You don’t know what fascism is, do you?

Palingenetic ultranationalism, accompanied by a totalitarian and repressive state apparatus, including genocide of ethnic minorities, isn’t fascism according to you?

I guess genocide is just good praxis if it has a thin coat of red paint.

Must be while you’re not fighting Trump.

what

I wouldn’t even go that far. Having iron weaponry when your opponents have bronze is an advantage, yes … but I really doubt that it’s a decisive advantage. It’s not like a bronze-wielding army is suddenly going to become helpless against a foe with iron weapons. If the bronze-age army has better numbers, better tactics/strategy, and/or better motivation, they may very well defeat an iron-age enemy in battle.

A few times, sure, but on a historical scale, it’s a ticking time bomb. One of the advantages of iron, other than being significantly superior for usage in edged weapons (armor is a mixed case), is that it is much more plentiful and cheap, and doesn’t require distant supply lines to be maintained in war time in most cases.

“Their swords are better than our swords” is bad, but not necessarily spelling doom. “Their swords are better than our swords and they can make 5x as many for the same time and cost, and they aren’t reliant on their trade ships not being pirated or sunk by storms to continue making them” is a bit dire.

In three years, I’ve had three accounts that I’ve actually used to any serious degree.

“Power user” just means “User which uses the service significantly more than average”

Which, tbf, I was.

Being a marxist and a socialist I am not a fan of his enlightend centrism and his constant assault on leftists in general and communists in particular.

Sorry for loving Marx but hating Stalin, I guess. Peak centrism.

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

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

There are plenty of examples of inventors through history with concepts and ideas that were not really practical in their time.

How is that in any way contradicting what was said?

Atomism is an another ancient concept across cultures east and west, which was conceptually used in the development of modern atomic theory.

… that’s literally a question of theory. On both ends of the equation.

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.

The Turks invented what is called the steam jack, which is distinctly different from the atmospheric engine used in English mines some ~150 years later. The steam jack is much closer to the aeolipile; the atmospheric engine which was instrumental in the industrial revolution was based on fundamentally different theory.

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.

Except it didn’t branch off from an existing technology. The early European attempts at ballooning, which led to the hot-air balloon being discussed, did not originate from the East Asian practice of kiting or sky lanterns.

A great deal of technological advancements have been out of military necessity/value, such as with the balloons,

… ballooning did not start out of military necessity and was not even taken seriously by most militaries of the day. The French Aeronautic Corps lasted maybe a decade; ballooning in the US Civil War was taken seriously until internal politiking wrecked it. Very little investment in ballooning was done by or for military purposes.

but the prerequisite for innovative adaptations of technology have simply had to do with how well they were recorded and disseminated throughout populations.

That’s not a question of invention, which is what was being discussed.

Militaries have been pretty good about learning a thing and getting a group to do that thing, and then recording itnfoebthe next time.

You’re fucking kidding, right?

Militaries as standing institutions do not even date back before the 17th century in most parts of Europe, unless you want to go all the way back to Rome, and effectively many were not really created until the 18th century.

Militaries, historically, have been horrible at learning, recording, or getting people to do something specific. The modern institutionalized military that is competent at that is an extremely recent development.

According to this link those first Subsaharan bloomeries were from the 6th or 7th century BC placing them well after the Bronze age from about 1000 years before. In this way it doesn’t look like they had the technological insight to skip the Bronze Age discoveries, they were just recipients of the technological advances from other parts of the world. Iron bloomeries were already in use elsewhere in the world over 1000 years before Subsaharan bloomeries.

Bronze Ages are regional; Subsaharan Africa lacked any such distinct Bronze Age in its history. Subsaharan Africa is suspected to have begun working iron and bronze effectively simultaneously in most areas, with some suggested dates as early as the 2nd millennium BCE, and a few outliers in the 3rd millennium. Furthermore, the design of bloomeries in Subsaharan Africa is largely autochthonous to the continent, without clear links to bloomery designs of North Africa or Eurasia.

The point is entirely that there were no “Bronze Age discoveries” other than bronze; the discovery of bronze defines the Bronze Age, and very few material technologies are linked to the usage of bronze, specifically. Iron has somewhat broader uses, but in most cases other metals can be substituted, in principle if not necessarily scale. The reason why so many cultures end up with a Bronze Age and an Iron Age is because bronze and iron are incredibly useful military metals, and if any of your neighbors have bronze or iron, you will learn from them very quickly, or else be very quickly conquered by their elites.

“Bronze Age” covers an incredibly wide variety of societies, as does “Iron Age” - the only unifying factor between such societies is the discovery of bronze or iron. In fact, of the two, I would regard “Bronze Age” as much more meaningful, as widespread use of bronze usually implies long-range trade routes, which in turn imply relatively robust state structures to ensure trade routes remain viable. “Iron Age” societies run the gamut from the incredibly urbanized and developed proto-industrial Roman Empire, to early nomadic Bantu tribes which rarely numbered above the low thousands.

Again, no technologies of the Bronze Age are necessary for the discovery or development of iron. If the first viable furnace in a region that is developed can reach temperatures above not just bronze, but also above the point needed to make iron bloom, there’s no need for any form of intermediate stage - and bloomeries do not require any metal tooling to be designed or constructed.

For that matter, China, for instance, is generally considered to have skipped bloomeries entirely.

Technology is not linear.

No argument to that statement. I would argue that materials science is even more underappreciated.

Materials science is the main thing most people consider when thinking about the conditions of the past, along with engineering/design, often to the exclusion of theory and organizational technology.

But the Bronze and Iron Age did not lead to one another. In fact, much of Subsaharan Africa lacks a Bronze Age entirely, precisely because they don’t lead to each other - the forms of furnaces (bloomeries) that spread in Subsaharan Africa were efficient enough to smelt iron from the start. Bronze is not needed to smelt iron - bronze or iron tools (though obviously you still need the iron itself) are not even needed to smelt high-quality steel, if you really know what you’re doing - all you would need are earthen furnaces, clay crucibles, coke (processable, if you know that it can be, in earthen kilns), and flux.

Theory does a lot of lifting that we often don’t appreciate.

Similarly, the De Havilland Mosquito was made mostly out of wood in part because of material shortages, but also in part because it was realized that in the UK’s total war situation, woodworkers, including furniture makers, were an undertapped labor source.

I’m sorry you think there’s something wrong with reporting genocide denial. But considering that you spend much of your time as an .ml admin removing anyone who doesn’t bootlick fascists, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

And last time I checked, PJ isn’t a transphobe.

Or a Zionist, but if fascist bootlickers didn’t have lies, they wouldn’t have anything.

“Supporting Nazis is when you acknowledge and oppose genocide” isn’t a new one, but every time a fascist bootlicker like you trots it out, it always astounds me all the same.

Rebuilding comms is the hard part. Building a userbase so posts aren’t being shouted into the void. It takes months of activity.

Maybe you can convince the UN to re-open the case they closed on the matter.

You mean this one?

Keep simping for the regime that stonewalls UN investigators; after all, bootlicking is all Nazi scumbags like you know how to do.

Typically people leave after saying goodbye but ok.

Imagine going to a farewell party and being surprised that the person leaving is attending, lmao.

And then you reply and we get into the whole thing where I keep asking you to provide a shred of evidence to substantiate your beliefs, and you reply that one must not test our Lord God the State Department and that blessed is he who believes the US government without having seen and skepticism is the tool of the devil, blah blah blah.

Cute, considering that you’ve been in numerous disputes on that matter, and were provided with reliable sources which you rejected as “Adrian Zenz” despite the fact that the vast majority of the evidence provided in said sources had nothing to do with Zenz.

But hey, genocide deniers aren’t here because you listen to evidence. You’re here because you’re fascist bootlickers who love the slaughter of minorities, as long as it’s by ‘your’ camp.

So, for both of our sakes, I will now block you again.

Don’t know why you felt the need to announce that since pretty clearly blocking me is apparently meaningless to you, but okay.

Yes yes, by defending myself from the accusation of being a witch, I’m calling the Church a liar and proving my guilt.

No, by your repeated previous denials of evidence provided, you’re proving you’re a Nazi bootlicker. Sorry if that’s too complex for you to understand.

I’m confused. You’re bootlicking the genocide of Italians too. We’re all bootlicking the genocide of the bubbly wumpuses in the fairy kingdom. All through the power of imagination, after we’ve completely severed any concern for evidence.

Thanks for proving my point through repeated comparisons of the actual, ongoing Uyghur Genocide to notions of a fantastic genocide.

I’m just wondering what the statute of limitations is here. Are you still gonna be in your farewell thread next week? Next month?

I’ll probably check up intermittently as long as it’s active, and when it’s inactive, I won’t be here. Sorry that you think it’s regulated by some law?

Don’t worry, I’ll block you again soon. I know you can’t resist engaging with me.

Cute coming from someone who unblocked me specifically to engage with me. :)

I responded to your dogshit any time I see it, regardless of whether or not you had me blocked, so I don’t know what you think that blocking me changed, lmao.

I’m talking about your accusations further down the thread.

Awfully funny that you post a link to a comment much further up in the thread, then. Almost like it’s all disingenuous fascist bullshit. :)

You know, the part where you call me a fascist for refusing to believe things without evidence?

lmao

You were a participant in numerous conversations with evidence regarding the Uyghur Genocide previously. Sorry that I called you out and didn’t play ball with your usual technique of sealioning. :)

What does that matter? You’re also a genocide denier, regarding the Italian Genocide. Everyone on earth is a genocide denier.

Anything to bootlick for genociding minorities, I see.

No, actually, I have reason and evidence, which you lack.

lmao

I did have you blocked. I unblocked when I heard you left.

What’s the logic there, I’m curious. Other than, of course, the usual logic of repeating blatant misinformation and genocide denial wherever you can?

Your farewell thread from two days ago? Quite the Southern Goodbye.

Sorry that you think a thread is timed like a real-world conversation? lmao.

Exactly what I’m talking about. You know that most people won’t read through the conversations to know you’re lying.

Talk about projection.

Me providing a link (see bottom left for the exact link) to evidence in the very first comment, followed by quoting the link when disputed, and providing further evidence.

Me literally screenshotting the link provided to show where you were wrong, and pointing out that you failed to understand what I was saying entirely, followed by me providing evidence of your genocide denial (link at bottom left)

Like most Nazis, repeating lies often in the hopes that they’ll be believed is all you have.