Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Some Russians consider Moscow the Third Rome. In Europe from the Middle Ages to around 1800 was the Holy Roman Empire, a loose confederation that was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire, as Voltaire said. 010
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 30/09/2026As to Rome, we have the absurd spectacle of people identifying with it despite sometimes not much connection with it. The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire. Though culturally Greek, its people called themselves Romans, and called capital city Constantinople the Second Rome. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 30/09/2026In fairness, Aristotle proposed this hierarchy of types of government. Rule of … One good person A good elite Good common people Bad common people A bad elite One bad person 110
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Does he want Plato’s Republic? Autocratic rule by a philosophically-trained elite. Aristotle? He said that some people are naturally fit to be masters and some to be slaves. How does one tell? By who wins and who loses in battle. 101
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Can he explain in his own words “the faith of Jerusalem, the philosophy of Athens, the power of Rome, and the freedom of Philadelphia circa 1776”? 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 01/09/2026Reminds me of Bret Weinstein (?) interviewing the Libertarian candidate for President. BW brought up a problem with all-sports lakes: the jet skiers tend to drive out other boaters, because the jet skiers can be dangerous to these others. 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 15/07/2026The second one was provoked by the Soviet Union taking over Eastern Europe and Communist revolutionaries taking over China. “Who lost China?” became a big issue. But this time? No big Communist victories. The remaining Communist countries are mostly capitalist roaders. 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 15/07/2026So President Trump and Speaker Johnson and their friends want to start a new Red Scare. Let’s look at the previous two. The first one was provoked by the Bolsheviks taking over Russia. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 11/07/2026I think that many Federal agencies should be run by Congress and should be independent of the Presidency. Also, the House should be elected proportionally. Also, the Supreme Court should be term limited at 20 years, with ex-Justices becoming senior Federal judges. 0150
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 03/07/2026Was it chemical? Being poisoned. Was it biological? Some infectious microbe. Some possible vaccine side effects might mimic such causes. 0150
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 03/07/2026Did the investigators of those toddlers’ deaths find out their cause of death? Was it mechanical? Being strangled, stabbed, crushed, … Was it thermal? Too cold, too hot, fire, … Those are obviously different from possible vaccine side effects. 200
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 26/06/2026Seems like the book “Profiles in Cowardice” deserves a big update. 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 26/06/2026Looks like we will have Nixon to kick around some more. 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 26/06/2026Leaded gasoline was very common a little over half a century ago: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraet... That included South Africa. 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 18/06/2026In summary, the early writers of Ireland, Greece, India, and Iran had little or no cultural memory of ancestors who lived elsewhere, and none that can plausibly be traced back to the PIE dispersion. 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 18/06/2026Iran This could be a purely imaginary super winter, like the Norse Fimbul Winter (“Mighty Winter”). Or it could be a distant memory of having lived in a place with much colder winters, like Sintashta, near Chelyabinsk, Russia. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 18/06/2026Iran The Vendidad, a Zoroastrian text, starts off with Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, creating 16 perfect lands, and Angra Mainyu, the Evil Spirit, creating 16 misfortunes for them. The first of them is 10 winter months and 2 cold months. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 18/06/2026India The Vedas are collections of hymns, rituals, magic spells, commentaries, and philosophical texts, without any history. The Vedas might contain allusions to having lived elsewhere, like long freezing winters or long summer days, but are there any? 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 18/06/2026India About the Vedas, the oldest Hindu religious literature, I’ve seen claims that they indicate that their composers’ homeland was in the Arctic, but that is based on interpretations that I find VERY difficult to follow. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 18/06/2026Greece The Dorian invasion may be a distant memory of the arrival of Proto-Greek speakers in Greece around 2000 BCE, but there is no hint of anything north of Greece. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 18/06/2026Greece Greek mythology contains some purported history, notably the Trojan War, and also the Dorian invasion: Dorian tribes moving from central Greece into the Peloponnesus and Crete. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 18/06/2026Ireland The Book of Invasions describes several invasions of Ireland. Most of them are difficult to trace, but the Fir Bolg, Men of Bolg, have a name that looks like that of a mainland Celtic tribe, the Belgae. They lived in what is now Belgium and nearby, not very far away from Ireland. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 18/06/2026How far back can oral histories go? Do any early Indo-European speakers remember the dispersion of Proto-Indo-European speakers from their homeland? That was Ukraine & nearby Russia some 5,000 years ago. Here is what I found. 110
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 18/06/2026Reminds me a a story I once wrote of some time travelers who visit Adolf Hitler early in 1919 to try to dissuade him from a political career. When the subject of the Zimmermann telegram came up, AH said “Isn’t it normal for Mexico to want its land back?” 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 17/06/2026Looking at what he gets away with, he’s the Mule of American politics, he seems like he telepathically controls his fellow Republicans. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy: the Mule builds a galactic empire by telepathically controlling his underlings. 010
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 16/06/2026The first part of my previous skeet refers to recent centuries, and the second part to before recent centuries. 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 15/06/2026Seems like Soviet leader Yuri Andropov without the “bad cold”. 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 08/06/2026Seems like they were using LLM’s as ghostwriters while not being very careful copy editors. 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 31/05/2026en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_p... - laser color is from a laser projector. It works by moving a laser beam with moving mirrors and modulating it, controlling how bright it is. Something like a TV tube, which steers an electron beam in a big vacuum tube. 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 31/05/2026Or else run many Federal agencies directly out of Congress, in parliamentary fashion. 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 31/05/2026🔷 Electing the President by popular vote. The Electoral College is far from whatever the founders might have intended it to be, if Federalist Paper 68 is any guide. Instead, it is some half-baked aggregated and weighted quasi-popular vote. 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 31/05/2026🔷 Electing single-seat positions by ranked-choice voting or other multicandidate-friendly ways. 🔷 Making each state have Senators in proportion to its population, like the House. Minimum: 1, average: 2. 🔷 Reducing the powers of the Senate? Like to the UK House of Lords. 200
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 31/05/2026There are other things worth doing: 🔷 Electing the House by proportional representation. Should also be good for state legislatures and city councils. 🔷 Making state legislatures unicameral, like Nebraska’s. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 31/05/2026My favorite alternative is to run many government agencies out of Congress. That won’t need a Constitutional amendment — only some appropriate enabling legislation. Thus being much like parliamentary systems. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 09/05/2026I note that women often wore pants after that, making skirts and dresses optional. So did those clothing items’ lengths also become a matter of choice? 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 09/05/2026The article claims that between WWI to around 1970, it was often considered unstylish to have a different length of skirt and dress. But after around 1970, that constraint disappeared. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 09/05/2026en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemline - length of skirt or dress. In the Western world, it was ankle-length until World War I, becoming knee-length or a little longer until the 1960’s, then often becoming shorter. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 09/05/2026What’s more, many female pants (trousers) wearers don’t make themselves look very “butch”, with long hair, and often with “femme” features like fancy hairstyles, makeup, jewelry, and/or pretty clothes. Do many women perceive pants as “normal” female clothing and not “butch” or male-coded?! 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 09/05/2026en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trouser... - about trousers (UK), pants (US, …) as women’s clothing. I am old enough to remember when it was not very common, but it has been common over the last half-century, to the point that many women seldom or never wear skirts or dresses. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 03/05/2026Slightly diminish a book. Euclid’s Materials Plato’s Big Party Marcus Aurelius’s Daydreams Ptolemy’s The Good Copernicus’s Wanderings of the Celestial Lumps Newton’s Arithmetical Principles of Natural Speculation Darwin’s Revealing of Species 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 03/05/2026Though Roman soldiers in the more northern parts of the Empire wore them because of how cold the weather can get. 010
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 03/05/2026I remember someone addressing the question of whether the ancient Romans ever had toga parties. I consider it unlikely, because, for them, togas were normal clothing, even if togas may seem weird to us. But what might they consider weird clothing? Pants. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trousersen.wikipedia.orgTrousers - Wikipedia 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 02/05/2026But might one want some intrinsic definition of “planet”? Some geophysical one, one that does not use its orbit. That’s a planetary-mass object or planemo. In the Solar System, - Every major planet - The largest minor planets - The largest moons en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of... 000
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 02/05/2026The IAU introduced “dwarf planet” for something orbiting the Sun and gravitationally rounded, but unable to clear its orbit neighborhood. Like Ceres and Pluto. 110
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 02/05/2026Here are some attempts to estimate the smallest gravitationally rounded object: Which are the dwarfs in the Solar System? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... The Potato Radius: a Lower Minimum Size for Dwarf Planets arxiv.org/abs/1004.1091 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 02/05/2026In 2015, Jean-Luc Margot published an attempt to quantify clearing one’s orbit: “A Quantitative Criterion for Defining Planets” iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1... All the major planets are above his threshold, and all the minor ones below it. Exoplanets are also above his threshold. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 02/05/2026In 2006, the International Astronomical Union issued yet another redefinition of “planet”: 1. It orbits the Sun. 2. It is massive enough to give itself a round shape. 3. It has cleared its neighborhood, around its orbit. The first one is specific to the Solar System, and the third is contentious. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 02/05/2026Starting in the 1990’s, astronomers discovered numerous trans-Neptunian objects, many with orbits much like Pluto’s, and some of them almost Pluto’s size and larger. It was a repeat of the 19th cy., when Ceres was joined by numerous other asteroids. 100
Loren Petrich @lpetrich.bsky.social · 02/05/2026But in 1930, they discovered Pluto, small and with an orbit between Neptune’s orbit and 2/3 further. Though it was an oddball by planet standards, it was accepted as a major planet, making nine, the number that many of us grew up with. 100
