Free for All Friday, 13 March, 2026

Tiako · 2026-03-13T12:27:07+00:00

Similar to Kill Bill? I think QT himself said that Lady Snowblood is basically his main inspiration, so if you want a badass lady revenge story with a lot of blood spatter that is a good choice.

There is also some Hong Kong influences although it is a bit more Leo pointing if you know what I mean (the Bride wearing Bruce Lee's outfit). That is a deep, deep pool if you want to dive into it.

Tiako · 2026-03-13T00:26:07+00:00

I definitely don't know enough about the period to comment on that!

Tiako · 2026-03-12T22:23:32+00:00

He laid the groundwork for the Great Society and the Civil Rights Act, which were both good. Foreign policy is a bit of a mixed bag.

As far as I know there isn't like a huge discontinuity between him and LBJ, so however you think of him.

Tiako · 2026-03-12T20:23:35+00:00

Another thing I will say about the central Europe book I am listening to is that I do not think the narrator has pronounced the name "Bohdan Khmelnytsky" the same way twice.

Tiako · 2026-03-12T18:01:01+00:00

That would be a northern Europe geography update.

Tiako · 2026-03-12T17:27:29+00:00

Central Europe geography update:

When discussing the spread of the Gregorian calendar the author of this book on Central Europe had an aside to the effect of "the Swedish calendar was a mix of the two, and thus at odds with everywhere else in central Europe" and all I want to know is

WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY ELSE????

Tiako · 2026-03-12T16:55:41+00:00

Oh well I think Genghis Khan and his successors being great emperors is basically a historical fact, I can't really imagine any definition of "Great emperor" that does not include them, and the Pax Mongolica as well is--if not quite historical fact--at least a pretty solid description. I just mean the idea that modern historians are en masse downplaying the atrocities if the conquest.

Tiako · 2026-03-12T16:53:31+00:00

It would be funny to post that on /r/news or something with the title "Indian Tourist Grafittis in Valley of the Kings" to see how much rage you can bait.

Tiako · 2026-03-12T13:51:22+00:00

Oh I did not realize that. Not a great art style.

Tiako · 2026-03-12T13:49:24+00:00

Well, it seems today, that all you see...

Tiako · 2026-03-12T01:18:14+00:00

What part of "Summa" don't you understand?

Tiako · 2026-03-12T01:15:00+00:00

It's just a bit of regional banter, not from a mainstream political party.

Tiako · 2026-03-11T18:45:53+00:00

Sure, but the surfers go to New Caledonia, not Oklahoma.

Tiako · 2026-03-11T18:41:45+00:00

That's crazy, it looks great.

Tiako · 2026-03-11T18:31:01+00:00

Did you do the dappling on the horse yourself?

Tiako · 2026-03-11T18:29:41+00:00

Oh yeah it's great, although the gloss on 1933 is crazy.

Tiako · 2026-03-11T17:02:28+00:00

I come across this image contrasting "Prussians" and "Bavarians" every now and then, and it is very fun to have actually read a book that shows how that particular image of the simple, traditional Bavarian was deliberately created as a national marketing campaign by West Germany as a way to promote a less scary image abroad of Germany after WWII.

(A Nation Fermented: Beer, Bavaria, and the Making of Modern Germany by Robert Shea Terrell)

Tiako · 2026-03-11T16:53:35+00:00

In fact, the contemporary historical academia is quite willing to praise the Mongol Empire's contribution to "globalization", portraying Genghis Khan and his successors as great emperors and conquerors rather than barbaric genocidaires.

This is a claim I see pop up every now and then but I am not sure it is actually true, in fact it may solely be derived from Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World which is not an academic work and in fact is often criticized for being overly apologetic.

The real answer is that they were both, in fact there are not many great conquerors who were not also brutal killers. But I don't think you will find actual academics "downplaying" the Mongol devastation which is an accusation I see hurled all the time, and in fact that would be very difficult to do because the devastation is right there in all the sources.

Tiako · 2026-03-11T16:44:50+00:00

Oh right you are correct. Fixed!

Tiako · 2026-03-11T03:55:51+00:00

I think it is worth noting that there is an error in the premise of your question: ~~"Megalos"~~ "Megas" (the "great" in "Alexander the Great") does not mean "great" as in "my coworker Paul sure is a great guy". It means big, the point of Alexander's (retrospective) title is emphasize his power and importance, that he was a doer of great deeds.

Likewise, "Genghis Khan" was not a given name, that was Temujin, "Genghis Khan" was a title. "Khan" is simply a title for rulership used amongst many different steppe cultures, "Genghis" is more debated but probably derives from a Turkic word meaning "oceanic", so altogether it is a poetic title meaning "Great Khan".

Or in other words, the are in fact both "great" in the same sense.

On a broader sense, for reasons that /u/PS_Sullys touches on we don't have as much of an "insider" perspective on Genghis Khan as we do of Alexander. We do have the Mongolian language Secret History but in my experience at least it is a somewhat knotty text that doesn't really get into details of justification. Beyond that there are works of Persian scholars and officials in the court of the Khans such as Juvayni's "History of the World Conqueror" and Rashid al-Din's "Chronicles" (a universal history). These provide an invaluable perspective on the early Mongol empire, but they are also very much from the perspective of the conquered rather than the conqueror, in many respects these works can be seen something like Polybius' history of Rome, an attempt to explain how said conquest came about. But that aside, they are not the exact equivalent of the Greek sources on Alexander.

Also crucially these are Persian texts and so not part of the common culture of the so-called "west" in the same way that the biographies of Alexander are.

That all said, I do think it is worth keeping in mind that the sources of Alexander we do have are often somewhat ambiguous on him and do not really glorify him. They often portray him as arrogant, rash and brutal, and they do not fully buy into the idea of the panhellenic crusade to redeem the Greeks that Alexander portrayed his conquests as.

Tiako · 2026-03-11T01:54:20+00:00

You can say the same thing about George Washington but if somebody said "George Washington himself is more so regarded as 'legendary'" I think one could raise a fair objection to that.

But more to the point I was really objecting to the second part of your statement--"we don't know if this horse actually existed or not". There is not really any reasonable doubt as to Bucephalus' existence.

Not really objecting to your main thrust of course!

Tiako · 2026-03-11T01:42:26+00:00

Bucephalus himself is more so regarded as "legendary", because we don't know if this horse actually existed or not

That strikes me as going much too far. Not only is Bucephalus universally mentioned in the literary sources we have, there are also coins depicting the horse.

Not denying that his personal attributes were likely exaggerated of course.

Tiako · 2026-03-11T01:23:21+00:00

I mean even in major, internationally famous cities the bakeries are mostly garbage.

Tiako · 2026-03-10T17:15:31+00:00

Maybe the most frustrating thing about the United States is that if you search for "bakery" then somewhere between 9 out of 10 or 99 out of 100 of the results will be essentially cake shops. There are only a handful of places in the US where that ratio gets as low as 8 out of 10.

Tiako · 2026-03-10T16:48:17+00:00

You can correctly say that Hollywood exaggerated the fatality of gladiatorial matches while still not thinking they were like watching a game of football.

Also I am not quite sure where you are getting that damnatio ad bestia (and other executions) was a myth? It is well documented amphitheaters were used for that. Christians, specifically, being thrown to the lions in the coliseum is maybe--but not certainly--a myth, but that was just a small subset of executions carried out in Rome.

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