I recommend

“SPQR” by Mary Beard for a good comprehensive book on Roman history

If you prefer chronology for some reason

“The origin of empire” by David Potter is really good

Also “Inventing the Renaissance” By Ada Palmer

I went to college for this shit and these books, while very long, do basically smarize everything I learned on these two subjects. So I’ve saved you probably $10,000

You would love reading any Roman History book and then “Inventing the Renaissance” by Ada palmer.

You’re right. It really does feel like were in the death throws of the republic of rome and the Empire is forming.

Which, naturally, will fall eventually and will likely turn into a nationalist nostalgia and inspire a Renaissance.

You should also be aware that most modern authors have 1 boon and 1 bane. Their boon is significantly more evidence than any other surviving roman historian ever. Their bane is that they will have Tue biases of our modern issues.

Its my favorite thing how much historical interpretation gets done through the eyes of a contemporary. Historians love to go on and on about not having bias, but their human so they do. A good example of this is Edward Gibbons “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” which revitalization our modern tradition of Roman History studies. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you’re like me and wanted to study intellectual history) this whole series is often used as a criticism of the British Empire in the 17th century.

Of course a lot of it is good enough roman history, but whole stories within the book are complete fabrications. There is no evidence that they happened to Emperor X or Province Y, but the series of events and the alleged public disapprovals of them do match up with the events of his contemporary political moment for which it would have been illegal for Mr. Gibbon to criticize publicly.

And this means of using nostalgia around a long dead empire to affect contemporary politics is what happened in the Renaissance.

Ada Palmers book she effectively (and very accessibly) argues that the Renaissance was more or less just a massive propaganda campaign since by no measure was the “Renaissance” better or worse than the middle ages. In fact the span of the “renaissance” is so grand that it often includes the middle ages or it doesn’t depending on where you want to believe the renaissance started which is constantly redefined.

Yeah but this also works on a lot of vegan substitutes and staples.

Quinoa is a good example in that its popularity amongst american vegans and health food enjoyer’s (myself included) caused damages to local food supplies in poorer countries. Forcing south american and I think African communities to consume shitty processed flour with little to know access to the same nutrients and proteins of quinoa.

TBH, I don’t know how bad this still is, I haven’t followed it for a while. But the point I think is that the industrial scale food production chain is always going to be questionable ethically.

And if you chose the local only route of going to farmers markets only you’re probably limiting yourself to the point of risking malnutrition on a vegan diet (love my local FM, but they do not have beans in the quantity I eat them) and, based on my interactions with all the Kentucky Farmers I’ve met, you’re probably financially supporting a fascism supporter.

The point of “No ethical consumption” I think has always been that things are very complicated supply chain wise and it will take a LOT of work to beat the system. I believe that was intended to make the people trying feel better when they can’t possibly beat the system. But you’re right, people take it to an extreme and justify not even trying.

There’s a “The Good Place” moment where a guy gets sent to the Bad Place for buying flowers for his dying mom. The joke being that the flowers were harvested by slaves and flown on a plane causing un told pollution (I never actually watched the show, just saw the clip on a meme board at some point). But that’s the consequences of “doing good” under capitalism. We just don’t know how bad it is to do good all the time.

Based.

There’s a few options now, but you can get Intel N100 ITX boards Like this one from ASUS with a soldered on N100 CPU for the cost of a normal motherboard.

If its just a NAS, and I do recommend having a separate Just a NAS, that CPU fucks hard.

I respect that Steve was able to control himself and only make a 25 minute video on this.

https://piefed.ca/comment/2532727

Oh wow, I got all the important parts didn’t I?

Crazy…

TL:DW;

Mr. Nexus still thinks its news that, under capitalism, production of luxury goods will always be sold to the highest bidder and not “the masses”

I didn’t watch it either. But its about Micron no longer selling consumer ram in favor of the AI industry customer.

I actually just want them to make proton drive work on Linux. That’s all I need.

"Yeah we lost all credibility with our fans and people who still play our games are generally seen as uncultured sheep with gambling addictions. And the culture we do have is massively attractive to racists, creeps, and bigots. Were not taken seriously as an exports option.

But boy did we make a fucking KILLING selling Nikki Minaj skins"

All proper names are just old/dead/foreign language for the thing.

Gods, I’m considering Job hopping and I saw Lockheed was hiring for my role, less experience, less certs, full remote, and quadruple my pay.

I had to block them on indeed and LinkedIn. I hated that I was considering it.

One of the guys I went to college with is an amazing programmer and had such a great understanding of C that hes why i got as far into CS as i did, couldn’t get a job after grad because 1) Covid and more importantly 2) he’s insufferable.

He got a job making $100k a year for I wanna say Lockheed because he quote “Wrote good looking code”. That’s all they needed because Tue DoD already told them that the project he was hired for was not going to be adopted, but they were still contracted for minimum 2 more years of development and Lockheed would be in breach of contract if they weren’t making progress even though it was already Dead.

The Military industrial complex is JUST a grift to put tax dollars in private hands.

Well seeing as its invite only still. Probably not yet.

I doubt anything that tightly under the creators control is going to be “soiled” yet

Nah you about got it.

That’s cool.

Proton drive Linux support when?

Oh man, Teams +Outlook + Office 365 + onedrive +Copilot?

So good for office shit. So bad for hood practices.

“Hey copilot I’m pretty sure I got an email asking if I had an SOP on X. Can you find that email and the SOP?”

“Copilot, using the recording of the teams meeting ‘Training from Vendor X’ and my notes on ‘Tool Y’ can you compile that into a FAQ sheet for us?”

Sure it misses stuff and is only so good because none of the data is private, but man that’s 90% of my work load for SOP making. Worth the $400 a year corporate pays for it.

Exactly what I was thinking.

Trump probably saw he was popular AND I’m sure Mamdani said polite things to the guy, and now were here.

Another one I didn’t know is gay.

Props to msm for not making it a big deal

Odd way to learn altman is gay.

Kinda shocked I’ve never seen a “worlds richest gay man!” Headline. That feels like low hanging fru-