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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 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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    2. 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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    3. 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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    4. 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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    5. 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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    6. 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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    7. 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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    8. 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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    9. 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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    10. 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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      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 

      11:49 PM - 3 Jun 2020
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      • FlorbFnarb Chris from Floral Park Ems Arlyn Culwick Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏🇺🇸 foo Aymeric de kerdanet Piers de Wilde
      2 replies 0 retweets 8 likes
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        2. 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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        3. 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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        4. 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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        5. 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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        6. 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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        7. 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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        8. 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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        9. 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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        10. 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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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 17
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          Big lesson from this book: never bet on the commoners. They get their periodic opportunities to blow up violently but pay a heavy price later. Being a countryside noble is good. Being a town noble is sketchy. Being upper bourgeoisie is dangerous. Being Jewish is very dangerous.

          5 replies 3 retweets 33 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 25
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          Still reading this. Now several chapters into part 2, rise of Coucy. Not as much to summarize or highlight since it’s more biographical. Our hero goes on diplomatic missions and military campaigns, plays a part in court intrigues etc. Among the better reps of a decadent class.

          2 replies 0 retweets 5 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 25
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          General theme here is a nobility in decline but not aware of it. Basically an extractive financial class that still thinks of itself as a military class but lacks the actual military culture. Shades of modern Wall Street. Mangy dogs believing themselves to be wolves.

          2 replies 1 retweet 19 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 25
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          “Deschamps is a scold but not an advocate of fundamental change... he is a bourgeois in sympathy, deplores injustice to the peasant... but he denounces peasants who attempt to become squires” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustache_Deschamps …

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 25
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          “Sorrowing, even sad, yet beautiful; He seemed too melancholy for one Whose heart was hard as steel” Contemporary verse about Louis 1, Duc d’Orleans. Apparently a mix of hedonist and ascetic, and a gambling addicted politically ambitious scholar. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_I,_Duke_of_Orléans …

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 25
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          Evil uncles removed from scene in France and Coucy gets to be the Grand Butler to Charles VI. Various intrigues that sound like a cross between Seinfeld and bizarro Camelot. General bloodiness seems to have given way to palace intrigues with young kings in England and France.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 27
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          Everything seems to be falling apart by the late 1380s but our man Coucy is doing well for himself. A ghostly portrait is starting to emerge: balding, sage, epitome of chivalry and knightly virtue but apparently not the vices that are rotting the median knight.

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 1
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          This book just goes on and on piling on the shittiness. Dumb mini-crusade against Tunisia. Tedious religious crap, a bad king Wenceslas. I suspect we’re headed for an exhausted whimper of an unhappy ending.

          1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 3
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          Even Tuchman’s writing can not redeem this last decade. It just exhausting stupid intrigues among elites. General condition is ghoulish fascination with death. Death cults on the rise. Death masks, obsession with rotting corpses, danse macabre on the rise https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre …

          1 reply 1 retweet 14 likes
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        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 4
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          Generally impressed by the sheer amount of 14th century information that seems to be available to historians. This whole reconstruction is very vivid. I’d like to watch a solid TV show based on this book.

          1 reply 0 retweets 15 likes
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        21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 4
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          Mad king Charles VI on throne for decades. Makes Trump look actually stable if not a genius. Evilunclocracy in England and France. Rise of occult and magic. Torture and extraction of confessions to devil worship a routine way to cancel people. OG cancel culture. We are at 1393.

          1 reply 1 retweet 21 likes
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        22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 5
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          Well, more intrigues in Italy and a misguided crusade later, out man Coucy is dead in Turkish captivity waiting to be ransomed. Kinda sad. He’s the hero of this story even though he never quite comes alive. Tuchman chose him because his life intersected a lot of key events.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 5
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          He’s a better example of chivalry and missing the corrupting weaknesses of the class. Sagacious and level-headed. Tuchman suggests he might have been a Washington style leader in a non-monarchical time but I don’t buy it. He comes across as a COO type. Execution, not vision.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 5
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          Tuchman’s own tldr of the ~60 years spanned by Coucy’s life: elites had exciting times, commoners had plague, pillage and taxes. Book does a fair job balancing the two, if favoring elite storyline a bit. Fair because there’s more to tell. Elites were mobile and agenty.

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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        25. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 6
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          Whew after awhistle-stop tour to the Middle Ages nadir in the 1450s and an epilogue tracing the fate of the Coucy estate into modernity, we’re finally done. Long-ass book but now I am an expert on the long 14th century++. tldr: lousy ass century. Not recommended for time travel.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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        26. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 6
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          History books are always unsatisfying and don’t end cleanly. The part she rushed through in 1 chapter to stick the landing (1400-1453) is probably worth its own book. Joan of Arc, Agincourt, etc.

          3 replies 0 retweets 6 likes
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        27. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 6
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          @threadreaderapp unroll

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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        28. End of conversation

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