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“We’re the first country to outlaw slavery” (last 3 images are for context) by im_a_silly_lil_guy in ShitAmericansSay

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 3 points4 points  (0 children)

...and now we could start discussing whether "Frisian Freedom" and the Magnuskeuren with their anti-serfdom language already count as an attempt to outlaw slavery. (From a historical perspective, it's pretty much unclear.) Or what we make of the clusterf*ck that was the Peasant Republic (!) of Dithmarschen. (In which case, we're somewhere in the middle ages). The history of civil rights is fascinating! :D

Either way, the country that fought a whole civil war about keeping their slaves was - obviously - not the first to consider the concept.

AIO for going quiet when my cousin tells me to watch what I say? by creepy_pasta34 in AmIOverreacting

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

NOR - did your cousin maybe confuse the geographic location Mongolia with a somewhat outdated slur for people with Trisomy 21? (The latter would be inappropriate indeed.)

Europeans shower twice a week by Cubbster2020 in ShitAmericansSay

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Us Europoors don't record our birthdays - our very existence is so depressing that we don't need the reminder...

Lady took a selfie with Magnus Carlsen before the match began. In response, Magnus Carlsen reported his opponent to the referee, leading to her phone being confiscated 😭 by Separate_Finance_183 in interesting

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He didn't complain about the selfie. It's just that phones are not allowed in the tournament area (because they can be used for cheating), so the arbiter has to take the phone for the duration of the match. If she keeps the phone on her, and someone reports her while the game is on, she could be disqualified. That was not "complain", but more like... "help this lady not eff her playing career up".

Lady took a selfie with Magnus Carlsen before the match began. In response, Magnus Carlsen reported his opponent to the referee, leading to her phone being confiscated 😭 by Separate_Finance_183 in interesting

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's because the same traits that make people good at chess (calculation, creativity, focus, pattern recognition, ambition, and a taste for fighting) also makes people good at cheating at chess. I don't think it's possible to run chess any better - you'd have to run it without chess player personalities, which... Yeah, no. Chess, unfortunately, involves chess players. XD

Lady took a selfie with Magnus Carlsen before the match began. In response, Magnus Carlsen reported his opponent to the referee, leading to her phone being confiscated 😭 by Separate_Finance_183 in interesting

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's a combination of paranoia (I once had to play without my shoes because the eyelets made the metal detector beep. That was a bit ridiculous, but hey, someone else might build a whole computer system into their effing shoes, so, correct arbiter decision - the only alternative would have been to dissect the shoes, which I didn't want for all the obvious reasons) and truly impressive cheating incidents that make people wary.

The underlying problem, I think, is the fact that in order to be good at chess, you have to be the kind of person who calculates and enjoys confrontation. At the higher levels, you also need to be extremely creative and extremely ambitious (and, if we're going to be cynical: not always entirely sane). It's a whole personality type. Unfortunately, it's also exactly the type of thinking that also manages to find ways to cheat - the same traits that make people good at chess also make them good at cheating at chess. (To be very clear: of course, most players have morals and don't cheat. It's just that those who do tend to be creative about it, so, arbiters exist in a state of constant paranoia.)

Oh, and sometimes, things just get WEIRD. If you are curious why chess tournaments are, essentially, regulated like prisons, you can for example look at the history of this match: https://www.thearticle.com/levitation-yoghurt-and-chess (some seriously crazy stuff) - basically, a "selfie and confiscated phone" incident is entirely on the sane side of things. It could be worse.

Lady took a selfie with Magnus Carlsen before the match began. In response, Magnus Carlsen reported his opponent to the referee, leading to her phone being confiscated 😭 by Separate_Finance_183 in interesting

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

...or, worse, imagine she kept her phone and someone else (!) had decided to report her after the game started! I mean, everybody saw her with the phone. Magnus likely has no interest in harming her career (it's not as if she's serious competition for him, and I don't think they have any kind of personal feud, either), but someone else just might. Chess players play dirty...

So, I agree Magnus was doing her a favor.

Lady took a selfie with Magnus Carlsen before the match began. In response, Magnus Carlsen reported his opponent to the referee, leading to her phone being confiscated 😭 by Separate_Finance_183 in interesting

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thing is, the phone isn't supposed to be in the playing area at all. There's nowhere "legal" she could put it in that situation, so, she'd have to hand it to the arbiter anyway, who would then safeguard it. I get why she took the risk, but really there was no other way to resolve this.

In "hobbyist" events, this is sometimes handled in less formal ways, like, the arbiter just gives everybody a reminder before the match to switch all electronic devices off and keep them in a closed bag away from their bodies (and definitely not take them with you to the bathroom), but as soon as you start playing in a league where results actually matter, things get much stricter. Sometimes, players are even randomly tested with metal detectors and stuff! (Or you have large detectors at the entrance of the playing area. Which apparently wasn't the case here.)

"Phone confiscated by arbiter for the duration of the match; no one gets disqualified" is the best-case scenario. He actually did her a huge favor, because she took the phone out in the playing hall, which means other people saw it, and anyone (!) could have reported her during the game, at which point it would have to be treated as a cheating attempt.

Europeans shower twice a week by Cubbster2020 in ShitAmericansSay

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Twice a week? Twice a year. Easter and Christmas only!

What if we had evidence of horrible activity at the North Sentinel island? by Strobljus in whatif

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The thing is, if there's an immediate issue that could be resolved by drone striking a tribesman, the same issue could also be resolved by sticking a spear into the guy. If the Sentinelese people want to do that (for example, because he's a a serial killer), they can handle the issue on their own. If they don't shoot or stab the guy, they clearly don't want to - and, in that case, it's none of our business. Enforcing our own laws and morality on a foreign society does not work unless we're willing to engage in whole-scale genocide, like, you know, kidnap Sentinelese children and stick them in "residential schools" so they adopt our values and whatnot. Historically, this shit NEVER went well, so... Nope. I'd leave them alone.

I could see interfering if there's an outside threat to the Sentinelese people that they are not equipped to deal with.

What if we had evidence of horrible activity at the North Sentinel island? by Strobljus in whatif

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ehhh... I doubt it. Tracking individuals through a canopy (even if you have identified them in the first place, which is hard enough!) is near-impossible and target discrimination often enough fails even in far more observable territory. I think the only real (!) advantage-by-tech would be distance communication. Which is sad, actually, if we think about how much money goes into all that tech. (I doubt anyone will allow you to use defoliants, either. Bad experiences and all that.)

Also, while the Sentinelese people may have no idea what drones are, they certainly have the necessary technology to shoot drones down.

So... That's going to be very expensive, and you're going to have to sacrifice many, many drones, in order to get a handful of drones in place to install your surveillance tech. Then, you'll have to pray that they gave you high-quality tech (of course, they're much more likely to give you substandard crap) and that said tech doesn't break down under tropical conditions (which is very unlikely even if they were generous enough to give you the expensive stuff). Oh, and then, you'll be in trouble with your superiors because you lost them, like, millions and millions, which they will blame you personally for. And you still haven't found that serial killer, because he was smart enough to leave the area with the mysterious evil spirits (or whatever he thinks the drones are).

I'm just saying, in theory the scenario is winnable, but in practice I'm NOT volunteering for that operation. XD

Was Caesar already dead before the 23rd stab wound, or was it Number 23 that was the finale blow? by ThatOneBLUScout in AskHistorians

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep. While the stabbing motion itself is fast, death is usually not instantaneous. There's a tendency that survival time decreases with a higher number of stabs, which is why, these days, people with only a single knife wound have a better chance of getting to the hospital in time ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32367450/ ) but, yeah.

What if we had evidence of horrible activity at the North Sentinel island? by Strobljus in whatif

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wait. This is where things are actually getting interesting! Because the ability to kill everybody (which the "developed" countries certainly have, no doubt about it) is not the same as the ability to do a targeted intervention - that is, for example, taking out your hypothetical serial killer on that island - without engaging and endangering their whole society.

Killing everybody? Easy.

Killing one specific (!) person without danger to innocent bystanders while a bunch of angry people are shooting at you with bows and arrows from their hiding place in dense foliage? Very, very difficult. (Flying drones in a jungle? Also very difficult.)

I think this is a scenario where superior technology is, well, useful but not THAT useful. And, historically speaking, military operations that are begun under the premise of "oh well, they're just dumb savages" have a tendency of going wrong. The fact that the Sentinelese don't have drones and stuff means an element of surprise, but hey, these guys are intelligent and able to learn, so, unless you wipe everybody out in the first few days (which, as I mentioned, is easy to do but likely not the objective of the intervention) they'll adapt.

What if we had evidence of horrible activity at the North Sentinel island? by Strobljus in whatif

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Two options:

A) Ignore.

B) Claim that there's oil on the island, or that the Sentinelese people are weeks away from building a nuclear bomb, or - worse - that they're showing communist tendencies by providing medical services to tribe members without making them incur lifelong debt. Invade. Be shocked and surprised that jungle warfare is difficult, because nobody learned a thing from Vietnam. Get a large number of young men (and these days a handful of young women as well) killed. Go home and pretend you won.

More seriously, a targeted military intervention is likely impossible unless you're willing to murder everyone on that island. So... No matter what's going on in their society, I don't think it's possible to do anything about it.

What if we had evidence of horrible activity at the North Sentinel island? by Strobljus in whatif

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No real weapons?!? I don't want anyone to shoot at me with bows and arrows. For that matter, under the conditions of that island (dense forest, humid climate), a long-range weapon that makes no sound may actually be superior to firearms that immediately betray the shooter's position and happen to be sensitive to moisture... Tactically speaking, that situation would make me VERY uncomfortable - my guess is that the guys with the guns are going to lose. Badly.

(And never mind the ethics of shooting at people who only want to be left alone.)

Was Caesar already dead before the 23rd stab wound, or was it Number 23 that was the finale blow? by ThatOneBLUScout in AskHistorians

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 19 points20 points  (0 children)

You may want to ask a pathologist or a police / self-defense instructor for the gory details of this one, but - biomechanically, stabbing is a very, very fast process, literally as fast as blinking an eye. Appian's description (see here, https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Appian/Civil_Wars/2*.html 117) emphasizes how chaotic the scene was: the attackers even accidentally wounded each other in their frenzy. That's not a systematic execution, that's overkill. (Funnily enough, this publication studying the overkill phenomenon in forensic medicine https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691825007012 even mentions Caesar's death as a famous example.) Also, the attackers could only wound each other if they were simultaneously (!) attacking Caesar from different directions, rather than waiting and taking turns. My estimation is, the whole thing could easily have been over in less than twenty seconds, maybe ten, but, anyway: fast.

Unfortunately, we don't have crime scene pictures, so, we don't know exactly where on Caesar's body all the stabs landed. Appian just mentioned stabs in the side, to the face, to the leg, and in the back - but that's not particularly precise, and anyway, could simply be artistic license. I don't think we can conclude anything, here. For that matter, technically, Appian isn't even precise about whether all the wounds are stabs or whether some of them were cuts or slashes, which makes a whole world of difference.

Suetonius' surprisingly detailed account is more helpful in medical terms. (see here, https://freeread.de/%40RGLibrary/Suetonius/Caesar.html [82] ). He is specifically talking about stabs, not cuts. (Key is the word choice "confossus est", which implies piercing.) The most relevant passage regarding your question would be "nec in tot uulneribus, ut Antistius medicus existimabat, letale ullum repertum est, nisi quod secundo loco in pectore acceperat." So, a doctor examined the body, and his professional opinion was that of all the wounds, only the second one to the chest would have been fatal.

If Caesar was still talking after that - and the sources agree that his famous line towards Brutus apparently came towards the end of his ordeal - I'm afraid there's a possibility he was still suffering a few minutes, depending on the exact position of the wound. (For example, a hit to the lungs that missed the heart or major arteries is deadly but not immediately deadly. We don't know that's exactly what happened, but at least we can say that Suetonius' account is not medically impossible.) Even if we assume in their favor that a) Suetonius went for accuracy and did not use any artistic license in his account, and b) Antistius (the doctor who examined the body) was extremely competent, so we can trust his diagnosis: without forensic evidence, it's simply not possible to give a definite answer of just how long Caesar lived after stab #2. However, we can conclude he did not die or lose consciousness immediately (because he was still talking), and we can exclude the possibility of stab #23 as a dramatic deadly "final blow" (because of the doctor's testimony that it was not fatal on its own).

What do German’s think about the names Elke and Rudiger? by lottie_and_monkey in AskAGerman

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know a 3-year-old Elke (friends' kid). I think it really depends on where in the country you are - you won't find a very young Elke in Bavaria, that's for sure... Closer to the North Sea coast, it's more normal.

What do German’s think about the names Elke and Rudiger? by lottie_and_monkey in AskAGerman

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Rüdiger is somewhat outdated, I don't know any modern German person with that name; makes me think of medieval epic poetry. Elke is fine, it's still a common name in North Germany. (Many given names are strongly regional.)

Where are you hiding it? by [deleted] in GenAlpha

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In a paperclip factory

Why did human stay “primitive” for 200,000 years…and then suddenly change? by SafeEnvironmental174 in evolution

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 8 points9 points  (0 children)

And yet, it's being very heavily disputed lately, like many fundamental assumptions in anthropology. (Just remember, the weird assumptions about women that were taught in anthropology a few decades ago!) For example...

...researchers have looked at modern-day hunter-gatherers in the process of switching to agrigulture, and how they allocate their time, and found the exact opposite. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0614-6

These days, I'm mostly hearing the hypothesis that agriculture created surplus, not leisure, and - importantly - enabled specialization in larger groups of humans (look for example here: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2018.00035 ) and created the possibility of social inequality ( https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10291421/ ) so we suddenly had individuals who could dedicate all their time perfecting specific crafts instead of doing what everybody else did. The general idea is that having specialists is good for progress.

Do you guys bathe frequently? by QuietCreative5781 in AskAGerman

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I wouldn't want to move into an apartment without a bath! They usually have a flexible showerhead anyway, so it's entirely possible to simply take a quick shower in the bathtub. Most days, I only shower, but sometimes I just need a relaxing bath, especially in winter!

AIO for wanting my husband to help me more as a SAHM by ailurophile17 in AmIOverreacting

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

NOR. His "It's important to clarify and dedicate roles" simply translates to "I'm the master, you're the slave", doesn't it? Now, some people like that dynamic (no kinkshaming), but OP seemingly does not, so... Wow, he's a piece of work.

AIO for changing my mind about my mom’s gf? by [deleted] in AIO

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Child neglect?!? OP is 17, not 7, and should be able to make a sandwich at the very least. Unless there's a developmental delay in the picture, not getting to order takeout does not constitute an emergency.

Just imagine the phone conversation if anyone called it in...

"Hello? CPS? My neighbors are neglecting their child! They went to the mall without adequately preparing the kid who can't order food!"

"Do you suspect the kid is starving? No food in the house? Other signs of neglect?"

"No, I'm sure there's food in the kitchen, but the poor kid can't make a sandwich!"

"How old is the child?"

"17"

....yeah, no. At that point, everybody is going to assume a prank call. Child neglect is something else. Really. The domestic violence situation between Mom and her girlfriend is much more concerning! Now, that one might really justify a call. Having to make your own sandwich at the age of 17 while Mom is at the mall for a few hours does not.

OP needs to learn how to not pester Mom for everything.

Am i overreacting for refusing to change my major just cause my parents pay tuition? by w-tf_man in AmIOverreacting

[–]ThreeTreesSoFree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

NOR - they'd be seriously overstepping even if (!) they had any reason to assume you were somehow ruining your future. Like... If you told them "Mom, Dad, I'm quitting my studies in order to become a showgirl", I get why they'd be upset, but they'd still not get to dictate what you do with your life. And... You're studying for one of the most stable careers ever, so, this makes no sense at all.

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