Premodernist

I think about history sometimes.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

@veritasium I don't know how anyone is supposed to figure this out if you don't convert it to inches first.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

The modern mind cannot comprehend this.

The incredulity in the quoted thread is misplaced. The map is fairly accurate, with due consideration for the roughness of our estimates. Several people are insisting there must have been more large cities in other parts of the world. There weren't.

That ribbon of territory between Japan and Western Europe was where the vast majority of the human race lived at the time. The current distribution of the world's population is not how it has always been.

Also note that these are cities with at least 100,000. That is not large by modern standards. Modern-day Conroe has 120,000. Port St. Lucie is approaching 300,000. A few outliers in 1700 were larger, of course. London at the time was maybe 600,000 (a little bigger than modern Canberra). Even the largest city in the world was still probably smaller than today's Buffalo or Leeds or Winnipeg.

The world of 1700 was still a very rural and wild place.

[Civixplorer @Civixplorer]

Cities in the year 1700 with over 100,000 people.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

@MarkRober "LFG"? 🤔 I'm guessing that stands for… "Let's Flippin' Go"?

[Dr Francis Young @DrFrancisYoung]

People on Twitter suddenly realising that vast swathes of academic writing are meaningless guff reminds me of the recent exposure of poor food standards at kebab factories. If you’ve ever read an academic paper/eaten a kebab it’s the least shocking scandal ever

[Premodernist @premodernist]

A century ago the time zones were pretty close to this, and over the decades they crept westward.

[Amazing Maps @amazingmap]

North American time zones as the meridians actually fall, each a clean slice of 15 degrees of longitude. Michigan keeps Eastern time although almost all of it lies in the Central slice, and Saskatchewan stays on Central despite sitting mostly in Mountain.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

During the first half of this post my mind didn't go to 1914 but rather to 1992. Could this be a generational thing?

[LiorLefineder @lefineder]

Going to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Hope I don't get shot. Just kidding, I'm not the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

@luke_winkie I've played according to tournament rules (i.e. the printed rules) many times. The game has almost always been over within 2 hours.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

A couple people in the thread mentioned being able to discuss subjects you're passionate about. Just a heads-up: that's more of a grad student experience. Faculty members don't usually get to do that except at conferences. Your faculty colleagues on campus are in other fields and your conversations are either normal office chitchat or discussion of administrative stuff.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

@megievalist Flexible schedule. Being able to get an errand or appointment done during the day without taking PTO.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

"named in a more culturally sensitive way"
"Chicaukee"

[Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600]

This map re-imagines the states of the #USA. Each state is now home to approximately the same number of people and is of similar size. States are also largely named in a more culturally sensitive way. You'll find me in Bayou or Yosemite.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

@OttokarHochman People relied more on in-person meetings/presentations and posting notices on bulletin boards. (That was still largely true even when carbon paper and mimeograph machines existed.)

[Jared Henderson @jhendersonYT]

Permanent STANDARD time. That’s what we need.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

@olivertraldi He never said that.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

This assumes that races are biological realities that people will by nature have a loyalty to, rather than historically contingent social constructs.

Moreover, they did not have our hindsight. Like people in any generation, they assumed the way things were in their lifetime (e.g. the state of affairs with the European settlers at any given moment in time) was the way it would always be.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

1. Women generally didn't travel alone because it was unsafe. So I guess their "shock" would be that modern society is much safer for travelers?

2. Women spent money. How did you get the idea that they didn't?

3. I'm not sure what you mean by "public-facing roles of authority." There were in fact women operating shops and businesses. It was less common than today but it happened. Quakers had women ministers. Mother Ann Lee (founder and leader of the Shakers) was currently in New York. Everyone had heard of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

Hank Green apparently thinks women in colonial America didn't spend money?

[Hank Green @hankgreen]

Medium-strength opinion: If you dropped a person from 1776 into a modern airport they would be more shocked by the number of women traveling alone, spending money, and working in public-facing roles of authority than by the jet airplanes.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

There's somehow a gap between what YouTubers do in their videos and what viewers like to see. It's baffling. Are YouTubers not also consumers of YouTube content? Don't they also get annoyed by this stuff? Nothing on this list should be surprising to any YouTuber.

[J.J. McCullough @JJ_McCullough]

I asked my YouTube subscribers what they hate the most about YouTubers these days. I got hundreds of interesting responses, here are some of the most popular replies:

- AI use in almost any context, but especially AI-written scripts or narrators, as well as AI graphics and thumbnails.

- Videos that are artificially stretched or padded to be long, especially those that are stretched to be an hour or more in length.

- On the opposite end, shorts. Everyone seems to hate YouTube shorts.

- YouTubers who only offer the most surface-level takes on things while pretending to be profound analysts.

- Front-loading videos with clips of the “most exciting” moments from the video to come.

- On the opposite end, excessively long, rambling intros that take too long to get to the point.

- Very obvious and forced scripted transitions to the ad read instead of just being like “and now a word from this video’s sponsor.”

- Confusing, unclear, or overly click-baity titles that communicate nothing of use to the audience.

- A lot of people also tend to hate YouTubers AB testing thumbnails and titles. This one is a bit hard to hear, because I find that feature to be quite popular among YouTubers themselves, just because it relives the stress that comes from worrying about picking the wrong title/thumb. But I get how it can look a bit needy and grasping.

[Premodernist @premodernist]

The Turkish government wants people to call their country "Türkiye" because "Turkey" is also the name of a bird. But "Türkiye" is too foreign for English-speakers. The solution that satisfies both sides is to start calling their country Turkeyland.

[History Calendar @HistoryCalendar]

The birth years of Continental Congress members if the United States Declaration of Independence had been signed in 2026.