Making money hand over fist

This would seem pretty valid even respective to the average person, except that Martin Luther would probably be more centrist than authright with that in mind.

“Amigo, you’re hosed.” - an online friend when he found out that I have a weakness for girls with tattoos, piercings, and technicolor hair (he has the same weakness)

Explanation: In 69 AD (nice), a series of four Emperors ruled in the Roman Empire, one after another. Galba, having overthrown the infamously bad Nero in 68 AD, was himself overthrown by Otho. Otho, then, was overthrown by Vitellius. The general Vespasian sent his son to pledge allegiance to Galba and assure Galba and the Senate that Vespasian had no designs on anything except his assigned duties crushing a rebellion in Iudea. Vespasian’s son, however, arrived to find he was two Emperors late to pledge allegiance to Galba, and rode back to tell his dad that things were fucked - Vespasian then marched on Rome and overthrew Vitellius, managing a stable rule for the next decade. Hell of a year!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood

The Great Molasses Flood, also known as the Boston Molasses Disaster,[1][2][a] was a disaster that occurred on Wednesday, January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.

A large storage tank filled with 2.3 million U.S. gallons (8,700 cubic meters)[4] of molasses, weighing approximately[b] 13,000 short tons (12,000 metric tons) burst, and the resultant wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 miles per hour (56 kilometers per hour), killing 21 and injuring 150 people.[5] The event entered local folklore and residents reported for decades afterwards that the area still smelled of molasses on hot summer days.[5][6]

Texas finally embracing its Spanish heritage 😭🙏

Funny you should mention that - voting there was different as well. Some states do have records of the popular vote, but the votes were for the electors themselves, rather than the presidential (and vice-presidential, as that was voted on separately at the time) candidates they were going to be electing.

Since all the electors who voted ended up casting a vote for Washington, and we can’t be certain how the failed electors would have voted, even knowing the popular vote totals doesn’t help us. XD

Real Filthe

Explanation: In the modern day, it’s common for dictators to announce elections, and then have them ‘won’ by improbably high vote counts - sometimes exceeding the number of actual registered voters in a region.

George Washington, the first president of the USA, on the other hand, won exactly 100% of the vote!

Of course, there is a substantial reason for this difference. While Washington was immensely popular as a war hero who had stepped down from power at the end of the American Revolutionary War, the real reason for the perfect score was the voting system of the early USA.

We in the USA have an institution known as the electoral college - it’s utterly fucked and archaic today, but it did serve a purpose originally. Namely, that each of the original 13 states joined up with the USA with the understanding that they would have freedom to run their own elections - nominally as a safeguard against centralized tyranny, and because of the vastness of the new country and the difficult of transport and communication (with even voting results of this system taking months to come in and tally).

However, this also meant that there were effectively 13 different election systems with different voter qualifications and processes. To ‘streamline’ counting that, each state was assigned a number of ‘elector’ positions based on their population that the state’s elected legislature would decide how to appoint. Three states, furthermore, had borked things up (two failed to ratify the Constitution in time for the election; the New York legislature got caught up in arguments with itself about its electoral system and failed to send any electors). Washington thus won every vote cast - but from an ‘electorate’ of 69 electors (nice), not millions!

… it made sense before the invention of the train and the telegraph, and when the roads to DC were packed with mud and not gravel; not so much now.

Explanation: Dante Alighieri was a medieval Italian writer, the author of The Divine Comedy - best known by the section of the Inferno, often referred to as Dante’s Inferno. In The Divine Comedy, an exploration of heaven and hell is undertaken as a metaphorical and dramatic journey, discussing condemnation, punishment, and salvation. It has maintained over 600 years of immense cultural influence, both in religious and secular contexts.

… Dante also writes several of his enemies as burning in hell when he goes on a guided tour, courtesy of his favorite Classical figure, the pagan poet Virgil.

Gondola

After reading his wiki, I feel like this characterization is a bit unfair. His rule was by most accounts successful, bringing the Empire back from the brink of collapse.

The worst of the Crisis of the Third Century was over when he took the reins, but he took the initiative in creating the ultra-fucked state of the Dominate, or Late Empire, which Constantine and later Emperors ran with. A complete lack of understanding of economics combined with delusions of godhood and no respect for Roman traditions, with bureaucratic organizational chaos, the codification of proto-feudalism, and the hollowing out of a robust-if-damaged military system in the hopes of dashing the chances of civil war (it did not dash the chances of civil war) are not qualities which recommend him.

Four Emperors is a lot, it does not stop coups or civil wars but rather precipitates them, and multiplying the imperial bureaucracy by over 10x in order to centralize control is not fiscally responsible - especially when combined with a ballooning of the imperial court and its ‘majesty’.

He fucked the government essentially by abdicating, rather than being a shit emperor, which is why they wanted him back.

The Tetrarchy was fucked before he abdicated. Maximian wanted him back because the system only worked when there was a clear supreme Emperor (contrary to Diocletian’s entire attempt) and Diocletian had spent most of his Emperorship accruing the necessary prestige to make it unthinkable that anyone else would rule. In any case, Diocletian stepping back in would have simply made it clear how broken the Tetrarchy was at that point (and arguably always was), since that would have made 5 theoretically reigning Emperors at war with each other.

It seems the Christians took over during Constantine’s subsequent reign and gave him a bad rap.

That’s partly true - the Christians certainly played up the Great Persecution, but most of my critiques are exactly the kind of top-heavy bureaucracy which the Christian Emperors embraced and perpetuated, and not core to their criticisms of Diocletian.

Wiki said he’d gotten sick before he abdicated, and reading between the lines it seems pretty certain he also got sick of everybody’s shit. Honestly, being emperor is hazardous to your health; I’d say he made a pretty smart move. The “nice villa” thing makes it sound like he lived in a hovel on a farm or something, but dude lived the rest of his life in a giant city-sized fort he had built for just that purpose. He was no slouch.

His villa is nice, certainly. Villas usually are - the word in the Roman context being something between a mansion and a self-sufficient farming estate - but Diocletian’s was palatial. The ruins still exist in Croatia, they’re very cool.

Wish.com Cincinnatus-ass

The Obama years, when staying informed just meant a low-level sense of continuing dread at the obstructionism of the GOP and lack of spine displayed by the Dems.

It’s not a question of “When were things good” but "When were things not getting worse at a horrific rate "

What a timeline we live in

Holy fucking shit, I remember that interaction but I didn’t catch that Raiden’s face was a pug, how glorious

Photo of Diocletian, 310 AD (colorized)

I thought it was “Pay other people to fight our battles for us” :p

I was unaware of any allegations until you commented. I hope the Canadian court system delivers justice.

In any case, it’s just a Trailer Park Boys meme, not an expression of support.

Explanation: Diocletian was a Roman Emperor of the late 3rd century and early 4th century AD who royally fucked the government he took over for some twenty years, and then promptly retired to a nice villa in the Balkans. When one of his co-emperors wrote to him begging him to come back and unfuck the mess he seeded, Diocletian responded “If you [the messenger] could show the cabbage that I planted with my own hands to your emperor, he definitely wouldn’t dare suggest that I replace the peace and happiness of this place with the storms of a never-satisfied greed.”