Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Scott's piece on the Dark Ages really touched a nerve. Even seven years later on Twitter, various people in the rat-adjacent and Silicon Valley spaces pass around charts about how the Dark Ages, were, in fact, extremely real and
spectaculardark.But let's not forget the piece that started it all: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/15/were-there-dark-ages/
As for me, I am going to die on any hill, it's that the Dark Ages were dark. If Kamala wrote that into her platform, I'd vote for her. It's that serious.
I was recently chatting with Claude to get a better sense of the course of European architecture after the Romans. As early as the 11th century you start to see beauty in buildings again (st Mark's basilica in Venice, Ely cathedral, San Miniato al Monte), but before that it's truly depressing except in Muslim Spain (the great mosque of Cordoba was built in 785 and expanded in the 10th century, the great mosque of kairouan). It's not all bad (the monastery of Santa maria de Ripoll is decent if not masterful) but it really does seem like the 11th century was a turning point. Basically Christendom was building tremendously dreary stuff until the Romanesque style came about.
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