This is a common mistake with large data sets and the thinking around stuff that is considered infinite.
If you flip a coin infinite times, there is a chance that you will only ever see one side of that coin as a result. The chance is small, but not zero. Its the same with infinite possibilities, doesn't mean you will see all possibilities.
Infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters with infinite time will not necessarily ever manage to type out the works of Shakespeare.
Infinite bananas seems the critical missing component here.
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
MATH IS THE SATANS TOOL TO BLIND YOU TO THE CUBE MATH ONE DAY SINGLE ROTATION SOUL DIES WITH THE BODY TIMECUBE SINGLE DAY FOUR DAY ROTATION ETERNAL LIFE IN JESUS.
You laugh, but I've seen the theory that the ancient Muslim world stopped all the great progress they had because one of the people in charge, I don't know ranks right now or the name of the person and I'm not looking it up, decided numbers ARE literally Satan, which plunged them into the dark ages that they currently are undergoing with only infighting going on. No recent scientific progress because all that happens is fighting. I hope this isn't too borderline racist, so I apologize if it is. I only vaguely remember it because it's covered in the same shit with a different flavor of the attacks on Jews.
Things like that happened, but long after the Muslim world fell out of the spotlight in the academic world around the 17th Century.
The decline of the Islamic golden age empires was slow (even after European monasteries took over as the guardians of classical text it was hundreds of years before the European renaissance saw them do as much with it as Egypt or Mali had at their peaks), and largely economic, as are most empires' falls.
What we see today came out of the rise of fundamentalism, which is even more recent in Islam than in Christianity, though somewhat more successful.
Yeah, IIRC some of the big things which contributed to the “fall” of the Islamic world were things like the Mongols fucking up Iraq, which was a major center of culture and economics and never really recovered, Europeans developing advanced sailing technology and bypassing their trade routes to India and China, etc.
There were anti-technology Muslim leaders, but there were also anti-technology Christian leaders. The Islamic world never unified to the extent that China or Edo period Japan were where one dude could say “hey everyone no more ocean going ships/guns/etc” and people would actually listen to them.
As for the decline of the Muslim world, there are several reason, multiple major wars and plagues being the biggest reasons. The sack of Baghdad was only one of many many battles that sapped the Muslim world of its vitality.
Its actually more relevant to ask why the west won and the discovery of America is a bigger part then most realize. It gave Europe access to some prime farmland and fishing grounds. It allowed the wholesale dumping of surplus populations overseas(Transporting troublemakers was a fun one and a precursor to the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade). It encouraged sailing and trade for the entirety of Europe. The Triangle Trade helped create commerce and banking institutions.
There are many other reasons, but Columbus had a major impact on human history. (The guy himself was an asshole). That being said, they knew the world was round and there was bound to be somebody that tried for a direct route to India sooner or later. Either that or a Portuguese ship gets blown across the Atlantic to present day Brazil on its trip down Africa(that is recorded as happening).
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Back to conspiracy theories, Trump started tweeting out of the blue that he definitely did not have a series of mini-strokes. (I am not going to link the Tweet but you can go find it if you really want to.) No one in the media or news ever accused him of having strokes; it's all been social media speculation.
So, Donald Trump definitely had a series of mini-strokes at minimum. Probably still ongoing, since that's kinda how it works. A lot of the mental decline people associate with Alzheimer's is actually caused by strokes that just keep happening. Each one might be silent, but they add up quickly.
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NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
Back to conspiracy theories, Trump started tweeting out of the blue that he definitely did not have a series of mini-strokes. (I am not going to link the Tweet but you can go find it if you really want to.) No one in the media or news ever accused him of having strokes; it's all been social media speculation.
So, Donald Trump definitely had a series of mini-strokes at minimum. Probably still ongoing, since that's kinda how it works. A lot of the mental decline people associate with Alzheimer's is actually caused by strokes that just keep happening. Each one might be silent, but they add up quickly.
Had someone elsewhere bring this up, apparently one of the many tell-all books we've had brought up that one perfectly normal routine checkup Trump had a while back. Supposedly Pence was on standby in case the procedure went wrong, but no details were given as to what the procedure was.
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Back to conspiracy theories, Trump started tweeting out of the blue that he definitely did not have a series of mini-strokes. (I am not going to link the Tweet but you can go find it if you really want to.) No one in the media or news ever accused him of having strokes; it's all been social media speculation.
So, Donald Trump definitely had a series of mini-strokes at minimum. Probably still ongoing, since that's kinda how it works. A lot of the mental decline people associate with Alzheimer's is actually caused by strokes that just keep happening. Each one might be silent, but they add up quickly.
Oof. My MiL had a series of mini strokes and the result is horrific. An intelligent, funny, kind English teacher transformed into a paranoid delusional. It wasn't all at once, mind you. It's been a gradual decline that is still terrifyingly fast. She's getting to the point where she is kind of forgetting how to eat.
Trump's mini strikes must have been relatively minor for him to still be able give a speech.
This isn't very conspiratorial. Obviously he's going to pretend to stroke out in October, everyone votes for Pence and an as yet unnanounced VP out of sympathy, then oh damn he's made a miraculous recovery from the power of prayer, I alone can return from the Great Beyond, and he's President again. I literally can't think of a more foolproof plan to win an election.
This isn't very conspiratorial. Obviously he's going to pretend to stroke out in October, everyone votes for Pence and an as yet unnanounced VP out of sympathy, then oh damn he's made a miraculous recovery from the power of prayer, I alone can return from the Great Beyond, and he's President again. I literally can't think of a more foolproof plan to win an election.
This plan requires Trump to both have a long-term plan and pretend to be physically weak.
I realized the other day that we haven't heard an official cause of death for Trump's brother, realized that's probably catnip to conspiracy theorists, dipped my toe in the pool, and then noped right out of there.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Trump's mini strikes must have been relatively minor for him to still be able give a speech.
Nonsensical rambling word salad "speeches" with occasional slurred words, no awareness, no point, and occasional inability to drink water and/or walk away. Sure, for certain definitions of "relatively minor."
I realized the other day that we haven't heard an official cause of death for Trump's brother, realized that's probably catnip to conspiracy theorists, dipped my toe in the pool, and then noped right out of there.
For people wondering but too scared to look:
There are two somewhat reasonable conspiracy theories about Robert Trump's death. The first is COVID-19, which is bring covered up for obvious political reasons. He had been in the hospital for weeks for unspecified/generic heart/lung issues which could very well be coronavirus related.
Of course he could have been in the hospital for other sorts of pneumonia/heart failure issues - but he left the hospital in order to sue Mary Trump for breaking the family NDA over her book. After he filed the lawsuit and talked to the lawyers and did photo op sorts of stuff, he went right back to the hospital where he keeled over and died quickly. It strongly seems like, SARS2 or not, he really shouldn't have left that hospital, which he very likely did at the behest of Donald. Being out of the hospital for those days meant whatever his condition was, it went from "stable" to "very much not stable" and then "dead." Which yeah, would mean Donald Trump is responsible for the deaths of two of his brothers. And that has to be covered up, if only for Trump's ego.
There's also a lot of stupid crazy shit. If you've ever seen QAnon stuff you can just use your imagination.
As for the decline of the Muslim world, there are several reason, multiple major wars and plagues being the biggest reasons. The sack of Baghdad was only one of many many battles that sapped the Muslim world of its vitality.
Its actually more relevant to ask why the west won and the discovery of America is a bigger part then most realize. It gave Europe access to some prime farmland and fishing grounds. It allowed the wholesale dumping of surplus populations overseas(Transporting troublemakers was a fun one and a precursor to the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade). It encouraged sailing and trade for the entirety of Europe. The Triangle Trade helped create commerce and banking institutions.
There are many other reasons, but Columbus had a major impact on human history. (The guy himself was an asshole). That being said, they knew the world was round and there was bound to be somebody that tried for a direct route to India sooner or later. Either that or a Portuguese ship gets blown across the Atlantic to present day Brazil on its trip down Africa(that is recorded as happening).
Europe basically did the civilization equivalent of an exploding crit in an RPG game (like in some systems where you roll a crit and it lets you roll for more damage, then you get a max value on that roll which lets you roll more dice, etc.
The discovery and exploitation of the Americas was a big deal, but it also took navigation from being basically a niche occupation for traders and fishermen to being a major technological focus, which had the knock on effects of making things like astronomy and mathematics get a lot more interest, spurring the scientific revolution. At the same time it created a huge demand for industry and transportation (if for no other reason than to build all the ships and related items that were needed), which itself led to interest in investing in the technologies that would spur the industrial revolution.
Europe had a big coincidental advantage in that it’s “center of mass” was a lot closer to the new world than other developed areas at the time, but it’s not hard to imagine a world where the Islamic world made that leap (especially if they had had greater long term success in Spain).
OK, so you want history with Mongols, the decline of the Islamic world, and conspiracy theory? Have I got one for you.
First of all, yes, the Mongols destroyed Baghdad. But though Baghdad was the centre of the Islamic world, it was by no means all there was in the Islamic world. On September 3, 1260, an army of Mamluks from Egypt fought the invading Mongols at a place called Ayn Jalut. There, the Mongols were defeated. It was the first time that a Mongol advance was permanently stopped in the west. There was no decline in the Islamic world as a whole. The Mamluks continued to be a power in Egypt and the region for centuries, and to the north a different group was soon gaining in power: the Ottomans.
The Ottomans conquered the remains of the Roman Empire, ending it in 1453. They grew into one of the largest and most powerful empires in world history, threatening Kiev in the north, Vienna in the west, controlling Egypt in the south, Baghdad in the east, the Mediterranean was their pond, and they controlled Mecca and Medina. The learning that Islam was famous for continued. It reached its peak under Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled between 1520 and 1566, and it’s there that we get to conspiracy theories.
I’ll quote from A World Undone by G.J. Meyer:
Suleiman had some three hundred concubines, as well as a promising young son and heir named Mustafa, when he was given a red-haired Russian girl named Ghowrem, who came to be known as Roxelana. She came into his harem as part of his share of the booty from a slave-gathering raid into what is now Poland, and she must have been a remarkable creature. (Not surprisingly, in light of the power she acquired in Constantinople, she eventually won a second name: “the witch.”) Almost from the day of her arrival, Suleiman never slept with another woman. Eventually and amazingly, he did something that no sultan had done in centuries: he married. Their love story would have been one of the great ones if it hadn’t ended up taking the dynasty and the empire in such a sordid direction.
Mustafa gave every indication of developing into yet another mighty branch on the family tree. At an early age he showed himself a bold military leader adored by his troops, a capable provincial governor, and a popular hero. But he stood in the way of the son whom Roxlana had borne to (presumably) Suleiman, and so he was doomed. Working her wiles, Roxelana persuaded Suleiman that Mustafa was plotting against him. (He was doing nothing of the kind.) With his father looking on, Mustafa was overpowered and strangled by five professional executioners whose tongues had been slit and eardrums broken so that they would hear no secrets and could never speak of what they saw. And so when Suleiman died some years later, master of an empire of almost incredible size and power, he was succeeded by Roxelana’s son, Selim II. Nothing was ever the same again.
Selim the Sot was short and fat and a drunk. He never saw a battlefield and died after eight years on the throne by falling down and fracturing his skull in his marble bath. His son, Murad III, was also a drunk and an opium addict as well; during a reign of twenty years he sired 103 children and apparently did little else. His heir, Mahomet III, began his reign by ordering all of his many brothers, the youngest of them mere children, put to death, thereby introducing that custom into Ottoman royal culture. Having done so he followed his father in devoting the rest of his life to copulation. And so it went. Every sultan from Roxelana’s son forward was a monster of degeneracy or a repulsive weakling or both. The abruptness and permanence of the change, the sharpness of the contrast between Mustafa and his half-brother Selim II, has given rise to speculation that Roxelana’s son was not Suleiman’s son at all.
Whatever the case about the family tree of the Sultans, with rotting leadership whose greatest concern was staying in power, and with that rotting leadership still possessing immense authority in all matters, the Islamic world slowly fell into decay. If you really want to go off the deep end in conspiracy theory: Roxelana’s deliberate removal Mustafa was not for any love of her son. Rather, Ghowrem did it because Mustafa would have been another great leader and her son would be a terrible leader, and thereby would do immense harm to an empire and people she secretly hated. A decades long con to try to destroy the greatest empire in the world from within, and it ultimately succeeded.
Suleiman’s reign was the high water mark of the empire. Had the Empire continued on the path Suleiman was leading it on, we would probably be living in a very different world, one where there was no question of “what caused the decline in the Islamic world” because there would have been no decline in art and learning and technological leadership as we currently see it. Yes, the Ottoman’s wouldn’t have had access to the New World to the extent of the European powers. However, they were expanding rapidly into Europe, and a situation where they became a form of Super Germany + Super Russia would have more than made up for the lack. They could have pushed into Germany, Russia, India, Africa, and further. They were the greatest power in the world, and they could have become far greater still.
Instead, whether due to a mother’s jealousy or a slave’s hate, the course of the empire all of the regions it controlled shifted.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
OK, so you want history with Mongols, the decline of the Islamic world, and conspiracy theory? Have I got one for you.
First of all, yes, the Mongols destroyed Baghdad. But though Baghdad was the centre of the Islamic world, it was by no means all there was in the Islamic world. On September 3, 1260, an army of Mamluks from Egypt fought the invading Mongols at a place called Ayn Jalut. There, the Mongols were defeated. It was the first time that a Mongol advance was permanently stopped in the west. There was no decline in the Islamic world as a whole. The Mamluks continued to be a power in Egypt and the region for centuries, and to the north a different group was soon gaining in power: the Ottomans.
The Ottomans conquered the remains of the Roman Empire, ending it in 1453. They grew into one of the largest and most powerful empires in world history, threatening Kiev in the north, Vienna in the west, controlling Egypt in the south, Baghdad in the east, the Mediterranean was their pond, and they controlled Mecca and Medina. The learning that Islam was famous for continued. It reached its peak under Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled between 1520 and 1566, and it’s there that we get to conspiracy theories.
I’ll quote from A World Undone by G.J. Meyer:
Suleiman had some three hundred concubines, as well as a promising young son and heir named Mustafa, when he was given a red-haired Russian girl named Ghowrem, who came to be known as Roxelana. She came into his harem as part of his share of the booty from a slave-gathering raid into what is now Poland, and she must have been a remarkable creature. (Not surprisingly, in light of the power she acquired in Constantinople, she eventually won a second name: “the witch.”) Almost from the day of her arrival, Suleiman never slept with another woman. Eventually and amazingly, he did something that no sultan had done in centuries: he married. Their love story would have been one of the great ones if it hadn’t ended up taking the dynasty and the empire in such a sordid direction.
Mustafa gave every indication of developing into yet another mighty branch on the family tree. At an early age he showed himself a bold military leader adored by his troops, a capable provincial governor, and a popular hero. But he stood in the way of the son whom Roxlana had borne to (presumably) Suleiman, and so he was doomed. Working her wiles, Roxelana persuaded Suleiman that Mustafa was plotting against him. (He was doing nothing of the kind.) With his father looking on, Mustafa was overpowered and strangled by five professional executioners whose tongues had been slit and eardrums broken so that they would hear no secrets and could never speak of what they saw. And so when Suleiman died some years later, master of an empire of almost incredible size and power, he was succeeded by Roxelana’s son, Selim II. Nothing was ever the same again.
Selim the Sot was short and fat and a drunk. He never saw a battlefield and died after eight years on the throne by falling down and fracturing his skull in his marble bath. His son, Murad III, was also a drunk and an opium addict as well; during a reign of twenty years he sired 103 children and apparently did little else. His heir, Mahomet III, began his reign by ordering all of his many brothers, the youngest of them mere children, put to death, thereby introducing that custom into Ottoman royal culture. Having done so he followed his father in devoting the rest of his life to copulation. And so it went. Every sultan from Roxelana’s son forward was a monster of degeneracy or a repulsive weakling or both. The abruptness and permanence of the change, the sharpness of the contrast between Mustafa and his half-brother Selim II, has given rise to speculation that Roxelana’s son was not Suleiman’s son at all.
Whatever the case about the family tree of the Sultans, with rotting leadership whose greatest concern was staying in power, and with that rotting leadership still possessing immense authority in all matters, the Islamic world slowly fell into decay. If you really want to go off the deep end in conspiracy theory: Roxelana’s deliberate removal Mustafa was not for any love of her son. Rather, Ghowrem did it because Mustafa would have been another great leader and her son would be a terrible leader, and thereby would do immense harm to an empire and people she secretly hated. A decades long con to try to destroy the greatest empire in the world from within, and it ultimately succeeded.
Suleiman’s reign was the high water mark of the empire. Had the Empire continued on the path Suleiman was leading it on, we would probably be living in a very different world, one where there was no question of “what caused the decline in the Islamic world” because there would have been no decline in art and learning and technological leadership as we currently see it. Yes, the Ottoman’s wouldn’t have had access to the New World to the extent of the European powers. However, they were expanding rapidly into Europe, and a situation where they became a form of Super Germany + Super Russia would have more than made up for the lack. They could have pushed into Germany, Russia, India, Africa, and further. They were the greatest power in the world, and they could have become far greater still.
Instead, whether due to a mother’s jealousy or a slave’s hate, the course of the empire all of the regions it controlled shifted.
uh...
that's a hell of a story. wow... shame the Ezio Trilogy ended a few decades before that cause the Asscreed devs would've had a field day here.
OK, so you want history with Mongols, the decline of the Islamic world, and conspiracy theory? Have I got one for you.
First of all, yes, the Mongols destroyed Baghdad. But though Baghdad was the centre of the Islamic world, it was by no means all there was in the Islamic world. On September 3, 1260, an army of Mamluks from Egypt fought the invading Mongols at a place called Ayn Jalut. There, the Mongols were defeated. It was the first time that a Mongol advance was permanently stopped in the west. There was no decline in the Islamic world as a whole. The Mamluks continued to be a power in Egypt and the region for centuries, and to the north a different group was soon gaining in power: the Ottomans.
The Ottomans conquered the remains of the Roman Empire, ending it in 1453. They grew into one of the largest and most powerful empires in world history, threatening Kiev in the north, Vienna in the west, controlling Egypt in the south, Baghdad in the east, the Mediterranean was their pond, and they controlled Mecca and Medina. The learning that Islam was famous for continued. It reached its peak under Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled between 1520 and 1566, and it’s there that we get to conspiracy theories.
I’ll quote from A World Undone by G.J. Meyer:
Suleiman had some three hundred concubines, as well as a promising young son and heir named Mustafa, when he was given a red-haired Russian girl named Ghowrem, who came to be known as Roxelana. She came into his harem as part of his share of the booty from a slave-gathering raid into what is now Poland, and she must have been a remarkable creature. (Not surprisingly, in light of the power she acquired in Constantinople, she eventually won a second name: “the witch.”) Almost from the day of her arrival, Suleiman never slept with another woman. Eventually and amazingly, he did something that no sultan had done in centuries: he married. Their love story would have been one of the great ones if it hadn’t ended up taking the dynasty and the empire in such a sordid direction.
Mustafa gave every indication of developing into yet another mighty branch on the family tree. At an early age he showed himself a bold military leader adored by his troops, a capable provincial governor, and a popular hero. But he stood in the way of the son whom Roxlana had borne to (presumably) Suleiman, and so he was doomed. Working her wiles, Roxelana persuaded Suleiman that Mustafa was plotting against him. (He was doing nothing of the kind.) With his father looking on, Mustafa was overpowered and strangled by five professional executioners whose tongues had been slit and eardrums broken so that they would hear no secrets and could never speak of what they saw. And so when Suleiman died some years later, master of an empire of almost incredible size and power, he was succeeded by Roxelana’s son, Selim II. Nothing was ever the same again.
Selim the Sot was short and fat and a drunk. He never saw a battlefield and died after eight years on the throne by falling down and fracturing his skull in his marble bath. His son, Murad III, was also a drunk and an opium addict as well; during a reign of twenty years he sired 103 children and apparently did little else. His heir, Mahomet III, began his reign by ordering all of his many brothers, the youngest of them mere children, put to death, thereby introducing that custom into Ottoman royal culture. Having done so he followed his father in devoting the rest of his life to copulation. And so it went. Every sultan from Roxelana’s son forward was a monster of degeneracy or a repulsive weakling or both. The abruptness and permanence of the change, the sharpness of the contrast between Mustafa and his half-brother Selim II, has given rise to speculation that Roxelana’s son was not Suleiman’s son at all.
Whatever the case about the family tree of the Sultans, with rotting leadership whose greatest concern was staying in power, and with that rotting leadership still possessing immense authority in all matters, the Islamic world slowly fell into decay. If you really want to go off the deep end in conspiracy theory: Roxelana’s deliberate removal Mustafa was not for any love of her son. Rather, Ghowrem did it because Mustafa would have been another great leader and her son would be a terrible leader, and thereby would do immense harm to an empire and people she secretly hated. A decades long con to try to destroy the greatest empire in the world from within, and it ultimately succeeded.
Suleiman’s reign was the high water mark of the empire. Had the Empire continued on the path Suleiman was leading it on, we would probably be living in a very different world, one where there was no question of “what caused the decline in the Islamic world” because there would have been no decline in art and learning and technological leadership as we currently see it. Yes, the Ottoman’s wouldn’t have had access to the New World to the extent of the European powers. However, they were expanding rapidly into Europe, and a situation where they became a form of Super Germany + Super Russia would have more than made up for the lack. They could have pushed into Germany, Russia, India, Africa, and further. They were the greatest power in the world, and they could have become far greater still.
Instead, whether due to a mother’s jealousy or a slave’s hate, the course of the empire all of the regions it controlled shifted.
I don’t know that the path Suleiman was going on was that sustainable much past him anyway. They had been on a two hundred year conquest spree, but ultimately most of those conquests were small states that were militarily inferior, or Muslim states with populations and nobility that were pretty happy to jump onto the ottoman train.
By the end of Suleimans reign the borders of the Empire were Russia, the Poland-lithuania commonwealth, the Holy Roman Empire, a newly resurgent Persia, the sahara desert, and the Mediterranean sea. None of those were low hanging fruit that were likely to be gobbled up. And its not like the Ottoman empire immediately fell after Suleiman, they would seige Vienna again a hundred years later and it would be the 1700s before things really started falling apart (and the final blow obviously didn’t come until WW1).
OK, so you want history with Mongols, the decline of the Islamic world, and conspiracy theory? Have I got one for you.
First of all, yes, the Mongols destroyed Baghdad. But though Baghdad was the centre of the Islamic world, it was by no means all there was in the Islamic world. On September 3, 1260, an army of Mamluks from Egypt fought the invading Mongols at a place called Ayn Jalut. There, the Mongols were defeated. It was the first time that a Mongol advance was permanently stopped in the west. There was no decline in the Islamic world as a whole. The Mamluks continued to be a power in Egypt and the region for centuries, and to the north a different group was soon gaining in power: the Ottomans.
The Ottomans conquered the remains of the Roman Empire, ending it in 1453. They grew into one of the largest and most powerful empires in world history, threatening Kiev in the north, Vienna in the west, controlling Egypt in the south, Baghdad in the east, the Mediterranean was their pond, and they controlled Mecca and Medina. The learning that Islam was famous for continued. It reached its peak under Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled between 1520 and 1566, and it’s there that we get to conspiracy theories.
I’ll quote from A World Undone by G.J. Meyer:
Suleiman had some three hundred concubines, as well as a promising young son and heir named Mustafa, when he was given a red-haired Russian girl named Ghowrem, who came to be known as Roxelana. She came into his harem as part of his share of the booty from a slave-gathering raid into what is now Poland, and she must have been a remarkable creature. (Not surprisingly, in light of the power she acquired in Constantinople, she eventually won a second name: “the witch.”) Almost from the day of her arrival, Suleiman never slept with another woman. Eventually and amazingly, he did something that no sultan had done in centuries: he married. Their love story would have been one of the great ones if it hadn’t ended up taking the dynasty and the empire in such a sordid direction.
Mustafa gave every indication of developing into yet another mighty branch on the family tree. At an early age he showed himself a bold military leader adored by his troops, a capable provincial governor, and a popular hero. But he stood in the way of the son whom Roxlana had borne to (presumably) Suleiman, and so he was doomed. Working her wiles, Roxelana persuaded Suleiman that Mustafa was plotting against him. (He was doing nothing of the kind.) With his father looking on, Mustafa was overpowered and strangled by five professional executioners whose tongues had been slit and eardrums broken so that they would hear no secrets and could never speak of what they saw. And so when Suleiman died some years later, master of an empire of almost incredible size and power, he was succeeded by Roxelana’s son, Selim II. Nothing was ever the same again.
Selim the Sot was short and fat and a drunk. He never saw a battlefield and died after eight years on the throne by falling down and fracturing his skull in his marble bath. His son, Murad III, was also a drunk and an opium addict as well; during a reign of twenty years he sired 103 children and apparently did little else. His heir, Mahomet III, began his reign by ordering all of his many brothers, the youngest of them mere children, put to death, thereby introducing that custom into Ottoman royal culture. Having done so he followed his father in devoting the rest of his life to copulation. And so it went. Every sultan from Roxelana’s son forward was a monster of degeneracy or a repulsive weakling or both. The abruptness and permanence of the change, the sharpness of the contrast between Mustafa and his half-brother Selim II, has given rise to speculation that Roxelana’s son was not Suleiman’s son at all.
Whatever the case about the family tree of the Sultans, with rotting leadership whose greatest concern was staying in power, and with that rotting leadership still possessing immense authority in all matters, the Islamic world slowly fell into decay. If you really want to go off the deep end in conspiracy theory: Roxelana’s deliberate removal Mustafa was not for any love of her son. Rather, Ghowrem did it because Mustafa would have been another great leader and her son would be a terrible leader, and thereby would do immense harm to an empire and people she secretly hated. A decades long con to try to destroy the greatest empire in the world from within, and it ultimately succeeded.
Suleiman’s reign was the high water mark of the empire. Had the Empire continued on the path Suleiman was leading it on, we would probably be living in a very different world, one where there was no question of “what caused the decline in the Islamic world” because there would have been no decline in art and learning and technological leadership as we currently see it. Yes, the Ottoman’s wouldn’t have had access to the New World to the extent of the European powers. However, they were expanding rapidly into Europe, and a situation where they became a form of Super Germany + Super Russia would have more than made up for the lack. They could have pushed into Germany, Russia, India, Africa, and further. They were the greatest power in the world, and they could have become far greater still.
Instead, whether due to a mother’s jealousy or a slave’s hate, the course of the empire all of the regions it controlled shifted.
Whatat pisses me off is that the Russians have done the exact same plan again and we didn't even get a hot redhead out of it.
OK, so you want history with Mongols, the decline of the Islamic world, and conspiracy theory? Have I got one for you.
First of all, yes, the Mongols destroyed Baghdad. But though Baghdad was the centre of the Islamic world, it was by no means all there was in the Islamic world. On September 3, 1260, an army of Mamluks from Egypt fought the invading Mongols at a place called Ayn Jalut. There, the Mongols were defeated. It was the first time that a Mongol advance was permanently stopped in the west. There was no decline in the Islamic world as a whole. The Mamluks continued to be a power in Egypt and the region for centuries, and to the north a different group was soon gaining in power: the Ottomans.
The Ottomans conquered the remains of the Roman Empire, ending it in 1453. They grew into one of the largest and most powerful empires in world history, threatening Kiev in the north, Vienna in the west, controlling Egypt in the south, Baghdad in the east, the Mediterranean was their pond, and they controlled Mecca and Medina. The learning that Islam was famous for continued. It reached its peak under Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled between 1520 and 1566, and it’s there that we get to conspiracy theories.
I’ll quote from A World Undone by G.J. Meyer:
Suleiman had some three hundred concubines, as well as a promising young son and heir named Mustafa, when he was given a red-haired Russian girl named Ghowrem, who came to be known as Roxelana. She came into his harem as part of his share of the booty from a slave-gathering raid into what is now Poland, and she must have been a remarkable creature. (Not surprisingly, in light of the power she acquired in Constantinople, she eventually won a second name: “the witch.”) Almost from the day of her arrival, Suleiman never slept with another woman. Eventually and amazingly, he did something that no sultan had done in centuries: he married. Their love story would have been one of the great ones if it hadn’t ended up taking the dynasty and the empire in such a sordid direction.
Mustafa gave every indication of developing into yet another mighty branch on the family tree. At an early age he showed himself a bold military leader adored by his troops, a capable provincial governor, and a popular hero. But he stood in the way of the son whom Roxlana had borne to (presumably) Suleiman, and so he was doomed. Working her wiles, Roxelana persuaded Suleiman that Mustafa was plotting against him. (He was doing nothing of the kind.) With his father looking on, Mustafa was overpowered and strangled by five professional executioners whose tongues had been slit and eardrums broken so that they would hear no secrets and could never speak of what they saw. And so when Suleiman died some years later, master of an empire of almost incredible size and power, he was succeeded by Roxelana’s son, Selim II. Nothing was ever the same again.
Selim the Sot was short and fat and a drunk. He never saw a battlefield and died after eight years on the throne by falling down and fracturing his skull in his marble bath. His son, Murad III, was also a drunk and an opium addict as well; during a reign of twenty years he sired 103 children and apparently did little else. His heir, Mahomet III, began his reign by ordering all of his many brothers, the youngest of them mere children, put to death, thereby introducing that custom into Ottoman royal culture. Having done so he followed his father in devoting the rest of his life to copulation. And so it went. Every sultan from Roxelana’s son forward was a monster of degeneracy or a repulsive weakling or both. The abruptness and permanence of the change, the sharpness of the contrast between Mustafa and his half-brother Selim II, has given rise to speculation that Roxelana’s son was not Suleiman’s son at all.
Whatever the case about the family tree of the Sultans, with rotting leadership whose greatest concern was staying in power, and with that rotting leadership still possessing immense authority in all matters, the Islamic world slowly fell into decay. If you really want to go off the deep end in conspiracy theory: Roxelana’s deliberate removal Mustafa was not for any love of her son. Rather, Ghowrem did it because Mustafa would have been another great leader and her son would be a terrible leader, and thereby would do immense harm to an empire and people she secretly hated. A decades long con to try to destroy the greatest empire in the world from within, and it ultimately succeeded.
Suleiman’s reign was the high water mark of the empire. Had the Empire continued on the path Suleiman was leading it on, we would probably be living in a very different world, one where there was no question of “what caused the decline in the Islamic world” because there would have been no decline in art and learning and technological leadership as we currently see it. Yes, the Ottoman’s wouldn’t have had access to the New World to the extent of the European powers. However, they were expanding rapidly into Europe, and a situation where they became a form of Super Germany + Super Russia would have more than made up for the lack. They could have pushed into Germany, Russia, India, Africa, and further. They were the greatest power in the world, and they could have become far greater still.
Instead, whether due to a mother’s jealousy or a slave’s hate, the course of the empire all of the regions it controlled shifted.
Whatat pisses me off is that the Russians have done the exact same plan again and we didn't even get a hot redhead out of it.
Just a dumpy orange blonde.
Butina was a redhead.
I guess that makes the NRA Suleiman and Trump Selim in this metaphor.
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One of Ian M Banks Culture Novels has this as a minor subplot. A Contact Agent(Space CIA) is tasked with bring a Heir to a mighty Empire across the desert past a bunch of nomad warrior tribes that the empire was oppressing for ethnic/religious reasons. He succeeds and the Heir becomes the Emperor and basically turns out to be completely useless with his heirs worse then him. Meanwhile the Nomads gather strength as the empire no longer is capable of oppressing them and their religion starts calling for a holy war...
All so that in the ensuing chaos, the Culture could encourage the nomad's replacement empire to take a path favorable to the Culture.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
This seems less like an injury/condition of a walk, and more like the walk you see from a bored child who is only half listening and doesn't want to even be there. Which, fits
One of Ian M Banks Culture Novels has this as a minor subplot. A Contact Agent(Space CIA) is tasked with bring a Heir to a mighty Empire across the desert past a bunch of nomad warrior tribes that the empire was oppressing for ethnic/religious reasons. He succeeds and the Heir becomes the Emperor and basically turns out to be completely useless with his heirs worse then him. Meanwhile the Nomads gather strength as the empire no longer is capable of oppressing them and their religion starts calling for a holy war...
All so that in the ensuing chaos, the Culture could encourage the nomad's replacement empire to take a path favorable to the Culture.
Yeah... the Culture has lots of velvet gloves for things...
And some of them are more like Grey Area. Who has a very evocative nickname among the other AIs.
Just saw someone say that there are no homeless in America and the homeless encampments are antifa camps. I am so fucking tired of this country.
Are the sickly-looking guys in ragged clothing passed out in doorways also antifa? Because if so, antifa aren't as terrifying as I've been led to believe!
The homeless conspiracy thing is something I don't understand at all. That's one that my step-father is thoroughly on board with. He thinks all homeless people are secretly rich because they make so much money panhandling and are too lazy (easy money) to get a real job. He thinks they are all faking and are con artists. He hates them and it makes him angry. Donald Trump is not a con artist, however, all the bad things people say about him and his past and his present are all lies. He's impervious to logic about it.
The homeless conspiracy thing is something I don't understand at all. That's one that my step-father is thoroughly on board with. He thinks all homeless people are secretly rich because they make so much money panhandling and are too lazy (easy money) to get a real job. He thinks they are all faking and are con artists. He hates them and it makes him angry. Donald Trump is not a con artist, however, all the bad things people say about him and his past and his present are all lies. He's impervious to logic about it.
I mean, even if every panhandler is secretly rich because it's so lucrative, is it that easy? I sure as shit don't stand outdoors 12 hours a day, rain or blazing heat to make a living. I guess it's easy compared to, like, construction or UPS deliveries maybe but it certainly doesn't seem easy. To say nothing of the psychological costs...
The homeless conspiracy thing is something I don't understand at all. That's one that my step-father is thoroughly on board with. He thinks all homeless people are secretly rich because they make so much money panhandling and are too lazy (easy money) to get a real job. He thinks they are all faking and are con artists. He hates them and it makes him angry. Donald Trump is not a con artist, however, all the bad things people say about him and his past and his present are all lies. He's impervious to logic about it.
I mean, even if every panhandler is secretly rich because it's so lucrative, is it that easy? I sure as shit don't stand outdoors 12 hours a day, rain or blazing heat to make a living. I guess it's easy compared to, like, construction or UPS deliveries maybe but it certainly doesn't seem easy. To say nothing of the psychological costs...
The conspiracy usually has it that they don't stand outside 12 hours a day, which is easy for people to believe because generally people won't go past those specific places more than once or twice a day. For all they know, the panhandlers are only at their spot at the specific times that they see them.
Sometimes you'll also get specific conspiracy details like them getting picked up by their family in some kind of fancy car.
Over here in Sweden the conspiracies are generally less about them being secretly rich and more about them sending the money back to Where They Came From (usually the Ukraine, IIRC?), which... is actually true in some cases as they're sending some of the little they get back to their families, I guess, but it's not the huge problem some people like to make it out to be. The arguments are usually about it removing money from circulation within Sweden which, uh, sure buddy I definitely believe that it's economics that you're worried about and not just poor immigrants.
The homeless conspiracy thing is something I don't understand at all. That's one that my step-father is thoroughly on board with. He thinks all homeless people are secretly rich because they make so much money panhandling and are too lazy (easy money) to get a real job. He thinks they are all faking and are con artists. He hates them and it makes him angry. Donald Trump is not a con artist, however, all the bad things people say about him and his past and his present are all lies. He's impervious to logic about it.
I mean, even if every panhandler is secretly rich because it's so lucrative, is it that easy? I sure as shit don't stand outdoors 12 hours a day, rain or blazing heat to make a living. I guess it's easy compared to, like, construction or UPS deliveries maybe but it certainly doesn't seem easy. To say nothing of the psychological costs...
The conspiracy usually has it that they don't stand outside 12 hours a day, which is easy for people to believe because generally people won't go past those specific places more than once or twice a day. For all they know, the panhandlers are only at their spot at the specific times that they see them.
Sometimes you'll also get specific conspiracy details like them getting picked up by their family in some kind of fancy car.
.
It mirrors the whole "welfare queen" rationalization to justify not helping people (because they're probably scamming you!), but I suspect it's probably millenia old.
My favorite version is when they allege that the untold riches they make off with each day funds an elaborate panhandling organization, compete with with luxury car service to and from their secret gated hobo community.
The broad strokes are accurate in places, apart from the vast sums of money, the gated community being the underside of a bridge, and this is Florida, so they have to collaborate in shifts or they'd fucking die.
Monkeys will refuse a gift of fruit if they see another Monkey has been given more or a better one. Spite and selfishness is millions of years old, not just millennia.
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Infinite bananas seems the critical missing component here.
You laugh, but I've seen the theory that the ancient Muslim world stopped all the great progress they had because one of the people in charge, I don't know ranks right now or the name of the person and I'm not looking it up, decided numbers ARE literally Satan, which plunged them into the dark ages that they currently are undergoing with only infighting going on. No recent scientific progress because all that happens is fighting. I hope this isn't too borderline racist, so I apologize if it is. I only vaguely remember it because it's covered in the same shit with a different flavor of the attacks on Jews.
The decline of the Islamic golden age empires was slow (even after European monasteries took over as the guardians of classical text it was hundreds of years before the European renaissance saw them do as much with it as Egypt or Mali had at their peaks), and largely economic, as are most empires' falls.
What we see today came out of the rise of fundamentalism, which is even more recent in Islam than in Christianity, though somewhat more successful.
There were anti-technology Muslim leaders, but there were also anti-technology Christian leaders. The Islamic world never unified to the extent that China or Edo period Japan were where one dude could say “hey everyone no more ocean going ships/guns/etc” and people would actually listen to them.
Historians report that for days after the sack, the Eufrates ran black with the ink of books tossed into the river by the Mongols.
That sound like hyperbole. probably more likely the ash from burning buildings did it if it happened at all.
Its actually more relevant to ask why the west won and the discovery of America is a bigger part then most realize. It gave Europe access to some prime farmland and fishing grounds. It allowed the wholesale dumping of surplus populations overseas(Transporting troublemakers was a fun one and a precursor to the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade). It encouraged sailing and trade for the entirety of Europe. The Triangle Trade helped create commerce and banking institutions.
There are many other reasons, but Columbus had a major impact on human history. (The guy himself was an asshole). That being said, they knew the world was round and there was bound to be somebody that tried for a direct route to India sooner or later. Either that or a Portuguese ship gets blown across the Atlantic to present day Brazil on its trip down Africa(that is recorded as happening).
So, Donald Trump definitely had a series of mini-strokes at minimum. Probably still ongoing, since that's kinda how it works. A lot of the mental decline people associate with Alzheimer's is actually caused by strokes that just keep happening. Each one might be silent, but they add up quickly.
Had someone elsewhere bring this up, apparently one of the many tell-all books we've had brought up that one perfectly normal routine checkup Trump had a while back. Supposedly Pence was on standby in case the procedure went wrong, but no details were given as to what the procedure was.
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Oof. My MiL had a series of mini strokes and the result is horrific. An intelligent, funny, kind English teacher transformed into a paranoid delusional. It wasn't all at once, mind you. It's been a gradual decline that is still terrifyingly fast. She's getting to the point where she is kind of forgetting how to eat.
Trump's mini strikes must have been relatively minor for him to still be able give a speech.
This plan requires Trump to both have a long-term plan and pretend to be physically weak.
Ergo, your hypothesis cannot be true.
Nonsensical rambling word salad "speeches" with occasional slurred words, no awareness, no point, and occasional inability to drink water and/or walk away. Sure, for certain definitions of "relatively minor."
For people wondering but too scared to look:
There are two somewhat reasonable conspiracy theories about Robert Trump's death. The first is COVID-19, which is bring covered up for obvious political reasons. He had been in the hospital for weeks for unspecified/generic heart/lung issues which could very well be coronavirus related.
Of course he could have been in the hospital for other sorts of pneumonia/heart failure issues - but he left the hospital in order to sue Mary Trump for breaking the family NDA over her book. After he filed the lawsuit and talked to the lawyers and did photo op sorts of stuff, he went right back to the hospital where he keeled over and died quickly. It strongly seems like, SARS2 or not, he really shouldn't have left that hospital, which he very likely did at the behest of Donald. Being out of the hospital for those days meant whatever his condition was, it went from "stable" to "very much not stable" and then "dead." Which yeah, would mean Donald Trump is responsible for the deaths of two of his brothers. And that has to be covered up, if only for Trump's ego.
There's also a lot of stupid crazy shit. If you've ever seen QAnon stuff you can just use your imagination.
Europe basically did the civilization equivalent of an exploding crit in an RPG game (like in some systems where you roll a crit and it lets you roll for more damage, then you get a max value on that roll which lets you roll more dice, etc.
The discovery and exploitation of the Americas was a big deal, but it also took navigation from being basically a niche occupation for traders and fishermen to being a major technological focus, which had the knock on effects of making things like astronomy and mathematics get a lot more interest, spurring the scientific revolution. At the same time it created a huge demand for industry and transportation (if for no other reason than to build all the ships and related items that were needed), which itself led to interest in investing in the technologies that would spur the industrial revolution.
Europe had a big coincidental advantage in that it’s “center of mass” was a lot closer to the new world than other developed areas at the time, but it’s not hard to imagine a world where the Islamic world made that leap (especially if they had had greater long term success in Spain).
First of all, yes, the Mongols destroyed Baghdad. But though Baghdad was the centre of the Islamic world, it was by no means all there was in the Islamic world. On September 3, 1260, an army of Mamluks from Egypt fought the invading Mongols at a place called Ayn Jalut. There, the Mongols were defeated. It was the first time that a Mongol advance was permanently stopped in the west. There was no decline in the Islamic world as a whole. The Mamluks continued to be a power in Egypt and the region for centuries, and to the north a different group was soon gaining in power: the Ottomans.
The Ottomans conquered the remains of the Roman Empire, ending it in 1453. They grew into one of the largest and most powerful empires in world history, threatening Kiev in the north, Vienna in the west, controlling Egypt in the south, Baghdad in the east, the Mediterranean was their pond, and they controlled Mecca and Medina. The learning that Islam was famous for continued. It reached its peak under Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled between 1520 and 1566, and it’s there that we get to conspiracy theories.
I’ll quote from A World Undone by G.J. Meyer:
Whatever the case about the family tree of the Sultans, with rotting leadership whose greatest concern was staying in power, and with that rotting leadership still possessing immense authority in all matters, the Islamic world slowly fell into decay. If you really want to go off the deep end in conspiracy theory: Roxelana’s deliberate removal Mustafa was not for any love of her son. Rather, Ghowrem did it because Mustafa would have been another great leader and her son would be a terrible leader, and thereby would do immense harm to an empire and people she secretly hated. A decades long con to try to destroy the greatest empire in the world from within, and it ultimately succeeded.
Suleiman’s reign was the high water mark of the empire. Had the Empire continued on the path Suleiman was leading it on, we would probably be living in a very different world, one where there was no question of “what caused the decline in the Islamic world” because there would have been no decline in art and learning and technological leadership as we currently see it. Yes, the Ottoman’s wouldn’t have had access to the New World to the extent of the European powers. However, they were expanding rapidly into Europe, and a situation where they became a form of Super Germany + Super Russia would have more than made up for the lack. They could have pushed into Germany, Russia, India, Africa, and further. They were the greatest power in the world, and they could have become far greater still.
Instead, whether due to a mother’s jealousy or a slave’s hate, the course of the empire all of the regions it controlled shifted.
uh...
that's a hell of a story. wow... shame the Ezio Trilogy ended a few decades before that cause the Asscreed devs would've had a field day here.
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I don’t know that the path Suleiman was going on was that sustainable much past him anyway. They had been on a two hundred year conquest spree, but ultimately most of those conquests were small states that were militarily inferior, or Muslim states with populations and nobility that were pretty happy to jump onto the ottoman train.
By the end of Suleimans reign the borders of the Empire were Russia, the Poland-lithuania commonwealth, the Holy Roman Empire, a newly resurgent Persia, the sahara desert, and the Mediterranean sea. None of those were low hanging fruit that were likely to be gobbled up. And its not like the Ottoman empire immediately fell after Suleiman, they would seige Vienna again a hundred years later and it would be the 1700s before things really started falling apart (and the final blow obviously didn’t come until WW1).
Whatat pisses me off is that the Russians have done the exact same plan again and we didn't even get a hot redhead out of it.
Just a dumpy orange blonde.
Butina was a redhead.
I guess that makes the NRA Suleiman and Trump Selim in this metaphor.
Then Hillary would be Mustafa and Comey and 4 emails would be the 5 professional assassins...
Or maybe Bernie is Mustafa and superdelegates are the assassins...
Or America is Mustafa...
...
All so that in the ensuing chaos, the Culture could encourage the nomad's replacement empire to take a path favorable to the Culture.
This seems less like an injury/condition of a walk, and more like the walk you see from a bored child who is only half listening and doesn't want to even be there. Which, fits
Yeah... the Culture has lots of velvet gloves for things...
And some of them are more like Grey Area. Who has a very evocative nickname among the other AIs.
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Are the sickly-looking guys in ragged clothing passed out in doorways also antifa? Because if so, antifa aren't as terrifying as I've been led to believe!
Well they are wrong and they're clearly too delusional to be reasoned with, so disengage.
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I mean, even if every panhandler is secretly rich because it's so lucrative, is it that easy? I sure as shit don't stand outdoors 12 hours a day, rain or blazing heat to make a living. I guess it's easy compared to, like, construction or UPS deliveries maybe but it certainly doesn't seem easy. To say nothing of the psychological costs...
The conspiracy usually has it that they don't stand outside 12 hours a day, which is easy for people to believe because generally people won't go past those specific places more than once or twice a day. For all they know, the panhandlers are only at their spot at the specific times that they see them.
Sometimes you'll also get specific conspiracy details like them getting picked up by their family in some kind of fancy car.
Over here in Sweden the conspiracies are generally less about them being secretly rich and more about them sending the money back to Where They Came From (usually the Ukraine, IIRC?), which... is actually true in some cases as they're sending some of the little they get back to their families, I guess, but it's not the huge problem some people like to make it out to be. The arguments are usually about it removing money from circulation within Sweden which, uh, sure buddy I definitely believe that it's economics that you're worried about and not just poor immigrants.
Buzzfeed is changing how they'll refer to Q-Anon.
pleasepaypreacher.net
It mirrors the whole "welfare queen" rationalization to justify not helping people (because they're probably scamming you!), but I suspect it's probably millenia old.
My favorite version is when they allege that the untold riches they make off with each day funds an elaborate panhandling organization, compete with with luxury car service to and from their secret gated hobo community.
The broad strokes are accurate in places, apart from the vast sums of money, the gated community being the underside of a bridge, and this is Florida, so they have to collaborate in shifts or they'd fucking die.