Freddo: Bob, computers process assembly language, which is crazy detailed and error-prone for human programmers, so some smart people invented programming languages such as C so humans can program in a more abstract languages and then a compiler program can do the crazy detailed hard work of translating our C program into an assembly program. C and its cousin C++ are very powerful languages that allow you to stick in your fingers with the engine running. So very suitable for writing an Operating System...
Adar: Those persons able to write innovative code and operating systems no longer exist in the USA? Gone to foreign shores and for good?
Bob Sykes: So, today Macs run on Unix, which itself sits on C, and Windows machines run on C. Is that the takeaway?
Faze: Few Ohioans know of the terrible battles and massacres that took place in their placid state during the late 18th century. Not only the famous battles, like Fallen Timbers and Pickawillany, but the hideous Gnadenhutten massacre and others. Indians also committed unspeakable atrocities on random whites. It was a squalid trail of psychosis leading from the Ohio River, through the Dayton area to Sandusky.
Jim: Per La Wik, “Morse” was Nicholas Morse, the great-grandson of the inimitable Oliver Cromwell. Very cool.
Ezra: European captain of fortune was quite popular in Indian during the time of European expansion into thye area. Trained and commanded the armies of the various Shah, Nawab, Sultan, Nizam, etc. Wellington said his hardest fought battle was in India.
Bomag: “a high need for certainty with a low need for competence” On first blush, maps onto every internet crank with an explanation of the world. And other low-achieving groups. Needs to be a component of humility, a willingness to acknowledge evidence and let it guide you forward.
Bomag: Parallel’s today? Wagner group; drug cartels.
Clive: Mughal Empire seems prescient of the present West
Deeg: Sounds like the decadence in the west today. If the USA fragments it shouldn’t come as a surprise. The only question is how much or how little violence will accompany it. It will be an internal war as there isn’t a country capable of invading (unless you count Mexico). China is a decade away from demographic collapse so they aren’t a threat, Russia is bleeding itself white in Ukraine and India is too poor.
Harry Jones: The elite went soft, and was swept aside by a newer, more vigorous elite. It happens.
Adar: That use of gunpowder in warfare hardly relegated to the “western world”. Those central Asian powers adopting firearms quite readily and having “European” officers to command the armies.
McChuck: Lu An Li: You don’t like it, get out of America. The Rosenbergs deserved to hang. Both of them. As was proven by the KGB archives.
Jim: With all due respect to the Ronald, there has never been, nor will there ever be, a right-wing Ashk.
Adar: It has been noted the end of the Ottoman Empire began when the Sultans no longer accompanied their troops on campaigns. Dissolute life style of too much luxury and too many visits to the harem.
Lu An Li: “he published a book in 1983 arguing that Julius Rosenberg was indeed guilty of the crime for which he had been executed in 1953. ” Julius was guilty but Ethel was innocent. Ethel was guilty, so they say, only in the extent she typed the documents as passed to the Soviets. So Ethel was intimately involved too. AmeriKKKa not Amerika.
bob sykes: Eric Hoffer gives a pretty good explanation of the psychology of the radical in “The True Believer.”
