Post your funny pictures here!!! part Deux

[Baruch]

Yes, sorry!

No.  You are my hypnosis bitch.  Get your gimp suit back on, now!

[Hydra009]

[Hydra009]

Florida the past few days:

https://i.imgur.com/ypmseOk.mp4

[Blackleaf]

[Hydra009]

[Shiranu]

[Hydra009]

[Unbeliever]

Now that's a nerd joke!  LOL

[drunkenshoe]

LOL, Roman Empire and modern Italy? How? Geographically? There are 1500 years of invasions between them. I am sure Italians even 'proved' that they haven't changed -I haven't checked- but then they are Italians, lol. I have prejudice against Italian historical studies in any field. Esp. comes to their national and cultural heritage.   

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Il Duce wanted to restore the Imperial Roman empire. He acknowledged that it wasn't current.

[Baruch]

Il Duce wanted to restore the Imperial Roman empire. He acknowledged that it wasn't current.

Both were over-rated.  Italy would have done better to not suck-up to Germany.  Most of the Italian army was lost on the Russian Front.  Rome was built by attacking weaker opponents one at a time (Carthage was the exception).  Similarly Mussolini attacked Ethiopia.  Grabbing a small bit of Vichy France wasn't worth it, given it clearly put Italy beyond the Axis passives and fully into the Axis actives.  Hitler should have let Mussolini flounder in the Balkans.  Then maybe Germany would have had the timing and manpower to take Leningrad and Moscow.  Similarly Germany could get to the Baku oil field sooner, rather than waste effort trying to take Egypt.

[drunkenshoe]

A lot of generals and soveriegns came after the Roman Empire wanted to be known as the one who 'restored' the glory of the Roman Empire to their own land. Well at least with the reputation of something similar. History is full of paid court writers' histories, myths of how their city is the 'New Rome' or the 2nd, 3rd or fourth...fifth Rome. Between us, even the Ottoman sultan who conquered Constantinopolis wanted to make it a second Rome and the to continue the Empire. (Which it was kind of the real, tiny second Rome before he took it, anyway. But of course with a completely different culture.)

They also had tons of New, second, 3rd... Jerusalems and Athens and Troys...As you would guess they also had a lots of 'New' Hannibals, Alexanders, Constantins, Charlemagnes... comes with the package. They even named, depicted any famous politicans or generals in trees as triumvirates.

The most famous, extreme of them is the Louis the 14th who declared himself a god. The French! Oh the French.

This nonsense has gone for sometime, but of course people started to react react to it and that's where 'the secret history' tradition starts. The Secret history of what is going on some king's court, Jesuits, Vatican...everything. Some educated clever men, started to write secret histories of soverigns, popes, cardinals, events, wars, civil wars, explaining to people how actually all the things that happenning around have nothing to do with what is told but only about personal ambitious of these men and women. And the good intended ones were right of course, but some were killed or thrown in prison. So what did they do? They started to write anonymous or by replacing real people in old myths and ancient histories of past events. Making a history of the present via the past. Well, they made up tons of stuff to. How do you sort out the liars? Ancient history can also be used to criticise as used for praise, not that they had a concept of criticism as we have it, but they eventually came closer as a result of this chaos.

At one point it got out of hand. Private lives of monarchs, popes and cardinals, what is going on in courts became a beloved title. (Romance novels were born.) Because they realised, you can do whatever you want with a made of 'secret history' of something. They used it to spread anything they want. Propaganda. From reasons of Thirty Years' Wars to what Marie Antoinette said a lot of things get made up. BAM! French Revolutions.

(The secret history writing of today, comes from this tradition. Even the papparazzi and wiki leaks. The secret history of football, the secret history of rock music, the secret history of cia or the secret histyory of my ass.)

Well, it comes to a point that every kind of history is under suspicion. There is a mass paranoia. It's a mess. The rational questions in early stages like 'how would we look at the Gallic Wars if we had Vercingetorix's journal instead of Caesar's?' turn into 'how can be even sure that two men called Caesar and Pompey lived, let alone know that they battled?!'

Well, there are some men who are clever and a lot of men think they are clever and a very few men who are really smart. Uncle Descartes and his followers from the last group tries to explain with systematic scepticism why this this particular kind of history is bullshit and thankfully undermined the hümanist narrative of western history in the process. Bayle. A few men made sense. Voltaire is late to the show as usual. I don't like him anyway.

For around 200 years, history is seen nothing but as a string of erotic romance novels, plots, intrigues, propaganda... The French pioneered mess saved by the French, history is lost in the crisis. But we got something very important. For the first time in history, through this mess, people have learned to look at things; the publics figures, events in a different way, from a distance. And something remotely resembles to criticism is born.   

Then a German man named Ranke comes and screams 'stooop' his both hands up in 19th century and talk about how source based history is the way to go. He is also known as the patron saint of archive eaters, faaaader of the modern history. Myeh. If the history is thought to be made of diplomatics, politics and wars and winners of those. Of course he changed everything, and gave history its honour back, but leaves a lot to desire.

There is also another German man with a huge influence who shall not be named, just to annoy Baruch. :)

Then the French can't help but stir the pot, thank fuck. Annales School is born. Lucien Febvre, most importantly March Bloch...etc. A group of smart men oddly talking about a history beyond politics and diplomatics, invasion and wars; a history including sociology, economcial development, culture in a long term and came up with a strange idea that if we want to know what happened in the past may be we should stop reading it from 'top to bottom' and start to go from 'bottom to top'. Again, just to annoy, Baruch and the like.

The French and the German! Finally in the 20th century, coming a long way from bedroom gossips of kings and popes, whose is bigger, they invent something called critical theory again just to annoy Baruch and the likeminded. And what's worse this loose group had a few Frenchmen -Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Fronçoise Lyotard... - who this time undermined the narrative of contemporary history, pissed off everyone thank fuck and caused another crisis in the field, pretty much like the previous one also very different, which we live in it today.

So over rated or not, talking-writing about the Roman Empire... is a messy, looong business with serious consequences.

   

[Hydra009]

[Hydra009]

[Sal1981]

The old Norse language was like that (at least the Faroese version). Sixty is called three times twenty (tríssindstjúgu), and fifty is called half of five times twenty (hálvsindstjúgu). The odd numbers 50, 70 and 90 are called that, half-5 times 20, half-7 times 20 and half-9 times 20. While the even numbers 60 and 80 are 3 times 20 and 4 times 20. Don't ask my why the numbers from 50 to 90 are called that, since, 20 and 40 are just called twenty (tjúgu) and forty (fjóriti), and 30 is just called thirty (tríati).

We have the same -teen suffix for 13 to 19 and same unique names for 1 to 12. Trettan, fjúrtan, fimtan, sekstan, sjeytan, átjtan, níggjtan.

Unlike English, we say the leading number from twenty before twenty, so instead of saying twenty-one, for instance, we say one-twenty (ein-og-tjúggu) for some reason.