There's a TikTok trend right now of women asking their male partners (or others) "How often do you think of the Roman Empire?" and a significant amount of them responding "often" or "all the time".
there's a lot of liberal military nerds nowadays since the SMO, an interest in military history nowadays is more indicative of just having a strong political stance in general now more than being linked to a tendency.
I often think about the Roman Empire because their concrete had quicklime mixed with seawater, which resulted in a chemical reaction leaving patches of undissolved lime throughout the concrete. Therefore, when Roman concrete cracks, rainwater leaks in, hits the undissolved lime, which produces calcium carbonate crystals which fill in the gaps in the concrete as they form. It's literally self-healing concrete!
This is the reason why Roman concrete is so ridiculously resilient that it can last for thousands of years, compared to the few decades that concrete made with modern techniques tends to last. However, after the recipe for Roman concrete was lost to time, it took us about as long to reverse engineer it: it was literally only earlier this year when scientists discovered that the undissolved lime chunks in Roman concrete were not a mistake or a result of bad technique, but 100% the intentional and ingenious key to the concrete's longevity.
Cement production is currently a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and this could be greatly reduced by creating longer-lasting concrete with the recently rediscovered Roman method, or a derivative thereof.
...But chances are that most people who spend any significant amount of time thinking about the Roman Empire are not thinking about concrete, nor gender variant history, city planning, bathhouses and latrines, how the misspellings of vulgar graffiti are used to reconstruct the history of the Romance languages, how Catullus 16 was basically the spiritual predecessor to "Ram Ranch", or all sorts of other genuinely interesting things about the wonders and woes of daily life thousands of years ago... But rather, most people will be thinking about sexy muscle men with spears and shields and racist fashy undertones.
...But chances are that most people who spend any significant amount of time thinking about the Roman Empire are not thinking about concrete, nor gender variant history, city planning, bathhouses and latrines, how the misspellings of vulgar graffiti are used to reconstruct the history of the Romance languages, how Catullus 16 was basically the spiritual predecessor to "Ram Ranch", or all sorts of other genuinely interesting things about the wonders and woes of daily life thousands of years ago... But rather, most people will be thinking about sexy muscle men with spears and shields and racist fashy undertones.
Ancient people deserve better than that.
A lot of popular historical period and period-inspired (various fantasy settings or whatever) fiction tend to revolve around wars and stuff. I think we need more works like Pentiment that tries to connect modern people to the human side of history. Humans in the past were still little weird people like we are today, they just had very different material conditions.
Portland cement and it’s consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
E: I do wanna push back on the “figured it out yesterday” part of the lime cement story though. Builders have known about lime for a long time but concrete is reenforced with steel nowadays. A lime/brine cement would eat through the steel reinforcement in a couple of decades and all those pretty modern cantilever things would fall over.
It wasn’t until recently that we had reinforced plastic rebar to use in the same type of constructions (refer to table 3h for revised tension ratings). That’s why the whole internet is lit up with articles about Roman concrete, because we finally have reinforcement materials to build more with it than a patio grill.
Fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP; also called fibre-reinforced polymer, or in American English fiber) is a composite material made of a polymer matrix reinforced with fibres. The fibres are usually glass (in fibreglass), carbon (in carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer), aramid, or basalt. Rarely, other fibres such as paper, wood, boron, or asbestos have been used. The polymer is usually an epoxy, vinyl ester, or polyester thermosetting plastic, though phenol formaldehyde resins are still in use.
FRPs are commonly used in the aerospace, automotive, marine, and construction industries. They are commonly found in ballistic armour and cylinders for self-contained breathing apparatuses.
i watched that animation of the process of roman road building and it stuck with me. i think i was playing valheim a lot at the time and i wanted to make some intense causeway lol, but i've also taken courses in and helped install a small variety of hardscapes in backyards and small agricultural settings. earthworks and other "built environment" design for supporting human activity is super interesting to me.
i often think about the logistics, materials, and processes of the ancient/pre-modern world. my justification is that the world before the dependency of fossil fuels still has lessons for us, from an engineering and design perspective.
i am not so interested in the philosophy and value system of that era, which i think is the distinction. people who are obsessed with the imagery and pageantry are probably harboring fash tendencies.
My SO found that TikTok and texted it to me and I texted back 200 words about the organization and composition of the Roman Republic's manipular armies
I just played a lot of Rome Total War in 2008 but it was pretty funny
Haha I answered "not much, I usually focus more on the late Republic and how the illegal expansion of patrician slave estates mirrors the enclosure of the commons in England" and my partner counted that as "I think about the Roman empire a lot"
Often, because when I feel hopeless and that there is no justice in the world, I try to remember God enacted justice upon the Romans by turning them into Italians.
There's actually highly detailed trans shit that the Roman empire wrote down so I think about the 1 billion or so trans people that came before me and what their lives were like 🤔
(And yes that number is accurate assuming transness is . 7%-1% of the pop at any given time)
IDK for me I'm too busy thinking about global socialism (part present and future) and the Roman empire is mostly irrelevant to that.
If you're thinking about fascism a lot it quickly becomes more relevant I'd have to assume, or moderately relevant to liberals but they don't care as much about history in general.
Not meant to be a dig at you in not the thought police haha
I often think of the Roman Empire and other associated European history because of how much of it informs our current Anglo world-views, but it also demonstrates the differences in the current imperial set-up and how these differences may inform the signs of collapse. To be fair, I spend a lot of time thinking about empires and societies across the world.
Nothing is ever one-to-one but there are always strange similarities, but a lot of these similarities come from the interpretation of historians who are placing their own modern anxieties onto attitudes of the past (or even more common, us interpreting ancient historians who are interpreting history through the anxieties of their own time). Finding what is real, and what is imagined is likely the most difficult task in the world.
It's amazing how much we think we know, and yet how little we do. The past is truely a strange country.
I bet they love thinking about “greek boys” as well haha.
A lot of German CHUDs are really into roman history, well tbf the “weird guy historian who loves rome” is a niche as well but you get my point.
There's a TikTok trend right now of women asking their male partners (or others) "How often do you think of the Roman Empire?" and a significant amount of them responding "often" or "all the time".
Yuck, generally military history and military hardware interest are pretty major red flags to me. squints at news megathread that I regularly post on
It's one of those hobbies where everyone's a communist or a fash with very little in between
there's a lot of liberal military nerds nowadays since the SMO, an interest in military history nowadays is more indicative of just having a strong political stance in general now more than being linked to a tendency.
A "strong" Liberal stance is just fascism. Fascism = Distilled essence of Liberalism
In many cases it is
red flag.
British flags
I often think about the Roman Empire because their concrete had quicklime mixed with seawater, which resulted in a chemical reaction leaving patches of undissolved lime throughout the concrete. Therefore, when Roman concrete cracks, rainwater leaks in, hits the undissolved lime, which produces calcium carbonate crystals which fill in the gaps in the concrete as they form. It's literally self-healing concrete!
This is the reason why Roman concrete is so ridiculously resilient that it can last for thousands of years, compared to the few decades that concrete made with modern techniques tends to last. However, after the recipe for Roman concrete was lost to time, it took us about as long to reverse engineer it: it was literally only earlier this year when scientists discovered that the undissolved lime chunks in Roman concrete were not a mistake or a result of bad technique, but 100% the intentional and ingenious key to the concrete's longevity.
Cement production is currently a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and this could be greatly reduced by creating longer-lasting concrete with the recently rediscovered Roman method, or a derivative thereof.
...But chances are that most people who spend any significant amount of time thinking about the Roman Empire are not thinking about concrete, nor gender variant history, city planning, bathhouses and latrines, how the misspellings of vulgar graffiti are used to reconstruct the history of the Romance languages, how Catullus 16 was basically the spiritual predecessor to "Ram Ranch", or all sorts of other genuinely interesting things about the wonders and woes of daily life thousands of years ago... But rather, most people will be thinking about sexy muscle men with spears and shields and racist fashy undertones.
Ancient people deserve better than that.
i promise you i am thinking about roof tiles, hypocausts, and pottery on the daily
A lot of popular historical period and period-inspired (various fantasy settings or whatever) fiction tend to revolve around wars and stuff. I think we need more works like Pentiment that tries to connect modern people to the human side of history. Humans in the past were still little weird people like we are today, they just had very different material conditions.
Portland cement and it’s consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
E: I do wanna push back on the “figured it out yesterday” part of the lime cement story though. Builders have known about lime for a long time but concrete is reenforced with steel nowadays. A lime/brine cement would eat through the steel reinforcement in a couple of decades and all those pretty modern cantilever things would fall over.
It wasn’t until recently that we had reinforced plastic rebar to use in the same type of constructions (refer to table 3h for revised tension ratings). That’s why the whole internet is lit up with articles about Roman concrete, because we finally have reinforcement materials to build more with it than a patio grill.
I've never heard of plastic rebar, that's super interesting. i googled it and got "fiber-reinforced plastic," is that what you're talking about?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibre-reinforced_plastic
Yeah all that glass filled polymer and carbon fiber is just those compounds held together with some kind of plastic.
Basalt rebar is the same idea as well.
Tbh a better use for oil than burning the stuff.
i watched that animation of the process of roman road building and it stuck with me. i think i was playing valheim a lot at the time and i wanted to make some intense causeway lol, but i've also taken courses in and helped install a small variety of hardscapes in backyards and small agricultural settings. earthworks and other "built environment" design for supporting human activity is super interesting to me.
i often think about the logistics, materials, and processes of the ancient/pre-modern world. my justification is that the world before the dependency of fossil fuels still has lessons for us, from an engineering and design perspective.
i am not so interested in the philosophy and value system of that era, which i think is the distinction. people who are obsessed with the imagery and pageantry are probably harboring fash tendencies.
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My SO found that TikTok and texted it to me and I texted back 200 words about the organization and composition of the Roman Republic's manipular armies
I just played a lot of Rome Total War in 2008 but it was pretty funny
Haha I answered "not much, I usually focus more on the late Republic and how the illegal expansion of patrician slave estates mirrors the enclosure of the commons in England" and my partner counted that as "I think about the Roman empire a lot"
Tbh they're right 😂
Often, because when I feel hopeless and that there is no justice in the world, I try to remember God enacted justice upon the Romans by turning them into Italians.
There's actually highly detailed trans shit that the Roman empire wrote down so I think about the 1 billion or so trans people that came before me and what their lives were like 🤔
(And yes that number is accurate assuming transness is . 7%-1% of the pop at any given time)
this is me but for the USSR
Men only think about one thing and it's fucking disgusting.
So how much is a normal amount to think about the Roman empire? Twice a week?
IDK for me I'm too busy thinking about global socialism (part present and future) and the Roman empire is mostly irrelevant to that.
If you're thinking about fascism a lot it quickly becomes more relevant I'd have to assume, or moderately relevant to liberals but they don't care as much about history in general.
Not meant to be a dig at you in not the thought police haha
This is my second day in a row thinking about the Roman Empire because I've been prompted to by this meme.
They "think" about it all the time, but don't know anything about it beyond vague trivia about battles and emperors
Age of Empires 2 just ported Age of Empires 1 as the latest expansion, don't blame me for thinking about Roman legionary stats
I often think of the Roman Empire and other associated European history because of how much of it informs our current Anglo world-views, but it also demonstrates the differences in the current imperial set-up and how these differences may inform the signs of collapse. To be fair, I spend a lot of time thinking about empires and societies across the world.
Nothing is ever one-to-one but there are always strange similarities, but a lot of these similarities come from the interpretation of historians who are placing their own modern anxieties onto attitudes of the past (or even more common, us interpreting ancient historians who are interpreting history through the anxieties of their own time). Finding what is real, and what is imagined is likely the most difficult task in the world.
It's amazing how much we think we know, and yet how little we do. The past is truely a strange country.
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i sometimes think about how daily life would have been, they had fast food places and advertisements
also the battle of Cannae
but not every day, the Soviet Union however
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I, Claudius is my favorite book :(
I bet they love thinking about “greek boys” as well haha. A lot of German CHUDs are really into roman history, well tbf the “weird guy historian who loves rome” is a niche as well but you get my point.