Romans US mode: Patricians (uncle is admiral, grandad a senator, mayflower), Nobiles (rich plebeian who is now patrician status in politics/society), plebeian (working people with income and some education, voting base, middle class), proletariat (too little income to pay taxes) Mfs think they’re in a democracy when tenth gen Stanford legacies are out there waltz their way through life. It’s “our country, you’re all just visiting”. Good for them, but US is an aristocratic-oligarchic republic and for good reason.

The problem is: our military is based on giving socialist benefits to service members, and recruits heavily from the poor. Also, healthy people are less distracted and more acute. They might become more politically active or inquisitive.

https://twitter.com/jason/status/1662612330633650176

I’m for protecting the Americanist empire by encouraging poor people to sign up for single payer healthcare via military service. Maybe with drone soldiers it’s possible to get this.

Read an argument the other night that Rome actually 'fell' after the Punic wars. So many people died that the society was completely broken. Lands lay fallow across Italy, farms abandoned, hundreds of new Senators were appointed, something like 25-35% of Roman men died. The Republic was 300 years old and had successfully weathered many challenged, but only one generation after the Punic wars, they get their first super civil war, and then the first life dictator, and then do it all over again and again and again, until it becomes the Empire.

Sigurd has a magical sword Gram that kills the Dragon Fafnir, but the sword shatters into pieces. When Sigurd dies, his wife takes the pieces to Atli who asks smiths to reforge it but they cannot. A mysterious old man comes to reforge the sword, calling it Balmung, and leaves. Balmung, the anointed bright flame, the young and immortal fire.. Gram the wrath of fire, was said to glow bright whenever danger was near, and blessed by Odin, could defeat any enemy no matter how strong

It’s more like Pygmalion imo

https://twitter.com/yacinemtb/status/1632818727430373378

Complete with the sculptor hoping the creation is alive bc it is so beautiful, and then Aphrodite granting this wish, to the surprise of the sculptor.

EuroHuns survive for a lot longer after Atilla dies, but immediately after there is a large war between the Hun princes and Hun vassals. Atilla dies suddenly as he was planning a huge new attack on Rome, and during a wedding to a new princess. His sons Dengizich and Ernak take over but fight among each other, this leads to a division of Hunnic lands and the vassals to choose sides.

Huns come from Central-Northeast Asia, their empire the Xiongnu(cognate of 'Hun') was setup by Baghatur Modu Chanyu, and Tümen before him. They had by
-201 a large empire north of China and across the Steppe. By the year 250, the Huns begin to move in other directions. They invade south, to India, where they setup the Alchon Huns. They also begin moving into Europe, under Uldin, by year 350. Under Atilla, by year 453

Lots of Romans would flee to go live with the Huns. The Huns let anyone hold arms while the Romans restricted arms ownership to only police and military. The Romans also had many onerous taxes and the Huns had few. The late Romans east and west began to make it illegal for people to move around without approval, and the Huns had no such restrictions. It became a thing that the Romans had to ask Atilla to return runaway Romans, and he’d refuse.

Huns practiced skull elongation. The practice is found in Germanic cultures under their influence as well. It was a special thing that priests and royals did. Did it create more brain mass? Incans and ancient Peruvians did the same thing.

Simulation theory has been around for a long time. You can see similarities in many ancient beliefs. A sense of alienation from our higher facilities? Neoplatonism sort of induced the feeling if you read enough.

https://twitter.com/tvanantwerp/status/1632197155585769473

Enough Neoplatonism and you could talk to other beings and share a common intelligible experience with others.

Charlatans like Yud always want you to think the end is here, soon, unless you give them money and power. Millennial thought was once very popular, and every ten years some one or group would show up and try to convince everyone that the end was near so they needed to listen to them no matter what.

People say we don’t know how the Egyptians built the pyramids bc the stones are “too heavy”, but the stones are “too heavy” at Baalbek too. Yet we know Roman’s built the Temple of Jupiter there. Largest granite columns in history. Built in 170s. Larger stones than Kufu. and it has some of the heaviest stones ever used in history. Lifted 20m in the air. Yes I see that the Egypt people claim Baalbek precedes the Roman Empire and was built by a mystery civilization… that built something in exact Roman style… and was documented as it was built

Ai safety is a grift bc big tech wants the Ai to be regulated so that only big tech can comply and won’t be disrupted by newcomer startups. With banking they could say that small unregulated banks will do fraud so for customer safety you must have the big regulations run by big banks. Now they say it’s too dangerous to let Ai run amuck bc…. Uh…. Terminator?

Two years ago you had serious follower accounts in Ai safety saying things like: “Ai will kill us bc we are causing climate change” As if AGI cares about climate change like some dude who just watched a documentary and as if it would punish us to satisfy this guilt that our civilization is too advanced and too far along and therefore this desire to see it burn

Are we in a late Roman period? Yes. But technology lets us defeat the hum drum of historical repetition. We don’t need to fear barbarian invasions bc we have drones. We do have Luddite religious fanatics with new beliefs based on undermining technology (Ai safety), If they win, we get another dark ages.