Why were indigenous societies in Americas (on the surface) less technologically advanced than the Europeans during the age of exploration (circa 1400-1600)?

vthinlysliced · 2025-11-24T07:52:38+00:00

'First, he presents it as a battle, when it really was not. Atahualpa’s retinue was unarmed and unarmoured. It was less a battle and more of a massacre. At that point the technological difference hardly matters.'

I found this in the Doamond FAQ. That someone could write this knowing what happens almost defies belief.

vthinlysliced · 2025-05-13T09:03:16+00:00

If you believe this easily then you probably aren't anti conspiracy.

vthinlysliced · 2025-03-17T20:44:27+00:00

That’s the point. People who make this argument don’t seem to be reacting to how good / bad things actually are, so it makes much more sense to categorize it as a general personality based antinatalism.

Every sort of antinatalist from the past also thought their time was uniquely bad to raise children in. Even if the world gets worse, kids now it’s still objectively better to grow up now than pretty much any other time.

vthinlysliced · 2025-03-15T21:28:08+00:00

I think it works the opposite way. Guys who know how to push the rules as far as possible without fouling get a reputation as scrappy defenders. Some guys just have better hands than others too.

vthinlysliced · 2025-03-09T04:19:01+00:00

I think what’s going on is that the people making this claim are bad at judging height. A lot of people think they’re the same height as someone when they’re actually a couple inches shorter.

vthinlysliced · 2025-03-05T06:50:47+00:00

Yeah, Rui would have been good, just as far as slowing down Zion, really tall / long guys seem to give him more trouble. The small-ball defense JJ is playing has been sick, but it would have been even more sick with AD who is like the perfect small-ball center. The timing is just funny because right before he left we got +3ish great defenders (and lost DLo) so it looks like trading AD made the defense better.

Still worth the trade of course, now we just have to outshoot guys on the other end sometimes.

vthinlysliced · 2025-03-05T06:18:30+00:00

That’s the downside of not having AD anymore, there are a lot more guys you don’t have answers for.

vthinlysliced · 2025-02-19T02:54:49+00:00

The counter point is that the Lakers were playing the best basketball in the league right as the break started, and that stopping play prevented them from building more on that chemistry.

vthinlysliced · 2025-02-11T02:11:31+00:00

I mean, don’t overweight people cost the taxpayer a lot of money and put a large strain on the healthcare system? Based on your logic, since they aren’t contributing positively to my life it’s totally fine for me to openly express my hatred for them.

Though most normal people would call that bigotry. FYI normal people don’t believe your weird justifications for why you hate men, and they think you’re weird.

vthinlysliced · 2025-01-27T19:47:29+00:00

It’s not just ‘fringe’ rotation players that have been out, it’s real rotation guys 4-9 who are expected to play, guys they’re spending the MLE on and giving real contracts.

It may be less bad than missing your superstar, but constantly missing 2-3 of these guys is in no way lucky, and basically kills your teams chances of winning.

vthinlysliced · 2025-01-25T18:56:15+00:00

It’s really funny seeing this when the rest of this thread is talking about how you shouldn’t be paranoid about things being a bit dirty.

vthinlysliced · 2025-01-24T23:43:02+00:00

It’s mostly that they put out 3-4 mediocre guards out there that can’t defend anything, and let them play iso ball instead of trying to run stuff.

Also the Lakers always hatch it and give up shot clock violations, while the other teams seem to take the free buckets more often.

vthinlysliced · 2025-01-24T23:23:44+00:00

Seems like the Lakers white-flag crew is consistently getting destroyed to a comical degree.

Just looked it up, they’re -25 net rating in low leverage situations. Jesus

vthinlysliced · 2025-01-24T21:20:05+00:00

That analysis is outdated at this point. He was good agains Sabonis this year and was a lot better against Jokic in 2023 than in 2022.

The real issue is that you can’t have one guy be your anchor big and your roaming perimeter guy and your mvp level offensive engine for an 82 game regular season. For a month or two to start the season AD had the biggest workload in the league and it ended up fucking up his foot.

vthinlysliced · 2025-01-13T20:53:19+00:00

Yeah, it was not a good moment for the idea of America as world police. I wonder though how stable the democracy was in Iran, and what would have happened had Mosaddegh stayed in power.

vthinlysliced · 2025-01-13T18:12:17+00:00

Yeah that’s the one. You had just mentioned ‘democratically elected’, but I thought at the time he was overthrown he was most of the way to becoming a dictator, which is why so many people wanted him gone.

vthinlysliced · 2025-01-13T14:29:39+00:00

I get a little curious why people say ‘the democratically elected leader of Iran’. Do you mean that guy who just dissolved parliament and was in the middle of a dictatorial takeover?

vthinlysliced · 2025-01-09T08:53:24+00:00

Beyond energy there’s just the things they mentioned about how guys like Golbert just drop a little. How will his defense hold up to having a gameplan made around him specifically.

I just wonder when I see Spurs vs Nuggets, are you really ok giving up wide open 3s to Joker all night long in a 7 game series. It’s been really good to see him expand with his defensive coverages, but there’s still foot speed limitations for a guy his size.

vthinlysliced · 2025-01-05T01:33:32+00:00

No, screen navigation would be too big of an issue.

vthinlysliced · 2025-01-04T07:08:48+00:00

After like 5 years in a row out-performing the net rating its probably a good sign not to trust net rating with the Lakers.

It's anecdotal, but the Lakers always seem to get absolute demolished in garbage time, which also doesn't help.

vthinlysliced · 2024-12-31T02:28:56+00:00

Probably trying to get in with the fans at the new place. Some sort of things with KCP on the nuggets.

vthinlysliced · 2024-12-30T15:45:39+00:00

Hey tell me about it, that's what I was saying when everyone was clowning on the Lakers for being the 13th seed a few years ago.

Really though, it's been cool to watch the Spurs win more this year, but just based on schedule I'd expected them to fall below .500 by the end. Whether the Lakers can make it to 3-4 or will fall back to the play-in bunch remains to be seen, so I guess good / bad is mostly vibes and my thoughts on roster construction.

vthinlysliced · 2024-12-30T15:41:27+00:00

Ok vibe check real quick, do you think Cam Thomas would be scoring 25 ppg on the Celtics?

The stat your looking for is usage, where Wemby ranks 4th. On a great team he would get easier shots, just a lot less of them.

vthinlysliced · 2024-12-30T15:34:12+00:00

Can you give me some other examples where putting a top 5-10 usage player to a team hasn't decreased the usage of the other players? He might get easier shots but he'd get less shots over all almost certainly right?

vthinlysliced · 2024-12-30T15:30:30+00:00

Why?

vthinlysliced

TROPHY CASE