TIL: Today I Learned
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Timsup2nothin
Deity
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Because it is in my nature to help those in need, anyone is welcome to send me their brussel sprouts and as long as they arrive fresh I promise they will be steamed and eaten and you will never have to worry about them again.
Borachio
Way past lunacy
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I quite like brussel sprouts from time to time. Can get boring if you eat them all the time. It's like brocolli: what do you do with brussel sprouts apart from boil them and put a bit of butter on them?
They've not nice over-cooked, though. But then few things are.
They've not nice over-cooked, though. But then few things are.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
That logo looks downright classic.
Enjoy the crisp taste of USB
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Just make sure to recycle it to support our boys overseas.
Found a neat video involving the Traveling Salesman Problem.
Link to video.
And also this proof of why Pythagorean's Theorem works.
Obviously the small white square plus the medium white square added together has the same area as the bigger white square on the right.
The 4 triangles got moved around, that's all.
So a*a+b*b=c*c, which is a^2+b^2=c^2
Then you see that this equation also describes all 4 identical triangles, and now you only have to know 2 sides of a right triangle and you can always calculate the 3rd side.
Link to video.
And also this proof of why Pythagorean's Theorem works.
Obviously the small white square plus the medium white square added together has the same area as the bigger white square on the right.
The 4 triangles got moved around, that's all.
So a*a+b*b=c*c, which is a^2+b^2=c^2
Then you see that this equation also describes all 4 identical triangles, and now you only have to know 2 sides of a right triangle and you can always calculate the 3rd side.
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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- Oct 26, 2008
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TIL that, according to Titu Cusi Yupanqui, the penultimate Incan Emperor, his father Manco Inca fought the Spanish on horseback with lance and shield. Also, when Atahualpa first heard of the bearded white men who came riding large animals with silver feet, his first thought was that he wanted to hunt these strange new llamas. So he showed up to Cajamarca with a retinue of a few thousand armed only with knives and lassos for hunting the new llamas. His retinue were massacred.
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
The Incas put up a damn good fight with the Spanish. Actually the Mayans did too. And the Aztecs. And a whole lot of other people.
The generic history textbook more or less gives the impression that once the Old World diseases swept through and the Spanish conquered their capitals the native Amerindian states just threw their hands up in the air and said "ok we lost I'll willingly become your slave and grovel at your feet, no problem dude" but in fact they put up a lot of good resistance for a very long time.
Does remind me of how one of my professors told me a simple Inca trick against the Spanish was to wait until the Spanish went into a narrow canyon and start rolling boulders down.
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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I'm writing a 25-page paper on the conquistadors and the causes of their successes and failures, actually. More conquistador expeditions failed than succeeded. Ayllon's expedition was a disastrous attempt at colonization. De Soto failed to find any gold, died of disease before he could return home, and perhaps only half of his men returned clad in rags and hides in improvised ships, with all of their animals dead, because de Soto systematically antagonized every Indian he ever met. De Leon died from wounds sustained in battle with the Calusas, who beat back his expedition. Narvaez got wiped out by a hurricane in his improvised boats.
The Pizarro brothers took years if not decades to subdue all of the Incas, and three of them died in the process. Had Atahuallpa and Manco Inca been more wary of the Spanish, or had the civil war not been happening while the Spanish attacked, or had the conquistadors' own civil war gone differently, the Incas would have easily defeated them. As it was, it seems as many Incas fought against Manco and Atahuallpa as for them. And while I haven't quite reached certain papers yet, I recall them discussing how the role of disease has been greatly exaggerated in the Spanish conquests. Its demographic effects took years to really hurt the Aztecs and Incas, too long to have a part in the conquests. Disease definitely reworked the demographic landscape over the course of the next few decades for the big civilizations and centuries for other North American peoples, but in the short term, not so much.
And as for guns, they played a very small part in the Spanish conquests. Most of the expeditions had very few firearms and cannons, and it was the cavalry with cold steel and the native allies who did most of the killing. Except for de Soto, he never even tried to get allies.
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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Interesting connection. There's a town south of me called De Soto, though he never came anywhere near it.
TIL that Acoma Pueblo pottery is both stunningly beautiful and stunningly expensive. Not uncommon to find pots for over $2000!
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
wait what
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Twenty-five pages is a lot of pages. My papers come up to, like, eight pages. Twenty-five pages sounds more like a dissertation.
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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It is a lot, more than I've ever written. It's for my senior seminar course, which is required to finish with a bachelor's in history. I've read so many conquistador accounts of the conquests that I'm surprised I'm not sick to death with Indians, Incas, and Spaniards. But I somehow managed to stretch it out so much that I think the 30-page limit isn't enough.
Add to that a 10-pager on the exceptionally dull Puritans of New England and numerous other papers, and you get a weary Phrossack. At least my 10-pager for modern Japanese history is on the Japanese invasion of Mongolia, which should be fun.
My grandmother was terrible at cooking vegetables. She was great with fish, though, and soup.
When it's properly prepared, I'd happily eat broccoli every day. I love broccoli.
Sounds like some of the term papers I routinely typed back when I had my home-based typing business. November was usually a well-paying month for me (I charged by the page).
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