Azerban posted:

want to hear about this one

Epicurius posted:

They were Chinese nationals passing on information to the US, not US agents.

feedmegin posted:

I remember some episodes of the TV show with the chap in your avatar being particularly embarrassing in that regard.

Yep, those 20 French dudes sure are a full battalion, totally convinced.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

are postindustrial civil wars less civil than their predecessors?

Milo and POTUS posted:

I'm not an obstetrician but wouldn't chronic hunger lead to a bunch of problems with carrying to term anyway? Unless that's what you're getting at cuz I'm dense af today because I haven't eaten anything.

Nebakenezzer posted:

So maybe I should watch that Steven Spielberg Lincoln movie, but is it true that abolishing slavery was made a political goal by Lincoln and others when massive crazy casualties on both sides needed a point and a cause to continue fighting?

My ACW knowledge is pretty much this thread and that Ken Burns documentary

Also, is it true that the black population was way ahead of the curve at understanding "this is what will doom slavery" even as pols were still all "but maybe we could compromise?!?" Because if so, it is mighty impressive. I know the story of slavery as a political issue is that the political class constantly sought compromise lllllloooonnnnngggg after to the average citizen it was clear there could be no compromise

Alchenar posted:

I mean, if you were black then the 'gentlemanly' resolution to the ACW was pretty terrible and set you up for another hundred years of full blown legal discrimination to keep you firmly at the bottom of the civic ladder.

And yeah, the Western theatre got really nasty at points (mainly when the Confederate cavalry decided to go on a raid).

Cessna posted:

Anyone who bets their life on this deserves what they get.

Acebuckeye13 posted:

Ultimately, this discussion boils down to a simple question:

If the ancient Greeks had tabletop wargames, what 40K army would Alexander have played?

bewbies posted:

Squalid posted:

You know, I agree this style looks kind of weird at first. However this kind of style is really interesting in terms of art history, because it appears at a really interesting moment at which traditional Chinese court painting traditions began to fuze with then modern European techniques. The results follow the Chinese style of ink on silk scrolls with flat tonal variation, but incorporate European innovations in perspective and and heretofore unseen attention to anatomical detail.

This fusion is best illustrated through the work of Giuseppe Castiglione, a Jesuit missionary to China and court painter during the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor. You can admire some of his work done in tradition European style here: unfortunately I couldn't find a linkable image file. You can see he was a master of the European tradition, however most of his production in China adheres more closely to conservative tastes:


Qianlong Emperor hunting

However in his portraits of the emperor's household you can really see the fusion of styles to its best effect. Although he maintains the suble, almost washed out tones of traditional Chinese portraiture, look at how he works the subtle shading into the shadow of his subjects legs, the careful attention to lighting previously unseen in Chinese art.




Following this European influence you also start seeing Chinese art begin to incorporate one and two point perspective. However you can tell the Chinese consumer hadn't entirely lost their taste for linear perspective, as a lot of work continues to use those styles. In his famous paining A Hundred Steeds Castiglione employs combines these techniques to create what I think is a pretty stunning achievement that incorporates the best of east and west.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/A_Hundred_Steeds.jpg (linked because gigantic)

feedmegin posted:

Point of order, neither Austria nor Czechoslovakia existed any more at this point in time.

HEY GUNS posted:

i liked the book, i hated the stanford prison experiment and i believe it was a sham. it's a shame such a good book relies on such a terrible "study," and it's a shame that study was used as it was elsewhere

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

Edit: To be clear, I hate the book in question with a passion for the reasons listed. He also said that money was only invented to pay soldiers (what use the soldiers had for it is left up to the reader to imagine).

SlothfulCobra posted:

There's not really concrete evidence as to exactly how the first currency developed. Tokens demarcating value were just one of the intermediary steps in the development of currency, and it's definitely plausible that the thing that got governments to issue uniform currency to be accepted for everybody's transactions would be to pay an army, which in the army's downtime or retirement would get traded around.

Probably the barter system as it is imagined before the existence of currency is a myth. Pure barter has only been observed to happen in edge cases where the parties involved would probably never see eachother again.

tonberrytoby posted:

Pretty cool.

Combining this with the current topic of dumb nazis:
Why didn't the nazis use steam trucks/tractors in ww2? They had lots of coal, and so little oil that they had to use a lot of horses.
Is it just that they weren't considered cool?

Molentik posted:

Later in the war they used a lot of wood gas generators for non-combat and rear echelon vehicles.