nagaram

My brain is fried.

I thought you said A.I. Bundy and I was trying so hard to see how this looked like A.I.

I agree that ruler was the wrong word. "Renaissance Henry Kissinger" is certainly more accurate.

I disagree that his most influential move was the militia. His most influential move was the complex diplomatic network of alliances, treaties, and call backs to how great Rome was was objectively more influential since we actually still do it.

The Medici also didn't really beg daddy pope. I'm pretty sure that the pope was a Medici. I'll edit here if I'm wrong: Not a Medici, but was good friends with the two Medici Popes

He apparently wrote a lot in his correspondences how much he loved Florence and despite the torture, he did get a job writing the histories of Florence paid for by the Medici who did originally exile him.

All of that, BTW, was also in the wikipedia pages I linked.

Context: One interpretation of Niccolo Machiavelli was as a practical "patriot" who saw the turmoil that befell so many of the great cities of Italy during their warring and feuding. So he invented his controversial political ideology that influences modern day politics. He knew his time as ruler of Florence was limited. So he wrote "The Prince" as a manual for how he managed to keep mercenaries out of Florence and freely circulated to his friends and then to his successor the Medicis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince

Real and sad.

Boy I love being in a dying empire.

There was one account from "King Leopold's ghost" where a Congo chief was asked to either go live in a Brussels zoo and travel the world as a spectacle or his village would be wiped out.

He chose to he a zoo animal and when his tour ended, the village was wiped out.

KGB Chief: "Alright which one of you did it! Do you have any idea what kinda jeopardy you've put the world into! If the Americans find out what you fucking did, the world may go to nuclear war! How irresponsible! Its only a matter of time before-"

Agent: "Boss, it wasn't one of us!"

Chief: "What... then who? The Cubans? Vietnamese?"

Agent: "We saw a mob boss, a federal reserve agent, and a CIA guy all talking an hour prior. We didn't think anything of it until we heard the shots."

My only gripe is with historians in the meme part

It should be

"Bigotted conservative officials making records of the events or destroying evidence once in power"

Historians have their problems especially previous generations, but they're only as good as surviving evidence.

To me, Art is a catalyst for discussion, reflection, and expression.

So yes, I view internet trolling as a form of art. Maybe not capital A Art, but is it not the art of a sub culture? A way to catalyze discussion, debate, expression? A well crafted message that in often a hundred words or less that sparks endless debates and reactions?

Is the art the catalyst or the consequences?

Is the art the banana or my feelings about it?

To me I think its all art.

Leto certainly didn't help, but historically this is how this is supposed to go.

Its probably a parent company situation.

Lots of corpo structures are just large parent companies that actually just own a bunch of smaller companies so that the parent company gets the profits while the smaller companies make the risky products and can be bankrupted at any minute.

The company I work for does that. We just bought a couple companies that were competitors in a risky but profitable market. The full idea is that if one company gets sued to oblivion, we let that company die, move all the employees and customers to the backup company, and call it a day.

Capitalism baby!

Probably why they didn't do it in the first place.

They barely pay for moderation. Who is going to pay for that survey? And also why would they? Obviously most of the people on that site are under 18. That's when I used it.

What other demographic clicks the horny ads they run?

The classic

offers to recycle

actually installs esoteric Linux distros

Classic!