hydroacetylene
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User ID: 128
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Correct me if I'm wrong but Spain proper always had a low population density, at least through the spanish golden age. Crazy-big Spanish armies were due to new world extraction that was more due to Spain happening to conquer two gigantic ancient empires, one of which sat on a literal mountain made of silver, and a technological breakthrough in metals refining allowing the spanish to exploit more marginal mines in the new world. You can maybe blame the latter on something to do with Spain but Spanish military exploits were more like a random third-world dictatorship striking oil and suddenly buying top of the line military kit for long running wars in their near abroad than anything else. The Spanish army wasn't even mostly actual Spaniards.
Catholic Spain's cultural flourishing, on the other hand, mostly was the crown. Again, Spain's native military, cultural, and technological edge was not their, most of their soldiers and inventors and artists and a weirdly high percentage of conquistadors were literally not Spanish(Holland and Northern Italy and Greece all birthed notable 'Spaniards' in the period). The decision to keep launching moonshot expeditions at conquering parts of the new world, and not start moonshot ventures at eg invading China(a real plan that was presented to the Spanish crown), was the Spanish government. The decision to import the absolute best artists and engineers was the crown. There simply weren't enough Spaniards. Spanish armies were hilariously small when they actually enforced the de jure requirement for Spanish blood.
And Latin America being like 90% Spanish speaking Catholics(until recently) was also a crown priority; they could easily have been a normal conquering empire, just give us tribute type thing. The Incas sat on a literal mountain made of silver and could pay whatever bribe. The Spanish crown just really wanted to spread their culture and religion.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Correct, it's an accusation that Qatar is bribing someone. If you have nothing to clarify, but only a snarky comment about how yes, that is a meme, then uh, why are you chiming in on the explanation?
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Yeah, but the TLDR of that article is that canis lupus is not a grouping of common descent that includes every race of common descent from that particular ancestor. Very literally not a species under linnaean terminology. It's just a scientific name for a common name(wolf means 'big, pack hunting wild canid regardless of genetics' and that's fine, but the entire point of binomial nomenclature is to not do that)- and that genetically some wolves are more closely related to coyotes than to other wolves.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Syria wasn't able to hold Lebanon, and this is- as later history of the Assad regime shows- not due to squeamishness on the part of the former. Arabs are just a combination of incredibly fractious and bad at war without domination by a non-Arab power. No doubt there will soon be Israeli proxy forces(druze, probably Jewish settler, maybe Maronite) establishing non-state governments and mucking things up even more.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Uh, you'd get the ottoman and persian empires reborn. Arabs killing each other would line up to be proxies for more militarily competent neighbors in exchange for influence- this is how Hezbollah came to control Lebanon- and that's how empires are formed.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Why are wolves, coyotes, and jackals still categorized as separate species? They produce fertile offspring that remain inter fertile at many subsequent generations, and this fact has been known for a while.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
State level politics regularly has utter clowns get into surprisingly important backbencher positions that get to jump into the limelight for stuff like that(Texas had an ancient aliens theorist as a criminal justice committee head a couple of congresses ago, because the coalition politics required a democrat and he was the seniormost one without serious delusional higher ambitions. These kinds of stories just happen all the time in state level politics everywhere).
I'm also not sure that Kamala's ego can be discounted from political factors. She's made some poor political decisions in the past and 'it's my turn now' is a known failure mode for prominent democrats.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
I agree that safe storage is part of being a responsible gun owner. But it is very much not mandated by US law; the particular transaction might have been illegal, but it's not an inherent fact.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
The law in New Jersey did say that he can't own a gun.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
It's a twitter meme that I think is down to accusations of qatari bribes against some influencer or another.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
I mean we can write that off as ‘she’s stupid and bad at her job’.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
They could trade umpteen zillion prisoners for the hostages. That’s what they wound up doing anyways.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
American Jews are only about as Democrat as Hispanics and have never been as democrat as blacks.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
‘Suspect was known to the fbi’ describes just about every school shooter.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
Crappy jobs still exist. You can go work in a warehouse or a commercial kitchen or changing oil or doing construction(and approximately 100% of white roofers, concrete guys, drywallers, etc have been to jail more than once). These are productive employments. Society is a lot more expensive than it used to be, but an underdiscussed story of the 2020s is how crappy jobs can never get enough people now.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
I'm pretty sure that for survival of the community reasons the african american community did not like their fellows harassing white women.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
Women are not lesser creatures than men because agency is not the end all be all. They have their role and it's quite important. It's just not as much about leading.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
It seems worth noting that, while this woman will never be in the limelight again, she clearly wants to stay in dem politics. And absolute, unconditional loyalty to the boss, even retroactively, is... something politicians value.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
I mean, this women was never going to become a sex symbol. Absolutely nobody wants to see her selling fitness routines. But she's not buttugly and unpleasant the way so many female politicians- especially democrats- commit themselves to firmly.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
Yeah, I broadly agree- this guy clearly shouldn't be owning guns, even if the specific laws involved might not be reasonable.
Now, there is nowhere in the US that has specific safe storage laws, although everywhere criminalizes leaving guns where kids can get at them. Gunsafes are seen as a sign of responsible gun ownership.
It does need to be said, though, that the government ought to compensate him for his property. Even if it was seized for good reason(as it seems to have been), it was still seized.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
Israel could've gone into Gaza, wrecked shit, and left before it became a years long humanitarian crisis, and only lefty weirdos that also think kids can change their gender would've gotten all bent up out of shape about it.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
Trump's base has always been 'Christians that don't go to church very often'. In 2015 that opinion was laughably ignorant because boomer evangelicals already loved Trump.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
Arabs won't coalesce on their own, they need to be oppressed by somebody or they'll fight amongst themselves. So Israel beating up Iran and acting as a mild constraint on Turkish ambitions in Syria is the only way this actually happens, and both are newer than US support for Israel.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
Antisemitism has always been the horseshoe theory par excellence. The greens and constitutionalists were able to agree about it before all this.
Spain actually had a relatively low state capacity in the era. Spanish armies were so large because of new world precious metals flowing into the treasury allowing Spain to hire mercenaries that were not actually from Spain- it's the equivalent of if a random third world country struck oil and suddenly had a better equipped army than its rivals, no one thinks that's because of a better R&D program. Spanish taxation and conscription was pretty bad and that explains why much poorer rivals with smaller armies were able to beat them in battle so often.
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