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I know Grand Fromage and I went to see a weir system in Sichuan but I don't actually know what a weir is beyond a pile of rocks in the path of a stream.
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May 6, 2019 16:03
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Arglebargle III posted:I know Grand Fromage and I went to see a weir system in Sichuan but I don't actually know what a weir is beyond a pile of rocks in the path of a stream. yeah, i think they're used to force the water behind the weir to pile up a bit; if you put irrigation canals behind the weir some of the water will flow down them. it's presumably much easier to do this than it is to build a dam, then operate it to avoid overtopping i know there's still a big gated weir on the sacramento river that isn't allowed to drop its gates because people don't hate migrating fish quite as much as we used to. i'm sure there's plenty of other irrigation weirs in the country in pakistan they call them barrages and they're a big part of an irrigation system that's almost as big as all of the USA's irrigation put together  they're also useful for hydroelectricity; apparently 27% of pakistan's energy is hydro (5% is nuclear) that "the man who loved china" guy, joseph needham, who wrote tons of detailed books about the history of science and technology in china, wrote a lot about hydraulic engineering history and i found a pdf of that part of his book! (other parts can be found here). it takes forever to load so i'll come back and edit some poo poo in later maybe??? edit: okay, one cool thing is that there was an apparently Taoist vs Confucian argument about flood control that prefigured a debate that happened in the US as late as the 1920's. the taoist, or in this case correct answer is relatively low levees set back to allow some floodplain, while the confucian or in this case incorrect answer is to build really tall walls close together. the US army corps pursuing a Confucian plan in the Mississippi basin was part of the reason for how disastrous the great flood of 1927 was oystertoadfish fucked around with this message at 16:42 on May 6, 2019 |
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May 6, 2019 16:24
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The Basilica Cistern is really neat to visit and I recommend it if anyone’s ever in Istanbul.Arglebargle III posted:I know Grand Fromage and I went to see a weir system in Sichuan but I don't actually know what a weir is beyond a pile of rocks in the path of a stream. That pretty much is what it is, or at least was until modern construction methods. A weir is like a dam but the water is supposed to go over the top instead of being held back totally.
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May 6, 2019 16:28
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skasion posted:
Weird!
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May 6, 2019 16:31
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okay so from that link, one of my favorite things is a series of instructions contained in a temple right next to a place where flow seemingly was divided between two channels:quote:'Dig the channel deep, and i think people followed these directions for hundreds of years with success, using the iron bars and 'marks made on the measuring-scales' as indications of how much water to put where, and of when to stop dredging. the 'four-to-six proportion' is particularly ingenious because this diversion needed to go 40% down one channel and 60% down another in the dry season, then reversed in the wet season someone designed this system and people kept it operating for centuries; modern society has yet to prove that we can do that oystertoadfish fucked around with this message at 16:41 on May 6, 2019 |
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May 6, 2019 16:36
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Weird! 
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May 6, 2019 16:56
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Grand Fromage posted:Nah it was about ramming. The Romans were godawful at it in the First Punic War, so they decided "well, we're good at stabbing" and invented the corvus so they could just latch onto a Carthaginian boat and send over soldiers to murder everyone. Eventually they figured out actual boat combat and ditched the corvus. There was a similar art to a good ramming attack. Hit it too hard and you can get caught up in the wreckage of the other craft, now with your stern exposed and motionless, a perfect target for another enemy ship to take you out. Ramming would have worked the same way. The perfect ram would stave in the other hull just enough to guarantee a sink, while pushing your own ship backwards and leaving you free to maneuver on to the next target.
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May 11, 2019 06:25
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imagine three remes on the edge of a boat
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May 11, 2019 08:45
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Grand Prize Winner posted:imagine three remes on the edge of a boat quinquereme works the same way
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May 11, 2019 21:53
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physeter posted:I think it was Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash where the perfect katana attack was described as stopping the blade above the target, allowing the downward momentum and flexibility of wrists and good steel to both carry it through and rebound from the strike without getting lodged in the victim. I thought it was oblique, long-contact stuff like how the iceberg v titanic played out - you wouldn't want to make directly perpendicular contact but more of an angling blow so you gashed open the other boat without losing all of your considerable inertia.
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May 13, 2019 06:49
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If it weren't for the fact that they actually existed, I'd find triremes horribly unrealistic.
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May 13, 2019 08:12
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hey. thread. want a cistern pic? no? here's a cistern pic (300 BC, island of Delos) it still holds water, i guess. or maybe that's the groundwater table edit: ok if that was the groundwater table they probably wouldn't have needed a drat cistern in the first place editedit: this is really cool to me - an ancient water treatment plant! we still use this method today. these are north african locations; it seems the romans built lots of aqueduct -> cistern supply systems there quote:In the cisterns at Tuccabor and Djebel M’rabba in Tunisia, the transverse chamber was placed between the inlet and the parallel chambers; the chamber serves as a settling tank before water enters the storage chambers. 
oystertoadfish fucked around with this message at 15:16 on May 13, 2019 |
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May 13, 2019 15:01
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I enjoy cisterns
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May 13, 2019 15:03
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oystertoadfish posted:the water enters at A and leaves at H. A-C are settling chambers, D-G are the cisterns proper. H receives water from D-G through lead pipes. this seems like a pretty efficient design, although D and E are going to get lower quality water than F and G Why not make water flow through B and G to get to D and E? It would seem to solve the quality problem. There’s probably a good reason it was done the way it was, like having maintenance access to the passages on the settling side.
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May 13, 2019 21:15
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yeah, they might wanted to limit the number of pipes or something. packing it all in that square might've imposed space constraints too. and maybe they achieved the desired quality by mixing the four and calling it a day I'd love to see the plans and the contract, god drat. engineering survived way better than most trades but there are so many questions that can't be answered
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May 13, 2019 23:29
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 Here is an image of cistern that i took. Not much schematic info on it but wiki says this: quote:"Dara became the site of massacre in the midst of the Armenian Genocide. According to some reports, the cisterns were filled with the bodies of slaughtered Armenians from Diyarbakir, Mardin, and Erzerum in the spring and summer of 1915" ughhhh fucked around with this message at 23:49 on May 13, 2019 |
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May 13, 2019 23:45
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the dark side of cisterns... thanks! that's cool you got to visit dara, i guess i need to go to turkey someday to see all the byzantine poo poo edit: i just noticed something in the source (link (pdf)) about those cisterns a few posts up: quote:A circular tap chamber (H in Figure 10b) received water through two lead pipes from D and E at floor level. It also received the higher quality water from G and F in a third lead pipe a meter higher than floor level. i had assumed that H was full of water, and that the three pipes were all under the surface mixing, but maybe you could stop up some of the pipes and get either good or mediocre water? i still can't figure out how they operated this water treatment plant, drat oystertoadfish fucked around with this message at 01:06 on May 14, 2019 |
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May 14, 2019 00:15
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Might be a dumb question but what happened to the Huns? Did they just get quietly assimilated into other peoples or something?
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May 14, 2019 03:39
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guns for tits posted:Might be a dumb question but what happened to the Huns? Did they just get quietly assimilated into other peoples or something? Pretty much. The general idea is that they got absorbed by the Bulgars.
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May 14, 2019 03:55
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Doesn't Gary have something to do with them?
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May 14, 2019 03:59
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Epicurius posted:Pretty much. The general idea is that they got absorbed by the Bulgars. Thanks. Pretty weird how quickly they seemed to have disappeared though
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May 14, 2019 04:05
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guns for tits posted:Thanks. Pretty weird how quickly they seemed to have disappeared though Sure, although don't forget when you're talking about a lot of these nomadic groups that came into Europe at this time period that, first, they were, for the most part, not unified groups...they were tribal confederations, and identity tended to be fluid, and second, that we're relying on Roman/Byzantine sources for the most part, and they aren't always precise when identifying people. So, for instance, they'll refer to "Hunnish horsemen" when talking about the Bulgars, sometimes. Does that mean that the Huns joined with the Bulgars? Does that mean that the Byzantine historian was confused? Does it mean that he's just using "Hun" to refer to nomadic horsemen? We don't know. Or what does this mean? From a history of Justinian? quote:all of them are called in general Scythians and Huns in particular according to their nation. Thus, some are Koutrigours or Outigours and yet others are Oultizurs and Bourougounds... the Oultizurs and Bourougounds were known up to the time of the Emperor Leo and the Romans of that time and appeared to have been strong. We, however, in this day, neither know them, nor, I think, will we. Perhaps, they have perished or perhaps they have moved off to very far place. How many different groups of people are we talking about here? I was trying to explain to somebody the history of the Turkish migrations last month, and its so easy to get in the weeds when you do that. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 04:32 on May 14, 2019 |
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May 14, 2019 04:28
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guns for tits posted:Thanks. Pretty weird how quickly they seemed to have disappeared though The Hunnic political organization as we know it was basically Attila’s court, its warlords, and its patronage system. The majority of his subjects and retainers were not Huns in any sense other than that they served guys who called themselves Huns: they were Goths, Alans, etc. After his death, his sons were not equal to the task of keeping those subjects and retainers onside; it appears that the sons attempted to divide the empire of Attila among them, but that the Huns’ subject peoples, or at least their own leaders, were not disposed to sit back and be divided. Whatever the exact cause, some faction of the Hunnic subjects revolted under Ardaric the Gepid and fought the sons of Attila at the Nedao River in Pannonia. Ellac, Attila’s eldest son, died in the fighting and his forces probably got cut up pretty severely, though it’s hard to say for sure. Over the next decade or so the other sons relocated their power centers to the Black Sea coast. Depending on what you make of this poorly sourced battle (and you could be inclined to doubt the source that deals with it in most detail, Jordanes, since he’s loudly tooting the horn of the Amaling (Ostrogothic-Italian) princes throughout) you could conclude that it dealt the Hunnic preeminence in barbaricum a blow from which they never recovered. The Huns didn’t all vanish overnight, but their political center had at one point been with armies pushing actively into the Balkans, France and Italy. After the Battle of the Nedao, Hunnic rulers and armies never again exerted any significant influence in the western provinces, which instead became dominated by rulers who the Romans identified variously as Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Alans, Burgundians, Vandals etc. And even in the eastern empire Hunnic rulers had only a relatively minor and innocuous presence after the battle, eventually getting absorbed into other groups. It’s worth noting that these other barbarian rulers also did not rule highly organized nation-states that could totally survive crushing military blows. When was the last time you saw an Ostrogoth or an Alan or a Vandal, after all? (The Franks got a bit lucky.) Ethnicity in late antiquity could be kind of easy come, easy go.
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May 14, 2019 05:03
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skasion posted:It’s worth noting that these other barbarian rulers also did not rule highly organized nation-states that could totally survive crushing military blows. When was the last time you saw an Ostrogoth or an Alan or a Vandal, after all? (The Franks got a bit lucky.) Ethnicity in late antiquity could be kind of easy come, easy go. I think this is a good point to make especially with this weird tribal confederations that were kind of loosely defined even for the people who were apart of them. Another way of putting this might be that in antiquity, ethnicity was. . . smaller. There weren't so many big broad identities, but local and tribal ethnicities were much stronger. The difference between the Romans and their Italian neighbors was strong and endured for many hundreds of years even after their subjugation. But imagine trying to explain that to a Parthian? They all spoke related languages, governed their cities with similar customs, and followed similar religions. Yet the little differences made for strong and enduring differences. Distinguishing them as a people would have been very difficult without intimate familiarity. Another example is the achaemenid Persians and Medians. They lived in the same polity for hundreds of years, spoke related languages, were clearly very closely related. . . but also clearly distinguished each other for much of their empire's history. The Greeks were aware of the difference, but a lot of the time they kinda seem to melt together in the Greek histories. edit: I guess what I'm trying to say is that most likely, most Huns or Ostrogoths probably barely even thought of themselves as Huns or Goths. They would have recognized their connection to each other, but for them the primary identity would have been that of their kinship group or moiety, of which there would have been several within each tribe. Squalid fucked around with this message at 07:20 on May 14, 2019 |
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May 14, 2019 07:09
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skasion posted:The Hunnic political organization as we know it was basically Attila’s court, its warlords, and its patronage system. The majority of his subjects and retainers were not Huns in any sense other than that they served guys who called themselves Huns: they were Goths, Alans, etc. After his death, his sons were not equal to the task of keeping those subjects and retainers onside; it appears that the sons attempted to divide the empire of Attila among them, but that the Huns’ subject peoples, or at least their own leaders, were not disposed to sit back and be divided. Whatever the exact cause, some faction of the Hunnic subjects revolted under Ardaric the Gepid and fought the sons of Attila at the Nedao River in Pannonia. Ellac, Attila’s eldest son, died in the fighting and his forces probably got cut up pretty severely, though it’s hard to say for sure. Over the next decade or so the other sons relocated their power centers to the Black Sea coast. What's a gepid?
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May 14, 2019 13:46
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It’s another somewhat shadowy late-antiquity ethnic group. The Romans thought of them as a subgroup of Goths, which probably suggests that they were Germanic-speaking and followed Arian Christianity rather than the Athanasian/Roman version. Again Jordanes is a big source on them, which is a problem because he was writing to butter up his fellow (romanized) Goths and portrays Gepids as their rivals, so he trashes them a lot. After the sons of Attila were displaced to the east, Gepid rulers dominated the northern Balkans for the next century. Eventually (in the 560s) they fell foul of the Lombards, the Avars, and the East Romans and their territory was partitioned, after which they were presumably subsumed into those three groups. Fun fact: A couple centuries later, a Lombard writer claimed that the last Gepid King, Cunimund, had been killed by the Lombard King Alboin in this war, and that Alboin enslaved Cunimund’s daughter and made his skull into a winecup for the daughter to drink from, for which cause she assassinated him.
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May 14, 2019 14:02
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Try putting "The Roman empire fell in the year" as input to talktotransformer. It has some spicy takes.
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May 14, 2019 14:07
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Tunicate posted:Try putting "The Roman empire fell in the year" as input to talktotransformer. It has some spicy takes. quote:"The Roman empire fell in the year 79 B.C.E. to the forces of King Archelaus, the King of Rome. When the two nations met under one banner, the common people fought to the last man and death ensued. One man was caught in the chariot, and was pulled off, but was not killed. He was carried by a great number of wild lions into the palace, where he was given up to the gods. There he was worshiped, and for a long time the worship of him was so universal that the rest of the earth believed in it." The first Christian church appeared in the fourth century A.D. I mean, basically right.
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May 14, 2019 14:11
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quote:The Roman Empire fell in the year AD 79. After that, the Roman Emperors were killed by the Greeks who overthrew them. e: I’m dying lol quote:Romans are called by the name Romans because of their culture. They were founded on the Romans, so they are referred to as simply Romans, if used by one speaker or plural as they should be by anyone calling himself or herself a Roman and speaking about such an event on such a general and universal basis as one can imagine. The Romans were founded on Rome, and the Roman Republic on Rome, and that made the Romans Roman. skasion fucked around with this message at 14:29 on May 14, 2019 |
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May 14, 2019 14:23
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The Roman Empire fell in the year 1986. The Romans are very good at being terrible. The Romans are very good at being terrible. The Roman Empire fell in the year 1990. The Romans are great at being very terrible.
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May 14, 2019 14:39
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Oh my!quote:Caligula wrote and published his book, The Life and Times of Cicero and Quintus Plautus, during the first years of the Republic. This is a text that is, essentially, a history written in a way that is somewhat familiar from the lives of Cicero and Quirinus. It is written in the style of a Roman historian. The first paragraph of Cicero and Quintus Plautus is quoted verbatim, along with the rest of the text. Cicero himself wrote in this context, "The gods and men are equal." It should also be noted that the word "equal" was inserted into this portion of the text to mean only that things were the same in respect to each being. Cicero wrote these words exactly once, in Book II, Section 2, The Natural Good or Universal Law. quote:Julius Caesar (27 BC–27 CE)
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May 14, 2019 14:43
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quote:The Roman Empire fell in the year 391.
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May 14, 2019 14:48
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the torture fields, where torture is used, in a field
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May 14, 2019 14:50
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skasion posted:Fun fact: A couple centuries later, a Lombard writer claimed that the last Gepid King, Cunimund, had been killed by the Lombard King Alboin in this war, and that Alboin enslaved Cunimund’s daughter and made his skull into a winecup for the daughter to drink from, for which cause she assassinated him. yikes
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May 14, 2019 14:53
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skasion posted:It’s another somewhat shadowy late-antiquity ethnic group. The Romans thought of them as a subgroup of Goths, which probably suggests that they were Germanic-speaking and followed Arian Christianity rather than the Athanasian/Roman version. Again Jordanes is a big source on them, which is a problem because he was writing to butter up his fellow (romanized) Goths and portrays Gepids as their rivals, so he trashes them a lot. After the sons of Attila were displaced to the east, Gepid rulers dominated the northern Balkans for the next century. Eventually (in the 560s) they fell foul of the Lombards, the Avars, and the East Romans and their territory was partitioned, after which they were presumably subsumed into those three groups. I didn't realize the skull for a cup thing was a real thing, but if you need a reason to assassinate someone, that would be it.
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May 14, 2019 15:24
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SimonCat posted:What's a gepid? I dunno, what's a gepid wit you?
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May 14, 2019 15:29
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Mr Enderby posted:Caligula wrote and published his book, The Life and Times of Cicero and Quintus Plautus, during the first years of the Republic. This is a text that is, essentially, a history written in a way that is somewhat familiar from the lives of Cicero and Quirinus. It is written in the style of a Roman historian. The first paragraph of Cicero and Quintus Plautus is quoted verbatim, along with the rest of the text. it menaces with spikes of limestone
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May 14, 2019 15:39
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SimonCat posted:I didn't realize the skull for a cup thing was a real thing, but if you need a reason to assassinate someone, that would be it. A fair number of cultures seem to have made cups out of human skulls - though it varied whether this was intended as a symbol of contempt or respect for the person who... provided the material.
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May 14, 2019 15:45
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my personal favorite anecdote (which may have already been mentioned in the past 700 pages) is that of the sacred chickens at the Battle of Drepana during the First Punic War. My Roman Law professor took great joy in describing the importance of the sacred chickens in the divining of the auspices. Publius Claudius Pulcher, as consul, took the auspices before battle to foretell how things would turn out. How the sacred chickens ate would determine success or failure. The sacred chickens, having been on board a ship for some time were understandably a bit seasick and refused to eat. Pulcher decided that "if they won't eat, maybe they will drink" and kicked them overboard. This of course, was why the Romans were utterly defeated. You don't mess with the scared chickens. /s
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May 14, 2019 16:04
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I’m learning a lot about Christianity.quote:The Roman Empire fell in the year 121 A.D.
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May 14, 2019 16:30
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