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Yay, new laptop. Now to catch up on committee work
Not really, the only ones that Flourished as they rotted away was probably the groups that were comparable to Rome anway or had access to Roman Technology
Edit: It took a 1000 years before European Cities had the same population they had in Roman times
Population isn't a considerable factor when you consider that the fall of Rome heralds the Migration Period, in which the tribes of Europe (especially Germanic) shuffle about and establish kingdoms. The tribes that the Romans fought against ended up becoming Europe's powerhouses. Most notably, the Gauls migrated west or were subsumed into Frankish society and the Gothic tribes that sacked Rome in the first place were of southernmost Germania, today Austria and the southern provinces of Germany (Liechtenau, ect.).
France and Germany, lands host to Rome's two most domestic consistent adversaries, became the superpowers of Europe, even overtaking the Roman remnant of the Byzantine empire.
When Roman control was removed from Europe, it was an opportunity for the tribes in fear of them to establish themselves without any concern for a major imperialist authority. The medieval periods weren't all sunshine and lollipops, of course, but they were important because they established the blueprint for Western society. The ideal of neighbouring nations living in peace wasn't exactly a Roman ideal, for instance.
Great! ...Except they provide no source at all
People, if you're making a claim like that, then PLEASE provide a source! >.<
I'd disagree alittle bit
I'd say that by the Medieval period, Spain and France were the superpowers of Europe. Also, the unification of Spain wouldn't have happened if the Romans had stayed.
Spain was a little later. They were definitely a superpower by the Renaissance period, but they spent a long time in destabilising wars with the Moors. Keep in mind that Germany and Spain were very fast allies by that time and enjoyed a lot of mutual profit; Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, was also Charles I of Spain and ruled over those lands in the late 15th century during the early stages of the Renaissance.
The Holy Roman Empire wasn't Holy, Roman or an Empire though. It was a very loose group of kingdoms and cities that was defended by a Kaiser.
I know about the Reconqustia period but I can't really accept that Germany profited from the fall of the Roman Empire in the same way as France or England
The Holy Roman Empire's name being inaccurate doesn't really make a difference, though. It was a major power in Central Europe and is also important for its presence and influence in Eastern Europe (which often tends to get forgotten in such discussions).
Probably the most major way Germany profited from the fall of the Roman Empire was geographic in nature. Remember that Germania was right on Rome's doorstep, so tensions were very immediate. The lack of Germanic military organisation meant they couldn't expand beyond the massive forests that defined the region at the time, but the fall of the Roman Empire meant there was no absolute, major power in the region. Ergo, said tribes could move and expand freely without fear of running into five thousand Romans with large shields and pointy swords.
The thing about the British Isles is we tend to overstate their importance in the time period. As anglophones, that's somewhat natural, but remember that England is just a portion of a small series of islands in the far north-west of Europe, engaged themselves against Scotland a portion of the time, and Ireland wasn't always so co-operative. They had their own domestic troubles, plus France, before they could even think about exerting influence further. England was chump political change for a while, useful because of its sea borders and natural bounty. Ergo the clusterfuck of 1066, when everyone ever decided they wanted a piece.
Ica - tbh, I would take any statement made by anyone on Reddit involving science with a big pinch of salt. The lack of a source probably means they just pulled it out of the air.
Fun fact - I actually know, vaguely, a guy who claims that he has managed to stop the natural process of aging (he hasn't). You have to be really careful to keep him off the subject in conversation or he'll go on about it for hours. He once came to a coffee evening at my flat, and it was the most awkward thing you can imagine - I was terrified I'd be stuck with him on my own all evening. Fortunately, some other people turned up.
I'm almost sure I've made this post before, but I'm pretty sick of zombies.
They are very boring. Given, they were once a tool of expressing the nature of our society both in themselves and in the behaviour they caused in survivors, but there isn't a lot of zombie-related media that takes advantage of that anymore. They're just sort of shoehorned in there and it's all getting a bit ironic.
Putting zombies in something or a media production about zombies is just about code for "pandering to pop-culture" or "drained of ideas" at this stage. The most interesting thing to do with them now is discuss them, because social reaction to mythology is pretty interesting from my perspective, and zombies are undoubtedly part of modern mythology. Yahtzee made the observation that perhaps future societies will look back on ours and think we believed in zombies because they're goddamn everywhere.
What I think we do these days, with almost all of our pop cultural monsters, is domesticate them. Perhaps it's a natural result of living in an age where science has overtaken folklore as the guiding factor when dealing with the unknown, but it's boring all the same. At the end of books, films and games about monsters, we tend to know too much. If it's a modern setting, we know their general physiology and biomechanics; if such things aren't applicable, we know the exact source of their power. Personally, I enjoy not knowing. I like it better when the monster in the dark makes only enough sense to be threatening, but not enough sense for a silver bullet solution to be developed.
Once you've worked a monster out, it stops being threatening. The most horrific things are always those we can't pin down. We're a curious, creative species and we will always fill the gaps with our own imaginations. When there's no more room for imagination, all we've got is methodology. That's not scary, nor does it build tension. And sure, that kind of thing can be appropriate for stuff about characters that hunt monsters to a degree, but even they would benefit from keeping us in the dark in some respects.
For instance, The Witcher (game) reveals enough about the monsters you fight for you to construct strategies to fight them (when required), but doesn't explain the why. Some of these monsters have weaknesses for reasons lost to time, or weaknesses that only apply under certain circumstances. Even if it doesn't necessarily make them scary again, it at least makes them interesting. It helps that between the different sword styles, Signs and alchemical potions, there's a good amount of room for strategy. One of my favourites is a potion that poisons your own blood; its application against vampires is obvious. So despite the monster hunter perspective not leaving a huge amount of room for horror, the game still allows the monsters to hold interest because of the potential strategic depth. Unless you pimp out your sword skills and health, in which case most single monsters are kind of fucked.
Anyway, zombies are boring. Bleh.
Dinner with committee was cool enough, went for pizza, though I can't get over the fact that the other four peeps seem to be somewhat stiff.
To elaborate, three of the big five are preppy, old-money frats: people join it for the connections, the jargon, and the traditions of always walking around in suit and the like. The fourth is a bit of a mixture depending on which subgroup within said frat you're in: they have everything varying from lefty ones to your fratbro stereotype, and the one in my committee belongs to one of the more preppy subgroups. I myself am from the alt frat, and we get all the goths, nerds and socially maladjusted autists, so naturally we're a bit more loose in holding up a certain image to the outside world, but by the gods, they're reserved.
So there's another of these threads in the OTC. I feel like trolling it, I have this fun thought to post in there. What you say? Troll, or not?
Aaaah. Pity.
There is no way to predict technological advancement like that; it's only slightly harder to develop technology than it is to predict it. If the Singularity comes, it will be like a thief in the night, striking suddenly and without warning.
Like lightning from a clear sky!
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Was it irony, or are you unaware of the implication? I ask 'cause I'm not good at discerning these things.
If you mean the biblical reference, it was deliberate. While there are some major inaccuracies in the "Nerd Rapture" pejorative, most notably that transhumanists/Singularity types are far less likely to condemn people to hell, there's still a similar sort of storyline.
Too much Integrated Circuit Design lab. Now I'm seeing everything in terms of propagation delays and clock edges.
what is wrong with me
It's another one of those days when my reason and emotions clash and I get all emo.
We can all agree that some things like revenge, hate, bigotry, and extreme nationalism are bad. But should we go as far as to proclaim all supporters of those bad people?
Okay, my family and I live in pretty shitty conditions. It used to be worse, but now it's mostly tolerable - we've got enough to live, but not enough to actually enjoy it, something like that. The man my mother loves is even more pathetic in every conceivable way. I can say that I've seen what living at the bottom looks like, and I still know that more than half of the people from my country has an even worse and poorer life. What is here considered the lower middle class (where we belong) would in the West be far below the poverty line.
It got me thinking about the causes. The corrupt political elite, the wars in the 90s... everything traces back to the US schemes. And I hate them. I hate that fascist empire that calls itself the champion of democracy, its blind sattelites, their leaders who don't feel any guilt over all their crimes, lies and atrocities, their propagandists who put a rose-colored veil over the eyes of the world population. Hate. (no offense to any of you guys, I've got nothing against you as people or your nations as a whole, only your regimes)
Enter their domestic collaborators. Mostly the rich bourgeoise, who have never stepped foot outside of the inner city, who look down on anything made by and meant for the common people, who have never experienced hardships and who were outside of the country when the bombs were falling from the sky and the cash bills were reaching twenty digits due to inflation. They dare to preach the words of George Soros like a gospel, claim that America is the only hope for world unity and peace, dare to look us, the common people, in the eyes and call us "primitives", "fascists", "hateful" or whatever other lovely epithets for daring to question their word. And I hate them. I hate them even more. With all the passion of my heart.
It immediately got me thinking - if that is so, who am I to judge a man whose family had been brutally murdered for picking up a gun and dealing with the murderer himself? Who am I to judge my friend who consistently spouts racist nonsense against the Croats when they burned his family's house down and forced them to cross hundreds of kilometers to find a new home? Who? Who are any of us, for that matter? We can never know of the emotional turmoil that goes on within those peoples' minds.
That's why empathy is so important. We may not see what goes on behind the mask, but that's more reason to refrain from assuming the mask is all there is.
The older I grow, the less meaning the words "good" and "evil" hold.
While the choice between reason and emotion is a false dichotomy in a technical sense, I side with reason. It's sometimes the more difficult path and certainly less satisfying, but reason can be kind and mutually beneficial where emotion might be hurtful. Reason is the reliability to emotion's chaos -- but we all need some chaos. The application of reason where emotion was otherwise used could make countless scenarios, small and big, much more easily solved.
In short, I have greater respect for reason. Anyone can be taken away by their emotions, and emotions see from a singular point of view. But it takes more to put aside one's personal feelings and find some perspective or solution that is more even-minded.
Balance is required, of course, but emotions are perhaps the most inherently subjective experiences a human can have.
There are some "gems"
Tricky word: reason. Its meaning has been polluted by the ignorant claiming wisdom, and they claim intuition as a form of logic.
^Ugh. Considering my home riding, I guess I will have to vote PC. I usually hate lesser evil tactics and would rather not vote at all if that's what it comes down to, but the Wildrose party is pretty frightening.
I would define reasonable thinking as having a minimal amount of bias. Of course, what is then considered "bias" then comes into question. All the same, I think it's good to try and think in that way.
I am increasingly unable to see things in terms of dichotomies and instead see potential integration, so when I see elements like reason and emotion in conflict, I wonder why they couldn't work together instead.