It's odd how Hollywood goes to extreme lengths to make people's faces visible under/despite helmets. I wonder if this is related to the fact that we've evolved for some reason to have visible sclera?
1. I saw some Planet of the Apes remake tiktok recently, but the huge sclera pretty much squicked me on their costuming.
(then again, I really appreciated the sclera on Khryusha the pig; maybe because he's not supposed to be a realistic character?)
2. Some coats of arms have battle helmets; some have barred-face helmets. I always figured the latter were designed to make it easier to drink at the beer tent, but maybe even they agreed with Hollywood on the visibility issue?
3. Disney used to have an exercise for animators: make a sack of flour emote. Maybe actors who intend to play hard characters ought to have to do the screen test with a bag over their head?
Are you making an economic argument [pace HRV] that wit is better than distinction for avoiding underproduction of science, if it were to be monetarily compensated solely by its [near-zero] marginal unit returns?
> Je défie qu’on me montre une république ancienne ou moderne dans laquelle il n’y ait pas eu de distinctions. On appelle cela des hochets ! Eh bien ! c’est avec des hochets que l’on mène les hommes. —NB, 18 Floréal X
("Can anyone show me a republic, ancient or modern, without any achievements? They call them swag! OK — swag is how men are led.")
Id have hoped that it isn’t much of any kind of argument, since sharp wits can be an indispensable aid to …
(pace Edward Gibbon — personally, via Feynman*!)
… leading by example (showing >>> telling)
( but also/and by swagger
(Since wit, appropriately weaponized & singularly demo’d, is its own distinction?
)
)
NB hadnt experienced Eurovision, might have expanded his idea of swag..
* >But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous (quoted in TFLiP)
EDIT2: seems like NB had other ways to motivate his men (beside fear & swag)— according to that English historian “Livy” was smacked in this kind of context, but we’ll never know for sure now
EDIT: (material) baubles require a more or less centralized fount of honor (as republics ever had), transmission of (the clear products of) wit.. otoh, needs just… a market (of at least one)
> It has been objected to Marcus, that he sacrificed the happiness of millions to a fond partiality for a worthless boy; and that he chose a successor in his own family, rather than in the republic. Nothing however, was neglected by the anxious father, and by the men of virtue and learning whom he summoned to his assistance, to expand the narrow mind of young Commodus, to correct his growing vices, and to render him worthy of the throne for which he was designed. But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy...
compare (~500 years earlier for MA; a couple of thousand for EG)
Glad that helped! Sleeping on it, it was even more likely that NB was correctly quoted by the still unremembered English historian as having taken issue with Tacitus’ (cf the famous convo with Wieland) coverage of one or more of the emperors’ motivational techniques
The major divisions of Tacitean studies seem to be based on whether one rehydrates his dry narrative with anger* or with zeal?
le rouge ira
le noir studio
(what line might white or green Taciteans take?)
> Gesetze sind wie Würste, man sollte besser nicht dabei sein, wenn sie gemacht werden. —OELvB
> Les empires sont comme des saucisses ; pour les déguster, mieux vaut ne pas savoir comment ils sont fabriquées —not NB
("empires are like sausages: to enjoy them, better not see how they're made")
* The Onion was not supposed to be a how-to guide
EDIT: (in defence of Bonaparte re. Wieland: having both read Linebarger's Psychological Warfare covering the general theory, and myself noted a tendency, in modern US corporations as in ancient chinese imperial tales, to attach great importance to making your predecessor look bad, it's certainly a consistent position for one emperor, in reading about others, to be annoyed less by any red anti-tyrannical subtext, and more by a certain willingness to believe told tales that smacks more of cluelessness than psychopathy. I would not be surprised if Bonaparte would've claimed Bulgakov's Pilate to have been more realistically depicted.)
EDIT2: Tacitus was born (as the web seems to agree) an Equestrian, yet followed the cursus honorum (ought to be in official records), which implies imperial Rome was less vertically stratified than republican Rome?
[Just as I believe Bonaparte could easily have had ulterior motives in attacking a pro-republican Tacitus, I believe christian monks could easily have had ulterior motives in bothering to make copies of only the most sensational descriptions of roman emperors — especially considering Nero Claudius "never let a crisis go to waste" Caesar Augustus Germanicus had it coming, having framed them for the fire and all]
EDIT: placeholder for thinking more about this in context of Acemoglu & Restrepo: according to them ai as pointed at science today will not lead to even midterm econ growth
“Why zero-to-one’s cannot be automated”
id=41839542, note that nongoverning glamour-chasing elite Swedes didnt accolade Acemoglu for the institution-agnostic (“weird”er?) parts of his work that we were recently interested in
Edit: on 2nd slightly sleep deprived thought, seems to me that its flipped: sciencing is conerned with the essential and mathsing is the data-to-code..
Sleep deprivation might have led to {2->1}, but the almost iambic lines you 404’d on were borne of a restful sleep under fully endogenic (biochemical) influence. (Thats why you 404’d)
Nice you brought up the tensoring, my current work related (& pseudo AMP laced) investigations (thanx to your earlier hint) are cloyingly whispering: that Werner’s unitary designs should be reworked with bright eyed bushy tailism for cases t> X
