41–50 of 86 posts
The Ancient Romans used a sponge on a stick for washing themselves after defecating. I always wondered who was responsible for cleaning and replacing those sponges in public latrines.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The complete downfall of quora is surprising tbh. Trying to cash out before they reached critical point? At one point about a decade ago through my spotty memory they are pretty on par with reddit in terms of adoption and reputation.
To me it became unbearable after it became flooded with people trying to add content without bringing any actual insight. They'd largely reuse existing materials or top google/wikipedia results and used certain style that became annoying to me (I wonder if others also started noticing the 'quora-style' answers)
Please dont post quora links. Whilst the questions and answers might be interesting, the whole site its just a minefield of ads, SEO spam, forced logins, etc…
The military definitely had a pay advantage (and it got better over time in the imperial era, so much so that it began to bankrupt the state), but Rome was always killing people, either Romans or barbarians. The warfare was absolutely horrifying by modern standards, and I imagine that even the best warriors of Rome would have had severe PTSD. Add in practices like decimation and the life of a warrior could be shorter than any other.
As for mining, most miners were slaves. Worse, many slaves were captured and conquered people. Rome had slaves that were treated well too (accountants, physicians, potters, bakers, barbers, and so on), especially after various reform movements (legal claims could be made against slave owners who mistreated slaves, but it is not certain just how successful these claims were), but the majority performed brutal work in bad conditions (beyond mining, many prostitutes were also slaves, and some of the worst parts of construction in Rome were done by slaves).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The complete downfall of quora is surprising tbh. Trying to cash out before they reached critical point? At one point about a decade ago through my spotty memory they are pretty on par with reddit in terms of adoption and reputation.
To me it became unbearable after it became flooded with people trying to add content without bringing any actual insight. They'd largely reuse existing materials or top google/wikipedia results and used certain style that became annoying to me (I wonder if others also started noticing the 'quora-style' answers)
(kind of an aside after this point)
Meanwhile, ChatGPT (via Phind) just keeps giving me answers on the efficacy of sunscreen at blocking UV light. Nothing on what research went into deciding how much UV is too much. I want to know what actually makes UV 11 or UV 5, or why UV 2 is considered safe. It's the first time it's been 100% useless. I can't seem to get it to stick to the actual question no matter how I phrase it.
Maybe it's one of those ass-pull recommendations where no one really knows. I know people who sunscreen religiously and still got skin cancer, and people who don't get much sun who got it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Farming is the big one - if your job sucked too hard you’d just go back to being a subsistence farmer like most everyone else.
Was arable land easy to come by for a poor Roman or would you be more likely to have a landlord requiring some cut?
Not a terrible job, but uncertain was parasite. Basically you were paid to accompany someone and say how good they were. One of the few things I remember from high school was translating some plays in which a parasite was part of the cast. (Another thing I remember was the supposed punishment for parricide: to be sewn into a sack with a rooster, a cat, and some stones, and then be tossed into the Tiber.)
How did rich people keep their wealth? Interesting, they had banking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_in_ancient_Rome
Sometimes those bankers were disrupted by Judeans coming in an smashing up the nice open plan lending atriums. Really need the firm hand of government to prevent repeat offending
For some sources, here's two good threads[0][1] on /r/AcademicBiblical, which is strictly moderated with secular scholar rigor, and a video[2] linked in one of those threads by Dr Ian Mills at Duke University. If you're interested in an analysis of the intended meaning of the passage, there's more in those links.
[0]https://old.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/136pdmc/w...
[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/5xwjgd/wh...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermae_Romae#Episode_list_(DL...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermae_Romae#Episode_list_(Ne...