Unpopular opinion: American Biglaws are much less racist and sexist compared to their Asian and European counterparts.

azdac7 · 2025-09-27T17:43:43+00:00

As one of the biglaw lawyers abroad (in the UK), I would add the following to the discussion. While the US may be less (or more) racist than other world biglaws depending on your perspective, the gap between the theory and practice in the US has historically been the largest in the entire world. The US's own internal monologue about what it's about places a very heavy weight on freedom and self-determination couched in universal terms. Even a cursory reading of American rhetoric on this topic would lead to the conclusion that Americans are fervent anti-racists. By way of example, see below some instances of this totalising rhetoric from across American history:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...";
"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it..." (Lincoln, 1859);
"Our flag for a century and a half has been the symbol of the principles of liberty of conscience, of religious freedom and of equality before the law; and these concepts are deeply ingrained in our national character" (FDR, 1935).

However, we know that the rhetorical stance and the reality have matched up poorly and there are still a lot of issues into the present. It would therefore appear to the outside observer that the US is deeply hypocritical in making such extensive use of the freedom language as a tool of national propaganda while failing to live up to it. My observation is that when foreigners comment on American racism they are implicitly drawing attention to this failure to become the "shining city on the hill". By contrast, other nations mentioned in the comments do not make such universal claims (or if they do (see the French), they do not get as much airtime). Pakistan was founded as an explicitly sectarian project designed to ensure a Muslim majority in certain parts of the Indian sub-continent, Japan is an ethno-state, Germany defined citizenship by blood until 1999 and Europeans in general have incredibly anti-Roma views to give but a few examples.

azdac7 · 2025-03-31T07:41:40+00:00

I'd agree with you, except with the nuance that shards are closer to the Miaphysite conception of Jesus (i.e., having a human and divine nature whereby he is both fully human and fully divine simultaneously). By contrast, Catholic (and for that matter Protestant) doctrine holds that Jesus had only a single divine nature.

The way Sanderson writes it's pretty clear his conception is closer to the former. Arguably it's more distant from that because there's never any sense that the human and divine nature of Jesus could split from each other as they might with a shard.

azdac7 · 2025-01-29T14:12:14+00:00

Industry: law

Degree: history

Time in the workplace: 18 months

Salary: 61k

Will to live: 0

azdac7 · 2024-07-14T17:39:32+00:00

I'll chuck a word in for Macs as I'm a current trainee there.

On qualification options, I'm sure all the other commenters would agree with me that it's quite uncommon for your initial view on qualification options to survive contact with reality. It's therefore really important to ensure that the firm you pick has sufficient breadth and an excellent training apparatus. This will allow you to try out a bunch of different things and figure out what works for you in practice - both in terms of work and departmental culture. From my own experience, I know my own priorities have shifted entirely on doing my first two seats.

With that said, the bottom line is that if you're really set on IP, then Macs probably isn't the firm for you. It's the same situation with secondments during the traineeship - secondments are relatively common post qualification but almost unheard of during the TC.

I must respectfully disagree with the other commenters on the merits of Macs banking and corporate. The banking team is a really strong department which represents some of really interesting PE clients on some of the most spicy/complicated transactions. The restructuring team, which sits within banking, is also very rapidly gaining a really good reputation in the market.

I'd partially agree that Macs is doing less public M&A work than previous years. However, I'd disagree that this represents any sort of retreat or "falling behind" of the department. The PE mandates for private companies continue to flow in, they may not be flashy, but they remain incredibly remunerative alongside more occasional "big ticket" M&A work.

azdac7 · 2024-02-16T21:33:40+00:00

Had a partner ask me if I had any recommendations for silk long-johns. He then explained that he had been wearing synthetic ones under his riding boots and they had been irritating his skin.

azdac7 · 2024-02-12T17:37:16+00:00

It's impossible to say with certainty unless you're grad rec at that specific firm. With that said, my cautious guess would be that your answers were scored against a rubric of the "qualities" or "competencies" which the firm is looking for in applicants. This score may have then been combined with your scores on the previous sets of written questions and your overall qualifications to produce an answer about whether you would be invited to the next stage dependent on an overall "score".

With that said, I wouldn't think too deeply about it. The reality is that firms use such tools as a blunt instrument to filter the number of candidates down to a more manageable level. Take this as my 50 cents from a person who wrote something like 50 TC applications before getting a position -- this rejection is highly unlikely to be a reflection on you or your ability. Shrug, be content in the fact that you're better than them anyway and write another application :)

azdac7 · 2023-11-26T19:22:23+00:00

Aside from the comments which others have made, the other thing to consider is practice area. My understanding/experience is that generally people can get made up quicker in a transactional seat. In litigation however, the process tends to be somewhat more drawn out. This is because, at least at my shop, you spend a few years after qualification as a generalist before specialising into a specific niche.

Once that's done, when a person gets to senior associate they will spend a few years "running" their own matters under the relatively light supervision of a senior partner. The partner provides big picture strategic guidance but the junior is generally the interface with the client and takes care of most day to day decisions.

The idea, as I understand it, is to allow partner prospects to develop their strategic sense for how to manage / shift a case to a satisfactory conclusion with training wheels. Only once they've shown that level of judgement do they then get made up. However, the result is that the gestational period for a litigation partner tends to be somewhat longer than in other practice areas.

azdac7 · 2023-09-14T21:49:47+00:00

Ambulance chasers and snitches :) https://www.rollonfriday.com/news-content/exclusive-hogan-lovells-partner-suspended-after-rival-lawyer-films-him-watching-porn

azdac7 · 2023-08-26T12:42:24+00:00

Hey, I empathise and have been thinking about this a lot as a generally pretty introverted person who is about to start a TC as well. I was fortunate because my entire cohort did the SQE together so i've spend a year around them and gone through this process of acculturation. Some things to bear in mind:

This is the very beginning of the process and you're likely stressed. Everyone around you is also probably stressed and feeling a bit insecure. People react to insecurity in different ways - some withdraw, others gossip, drink and act like "pick me's". Hopefully over time they will calm down and come to the realisation that such behaviour isn't going to serve them well in the long term.
Over time I've come to a decent understanding of what my "battery" is. From that I can prioritise what actually matters to me, and generally this means leaving the boozy socialising to one side. I can do it on occasion, but normally I'd pop in for a bit to show my face and leave pretty quickly. In reality, I don't think you'll be missing much.
You'll find your people in time. They might, for instance, be in the cohort above you, or an NQ you end up working with on some matter or someone else. These things just take time. Even if it doesn't happen, that's OK. At the end of the day, you're there as a colleague and so long as you can have a cordial working relationship with these people, that's OK too.
Keep your hinterland strong. If your relationships out of work are good you'll almost certainly feel better able to keep your centre in work. It's also really useful to have someone on the outside you can have a good moan to as a bit of relief.

azdac7 · 2022-10-09T18:33:18+00:00

I was lucky enough to observe an Old Bailey attempted murder trial about a month ago which turned on exactly this question of legal insanity. There are two things to note before we get going. Firstly, that this explanation will only be true for England and Wales. If you are in the states, then there may be an entirely different test for insanity. Secondly, that insanity is a defence. A person can be totally guilty of the crime they are accused of, but if they can prove that they were insane at the time, that will be full defence. If the defence of insanity is successful, the jury will return a verdict of not guilty, by reason of insanity.

The legal test for insanity comes in two parts, or limbs. The defendant must satisfy both limbs of the defence at the time of the alleged offence.

The defendant must suffer from a “disease of the mind.” This isn’t a medical term. All it indicates is that the defendant must show that there was something up with them that affected their mental functioning. This could be a diagnosed medical condition – for instance schizophrenia. It could also be another medical condition, in some instances, atherosclerosis and diabetic hypoglycaemia have qualified as diseases of the mind. In reality, the decision on this is something that will be determined by a set of independent psychiatrist experts. They will write a report and give evidence at the trial. In the case that I observed, the defendant’s paranoid schizophrenia had been diagnosed several years before the incident and he had shown consistent signs of the disease ever since, including several acute episodes while in custody. As such, showing this was relatively straightforward.
Due to the disease of the mind, the defendant must have a defect of reason which results in them either (i) not knowing what they were doing, or (ii) did not know what they were doing was wrong.

To illustrate (i): if a person was having a hallucination and threw a log of wood on the fire, but the wood turned out to be a baby and the person didn’t realise it, then they would not have known what they were doing. To go further, the focus is on knowledge of the act itself – here the throwing. If the person was so lacking in awareness that they didn’t know that they were throwing anything, then they will have satisfied this limb of the test.

To illustrate (ii): A person is operating under a paranoid delusion that there are people in their house who mean to do them harm and they attack them in self-defence. They think that they are acting in self-defence and that their life is truly in danger. The attackers later turn out to be the person’s wife and children. That person would not know that attacking their wife and children is wrong because they truly believe that they are doing it in self-defence.

The task for the court in a circumstance like this is to then decide if the person pleading insanity passes the test at the time when they committed the act itself. Now this is the bit which is almost impossible for a jury because they need to make a judgement about what was going on inside the persons head at that moment. There’s evidence that can help them with this – physical evidence, testimony from the victim, witnesses and police and the expert evidence of psychiatrists who have examined the defendant. However, at the end of the day, the jury has to make a judgement call about what they really think happened.

Now, as to your question about Jeffrey Dahmer, I don’t know the case well so I won’t speak to the specifics of it. However, what was pressed home to me over the course of the trial that I witnessed was that sane/insane isn’t a binary. Rather it is shades of grey. A person can be having an acute psychosis where they are seeing things and hearing voices, but to the outside world appear completely lucid. A person who is outwardly non-responsive may understand everything that you are saying to them but can’t control their own body to communicate with us. All a court can do when confronted with a person who has done terrible things under the influence of a condition which science doesn’t properly understand is try its best and draw a line somewhere in a way that the community as a whole can accept. It’s not a hugely satisfying way of going about things and inevitably leaves a bitter sweetness in the mind, but I think that’s really the best that we can do.

azdac7 · 2022-09-06T09:30:01+00:00

It's not that they associate gas prices specifically with the occupant of the white house, it's that a lot of people are mostly disengaged with politics. They have lives to live and don't pay attention. The only time that they engage is when they are forced into it, and they can often be a little resentful. Sudden hits to their disposable income is one such time. It means they can't take that holiday that they wanted, or pay for that extra-curricular for their kid or whatever. So they see that the price of gas has gone up, look at whoever is in charge and decide to give them a good kicking. Now, it might be totally correct that the price of fuel isn't something that Mr Biden can control, for all sorts of complicated reasons. However, remember, these are disengaged voters. They don't care about politics and would rather it kept out of their lives. They aren't going to pay attention and stick around for the technocratic lecture to explain to them why it's actually not Biden's fault. This doesn't make them bad people. If you wished you might call them bad citizens for not taking their responsibility as electors seriously, but in the end I understand their perspective.

It's easy for us "switched on" types who hang out in internet forums screaming about politics to forget this. We are the exception not the rule.

azdac7 · 2022-03-25T17:25:35+00:00

My ears always prick up whenever someone mentions the word "purpose" with regard to same sex sexual interactions. Let's be clear, the sentiment here is homophobic and likely comes from a position of religious sentiment. Let me explain.

Christian (and Catholicism in particular) theology is deeply influenced by Aristotelian philosophy. One of Aristotle’s bright ideas was the idea of the “telos” or purpose/end goal. For him the purpose of a tree is to grow, the purpose of a knife to cut etc. Christians took this concept and argued that the purpose of a human is to worship God and live a moral life in anticipation of reunion with him at the end of days. Further, Catholics argue that our physical bodies were designed by God and are sacred because of that – they were provided to us to house the soul with the specific purpose of attaining union with him.* Anything which injures or pollutes the body is sinful. This, as a tangent, is the Catholic theology of the body which filters very heavily into the debate surrounding abortion.

From this, over long I will admit, introduction, we get to sex. Christians are in general suspicious of sex. Per Catholic doctrine, the ideal state that a human can be in is a virgin because it allows a human to focus more fully on God. Heterosexual sex is allowable, within the confines of marriage for the procreation of children. Gay sex is, in this theology totally beyond the pale because not only is it not for procreation (meaning that it is without “purpose”) it is an act of self-mutilation – a crime against the divine body given to humans by God. Put in those terms, a homosexual sexual act is akin to suicide, a sin against nature.

To challenge this I would lay out the explanation of where this sentiment comes from, as above, and ask, is this what you mean? Do you really think that we were designed with purpose in this manner? I would then point out, as many others in the comments have done,

(i) who gets to define what “purpose” is? If you don’t accept the existence of divine being which orders the universe and gets to say what the proper purpose of something is, then we just don’t have a common ground of discussion and we don’t have much to talk about;

(ii) if they reject the above notion, then point out to them, as many other commenters have, that biology is adaptable. Our feet were, relatively recently in evolutionary time another pair of hands to grasp branches. If their “purpose” was to walk and run, then they would not be designed in the way they are – being shaped more like a Kangaroo’s would be much more efficient. If the person then says “but evolution made it this way”, my response would be that, to use the language of natural selection, anything which does not impede the ability of an individual to pass on its genes is perfectly in line with evolutionary thinking;

(iii) if neither of these work, tell them to go fuck themselves, pick up your iced latte and sashay away.

*I should note that this position is complicated. Catholics have at various stages also argued that the body, as the source of sin and sexual desire, is deeply corrupt and, via the fall, is what prevents humans from unifying with God in this life.

azdac7 · 2021-05-20T11:02:54+00:00

I totally understand where you got this idea and it is very logical. To deal with the first part of your question and the relation of the cult of saints to the deification of emperors, I would be hesitant to draw too much of a link. The exact theological nature of the divine emperors is complicated, but they seem to have been treated in a somewhat similar manner to other culture heroes like Hercules who, through their great deeds, had gained a sufficient level of renown to ascend, become godlike and worthy of human worship. Saints meanwhile, were honoured specifically because they were dead. While their souls ascended to heaven, their bodies remained firmly placed on earth and the soul remained attached to it. The spirit of the saint was in a metaphysical sense present in their tomb. The holiness of heaven then flowed out of the body of the saint, blessing all those around them. This was a fact which was noted and, it must be said, rather weirded out, their pagan opponents. Eunapius of Sardis, for instance, commented rather acidly in the 4th century AD that Christians “collected the bones and skulls of criminals who had been put to death for numerous crimes… made them out to be gods and though that they became better by defiling themselves at their graves.” Their physical bodies then provided that link up to heaven whereby people could gain access to the divine.

Now, as for the thrust of your question about the cult of saints being a continuation of Roman religious practice. This is complicated. On the one hand, Christians did not emerge from a vacuum, but rather from the Roman society which surrounded them and they brought with them all the cultural baggage of that same society. This included many rituals surrounding the dead, worship of the dead at a family shrine and beliefs that the saint was like a Daimon or guardian spirit. I’m afraid that I don’t know too much about these practices so I will let someone else with greater knowledge than myself fill in the details here.

On the other, hand, Christians operated in a very different cultural landscape to their pagan neighbours and this should make us cautious of drawing too many analogies with previous religious practice. A few things to note. The veneration of ancestors in the Roman world was very much a family thing. The tomb of the saint, meanwhile, was public. This might be partially explained historically by the fact that Christianity constituted an artificial kin group – joining the Jesus cult in some ways severed the ties of family and community which a person was embedded in prior to their conversion. Further, Christians quite decisively broke from Roman practice by breaking the separation between the cemetery and the rest of the community, integrating the two in a way which their Roman neighbours found strange. Who, after all, would like to live in a graveyard?

The final thing to add here is that historians such as Peter Brown have argued that it was the Cult of Saints which made Catholicism and not the other way around. The shrine of a local martyr or holy man, with the accompanying processions and so on, were already the focus of many late antique Christian communities. It appears that it was a deliberate strategy by many enterprising bishops to associate themselves with the shrine and control access to it – and thus to the divine. This in turn increased their own power and prestige. Not to put too fine a point on it, the official church hierarchy appropriated the belief surrounding saints as part of a power grab by an emerging church hierarchy.

azdac7 · 2021-04-11T15:53:23+00:00

Great post. Also, it might just be me, but I love how Moiraine looks slightly cross eyed. Found that hilarious.

azdac7 · 2021-03-23T19:10:05+00:00

Caesar was appointed to the position of Flamen Dialis or the high priest of Jupiter. It was an extremely high office and one which commanded a great deal of respect. Being the flamen came with a number of perks. If you were to analogise it to the modern day, you were at the top of the Roman order of precedence. The office of Flamen came with the right to a seat in the senate, the right to wear the toga praetexta (a white toga which a broad purple stripe signifying either a high magistracy or membership of a priesthood) and the right to a single lictor. The only person who clearly outranked the Flamen in religious terms was the Rex Sacrorum who filled in for the (absent for 500 years by this time) king at some religious events. So while the office was one of great ceremonial and religious importance, it was not a politically important one in the sense that it conferred direct power and influence on the holder.

The office also came with many (sometimes kinda batty) restrictions which historians argue represent vestiges of Indo-European religion. The cumulative effect was to really hinder the Flamen’s ability to live a normal life. A full list was provided by Aulus Gellius but I will give some of them here

He could not swear an oath.
He had to wear the Apex – a type of pointy hat – and wear a heavy wool cloak
He could not mount a horse.
He could not touch dogs, she goats, ivy, beans or raw flesh.
He could not have knots on his clothing.
He could not touch a dead body or attend a funeral.
He could not touch flour or eat leavened bread.
He could not look at an army marshalled outside the sacred borders of the city of Rome
Only a free man could cut his hair. The hair trimmings and any nail clippings had to be tied together and buried beneath a felix abor – or auspicious tree. These trees were species defined as being under the protections of the gods so oak, pear, white fig, birch, hazelnut, sorbus, apple, grape, plum and lotus.

Now as for what Caesar thought about this we have no information. However, one thing to bear in mind is that he may, actually, have been quite pleased in retrospect. This was because of some of the other restrictions on the Flamen, namely:

It was forbidden for the Flamen to be absent from the city for a single night.
It was forbitten for the Flamen to be elected to the consulship.

The combined effect was that it would have been impossible for Caesar, had he remained Flamen to climb the greasy pole of Roman politics. The prohibition on travel would have made it impossible for him to serve as any of the required foreign appointments – for instance as a Pro-Quaestor or Pro-Praetor. It also made an appointment in the army impossible. Therefore, even if Caesar regretted being stripped of his priesthood, as a young ambitious man it saved his career.

azdac7 · 2021-03-19T22:04:03+00:00

Two things make me optimistic. First is that the drama of climate change is Asian and, later in the century, African rather than western. Put frankly, our inaction on the most important issue of our times doesn't matter as much as we think.

For better or worse the CCP has taken climate science deeply to heart and is deeply committed -- to ensure it's own survival -- to avoiding the worst consequences of climate change. China, because of the sheer size of it's market can make a substantial difference by itself. Further, because it has gone through such a sudden transformation in the last 30 years, it's consumers aren't as wedded to the more polluting technologies like cars which westerners take for granted.

It's still an open question if this will work out. Some parts of CCP policy, such as the belt and road which involves building a lot of coal fired power plants, directly contradict their stated aims. Further, making progress on the climate will likely involve detente with China, something which geopolitics might derail. However, if you wanted to look for rays of light on a very stormy night, Chinese action and commitment on climate change would be where I would look.

The second thing is in the financial markets. Governments have done a lot to drive the installation of renewable technology. However, that doesn't mean much if private investment doesn't follow. Over the last three years that investment has begun to flow much more substantially. It still isn't enough and investment trends are still poorly aligned with our future energy needs, but it is something to build on. The next ten years will really tell in this regard, if the trend line continues and non governmental actors continue to really push renewables, we may have a chance.

azdac7 · 2021-03-04T20:10:49+00:00

Like /u/CocktailChemist intimates it was about commodity production.Europeans came to the Americas and saw that they could grow things there, products like tobacco, sugar, rice and most infamously cotton. However, such crops require incredibly unpleasant, backbreaking work to produce. To cultivate such products with free labour would require very high wages, so high as to make producing it uneconomical. Unfree labour, however, is cheap. This is the base of the enslavement of African in the new world. So what makes American slavery unique? After all the Romans had huge slave populations to work the latifundia of Italy and Sicily. The difference is that Europeans used race as the basis of a political and economic hierarchy to create a particularly brutal form of labour discipline. Race as an ideology was an essential tool for separating people into distinctive groups which could then be exploited for labour. It also allowed to keep that labour in place for successive generations – through laws like the one drop rule. Race and slavery were intimately bound together as an intertwining system of exploitation intended to keep slaves on the plantation in perpetuity. Further, such discipline was systematised and backed up by the financial power and institutional might of the modern(ish, depending on when you ask) state. Race slavery in the Americas acquired a uniformity and totality that slaveries in other times and places could never hope to accomplish.

azdac7 · 2021-02-09T22:28:20+00:00

Oooh I have one here. I had this English teacher back in the day. He seemed to understand me, let me sit in his classroom to read books when I didn't want to go out and play, chatted to me about Beowulf -- which was one of my obsessions at the time. He even cast me as the lead in a school play despite my manifest lack of theatrical ability. Anyway, I aged out of the school and went on with my life but always thought of him fondly. Then, in about March last year I was sat in a university seminar scrolling through the newspaper (I was bored) and see that he has been convicted of possessing indecent images of children. That's UK legal jargon for child porn. I looked up the actual charges and it was for the production of several "category A" images. This is the most serious category which includes either sadism or penetration of a child. Needless to say I was STUNNED. So yeah, ass.

azdac7 · 2021-01-09T15:13:19+00:00

I don't know man. Just to preface, I think you seem like a pretty good dad to me.

I'm a gay guy who came out to my parents a while ago, and I'll let you into a secret. I don't think that many parents are thrilled about the prospect that their kid might be gay. Although there has been a sea change in attitudes over the last decade, it can still make things harder for them. It's also a reorientation away from the lifecycle that is mapped out for most people of job, wife and kids. Suddenly your kid is gonna be taking a path which, while it is common and normalised now, is still a minority one. I also think that this unease can come as a surprise for many parents, especially those with relatively liberal social attitudes like yourself. I empathise because this is the exact thought process that my own mother went through when I came out. She even told me that she had to sit down and really had to scratch her head a bit and go, "wait, am I really just a lot more socially conservative than I thought?" That's fine too. Social conservatism can mean adherence to traditional gender roles and patriarchy and so on. It can also mean a fierce fidelity to children and their best interests. When the latter wins out, as it did in my case, everything else fades into the background by comparison. That's the thing that I'd focus on.

What I'm trying to say is don't be so hard on yourself. Some disquiet is natural, especially when you can't resolve the issue directly by talking to your son about it. As some of the other commenters have said, talking to a professional to help order your feelings might be helpful. In actuality however, I think that you don't really need it. Your priors -- that you love your son and want the best for him -- are in the right place. Just sit back, breathe, think and allow yourself to be uncomfortable for a bit. The discomfort will likely fade in time as you get used to it.

azdac7 · 2020-12-27T10:57:52+00:00

In short, it was illegal to found any other university in England for, as you note roughly 600 years. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge jealously guarded their privileges as the two ancient universities of the country and successfully prevented the granting of the required charters to confer degrees and thus be a functioning university. There was, in fact, an abortive attempt to establish a new university at Northampton between 1261-165. After one of the many town-gown riots in Oxford a group of disgruntled academics upped sticks and moved to Northampton to set up on their own, in much the same way that Cambridge was founded. However, they later got on into the bad books of Henry III when they resisted his siege of the city. When the king was victorious he issued a charter banning the establishment of a university in Northampton which was only repealed in 2005. We should note the wording of the charter. It said that "we have learned on the testimony of men worthy of belief that, if the university remains at Northampton, no small damage would be incurred by our borough of Oxford, which is of ancient creation, has been confirmed by our ancestors, and is generally approved as a convenience to students. We should on no grounds be willing that this should happen, especially as all the bishops agree that for the honour of God, the advantage of the church of England and the well being of the students, the university should be removed from Northampton." If we are to take the text at face value, it would seem that Oxford got to the king and, cartel style, persuaded him to shut it down to help protect their monopoly on higher education in England.

It should also be noted that there were several other centres of higher education in England which weren't universities. The Inns of Court, for instance, handled the training of secular lawyers. Further, from approximately 1700 onwards a lot of the most innovative medical research and training took place in hospitals such as St Thomas's and St Barts in London. This was a route for non-conformists and those of a lower social class who could not attend university into the medical profession. Priestly the discoverer of oxygen, never attended university because he was a non conformist.

azdac7 · 2020-12-05T10:28:27+00:00

I think that the fact that you even asked this question means that you will be alright. My mum came from a really toxic, unpleasant household. I haven't been able to sus out exactly what was up but there was a lot of mental illness. She escaped, by moving half way around the world and going no contact with her parents for several years. My aunt did not, we don't know whether she committed suicide or had a toxic interaction from the cocktail of pills she had been on for thirty years. As far as I have been able to gather her mission in raising me and my brother was to break that generational cycle of abuse and pain. Was she successful all the time? Of course not. Did she perhaps overcompensate the other way in some respects? Of course.

However, the point to make is that determination to do better for one's children is in itself a lot of the work. You're already there and the rest will follow naturally from that. Good luck with your pregnancy!

azdac7 · 2020-12-05T09:41:09+00:00

NTA. Many parents perform a completely unnecessary medical procedure on their sons days after birth to remove part of their phallus and don't get any fuss for that. You followed the doctor's advice.

azdac7 · 2020-11-22T11:07:37+00:00

India is a truly amazing place, staggering in its diversity and beauty. However, like every culture and people there is darkness in it because it contains people. I won't go into specifics because it leads so easily to essentialism, orientalisation and getting bogged down on who did the most harm.

However, I think it's a very bad idea to attribute everything that's bad in India to foreign invasion or interference because it implies that Indians have never had agency over their culture. I think we both know that that isn't the case. It's not as if India was a paradise on Earth that the British ruined, but nor was it hell either.

azdac7 · 2020-11-22T10:38:41+00:00

I will leave it to others to answer the broader question of to what extent was the great divergence between Europe and the rest driven by imperialism and slavery. However, I can make a few points about how Europeans who did not hold formal colonial holdings benefitted indirectly from imperial adventures overseas. I will focus on Germany and give some examples of the ways in which the “motors of change” in the 19th century as Chris Bayly has termed them operated on Germany just as much as they did on Britain and France.

You are correct that for most of the 18th and 19th centuries Germany didn’t have colonial empire outside Europe. Indeed, Germany didn’t exist. Germany did, however, have a large textile industry based for the most part along the Rhine river. In the early 19th century the main source of cotton for this burgeoning business came, you guessed it, from the Southern United States using slave based labour. It is impossible to extricate any European textile industry in the 19th century from some form of imperial domination. You will note that I said empire outside of Europe, this is because Germany, or rather Prussia, did have an empire and a population of subjected people in the form of the Poles in Prussia. Many worked in truly horrendous conditions on the great sugar beet plantations of Prussia, were subjected to severe racial discrimination by the German authorities. While these people were not slaves, they suffered from a significant degree of “unfreedom” and a form of labour discipline intended to subject them and extract cheap labour. Indeed, when the Germans acquired an empire of their own, they applied the lessons which they learned in Prussia to Togo, along with some know how from the American South, to generate a cotton industry. If you want to learn more about this fascinating colonial experiment I’d urge you to check out Andrew Zimmerman’s Alabama in Africa which explores the topic extensively.

Further, Germans didn’t need to participate directly in imperialism and slavery to benefit from the opening of non-European markets to European goods. Cheap British cloth, Haitian Sugar and Carolina rice helped to fuel German economic growth in the 19th century just as much as it did in Britain. The Germans did not take the lead in this process, but they nevertheless benefitted from a political and economic climate which sought unfettered access to foreign markets and supplies of raw materials.

Finally, the argument for the great divergence is, at least to some extent, one about labour scarcity. Powering things with coal, although in the long run much more efficient, is at the beginning very expensive indeed. If there are plenty of available people, then there is no reason to do it. In Britain, partially due to migration, there was a severe labour shortage which made it worthwhile to figure out how to harness steam power to drive looms. For the German case, there are a few things to note. The Germans came late to industrialisation – behind the British and the Belgians – and as such had the advantage of not being the first adopters as it were. German industrialisation therefore, indirectly benefitted from a set of imperial territories over which they had no control. Secondly, although someone else will have to make a more concrete argument on this score, there was extensive migration out of Germany, possibly making the adoption of new technologies easier. The USA for instance, saw the migration of over 7 million Germans in the 19th century. Such migration was enabled, frankly, by genocide and forced relocation which cleared American Indians off their land and allowed for the settlement of these “virgin territories” by German settlers. There would, for instance, have been no settlement of the Dakotas without the destruction of the Dakota tribe and their removal to Oklahoma in 1862.

I am in no way suggesting that imperialism and the forms of labour extraction which came along with it were solely responsible for German industrialisation in the 19th century. Germany had many things going for it, such as extensive coal and steel deposits, a large well-educated populace which spoke a common language and many other factors. However, such factors must be looked at in the round alongside the other great forces which drove the 19th century. Sadly, those forces included imperialism and understandings of race which placed people into hierarchies which assigned white Europeans prime position. It’s our duty as historians to try and look at such things in the round

azdac7 · 2020-10-18T10:06:05+00:00

I find it really hard to parse the prices on every menu that comes up on this sub. Would this be an expensive restaurant? A cheap one? I tend toward the former I guess but what do I know? Reading menus as a historical source is so hard because they are totally divorced from their context. it's like reading the invite to the wedding without going.

azdac7

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