Sorry, I can't hear your chants over the sound of the Social War sparked by two ambitious usurpers disrupting the previously solid system of alliances.
lennivelkant
joined 1 year ago
I would argue that the Empire as an imperialist hegemon started with their conquests that formed a hegemony, which I'd place around 340 BCE. The Principate replaced the Republic in 27 BCE with the ascension of Octavian, later to he replaced by the Dominate in 284 BCE with the ascension of Diocletian(though that distinction is disputed), together forming the Empire as a system dominated by the reigns of Emperors, ended as you describe by the deposition of Romulus Augustus in 476 CE and the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 CE.
It's a cargo cult. They don't understand, but they like what it promises, so they blindly worship. Sceptics become unbelievers, visionaries become prophets and collateral damages become sacrifices.
They may use different terms, but if some job became obsolete, that's just the price of a better future to them. And when the day of Revelation comes, they'll surely be among the faithful delivered from the shackles of human labour to enjoy the paradise built on this technology. Any day now...
It's not the goal itself that's the issue. Protecting kids from harmful content until they're ready to deal with it is absolutely a worthwhile endeavour.
But the means to that end often pose a massive security and privacy issue.
You're supposed to give all your identifying details to some website and trust them, that they'll use it only for the legal purpose of verifying that identity and promptly deleting them, rather than selling them to criminals who now have everything they need for identity theft. Hell, just storing them is a risk because we all know how many companies (and people) treat IT security as an afterthought at best and a breach compromising the identification of thousands of people would be a fucking nightmare.
And what if your kid tries to circumvent it? Now their face is out there on some server, whether or not they succeed. Is that really better?
The argument is that the onus should be on parents to protect their children and help them find their way safely, rather than compromising everyone else with poorly thought-out and invasive policies.
What about Black Hole by Betraying The Martyrs?
If I'd managed to stick a robot landing on a rock hurtling through space, you bet I'd be celebrating hard too
So what's wrong with cumming the backstreet
Solid vitamin C is relatively stable, but it decomposes rather quickly when dissolved in water. Factors such as pH, temperature, oxygen, and the presence of catalysts (iron, copper) influence the decomposition process. The lowest rate of oxidation is observed at pH 3, where vitamin C solutions are the most stable. Raising the pH to 5 increases the oxidation rate by a factor of 2.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3510389/
The study uses particularly clean water (clean enough to be suitable for medical injections) with a pH of ~7.4. At that acidity and a temperature of 20°C (≈70°F), it takes about 95 days for the vitamin C to decay to 10% of its original concentration, or 28 days to reach 50%.
Normal drinking water has a pH of 6.5-8.5, but also contains a lot of other substances, which might increase the rate of oxidation. Given the potential time between treatment and consumption as well as the fact that people might boil it and increase the rate of decay that way, it's just not as economical to add ascorbic acid to the water supply if only a small percentage of it will ever reach the consumers.
Additionally, the exact dosage will be hard to control, leading to a risk of excessive side effects such as kidney stones. People with a specific enzyme deficiency may also suffer anemia as excessive doses.
Compare that to, say, lemons, whose juice has a pH of ~ 2.4 and renders the vitamin a lot more stable. If you want people to get a good intake of vitamin C, tell them to eat fruits and vegetables, preferably uncooked. The vitamin C dosage you'll get from that will hardly lead to megadoses, unless you eat such vast amounts that you'd probably get other problems anyway.
The reason fluoride is added is that it's quite stable, safe and effective, while also being fairly cheap.
Did George Lucas know that?
I don't know. There is a certain tendency in western media to overrepresent the significance of swords in pre-gunpowder combat (at least when they're not treating bows like they're guns and catapults like artillery).
On the other hand, with well-made swords often serving as a status symbol (due to being more expensive in terms of required material, labour and skill of the craftsman) it makes sense for the Jedi to wield them as a symbol of affiliation and the reputation that accompanies that affiliation. Everyone can buy a Blaster, but a Lightsaber?
Or maybe he just wanted to emphasize the mysticism around katanas.
It doesn't have to be either/or, I think both are plausible.
Heh, flavour
(I like Fedora, but it obviously doesnt taste as good)
That's the siege concept of Contravallation: building a wall outside the besieging force to prevent reinforcements from overrunning your positions. I think what made Jules' implementation remarkable was the speed and complexity of its construction, and his precise maneuvering to hold both walls against considerable hostile forces.
Actually keeping track of how a battle is going without modern communication is extremely difficult if your fastest communication is "Man on horse", your best surveillance tool is "Good eyesight" and you can't easily see the actual troops. Caesar was a master at predicting weaknesses and coordinating his reserve troops just so that they could plug the gaps and snatch an unlikely victory. He personally led troops into a breach (where the terrain prevented building a wall), salvaging his troops' breaking morale while another unit flanked the attackers and drove them off.
Building walls was nothing new. Building good walls quickly, holding them and even holding the point where no walls could be built?
He fought a battle on two fronts and came out on top. That's why he's the GOAT.