3 ms·

Pretty sure I passed some sort of test with my wife when I told her "Oh, think about it and not in the context of it coming up in a book or legal concept, but j

by flkiwi 3y ago

Pretty sure I passed some sort of test with my wife when I told her "Oh, think about it and not in the context of it coming up in a book or legal concept, but just sit and ponder the Empire? Once every six months or so?" but then rapidly lost ground when I continued, "Maybe slightly more if you include the Republic, the Byzantine Empire, and any of the purported successor entities like Tsarist Russia or the Ottomans." The equally amusing thing is the trend to ask "What is the Roman Empire for people who don't think about the Roman Empire?" The answer for a SHOCKING number of people is Tom Holland lip syncing 'Umbrella'. And as astonishing and inconceivable as that is to me--that someone could think about that multiple times per year, much less the more frequent schedule my wife, who is deeply, boldy intelligent, joyously admits to--I'm reminded that that's EXACTLY how they feel about people who think about Rome. So I just shrug and say "well people like different things."

jncfhnb 3y ago
Seems more likely to me that all of you are just bad at estimating your past thoughts you neither think about Tom Holland nor the Roman Empire nearly as much as you believe.
- flkiwi 3y ago
  Or we're spot on and different people have things that stick in their minds, that frame their mindset, that drive their creativity, whatever. I'm not prepared to question anyone's testimony about something as funny and trivial as this. It's just another excellent example that we are all very different people.
1-more 3y ago
Lady Gaga's performance of "Paparazzi" at the 2009 VMA awards for me. But also the Roman empire. I just finished making a table. Whole time I was wondering how the hell anyone without cast iron base plates on their power tools could ever make such a thing, and that for sure included the Roman empire. What was life like for a regular guy back then who wanted a table? Crazy. Once you throw in all the things before (Roman kingdom, Roman republic, who the heck were the Etruscans anyways, things of that nature) and after (who was the last person in what's now Spain to think of themselves as a Roman subject? Holy Roman empire: pretty wild huh; is there a through-line of kin based organized crime to the classical era?) you've basically got the last 2000+ years of history. So it's easy to count just about everything as "the Roman empire" with the level of handwaving I'm comfortable doing. This isn't to say I'm stuck there. Pre Indo-european Europe is wild. The Tang Dynasty is wild. People settling high up in the Andes or Rockies or Himalayas is insane to me. So there's a lot to think about!
- flkiwi 3y ago
  What I love deeply about this reply, is that the "you think about the Roman Empire?" people would absolutely gesticulate wildly, then point, and breathlessly exclaim "SEE? I DO NOT DO THIS!" I mean, I get you. I just watched a youtube video about the first normal person in history whose name we know unambiguously, and it was this delightful dive into the fact that people just like us were keeping track of beer a few thousand years ago and that stuff just makes me fizz. I love it. I want my life to be long and free enough for me to learn at least a little bit about the pre-Indus Valley culture that brought some absolutely unique cultural features to the culture of what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan that cannot be traced to anywhere but that one geographic location. Or Basque language -- why did it, and no other, pre-Indo European language survive? My brain is consumed by this, and so it is statistically likely that I'm going to stumble into the Romans here and there. This is fundamentally different than some of my acquaintances who think about Rome disturbingly often because, I think, they believe they could be emperor someday and would do a better job of it than this democracy nonsense.

by flkiwi 3y ago

jncfhnb 3y ago

Seems more likely to me that all of you are just bad at estimating your past thoughts you neither think about Tom Holland nor the Roman Empire nearly as much as you believe.

flkiwi 3y ago
Or we're spot on and different people have things that stick in their minds, that frame their mindset, that drive their creativity, whatever. I'm not prepared to question anyone's testimony about something as funny and trivial as this. It's just another excellent example that we are all very different people.

1-more 3y ago

Lady Gaga's performance of "Paparazzi" at the 2009 VMA awards for me. But also the Roman empire. I just finished making a table. Whole time I was wondering how the hell anyone without cast iron base plates on their power tools could ever make such a thing, and that for sure included the Roman empire. What was life like for a regular guy back then who wanted a table? Crazy. Once you throw in all the things before (Roman kingdom, Roman republic, who the heck were the Etruscans anyways, things of that nature) and after (who was the last person in what's now Spain to think of themselves as a Roman subject? Holy Roman empire: pretty wild huh; is there a through-line of kin based organized crime to the classical era?) you've basically got the last 2000+ years of history. So it's easy to count just about everything as "the Roman empire" with the level of handwaving I'm comfortable doing. This isn't to say I'm stuck there. Pre Indo-european Europe is wild. The Tang Dynasty is wild. People settling high up in the Andes or Rockies or Himalayas is insane to me. So there's a lot to think about!

flkiwi 3y ago
What I love deeply about this reply, is that the "you think about the Roman Empire?" people would absolutely gesticulate wildly, then point, and breathlessly exclaim "SEE? I DO NOT DO THIS!" I mean, I get you. I just watched a youtube video about the first normal person in history whose name we know unambiguously, and it was this delightful dive into the fact that people just like us were keeping track of beer a few thousand years ago and that stuff just makes me fizz. I love it. I want my life to be long and free enough for me to learn at least a little bit about the pre-Indus Valley culture that brought some absolutely unique cultural features to the culture of what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan that cannot be traced to anywhere but that one geographic location. Or Basque language -- why did it, and no other, pre-Indo European language survive? My brain is consumed by this, and so it is statistically likely that I'm going to stumble into the Romans here and there. This is fundamentally different than some of my acquaintances who think about Rome disturbingly often because, I think, they believe they could be emperor someday and would do a better job of it than this democracy nonsense.