Hello r/AskHistorians, I'm Scott Alan Johnston, a historian of science and technology and author of The Clocks are Telling Lies, a book about the history of global timekeeping, which comes out today!
Timekeeping is one of those things that is usually unobtrusive, yet is absolutely central to all aspects of everyday life. As a scholar I'm particularly interested in how timekeeping went from a local affair to a global system in the late 19th century.
The Clocks are Telling Lies asks: why do we tell time the way we do? It shows how early proposals for standard time (time zones, etc.) envisioned by railway engineers such as Sandford Fleming, clashed with universal time (a single global time like UTC) promoted by astronomers. When both sides met in 1884 at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC, to debate the best way to organize time, disagreement abounded. Scientific and engineering experts found it hard to agree, and the public was equally divided. Following some of the key players in the debate, the book reveals how people dealt with the contradictions in global timekeeping in surprising ways - from zealots like Charles Piazzi Smyth, who campaigned for the Great Pyramid to serve as the prime meridian, to Maria Belville, who sold the time door to door in Victorian London, to Indigenous communities that used timekeeping to fight for autonomy.
Things you might be interested to ask about:
- Anything about time zones, the prime meridian, astronomy and timekeeping, railways and timekeeping, longitude at sea and mapmaking, selling the time, time signals/time guns, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, timekeeping in international diplomacy and imperialism, the prime meridian conference of 1884, the debates about adopting the metric system (which was surprisingly relevant to timekeeping), timekeeping in schools, and anything else you might be wondering about global time measurement.
Things I might be able to answer but are outside my primary area of expertise:
- Timekeeping in the ancient or medieval world, calendars, daylight savings
Finally, if you are interested in a copy of The Clocks are Telling Lies, the mods tell me that the following links are Affiliate codes that will support r/AskHistorians, helping fund community events like the annual conference. Show AskHistorians some love and buy your copy v
... keep reading on reddit ➡i’m finding it difficult to describe exactly what i’m looking for as it’s a semi-formed feeling in me. and it’s not necessarily a trope/theme you build a movie upon, but if anyone knows what im talking about its you all.
basically, i am interested in a movie (or tv show, or books if i’m allowed to ask that here too) where characters find themselves totally removed from real society for an extended period of time and have to adjust to the new reality, laws, norms of that society- maybe they spend all their time trying to get out and “back to real life” only to realize when they do get back, that it no longer fulfills them, and the place they tried so hard to escape is where they feel the most comfortable and maybe desperately wish to go back to it.
the most concrete example i can think of is the tv show LOST. where the characters spend seasons with just one another, creating their own society from scratch while the real world moves on without them, desperately working together to get out- but when the time comes to leave, they realize (or at least a couple do) that they’ve changed so much that they find it difficult to readjust to the real world and their “old lives” no longer suit them and have a desperate desire to go back to this other reality where things made more sense.
i’m interested in any sort of removal from reality (shipwreck/plane wreck, kidnapping, war, “games” like squid game, hunger games), anything that totally shifts reality for this character(s)
anything where the characters realize the life they thought they wanted, and what they fought to return to, has moved on without them and furthermore they’ve changed along the way, and as much as they may hate it, this alternate reality they were living in, possibly alongside these other strangers, is where they feel most at home. and maybe there is even a desire to return to it, or a disappointment upon being rescued as they secretly wanted to continue whatever messed up way of life they had and they find themselves unable to let go of that past.
sorry for the jumbled words, again this is a really difficult feeling for me to describe but if it rings any bells please share! i am happy to further try to explain if this is still confusing lol.
Here is a thesis that i found interesting. Maybe some of you will too.
https://ris.cdu.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/24632569/Thesis_CDU_24577264_Chester_H.pdf
Edit/add: I’m in the states. BA in Fine Arts. Currently work for a new home builder. I work on the sales side. I get paid well, and it’s just my income so I am concerned a out leaving to start the M.Arch path. Currently, 48. I was thinking of waiting a couple of years before pursuing so I could put some money aside for the program. Hence, starting at 50. Also, would really love to do some of the work online-is that even possible? If so, then I could get started sooner. Anyone have suggestions for schools? Suggestions even to my pseudo-plan? Thank you in advance!
Time for another post on marriage, I love to deconstruct this one boys. I've been involved in numerous affairs as of recent. Most the women I date now are married or separated. Usually they are in fights with their husbands and I am the one who gives them a fun night when they are drunk and upset. I am 30 years old at this point, I doubt this routine will continue past 40, but I am seeing a common theme in my relationships:
People marry because of necessity. They think it must be done, they think this is the better path in life. It makes me hate people. They cannot see past the comfort of having two people in a household that they are willingly raising up a prison cell around them. They cannot think critically and realize it is a mistake to think you will like / want to be with anyone for more than 5 years at most.
When you marry, it is a legal contract. It is DESIGNED to enslave. I respect the gays, the polys, who want to marry whoever and whenever and say fuck the system and just do it for fun. I think as a society we need to do this more- the amount of people I talk to who are stuck in a marriage because they don't have the money for the legal fees to get out of it, or the time or the will to really move on, is far too many to count. They just stay in the marriage, create misery, if there are children they pass on even more trauma and misery.
Why do we have to get all legal, why can't we just give each other some promise rings?
I go out with some women who joke about being set with alimony and act like it's a prize. My mother has a shit ton of alimony and she also can barely think for herself from being abused my father for 30 years and acts like a child. Is this really a good avenue to go down in life?
More of us need to strive for independence, to be our own selves. Through this the world would be a less shitty place. I know that is idealistic and all I ever will get from this view is how much people suck ass. I'm sure there are some good marriages, but fuck, there's so many shitty ones. I see them everywhere, people suck so, so, so bad.
To get weekly blog notifications and more: https://www.mankinds-monstrosities.com/
It's really frustrating to play against players who use this and doesn't miss a headshot. The range of this stupid weapon is 9m base and 11m when upgraded. It's extremely broken. At least nerf the range of this weapon because it's a damn shotgun which is better than many smgs. u/HirezRadar
Lancers and characters with replenish using arbitrators are OP atm. The range of this shotgun is huge..
Under the rule of czar Peter the First an unseen infrastructure project started: the construction of Saint-Petersburg. I know that there was conservative resistance against the reforms in general and the building of a new capital in particular. But was there also a humanist inspired criticism of this endeavor, as it came with a lot of forced labor and deaths?
Is there any written account of non-aristocratic, non-clergy Russians (e.g. the builders of the capital) of that time and their ideas about this endeavor and/or other reforms that concerned them?
Was there a theological argument against the installation of a new capital, maybe referring to the idea of Moscow being the 'third Rome'?
Also, are labels as 'conservative' and 'humanist' applicable to 18th century Russia?
Sorry for this load of questions: I would be very thankful for a partial answer too :)
Automation, Artificial intelligence and cryptography are here to do the heavy lifting but if we don't seize these modes of production now we are going to suffer a dystopia that would make Orwell roll in his grave.
I was just watching a couple YouTube videos on the Miranda class starship, imo the most aesthetically pleasing of the Star Fleet ships, and the question came to mind; how much would it cost (either in man-hours, material or just plain latinum) to construct a single Miranda class vessel?
Now I know that a lot of people say that the United Federation of Planets is a post-scarcity society, but surely there is a standard by which we pre-scarcity Plebeians can judge the unit cost of such a ship, either in real world terms or in terms of a Star Trek currency like gold-pressed Latinum. After all, even a T-72 tank is said to have a per unit cost of $0.5-1.2m in the 90s. So maybe there are ways of calculating these things, even if Starfleet uses some futuristic 3d printing or whatever.
I know this is probably going to be a far cry, but I'm wondering if anyone came across a midi version of Azure Arbitrator? Having been searching for it for quite a long time, but I couldn't find any good result. Arranging it would be quite a lot of work, but I know at least one person on bilibili has arranged a part of it, but the creator does not provide midi file.
***(Can't edit title -- should read "arbiter-of-truth" ;))***
Here is the link to the show/interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3jM13A7OEw
It just seems like such a brilliant example of where the suspicion of institutions takes us. I think he condemned "the woke" even more times than Sam. He has done his own research, of course (he's a multi-millionaire).
Don't know if I need to give more background, but Aaron Rodgers is considered amongst the best athletes to ever play American football -- and also has a reputation for very high intelligence (I'd say questionable, at this point), a contrarian nature and extremely high self-regard. He was recently diagnosed with Covid, outed as unvaccinated after having claimed to have been at a press conference in August and forced to miss at least one very important game. The talk-show he is on, here, is one run by former football players on which he has appeared multiple times and has a friendly relationship with everyone involved.
It seems to me his case stands for something.
Here's tape of the press conference in August where most people think he definitely claimed to be vaccinated, though his supporters and he argue that you can parse his words otherwise...
Mesalina was the third wife of the emperor Claudius, in ancient Rome, to my understanding she was basically a queen or a princess, one night she challenges all prostitutes to a competition, the women who could have sex with more men in one night would win, the prostitutes choose the best one of all to face against Mesalina, Escilia the most famous prostitute of Rome, Escilia surrender after being with 25 men, the legends say that Mesalina was able to have sex with 200 men that night.
Maybe Mesalina had a sex addiction problem, but I also understand that sex was almost everywhere in ancient Rome and Greece art, so it looks like, to my little understanding of the subject, that those societies were more open about sex.
I've also read that in the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the seven wonders, there were priestesses, their job was to have sex with the travelers that arrived to the temple, I read this a lot time ago so please forgive me if I am making a mistake here.
My real question is: Is the current view about sex a construct of our society? For many years maybe due to the influence of Christian religions, and maybe other factors, sex have become a Taboo subject, so I wonder if we would be more naturally open toward sex if it hadn't become a Taboo, maybe not exactly like Bonobos, but more similar, more open about it
Opinions?
Edit: what is identity? We have an explanation for preferences, taste, sexual orientation so who are we really? And why are we obsessed with having this sense of self which makes us feel like life has a purpose ?
I’ve had this gun for a few days now and been using it in various loadouts in an attempt to fully understand where it’s best suited and whether it’s a gun that truly sits amongst the most elite guns in the game. Firstly I tried using it as a shotgun replacement, after all that’s what all of the youtubers are doing and that’s how the devs have marketed the gun. In short, it’s not that. When someone’s running Bear Trap, Porc or Dolores and you’ve got this spluttering, slow gun there’s no way you can match their damage output and I constantly failed when using the gun in this way. So no, you’ll still need a shotgun.
Next I tried using this gun as a meta AR, i.e. how you would typically use Survivor, Bastion or Sunburst. It definitely faired better when treating it as an AR (shock horror), but it still fell short of the mark, which I largely put down to it’s low headshot in comparison to other guns. I was regularly beaten by those meta AR’s from various ranges, especially mid/long range, even when landing all of my shots. Lastly, I used this gun as a sniper supplement, i.e. finishing off enemies after a headshot with a crossbow/cuda. This is the only area where the gun truly excelled, due to it’s high damage when opponents have low health, this was the sweet spot.
The gun is bad in most situations and hand-picked gameplay from youtubers is really masking it’s every day use. It’s too slow for close combat, too weak for mid/long range combat, leaving it’s only real use as a ‘mop up gun’ which just about any AR can do (I even use Odin successfully when it’s just for that purpose). I’m still going to give it a few more days to see if I can improve with it, but I’ve been playing this game for years and I can just tell when a gun is not up to scratch (e.g. survivor when it was first released, or the fail that was chopper). Don’t grind your asses or worse yet waste your money on this gun, it’ll disappoint.
