $10 to have Eastman Kodak develop the film, reload the camera, and send you the freshly loaded camera with prints. This is equivalent to $630 for the camera and $250 for the developing and prints today, or $2.50 for a single exposure and developing/printing service. So actually not that bad!  The Brownie (I'll post pics of mine later along with a drawing of the inside showing the mechanism) was a refinement of the old box camera to try and make photography truly available to everyone. It cost only $1 (I think about $27 today) when first released and used "cartridge film", so named because the rolled-up paper-backed film looked vaguely like a shotgun shell. Inside the leatherette-covered cardboard (later metal) box was a wooden (later cardboard) film carrier, a hollow box with a spool on one end and empty space for a film roll on the other end. You put the film roll in the empty space and unravel it around the empty space at the back of the carrier so the film will be passing in front of a hole facing the lens, then put the end of the film into the spool and wind it a turn or two to get it started. On the side of the box is a little lever that flips the shutter open and closed whether you push it up or down. You push the lever to click the shutter open and take an exposure, then wind the film. There's just a little red window on the back that exposes numbers on the back of the film paper to show which exposure you're on. When you're done, you open the box and pull out the film carrier. The film has been wound tightly around the spool so you can pull it out safely in the light and pack it for development. You take the now empty spool that the film used to be rolled around and move it to the other side of the film carrier to become the new take-up spool for the next roll. What makes the Brownie so revolutionary is that it was the first camera to combine the idea of a cheap, simple box camera with cheap and light film; there were a few older designs for a Brownie-like camera by other manufacturers, but they used glass plates. The No. 2 Brownie I have is also the camera that introduced the standard 120 roll film to the world, which is the only film along with the smaller 35mm to really survive the digital revolution of the past 15 years. Almost everything else is only available from a few manufacturers or not even made at all, forcing people to rely on old film stocks of dubious quality or even try to refill cartridges with cheap 35mm to use them in their cameras now that new ones are no longer being made.
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Apr 29, 2016 23:05
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I think Kodak, Fuji and Ilford are still making 4x5 film sheets.
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Apr 29, 2016 23:10
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After reading about all the Mongolian shenanigans I wouldn't be surprised if one day China just rolled carpet bombed the entire country one day , just to make sure they don't ever try that poo poo again.
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Apr 29, 2016 23:36
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Instant Sunrise posted:I think Kodak, Fuji and Ilford are still making 4x5 film sheets. Film sheets and plates are still made for special purpose photography like holography and astronomy (and enthusiasts snap them up for their vintage or weird cameras too), but all the strange roll film sizes like 117 or 127 and pretty much any proprietary film is long out of official production. The good news is that some small photography enthusiast businesses are able to make obsolete film sizes like 127 and 620 and sell it, and the 126 cartridges used for the famous Kodak Instamatic cameras can be refilled in the dark with 35mm film so you can actually shoot on your $10 garage sale camera with brand new film. You're poo poo outta luck for APS unless you want expired film, though. Even if you wanted to fill a cartridge with new film, you'd need to make your own to fit its smaller size (unlike Kodak 126 cartridges, which just use regular 35mm). The good news is that expired film usually just gradually degrades from the expiration date, rather than suddenly becoming useless when it hits, and the degradation of film can be slowed or even nearly halted by refrigeration and freezing. There are companies with stocks of frozen expired film that they sell off.
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Apr 29, 2016 23:55
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chitoryu12 posted:Film sheets and plates are still made for special purpose photography like holography and astronomy (and enthusiasts snap them up for their vintage or weird cameras too), but all the strange roll film sizes like 117 or 127 and pretty much any proprietary film is long out of official production. The good news is that some small photography enthusiast businesses are able to make obsolete film sizes like 127 and 620 and sell it, and the 126 cartridges used for the famous Kodak Instamatic cameras can be refilled in the dark with 35mm film so you can actually shoot on your $10 garage sale camera with brand new film. Yeah, I shot an expired roll of Kodachrome a few years ago and got it developed just before Dwayne's stopped processing it, and that came out fine.
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Apr 30, 2016 00:11
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Your Gay Uncle posted:After reading about all the Mongolian shenanigans I wouldn't be surprised if one day China just rolled carpet bombed the entire country one day , just to make sure they don't ever try that poo poo again. It's actually really interesting how much influence the steppe nomads had over the history of Eurasia for the last 4000+ years in general.
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Apr 30, 2016 00:12
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It's funny, I worked at a science museum for a while, and school classes would come in for lessons about a range of subjects. I often did the photography one, and after a short history of photography, the kids would get to work with film and a pinhole camera in the dark room, take a picture, and then develop it. Next, they'd make a positive by putting the developed film on photographic paper and applying light. They were simple black-and-whites of course. Of course I made some pics myself too, and I kept a few of them. After sitting on my desk for a year or so they started fading and turning a bit brown just like actual old photographs. I suppose the cheap quality of developer and fixer fluid we use reduces the time they stay looking "fresh". The funny thing is that when I show these pictures to people now, some of them just won't believe it was me who took them, and just a year ago. They see sepia photos and they immediately assume they've got to be old. Even though if you look more carefully you see modern stuff in the picture.
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Apr 30, 2016 00:35
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Elyv posted:It's actually really interesting how much influence the steppe nomads had over the history of Eurasia for the last 4000+ years in general. The Scythians were a steppe people some 3k years ago, and I may be wrong but I think the scythe (as in the sickle-on-a-stick agricultural instrument) was named after them sometime before recorded history. They brought it here, or whoever named it back then thought they did. Re: film, I'm helping my parents scan their negatives from the 70s/80s/90s (3000 so far, and nowhere near halfway through god), and a lot of them are hella degraded. To be fair they've just been stored in like cardboard sleeves in a box on a shelf, but often the developed pictures in the albums that've seen daylight at least a couple times per year have better definition & clarity. Seriously if you have the opportunity to get all that poo poo scanned: Do it now, cause they'll only lose more color & more contrast & fade away into oblivion the longer you wait. Carthag Tuek has a new favorite as of 00:50 on Apr 30, 2016 |
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Apr 30, 2016 00:44
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Yeah, cellulose acetate film ("safety film", as it replaced extremely flammable nitrate-based film) has a bad problem with degradation. This is how Wikipedia describes it:quote:In acetate film, acetyl (CH3CO) groups are attached to long molecular chains of cellulose. With exposure to moisture, heat, or acids, these acetyl groups break from their molecular bonds and acetic acid is released. What this means is that in hot and humid conditions, the plastic film base begins to chemically transform and deteriorate. It has a distinctive vinegary smell and becomes brittle, sometimes so bad that the film shatters when handling. It also shrinks and separates from the image emulsion itself, causing the image to buckle, and in advanced stages the base's plasticizers begin to ooze out and bubble on the surface of the image. There's no known way to adequately reverse "vinegar syndrome", but low temperature and low (but not too low; about 40% is good) humidity can make film last for as long as 150 years before it begins to deteriorate. Of course, the universe is destined to wreck film even in ideal conditions. Just background radiation can cause unexposed film stock to deteriorate even when frozen to the point where all other degradation has effectively ceased.
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Apr 30, 2016 04:12
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Ah that makes sense. I never looked into the chemistry of it, but the older they are, the more they're curving along the length, which makes sense cause that's the shortest side on a 4-image strip. most of the time It's still possible to put them in the scanner slide. Some of them got some moiré patterns when scanned but mostly they turned out ok. Biggest problem is that a lot of the pre-1990 ones are way dark or have like random sharp blots on them, which idk what are but they're there. Also to be fair: some of them my dad developed himself so idk his mixtures etc.
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Apr 30, 2016 04:23
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The recording industry has a similar problem with magnetic tape. The adhesive used to bond the oxide to the tape backing tends to absorb moisture from the air, weakening the bond between the two. If enough time has passed the adhesive can break down to the point that when you put a tape up on the machine and try to play it you end up with a sticky mess of oxide coating the heads and guides along with a dusty coating all over the deck itself. This is called 'shedding' (for obvious reasons), and is disastrous for both the tape and the machine. Fortunately, unlike with film, you can fix the affected tape(s) by carefully baking them in a convection oven to remove the moisture and return them to playable condition. It's not a perfect fix, and it's certainly not permanent, but you should get one good pass out of the treated tape before it starts shedding all over the place again. You might get more if you're lucky and the tape wasn't too bad to begin with, but one pass is all you need to transfer it to a new tape (or whatever media is being used) which can then be used without fear of destroying the master or damaging the machine.
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Apr 30, 2016 05:07
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Oh man I remember when my folks started to rip some of the reels they'd recorded in the 70s. They had to borrow reel to reel player, they'd sold their own. But they had to align the tape head and the gain & and one more thing I think. At least I they figured out how to cut up the longass aiff into tracks for burning on cds. That's gotta be like a decade ago. I guess it's time to copy the important CDRs huh. Carthag Tuek has a new favorite as of 05:35 on Apr 30, 2016 |
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Apr 30, 2016 05:33
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The Mentalizer posted:The recording industry has a similar problem with magnetic tape. The adhesive used to bond the oxide to the tape backing tends to absorb moisture from the air, weakening the bond between the two. If enough time has passed the adhesive can break down to the point that when you put a tape up on the machine and try to play it you end up with a sticky mess of oxide coating the heads and guides along with a dusty coating all over the deck itself. This is called 'shedding' (for obvious reasons), and is disastrous for both the tape and the machine. Fortunately, unlike with film, you can fix the affected tape(s) by carefully baking them in a convection oven to remove the moisture and return them to playable condition. It's not a perfect fix, and it's certainly not permanent, but you should get one good pass out of the treated tape before it starts shedding all over the place again. You might get more if you're lucky and the tape wasn't too bad to begin with, but one pass is all you need to transfer it to a new tape (or whatever media is being used) which can then be used without fear of destroying the master or damaging the machine. Aren't magnetic tapes commonly used by large internet companies for data backups, because while they're slow as hell, they last way way longer than discs of any kind, and are a relatively compact way of storing data? I think Google has these huge warehoused of tapes with robots automatically loading/unloading them into a data recorder. If what you said is true, that sounds like a serious problem for those backup solutions.
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Apr 30, 2016 08:23
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Modern backup tape systems (ie invented after 1990, probably earlier) usually have some kind of auto-correction checksum going. Basically they can lose X% of the data, but the rest will be enough to reconstruct it. What X is depends on the sytem.
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Apr 30, 2016 08:37
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Sorry, when I say "modern" magnetic tape backup systems I just mean that those are still used. There's nothing modern about them.
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Apr 30, 2016 08:40
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