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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 28
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      Next pandemic live read, Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror, a history of the 14th century through the life of a single minor nobleman whose life was coextensive with the main events, esp the Black Death.https://amzn.to/2ww5ixs 

      20 replies 40 retweets 342 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 3
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      This is the rare history book that is so engrossing it’s competing and winning against the Terry Pratchett I’m reading (Maskerade) for bedtime escapist relaxation. The 14th century is the right shit show to compare too. Our pandemic so far has been paradise by comparison.

      5 replies 5 retweets 70 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 3
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      Introduction is an excellent apologia for shortcomings of historical research methodology. Problems or missing/noisy data, biases of eras of historiography etc are deftly discussed. Choice of Enguerrand de Coucy as lens of the story explained.

      1 reply 1 retweet 20 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 3
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      First chapter is a sketch of French society esp the Coucys milieu at the start of the story. It’s a feudal decentralized polity with weak monarchy, strong sumptuary laws and merchant class slowly buying its freedom from bankrupt crusading nobility. Status currency being debased.

      1 reply 5 retweets 29 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 3
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      Second chapter is discussion of the deep corruption of the Church in the years following France king Philip IV “the fair” takedown of pope boniface and the papacy moving to Avignon and basically turning into a sort of super corrupt Davos set. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_des_Papes …

      1 reply 2 retweets 22 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 4
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      Learned about Simony. The church was basically a deep state for sale. Purely commercial enterprise. Offices being sold to highest bidder, illiterates being appointed to clergy, all sins washable with money. They were practically asking heaven for a plague. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simony 

      2 replies 7 retweets 38 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 5
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      This book is not recommended if you want reassurance that we’ve been through worse and returned to normal. It’s building up like a doomsday story and we already know how bad it gets. Spoiler alert: doompic.twitter.com/ZRqNTYO4ld

      1 reply 4 retweets 40 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 5
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      Life for commoners sounds horrible even before the Black Death. Caught between a venal church and a crappy nobility being invaded by a social climbing merchant class. No wonder they clung as fervently to the idea of an afterlife as we do to the idea of a reopening.

      10:26 PM - 5 May 2020
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      • Cameron Plommer 🏴 ArrieroTosco🏳️‍🌈💰⚡ we regret to inform you DAVID SUGARMAN Aaron Franklin Anant Sharma Shlok Vaidya stupid twitt account nolan
      2 replies 9 retweets 55 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 6
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          Everybody hates the church in the 14th century it seems. Including reformers within who think it ought to reflect Jesus ideal of poverty. Franciscans excommunicated for such ideas. Kings resist Pope’s right to crown emperor. Merchants change at silly economics.

          1 reply 4 retweets 22 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 6
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          Weird just how much centralized power the church laid claim to, and with corrupt staff at that, purely on the strength of a claim to gate-keeping salvation. Interesting contrast to Hinduism, where there was an equally strong claim but no central Pope making the claim.

          2 replies 4 retweets 27 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 6
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          Whoa. This is insane.pic.twitter.com/oPFBI6rJQw

          4 replies 14 retweets 112 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 6
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          Long section on how extremely communal guild life was. Capitalists pretty much owned towns and had captured city governments. Town and rural poor equally oppressed. Also TIL about 1320 Pastoureaux that began as rebellion against oppression and ended in slaughter of Jews.

          1 reply 4 retweets 30 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 6
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          The 14th century really couldn’t come to terms with the necessity of interest, and the result was antisemitism as a sort of economic doctrine. Christian usury prohibitions grounded in economic illiteracy made periodic slaughter of Jews necessary to balance the budget?

          3 replies 4 retweets 40 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 7
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          Chapter 2 ends on the cusp of war between France and England with the father of our hero drawn in via complicated marriage alliances, dowries, military commitments in exchange for money etc. Our hero Enguerrand de Coucy, who I will call Eng, is born.

          1 reply 2 retweets 15 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 7
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          Chapter 3 is a pretty thorough portrait of medieval life in Eng’s milieu. Reads like a history text. Lots of details on child-rearing, education, economic life etc. No big surprises so this is a bit boring. It does surprisingly resemble cartoon views (Monty Python, King Arthur)

          2 replies 2 retweets 19 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 7
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          Life kinda sucks, the world doesn’t change, progress is not a concept, everybody is waiting to either die or the second coming when there is a lottery chance it will suck less. Knights must learn how to fight, rude, and... hawk? Why hawks? Toy drones of the time I guess.

          2 replies 4 retweets 33 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 7
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          Familiar names popping up: Petrarch, Dante, Ockham. The whole description sounds fairly close to Indian history of the time, which I know better. Just slightly more technologically advanced, and significantly better peasant/commoner conditions. Life is rough. Wouldn’t want it.

          3 replies 3 retweets 22 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 7
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          “Yet if the [chivalric] code was but a veneer over violence, greed, and sensuality, it was nevertheless an ideal, as Christianity was an ideal, toward which man’s reach, as usual, exceeded his grasp.” Great sentence.

          1 reply 6 retweets 69 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 10
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          Well, with a quick account of the Battle of Crécy and the start of the 100 years war, we’re officially into the plague chapters. Tuchman moves very fast through this, 1948-49. It is depressingly and uncannily similar to what we’re going through.

          2 replies 2 retweets 13 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 10
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          Way more death of course, but similar dynamics: poor dying more, animals running wild, labor shortage,... “The sense of a vanishing future created a kind of dementia of despair.”

          1 reply 1 retweet 27 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 10
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          “Fields went uncultivated, spring seed unsown. Second growth with nature’s awful energy crept back over cleared land, dikes crumbles, salt water reinvaded and soured the lowlands”

          1 reply 2 retweets 22 likes
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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 10
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          One big difference: they had no idea how it spread. Didn’t even suspect fleas and rats apparently. Though rats were associated with pestilence generally (the Pied Piper story is from 1284 it seems). That’s our one big advantage. Perhaps the main one.

          1 reply 1 retweet 24 likes
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        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 10
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          Both bubonic and pneumonic plagues were present together so the miasma theory was not entirely wrong even though they thought it was stinky air and malign astrology that caused air transmission. They also believed in sight transmission. Must have been total FUD.

          1 reply 1 retweet 20 likes
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        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 10
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          The official explanation was an astrological one from the professors of the University of Paris. They were widely translated, leading to growth in national languages as a positive effect. Kinda like internet today I guess.

          2 replies 2 retweets 18 likes
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        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 11
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          Lots of prayer and religious life cleansing. “When it became clear that these [penitence] processions were sources of infection, [Pope] Clement VI had to prohibit them” (initially authorized by the pope).

          1 reply 2 retweets 17 likes
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        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 12
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          Long section on predictable antisemitism followed by fascinating but, new to me, about how flagellants were a heretical movement that challenged the intercessionary authority of priests by claiming their self-flagellation as saving humanity/Christianity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellant 

          1 reply 1 retweet 18 likes
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        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 13
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          Apparently very few broad generalizations can be made about the effects of the Black Death. Fir every claimed effect in one place there was an opposite one elsewhere. Labor shortage and stronger peasant/artisan position was the strongest broad effect. Inflation/wages spiral.

          1 reply 2 retweets 21 likes
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        21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 14
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          The church got generally richer through legacies and Clement VI 1350 jubilee, where you could get absolutions fir money. But it grew much more hated. I guess the seeds of the reformation were planted here.

          1 reply 1 retweet 17 likes
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        22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 14
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          TIL about mendicant orders which some in the church tried to have banned https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendicant_orders …

          1 reply 2 retweets 16 likes
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        23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 14
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          Tuchman argues that dissatisfaction with the meaninglessness of the suffering, with no changes for the better, is what unleashed the social forces of change. Argues it created modern man, hungry for a better answer than mysterious will of god.

          1 reply 5 retweets 30 likes
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        24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 14
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          Interesting: in the wake of the Black Death, both England and France raised knightly orders nostalgically modeled on King Arthur’s round table, with the practical purpose of preventing independent withdrawal by feudals in battle. Chivalry was already a fandom larp in 1351.

          1 reply 2 retweets 33 likes
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        25. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 14
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          The orders were the order of the garter on the English side, and order of the star on the French side. This stupid affair was apparently the aspirational model of combat. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_of_the_Thirty …

          1 reply 1 retweet 11 likes
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        26. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 14
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          Now we’re on to examples of how the whole era was full of ultra-violent psychopaths killing each other, like Charles of Navarre. Tuchman suggests perhaps as a result of Black Death memento mori. This era is motorcycle gangs basically. Pandemics cause Hobbesian conditions.

          2 replies 3 retweets 24 likes
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        27. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 14
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          Honor killings, rape, torture, heads on stakes, arms, legs, ears cut off for crimes... These are horrible, miserable people. Why does fantasy fiction love this age so much again? Not an age for smart people.

          4 replies 2 retweets 40 likes
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        28. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 14
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          Ok these people are the worst.pic.twitter.com/6ZXy1ylV8O

          3 replies 2 retweets 46 likes
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        29. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 14
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          Tuchman offers theory that since neglect was the standard of childcare till age 7 or so, everyone grew up severely messed up. Sounds about right. A world where having a serial killer psyche is the norm, and being nice is a form of mental illness

          1 reply 4 retweets 59 likes
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        30. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 15
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          My horrible loud music playing neighbor would have fit right into the post-plague late Middle Ages. Bet he tortures cats. But moving on, having wished a pox on neighbor. We resume our reading.

          2 replies 1 retweet 24 likes
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        31. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 15
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          Money printer go brr. King Jean tries to get clever debasing currency and trying to reform the military. Long account of Battle of Poitiers, another debacle for the French. The 100 years war seems to develop one confused and stupid battle at a time. Each is harambe-like.

          1 reply 1 retweet 17 likes
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