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

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. 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

      1 reply 0 retweets 22 likes
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    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.

      3 replies 0 retweets 15 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 1 retweet 25 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 12 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 18 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 15 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.

      3 replies 0 retweets 24 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 2 retweets 18 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 1 retweet 28 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 2 retweets 18 likes
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      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.

      11:38 PM - 27 May 2020
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      • Chris from Floral Park Orazio Burns Ems Arlyn Culwick 🌨 Aymeric de kerdanet Erik Vincent Smykal Ra’s Al Ghul, Venture Capitalist LarchmontVanLonglunch
      1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. 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.

          1 reply 1 retweet 16 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 30
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          Here we go. Looting and explosions and sirens and choppers in DTLA outside as we pick up the story in 1360s Italy.

          1 reply 0 retweets 20 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 30
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          Another boom outside my window. Fireworks? Meanwhile in 14th century Italy Duke Lionel of England dies after marrying Violante Visconti at a lavish wedding and elsewhere Philip of Burgundy marries Marguerite of Flanders which will apparently have consequences later.

          1 reply 1 retweet 20 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 30
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          “The amount the rich could squander on occasions like these in a period of repeated disasters appears inexplicable, not so much with regard to motive as with regard to means. Where, in the midst of ruin and decline... did the money come from to endow the luxury?”

          2 replies 2 retweets 21 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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          France and England back at war. Eng begs neutrality and goes off to fight in papal-Visconti wars instead. Wins glory in future war that changes nothing and returns with honor to a France that’s winning. Plague back for third wave, Petrarch and Boccaccio dead. 1374.

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 31
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          This section is a bit of a slog. Tedious chapter in the 100 years war. Very grimdark wind-down of futile shit. Age of chivalry slowly dying, nobody achieving any strategic aims. Key figures aging and dying. Eng has had a charmed career so far.

          1 reply 0 retweets 15 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 1
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          Second half of book is turning into a bit of a drag. First half was going brrrr. Not author’s fault. The material is like our time. Running out of manic pandemic energy. Eng off to fight a war in Austria to claim some title. Financed by French monarchy to get rid of companies.

          2 replies 0 retweets 15 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 1
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          This is the Gugler war. The mercenary army was barely in control, pillaging along the way. Half the intent was to lose them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gugler 

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 1
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          So this was an attack on Switzerland against a dowry claimed from Austria. Swiss peasants beat back French-English mercenary knight brigands and this battle paved the way for Swiss independence later. Kinda interesting. Swiss and Flemish peasants were rare commoner non-losers.

          1 reply 0 retweets 14 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 1
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          Dowries and marriages were like corporate board memberships looks like. High nobles all had claims on all sorts of titles all over Europe, via succession calculus. Church exercised power by sanctioning some consanguineous marriages but not others. Everybody was cousins.

          1 reply 0 retweets 15 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 1
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          Fairly decent system for keeping ownership circulating in a fixed elite class of nobles since they didn’t marry out of the class. Feudal estates = crony corporations. Distant claimants of titles via dowries etc = activist shareholders. Buncha Carl Icahns basically.

          1 reply 1 retweet 23 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 1
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          Most of the wars were carefully justified as just wars. Paper trails for religious-legal reasons. The church was sort of a spiritual SEC. Ransom ops make sense as stock and debt deals. This was just a very violent and inefficient capital market.

          1 reply 3 retweets 24 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 1
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          Humanity has always been depressingly stupid, violent, and apathetic. Earth should just be demolished by Vogons to make the hyperspace bypass. On some key fronts we’ve learned nothing of importance in 700 years.

          5 replies 2 retweets 34 likes
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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 1
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          Funny how they endowed perpetual rents on monasteries for perpetual prayers for their souls while going off to fight in constant corporate raider type wars. Hobbesian eternity with afterlife insurance. They really thought nothing would ever change on earth or heaven. Grimdark.

          1 reply 1 retweet 30 likes
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        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 1
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          Today’s equivalent: corporate barons endowing universities in perpetuity to eternally keep the family name laundered and clean forever.

          1 reply 0 retweets 36 likes
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        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 2
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          Back to this slog. Coucy returns to England in dual role as son in law to Edward looking in on lands, and emissary of France on the DL to broker peace. England is now in same shit of depopulation, brigandage, and restive peasants. The legend of Robin Hood is growing in popularit.

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 2
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          Kinda interesting. The knights had their Arthurian legends, the peasants their Robin Hood and William Tells. Never noticed the Europe-wide pattern.

          2 replies 1 retweet 18 likes
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        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 2
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          Now reading about John Wycliffe who laid the seeds of secession from Roman Catholic Church and Protestantism to come centuries later. Never heard of him. Doh realization that Brexit is not the first English secession from an EU. It all makes sense now. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wycliffe …

          5 replies 3 retweets 26 likes
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        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 2
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          Damn everybody of importance in this story is really young. Under 40 mostly. We are such an old society.

          2 replies 1 retweet 27 likes
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        21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 3
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          Alright back to this slog. Can’t really read more than 20-30 minutes/night so I’m essentially live tweeting the 14th century at about 400x speed. 90 days to read about 100 years? I’m beginning to suspect this story won’t have a happy ending.

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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        22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 3
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          My mansion must have a robot seneschal. Wtf how do I not have a seneschal. This is unfair. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneschal 

          2 replies 0 retweets 8 likes
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        23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 4
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          Tables turned. France ascendant, Edward and Black Prince both dead. Eng finally picks a side, the winning one, forfeiting both English allegiance and property and wife Isabella. French raudcEngkand triggering peasants rebellion. Karmic meat grinder here.

          1 reply 1 retweet 11 likes
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        24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 4
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          Apparently this was when nationalism began superseding feudal allegiances crafted by marriages. Eng’s divorce was symbolic. This was when the channel became basis of boundary between England and France rather than noble family land titles. Nobility= tax-haven corps today.

          2 replies 0 retweets 11 likes
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        25. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 4
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          I’m struck by how much religion was an economics theory back then. Indulgences, confession. absolution, heaven/hell, grace: these were all monetary concepts in 14th century with church being spiritual bank. Even used metaphor of Jesus paying off debt of sins, treasury of merit.

          3 replies 4 retweets 33 likes
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        26. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 4
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          Modern idea that economics is a religion is false. Traditional religion when seriously believed and practiced is an economics. Modern half-assed religiosity is more like a fandom hobby. Abrahamic and karmic religions are schools of afterlife economics. With fiscal/monetary policy

          3 replies 9 retweets 38 likes
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        27. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 6
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          Very interesting chapter on the visit of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV to Paris in 1377 to visit his nephew Charles V. Dog and pony show to legitimate former’s resumption of hostilities with England. Lots of pomp.

          1 reply 1 retweet 6 likes
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        28. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 6
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          Segues into account of mystic sects like the Bretheren of the free spirit. Wikipedia has a page on everything. I’d never heard of this. Church was basically a bank so people looked elsewhere for spiritual needs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brethren_of_the_Free_Spirit …

          1 reply 1 retweet 11 likes
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        29. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
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          Magic, black magic, witch burning and some early rational philosophy. 1370s were basically intellectual bankruptcy proceedings. This guys seems alright. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Oresme …

          1 reply 1 retweet 13 likes
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        30. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 9
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          Finally at halfway point of book. Lengthy telenovela type chapter on papal succession conflict, return of papacy from Avignon to Rome, Catherine of Siena, and much else. This is deep inside baseball of European history. Kinda tedious. Pope Urban vs Pope Clement schism splits EU.

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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        31. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 17
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          Still working through this book. Now into commoners revolts in England, Netherlands and France. Pattern: they revolt over taxes, are suppressed brutally, bunch of executions, ceremonial apologies and heavy fines follow, king distributes fines to nobles doing the suppressing.

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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