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"I was made for WAR, not scratching text into wax tablets ๐Ÿ˜ญ" (media.piefed.social)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/grimdank@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/56500146

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/noncredibledefense/p/1853746/i-was-made-for-war-not-scratching-text-into-wax-tablets

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28 comments in c/noncredibledefense@sh.itjust.works view that post
[โ€“] 48 points 8 months ago (20 children)

The reason Roman legions were as successful as they were was because of Rome's bureaucracy and logisitical efficiency. Their road network existed to allow legion and their food trains to go anywhere in the empire unrestricted.

Same reason that the US military has been as successful as it has in WWII and at least some part of the 20th century- it's never about tactics, it's about mastering industrial logistics to move any gear, any where, with a day's notice.

Yes. The Romans would have fucking KILLED for Excel.

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  • [โ€“] 14 points 8 months ago (16 children)

    Their road network existed to allow legion and their food trains to go anywhere in the empire unrestricted.

    oh don't get me started. The success of the entire roman empire was the roads and infrastructure (also aqueduct but less so). You can trace the success and growth of civilization to transportation technology. Direct correlation, close enough and rational enough (i haven't run the numbers but I'm confident making an ass out of myself) I'm willing to say it's causative. The biggest change we've seen has been computers, and integrating that fully into transportation (which we still haven't done. because it's nigh fucking impossible to get computers and humans to drive together safely. it's almost like we need a new transportation revolution) will overhaul society. however we do it.

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  • [โ€“] 20 points 8 months ago (9 children)

    Putting computers on wheels was always a terrible idea. Computers go on rails. We're failing to overhaul society because we're using wheels where we should be using rails.

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  • [โ€“] 11 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Reading the comments above, I wasn't even done before I was imagined how to write this exact response lol. Guess I'll contribute this instead:

    Roads are for local human freedom, rails are for proper logistics, which is where you want your computers integrated as much as possible. People don't realize that in WW2, most of the distance travelled by tanks was on trains, not by their own power which is very resource intensive.

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  • [โ€“] 3 points 8 months ago* (4 children)

    my favorite fictional transportation invention was by Jasper Fforde. If you've read his Shades of Grey series (it's the You Can't See Color series, not the Bad BDSM series, and actually good to read. my favorite books right now) it's basically a very very fancy conveyor belt that has higher speed lanes (like 50mph lanes) as you get toward the center, and all you do is step on and whoosh off from Reading to Cardiff. Except it's also made of gel and eats people if they fall asleep on it. Science fiction and stuff.

    i like the fiction because it gets our minds churning about "well, how could we do that IRL? is it possible?" about all sorts of things.

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  • [โ€“] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Except it's also made of gel and eats people if they fall asleep on it.

    You sure this isn't a vore spinoff of the twilight spinoff ?

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    conveyor belt that has higher speed lanes

    by Jasper Fforde

    Asimov was writing about that kind of thing in The Caves of Steel a decade before Fforde was born, and almost fifty years before Fforde published his first novel.

    Arthur C. Clarke used moving walkways in Against the Fall of Night (later rewritten as The City and the Stars) in 1948.

    Heinlein wrote The Roads Must Roll in 1940.

    Fritz Lang's Metropolis depicted moving walkways on film in 1927.

    H.G. fucking Wells used them in 1887 and 1889 in A Story of the Days to Come and When the Sleeper Wakes.

    But he didn't invent them either. The first moving walkway was designed and built in 1893 by Joseph Lyman Silsbee.

    Moving walkways have been in science fiction since the very beginning.

    I'm frankly surprised Verne didn't invent them in Paris in the Twentieth Century, but that's probably more futurism than science fiction, so he wrote about asphalt, and cars, and gas stations, and high speed trains, and elevators, and fax machines, and something quite close to the Internet. In 1860. But, alas, no moving walkways.

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  • [โ€“] 3 points 8 months ago

    ? my 1980s car had a computer in it and she was great. computer didn't try to drive. it was just a little box the same size as the radio, just under the passenger seat. nowadays i don't even know where all the computer shit is it's how much of the driving experience is taken over by the computer. i got a lot more safety shit now, which i appreciate (i've been saved from a couple massive pileups in the fog because the adaptive cruise control sensors told me there was a car before i could see it with my eyes, even though i was already driving slower) but like, we agree with You that letting the computer take over 100% is bad.

    the help computers give? i'm not going to turn it down. i'm a shitty driver.

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  • [โ€“] 5 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    because it's nigh fucking impossible to get computers and humans to drive together safely. it's almost like we need a new transportation revolution) will overhaul society.

    Or we could just build a rail network and avoid the problem

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  • [โ€“] -2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    and yet that doesn't happen. it's about time y'all start figuring out what will

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Okay, RoughRomanMemes is fully leaking at this point.

    I guess it depends how you define civilisation. Usually "they left momuments for us to find" is close to what gets used, which of course is going to correlate strongly with transportation.

    (also aqueduct but less so)

    It bugs me that after all the effort they put into aqueducts and sewers, they still ended up with a typical ancient parasite load, probably from unclean public baths and garum.

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  • [โ€“] 13 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Hell, Napoleon put out a massive bounty on the invention of canning. The idea had been shown theoretically possible and he understood what a massive logistical edge he would get from the ability to ship food other than hard tack with his armies. Before canned goods war didn't just kill soldiers, soldiers pillaged the countryside (regardless of whose side they were on) for food.

    People really underestimate how difficult it has been historically to actually feed armies. Even today the US is doing wild crap like establishing fast food chain restaurants in military bases and making sure that continental US food is available in South Korea and Guam to ensure morale is maintained.

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 8 months ago

    and making sure that continental US food is available in South Korea and Guam to ensure morale is maintained.

    I get that not everybody is adventurous, but damn, the idea that you're deployed in the military, and your big problem is that you have to eat ribs as galbi instead of with a rub from home.

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  • [โ€“] 4 points 8 months ago

    I don't think the guys getting PTSD fighting Picts on the Isles cared much about logistics beyond ensuring they had something to eat and equipment to use. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that Romans were a lot of different people but I just take umbrage with the wording (more from the OP image). The idea of labeling all Romans by the heights of their exemplars.

    Like, the US has a lot of well-regarded universities but we wouldn't call Americans a learned people; a country of skilled doctors and exacting engineers.

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    • [โ€“] 20 points 8 months ago

    War is a high stakes logistics competition with tactics thrown in to give purpose to the logistics. Rome was a logistics empire in the same way that England and the US were. Kublai Kahn was not remembered as a great warrior like say, Oda Nobunaga, he was good at war because his troops always got food and reinforcements. Hell, this basic principle is a large part of Sun Tzu.

    Excel makes logistics easier. Every empire wants that shit.

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    [โ€“] 11 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Roman soldiers mostly just walked and built fortifications, I heard they were so good at this they even built fortifications during battle.

    So I guess if you're built for Roman war join a construction/landscaping company

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    • [โ€“] 7 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Every time I read this meme about I reach for the big iron on my hip only to see the secod part and remember there was that other Cesar that people worship...

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    • [โ€“] 7 points 8 months ago

    ultramarines and bobby g

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    [โ€“] 2 points 8 months ago

    I am glad to be here

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    14 comments in c/noncredibledefense@piefed.social view that post
    [โ€“] [S] 53 points 8 months ago (7 children)

    Explanation: While the Roman Legions do rightfully have a reputation as a refined military machine, what enabled that military machine is the same thing that enables modern militaries - organization, and all the (metaphorical) paperwork that goes with it. The Legions in particular were very... exact about how they wanted formulaic requests made, even in things as small as an ordinary legionary requesting a few days leave from his centurion.

    They would've gone nuts for Excel. And please, no one introduce any ambitious Tribunes to Powerpoint.

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  • [โ€“] 19 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    They were persnickety enough that their pole arms eventually became a unit of measurement.
    Not too weird, until you learn that we still use it to an extent.

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  • [โ€“] [S] 29 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Someone writing the regs probably had OCD. But hey, militaries run on details...

    We will now explain the way in which the cohorts described above pitch their tents. One tent occupies ten feet; this length is increased by two feet for the pitching, and it shelters eight men. A complete century has 80 soldiers, so there will be ten tents which will run in a line 120 feet long. Because the width of the hemistriga is 30 feet, 10 feet are assigned to the tents, 5 feet to the weapons and 9 feet to the pack animals. This makes 24 feet; twice this is 48 feet. So when two centuries camp opposite each other, a striga (strip) of 60 feet will be made; there remains 12 feet which will provide sufficient space for those coming and going. This space is calculated for a complete legionary century. Since 16 men from each century are on guard duty at any one time, they do not pitch more then eight tents per century. In this way their centurion has a place to pitch his tent on the same area as those tents would have been. Otherwise it would have been necessary to allocate more space.

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  • [โ€“] 9 points 8 months ago

    Not sure if it was the romans exactly, but I read an article on why our railway line tracks have the width they do and it tracked it down to the width of roman roads - carriage axles for horse drawn carriages were made for road width, and it started from there.

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    • [โ€“] 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    They did have Excel during their time, only it was called "IXCIL"

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    • [โ€“] 9 points 8 months ago

    Or any sort of engineering software

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    [โ€“] 8 points 8 months ago

    The amount of Excel and PowerPoint used by modern Western militaries is frankly shocking.

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    7 comments in c/historymemes@piefed.social view that post
    [โ€“] [S] 33 points 8 months ago

    Explanation: While the Roman Legions do rightfully have a reputation as a refined military machine, what enabled that military machine is the same thing that enables modern militaries - organization, and all the (metaphorical) paperwork that goes with it. The Legions in particular were very... exact about how they wanted formulaic requests made, even in things as small as an ordinary legionary requesting a few days leave from his centurion.

    They would've gone nuts for Excel. And please, no one introduce any ambitious Tribunes to Powerpoint.

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    [โ€“] 10 points 8 months ago

    If they wanted computers, they should have invented the numeral zero

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    [โ€“] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

    They did have spreadsheets during their time, only it was called "IXCIL"

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    • [โ€“] 5 points 8 months ago

    They couldn't even be arsed to adopt positional notation, despite having abacuses all over the place.

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    [โ€“] 4 points 8 months ago

    Romans would spread their legs for spreadsheets? I will see myself out now..

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    1 comment in c/roughromanmemes@piefed.social view that post
    [โ€“] [S] 7 points 8 months ago

    Explanation: While the Roman Legions do rightfully have a reputation as a refined military machine, what enabled that military machine is the same thing that enables modern militaries - organization, and all the (metaphorical) paperwork that goes with it. The Legions in particular were very... exact about how they wanted formulaic requests made, even in things as small as an ordinary legionary requesting a few days leave from his centurion.

    They would've gone nuts for Excel. And please, no one introduce any ambitious Tribunes to Powerpoint.

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