@nhledbetter.bsky.social
ABD, Princeton, East Asian Studies. Instructor, Asian History, Rider University. Perpetually writing my dissertation (warfare in 16th C. Kyushu, Japan). He/Him/あいつ/"That Nagashino Guy." At some point I'll start posting useful stuff here. Maybe.
How, exactly?
I can't even begin to unravel what just happened in the last 5 min.
The pace is frenetic.
Wait!
She's not!
Well that was a fake out!
Nope!
She's dead!
Too late (?)
Concubine drank the poison (her sentenced method of death).
And the episode ends.
There are 23 more to go, can't imagine that's it.
And now the wife is trying to save the concubine, because if she takes the fall then they won't find the real culprit.
Oh crap! Assassination attempt as they take the baby to meet the people! The wife is hit by an arrow, in the confusion the new concubine takes the baby and is trying to escape, and someone comes up and knifes the baby! And now she's accused of murdering the kid.
The only common thread here seems to be every character in this has lost a brother or parent or grandmother to attacks by the Liao.
That tracks for the Song, actually.
Facts only.
And the wife/future empress is not happy about it, as you may imagine. Oh, and the emperor is about to keep over because he's old. But also, apparently he took over by killing his brother the emperor before him, so now he's worried that his sons will do the same to each other.
Everything is being explained by random haphazard flashbacks and I think I'm understanding about 75% of what's going on. Prince went out on campaign, was rescued from dying in the earthquake by a peasant girl, brought her back as a concumbine to the palace as his wife gave birth to a son.
17 min in and I am SO. Lost.
Oh, it just collapsed in an earthquake. Guess it made sense to save some money on that set...
Watching the first ep of Palace of Devotion, which takes place during the Song Dynasty, and I'm convinced the palace set is the same one they used in Qin Dynasty Epic.
Yes, that's pinpointing exactly where I'm at. Like, having been a staff officer, I get that at a certain point you can only tell the commander so many times "hey they might do this" or "we might want to think about this" but also I have no confidence those conversations are happening at mult levels.
The Dominican Republic mercy-ruled Korea? Oh my.
It's not so much the specifics of defense for any one site, and much more so the complete lack of awareness that the enemy gets a vote.
Hearing my eldest daughter scream at her friend on an online call "no! don't you dare! You may NOT put [her fictional writings] into an AI chatbot! I refuse to have AI touch them!" and simultaneously smiling and hoping she finds better friends.
The folks going "what are PhD students even for if we have effective LLM agents" are really telling on themselves
It's almost as if we started a war/non-war on the whim of a senile narcissist and his incompetent henchmen instead of through careful deliberation and planning.
That is the best. I get high from it.
made a crack about how assuming a siamese cat was a female cat was lady-and-the-tramp informed sinophobic misogyny to my uncle and now i'm stuck explaining the concepts of the struggle session and the purity spiral in what was a normal conversation about some kittens he saw. sorry. im sorry
If Shogunate Navy Admiral Katsu Kaishū got deified...the path to the shrine would be the Katsu Sandō.
Well, if he were running as a Republican it’d be fine
U.S. Suffers Additional Casualties In War It Won Last Week
“How many impeachable offenses can I commit in one 24-hour session” challenge
I get the logic of doing this to apply pressure because oyu are frustrated with the asymmetry of Iran selling oil when no one else can but, uh...now they have no reason *not* to mine the strait.
So assuming they don't have an immediate nervous breakdown you have made the problem worse.
Reworked this old favourite, chiefly for amusement of sad people like myself - credit owed to the original author except I don’t remember their name and not even sure I ever knew it.
This site needs a break. Post 3 good things, none of which are the cessation of a negative.
1. Watching proudly as my students contrast the depictions of nomadic peoples in Priscus, Herodotus, Sima Qian, the Strategikon, and others.
2. Grilled pork banh mi
3. Naps
Man, one of the most depressing aspects of modern scholarship is finding a great article and then looking up the scholar to see what else they’ve done and just catching a glimpse of an abbreviated career hopping between visiting positions and publishing great pieces before disappearing from academia