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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 May 22
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      Ah shit. Clearly I backed the wrong conceptual horse here as Rick would say. The Jacques have been slaughtered by the knights. Bloodbath.

      2 replies 1 retweet 8 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 22
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      This era in Europe is relentlessly stupid with no redeeming qualities. Just pointless slaughter, plague, and general shittiness. No wonder it triggered the age of exploration in the next century. Who would want to live like this?

      8 replies 2 retweets 37 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 23
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      “...short of a fluke like the capture of a king at Poitiers, medieval armies had no means of achieving a decisive result, much less a surrender.” On Edwards’s weird campaign in France in the winter if 1958 trying to exactvthe biggest possible ransom for Jean

      1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 23
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      The Treaty of Bretigny... this is some weird-ass shit. Large territorial claims insured by exchanging a king for a bunch of nobility? Apparently this was the occasion when the first franc was minted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Brétigny …

      1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 23
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      Our hero, Enguerrand de Coucy is among the nobles exchanged for the king. Eng is apparently going to end up as the son-in-law of Edward... this hostage/ransom shit among royalty was all very nominal. The royalty treated each other like royalty.

      1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 23
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      Writer dude Jean Froissart is on the ship carrying noble hostages back to England. He’s gonna make Eng famous. Geoffrey Chaucer is also onboard. Eng is curiously lifeless so far in this long 7 chapter setup. Finally he’s getting foregrounded. I never read the Canterbury tales.

      1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 23
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      It’s a be somebody or do something century. Tuchman says unless you were royalty nobody cared about your appearance or character. You were known only by your deeds. Curious kind of dehumanization. Much klout. Very karma.

      1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 23
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      No live portraits of Eng exist, only one painted 200y after his death. He was apparently tall, dark, and handsome. And could sing and dance well. Basically a generic harlequin romance cover hero.

      1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 23
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      1361, plague is back after 12 years. Everybody is gloom-and-doom. This is relentless shittiness. Including actual shit. London is awash in manure apparently. No wonder the rich lived a barbell life of death sports and nihilistic hedonism.

      2 replies 0 retweets 11 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 23
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      “Between the happening of a historical process, and its recognition by rulers, a lag stretched, full of pitfalls” The rulers here are half-criminal brigands anyway. The poor really seem to need the monarch for hope.

      1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 25
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      tfw the highlight of your day is half an hour of bedtime reading about the Black Death enjoying the schadenfreude. At least one group of people

      10:41 PM - 25 May 2020
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      • зануда, душноват Kyle 🍎 🥕 🍎 🐝 🎙 Piyush Maverick Tainguriya Customer Support🎙 Erik Vincent Smykal Evan Meagher Bravo Johnson marylyn, taker of pisses☽ ☉ ♁ ☈ ⊡ ⊖ Daniel Davies
      1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 25
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          Now into the story of Eng and his spoiled bride-to-be, Isabella Kardashian-Hilton. Woman sounds awful.

          2 replies 0 retweets 6 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 25
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          Chapter about women. Seems like the age had a theory of submission around women’s role in the works but in practice they had a lot more unofficial agency than anyone admitted. They ran things while the men were off fighting or being held ransom etc.

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 25
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          Eng and Isabella now married, with 2 daughters. It’s 1367 and they’ve been given a lot of wealth, titles and territory in both England and France. Dude’s married up. Still not gone to life though. Isabella is better portrayed so far.

          2 replies 0 retweets 4 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 26
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          Eng and Isabella now back to France, 3/4 of which is now overrun by brigand companies who are getting institutionalized. Description is a bit like gang-run Mexico or Afghanistan today. Except line between them and “legitimate” royalty/nobility is really just a matter of taste.

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 27
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          The old king jean and pope innocent are now dead. Charles and the new pope urban try to export the brigand companies to Hungary for a crusade against Turks and fail, but succeed in exporting them to Spain where Anglo-French proxy wat is unfolding under excuse of fighting Moors.

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 27
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          This is very confusing 4d chess. Also the brigands are weirdly religious enough to demand both loot and absolution when attacking the clergy. Everybody tries to pay off brigands to go away with other people’s money. Stationary bandits pay off roaming bandits with OPM.

          2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 27
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          Brigands are zeroth estate really. Includes both fuckit knights and even destitute clergy. First and second estate are trying to get rid of them by taxing the third to the limit. Had anyone made up zeroth estate concept? If not I claim it. Hobbesian ground state of humanity.

          4 replies 0 retweets 8 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 27
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          Adding this side readhttps://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-the-oldest-pub …

          1 reply 0 retweets 16 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 27
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted  🎙 Piyush Maverick Tainguriya Customer Support 🎙

          Another side read: knights vs archers, contemporaneous Indian edition. https://twitter.com/mangozeus/status/1265843370624081920?s=21 …https://twitter.com/mangozeus/status/1265843370624081920 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

           🎙 Piyush Maverick Tainguriya Customer Support 🎙 @MangoZeus
          Replying to @zacbracz @vgr
          You get a fragmented picture by reading various sources. One thing common among all Rajput accounts is that they adopted a full frontal attack strategy. We also know that they started recruiting bhil archers but couldn't get rid of their melee habit. https://scroll.in/article/728636/what-our-textbooks-dont-tell-us-why-the-rajputs-failed-miserably-in-battle-for-centuries …
          1 reply 1 retweet 3 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 27
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          Back to the story. It’s around 1368 now. Coucy frees serfs for rent. The nobility appears to be slowly healing after 2 decades of war and plague. The brigand companies have been foisted onto Spain. Life sucks for most people but nobility is doing ok.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 29
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          Long passage now about the Visconti family of Italy who sound like psycho gangsters. They are challenging papal forces. Brigand company called the White Company fights on all sides of all conflict. Hobbesian ergodicity goingbon here.

          0 replies 1 retweet 1 like
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        13. End of conversation

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