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FishFood posted:Bringing it a little back to a historical lens, I wonder how the decline of the internet will be studied. Will researchers have to rely on people's memories, as the old internet is so hard to actually see? You can get snapshots of things via the Wayback Machine and other archives, but there will be a lot of dead links and the texture and feel of actually using it just isn't there any more. To add to that, so many things are broken in hilarious ways like when vid.me's corpse was purchased by a porn company. Suddenly hundreds of thousands of webpages (mostly local news sites) and twitter posts were blasting hardcore porn.
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Aug 31, 2023 22:06
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Mr. Nice! posted:If you want to see just how hosed up the internet is now thanks to GPT, search for the difference between a bay and a sound. for me, the fourth result was obvious AI, but the first three were helpful, human-written results from reputable websites. I likely wouldn't have even noticed that the fourth one was bad if I wasn't specifically looking past the first result. not ideal, but hardly unusable either
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Aug 31, 2023 22:09
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cheetah7071 posted:for me, the fourth result was obvious AI, but the first three were helpful, human-written results from reputable websites. I likely wouldn't have even noticed that the fourth one was bad if I wasn't specifically looking past the first result. The AI one is the third link for me. This is just showing an egregious example. If you search for almost any comparison between two things, a lot of sites like that show up.
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Aug 31, 2023 22:11
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It would be absolutely fascinating to get to see future historians figuring out the internet tho for real. Just send a grab bag of SA threads with missing posts to some future person and have them make sense of it as best they can, I’d pay to see it They used the pink forum for ritual purposes
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Aug 31, 2023 22:23
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:It would be absolutely fascinating to get to see future historians figuring out the internet tho for real.
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Aug 31, 2023 22:30
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There's a fascinating example of that in the third part of Dan Olsen's "A lukewarm defense of 50 shades of Gray" video series. Time stamped link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R4bczm8BPY&t=195s Basically, in discussing the progression of the whole 50 Shades project from an online Twilight fanfic to a published book to a movie, he talks about how difficult it was to research a lot of that early stuff. The author and her publisher, after the fanfic got picked up for editing into a real book, pulled all their online stuff, issued takedown notices to the Internet Archive, and did the same to bloggers who had reposted her stuff. The long and the short of it is that the parallel blog posts, forum discussions, etc. that had taken place alongside her posting the chunks of the original fanfic disappeared. This was important because there was a constant back and forth between her and her audience, and poo poo was done in response to what they said they wanted. Think of it like reading an LP here on SA, only you filter to only show you the OP's posts. It's legible, but you're missing out on a HUGE part of the discussion and a lot of what the OP does is going to be missing a ton of context if you're not also seeing the commentary and reactions from the posters. It's an interesting look at just how ephemeral a lot of online stuff can be, and how difficult reconstructing that history after the fact is.
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Aug 31, 2023 22:38
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Cyrano4747 posted:Think of it like reading an LP here on SA, only you filter to only show you the OP's posts. It's legible, but you're missing out on a HUGE part of the discussion and a lot of what the OP does is going to be missing a ton of context if you're not also seeing the commentary and reactions from the posters. This happens occasionally on the lparchive. Random stuff will get talked about in a post or video and without context it's very confusing
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Aug 31, 2023 23:28
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I was reading Salammbô and towards the very end the Carthaginians are mentioned to have oiled their shields so that any projectiles will glance off. Now I know my boy Flaubert does his homework, so tell me, is this some bullshit he read, some bullshit he made up, or some legit thing. Cause I can't see how it even makes sense. Secondly, If you like the Starz Spartacus pick up a copy of the novel. It's just as over the top, politically twisty, and incredibly hyperviolent as that masterwork.
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Sep 3, 2023 02:58
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Gaius Marius posted:I was reading Salammbô and towards the very end the Carthaginians are mentioned to have oiled their shields so that any projectiles will glance off. Now I know my boy Flaubert does his homework, so tell me, is this some bullshit he read, some bullshit he made up, or some legit thing. Cause I can't see how it even makes sense. Secondly, If you like the Starz Spartacus pick up a copy of the novel. It's just as over the top, politically twisty, and incredibly hyperviolent as that masterwork.
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Sep 3, 2023 03:10
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Nessus posted:Rubbing oil or other such things into a leather shield would help keep it supple, which is how the whole term came up in the Bible, but I'm not sure how it would make projectiles glance off unless it might mean they fall out more readily, or the leather provides more resistance by being oiled? Flaubert posted:The Carthaginians arrived first in the plain. They rubbed the edges of their shields with oil to make the arrows glide off them easily; I went back and grabbed the actual quote and am even more confused, why just the edges of the shield.
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Sep 3, 2023 03:18
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Gaius Marius posted:I went back and grabbed the actual quote and am even more confused, why just the edges of the shield. It may be one of those things that is more of a habit or superstition than actual value. It could be just a part of their "psyching up" ritual for battle. I can't think of any physical reason for it.
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Sep 3, 2023 03:27
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Sounds like a typical author thing of third-hand details getting misinterpreted and inventing things to fill the gaps that 'seem' right.
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Sep 3, 2023 05:50
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It might be short hand for general maintenance of your shield edge or whatever. Leather can get pretty rough if it dries out or gets weathered,, especially if its a surface that sees lots of contact, and I can definitely see it catching blade edges and arrows more if it's not dealt with. Here's the top of an old pair of survey boots of mine as an example. Nice pair of boots, shame I wore holes through the bottoms. 
Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Sep 3, 2023 |
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Sep 3, 2023 05:54
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Telsa Cola posted:It might be short hand for general maintenance of your shield edge or whatever. Leather can get pretty rough if it dries out or gets weathered,, especially if its a surface that sees lots of contact, and I can definitely see it catching blade edges and arrows more if it's not dealt with. There are boot repair places around that can mend & replace the soles on leather shoes and boots if you're ever interested. I think the oiling the shields thing probably just means keeping them supple so they rebound instead of crack, but I can't stop imagining some Looney Tunes type physics acting on the projectiles when they hit the shield like a greased-up floor
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Sep 3, 2023 13:22
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I’ve had some absolutely amazing combat boots that feel like they’re my nirvana. My favorite being Bates Cobra Jungle that are now discontinued, sadly. But despite how bad I wore some of them, and how hosed they became, it never seemed worth it to have the soles replaced by someone who knows what they’re doing. When you’re nearing 100 bucks or going above, it’s just always better to get a brand new pair. It’s probably why most of the shoe repairers are long gone from the storefronts.
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Sep 3, 2023 15:01
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Vahakyla posted:I’ve had some absolutely amazing combat boots that feel like they’re my nirvana. My favorite being Bates Cobra Jungle that are now discontinued, sadly. Eh, I had a pair of Czech combat boots in grad school that fit my feet perfectly. I think I got them off some surplus website for like $30? Even as cheap as they were, and as broke as I was, it was worth it to me to pay the ~$50 to get them re-soled at the local shoe guy. The leather was broken in loving PERFECTLY, and it was worth spending that money to be able to re-use it. New boots would not have been as comfortable by a long shot.
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Sep 3, 2023 15:09
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Owl at Home posted:There are boot repair places around that can mend & replace the soles on leather shoes and boots if you're ever interested. Appreciate the info, yeah It's why I've kept the boots (and also a sentimental thing, they were my first pair of survey boots). One of these days I might get them fixed up.
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Sep 3, 2023 15:17
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The discussion about oiling shields to make the arrows glide off reminds me that there was a belief for some time (among ancients) that the reason why slings were so effective against armor was that the bullets would heat up so much in the air that when they hit they were like lances of molten lead. Which is...not at all what was going on. It was just a lot of kinetic energy in a small area.
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Sep 3, 2023 18:53
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Tulip posted:The discussion about oiling shields to make the arrows glide off reminds me that there was a belief for some time (among ancients) that the reason why slings were so effective against armor was that the bullets would heat up so much in the air that when they hit they were like lances of molten lead. Which is...not at all what was going on. It was just a lot of kinetic energy in a small area. Yeah, it's important to keep in mind that we're talking about people who didn't have a great way to observe what was happening with some of this stuff. So even if they think they've found a "scientific" explanation it could be totally wrong. It's also important to remember that we're dealing with societies where the animal entrails not looking auspicious was a totally legitimate reason to call off the battle for that day.
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Sep 3, 2023 19:21
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yeah, it's important to keep in mind that we're talking about people who didn't have a great way to observe what was happening with some of this stuff. So even if they think they've found a "scientific" explanation it could be totally wrong. Yeah. And part of this is just that science can be quite tough, if you do broad research you run into just utter baffling mysteries pretty frequently, but people tend to hate a total lack of explanation, that kind of skepticism requires discipline to maintain and if you aren't a professional expert on the topic you are much more likely to just latch onto a plausible sounding explanation. So its entirely believable that there was a real correlation that the guys who were oiling their shields before battle were more likely to survive, and people saw this. My gut reaction is mutual causation: the guys who were the most likely to survive were the guys who just kept their equipment well maintained all the time, which means oiling their shields all the time but other people really noticed right before battle, and "this has a dramatic physics explanation" is more emotionally satisfying than "the guys who survive are the guys who are the most boringly reliable and disciplined." Or it could have just been pure superstition! Hard to say. This does feel like a good place for Tod's Workshop to do some tests and see if it makes any difference: compare an under-oiled shield, a regularly-oiled shield, and a shield that is poorly maintained but then oiled at the last minute.
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Sep 3, 2023 19:44
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Even if they were doing it for exactly the reasons that they said they were - a genuine belief that it would make arrows deflect better - they could also have just been wrong. See also: Sherman crews in WW2 putting sand bags all over their tanks. Late war testing showed that it didn't really help vs. panzerfausts.
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Sep 3, 2023 20:16
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Cyrano4747 posted:Even if they were doing it for exactly the reasons that they said they were - a genuine belief that it would make arrows deflect better - they could also have just been wrong. See also: Sherman crews in WW2 putting sand bags all over their tanks. Late war testing showed that it didn't really help vs. panzerfausts.
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Sep 3, 2023 20:55
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Things that people will have relatively few experiences with, and when it does happen, it will be very stressful so you're just kinda guessing at what's going on.
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Sep 3, 2023 20:59
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Next you guys are gonna tell me that burning all those children alive didn't appease Moloch and cause him to send rain just in time to save them after their aqueduct got destroyed.
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Sep 3, 2023 21:02
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Nessus posted:It might have been a magic feather that let them continue the attack, which long term would reduce the supply of Panzerfausts. Yeah, iirc there was a comment by the guy running the post-war study that said basically this. That it probably wasn't a good idea to crack down on the practice because it improved morale, and crews who thought they had a higher chance of survival were going to be more aggressive on the attack. For all we know there could be a similar thing at work with the shields. Even if you're skeptical of the efficacy, you're not going to tell that to the dude frantically oiling his shield next to you. gently caress it, if that's enough to make him aggressive and rush forward to stick his spear in a Roman neck? Sure buddy, rub that arrow deflecting oil on the shield.
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Sep 3, 2023 21:03
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I actually had a similar thought on reading your haruspicy comment. It seems silly now but it probably wasn't a bad thing that sometimes the warmakers looked at a liver and said, "Gods don't feel it, no mass death/murder today"
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Sep 3, 2023 21:58
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Gaius Marius posted:Next you guys are gonna tell me that burning all those children alive didn't appease Moloch and cause him to send rain just in time to save them after their aqueduct got destroyed. OK actually you just reminded me of a bible question that's been bugging the hell out of me. 2 Kings 3 posted:26 And when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him, he took with him seven hundred men that drew sword, to break through unto the king of Edom; but they could not. 27 Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt-offering upon the wall. And there was great wrath against Israel: and they departed from him, and returned to their own land. So, what this reads as is that the Israelites, with Jehovah's blessing and promises (2 Kings 3:18), get their butts kicked by some gentiles who did human sacrifice to another god. I was raised Catholic and this just fully does not fit at all into my understanding of how any of this works: Jehovah is All Mighty, and there simply do not exist alternative gods, let alone ones that are stronger. I guess I'm just wondering like, how this story survived in the Bible? It seems like an easy one to just...not copy at some point.
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Sep 3, 2023 22:02
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You could probably parse that verse as being that the Moabites were so strong and angry that their king sacrificed his own son to his god on his way out to fight Israel, and he was so goddamn strong that the Israelites were like "Alright, fine, we'll try later, Jesus! (whoever that is)" In other words, that these were two separate things; that their king was such a psycho he burned his own son as an offering, and this big killer energy was part of his immense strength (which prevailed, in this case, against Israel, if not to Israel's destruction). The suggestion is of course that the offering worked out. In the early period of Jewish history, I think it's generally held that the approach was that there are other gods, or at least some kind of beings, but that Hashem is the real deal, and those other guys are spirits at best, and probably demons.
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Sep 3, 2023 22:06
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in the early period the israelites were straight up polytheists, and once you know that then you see it everywhere in the old testament. it's woven into the stories so tightly you couldn't excise it without cutting the narrative apart entirely. yahweh was their patron god, and he was a jealous god who preferred you to just worship him, but y'know...a lot of people didn't, and recognized the whole pantheon. there was a lot of religious violence over it, but no actual resolution until well after babylon had rolled in. by the time stuff starts getting written down in the form we know today, monotheism is the order of the day and everything is shifted to cast the other gods as spirits, angels, or demons, but it was an imperfect effort at best. and after that, well, you can't just change it
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Sep 3, 2023 22:19
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I mean you can just look up commentaries, they're onlinequote:2 Kings 3:27
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Sep 3, 2023 22:22
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Jazerus posted:in the early period the israelites were straight up polytheists, and once you know that then you see it everywhere in the old testament. it's woven into the stories so tightly you couldn't excise it without cutting the narrative apart entirely. yahweh was their patron god, and he was a jealous god who preferred you to just worship him, but y'know...a lot of people didn't, and recognized the whole pantheon. there was a lot of religious violence over it, but no actual resolution until well after babylon had rolled in. by the time stuff starts getting written down in the form we know today, monotheism is the order of the day and everything is shifted to cast the other gods as spirits, angels, or demons, but it was an imperfect effort at best. and after that, well, you can't just change it Yeah, those verses read for me as a combination of the facts you point out here, and also maybe a twist of pro-Yahweh propaganda in the wake of the loss. "Sure, they turned us away that time, but look at the unconscionable sacrifice it took for their God to pull it off."
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Sep 3, 2023 22:39
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Tunicate posted:I mean you can just look up commentaries, they're online 
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Sep 3, 2023 22:40
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I uh coincidentally recently listened to a podcast with an Actual Biblical Scholar about that story, so I'll drop it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35Jz3A7tBgU.
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Sep 3, 2023 23:30
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LITERALLY A BIRD posted:I actually had a similar thought on reading your haruspicy comment. It seems silly now but it probably wasn't a bad thing that sometimes the warmakers looked at a liver and said, "Gods don't feel it, no mass death/murder today" And I think it's actually an open question to what extent haruspicy was 'fair' for lack of a better word. Could a negative call be a way for a general to avoid a battle without loss of face? Could lower level officers influence the haruspex to give a negative read because they were better informed than the general and wanted to avoid a pointless battle? Could a positive read just be a way for the general to improve morale when the men were complaining about a battle against the odds? There's probably dozens of other reasons to "hope" for a possible outcome, and ways to influence the haruspex, if he didn't already have the kind of social antenna to get a feel for what kind of result would be well-received. That's not to say that it's impossible for these guys to believe they were doing their work with full sincerity. I guess it's the same as people who truly believe they're mediums who may or may not realize they're just cold reading their audience
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Sep 3, 2023 23:55
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Along those lines, it also seems like a good way to goose morale and get your men jazzed up. Have a few days where you really don't need to be fighting where you get them out there and assembled then tip to the priest that he should tank this, march them all back, then on the big day have him give the thumbs up. poo poo, we can't lose now, the gods said it was good to go this time! edit: that said, while I'm sure there was some level of that poo poo going on, the usual best answer for this kind of thing is that yeah, they took that poo poo seriously and the priests were being honest agents when they stirred the entrails. Projecting modern sensibilities re: religion and the impact of spiritual matters back to ancient times rarely works out well.
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Sep 3, 2023 23:59
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Tulip posted:I was raised Catholic and this just fully does not fit at all into my understanding of how any of this works: Jehovah is All Mighty, and there simply do not exist alternative gods, let alone ones that are stronger. A close reading of the Bible has the understanding of God rather dramatically over time. There are also very large changes in the intertestimental period.
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Sep 4, 2023 00:16
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EricBauman posted:That's not to say that it's impossible for these guys to believe they were doing their work with full sincerity. Cyrano4747 posted:edit: that said, while I'm sure there was some level of that poo poo going on, the usual best answer for this kind of thing is that yeah, they took that poo poo seriously and the priests were being honest agents when they stirred the entrails. Projecting modern sensibilities re: religion and the impact of spiritual matters back to ancient times rarely works out well. Yeah, I mean, I certainly can't declare that across the board augurs were always interpreting as honestly as they could; I would imagine especially as divination practice began to decline it might have become more common for results to be fudged or purposely misinterpreted or just made up all together. But I've definitely gotta push back on the idea it could have been consistently commonplace to doctor outcomes. The augurs interpreting auspices were priests first and officials second, and actively lying about the messages received from a God that you and your entire culture believed in and depended upon would be considered some pretty consequential poo poo on multiple levels. Edit to add that surely there were straight charlatans as well -- we have those in all sorts of fields even today -- but the charlatans probably wouldn't be the ones depended upon by rulers and generals. LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Sep 4, 2023 |
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Sep 4, 2023 00:17
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Rulers having an affinity for charlatans is well-attested.
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Sep 4, 2023 00:50
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 , touchee: btw, Omnomnomnivore, thank you for that video! Good stuff. e2: time stamp for the 2 Kings conclusions, but everyone should watch the whole thing LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Sep 4, 2023 |
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Sep 4, 2023 00:51
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LITERALLY A BIRD posted:The augurs interpreting auspices were priests first and officials second, and actively lying about the messages received from a God that you and your entire culture believed in and depended upon would be considered some pretty consequential poo poo on multiple levels. There are examples of Roman officials who sometimes performed augury as part of their official duties while privately considering it nonsense. See Cicero's On Divination. (Which isn't to accuse Cicero of faking omens, just pointing out that he didn't actually believe in that stuff, and while his view may have been a minority one, it probably wasn't unique.)
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Sep 4, 2023 02:14
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