@theo_nash I don’t think “Rome used to be awesome because men used to be men” is a particularly good paraphrase of that passage, but then again, I‘m not a card-carrying historiographer.
@theo_nash The trick here is that you attribute a single, rather simplistic master intention to Livy, and then insist that the idea about his intention that you conjured shaped the history that Livy wrote.
@theo_nash Wow, only a card-carrying master of historiography can come up with insights like “Livy’s project is to make you think that Rome used to be awesome because men used to be men”. We’re not worthy.
@theo_nash The question of “why the text is actually making you feel that way” is probably the least interesting thing you can focus on … “but enough about the past, let’s talk about how I feel about it”. Questionable whether any text will make two yous feel the same thing, to begin with
@FischerKing64 I started reading War and Peace a number of times, and never managed to get very far. Then I bought a used copy of Gary Saul Morson’s “Hidden in Plain View” on a whim in a bookshop, and finally I got it. He is a great guide to what is best about Tolstoy.
@MartinSkold2 Richard Burton - the explorer/soldier/scholar/fencing master/etc etc ad infinitum, not the drunk actor - was maybe the best example of this type of man ever, and second-place would probably go to some other 19th century Brit. Peter Hopkirk’s books contain many solid candidates.
@eurofounder I think it would be even better if she calls him Mohammed I. That way, boy number 2 can be Mohammed II, and so forth. (I’m assuming here that it is still legal for Germans to have more than one child. I’m told the weather gods do not approve.)
@jonatanpallesen Might work if you also get rid of Schengen etc. Otherwise, you’ll just keep getting hoards of people streaming into e.g. Spain, and once they’re made legal down there, they’re potentially your problem again.
@eugyppius1 Amazing. No matter how retarded one thinks these people are, they always manage to come up with something that shows you gave them way too much credit.
@wil_da_beast630@StirlingWisdom My Boer ancestors, armed with just “voorlaaiers” (muzzleloaders), were wiping out vastly bigger Zulu armies in the 1830s (eg at Blood River, 460 Boers killed 3000 Zulus), long before the Maxim was a thing. Sure, voorlaaiers gave some advantage, but it is not the whole answer.
@jerryteixeira I’ve been doing pushups and pullups etc for the better part of four decades, and it did not cost anything. Looking back, I was really lucky: picked up good exercise habits playing rugby in school, and then in the army, and just stuck to it.