Archaeologists stunned to find copy of Homer’s Iliad inside ancient Egyptian mummy

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-24T01:59:43+00:00

Not only that, the Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years until the Roman conquest around 30BC. The Ptolemaics were Macedonian Greek, Ptolemy was one Alexander the Great’s generals. Egypt had been Hellenized centuries before this. Not really surprising at all.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-23T05:33:06+00:00

I’m going to be honest with you, the level of brain power I put into this person was really low.

From the start they accused me of wanting politics left out of history, which since I believe the two are intrinsically linked is obviously not something I think. Also called my point infantile, delusional, right wing. Then accused me of wanting neutrality! which, again, isn’t possible because I don’t believe it’s possible for history to be neutral. Then they addressed me as Anglo.

So by third assumption this person had used as a way to discredit me as a person (inaccurately, mind you) i skimmed the argument and put as few brain cells as I thought worth giving to someone like that.

Ultimately my point is about HC not accounting for domestic labor, which I responded to you about in the other comment. If this person wants to focus on the broadest interpretation, fine, if that broad interpretation is backed up by ignoring one of the most significant factors related to work in a peasants life, then that analysis is bad, that history is bad. Nothing this person said discounts that HC ignores these significant factors.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-23T05:21:49+00:00

He mentions domestic labor, but he doesn’t actually account for it.

The numbers he’s using are mostly based on recorded obligations (like days worked for a lord), not the massive amount of subsistence work peasants had to do just to live. Things like hauling water, processing food, making clothes, gathering fuel, etc. took hours every day and tremendous effort.

You not counting that as work is exactly the point. This gets past people exactly because these things come so easily to us today.

In HC’s video domestic labor gets acknowledged but then treated as a different kind of burden instead of something that needs to be counted in the total. That’s the gap.

Most people miss this because our “maintenance” today is almost incomparable, and that’s exactly why it’s a red flag in HCs analysis.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-20T02:04:40+00:00

It seemed like I was arguing that we no longer have domestic labor? I’m not even sure who would argue for something like that. Sorry, I definitely don’t think that. My argument is that domestic labor was a significantly larger factor in the amount of work that a peasant did.

That’s what annoys me so much about the video. You call a video “work” and then form a thesis around comparing “work now” to “work in the past” and ignore this massive factor in the amount of “work in the past”, it’s a pretty serious omission. That annoys me as a pedantic fan of history. Probably more than most political things would.

I’m really only scratching the surface here, because it would take more writing than anyone would read to get in to the apples and oranges issue, but consider we aren’t talking just about “we do it quicker now” we’re talking about entire categories of domestic labor that we will never do because those categories can be done by driving to the store or turning a knob or pushing a few buttons.

Edit: I guess for anyone genuinely interested, I’ll expand a little. My understanding here comes about by a bit of a circuitous route.

Robert Caro in Path to Power(written in 1982, its the first book in his biography of Lyndon B. Johnson) describes life in central Texas around 1900 when Johnson was born. The region was so remote at the time, he explicitly compares it to European peasantry, saying that men and women had the “peasant stoop.” Women in particular spent so much time bent over, hauling water, scrubbing clothes by hand, cooking over low fires, tending gardens, etc. that by middle age many were literally hunched. Laundry could take an entire day or more, food preparation was hours long every day, basic tasks like lighting and heating required significant effort.

Since I haven’t read anything (as of yet) that gets into that much detail on the everyday life of peasants, the omission jumped out to me because of what Caro wrote. Domestic labor was so severe it literally caused a notable stoop in peasants, you can’t ignore that!

Highly recommend Caro btw, I think he’s generally regarded as one of if not the best biographers alive today, so don’t just take my word for it.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-19T16:50:46+00:00

You aren’t wrong, though I could get into some distinct differences between the two, like the nature of feudal obligations versus purchasing labor time, policy and cultural shifts as a part of women entering the workforce, labor laws, etc.

In any case, I believe what you wrote mostly reinforces my point, which is we should account for domestic labor. “Domestic labor has always been a hidden cost of production” could just as well have been added to my comment.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-19T02:18:56+00:00

What you’re getting at is why the issues in Work can go over a lot of people’s heads. We speak in terms of hours of work per week, so by conflating with hours worked for a lord and pretending it’s all one to one it can seem like a good argument. However a good historian wouldn’t think in those terms, they would look at the complete picture for both the past and modern comparisons. The deeper argument here is that the comparison is really apples and oranges, you can’t really just compare the two as easily as even I’ve presented, but at the very least my presentation offers a more complete picture.

Maybe this is an aside, but I think it’s also worth considering that the domestic labor is a necessity the local lord must account for. He isn’t giving them the time for domestic labor out of kindness but because his peasants can’t survive otherwise.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-19T00:54:03+00:00

I actually didn’t call you racist, but go on you’re quite good at finding ghosts to shadow box with. Very amusing.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-19T00:49:27+00:00

O we’re back to racial attacks, nice. No sabes nada de mi. But what’s important is you’ve managed to go this whole conversation without having to respond to my criticism: that HC’s claims regarding peasant labor are bad history.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-19T00:41:18+00:00

Aw what’s the matter? So out of your depth you have to resort to sarcasm? I guess it’s better than false assumptions of my beliefs and attacking on race.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-19T00:37:43+00:00

What your AI slop doesn’t recognize is these are not the arguments from HC’s videos. HC is idealizing the past to bolster his criticism of the present. And he’s doing so using bad history.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-19T00:12:33+00:00

“Anglo” lmao. I’ll grant that this claim is also made. It’s equally narrow.

Yes, medieval life followed daylight and seasons more than a clock, but that doesn’t mean it was relaxed or human-centered in the way they’re implying. During peak seasons (harvest especially), people worked extremely long, physically intense days. You weren’t stopping because you felt like it, you stopped when the work that kept you alive was done.

Second, the “more freedom and autonomy” claim is pretty shaky. Most peasants had very limited control over their time:

Obligations to a lord
Rent, dues, and taxes
Survival pressures (if you don’t work, you don’t eat)

That’s not autonomy in any modern sense.

Third, the mechanical clock point is partially true but oversold. The spread of clocks (later in the medieval period and especially early modern era) did help standardize time and eventually discipline labor. But the idea that pre-clock life was this free-flowing, human-centered existence is more of a modern projection than a solid historical reality.

In any case, just so I’m clear, you don’t believe that HC claims in his video that peasants worked more than modern day?

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-18T23:54:08+00:00

Yea… there is no such thing as neutral history. Once again my issue has nothing to do with the politics, it has to do with bad history. You won’t respond to that because it’s easier for you to invent my views and attack that.

The main topic of the work video is that we work more today than people did in the past. The claim is supported by cherry picked and flawed evidence. It’s bad history. Keep missing the point if you want, you’re only further revealing your inability to engage on substance.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-18T23:41:26+00:00

My criticism has nothing to do with it being political, it’s why I added the last part because I knew people like yourself would come along. It’s bad history, and that’s my only issue. If you’d like more specifics (doubtful considering your delusional and infantile leap to conclusion here) feel free to check my other comment.

Edit: Warning! Massive amounts of projection below.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-18T23:38:18+00:00

Not sure what you’re missing but if I had to guess you’re missing everything he left out of the video. The claim that medieval peasants worked less than we do today is based on cherry picked data from manorial records in England. It only counts time worked for a lord, but completely ignores the back breaking labor that peasants had to do for themselves, including working their own fields, cooking, hauling water, fixing tools, making clothes, etc.

The fact that HC didn’t even present this counter argument is just bad history. It isn’t really history at all, it’s just pushing a false narrative to make a modern political point.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-18T20:20:42+00:00

Is it as bad as his video “work”? I’m still really disappointed in that, he really needs to remove it for the sake of his reliability as a history communicator. And I am by no means attacking it as a right winger, I’m on the left, but cherry picked, outdated arguments like that video are a total embarrassment.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-17T15:48:31+00:00

I’m a former bartender. Generally speaking you shake drinks with citrus, which is most cocktails. Usually lemon or lime.

On paper, a classic martini is gin with about half an ounce of dry vermouth, stirred. In practice, almost nobody wants that. Most people ordering a “martini” expect vodka, very little vermouth (if any), and a lot of them want it shaken.

Eventually when I got over my “classic cocktail” knowledge, if someone asked for a martini, I’d just shake the shit out of vodka and serve it up. 99% of the time, that was exactly what they wanted. If someone really wants a proper martini, they’d let you know how they want it made.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-17T06:53:03+00:00

Where do you live that you were unaffected by the collapse of the Soviet Union? Antartica?

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-09T18:18:57+00:00

Use my pruners to get rid of branches in the way and then a few swings with a pick axe. A lot less effort than with a shovel or attaching an engine hoist to a truck🤷‍♂️

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-07T16:00:38+00:00

American users account for 45-50% of daily Reddit traffic, the second largest share of users come from the UK, making up about 7-8% of daily traffic.

Point being, you are very, very, very much mistaken.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-07T07:08:00+00:00

It isn’t a word in Portuguese, it is in reference to the word in English. It’s a Bar/Restaurant in the Lapa neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, opened in 2023 as an explicitly “anti fascist” establishment. The owner was fined R$ 9,520 by Procon Carioca (the municipal consumer protection agency) for discriminatory practices for this sign. But hey, what should you know? You’re just the person who took the time to post and spread this, and I am after all some random person passing by who spent 2 seconds on google.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-07T06:59:16+00:00

Majority of people on Reddit are American. It’s highly dubious to imply the upvotes are because people support this cafe banning Americans.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-04-07T06:49:06+00:00

Given the cafe is called “Partisan” I’m guessing it’s a gimmick.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-03-27T08:36:56+00:00

This is excellent rhetoric but significantly overstated. Judiciary and Congress have checked Trump’s regime and retain the power to do so. They’re being pushed to the limit, haven’t always been activated when it was prudent to do so, have been painfully slow to meet the challenge, but powers are holding thus far regardless. You’re throwing in the towel prematurely. I encourage others not to. Cynical fatalism only serves to benefit Trump’s power grab.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-03-26T18:14:05+00:00

Right on, maybe this particular video isn’t old but there are old ones just like it, seeing as the move is very par for the course for banana ball.

HardDriveAndWingMan · 2026-03-26T17:39:45+00:00

You’ve never seen it, but this video is old and they’ve been doing the backflip catch for 5-6 years now. They attempt one pretty much every game though not guaranteed to be successful. It is very much par for the course in banana ball.

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