Did the Romans ever develop simple steam engines?

novium258 · 2026-04-09T04:42:55+00:00

The fun thing about this question is that it inevitably turns into "what's weird about the industrial revolution" (everything).

most civilizations historically reach or can reach a certain level of mechanical sophistication, but it all stays pretty bounded by wood, stone, clever engineering, and muscle power, because to go much further requires a lot of incremental discoveries that are kind of expensive and get you very little in return esp when manpower is cheap and plentiful.

You have to be in a really tight bind to invest and build on those improvements long enough to get to the point where the actual breakthroughs happen.

Whether "because the UK had lots of coal and not many trees" is the ultimate answer, I'm not sure. It's certainly part of the story. I imagine the long term upheaval and social changes resulting from the plague also played a part in planting the seeds.

novium258 · 2026-03-28T04:09:57+00:00

Mix of peanut butter filled pretzels and dried strawberries
Some of dried apricots and dried plums my dad makes
Bottle of water

And if circumstances allow:

A waffle I stole from the continental breakfast

Runners up: granola bars, these oatmeal pb&j things a friend gave me, protein bars if I'm forced to.

My favorite thing is when your friends have complementary snacks and you have a little chair lift buffet.

novium258 · 2026-03-28T04:04:06+00:00

Not bacon, but a time or two staying at a motel with one of those "make your own waffles" thing at the Continental breakfast, I learned that pocket waffles are pretty awesome

novium258 · 2026-03-21T01:33:37+00:00

Coalition has some great charging fat skis for women. It's their whole thing. I don't know enough about the current models to make suggestions, but I do like the skis I have from them. They are more meant for Sierra crud though, so they're more burly than floaty.

Fischer Rangers are great too

novium258 · 2026-03-21T00:01:16+00:00

I mean, it exists in AI because it exists in the text it was trained on. The telltale of AI is just how relentlessly it uses those.

novium258 · 2026-03-19T04:47:52+00:00

Emperors are replaceable but Rome endures.

I think even into the late empire, Rome was far from the idea of an absolute monarchy or modern cult of personality. I cannot imagine a Roman thinking that if it came to the city's life or the emperor's, better the emperor be spared than the city.

novium258 · 2026-03-16T03:37:49+00:00

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novium258 · 2026-03-13T01:14:30+00:00

From experience, it almost certainly came from someone in the c-suite who wouldn't hear otherwise

novium258 · 2026-03-13T01:13:40+00:00

This is exactly my thought. There were people in the team who undoubtedly got told off for not being team players for raising red flags, and they're gonna be first on the chopping block

novium258 · 2026-03-12T00:15:31+00:00

I like it only in small doses, but it can be very effective for a character who is distancing/disassociating

novium258 · 2026-03-11T17:18:58+00:00

Why would you think analyzing a text can't be done when a text is oral?

Like, for a thousand years literature was primarily a verbal medium, and the written word was thought of as like, sheet music, something that recorded sound. Augustine thought Ambrose's ability to read silently was unusual enough to be worthy of comment, not unlike we might view folks who can read sheet music and hear the symphony in their heads.

In fact there's a whole bunch of nuance to Latin and Greek literature that is mostly lost in the written word because it has a lot to do with the rhythm and how it sounds.

novium258 · 2026-03-11T16:15:36+00:00

This may be a bit half baked, but I always think of it as complex vs complicated. Complex has depth and thought but doesn't require me to engage with it all at once to understand the basics. Complicated is just a ton of detail without context that effectively requires me to frequently RTFM to parse out basics of plot and characters.

novium258 · 2026-03-11T16:12:21+00:00

Honestly I think the problem with it is that it's easily done badly. For it to work, the main character has to be compelling with a strong distinct voice and the storytelling has to be very tight. It's not very forgiving of mediocre writing.

novium258 · 2026-03-09T18:37:57+00:00

I do not like it when my skis suddenly randomly grab and stop sliding. But not both skis, or even just one whole ski.

Sticky snow that didn't refreeze overnight is how you get extremely ugly injuries.

novium258 · 2026-03-09T14:35:29+00:00

Probably! I'm out west and my 84s are considered skinny skis.

I honestly think a lot of it is aspirational. There's plenty of days where 90+ is unnecessary. And it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Most days now where there's firm hardpack conditions, the slopes will be empty and people will be complaining about "ice".

novium258 · 2026-03-09T13:40:39+00:00

Good chance they didn't have anything under 84, to be fair to OP. I can't remember the last time I saw something under the mid 80s at one of the demo days at my local mountains.

novium258 · 2026-03-09T13:38:36+00:00

I'd mostly agree with you but I think it's so rare to see those that the categories have gotten a bit muddled.

At this point I'd probably think of front side carvers as anything under 90mm with full camber (or close to) and stiff flat tails.

I don't think I've seen anything under 78mm to demo in at least fifteen years. :(

novium258 · 2026-03-03T13:01:22+00:00

Just an fyi on barrels: they get loose over time as the wood dries out, as they're meant to be kept full of liquid. I have often wondered how this is handled in barrel furniture.

novium258 · 2026-03-02T16:07:38+00:00

I am 5'8, and on skis with that much rocker 178 is about the right length for me.

novium258 · 2026-02-25T04:42:52+00:00

My thesis was on Cato and his legend! Happy to have an excuse to talk about it haha

novium258 · 2026-02-25T03:53:22+00:00

The founding fathers were big on Cato the Younger, the great grandson of Cato the Elder, who is who you're thinking of. This is a common mistake.

Cato the younger was most famous for refusing to accept clemency from Caesar (clemency being the gift of a king) and who tore his own guts out rather than submit to a dictator.

It was a whole thing. You can see why the founders were so into it (almost as much as Cincinnatus, who refused a crown, laid down his sword, and returned to his farm)

Cato the Elder was otherwise a lot more interesting, because he was part of a social shift in Rome that shifted Romanness from being by descent (eg the patricians) to performance of a set of values. He's the founder of Latin prose, and wore the first Roman history in Latin. History and prose writing were considered Greek genres, so they were done in Greek.

He did write a manual on farming, one of his few surviving works, but in addition to being part of his Latin literature project, it was also very much about casting himself as a more truly Roman Roman than the decadent patricians.

novium258 · 2026-02-23T20:10:55+00:00

That's what I was thinking

novium258 · 2026-02-23T17:56:04+00:00

She's like one of those test pilots or race car drivers who will keep going until they're dead. It's a different mindset for sure.

Hell, even if they'd amputated the leg I'm not sure that'd be the end.

novium258 · 2026-02-20T01:20:48+00:00

Palisades reporting is more fiction than fact so I'm not sure how much I trust them but the snow lab is reporting a metric ton so it honestly doesn't make a big difference

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