I've logged in for years to do STO online events. I have like 6 free T6 coupons and 2 big prize boxes that I haven't opened from doing the year long event grinds.

Admitting you have a problem is the first step. Cancelling your WOW subscription is the second step.

Is this your relative?

ICE agents pulling aside Native Americans because they think they look Mexican is one of those stories that is ironic on multiple levels.

What did this entail? Did ask for their passports?

As you get more and more used to writing 'em, you'll end up combining strokes just like you do in English. Just make sure to be following proper stroke order, or your handwriting will get fucked up.

I keep seeing that Jeffrey Epstein cologne ad and it always makes me do a triple take.

it always looks as though you could make a perfectly good attempt at pronounciation - and then you hear what it's actually supposed to be and it's completely different.

This is how you Anglos are with every language, including the ones the pronunciation of which is obvious to nearly everyone else.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I had managed to obtain a vhs cassette of the international version of Bullet in the Head and as it happened it was English with Dutch subtitles. That was surprisingly annoying because for a German the brain just consistently tries to read the subtitles, fails and starts concentrating on these strange symbols that look like German on first glance.

Dutch looks like what having a stoke sounds like.

Straat op gejorking mijn pijnits.

I'm a weirdo I guess in that kanji are extremely helpful to remembering words for me. I know people say there's no such thing as learning styles or whatever but something to see is incredibly helpful to me. I see them in my mind when I'm trying to think of a word.

Anyway I believe immersion is the way, just constantly surround yourself with stuff to read. In Japan it was so much easier because you are absolutely enveloped in print advertising at all times. I wrote out phrases and practice sentences on little pieces of paper and stuck them all over my apartment so when I was walking around I'd see them and try to read them out loud.

Yeah, I'd say they do. At some point the only new ones you're being exposed to are weird ones that stick in your head, but even before that getting used to radicles and phonetic components makes 'em easier to pick up.

Also this is a hot take, but don't worry too much about learning to write kanji at the start. You should certainly know how to read them, and the basic stroke order rules, but once you have those two skills learning to write kanji at a later date is a breeze. That's what I did, at least.

If you're learning the Kanji by memorizing the signs in on themselves, then I think that's a fool's errand.

I am of the opinion that you should just learn vocabulary and how to read and write it. Kanji is not a writing system that you can "learn" and then read Japanese.

I do recommend practicing writing them by hand though, it helps drill them in.

So, does learning Kanji become easier at some point?

No, and you have to practice writing them regularly or you end up becoming only able to read them but not able to write them. Though, I'm talking form Hanzi rather than Kanji experience.

I wonder how much of the “there were so many more bugs when I was young” is a selective memory thing like how many people in the US insist there were more thunderstorms, or mourning doves cooing, when they were a child despite neither actually being true. 

Studies on insect populations are more mixed, but much of the popular perception of dramatic decline could be the same thing. The time your car got covered with bugs on a childhood road trip, or the one summer night where your backyard was filled with fireflies, or the handful of times you got nailed by a dragonfly while riding your bike, are all more memorable than the many more times you did the same activities and those things didn’t happen

I'm guessing this was on the askUK sub?

Stay around internet discourse enough, you can predict most conversations in the way that chess players are able to predict their opponents moves.

The third point seems obviously wrong. You can see there are fewer insects. When you put out a light, it used to get swarmed with moths. Also, I remember always getting nailed in the face by insects while cycling.

"Ottomans banned Kurdish in schools and from being printed"

Was the Ottoman public schooling system ever developed enough for that to be an issue? As I understand it, before the early Republic most of the Anatolian populace were illiterate (and Kurds primarily lived in mountainous rural areas dubiously controlled by the central government anyway).

There's also the point about Arab countries only being Arabic-speaking because of conquest and colonization. I mean, it's technically correct*, but that's little different from why the French, Spanish and Portuguese all speak languages derived from Latin.

*The best kind of correct

I think Arab cultural identity is one of those things that's just too nuanced for most people to have patience with: watching the infighting between different groups of Christians in Arab countries always reminds me of this.

It's the "Polish death camps" debacle all over again.

Do many Jewish people outside of Israel, or anyone else, have this view of the Holocuast as a German-Polish joint atrocity? 

Given this and Netanyahu's attempts to pin the Shoah more on Al Husseini then is probably merited, I wonder how many Israelis are actually technically deniers by way of minimising German culpability. It would be a very controversial line of enquiry but I'd be extremely curious.

The Supreme Being

You're neoliberal.

Sir this is r/badhistory

Bloooooooooooooooooooo!

A Tudors or Borgias style drama about the Gustav Vasa and his sons. Plenty of feuding, once favoured courtiers being executed or fleeing to Lübeck. A comedy interlude with Erik XIV trying to woo Queen Elizabeth 

I bet the people here roll their eyes at the "Freud, Hitler, Trotsky, etc all lived in Vienna at the same time" thing that comes up now and again, but what a great set up for a show. Secession art, Schoenberg music, Wiener Werkstatte designs, Otto Wagner architecture, all the setup for the apocalyptic ending when they get the news from Sarajevo.

Iberia during the Reconquista period, with great emphasis on all that infighting and shifting alliances between the various Christian and Muslim polities. Or a comedy about Maniots holding onto their customs. Or even a comedy-thriller series about the four Fitnas in Islam

Diadochi wars.

I think there is potential for stories set in Appalachia in the American Revolution due to a weird byproduct of the war. Take this with a grain of salt; I've heard that the War for Independence gave a lot of feuding people in Appalachia the idea to use the pretense of the war to murder foes and get away with it by claiming to have suddenly become a diehard patriot or loyalist and the murdered party to have been the opposite and doing something to advance said cause. Just conceptually, it's a crime drama where premeditated murder becomes de facto legalized for something like half a decade because of a conflict that never once comes close to the community, there's a great deal of potential. I also think it's probably it's a concept that could actually get the greenlight because of the violent rural nihilism baked into the premise that I could see Taylor Sheridan wanting to produce it.

A comedy like Death of Stalin set in the shortlived Bavarian Council Republic

I think a series following the careers of Stilicho and Alaric after they (maybe) both fought under Theodoric at the Battle of Frigidus River would be interesting. Two Germanic war lords hose ambiguous relationship to the imperial center led them down different paths, until they eventually collided again. Seems juicy!

More small scale, but I think a series just based around a Roman military fort would be interesting. It could be set around a rebellion (like, say, Vindex's in 69 CE) and show how the community formed and broke apart, but i am more just interested in following the ordinary lives there.

If I had the actual power to greenlight something, I might choose a series based on the early years of Liberia.

I'd love an epic movie about the battle of Talas. Tang vs. Abbasids!

A detective show but set in the Late Roman Empire.

Or a show following Constantine III and his arch enemy, Constantius III.

A movie about Friar Julian finding the Hungarians who stayed in the East before the Mongols eviscerated them would be pretty fun.

A noir set in San Francisco's Chinatown in the late 19th century.

I’ve always wanted one about the life of Puyi.

I’m still waiting for a noir set in early 20th century Shanghai

One, I think we need a series about the French Revolution, maybe remind people nowadays what things were like before all these fancy rights they take for granted.

Two, a drama about Brutus, because the story of a man who killed a dictator in order to preserve a government he didn't know was already lost seems like a winner.

Multi-season billion dollar budget HBO series on the Wars of the Diadochi and a Band of Brothers style adaptation of Co. Aytch.

Inspired by a misreading of your comment, a civil war series, like all of them. Featuring Caesar's march on Atlanta and Charles execution after the battle of Sarajevo. So the thing starts with the first defenestration of Prague and the Tilly starting the long march.

Nine Years War and/or the Flight of the Earls would make an interesting series. There are rumors that something is in the works but not much to go on.

This is double layers of geek, but I've long liked the idea of The Warlord Chronicles (Early Medieval King Arthur series) as an anime. Too bad the live action series a couple years ago bombed hard.

And this is more of a gag, but a historical series where a non-European protagonist travels to Europe and has to navigate the various cultural shocks and take up the cause of/become the favorite in a powerful European Court. Basically the loose premise of The 13th Warrior and the reversal of most other English language historical dramas set outside of Europe.

I’d like to see more Vietnam War stuff that is actually centered around the Vietnamese themselves rather than having them effectively serve as part of the backdrop for Americans/French/English/etc. I know there are Vietnamese-made movies but they’re probably a bit more on the jingoistic propaganda side of things.

I read The Sorrows of War earlier this year, by a veteran of the NVA, and 1) it’s fascinating as it is grim, and 2) it made me even more fully appreciate how often the war is used in American fiction as a catalyst for our own veterans’ experiences rather than something more international.

That or, idk, more Korean stuff. Someone mentioned the show Kingdom a couple threads ago, which is a kind of goofy but thoroughly entertaining zombie thing taking place after the Imjin War. I dunno, it’s just a setting I don’t see much of.

Someone here once suggested a William of Orange biopic and I still think about that every now and then

Prestige mini series about the 1926 general strike in Britain with each principal character roughly representing each of the “Bells of Rhymney”

1. Johann Friedrich Böttger

2. The Measure of All Things

3. A Viking saga. Literally just a saga. Just a take a saga and put it on screen. I just don't care about your tribal-shaman-barbarian sagas.

Depends on what languages these are.

Skill issue 

One thing i've noticed is that i haven't learned how to learn a language. Every time, i feel like i start from scratch.

Like, one of my major issue i personally face when I learn a language is listening comprehension : when I listen to a sentence, not only I don't understand anything, but my brain isn't even able to parse the sentence, to detect boundaries between words. I'd think this shouldn't be a very language specific competence : if i struggle but makes major improvement in that regard learning language A, my brain should be able to bring about the same tools to help parse sentences in language B. But no. It's as if my brain just get accustomed to the way people in language A speak, enough to recognize a few words, patterns, hard-code them and... stops there. It just won't bother improving the "how to detect boundaries between words" competence in general. It's a bit frustrating, honestly.

I guess it depends on the language and its relation (if any) to the others you've learned.

Tooze is definitely widely read, especially Wages of Destruction. I don't think Crashed is as good.

He’s an economic historian. Economic historians tend to receive training in economic theory (and actually the bulk of economic historians today tend to be trained in economics departments).

In the marxist tradition, history is basically a history of economics: the stakes and actors are all economically formulated. Tooze is not a marxist, but he's pretty solidly in the tradition of political economy, where history is deeply indebted to economics and vice-versa.

Aren't there historians who specialize on the economic history of some periods (like how Tirthankar Roy is an expert in the economic history of the Raj)? Adam Tooze also specialises in economic history of Nazi Germany, doesn't he? Do those have qualifications in economics or history or both?

Bachelors in history and working on my masters in econ here—far from an expert but y’know. I skim university syllabus and university booklists (here’s an AskEconomics thread on this) on my free time and I’ve definitely seen his work on economic history course material. I’ve seen plenty of professors of economic history recommend his work.

As much of an absolutist I am in reputable academic credentials for making a claim, I’d say he has proven his knowledge on the subject and is respected. Much like how Powell doesn’t have a background in economics but has direct experience in monetary policy, outsiders can prove their capability and knowhow of the literature in a field.

I do tacitly agree that most economic historians or policymakers would prolly not read his work in the same way they read Economic History Review. This isn’t a bad thing, his work is just geared to a more general audience. But he does something even better than being the person economic historians or policymakers lean on, he is the one who taught them.

I assume that no 'real' economist/policy-maker reads his books

They definitely do.

The Twitter/Bluesky micro celeb Matt Darling (/u/besttrousers) made me a mod of /r/badeconomics because he liked my history writing so there is at least some overlap.

I think economists tend to like economically minded historians because we flatter them by using a lot of the same tools and concepts as they do while still treating them with scorn and disdain, it's a psychological thing.

There was a lot of shit going down in the days after 9/11. A lot of foreigners were arrested for being foreign. There was the story of the Sikh who always wore a turban, took the New York subway to work on 9/12, panicked passengers called the police on him and they took him in. They couldn't hold him because wearing a turban isn't a crime but the police were enabling the hysteria for a time.

Did MtG renounce her anti-revolutionary actions on Fox?

Chomsky fans online are genuinely insane, especially post 2022

There is a lot of guilt by association regarding Epstein. Surprise, but a rich guy with connections actually knew a lot of people and a lot of people knew him. However, we live in this post-Pizzagate society where you're never further than 20 m away from the next Epstein.

Like, the poster could have just said "Epstein's flight logs are pretty useless evidence and Epstein knew a lot of people". 

 Chomsky had no idea about what exactly Jeffrey Epstein was doing or the extent of Epstein's operations

A seminal thinker who was smart enough to come up with Universal Grammar (lol) but also had no idea the world’s most prolific pedophile may have actually been kind of a shady character.

I’m fairly far to the left but I’ve never really understood the worship for Chomsky. He never struck me as saying anything terribly novel politically, and being a weird asshole about the Bosnian War didn’t really help.

I feel like a lot of leftists pick someone to be attached to so strongly because there's always the fear of them doing something that gets them cancelled. Like look at how the left reacts to any leftist that gets power. Nothing is ever good enough. So you over compensate by idolizing one dude your entire life who is the pinnacle of leftism.

Mission failed; we'll get 'em next time.

Think of all the tragedies we could have avoided if we only had historians specialized on the fall of Rome.

Oh, I definitely don't know as much about the Congress of Paris as I should, what were the diplomats at Paris trying to avoid, exactly?

Weren't most of the early CHP leaders from the Aegean coastal areas (and tended to have a low opinion of the more 'rustic' populace of the Anatolian interior)?

Why is that people who support an idea of an oligarchy of the elite tend to such horrible people?

It truly is a mystery for the ages.

IMHO SOMA works better in easy mode since the actual hiding from monsters gameplay is mid at best.

I generally play games to relax and survival horror has always just made me anxious for that reason. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing and I’m just bumbling around as some gross thing lumbers after me.

I appreciate the craft that goes into making a spoopy game but if it’s more involved than Dead Space then I’m probably just going to get kind of irritated about not being able to find the elevator handle of Baphomet or whatever. I already feel powerless in real life, I have no need to simulate that.

[removed]

Baseball was too nostalgic

Saying a documentary on baseball is too nostalgic is like saying the cars in an F1 rally are going too fast.

(continued)

Less good stuff:

• I mentioned it previously, but I'd reiterate that I think Rick Atkinson gets a little too much coverage relative to other presenters, and I would like to have seen more time given to the academic historians' viewpoints. Though folks like Gordon Wood and Bernard Bailyn are now at the tail end of their careers and might be a little out of step with the newer generation (Wood's critiques of the 1619 Project are a little lamentable), they were and are still undoubtedly giants in their field and deserved a little more time on screen.
• Also mentioned previously, I dislike the over-focus and equivalence drawn between "the war" and "the Revolution." Episode 1 does a good job of getting into the political debates and details going on in the colonies, but very little coverage is given to State legislatures, the Continental Congress, or local committees in the later episodes. The political maneuvering and shifts in public opinion in this period are maybe the most critical elements in forging a new kind of culture in the States, but coverage here is pretty scant (perhaps my appreciation for Bailyn and Wood are reflective of this critique). The typical subtext of virtuous soldiers and selfish politicians is pretty evident here, and in my view regrettable in the society that already fetishizes the military to an unhealthy degree.
• On that note, the end of episode 6 was IMO the weakest part of the series. The period between Yorktown and Washington's terms as President receives no more than a half hour of coverage. I would honestly have preferred they just left this out altogether than repeat the common narrative that the Articles of Confederation were obviously terrible, and the Constitution was the inevitable product of the revolutionary struggle. This is truly lamentable given the series' otherwise good coverage of the complexity (and messiness) of revolutionary struggles. I wish Burns and Ward had either devoted 1-2 more episodes to this period, or just closed with the Treaty of Paris, leaving off the Confederation and Constitution for another doc or further reading.
• While I praise the improved coverage of indigenous peoples, Black Americans (both enslaved and free), Loyalists, and women, these sections still feel like parenthetical addenda to the principal focus on the military campaigns, rather than integrations into the main narrative. Telling a more coherent, multicultural, pan-Atlantic story of the Revolution is difficult, and probably more than could be accomplished in 12 hours, I still feel like these additions were a little messy. Still, I applaud Burns, Ward, and company for including these voices to a greater degree than most surveys of the Revolution. There were still issues (I lament a comment from Maggie Blackhawk that was probably edited down about natives not having the same conception of property as Europeans--that's not "wrong," but it does feed into mainstream "noble savage" stereotypes that should be challenged).

Overall I'd give a solid B/B+ for historical content I think. For a layperson, if this was the only exposure to revolutionary history (beyond the generally poor and overly nationalistic high school surveys most Americans receive) they got, I'd say they could definitely do worse. The documentary I think is pretty tame by the standards of modern scholarship, but it's almost certain to provoke a backlash from anti-"woke" sectors and from Americans who don't like their clean nationalist narratives challenged. Nothing here is too controversial or particularly interesting for experts, but most Americans are not experts, and their view of this period tends to smack more of mythology than of genuine history.

It's not an assassination because he survived and swam around the ship three times, obviously.

My only take on the incident is that Robert Newton's line reading of "Mayynarrrrd" is one that will forever live in my head.

Ding dong, the wicked bitch is dead.

One guy I know calls it a political assassination against the law.

Why would the CIA do this?