“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious,” according to Oscar Wilde.

(I can only ever associate that quote with that scene from The Rock.)

It may be worth pointing out that the metal ages are used primarily for old world archaeology. The Americas utilize a different system that isn’t so bound to metallurgical ages.

Lithic > Ancient > Formative > Classic > Post-Classic

Each era is about mlre than material sciences, and specifically metallurgical ones, of the old world. (But let’s be clear, the Bronze age is so, so much more than bronzeworking. Sometimes that gets lost in the nomenclature.)

Arguably one could apply the american measurements similarly to old world history too, since these are all approximations for coherent discourse.

A user posited the question of why hot air balloons were not invented sooner despite the materials and tools being available.

Ah. It seemed like a vague question so without context it was confusing to respond to. The context helps, and so much of what I wrote was based on trying to understand the framework to begin with.

How is that in any way contradicting what was said?

It wasn’t really. There’s usually a common thread and history to technology where their concepts are translated and travelled. Like you have signal balloons being used in China, which the Mongols adapted, which the Poles witnessed and recorded, which was how it came to be known in in Europe.

Comments aren’t always contradictory or a refutation, so taking them as such is going to cause some unnecessary grief.

Keeping the discussion exclusive to humans is typically just assumed, so to add a correction of ‘Sapiens’ felt a bit odd, is all.

Sapiens

As opposed to…?

Is there a tendency to assume ‘everything should have been possible in antiquity’? What is that supposed to mean?

Nonetheless:

There are plenty of examples of inventors through history with concepts and ideas that were not really practical in their time. Leonardo da Vinci’s airship concept comes to mind as a well known example. Atomism is an another ancient concept across cultures east and west, which was conceptually used in the development of modern atomic theory. I think the Turks invented the steam engine based on Hellenic Greek concepts, but it was the English put it to state-level use and implementation.

So there’s just a long history of technologies being adapted and improved for different purposes. Ballooning is a good example of something that has existed for many centuries in Asia. Lifting a person into the sky, instead of a message, is a newer concept that branched off an existing technology.

A great deal of technological advancements have been out of military necessity/value, such as with the balloons, but the prerequisite for innovative adaptations of technology have simply had to do with how well they were recorded and disseminated throughout populations. Militaries have been pretty good about learning a thing and getting a group to do that thing, and then recording itnfoebthe next time.

So with that in mind: Large scale education with writing and reading is a pretty late stage development. A chinese manuscript translated into English for someone who could read it occurred once every a few millenia for most of history, picked up to a few decades in the 1800s, and now that likely happens many thousands of times a day today.

This begs the question of just who you think is being hurt.

Man I wish we had communism on our shores.

flag these stories as falsified anecdotes by propagandists.

There’s only one user in this thread insinuating the sort.

I don’t know if it’s specifically from the Ms Rachel show, but the clip is from when she and Zohran met up and sang to kids in a New York elementary school around his inauguration.

In America, liberalism is called leftism, leftism is called fascism, and fascism is called bipartisan common-sense politics.

The nuances between Social democracy and Democratic socialism never stands a chance in public discourse.

writes “Protect the World from Climate Change” on the whiteboard

nods

Progress.

High octane maneuver at about the 1 minute mark.

Hangover + cicadas = nefarious communist plot and wunderwaffe

I have driven across that bridge many times. The rise up there coming into Astoria always unsettled me. Going down it wasn’t so bad, but just lifting out of the water towards the cliffside would get to me. Or it did when I was a kid and I just held that in my memory each subsequent crossing.

Havana syndrome? Eh it’s not worth looking into.

That’s reserved for CIA operatives willing and able to convert the guilt of their actions into projection of an imagined enemy.

Basketball diplomacy in another form.

no public opposition

If you go online and insult the Epstein class you’ll likely get hatemail about how you’re not being fair. The opposition is very private and individualized.

We are operating from a position of strength!

The policies that Platner is backing sure aren’t scrutinized for the topic of discussion, that’s for sure.