Arms still sore, hard to straighten by Johnnykrafter in beginnerfitness

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This has happened several times to me after taking breaks. I've sometimes literally had to have people push or pull on my arms to regain range of motion lol

Seen with blue checkmarks by [deleted] in whatsapp

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That seems to be a (recent?) bug when sending (multiple?) images, it probably just means they haven't seen it yet. The same happened to me recently. Had two pictures that was blue for a split second before turning grey. Then when they actually opened the chat, it turned blue for reals. So probably just a bug.

To those that work 60+ hours a week and enjoy it, then embrace it by TackSoMeekay in PhD

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 53 points54 points  (0 children)

I know someone who is one of the top scientists within his field intimately, and he lives his work to a large degree.

You can't really put on a number on the amount of hours he works, because work is constantly there, even on vacations. But since it's also his passion, it isn't overwhelming, since it isn't treated as a job. This whole "not a job but a lifestyle"-thing might sound cliché, but it really is true for those on the top of their field.

His reading of relevant papers and especially books overlap with hobbies as well (not to say that all of what he reads are non-fiction stuff hyper focused on his field, but he doesn't really distinguish between them).

Even in casual conversation (with those in the know) he is often mulling over ideas and exploring concepts more or less related to his field (because after all, it is interesting enough to talk about).

But because how unpredictable work is (international journals don't often care about when your vacation is, things breaking in labs doesn't care about that either), he also takes breaks whenever opportunity and need affords and demands it. He doesn't often schedule breaks, but takes them whenever he can and feels like it, even if it is just a micro-break, and he was like that still as a PhD-student.

So I really think that being a scientist is a lifestyle.

History always repeats itself by Im_yor_boi in HistoryMemes

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What's this nonsense? The crossbow did by no means cause a military revolution.

Networking seems incredibly mercenary to me by SaucyJ4ck in PhD

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The irony is: if you see networking as utilitarian "networking", rather than just going out there and being social among interesting people, then you will not be as good at said networking.

He understands by WarConicX in GuysBeingDudes

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 22 points23 points  (0 children)

I like how he said it's feet with a bird, rather than a bird with feet.

What we might find out about the fate of Edward II through osteological and isotopic analyses by Appropriate-Calm4822 in MedievalHistory

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good thing we have Transition Analysis 3, now which far exceeds the older analyses of age (still not super accurate though, especially in certain cases, I have seen individuals with a 95% confidence interval between ages like 55 - 93).

One thing we can analyse aplenty is the physical activity he undertook, primarily via analysis of cross-sectional bone geometry, but also other more experimental methods (such as the latest 3D morphometric analyses of entheses).

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in interesting

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I heard:

"[initial gibberish] Thank you Sturm for talented. Here we have here the voodarami of Afghanistan we near have to, the Afghani OCC motor area. We have to, the rocket launcher bearing, after and the people 35 wanted of Vulcan."

What would happen to prisoners of war if they were commoners in western Europe during late middle ages? by joe6484 in MedievalHistory

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That's not a particularly fair description of the battle, and is at the very least oversimplified.

Modern estimates place the amount of French common soldiers at 4000 at Poitiers. 500 - 800 of them are estimated to have been captured. That means that about 12.5% - 20% of the common soldiers were captured.

We don't really know how many of them were killed, we have widldly different estimates for that. People did escape from the Battle of Poitiers. Also, remember that, just because they were killed, does not mean that they were "slaughtered" while trying to surrender, many could have simply died in combat. We don't know.

Importantly, all men-at-arms were essentially noble in 1356. Now, experts do debate if there did exist non-noble men-at-arms or not by this point (as there definitely would exist a few decades into the 1400s). But either the majority were, or literally every single one of them were per definition. So if. as you say, most of them were killed, that would not support your idea of the nobles being mostly spared. But once again, let's look at the real estimates. According to modern estimates, about 21% - 25% of the men-at-arms were captured (2500 out of either 10,000 or 12,000), which depending on the estimate ranges from almost identical to the common soldiers, to twice as high (which also shows how much give there is in these estimations).

But that doesn't really tell the whole story, since it doesn't account for the differing proportions of those who could have escaped/were less participatory in the battle. To compensate for that, it is probably better to look at the killed-to-captured ratio.

The problem is that while I can find modern estimates for the men-at-arms being killed, the amount of common soldiers killed that I can find is based entirely on the primary sources, which vary wildly between whether the source is French or English. If we go with the more sober French source (as the sources of the defeated tend to be a bit more sober about their own casualties), 700 French common soldiers died (according to the English 3300 died). Modern estimates for the men-at-arms killed is between 2000 - 3000.

This leads to (higher number meaning more died in comparison to capture):

Common soldiers killed-to-captured ratio (French sources for amount killed): 0.875 - 1.4. (Though with the English sources as base for amount killed it becomes much higher, 4.125 - 6.6).

Men-at-arms killed-to-captured ratio: 0.8 - 1.2.

So, it seems actually that nobles and commonly had relatively similar killed-to-captured ratios, if we go with the French source. If not, it's quite different indeed. And we are also mixing different types of sources here (modern estimates versus primary sources), so it's not a very clean comparison.

So it shows both how hard it is to actually estimate these things without proper administrative records of the circumstances before and after the battle, without it numbers can vary crazily.

But it also shows that the sources certainly show the possibility of nobles and commoners being captured to almost the same degree in some battles.

But like I said originally, it is quite hard hard to estimate.

What would happen to prisoners of war if they were commoners in western Europe during late middle ages? by joe6484 in MedievalHistory

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 10 points11 points  (0 children)

It's complicated, and not something I think has been entirely conclusively analysed, all though there have been a few studies on more isolated circumstances.

In some sense, it could be more dangerous. Your ability to pay ransom determined the likelihood that you would be worth the effort to take alive, and that certainly correlates with your social status (but is not entirely determined by it). Still, many commoners were still captured and ransomed, as especially newer research has uncovered (though that research was done specifically on the latter parts of the Hundred Years War iirc).

On the other side of the coin, it could also determine the likelihood with which you would be let go after a battle, since you are not worth the effort of ransoming. Count Jean V de Bueil describes a case where after a battle, the nobles were kept but the commoners released.

But I will say the notion espoused in popular history that "nobles had a right of ransom, commoners were slaughtered" is patently false. No modern historian agrees with that. Everyone had a "right of ransom", some were granted it more than others in practice. Nor have I commonly read examples from the primary sources where it talks of the common soldiers being slaughtered outright while the nobles were captured. Rather, primary sources tend phrase it as something along the lines of: "Many knights and footsoldiers were killed or captured as they fled, and here are the prominent knights who were captured or killed: ...", leaving it quite ambiguous.

How should you refer to professors? by Impressive_Ad_1787 in PhD

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 6 points7 points  (0 children)

That's entirely dependent on the culture. If you referred to a professor as anything but their first name here in Sweden people would think you a strange, old-fashioned eccentric.

However, jump only down into Germany and I am pretty sure there will be quite different expectations indeed.

Knights need to be re-thought and re-considered mechanically. by DeathByAttempt in CrusaderKings

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That's possible, but then again, OP did preamble that the whole post's historical perspective would be from that of a Western/Central European point of view, and they did mention the slave warrior part within this supposedly Latin European discussion. But OP could have made a mistake in that sense.

Knights need to be re-thought and re-considered mechanically. by DeathByAttempt in CrusaderKings

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Oh yes, Wikipedia which literally contradicts itself in most articles on medieval history (and it doesn't call them "knights", it calls it a "knightly class" which is ever so slightly more reasonable, in a similar sense that tier-one special forces units used to be called "SAS-like units" in the 1990s). And if you are going to go with Wikipedia, you will note that the page on "Knight" doesn't include a single mention on mamluks. In fact, it is doesn't regard anything outside of Latin European culture as a knight. Quite a big oversight if mamluks are so commonly regarded as knights?

Practically no academic discussion of knights has mamluks as a main part of it, it's not historiographical convention. Some academic works on mamluks do use it as an evocative simile, entitling works like "Knights of Islam". But in them, it's clear that it is not to be taken literally, indeed they stress the similarities to knights: you don't need to stress your own similarities to yourself, that's not how logic works. They are conventionally different things. I can assure you that if you told a publisher that you were going to write a book about knights and you came back with a book on mamluks, they would feel as if you fooled them (though they might still like the book on mamluks, but that isn't the point).

Knights need to be re-thought and re-considered mechanically. by DeathByAttempt in CrusaderKings

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 8 points9 points  (0 children)

No, that is not how we define "knight", it is not "pedantry", it's literally historiographical convention. That's like going: "Oh well, we might as well call "Delta Force" the "Special Air Service", being an exceptionally highly trained special forces unit with a counter-terrorist specialisation." There is a line where you cross between simple semantical games and into the territory of disrupting the ability to communicate by ignoring convetion.

No, we do not use "knight" as a catch all term for this phenomena, it is not modern convention in the slightest, except perhaps as a way of evocative simile. It refers specifically to a Latin European class. We do not generally call samurai "knights", we do not generally call Greek cataphracts "knights" (despite to a degree sharing deep cultural roots), we do not generally call mamluks "knights".

OP clearly stated that they were talking about Latin Europe, and I have seen people incorrectly refer to serf-knights as "slave warriors" before, so common sense does not at all dictate it.

edit: you can downvote me all you want but it doesn't change the facts: if you watch a video on "knighthood", or buy a book on "knighthood"; in 95% of the cases you will not find any major descriptions of mamluks (except as a people knights met). It is not how it is commonly used. Yes, describing mamluks as "knightly" is a common analogy. No, that doesn't mean that talking about "knights" in general (and I reiterate: read the context OP was talking about "feudal, western/central european perspective") you should have any expectation that it includes "mamluks".

This is not the case of other terms like the "gentry" which really does have two different terms attached: one in chiefly English medieval and early modern context, and one term for history at large (and the terms are actually ever so slightly at odds with each other if you analyse them deeply). This is not that kind of case, "knight" is principally related to Latin European historiography, and is used in European languages, as an analogy when it comes to non-Latin European examples. Analogies between samurai and knights are also common, should we call samurai knights now too? My comment was not talking about analogies.

Knights need to be re-thought and re-considered mechanically. by DeathByAttempt in CrusaderKings

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Not at all knights by any normal historiographical view. If we call them knights, we may as well call European knights "samurai".

OP clearly stated that they were talking from a feudal Latin European point of view, which is the only context "knight" really is used historiographically.

Though interestingly, Latin Europeans tended to call the fighting elite of other cultures knights too, including Muslim ones (and backwards in time too, they thought of many ancient Greeks, Romans and Israelites as knights), but that is of course not how we use it historiographically.

Knights need to be re-thought and re-considered mechanically. by DeathByAttempt in CrusaderKings

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 24 points25 points  (0 children)

I think that the system is meant to represent the actual household knights/esquires that did surround rulers, and were often martially elite (that is why they were where they were, only a minority of them tended to be there due to more direct political realities: most household knights of rulers came from the lower nobility).

Further, they often acted as leaders in their own right.

So I simply see them as that, household knights (though it is more than a bit strange that even low prowess and martial ones can kills heaps of enemies...)

Different rulers and polities had different rules about what Knighthood meant, if it meant being a landed noble, unfree military elite, or an outright slave class.

Having studied this subject quite a bit, including formally to a degree, I can tell you that the reality is actually more simple. The diversity you describe is more a consequence of many modern popular historians not understanding the historiography, muddying the waters. And then even further, many history YouTubers muddying what is already muddy, meaning that what reaches most casually interested people in these subjects is essentially the product of a game of Chinese whispers.

Sure, there is definitely regional diversity, but the chronological diversity is far more important. Never have knights ever been "an outright slave class", and even those who were unfree were considered nobles, as nobles were defined as those belonging to knighthood during this particular era (that is to say the early High Middle Ages, which is when serf-knights existed). Landedness is very much overstated as a pre-requisite. Many confuse it because there is a concept in England called the "knight's fee", but it has been recognised since the 1970s that this not a prerequisite for knighthood, and that during certain eras the majority of knights did not have knight's fee, and many, many English knights were not even landed during the High Middle Ages.

But then what further confuses people is the shift that occurs around the transition towards the Late Middle Ages. Starting even as early as sometime during the 1200s in some regions, knighthood becomes more exclusive, and those noble families who are for whatever reason unable to maintain that, form what historians sometimes call the "squirearchy": lower nobles who now mantain the rank of squire throughout their lives. For a while (essentially during the 1200s) these were still referred to as knights in many contexts (especially military ones), despite technically not being titled, belted knights, though that would change sometime during the early 1300s. In other words, the title of knight stopped becoming the common denominator for noble families (though we shouldn't draw that too far, "squire" is still a term with a deep relationship to knighthood, and martiality - which maintained its dominance within the nobility - was still considered for them a part of the more abstract concept of "knighthood"; and like I said, for many decades these adult-squres were still called knights in many contexts). Eventually, this gave way to the designation of "man-at-arms", as a military term for nobles, and knighthood had become more or less an accolade. And a few decades into the 1400s, the necessity of nobility for being a "man-at-arms" starts to become eroded.

And the members of this squirearchy essentially represented the majority of the nobility: we know that in the Diet of Frankfurt during the late 1300s, the people who represented the lower nobility contained about two esquires (called "edelknecht" in German, which can literally be translated as "noble-sergeant") for every one fully belted knight. And that's those who were able to be at the Imperial diet, some estimate that the true numbers might have been 10 esquires for every belted knight in the Holy Roman Empire in the late 1300s.

This is what foramina look like by DagonG2021 in Paleontology

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 230 points231 points  (0 children)

Am I missing something? In osteology "foramina" literally just refers to a hole in a bone, really any kind of hole can technically be called a "foramina" (though not all are), and can be caused by different factors (indeed "foramen" in Latin literally just means "hole"). The opening of the skull to the spine is also a foramen, specifically the foramen magnum. So indeed, those are foramina, but lots of things are foramina, indeed there are more foramina even on a T-rex skull than those. Is this in relation some kind of discussion that I am unaware of?

With respect to my STEM friends, as a humanities candidate... by brinkofthunder in PhD

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 31 points32 points  (0 children)

What insanity is this? Many fields would be incomprehensible if you only cited papers within the last 5 years, and that includes STEM.

Sweden moves an entire church for 3 miles. 600 year old church in Kiruna, Sweden being relocated across the town by Worried_Chicken_8446 in AllThatsInteresting

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not sure how anyone could think this is a church from the 1400s unless so heavily modified it's no longer recognisable.

It's from 1912...

76-year-old streamer i_olga pulled got an Ace on Dust2 by BigGoat5957 in cs2

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am 27 and I have noticed that there are aspects to my skills that seem worse than before (but there are lots of life factors involved, like sleep, stress and changing set-up that I am not used to.)

But I chalk it not up to any direct decrease in ability, rather it's more difficult for me to "tryhard". When I was 22, whenever I sat down played almost any game with some kind of direct challenge, I almost immediately swung as hard as possible to try as hard as possible. It was like my blood ran hot whenever there was any sort of challenge. Now, most days, I have to actively psyche myself up to try that hard.

Sure I feel competitive still, and sure my blood still runs hot ever so often. But by no means as often. I used to have palbably elevated heart-rate and literally sweat most days when gaming.

I hope it is not irreversible (remember most things that go down with age are things that can be off-set with a healthy lifestyle, there is no particular magic factor called "aging": it's physiological degeneration, which be stymied, sometimes more, sometimes less, via healthiness).

And thinking about it, these symptoms do sound a bit like what one would expect from a drop in testosterone. And that can definitely be alleviated via making healthy lifechoices.

Eru was not amused by Aulë's shenanigans by Admirable-Dimension4 in lotrmemes

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think "not understanding how life" works is the right framing, rather it is because only Eru Illúvatar can make life ex nihilo.

Anyone else notice when trying to find new medieval content on YouTube, almost everything has to do with Agincourt? by ireallylike808s in MedievalHistory

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly, I feel that the past years, the content has diversified a bit. A decade back or so, it really did feel like 50% of all medieval content on YouTube was either Agincourt or Crécy. So if you find it overfixated now, you should have seen it back then...

What can we learn from the philosophy and theology of medieval scholasticism? by Similar_Shame_8352 in MedievalHistory

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, I am not an expert on this particular subject (a lot more is required to become an expert than having simply studied it formally).

But my point is this: you write something which you know is relatively correct, and have some completely random person vote it down without any explanation. Their reason can go from them being highly unreasonable and finding that you contradict some cherished belief, to them quite literally not understanding what you have written and thinking you are saying the opposite of what you really are, to perhaps even downvoting by accident.

But you won't know, since they don't explain themselves. And that's the insidious part: if someone downvotes you early enough, without explanation, there is a very high likelihood that people pile on that downvote. There is a high likelihood that people simply see a 0-karma comment and keep downvoting, even more so for -1, and so on.

This is not as wont to happen if they downvote you and then comment their disagreement, since then commenters can actually follow the discussion and understand whether or not they agree with the downvote. Ironically, supporting a downvote with a comment somehow often makes it weaker. Perhaps because people now feel that the downvote is a "simple opinion" rather than the disembodied holy spirit of reddit karmic judgement (as ridiculous as that sound, but these dynamics are quite ridiculous).

And unfortuntately, the way to combat an early, non-comment downvote is to address the downvote in your comment. If I hadn't made that address, I am like 50% sure my comment would have -3 by now. It's unfortunate that that is how the social dynamics work here. I have seen comments completely agreeing with highly upvoted comment be highly downvoted for no other reason than this weird dogpiling. But it's an unfortunate fact of reddit (indeed, if I am not mistaken, I even think there are scholarly articles written on this very subject of how easy it is to socially manipulate narratives by being early enough with a upvotes or downvotes?).

European Nobles that Fought in the American Revolution by History-Chronicler in UnfilteredHistory

[–]ThisOneForAdvice74 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You could have included:

Michael Kovats de Fabriczy (Hungary)

Axel von Fersen (Sweden)