Bartender_Venator
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User ID: 2349
Bartender_Venator
2d ago
"Pop" history isn't "history" if it gets stuff seriously wrong. But history as a discipline isn't just an arcane hobby for a gaggle of ivory-tower academics - a huge part of the point of those academics' existence is to inform (or to write) works that educate the public about history. And Mike Duncan pretty much gives you the background you need to read academic Roman history without getting lost. Papers can be abstruse and difficult but academic books are generally written with enough background to be readable outside a specialist niche, even if you need to have some experience in the discipline. Just as an example, I recently read Emanuel Mayer's The Ancient Middle Classes. Mostly a very dry read going through the details of Roman tombs and houses and making arguments from there about the existence of a Roman "middle class", but the book contains enough background that someone generally familiar with Roman history can read it all - after all, an academic writing a book like that will expect it to be used by scholars in other aspects of ancient history, or economic historians studying class throughout history, or historians working on urbanization, etc. etc.
Bartender_Venator
2d ago
You're right, should have read that more carefully, the fines were imposed by the disciplinary board and reduced on appeal (lol).
Bartender_Venator
2d ago
I think it is, uh, difficult to call CAF a serious organization, much like FIFA when it comes to stuff like the Qatar World Cup and the inevitable future Saudi World Cup, or the Premier League when it comes to Man City. But the seriousness of a tournament is, thankfully, not determined by the organizers - it's determined by the passion of the fans and players, and AFCON has that in spades (no thanks to Morocco, who seemingly did everything in their power to exclude fans from getting tickets).
Bartender_Venator
2d ago
Death Chuck Norrised at the age of 4,000,000,000. RIP.
Some of you may recall my write-up on the African Cup of Nations final a couple months back. Well, I'm pleased to announce that the crazy AFCON drama is not actually at an end. To recap: Senegal defeated Morocco in a highly contested final. Throughout the tournament, I'd heard black African fans complain that "the Arabs" are bribing the refs to help Morocco and Egypt against sub-Saharan nations, and the ref made himself a big part of the game. In the last minutes of the game, he ruled out a Senegal goal for a very soft foul, then awarded Morocco a penalty for an even softer one (on what would have been the last play before the game breaks to extra time, if a goal is not scored). Senegalese fans started fighting the Moroccans, a delay is announced, the Senegalese players get into an argument on the pitch and storm off into the dressing room. Eventually, their captain runs in, convinces them to come back out, the penalty is set up - and Morocco flubs it in embarrassing fashion. Senegal wins with a smashing goal in extra time, cue massive celebrations (including my family jumping around waving a knockoff Senegalese jersey in the air).
But, it's not over.
59 days after the final, CAF, the body administrating African football/soccer, officially stripped Senegal of the title. Their reasoning is that, by leaving the pitch without the authorization of the referee, Senegal forfeited the match, and therefore Morocco is awarded a 3-0 victory (as is standard for forfeits in football). They also fined Morocco for some of their infringements, like, uh, having their ball boys steal towels and water bottles from the Senegalese goalkeeper.
Senegal, of course, is not taking this lying down. Their government has announced they will appeal the verdict and called for an investigation into CAF corruption. An Senegalese member of the CAF Executive Committee publicly slammed the decision. The Senegalese coach, already sanctioned by CAF due to the scuffle during the final, has reportedly taken the trophy to a military base for safe-keeping.
Now, the appeal itself seems simple: were the rules broken? And it would be simple, anywhere but Africa. Let's take a look: the CAF board cites Senegal as violating Articles 82 and 84 of the CAF rules. See here:
ARTICLE 82 If, for any reason whatsoever, a team withdraws from the competition or does not report for a match, or refuses to play or leaves the ground before the regular end of the match without the authorisation of the referee, it shall be considered looser [sic] and shall be eliminated for good from the current competition. The same shall apply for the teams previously disqualified by decision of CAF.
ARTICLE 83 A team that shall not be present on the ground, dressed to play at the time fixed for kick-off or at most 15 minutes later, shall forfeit the match. The referee shall register the absence of the team and shall write it in his report. The Organising Committee shall take the final decision in this respect.
ARTICLE 84 The team which contravenes the provisions of articles 82 and 83 shall be eliminated for good from the competition. This team will lose its match by 3-0 unless the opponent has scored a more advantageous result at the time when the match was interrupted, in this case this score will be maintained. The Organising Committee may adopt further measures
Let's think about this. Senegal cannot have violated Article 84. In fact, Article 84 only applies to no-shows, because it clearly states that a team must contravene the provisions of articles 82 and 83. Article 82, if it applies, would state that Senegal is "looser" and eliminated from the competition, but has no provision to award Morocco the 3-0 win in particular. Furthermore, Article 82, unlike 83, does not provide for the final decision of the Organising Committee in the article, it seems to be up to the referee's judgement. And the referee did not disqualify Senegal. He let them play on, and no statement from him revising that is addressed by CAF. Is there precedent for this? Well, in 1976, in the game that won them their first-ever AFCON title, Morocco's players walked off the field in protest at the referee and stopped play for 15 minutes. Their title stood.
I hope for good luck for Senegal in the Court for Arbitration of Sport (the international court in Switzerland which oversees football as well as e.g. the Olympics), both for their sake and for the drama that will result. It's also worth noting that, if Morocco and Senegal both finish second in their groups in the World Cup (likely, both are comfortably the second-best team in their groups), and both win their first knockout game (tougher - Senegal would have an easy one, but Morocco would face Japan or the Netherlands), we will see a very juicy rematch in New York...
Bartender_Venator
3d ago
I tend to go for the heaviest weights I can, as soon as I can.
I also avoid deadlifts because I have the impression the risk of injury is concerning
Those two are related!
Anyway, form is more important than weight. Not just for injury, but also to make sure you're actually progressing and not just finding new ways to cheat that will bite you in the ass (while also probably killing your mind-muscle connection gains). Your goal is not to get the weight from point A to point B, it's to do the lift. You won't progress as fast in the numbers, but you'll progress a lot better in the mirror.
Bartender_Venator
3d ago
The global doctor workload is the aggregate effective demand for services which must be provided by MDs. Since very little of healthcare functions based on market dynamics, this mostly resolves to "how much are governments/charities/insurers willing to pay for", which is basically "how much do they need to pay for before people flip out at them to an extent it causes them problems". I suspect that line is actually surprisingly easy to move, that it will move by necessity with our aging populations, and we are already seeing it move (not just delegation of doctors' authority, but stuff like MAID).
Bartender_Venator
4d ago
I suspect the dam on AI medicine is going to break quicker than anyone believed possible. Many of the gatekeeping functions of doctors, like writing prescriptions, are already being outsourced to NPs, and AI will act as the gatekeeper to them or, if you really seem to need it, an actual doctor. We don't have enough doctors to do the global doctor workload; we probably do have enough doctors to do the things only doctors can actually do.
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
Notably, Stacey Abrams also claimed that her 2018 gubernatorial election was Stolen (I will, in fairness to both her and Blake Masters' mysteriously broken voting machines, say that having partisan Secretaries of State overseeing elections seems insane to me).
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
It's significantly more than the Lizardman Constant. Rasmussen in 2023 had 32% of Democrats believing it was very likely that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election (13% "somewhat likely"). 62% all voters for very/somewhat. Now, before someone jumps on me, that's "affected", not "the election was stolen". But this loss of faith is a serious problem, and no amount of socially enforced outgroup-blaming or ostrich-heading among Respectable People will change that.
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
Y’all need to fix the DMV before anyone talks about voter ID.
I believe this is known as the Moldbug Speedrun.
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
I yeschad to your first paragraph, but with regard to the last point - that may be a current among weird Kansas evangelicals, but the typical Anglo-civil-libertarian opposition to mandatory ID is more along the lines of "it's not a question of what the government pinky promises to do with it now, but what it can do with it in the future - plus, we can expect it to end up disenfranchising innocent people in a much worse way than something like slapping voter ID onto the existing system." This is very much a live political issue in the UK, where several governments have tried to introduce national ID and failed (voting in the UK also requires a government-issued photo ID, or a certificate from your local voting authority including a photo and the UK-equivalent of an SSN).
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
The words of a man who will never get to China.
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
I have not had much trouble at Newark lately, but I know it's usually a shitshow in all respects. Touchless ID should at least smooth some of that out if you're signed up and flying through a terminal that has it.
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
Austen is much more accessible to the modern reader than the KJV or Hamlet, and reading things like Pride and Prejudice will prepare you for reading Shakespeare.
Funny, I would hard disagree on the Shakespeare point. Sure, there will be even more words you have to look at the footnotes for, but Shakespeare's plays are written to be performed on stage, generally in a simple and natural meter, which inherently limits sentence length and complexity. Having trouble with To Be or Not To Be? Just read it like you were speaking it. Austen and the later Victorian novelists are the result of a tradition continually building on Shakespeare's English, making it more structurally complex and verbose to fit a reading public rather than a theatre audience (if nothing else, if you look at Victorian novelists, their most kudzu sentences are generally physical descriptions of a scene, which Shakespeare doesn't do much. Marlowe, yes, but rarely Shakespeare).
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
These days, at least in the airports I use, it's a <5 minute process, and the only inconvenience is emptying my pockets into my bag and putting them back in. Walk in, Touchless ID/CLEAR, get to a line of a few people on the new machines, bags in, metal detector, done. Not that there aren't absolute disasters, like Austin last weekend, but those are usually pretty easy to avoid. Sure, it would be nice to just not have it, but when has the government ever abolished a jobs program that lets them charge you money?
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
Airport security basically doesn't exist as an inconvenience any more if you are willing to pass a background check and pay some money. The background check is what actually replaces the security, the money is why they keep the shitty lines for the plebs.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
...I hope you're not claiming to get that view from actual Straussians. The closest thing there is to a (West Coast) Straussian perspective on the current state of Congress is that the Constitution intends for the legislature to be a dynamic, powerful branch which acts to shape the law as necessary. The Senate is a participant in that process, but a participant in an actual working process. Congress today is a castrati choir because of the Leviathan you mentioned, but Congress also willingly abdicated their power to Leviathan in order to keep their chairs comfy and spend more time fundraising.
Then, I'd like to see a hard RETVRN to Federalism that places states as the primary "actors." California can experiment with its polyamory socialist redistributionism while West Virginia fucks around with legalizing machine guns.
From your lips to Lady Columbia's ears.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
I do think the word had a different valence in the 19th Century, more neutral - in part because of its entirely negative use by socialists. Think of the the way the word is used for the exploitation of mineral deposits, for instance (that is to say, "exploitation" had the connotation of treating people as resources, still mildly negative but not as inflammatory as today). For what it's worth, the robot agrees - but I may be wrong, this is just the vibe I get from old books. At the same time, Marx was very much a pamphleteer as well as economist, so I think it's partly both.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
My sympathy is strictly with the textualist Marxists who also find this annoying when the kids around them are doing it. They do exist and I appreciate their grumpiness.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
Because if you are, then you should know that preserving the original sentence structure is flat out impossible in many cases because languages have different grammars. What is correct structure in language A can be very much not correct in language B.
I think I've been unclear there. What I mean to say is that if a book has complex and layered sentence structure, that should be reflected in the translation, and likewise if it has clear prose with short sentences. Translation is not a case of going word for word. For instance, if you are translating a single-sentence modernist novel, your translation should if at all possible be a single sentence in the other language. It's an art that trades off preserving word-for-word accuracy, semantics, flow, rhythm, and structural considerations. I've read a couple works in multiple translations, and you can see how the tradeoffs work and which translators do it better.
I did see your examples, and I'm sorry to say that Example 3 is just worse prose (to be fair, Example 2, the Finnish translation, is execrable, I assume because that sentence structure is impossible in Finnish?). It's easier for an inattentive or less experienced reader to follow, because it breaks up the sentence with an extra verb and a reminder of the subject, but it kills the rhythm and unbalances the structure. Try reading the original and the edit out loud - notice how, for instance, the original is instantly dramatic, with the little break between "Woodhouse" and "handsome" making you read "handsome, clever, and rich" with energy, notice how the emphases on "house" and "handsome" both play on each other and break natural iambic rhythm in a way that makes "handsome" bounce off the tongue, and that runs all the way to the next strong syllable of "COMfortable". Meanwhile Example 3 reads comparatively flat, just conveying information, more like a movie narrator or a story you could read out in a classroom.
Seriously, what is it with these condescending personal attacks? Do you truly believe that anyone who disagrees with you can only do so because they are somehow inferior?
It's fine for the various forms of art appreciation to be skills you have to learn and develop - and, as you point out, only a small fraction of native speakers ever develop them. As an example, I am a complete philistine when it comes to appreciating music (but I also don't insist to my Wagner-loving friends that he's got too many notes and they're just gatekeeping). I suppose I could couch it in more padding and compliments and so on, but this is the Autism Forum. I told you how it is, and gave you my advice, which is to use authors who bridge the gap in prose style between the modernists and the Victorians as a way to develop those skills.
To a more general point, I think a lot of people have skills they don't think of as "skills" but as innate things which are reflections of their intelligence, self-worth, whatever. I've made this point a lot in the various Wellness Wednesday discussions of socializing, making friends, dating, etc. that those things are skills you have to learn and practice consciously, and doing that is the difference between getting what you want socially and becoming an ngmi shut-in. People are more receptive to that advice about social skills here, because, again, this is the Autism Forum, but it's also true of reading and writing prose. Such is life.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
Calvin Westra's Moth Girl. I, uh, didn't think anyone would ever write a good novel told almost entirely through text/internet messages, and I think I was wrong. Also interesting to see the book take themes and tricks from his previous novellas and expand them. The man's a maestro and I expect great things in future.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
However translating to a foreign language - which throws the sentence structure to wind and streamlines it significantly
Then that is a bad translation. If a book has complex and difficult sentence structure in the original, it should be preserved in translation (and some translations, like Ottilie Mulzet's translations from Hungarian, imo qualify as great works in themselves). Of course, good writing, ideally, has sentences which are complex but not difficult, sentences which flow, which pull you along in a clear semantic progress from concept to concept. Reading these sentences is a skill, one which modern readers have to develop, but that's fine, it's part of being a good reader. You may be taking too much of a jump at once - consider taking a look at Conrad or some other turn-of-the-century author, who can act as a bridge into the Victorians. Personally, I read very few Victorian novels, too stodgy for me, but still try to keep sharp on it to read Victorian poetry, history, and philosophy.
With respect to archaic terms, that's understandably frustrating to non-native speakers, but also part of the game. There are very few cases where you can seamlessly replace a word without some semantic or rhythmic difference. Where I do share your frustration is with the ebook format. Footnotes are very easy, and often necessary, on a physical book (e.g. there is simply no way to do without them for a Classical text), but a huge pain in the ass on e-readers.
History podcasting has also evolved a ton since the Carlin/Duncan days. It's sort of split off into two directions - one, exemplified by The Cost of Glory, is being upfront about being a retelling and explanation of the ancient sources. Cost of Glory is as much about Plutarch as it is about the characters, and I think it's a better podcast for it (it's my favourite of the current crop. Listen in the gym and hit PRs). Then, there are podcasts like History of Byzantium, History of the Germans, and above all When Diplomacy Fails, which blend narrative history with an overview of the historiographical debates and a proper examination of the sources.
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