John Harney

John Harney

@ludensprof.bsky.social

Associate Professor of History at Centre College. Written on: baseball in colonial Taiwan; American missionaries in interwar China. Interested in national identity, science fiction, video games. Associate Editor at www.historyrespawned.com

1,148 Followers 924 Following 725 Posts Joined Aug 2023
10 hours ago

There are two reasons this is not going to happen: 1) the US Navy doesn’t have the spare ships (in part because it doesn’t have frigates anymore) and 2) it has no interest in letting the Iranians apply their preferred strategy of using swarms of missile boats to close with them in the Straits.

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1 day ago

I don't know if you've heard but Promise Mascot Agency is a pretty cool game. If you like a Yakuza-inspired narrative, collect-a-thons, and a banger soundtrack, look no further.

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1 day ago

Thank you!!!

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2 days ago

Atlanta manager Walt Weiss: “I don’t like elephants in the room. I think the elephants need to be confronted, or it starts to get weird.”

I love baseball.

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3 days ago

Yeah... I think we are already seeing all kinds of programming solutions being labelled "AI", so that will continue for a good while I suspect.

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3 days ago

VAR has resulted in applications of the offside rule that were never intended.

This is beyond frustrating. If it's that close just give onside.

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3 days ago

This is a really great talk about PC history!

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3 days ago

The actual case being made here, that AI can be a kind of sounding board or conceivably a tutor, is already satisfied by working with other human beings, which in addition brings benefits AI cannot bring.

Also, I am tired of the blanket assertions AI is here "forever."

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3 days ago

I've been watching football my entire life and I do not know why that's a red.

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4 days ago
YouTube
History Respawned is back to talk about games YouTube video by History Respawned

History Respawned is back, kind of, in dude in his office chatting form! Just a short message to say hello, going to post videos about once a week.

youtu.be/LeEFAmHszdM?...

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4 days ago

This is a very good encapsulation of how a lot of us feel about the impact of AI on a day to day basis which is that using it to find information can be more helpful than Google but a lot of that is because Google has gotten much worse

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4 days ago

At one point it was “Death Stranding” by Chvrches, every day, for like a year. It’s a great song but also I was depressed.

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4 days ago

My current rotation for the song I play after dropping my daughter off to school, one of:

Jellybelly by Smashing Pumpkins
The Winner Takes it All, ABBA

Just depends on my mood.

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6 days ago

BTW it is EXTREMELY common for academic papers to declare Lara Croft the first playable female game character (a very easy fact to debunk). As a grad student I wrote a paper that traced every appearance of this "fact" to a single paper, which is why you don't only engage with academic texts!!

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1 week ago

okay, Ill bite.
What do you think the point of reading for and writing a literature review is? The process of reading and writing is crucial for THINKING. Your ideas are shaped by all of this, offloading it to gAI, no matter how "good" you think gAI is at it defeats the purpose entirely.

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1 week ago

Indeed. It makes perfect sense to me that rock’s mainstream popularity declined due to political correctness to be superseded by - checks notes - rap music.

There are a lot of guitar bands around. Lots of good ones. I suspect the larger issue is that we made it very hard to make money as a musician

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1 week ago

"The CIA conspired to make me less cool than I was when I was 25" is the most succinct Gen X manifesto I've ever heard

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1 week ago

Guys I did not expect Chiang Kai-shek to feature so prominently in my timeline tonight.

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1 week ago
Post image

In light of the recent Chang Poasting:

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1 week ago

Professionally, I try to explain the war and its consequences in objective terms: the logic might prove flawed, but surely it exists. And yet I can't escape the conclusion that a lot of the people leading us to war are simply underqualified and unserious. They don't have a clue what they are doing.

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1 week ago

A war no one asked for, started in an attempt to improve a president’s poll numbers, and now children we allegedly want to free are dead.

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1 month ago

GM: Charisma check.

Mamdani: [rolls natural 20]

GM: that’s a d6 how did you

Mamdani: [direct to camera] Did you know you can check out board games at your local public library? 😊

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1 week ago

Man, I really want an “inspired by real events” episode of Law and Order now.

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1 week ago

Sending love to my former colleagues <3

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1 week ago

The February 26 Incident of 1936, which happened on this day ninety years ago, was modern Japan’s most serious coup attempt and led to four months and twenty days of martial law.

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1 week ago
Preview
Letter Lost on Steam You’re the sole employee at the Kharnym Isle post office, stamping, sorting, and delivering mail. But the job hides secrets, and the office itself holds mysteries you must uncover. This will be the on...

store.steampowered.com/app/3624790/...

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1 week ago

Incredible stuff. I guess it’s hard for Bill, what with him staying on the left and everyone else moving.

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2 weeks ago

I just learned a bunch of things about Dan Ariely and I’m really glad I like my job. I’m also grateful for my job.

Young scholars are working so hard to get academic jobs, and every R1 seems to randomly tolerate people who make career-ending mistakes every few years.

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2 weeks ago

Wow. I mean it’s one thing to think it (who cares) and another thing to WRITE AN EMAIL SCOLDING SOMEONE ABOUT IT.

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