• 5 Posts
  • 162 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: July 8th, 2023
  • pdxfed@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•What battle influenced the course of history the most?
    8·
    8 days ago

    Waterloo.

    Napoleon’s tactical errors leading to a ton of his skilled and valuable horse soldiers self inflicting and defeating themselves basically made it easy for wellington to triumph though he did enough to earn the w. That is just from memory 20 years ago when I read from Les Miserables, there is like a 100 page section–maybe 150 just on the battle of Waterloo which isn’t that critically tied for the plot. Victor fucking Hugo, ladies and gentlemen.

    Napoleon’s defeat led to alliances across Europe for protection, which led to WW1, which guaranteed WW2 due to unsustainable concessions for Germans leading to Hitler’s rise, which led to USA being gifted a churning economy almost undamaged and populace relatively unscarred by war compared to devastated Europe. Baby boom, relatively equal wealth distribution and a GI bill built the US might that is now imploding under it’s own fetid weight of corruption and ignorance, as many empires fall to, but it’s all pretty linear imo from Napoleon.

  • pdxfed@lemmy.worldtoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•what are the grievances with the "male loneliness epidemic"? [close this topic maybe?]
    2·
    2 months ago

    That flank. Sigh. I remember the turn after Occupy. It went from economics to being cool to just broadly bash men. I specifically remember outspoken, angry women at marches and protests and was like wait, where did the economics go? Like 60% of Republicans wanted wealth reform during occupy. It unfortunately coincided with really great–though apparently transitory–improvements in lgbtq rights. It was so weird to me that self-labeling “feminists” were suddenly talking like it was a zero sum game; for women to rise and improve and build and grow, men had to be put down. That is of course the language of someone seeking power, a charlatan, but it became quite normal. Even questioning the broad criticism of men wasn’t appropriate in “liberal” press or circles for a good decade. The whole "yeah but bashing men isn’t right/fair or clumsy” finally started working into the Atlantic, NYT and other large publications in 2023 but the damage had been done.

    It of course drove lots of men right to the tall radio, podcasters–and those were young adults then–i can’t imagine what it was like growing up since then as a young person with the normalization of some of this stuff.

  • pdxfed@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•What things that are legal today could become illegal in 50 years?
    5·
    3 months ago

    Poors will be priced out by insurance companies. A large auto manufacturer, probably Tesla will buy one of the enormous insurers and start by offering lower rates for self-driving. Many will sign up and the standard startup playbook will follow. Personal vehicles will become luxury items and then you will be required to subscribe.

    I wonder what the poor right will say when they don’t own their car anymore?maybe they will have f350 self-driving trucks too and it’ll be ok.