ricree

Or even the Roman Empire itself.

an empire is a state where the core ruling population exercises control and extracts resources from a periphery which is composed of people other than the core group

By definition, doesn't the later Roman Empire cease being an "empire" as there isn't really a "core" population anymore outside of some vague multi-ethnic military aristocracy.

Sure, Rome had a few lingering privileges and prestige, but little in the way of direct power. And certainly, the post-crisis Empire didn't exist to siphon resources on their behalf. Heck, pretty much as soon as the 3rd century crisis ended Italy itself lost most of its special status and more or less just became yet another province.

And once that was gone, they weren't really replaced by anyone except the imperial bureaucracy and aristocracy itself. So who are the "core" people here, because if "an aristocracy" is enough to count, then who the heck isn't an empire under this definition?

Maybe it's enough that they began as an empire under this definition. Or maybe Devereaux is fine with the stereotypical Empire losing its status as an empire long before losing its territory and power. Or perhaps would have some counterargument at hand if he happened to read this. Who knows.

The main issue is that they are very careful not to frame it like that. In broader contexts, it's always framed as something like "do you favor limiting children's access to social media" without a word on what it would cost to actually institute such a ban.

Rather, hopefully, Iran will be to the US what Turks were to Byzantium.

An invading force that settles within it and ultimately destroys it before launching expansionist invasions to all of its neighbors?

Arguably, Rome itself is such an example. Over the course of its long history it was repeatedly pushed to the brink of ruin only to slowly build back up without ever quite reaching its old heights.

The crisis of the third century could easily have been the doom of Rome, with its crumbling splinter states infighting until they broke apart completely. Instead, the succession of Aurelian, Diocletian, and Constantine were able to build it back into a single unified state, if not so prosperous or dominant as the previous version had been.

The same chaos that took the west might well have claimed the east as well under different circumstances, but over time they were able to restabilize, recover, and start to grow again. If not for the Justinian Plague, the reconquest of Italy might have been an actual success instead of the phyrric one it turned into. If nothing else, they at least managed to hold onto fully half the empire until centuries later when the Arabic conquests began.

And speaking of those early conquests, there was absolutely no guarantee that those wars were something they would survive. The Empire was still recovering from a brutal, generations long war against Persia, which itself did not survive as an independent state. The sieges of Constantinople were harsh and brutal, and could have gone differently, but they held on and slowly regained control of what they could, until the Macedonian dynasty was at least the foremost power in the region once again.

But then they screwed it up, spent some years in decline from a succession of bad rulers culminating in a few key defeats to the Turkish invaders caused in large part by infighting from wealthy elites. After this, they spent most of a generation with various elites selling off bits of the remaining empire to secure a throne whose value continued dropping with each betrayal. This too could easily have been the end, but eventually things stabilized. One of these grasping leaders actually managed to hold onto power and slowly rebuild. Then one lucky crusade later, they actually have much of their pre-Turkish territory back.

Except oops, a grasping member of the imperial family seizes control and drives it into the ground. After that we get a succession of weak emperors unable to deal with the harsh realities of their situation, followed by a series of coups that results in one of the displaced heirs inviting the fourth crusade into empire, which eventually results in the capital being sacked and the empire shattering into tiny city states.

That really ought to have been the end. Except that one of these states managed to regain control, rebuild to a fraction of their old strength, and at least hold most of Greece and Western Anatolia. It was a tiny, tiny fraction of the pre-crusade empire, much less Rome at its height, but they were still able to carve another century or two of stability when all hope had seemed lost.

It's harder to play baseball or football without all assortment of costly bats, helmets, gloves, et cetera

In practice, casual football isn't any more resource heavy than soccer. Most non-league games of football are going to be "touch football", which only requires a ball, a field, and some sort of end marker (as a kid, it was usually just "from that tree to that other tree").

Obviously, organized league play has a ton more equipment, but the sort of informal casual games that kids or young adults play requires much less. It's one of those things that doesn't really get talked about a ton compared to league play, so it's easy to miss for those who didn't grow up with it.

Can they?

In most places with any sort of economic opportunity, I have a very hard time believing that part time earnings would get you housing on par with a full time earner in 1976.

For example, the vast majority of people choose to retire once they reach the age where they are able to collect enough from their pension that they no longer need to work in order to get by

Part of the problem is that the current system doesn't provide a great way to taper off, at least not by default. I suspect there would be a lot more people who'd keep working if it was simple to get a comparable job at 30 hours per week 25 weeks out of the year. But for those who are traditionally employed instead of contracting, the choice is often between full time or nothing.

but most states do not have a per se ID

Out of curiosity, do you have a source or list for this? My own home state and those around me that I've spot checked all have a state ID available as an alternative to a driver's license. My understanding was that this is the case for most states.

Unless I've misunderstood you and you meant a state ID that is completely separate from a driver's license to the point that people with a DL would have one?

Pertinent quote:

It was also possible to bypass the copyright monitors by installing a modified system kernel. Dan would eventually find out about the free kernels, even entire free operating systems, that had existed around the turn of the century. But not only were they illegal, like debuggers—you could not install one if you had one, without knowing your computer's root password. And neither the FBI nor Microsoft Support would tell you that

Many kids who placed highly in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search ended up winning Nobel Prizes later in life

Do you happen to have a list available? I saw a few among the winners, but I wasn't able to find much about non-winning top placers.

The ones I could find won their Nobel much later than their Talent Search win (40+ years, and in one case more than 60 years after), so it might be premature to rule out the more modern contestants. (at least based on that alone)

I remember reading about this when it first happened. Glad there was at least a somewhat positive outcome.

For reference, here is the HN thread shortly after the arrest: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21000273

how much sugar water people buy, cases and cases

One confounding factor here is that oftentimes the price is only reasonable in bulk. I don't know about walmart, but around me the best deal typically is "buy 2 get 3 free". I rarely buy/drink soda, but on the occasions I buy at all I'll be getting many cases at a time.

Yes. As far as I'm aware the person I responded to was mistaken about that. My own point was that commercial farming in the rest of NA (and possibly even parts of Mexico, I genuinely don't know) was introduced via Europe rather than straight from Mexico. At least as far as I'm aware.

So it's native to the new world, but not native to North America?

My understanding is that the wild turkey was common throughout North America, but was domesticated in Mexico, and modern turkey farming uses stock descending from that population.

So the bird itself is native, but most Turkey farms in the US or Canada would have been Mexico->Europe->NA.

Just about a year and a half too late for https://longbets.org/712/

Although from the article, it sounds like this might not be servicing a wide enough area to win the bet even if the time was extended a couple years.

This change will not affect any other benefits in your AOL plan, which you can access any time on your AOL plan dashboard. To manage or cancel your account, visit MyAccount

Sounds like everyone keeps getting charged, since this is technically part of their "AOL plan", whatever that actually includes.

My sense is actually that the reason he talks that way is to make sure that people who consider themselves "on the left" don't mistake him for being someone "on the right"

If so he has sorely missed the mark. I pretty heavily associate the phrasing "the $X left" with disengenuous right wing pundits. Knowing nothing else about the author, seeing that pop up repeatedly doesn't merely suggest that he's on the "right", but that he's writing the piece with a politically motivated axe to grind.

[flagged]

Is this really viable for something like Uber, where most rides aren't really meaningfully better or worse?

I imagine it would work out roughly the same as if security camera footage was copyrighted, but as far as I can tell there really isn't a clear precedent in the US for this. The monkey selfie case suggests that they probably aren't, but as far as I can tell it's a legal unknown in the US.

In addition to that, if the Why ever changes (maybe the issue was in an external dependency that finally got patched), you'd have to update the name or else leave it incorrect. Mildly annoying if just in one codebase, but a needlessly breaking change if that function is exported.

To elaborate on your points some more: the basic building blocks of contract law were already well established by the time Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball came about. The main question at hand was whether these could apply when the offer was made to the public at large rather than to any specific person or group.

And you're expecting them to make pennies?

I don't think the person you are replying to was expecting this. Rather, I read their comment as agreeing with you that the benefits and compensation were low enough that few people would be interested in the position except as a stepping stone into a better faculty position.

I also enjoyed his similar series on generating a procedural city: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2940

Unless I'm mistaken, this strikes me as a really incredible claim. To the best of my knowledge, Rome didn't make much use out of cast iron. Iron has a very high melting point, it's not something that people were just casually melting. There were a few exceptions, but my understanding is that Europe mostly didn't use cast iron until late in the middle ages.

The idea that some random resort town was casually melting iron and hauling it around to fill cracks strikes me as really implausible. Some other, more easily melted metal perhaps, but not iron. Not unless my understanding of Roman metallurgy is really mistaken.

In his blog (acoup), Bret Devereaux had a decent sized three part series examining this debate. He mostly comes down on the "decline and fall" side (especially when it comes to the living conditions of people in the region), but does give a fair shake to the "change and continuity" argument.

Part 1: https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-f...

I believe PEP505 should cover what you're asking, but from what I can tell it seems stalled out.

https://peps.python.org/pep-0505/

Artistic preference aside, the Dall-E 3 version definitely follows the prompt closer (in the it shows someone dunking a ball).

It would be much less likely if we could get the market share back to 2010 levels.

Is that a realistic goal? I don't know, maybe not, but it seems like there's little will even in tech to try.

There was a time when tech was the biggest driver of alternate browser adoption, and even managed to make serious inroads into the mainstream. It's a huge shame that this attitude seems long gone.

The text you're replying to is part of a long quote from the linked article, not a statement by the person you replied to.