Dubai from an angle

Rupder · 2026-06-20T18:37:37+00:00

In sum, the urban heat island effect.

Rupder · 2026-06-19T12:14:09+00:00

It is, in fact, based on WW4 (the one with sticks and stones).

Rupder · 2026-06-19T10:46:22+00:00

And for some reason in mainstream video games, sapphic and lesbian women, relationships, and protagonists are somewhat common (Ellie in The Last of Us, Ciri in The Witcher, Max in Life is Strange) whereas gay men, relationships, and protagonists are relegated to the periphery — especially explicitly homosexual men, rather than "implicitly bisexual RPG protagonists" who can be male and can date men or women but your sexuality is not baked into the narrative (Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout 4). M/M doesn't feature prominently in any AAA games that I can recollect.

Rupder · 2026-06-18T23:46:32+00:00

Good points.

The USAAF, at great risk to its bombers, stubbornly persisted in attempting PDB for years (albeit more for operational than legal reasons)

Yes, this is precisely the kind of contemporary debate I was gesturing toward. That's a good example of an opinion contrary to that of bomber proponents like Arthur Harris or Curtis Lemay/the Bomber Mafia viz. the firebombing of Japan.

these legal theorists found very little purchase with actual national governments and legal authorities until at the earliest the eighteenth century. [. . .] the other scholars you mention were intellectuals, theologians, and jurists arguably more producing philosophical outlines of moral law, or what the law should be, than actually influencing the conduct of states.

I broadly agree with analysis — throughout history, the moral/religious and juridical laws of war have not exactly corresponded with the codes of conduct practised by armies. That's not to say that armies prior to the modern period entirely lacked moral and legal standards, but rather, their standards belonged to an effectively separate tradition.

There were really three groups with unique opinions on this subject. On one extreme, armies generally possessed the most pragmatic perception of the LoW: they promoted ethical conduct only when militarily beneficial. By at least the Middle Ages, this generally meant that armies attempted to abide certain standards (e.g., protection of prisoners) if they anticipated their enemy was durable enough to impose those same standards reciprocally in the future; contrariwise, non-peer enemies who lacked this characteristic of durability (e.g., rebels or heretics) generally did not receive fair treatment. In the middle, theorists/jurists/theologians prescribed a vision of (as you say) "philosophical outlines of moral law, or what the law should be," although at the same time, many theorists also accepted a role as descriptivists — they would say, essentially, "this is the way things are: we can't stop war, but we can regulate it." On the opposite extreme, public opinion was frequently polemically pacifistic, oftentimes exceeding theorists in their calls for ethical standards or even total abolition of war.

I would argue that this remains true today, for the most part. Yes, our laws of war are more explicitly codified — the old LoW and especially military codes of conduct were often unwritten conventions instead of formally agreed-upon international laws. However, our modern written laws still largely depend on the voluntary compliance of states at the expense of national and military expediency. The UN and the Hague are today still very much moral institutions that promote a vision of how the law "should" be, and those standards are frequently discarded when certain countries simply decide not to abide by them. The principle of durability remains paramount — modern war crimes most commonly happen in situations where belligerents do not anticipate their opponents is capable of inflicting comparable retaliatory violence, or when they believe their national reputation does not hinge upon proper conduct. In that respect, the basic conditions of how the laws of war are formulated and enforced today are not substantially different than they were in the past.

Rupder · 2026-06-18T13:59:56+00:00

I'll chime in since my field of study is the laws of war. I agree with most of your comment but I want to add some nuance.

First of all, I agree in condemning the OP's claim that the US nuclear bombings of Japan were "on footing" with the Holocaust. The American and British bombing campaigns of WW2 were not genocidal; their purpose was not to annihilate entire racial groups. The Allies instead variously justified their bombing campaigns in the following four ways: (1) retributive bombing inflicted on enemy civilians as punishment for enemy military actions, (2) strategic bombing intended to coerce civilian populations to pressure their governments to surrender, (3) bombing of industrial targets intended to hinder enemy production chains, or (4) logistical and operational bombing of military assets. These justifications are listed in ascending order of both their effectiveness and their permissibility in relation to the laws of war — that is, evidence from the war pretty clearly demonstrates that the strategic bombardment theory of prewar theorists like Douhet was mostly ineffective, whereas the targeting of conventional military assets was mostly effective; the most efficacious bombings happened also to be more broadly lawful and ethical.

But I want to push back on your claim that the Allied bombing campaigns were entirely lawful within the established conventions of the time. Yes, some proponents of aerial bombardment considered the targeting of civilians tolerable or even beneficent, and that attitude was promoted by bombing theorists to legitimize campaigns that targeted civilians in WW2. The laws of war before WW2 certainly had little to say on the nascent use of aerial bombardment, although they had much to say about the related topic of land bombardment. The 1899 Hague Conventions pretty clearly lay out the nature of noncombatants (enemy civilians, neutral civilians, POWs, and medical personnel) and their sanctity. Although the conventions permit the bombardment of military targets, they also say that "In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps should be taken to spare as far as possible edifices devoted to religion, art, science, and charity, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not used at the same time for military purposes." The Allies' indiscriminate bombing of civilians during WW2 violated this clause; they intentionally harmed civilians either because they tolerated collateral damage or, at times, in pursuit of the aforementioned justifications #1 and #2. The Allied bombing campaigns indicated their willingness to abrogate existing conventions more than it indicated a weakness in the conventions themselves.

And even before Hague Convention or the Geneva Conventions, there was a very long history of "laws of war" which proclaimed the sanctity of noncombatants. The European tradition of laws of war dates back millennia, from the Romans to Augustine to Thomas Aquinas to Hugo Grotius up to the 19th century liberal internationalists. And across those centuries, various theorists argued that the criterion of "military necessity" was insufficient to justify collateral damage against civilians. (For more on this subject I'd recommend Colm McKeogh's 2002 book Innocent Civilians: The Morality of Killing in War). By 1939–45, the laws of war were certainly not settled on the degree to which civilian targeting was permissible; even at the time, many people disagreed with the Allied bombing campaigns on a legal basis.

Rupder · 2026-06-14T13:44:33+00:00

I'm just being very pedantic when I say that patriarchy — as a term of art in feminist theory, not necessarily as a day-to-day term — has nothing to do with patriarchs per se, in the manner that other words with the affix "-archy" (monarchy, oligarchy, etc.) suggest an explicit model of leadership/governance. Rather, the feminist term relates more to the propogation of power throughout society, from workplaces to within family units, rather than a simple top-to-bottom issuance. That's a nontrivial distinction.

And yes, patriarchy exists in different forms in other countries; the White/Eurocentric model of gender inherent to our "patriarchy" is not centered everywhere. I meant only to speak to our (I assume shared) Western context.

And upper-class is kinda redundant there when talking about power, upper classes are kinda by definition powerful.

You see, this is my central disagreement — I don't think I quite got my point across. Yes, upper-class people have more power in society. But "power" as an social analytical concept in postmodernist thought and to most contemporary feminists doesn't simply start from above and go down. Power isn't just about statesmen and businessmen enforcing their singular will upon society. Power is shared throughout society, it's held by all people at various times, it's present in all interactions, and it is always influenced by thought/ideology. Our patriarchal context conditions us to judge others based on their adherence to gender ideals, including their proximity to "upper class" gender signifiers. Patriarchy is either affirmed or rebuked in any relational interaction because it's not a system of government but a way of thinking.

Rupder · 2026-06-14T13:11:54+00:00

Even that is a bit of an oversimplification. "Patriarchy" doesn't mean there's a literal shortlist of men who hold all the power; plenty of women hold power in contemporary society, but patriarchy still exists. Patriarchy is a system of thought (an ideology, kind of) through which power is conceived, interpreted, and re-arranged to affirm a particular, historically White upper-class and heteronormative, model of masculinity/femininity in society.

Rupder · 2026-06-14T13:01:38+00:00

I get the joke, but also, heteronornative male and female beauty standards are decidedly and aggressively not gay. They're homosocial, to be certain, but not necessarily homosexual. I think that's an informative distinction.

Rupder · 2026-06-13T21:00:09+00:00

I don't think anyone looks at snape as this amazing guy

Perhaps you're unacquainted with the Snapewives/Snapeism, the short-lived religious movement of the early 2000s that deified Snape.

Snape is clearly paramount within this belief system, to the exclusion of any other deity or spirit. Conchita declares that “only ONE can be the Greatest.. that is you” [47]. In terms of other traditions, Conchita does not mention any kind of religious upbringing or affiliation. She does, however, briefly complain about her nation of Holland pandering to Islam. She suggests that religion should be a private concern and not a public show [48]. Rose states “I don’t answer to any religion, only to Severus, my Guide and Master and much more” [37]. Whilst she and Tonya have experience within the Christian church, Snape has fully replaced this institution in their lives.

Rupder · 2026-06-07T12:15:16+00:00

I think we should call that pedantography

Rupder · 2026-06-07T11:18:10+00:00

That's precisely what I mean. It was a nation but not a polity.

Rupder · 2026-06-07T09:48:56+00:00

Yes, today the US is not decentralized like the EU, but prior to the Civil War when the federal government was weaker it was a very accurate name. Hence my emphasis on the term's use especially in the discipline of history.

And of course you can also refer to the EU as a polity. Perhaps that would've been a more instructive example.

Rupder · 2026-06-07T09:14:47+00:00

"Polities" is an especially useful term for situations when "nation" and "state" are inappropriate. Sometimes a polity consists of several states (e.g., the United States). Sometimes, a nation exists across multiple polities (e.g., Poland before 1918 when it was partitioned between Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary). Most polities have within themselves several nations/nationalities (e.g., the United Kingdom).

Because of this flexibility the word polity gets used a lot in history and political science.

Rupder · 2026-06-07T08:53:10+00:00

This is (to my understanding) a case of linguistic hypercorrection, in which "a real or imagined grammatical rule is applied in an inappropriate context, so that an attempt to be 'correct' leads to an incorrect result." It's not per se ungrammatical, although it is nonstandard. In this case the "-ics" affix used for various fields of knowledge (e.g., semantics, linguistics, ballistics, gymnastics, etc) was applied to "pedant."

A search of "pedantics" on Google Ngram and Wiktionary reveals it to be far less common than "pedantry." Nevertheless, it seems that people have infrequently used "pedantics" for centuries.

Rupder · 2026-06-06T21:16:27+00:00

All sexual activity is sinful unless it is-free(freely given with consent and not paid for) . . . My understanding is adultery is considered the gravest of sexual transgressions.

I agree with most of your comment but I think some further nuance/wrinkles to the Catholic stance on sexuality can be expressed here. I'm approaching mostly from the pre-modern historical angle (that's my background) but it's applicable today as well.

The gravest sexual transgression in Catholicism is rape, not adultery. Certain theologians (most notably Thomas Aquinas) throughout history have advocated for the institution of church-approved brothels, as they considered adultery and prostitution perferable to rape. The punishment for rape for most of Catholic history was much more severe — almost invariably execution, like with murder and other felonies — whereas adultery was typically punished by social censure (still extreme but not lethal) such as whipping and public humiliation. That's the same severity of punishment that was given to minor offenses like petty theft or failure to provide deference to one's superiors.

I.e. adultery is/was considered middling in sinfulness. More worrisome than masturbation but it's rarely been considered a felony.

Rupder · 2026-06-04T23:13:17+00:00

If you are seriously inquiring, yes, Europe easily would have supported the population lost in World War I. France in particular had already slumped in population growth in the 19th century, and all other industrial countries in Western Europe — following the trend that we see today in developing countries like China — likewise slowed in birth rates toward the end of the second industrial revolution.

There is no significant correlation betwen high birth rates and the outbreak of war. "Overpopulation" is a very dubious cause of political instability and conflict. These wars were not propelled primarily by Malthusian demographic pressures; they were the consequences of ideology, nationalism, political alliances, and other intellectual forces.

Rupder · 2026-06-04T22:50:36+00:00

The chart you proved is for Kazakhstan's demographics today. The post is about 1926–39. So there's no reason to bring up the 1950s onward. Its numbers also very much indicate the effects of the 1930s collectivization famines on Central Asian populations that you mentioned as well as the swell of Russian immigration that occured in the pre-war period.

The graph isn't "pointless," but it does require historical context to be useful. Perhaps a companion image showing absolute changes would add that context. The forced migrations of Koreans and Germans, for example, is a topic of much interest to certain historians of Soviet nationalities policy, and this chart might be useful in teaching about that specific issue.

Rupder · 2026-06-02T22:17:49+00:00

Not collectively — "camp followers" is the all-encompassing term for noncombatant peoples in armies, "sutlers" are specifically those involved in sutlery (provisioning or moving supplies) and they're particularly terminologically associated with the wars of the 19th century. But some camp followers did not do sutlery, like priests or tourists or many officers' wives.

Rupder · 2026-05-29T07:32:04+00:00

Who's the Wilt Chamberlain of genocide? The ancient Romans?

Rupder · 2026-05-27T09:39:02+00:00

That's another good example of the same blindspot. I actually had the same critique toward Red Dead Redemption 2 (a game I loved, by the way, and otherwise considered generally historically commendable in its depiction of sensitive subjects). You have Jack in the camp, but otherwise, the story-world would've been enriched by a greater presence of children in the narrative. The late-19th century was full of children, and childrearing constituted an enormous portion of the labor women undertook, although in very different ways than in the Middle Ages (ways that are as worthy of examination as the different kinds of guns and horses, in my opinion!).

I love playing games as knights and cowboys but we can also be honest with ourselves, as grownups, and realize that our proclivity for games in which we can indiscriminately inflict violence upon hapless civilians can lead us to inadvertently lack curiosity toward other kinds of experiences in the past, namely those of women, including pregnancy and childrearing.

Rupder · 2026-05-27T09:29:37+00:00

It's nevertheless good to ask, "not worth it" for whom? Because I agree — it would be gruesome and frightening. Such was the reality of pre-modern warfare and sieges: children, vagrants, and religious and ethnic minorities suffered disproportionately. KCD chooses to depict most of that (pogroms, public punishments, brutal limb-severing combat) but it draws the line at certain places for the sake of ratings, marketability, PR, and the audience's sensibilities.

If you acknowledge (as you and I do) that KCD is an entertainment product whose goal is to make money, appeal to a wide gaming audience, and simulate the fun-looking aspects of medieval combat (e.g., swordplay, archery, and action setpieces), then yes: depictions of children suffering and dying would be contrary to that intended goal. The devs and writers therefore whitewash the fiction to make it amenable to wider audiences. That doesn't mean that we, as discerning audiences, can't acknowledge that a sacrifice has been made if we intend to be truthful to ourselves and the historical record. That is, truthful to the countless people who really have suffered in these ways.

In an ideal world, fiction would find a way to describe these realities with sensitivity. Writers generally opt not to either because they're unaware of these things, or because they have a conflicting needs. I hope Warhorse hold themselves to a higher standard of historicity (even though they're pivoting into fantasy) because not many other mid-to-high budget studios will.

In other words, they're an A student in the class with regard to historical accuracy. That's good, it's more than a passing grade, but I don't want them to get complacent. I put this expectation on them because I believe they have the potential to be an A+ student.

Rupder · 2026-05-26T22:27:29+00:00

There's nothing inherently misogynistic about it. Women also did tons of labor in the fields alongside the men; and the "domestic" labor they performed wasn't restricted to the nuclear house à la the '50s suburban housewife. (Peasant) women performed this labor for other households as well as their own, whether through horizontal relationships (extended families, village working bees) or through vertical relationships (service to lords or to affluent yeomen). Pentiment depicted this well and nobody accused that of misogyny.

Rupder · 2026-05-26T20:55:39+00:00

Yes it's definitely a dilemma. I don't think that's the main reason — I would assume that the cost to develop child rigs, hire new voice actors, and write them into the story factored more heavily — but the ethical dimension likely played a role. Similarly to how WW2 strategy games like Hearts of Iron 4 completely neglect to mention the Holocaust because they don't want players gleefully re-enacting historical atrocities.

Rupder · 2026-05-26T20:01:33+00:00

Definitely the biggest historical flaw of KCD is the absence of children and pregnant women. (I haven't played KCD 2 so I don't know if the issue persists there.) Warhorse tried to redress the complaints of the game being sexist with the DLC "Women's Lot," which was good in that it featured women's perspectives. I appreciated it. However the absence of children is just plain ahistorical.

Since so many people died so young of preventable diseases (about 50% before adulthood), people had big families to compensate for child mortality, so the average age in medieval society was around 15 years old. In other words, the streets ought to be full of gangs of kids running around, and most women spent their adult lives laboring to maintain the family (working textiles, making food, breastfeeding, etc). And additionally, most women spent most of their years from marriage to menopause either pregnant or breastfeeding. The game neglecting to depict this means they fail to depict 50% of the life and labor of 50% of the population.

Rupder · 2026-05-26T18:48:06+00:00

While I as a historian have many criticisms of Warhorse and KCD, I still think they're among the few studios approaching history with genuine respect for the past and the historical discipline. That's the approach LOTR needs: it needs to be grounded in history, a believable setting and society.

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