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Libluini posted:That sounds perfectly reasonable. From now on, the mods should probate everyone using both words. You complete fuckface rear end in a top hat, you're totally right. Fuckface is offensive too tho.. Maybe ppl should grow up and realize than in anger, people will use mean words. What makes me lol is the idea that some words are too offensive when the point of an insult is to offend. Maybe ppl should just stop being assholes and stop insulting others and stop pretending that its ok to insult others in one way, but not ok to insult them another way when in truth, its not ok to insult others regardless of which stupid word is used.
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Oct 20, 2020 16:35
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Scarodactyl posted:While he is being disingenuous to some extent 'idiot' was once a technical term too (along with 'imbecile' and 'moron'). Then again given the medical establishment at the time I'd guess it being technical was not particularly meant to exclude it being perjorative. Here's the things... Its not the word that's the problem, its the use of the word. It doesn't matter that the clinical definition of a word changes, ppl will use the new word. There's a term for it, i don't remember it. But 100 years from now, people will say "Don't use the word Goobermaster, it refers to X conditions and its punching down and whaaaaannnn". Personally I always used the R word a lot and the only reason i'm trying to cut it out of my vocabulary isn't that i care, its that i'm sick of idiotic 6h probate.
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Oct 20, 2020 16:38
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I am glad for your support of my coworker who shouts slurs for black people whenever he stubs a toe or gets sun glare in his eyes.
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Oct 20, 2020 16:41
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Scarodactyl posted:While he is being disingenuous to some extent 'idiot' was once a technical term too (along with 'imbecile' and 'moron'). Either we have some different definition of disingenuous or we're saying the same thing here, I don't know which.
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Oct 20, 2020 16:41
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Dalael posted:Fuckface is offensive too tho.. atlantis alive in bolivia
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Oct 20, 2020 16:42
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Terrible Opinions posted:I am glad for your support of my coworker who shouts slurs for black people whenever he stubs a toe or gets sun glare in his eyes. Now that's a bold assumption. Like we're talking about words like "idiot" and "retarded" and you immediately go "Well i'm glad you support the use of racial slurs." What in the actual gently caress is wrong with you?
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Oct 20, 2020 16:43
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He'd just move on to a different word for being mad. So why get upset that he's using a slur? How about calling down syndrome kids mongoloid babies?
Terrible Opinions fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Oct 20, 2020 |
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Oct 20, 2020 16:45
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Terrible Opinions posted:He'd just move on to a different word for being mad. So why get upset that he's using a slur? How about doctors calling severely malformed infants unlikely to survive more than a few weeks "mongoloid". Parents are gonna get just as upset at any other word for "your baby's gonna die". I'd say because racial slurs don't evolve based on the medical jargon of the day so that makes a bit of a difference. But then again, i repeat. Its extremely lol to think "Its ok to insult others, as long as you do it right" when in truth, its not ok to insult someone. Whenever I do, regardless of the words I use, I know I'm the rear end in a top hat for having stooped low enough to insult even if absolutely no slurs were used. Stop trying to pretend its ok and giving yourself a pass on how to "do it right" *edit that was the end of my part of the derail for the day. Dalael fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Oct 20, 2020 |
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Oct 20, 2020 16:51
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There is no way I can express my sincere opinion on that assertion without insulting your reasoning capabilities.
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Oct 20, 2020 16:56
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what are some fun insults the romans used, maybe in their wacky graffiti or the grandiose speeches they loved? e: pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo
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Oct 20, 2020 16:57
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Thank god, I'm sure I'd have developed brain cancer if this derail had continued any longer.Edgar Allen Ho posted:what are some fun insults the romans used, maybe in their wacky graffiti or the grandiose speeches they loved? I sincerely hope at least some Romans called stupid people "Atlantians", bonus points if it refers to people believing Atlantis was real.
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Oct 20, 2020 17:00
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Libluini posted:Thank god, I'm sure I'd have developed brain cancer if this derail had continued any longer. Sounds like you want another derail 
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Oct 20, 2020 17:02
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I don't know a ton about the Tang Dynasty, but I do know that the Tang poet Li He was supposed to be a child prodigy, and went off to write the Imperial Examination aged 20, but was prevented from doing so at the last minute because his father's name was too similar to the name of the exam. He then went home, wrote tons of well-regarded but super angsty poetry (much of which his mom threw down a toilet), and died of tuberculosis at age 27. So, here's the big problem with all Tang history-- bibliographically, it's nearly non-existent. Most of what passes for Tang History comes from the Old Book of Tang (JTS), which was compiled right before the beginning of the Song Dynasty by one of the dynasties which existed in the Tang-Song interregnum. Scholars generally explain the lack of Tang primary sources with reference to the An Lushan Rebellion, during which the capital at Chang'an was taken, and the imperial library burned (this sounds right but Tibetan forces briefly occupied the Tang capital like 3 or 4 times during the 8th century as well, so who really knows when the sources were destroyed). While we do have a decent amount of primary sources from the time, very few are expressly historical. Epitaphs, letters, poems, and even a nascent sort of fiction-writing have all been transmitted to us-- but largely through the selections of Song and later, Qing bibliographers, historians, and scholars. Thus, the biggest problem with pointing to the biography of Li He is that it is a record written centuries after the subject died; his inclusion in the biographies in the JTS is reflective of the later literary culture in which it was composed. Li He is only one Tang poet who fits this sort of mold--precisely because of the later-deified rockstar of Tang Poetry-- Han Yu : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Yu. That we have a LOT of Han Yu's letters, we can at least get a feeling for the ways in which the man was later deified into THE POET, and by analogy ask how much of the JTS biography of Li He was really just filling out a pantheon
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Oct 20, 2020 17:13
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:what are some fun insults the romans used, maybe in their wacky graffiti or the grandiose speeches they loved? I know that Caesar told the senate that he would force them to suck his dick once. I took a book on "Roman humor" out from the library and that was one of the few bits that stuck. There was also a time when somebody insulted Caesar by calling him a woman. Fuschia tude posted:Also we were there in the 1850s, and it very much did lead to a further breakdown on a national level. That one's especially not analogous to Rome, because the civil war wasn't the result of a steady breakdown of norms until the power plays of the aristocracy started involving slinging armies around. It was a pretty conscious intention of the southern aristocracy to dissolve the union to consolidate power after they found that the democracy of the country as it was had clearly swung against their favor. America also has a lot of genuine regionally distributed power, and even moreso back then, which can get in the way of Rome comparisons.
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Oct 20, 2020 17:15
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think comparisons between Rome and America can be useful just as comparisons with any other state can be useful. I find that while your first sentence on comparisons with other states is broadly true, it's also overtly reductionist. While Gaius Marius' polemic was too acerbic, his sentiment is probably shared by most academics. You can find the core of these arguments in Mary Beard's SPQR, which I'm sure many in this thread have already read. Romans are humans, and in that sense, perhaps they are similar to us in our base survival instincts, but outside of that, they are vastly different from us; materially and culturally. For example, Romans didn't have salary jobs. Probably 80% of them were farmers (we have no real idea how most of them were organized). Of the rest, you might be an urban inhabitant that worked unskilled labor. There are some tenable theories that such urbanites might have been seasonal laborers and did not permanently reside there (great book that talks about this: https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/jh343t351) There was no permanent state bureaucracy, such institutions would often just sprout off from the ground where magnates appeared. They(Italians) weren't taxed, with most of the state being funded through ad-hoc oppressive imperialist projects that extracted wealth from non-italian provinces. And from Italian communities, they had a principle of political hegemony which was predicated on a system of alliances whereby various communities would supply Rome armies with troops. In terms of supplies and financing, a part of these armies would be funded by the soldiers themselves, and another part would come rampaging other cities in the Mediterranean. Violence (low and high intensity) was endemic in this time period. Just a few examples in ways that they are completely alien to us. As for your comment about political violence in Rome: not so. Political violence in the streets of Rome existed during its foundational narrative (both mythological and factual) through its Conflict of the Orders. But you are right to say that political murders only really appeared on record in 133 BCE. As for political violence in the states: it's pretty much existed on and off in America since its foundation. You comment on political violence of the reconstruction era, but that did not disappear when the federal government abandoned reconstruction. Political violence in the south was a preeminent tool to enforce white supremacist regimes. The south's civil rights narrative of course culminates in the 50s and 60s with mass protests, but also mass riots. We could also talk about the political violence between labor organizations and private security forces such as the Pinkertons, which often allied with local and federal police agencies. These conflicts sometimes would intersect with racial enmity, and lead to race riots. I'm not a fan of using wikipedia, but you can simply sift through this list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_the_United_States and see how many riots are labelled "race riots" up to the 1970s. In short, you probably don't need to go back to Rome to find useful comparisons to be learned, and when you do, those comparisons often appear to be strained upon closer examination.
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Oct 20, 2020 17:19
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SlothfulCobra posted:That one's especially not analogous to Rome, because the civil war wasn't the result of a steady breakdown of norms until the power plays of the aristocracy started involving slinging armies around. I really don't know what else you would call this poo poo tbh. And a lot of the early Confederate troops were in fact raised and equipped by the rich planters who were effectively the aristocracy of the South.
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Oct 20, 2020 17:19
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Libluini posted:Thank god, I'm sure I'd have developed brain cancer if this derail had continued any longer. there's always the "dumb abderite" jokes quote:An Abderite saw a eunuch talking with a woman and asked him if she was his wife. When he replied that eunuchs can’t have wives, the Abderite asked: “So is she your daughter?”
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Oct 20, 2020 17:24
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My completely unscientific and haphazard experience with Roman humor seems to boil it down to them mostly calling each other Cucks and/or Simps. So I guess that's another America parallel.
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Oct 20, 2020 19:39
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feedmegin posted:I really don't know what else you would call this poo poo tbh. And a lot of the early Confederate troops were in fact raised and equipped by the rich planters who were effectively the aristocracy of the South. Isn't this also true of northern volunteer units?
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Oct 20, 2020 20:16
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Oct 20, 2020 21:30
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In Joseon, Confucian-style portraiture was supposed to capture the subjects' appearance to the most minute detail, even down to accurately depicting stray hairs on their head; anything distorted from life was undesirable. So flattery definitely not the goal. You have depictions with vitiligo, cirrhosis marks, rhinophyma:    Even the state portrait of the founder of the dynasty shows a wart over his eyebrow:  And there's another very famous portrait I can't seem to find right now of a statesman looking absolutely old as heck and with a very prominent lazy eye. I haven't read about Ming portraiture specifically, but I wouldn't be surprised if that portrait was at least attempting to capture his actual appearance.
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Oct 20, 2020 22:03
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Gaius Marius posted:American soldiers aren't as personally loyal to their generals as Roman soldiers were nor are the generals as synonymous with politician like in rome. Nothing similar to the end of the Roman republic can happen anywhere without those two factors, no matter how hard people try and twist logic to make it work. yeah instead we have police forces eating up half the city's budget acting as enforcers for property developers slaughtering citizens in the streets, enormous wealth inequality and a refusal to pay into public funds, so instead the tax burden falls on the less wealthy the details may be different, even if the trajectory can have similarities
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Oct 21, 2020 01:23
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Phobophilia posted:yeah instead we have police forces eating up half the city's budget acting as enforcers for property developers slaughtering citizens in the streets, enormous wealth inequality and a refusal to pay into public funds, so instead the tax burden falls on the less wealthy Violent oppressive landowners and wealth inequality has been an issue since the dawn of time. Such generalizations are so abstract that you have to ask if there's anything useful to be gained from them? There's a reason why the details are important because the nuances is what allows for extraordinary things to happen. History is a study of those nuances, and not something to skip over by using confirmation biases and to broadly connect two extremely distant dots.
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Oct 21, 2020 01:46
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I thought during Caesar's civil war there were plenty of cases of soldiers having more consideration who they fought with beyond just direct loyalty to their generals. Pompey had errant legions and errant allies, Caesar had a subordinate commander going rogue, there was even a whole thing where Caesar managed to convince enemy legions to join him. Maybe in imperial days legions would be more tied to their leaders and their localities, but at that point it definitely seemed like they had some kind of interest in the overall political picture, even if it was something as basic as reluctance to fight other legions. I think it's weird to insist that there's absolutely no parallels between the US and Rome, although definitely we're not at a point directly analogous to the fall of the republic yet. There's a long way from police forces attacking protestors to political assassinations, even if the police definitely have little loyalty to democracy or legislators. Trump isn't a Caesar or a Sulla or a Gracchus, although he is somebody that a future one of those may look up to or learn from in time. There are much faster ways for Republics to fall than Rome, and it's not implausible that the current administration may try a faster, more intentional plan, but the fall of Rome is still relevant if you're keeping things in perspective, especially if you're looking at how the Senate is getting increasingly undemocratic and out of sync with the public will.
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Oct 21, 2020 03:56
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Augustus' playbook of a brief period of intense political suppression followed by pretending everything is normal and the government is functioning as it always has is as old as time and still being used today. There's much more to learn from that period than from Caesar's period in my mind, though I'd still probably look to the modern era rather than antiquity for the clearest lessons
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Oct 21, 2020 04:21
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think it's weird to insist that there's absolutely no parallels between the US and Rome, although definitely we're not at a point directly analogous to the fall of the republic yet. I think you can find parallels between the US and a lot of places, and more generally, you can find parallels between any two places and times, but it's weird that Rome is always the first place we go. I'ts never, "Are there parallels between the US and Tang Dynasty China?", or "Are their parallels between the US and fin de siecle Austria?" or "Are there parallels between the US and early 19th century Brazil?" It's always the US vs the Roman republic or the Roman Empire.
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Oct 21, 2020 04:27
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SlothfulCobra posted:I thought during Caesar's civil war there were plenty of cases of soldiers having more consideration who they fought with beyond just direct loyalty to their generals. Pompey had errant legions and errant allies, Caesar had a subordinate commander going rogue, there was even a whole thing where Caesar managed to convince enemy legions to join him. Maybe in imperial days legions would be more tied to their leaders and their localities, but at that point it definitely seemed like they had some kind of interest in the overall political picture, even if it was something as basic as reluctance to fight other legions. It's not to say that there aren't parallels; it's to say that the parallels are merely functions of a confirmation bias and a penchant for generalizing and ignoring of the important bits that makes the parallelization useful. For example, your comparison of the late republican personal legions to modern day police force completely overlooks their political purposes and functions in an attempt to draw parallels. Certainly you CAN draw those parallels if you ignore quite a lot of things. Oh yeah, Rome was called a Republic? And it was imperialist? So is America! They must be on the same trajectory. Let us ignore the fact that Rome as a republic is pretty much totally unlike America with regards to its political institutions and material culture. At some point, you have to ask yourself: why am I going out of this way to make these comparisons? So I can claim that America's republican institutions are about to collapse? It's simply not tenuous and convincing if that is the point of the argument. And honestly, you really don't have to to go to antiquity for these comparisons when there are so many closer comparisons in the modern era.
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Oct 21, 2020 04:31
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Epicurius posted:I think you can find parallels between the US and a lot of places, and more generally, you can find parallels between any two places and times, but it's weird that Rome is always the first place we go. I'ts never, "Are there parallels between the US and Tang Dynasty China?", or "Are their parallels between the US and fin de siecle Austria?" or "Are there parallels between the US and early 19th century Brazil?" It's always the US vs the Roman republic or the Roman Empire. Nah, lots of people are pointing to parallels to Nazi Germany (personally i think more italy and mussolini)
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Oct 21, 2020 04:32
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Dalael posted:Nah, lots of people are pointing to parallels to Nazi Germany (personally i think more italy and mussolini) "At some point, you have to ask yourself: why am I going out of this way to make these comparisons? So I can claim that America's republican institutions are about to collapse?" Maybe keep rereading that portion of the previous post until you come to some conclusions.
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Oct 21, 2020 04:38
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America clearly does not have a healthy political environment right now, and some form of collapse or major shift in the near future is very plausible. Looking to other countries, past and present, for examples of how that might go down isn't unreasonable. I'd recommend picking somewhere more similar to the US than Rome though
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Oct 21, 2020 04:40
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Almond Crunch posted:Li He is only one Tang poet who fits this sort of mold--precisely because of the later-deified rockstar of Tang Poetry-- Han Yu : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Yu. Han Yu was awesome though; lover, fighter, poet and famous for reading on the toilet.
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Oct 21, 2020 04:56
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Dalael posted:Nah, lots of people are pointing to parallels to Nazi Germany (personally i think more italy and mussolini) Wouldn't we be at the Weimar stage? And even that is a pretty tenuous comparison, we have nothing like the developed mass movements of Far Left and Right they had. Bernie Sanders and other stuff has helped to reawaken Leftism in the US sorta kinda but it's nothing like how strong it was in the early 20thCentury. Anyway, I think I might have made a post about it in this thread already, asking about "why everybody wants to copy Rome, even its decline?" I might have asked it somewhere else but it's still very weird to me.
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Oct 21, 2020 05:05
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Well the specific reasons why you're always gonna see US/Rome comparisons are: 1. It's a famous Republic falling that everybody is going to know about. 2. Many of America's political institutions were very specifically patterned after Rome, at least aesthetically, even if there were newer ideas about democracy and regional power mixed in there. 3. When current US politics bleed into the ancient history thread, people aren't going to be making comparisons to Tsarist Russia, Weimar Germany, or the Spice Mines of Arrakis. 4. If you've got a bee up your butt about the general principle of comparing the US and Rome, then if that's anywhere in a post, you're gonna zoom in on that and ignore any nuance because you want to argue against people who aren't actually here.
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Oct 21, 2020 05:33
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5. It sells books, and anyone making a comparison between the two is aiming for the lowest common denominator, people who can't realize they're being misled by superficialities and aesthetics, and that the arguments towards comparison aren't taken seriously by anyone who has any actual knowledge of the subject.
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Oct 21, 2020 05:41
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SlothfulCobra posted:Well the specific reasons why you're always gonna see US/Rome comparisons are: dang the slow pitch over the plate that is gracchi/kennedy similarity not even being brought up is a pretty alpha historian move
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Oct 21, 2020 05:42
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SlothfulCobra posted:Well the specific reasons why you're always gonna see US/Rome comparisons are: Comparisons to Rome were really popular in US early history:  Washington as Cincinnatus, Horatio Greenough, 1840
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Oct 21, 2020 05:44
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Mussolini's Italy was also big on the Roman aesthetic. Unfortunately aesthetics mean jack poo poo.
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Oct 21, 2020 05:47
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You remember spartacus-talk from a a few weeks ago? The whole series is free to watch on https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1442449/?ref_=hm_stp_fdv_tt_28 probably US only, use a proxy if you need to, this show's sick
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Oct 21, 2020 07:13
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Isn’t there a political theory that says when the elites take more and more of the GDP eventually you get a revolution? And most societies tend to end that way, Rome included.
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Oct 21, 2020 08:45
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SlothfulCobra posted:Well the specific reasons why you're always gonna see US/Rome comparisons are: Yeah the country came of age during peak Neoclassicism. Just look at all the courthouses and capitol buildings. But also, there was a longstanding historiographical trend in the West of trying to trace a cultural lineage straight back to Ancient Rome. This coincided with much of US history, and has hung around in popular culture. Gaius Marius posted:Mussolini's Italy was also big on the Roman aesthetic. Unfortunately aesthetics mean jack poo poo. I don't think anyone's trying to argue that it's a particularly rigorous comparison. We're just trying to explain why the US keeps getting compared to Rome in politics and pop-history. That has everything to do with aesthetics and culture, and very little to do with any kind of critical or academic analysis.
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Oct 21, 2020 09:03
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