Bret Deveraux, summarizing the various ways Sparta sucked ass. Convenient!

The fact that Cleopatra stays for a month after Caesar’s death suggests to me that she hoped to get Caesarion recognized as Caesar’s heir, which in turn suggests that Cleopatra had a poor grasp of Roman law and politics, both not realizing that her mere presence was a liability to the one person she needed to succeed (and not be stabbed 23 times) and also that the quest to get Rome to acknowledge Caesarion as Caesar’s heir was almost certainly hopeless. Caesarion could not be Caesar’s heir; as a non-citizen Caesarion wasn’t even a valid target as primary heir of Caesar’s will and so the chances of getting him recognized as Caesar’s heir through a Roman court was basically nil. In any case, Caesar’s will made Octavian his sole heir, which is a twist Cleopatra really ought to have seen coming since Caesar was openly preparing the fellow and planning to bring him along on his next campaign. Personally, I suspect Caesar always knew Caesarion wouldn’t be acceptable in Rome and never had any intention of making him his heir; that Cleopatra doesn’t seem to have known this is a striking indictment of her political acumen. And if you are thinking, “but wait, Antonius later seems to think he might be able to sell this at Rome” – yes, he might well have. He was also a lot less politically astute than Caesar.

Devereaux wouldn't say "Famous himbo Marcus Antonius" but I'm certainly thinking it

I like Bret Deveraux and his content but I hate those people who read one (1) ACOUP article and immediately think they’re god’s gift to ancient history

ACOUP's post this week is about Cleopatra VII! I thought it was cool--it's an assessment of her reign, mostly, and how effective she was as a queen.

A blog post by an academic about the state of academic employment. TL;DR: Stealth gig economy takeover, most professors aren't.

#insurrection #civilwar #trumpisguilty #quitmincingwords #acoup #january6th #astaininourhistory #trumpmustbeheldaccountable https://www.instagram.com/p/CgUpi0FJBM8/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

thinking about the pre-tang eras of china keeping in mind acoup's series on crusader kings really helps contextualise things

Verkaufe das Opel Sammelheft Nr. 1 "Neu" mit dem Opel Commodore A Coupé GS/E, 1970-1971. Realistisch bis ins Detail, Maßstab 1 : 43, Sammlermodell aus Metallguss, präzisionsgefertigt. Den Link zu meinen Verkaufsangeboten findet Ihr im Profil. #opel #lotus #commodore #collektion #opelcommodore #acoupe #opelcommodoreacoupe #sammeln #sammelliebe #sammelleidenschaft #sammelheft #modellauto #collektion #opelcollektion #sammelheftsieben #sammelleidenschaft #sammelfreunde #opelfreunde #hobby #freizeit #ebay #metallguß #präzision #präzisionsgefertigt #schorschidk #zuverkaufen #sofortkauf #opellove (hier: Silke's Fundgrube) https://www.instagram.com/p/CbFkBIlKgus/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Engasgando no meu pau Vina Sky , Kenzie Reeve , Alexis Tae In Master Debaters Hitomi Tanaka tell you what to do Four big tits ebony chicks fucking with dildos flaca maldonado uruguay Ana Cristina dando para Mateus Kenyan porn Hombre pajaro se coje a enana bien rica Stunnin brunette Katrina Jade BBC sucking Natural lesbian kittens get covered with piss and squirt wet snatches

Dune discourse is uniquely annoying because there's a bunch of extremely obvious, in-your-face orientalism perpetuated by the main characters that's being discussed at nauseum and is very easy to dismiss and completely overshadows any actual issues with the movie, like the refusal to use recognisable arabic phrases or the hiring practices. I'll be charitable here and assume that people have a rightfully negative reaction to how those images of white people, particularly Jessica, are used as marketing material, instead of just not getting the point, and with how often concerns like this are overlooked, I can understand why they aren't receptive to "no this thing that media does uncritically all the time is meant to be bad THIS time actually trust me bro just read this 1000 page book".

Seemingly the entire film crew having cold feet about including references to real world anti-colonial movements or just normal Arabic would always be concerning, but especially given the current situation in Palestine and it's all overshadowed by the colonisers in the book acting like colonisers because every other issue is more complicated. Dune, as a text, still believes in noble savages and "hard times create hard men" nonsense. I'm really not coming at this from a "don't criticise the thing I like" angle, but debates about Jessica's outfit have made me learn nothing besides occasionally seeing really cool pictures of real arabic clothing, while reading Haris A. Durrani's dissections of the books and the current adaptation has actually tought me a lot of stuff about both the book and the real world.

If you haven't seen his Dune essays, you can find a collection towards the bottom of this page: https://history.princeton.edu/people/haris-durrani

https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization < This blog post isn't specifically about Dune, but it uses the Fremen as an example to discuss the historic origins of the noble savage trope (Acoup is generally a cool history blog, mostly focused on greek and roman history)

I love Dune but it's so problematic, just not for the obvious reason and dissected Frank Herbert's actual politics and the strange intersection of conservatism and anti-colonialism is fascinating. You should criticise Dune, I would just like the criticism to be better, especially because focusing on the thing that is framed as bad in the story gives every chud an easy way to dismiss criticism of the text as bad media literacy

So while I think the coalition may well have emerged without the United States, it is no surprise that, the United States being a thing that exists, the coalition is often regarded (wrongly) by Americans and Russian propagandists alike as simply a tool of American Imperialism – a collection of smaller states huddled around Columbia‘s skirts. That reading is a mistake and it leads to misjudging how the coalition will act, because the coalition isn’t bound together by American power but by common interests and so behaves differently.

Thinking about those early jurists from the Roman Republic, when "lawyer" wasn't really a job yet. They weren't getting paid for it they just liked writing legal documents enough they did it as a hobby.

Types of Guy you will find on Sbee and Svee, an incomplete list

People who get really intense about Fate lore

Circular Firing Squad Leftists

Worm fans

Worm fans who hate Wildbow

Worm fans who have never read Worm

Worm fanfic authors who have never read Worm

Guys who use phrases like “omniversal tiering” with a straight face

Guys who are still really into Lyrical Nanoha in this foul year of our lord 2023

Guys who don’t read history books but have read one (1) Bret Deveraux article on the subject and will link it at you if you give them the slightest opportunity

A type of guy who isn’t actually a guy at all she just doesn’t know it yet

Guys who have been around since the late 90’s and remember when the site was about spaceship videos

People who have been banned from one of the sites and now lurk on the other one, bitterly

Hidden cryptofascists

I've been reading ACOUP posts for too long and now I'm incapable of watching fantasy without asking where these people are getting all these finely worked textiles and metal.

Bret “Orc Logistics Guy” Devereaux watched “Rings of Power”

Highlights:

Oh btw here's an interesting Dune Part 1 review by historian Bret Deveraux, specifically about how the movie handled imperialism. Hope he makes one for Part 2 at some point: acoup . blog/2021/11/05/miscellanea-reflections-on-the-sands-of-dune/

(I got both your asks and I'm answering them out of order; trust me it'll make sense.)

Oh this was such an excellent review; he picked up on a lot of things about the way the Atreides are presented that are there but easily missed if you go into it thinking they're the good guys. That scene where Stilgar comes to meet Leto is so so telling because you can see Leto believes he is being respectful and diplomatic (while still asserting his right to go anywhere on the planet) but all the Atreides characters are literally standing a step above Stilgar looking down at him (except Gurney, who's gotten closer because he considers Stilgar a threat).

Even Paul, who is symbolically standing a bit apart from his family here, and agrees with Stilgar that foreigners have done nothing but exploit Arrakis, comes off looking well-intentioned but a bit full of shit, inviting Stilgar to stay and be "honored" like he's a guest on his own fucking planet.

I think Devereaux really hits the nail on the head when he talks about how Denis Villeneuve is able to "create this post-colonial reading of Dune, not by preaching to us about the evils of imperialism but simply by turning the camera, as it were, and getting us to view the question from the Fremen point of view." Because yeah turning the camera around, from what is often the default POV--that of the privileged, the powerful, the colonizers--is exactly how I think of this type of shift in perspective. It happens metaphorically in the Villeneuve Dune, with things like using Chani instead of Irulan to frame the whole narrative, and it often also happens literally.

Every time I watch Part One, I always get smacked in the face by this moment:

...where we transition from a series of fairly objective wide shots of the harvesters descending to this shot, which is not objective at all. We are literally being introduced to this world from behind the barrel of a resistance fighter's gun; it is pretty hard to think of a stronger POV choice than that. This is less than two minutes into the movie by the way.

And Part Two goes so much further in terms of showing us the world from a Fremen point of view, as Paul's own perspective on the world shifts. I really hope this guy does a review of Part Two because I am super curious to see what he has to say.