what were you expecting? something useful?

[thememedaddy]

[hungwy]

Another reason why trains would be good is that most people are not good at driving

[apricops]

that post about “you get bandits when you cut soldiers loose without pay” reminds me of the Thirty Years War, because one could say that beneath all the religious schisms and diplomatic jockeying, the heart of the thirty years war was “what happens when you have a state with just enough capacity to raise massive armies but without enough financial capacity to actually pay those armies” and the answer is that the line between professional armies and roving gangs of bandits disappears and every time you try to raise an army it just becomes another independently acting wildfire devouring the countryside. No matter how bad things get, every day I wake up and thank my lucky stars that I do not live in 17th century Europe. Or 17th century China. Or the 17th century Americas. Or basically anywhere in the 17th century.

[probabilitydirigible]

One of my favorite little anecdotes about ancient mercenaries is that it was tradition for most of history to give your mercenaries two wages- "Bread" and "Gravy." Both were set at a daily value, but where "Bread" was intended to cover regular maintenance and life stuff and therefore paid out frequently (Here's your week's meal and gear repair budget!) the "Gravy" wage was paid out exclusively at the end of the contract as one lump sum. So like, your gravy wage and bread wage might be one silver coin per day each, so you're getting a handful of coins every week to cover food, and then at the end of an 800 day campaign, you get a wheelbarrow with 800 coins.

Employers liked offering this structure because then they didn't have to like, try to guess how long the invasion of spain will take and then carry 800 coins per soldier around the battlefield where it could be captured. It also gives them the chance to budget around the assumption that they take an enemy city and *find* vast sums of treasure even if they don't have the full value at the beginning of the war.

The main flaw of this system is that it's very easy to end up in a scenario where if you have, say, 50,000 guys that have been fighting for 800 days, you now owe 40 million silver to your army, and if the budget has not worked out to a 40 million surplus, you literally can't afford to end the war, but you can probably afford to pay them for a couple more weeks. So then you have to start thinking creatively.

Anyway across all time and history a lot of generals were ultimately beaten to death by men chanting gravy.

[animentality]

[mikkeneko]

[fishing-princess]

I Defeated the Demon Lord but it Turns Out the Demon Army was Largely Unaffected and I Fell Victim to a Flawed Belief in Great Man Theory

[leftcosine]

I Executed The Demon Lord With One Flawless Strike And After A Brief Power Struggle The New Demon Government Is Substantially More Committed To The War Because Of Some Reason I Don't Know

[letterful]

[bumblebeebats]

The crazy thing is, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if you asked me on any given day "Would like to see a picture of some genitals?" my answer would be "😰 No, that's... No, thank you. I'm okay, actually." I have nothing but the utmost respect for people who do engage with the penis side of the internet, but personally, I've spent the better part of two decades doing all I can NOT to have pictures of dick and balls or sexy bikini babe buttcheeks blasted onto my retinas constantly. And yet... to be denied the penis? To have a jumped up pile of javascript tell me, a grown adult with an air fryer and an outstanding council tax bill, that I cannot be trusted to withstand the sight of a bare nipple unless I let it scan my drivers' license? I will move heaven and earth to see that fucking nipple, friend. I will walk a thousand miles barefoot on hot coals before I give you big brother bitches my passport number. A thousand miles through the desert with five VPNs just to press my face up against the glass and see the last uncensored picture of two My Little Pony Characters sixty-nining each other, and I don't even want! to look at it! But I will! I must! for the sake of our fucking democracy!

[mumblesplash]

it’s so magical and beautiful that there are sprawling interconnected cave systems carved deep into the earth by various geological forces and you don’t have to go in them. there are miles and miles of stone passageways in total darkness that require you to exhale all the air out of your lungs to squeeze through parts of them and you don’t have to be there. some of these squeezes are underwater and require cave divers to take off their oxygen tanks and push them through ahead of them and me i am above ground looking at the sky as we speak. there are untold subterranean wonders no human has ever seen and i will not be the one to discover them #grateful #blessed

[toskarin]

[condensed-ink]

[beardedmrbean]

this sounds like a party to me

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

[friendly-neighbourhood-demonz]

I love living in Norway♡

[squarebracket-trickster]

"Readers have SHORT attention spans! The average reader takes just TWO sentences to decide whether to put a book down! You have to HOOK them in the FIRST sentence! GRAB them by throat and don't let them BREATHE—"

... have... have we considered that perhaps the average reader just, like, knows what they like in a book? I mean... first sentences are famous for establishing things like *checks notes*... genre, tone, POV, pacing, character, voice, uhhh... writing style...

The average reader is putting your book down because they discovered it's in first person (or not in first person). The average reader put your book down because they wanted a cozy read, or they're sick of cozy reads, or romance, or grimdark, or assassin princesses, or vampires, or or or. The average reader put your book down because they just didn't like your writing style—no, not because it was boring... they just, get this, didn't like it.

The average critical reader put your book down because it had six grammatical mistakes in the first two sentences.

The average reader will read quite a ways if the premise intrigues them, they like the genre, the writing style doesn't get on their nerves, and the characters pop off the page. In fact, they'll probably read the whole book, so long as it delivers on its plot promises and doesn't drag in the middle section.

The average reader will, however, stop reading after just two sentences if it's clear by the second sentence that the only thing they'll like about this book is the opening line.

[squarebracket-trickster]

Idk, I just think like, painting a demographic of people who, you know, pick up full length books to read for fun, as having short attention spans doesn't make too much sense. At least not as much sense as the alternative: words tell people things; namely, the contents of this book.

In general, though, I think we jump to blame short attention spans too often when there is a far more logical explanation. "It takes 0.06 seconds for viewers to scroll past a post." Yes, that is typically how long it takes me to discern whether this post is about something I'm interested in. There's a trillion posts out there, probably a billion books, of course we've gotten fast at sorting through content. That's not an attention span issue. That's just efficiency.

[maykitz]

[birdbigbutch]

you stole dog blood

[vhs-dvd-comboplayer]

[txttletale]

it's so funny how many problems wotc caused for themselves by committing 3+ years of planning to the premise that a new product line selling packs of Less cards from a Smaller pool for More money would sell like gangbusters

[txttletale]

like huge chunks of their business model from 2023 through to Now were apparently resting on the foundation that everyone would leap at the chance to pay more money for a special type of pack that was Worse. a ten year old could have told them aftermath boosters were going to fail and why and they didn't just sell them, they planned for them as an integral part of the game's release cadence for several years, including signing contracts with outside parties!

[artbyblastweave]

Where does an 800 pound gorllia sit? Invincible (2021) 3x6 All I Can Say Is That I'm Sorry/ Worm 27.3 (2011)/Rising Stars Volume 2 (1999)/The Boys: Butcher, Baker Candlestick Maker #5 (2011)/ Strong Female Protagonist Chapter 5 (2012) Bonus:

Marvel Zombies 2 #5 (2008)

[ayeforscotland]

I’ve been in absolute tears cry laughing at this for the past 15 minutes.

[deliverancefromfear]

[marxistmandalorian]

Lessons from the 90s that children today need

[cpericardium]