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California feels like a good analogy
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Nov 29, 2021 04:56
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cheetah7071 posted:California feels like a good analogy Yeah Philadelphia was just the first thing that popped into my head. California is much more fitting.
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Nov 29, 2021 05:21
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cheetah7071 posted:California feels like a good analogy Hmmm depends how you look at it. Economically, maybe, but geographically California would be more like Britain or something. The eastern Med was Rome's centre of gravity, which of course was why Anatolia was Roman well into the High Middle Ages (and a major source of Byzantine manpower, that's why losing it sucked so much), so I'd actually put it somewhere 13 Colonies-ish, like I dunno South Carolina.
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Nov 29, 2021 16:20
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I was reading an Ars Tech article about a mural found recently in England. However, linked in the article I found something a little more charming, I thought. I don't recall seeing it referenced in this thread. If it was, my apologies. A stylus found several years ago, dating to pre-Hadrian Wall Londinium shown here:  The inscription on all sides reads: "I have come from the City. I bring you a welcome gift with a sharp point that you may remember me, I ask, if fortune allowed, that I might be able [to give] as generously as the way is long [and] as my purse is empty." It's a souvenir that someone brought, that, if translated in modern English, would read "I went to Rome and all I got you was this lousy pen." as a joke. I love it.
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Nov 29, 2021 16:51
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 https://twitter.com/OptimoPrincipi/status/1465407560522084361
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Nov 30, 2021 09:48
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Nov 30, 2021 10:42
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Looks like someone typed "nationalism patterned bowl" into styleGAN
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Nov 30, 2021 13:41
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I love the occasional reminders that Romans had awful taste. Broke: We must return to tradition. Gaze upon this stately white marble statue of a god, rendered in such perfect detail every lock of hair is perfectly in place. Woke: loving DISCO ACID TRIP BOWL MOTHERFUCKERS
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Nov 30, 2021 15:43
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Somewhere in Pompeii under meters of ash there's a bowl just like that with Grandma Anus's hard ribbon candy preserved for eternity in it
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Nov 30, 2021 15:48
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It must have been some misunderstood genius of  pottery who never got his big mainstream break."Philistines! You always keep buying the same stuff, same same same, you should call it samian ware!"
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Nov 30, 2021 16:07
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Grand Fromage posted:I love the occasional reminders that Romans had awful taste. The Pompeii book (which is great ) goes into this a big and it seems -just like now !- tastes changed over time and iirc Pompeii was entering a slightly less guady era when it died compared to like the 20 years before I just love the insights from that book that people then were more or less the same as we are today
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Nov 30, 2021 17:19
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Grand Fromage posted:I love the occasional reminders that Romans had awful taste. I think you mean awfully awesome
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Nov 30, 2021 17:24
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The painted statures must have been extremely eerie in candle light
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Nov 30, 2021 17:25
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euphronius posted:I just love the insights from that book that people then were more or less the same as we are today This is one if my favorite facts about history. People have been people for as long as we’ve been people. Yes, technology has improved, but we’re all still basically the same. Hades named his loving dog Spot, for example.
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Nov 30, 2021 17:31
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Brawnfire posted:Grandma Anus I laughed
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Nov 30, 2021 17:46
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euphronius posted:The Pompeii book (which is great ) goes into this a big and it seems -just like now !- tastes changed over time and iirc Pompeii was entering a slightly less guady era when it died compared to like the 20 years before What book? Edit Mary Beard’s, I’m assuming, checked your posts. Ordered for Christmas! gowb fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Dec 1, 2021 |
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Dec 1, 2021 01:19
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Grand Fromage posted:I love the occasional reminders that Romans had awful taste. “Ah yes, the men of the Digital Age Collapse and their sky blue window poster prints. Such a sophisticated blend of light monochrome, such was their pride in producing blue inks” 
Triskelli fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Dec 1, 2021 |
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Dec 1, 2021 02:01
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Grand Fromage posted:I love the occasional reminders that Romans had awful taste. Well they are Italians after all.
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Dec 1, 2021 02:05
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romans would have loved their "aguafresca" toothpaste
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Dec 1, 2021 02:26
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euphronius posted:it seems -just like now !- tastes changed over time There absolutely were trends since forever, but our kind of obsessively revolving tastes in the modern day are at least partially a newer thing, and by design -- early 20th century product designers like Raymond Loewy explicitly pushed the idea that they could keep people buying things by actively refreshing branding/fashions, and companies have been doing it ever since. I know this isn't really what you were saying, but the impression they were just like us comes up from time to time and at least in this instance it's not really accurate. Tastes changed, but considerably more slowly.
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Dec 1, 2021 06:12
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Koramei posted:There absolutely were trends since forever, but our kind of obsessively revolving tastes in the modern day are at least partially a newer thing, and by design -- early 20th century product designers like Raymond Loewy explicitly pushed the idea that they could keep people buying things by actively refreshing branding/fashions, and companies have been doing it ever since. I know this isn't really what you were saying, but the impression they were just like us comes up from time to time and at least in this instance it's not really accurate. Tastes changed, but considerably more slowly. It also has to do with that fashion is generally not copyrightable so it’s only a short time before an expensive designer thing is knocked off. It’s basically only logos you can trademark which is why they become such a big part of the fashion. You always need to be selling something new. In more ancient times the cost of certain fabrics and other clothing stuff could make stuff much more permanently in fashion.
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Dec 1, 2021 14:32
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Koramei posted:There absolutely were trends since forever, but our kind of obsessively revolving tastes in the modern day are at least partially a newer thing, and by design -- early 20th century product designers like Raymond Loewy explicitly pushed the idea that they could keep people buying things by actively refreshing branding/fashions, and companies have been doing it ever since. I know this isn't really what you were saying, but the impression they were just like us comes up from time to time and at least in this instance it's not really accurate. Tastes changed, but considerably more slowly. The Pompeii book kind of goes against that , at least in the art forms preserved under the ash I guess we could get hyper critical about the relative velocity of change
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Dec 1, 2021 14:38
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Pompeii is a good barometer because before the eruption there was an enormous earthquake that caused damage throughout the city which, therefore as a a result, was being widely renovated at the time of the eruption . So a comparison between then-contemporary design and what it was replacing can be seen
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Dec 1, 2021 14:40
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I was always under the impression that beer brewing in mesopotamia came about as a water safety sort of thing, but now I've found out they had perfectly fine water from deep wells and I'm all sorts of confused. Can someone give me a basic overview and possibly a link to a reasonably scholarly source on this if they have it handy?
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Dec 3, 2021 10:29
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That has come up many times in this thread, and iirc it's just a cliche that comes up again and again because it just seems like common sense. I don't think there's a lot of evidence to support it while you can find several references to drinking water in classical texts.
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Dec 3, 2021 10:51
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Yeah I think people just like being drunk
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Dec 3, 2021 10:53
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Beer is a decent source of calories and easier to store than bread, especially the type they drank. But it's also just fun to be drunk. If you're looking for a reason for it beyond intoxication, food storage makes more sense than hydration.
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Dec 3, 2021 11:03
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Thanks, I think it was just one of those things I heard years and years ago and never really thought too much about. Thanks for the confirmation
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Dec 3, 2021 11:35
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If the water was contaminated, wouldn't any beer brewed from it turn out rank as all gently caress?
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Dec 3, 2021 13:08
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Also, even modern 40+% ABV liquor isn't a high enough concentration to disinfect anything. poo poo like hand sanitizer and rubbing alcohol are 60-70% minimum for a reason. Ancient beer would just be germ goop, if anything less safe than the plain water.
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Dec 3, 2021 13:32
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I think the idea relies on people boiling the wort as part of the brewing process. But I've even heard a professor (of classical literature) say in class that mixing water with wine might make it safer to drink.
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Dec 3, 2021 13:37
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I wonder if the dirty water trope came from water supply in a lot of cities in the 1800s being really bad and people just assumed that it applied to all history.
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Dec 3, 2021 14:18
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Malting your grain also makes it taste nice.
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Dec 3, 2021 14:44
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Fader Movitz posted:I wonder if the dirty water trope came from water supply in a lot of cities in the 1800s being really bad and people just assumed that it applied to all history. Victorian "historians" did so much damage its utterly amazing
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Dec 3, 2021 15:26
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Like they say in Ankh Morpork, water that's passed through so many kidneys has got to be clean.
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Dec 3, 2021 17:00
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You gotta bury the dead right next to the cathedral and/or churches that are strew all across the city. Water? We get that from wells all over the place. It tastes funny.
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Dec 3, 2021 17:54
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Guildenstern Mother posted:Thanks, I think it was just one of those things I heard years and years ago and never really thought too much about. Thanks for the confirmation It's a very very common myth, don't feel bad. Even though ancient people didn't understand the mechanism, they generally knew how to tell between safe and unsafe water and stuck to drinking the safe stuff. Fader Movitz posted:I wonder if the dirty water trope came from water supply in a lot of cities in the 1800s being really bad and people just assumed that it applied to all history. I wouldn't be surprised. A lot of the beliefs about short lifespans and terrible diets also come from retroactively projecting how bad life was for people in the early industrial age.
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Dec 3, 2021 18:13
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Siivola posted:If the water was contaminated, wouldn't any beer brewed from it turn out rank as all gently caress? I'd suspect that this is it honestly. When you open the bottle either wine or beer has obviously gone bad or it's clean.
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Dec 3, 2021 18:34
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'd suspect that this is it honestly. When you open the bottle either wine or beer has obviously gone bad or it's clean. gotta depend on what the contamination is, since the literal hour of boiling people often do to beer is gonna do some serious work eke out fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Dec 3, 2021 |
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Dec 3, 2021 18:37
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There's a cross-talk about it too. A lot of people claim beer was safe to drink because it has alcohol in it, which is nonsense because the alcohol content is not even remotely high enough for that to work. It is true that freshly made beer is likely to be safer because it was boiled, but ancient people understood that boiling water made it safer, the beer part was incidental. And there was plenty of safe water too. People drank a lot of beer because they liked drinking beer and drinking water all the time is boring. You don't have as many options for flavored drinks in the ancient world, small beer is one of them.
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Dec 3, 2021 18:43
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