• 855: What would be considered the first known instance of “fetish” / “deviant” sexual content in literature?, submitted on 2022-10-04 12:44:53+08:00.
• 856: I don’t know if this is the correct place to ask but what is the actual merit of Steve Wozniak for creating the apple II?, submitted on 2022-10-04 14:44:27+08:00.
• 857: What date in 1987 was unemployment compensation considered taxable income in the USA?, submitted on 2022-10-04 15:06:33+08:00.
• 858: I travel back in time to Ancient Rome, and language isn’t an issue because I have a universal translator chip embedded in my brain. How long until people notice that I don’t worship their gods and goddesses and what are the consequences, if any?, submitted on 2022-10-04 16:28:52+08:00.
• 859: What are some awesome uncommon history facts?, submitted on 2022-10-04 17:06:49+08:00.
• 860: [miniature] posting pictures and videos, submitted on 2022-10-07 14:18:42+08:00.
• 861: As I understand, it’s well-established that gunpowder and guns were invented in China. Why didn’t this lead to a legacy of Chinese primacy in terms of innovation and dominance in firearms production?, submitted on 2022-10-07 15:20:19+08:00.
• 862: Duality of cat-dog relationship in hololive, submitted on 2022-10-08 22:14:54+08:00.
• 863: What are some historical units that deserve table representaion?, submitted on 2022-10-09 04:10:44+08:00.
• 864: [Hobby Scuffles] Week of October 10, 2022, submitted on 2022-10-09 22:44:30+08:00.

855: What would be considered the first known instance of “fetish” / “deviant” sexual content in literature?, submitted on 2022-10-04 12:44:53+08:00.

—– 855.1 —–2022-10-04 17:11:35+08:00:

Please repost this question to the weekly “Short Answers” thread stickied to the top of the subreddit, which will be the best place to get an answer to this question; for that reason, we have removed your post here. Standalone questions are intended to be seeking detailed, comprehensive answers, and we ask that questions looking for a name, a number, a date or time, a location, the origin of a word, the first/last instance of a specific phenomenon, or a simple list of examples or facts be contained to that thread as they are more likely to receive an answer there. For more information on this rule, please see this Rules Roundtable.

Alternatively, if you didn’t mean to ask a question seeking a short answer or a list of examples, but have a more complex question in mind, feel free to repost a reworded question. Examples of questions appropriate for the ‘Short Answers’ thread would be “Who won the 1932 election?” or “What are some famous natural disasters from the past?”. Versions more appropriate as standalone questions would be “How did FDR win the 1932 election?”, or “In your area of expertise, how did people deal with natural disasters?” If you need some pointers, be sure to check out this Rules Roundtable on asking better questions.

Finally, don’t forget that there are many subreddits on Reddit aimed at answering your questions. Consider /r/AskHistory (which has lighter moderation but similar topic matter to /r/AskHistorians), /r/explainlikeimfive (which is specifically aimed at simple and easily digested answers), or /r/etymology (which focuses on the origins of words and phrases).

856: I don’t know if this is the correct place to ask but what is the actual merit of Steve Wozniak for creating the apple II?, submitted on 2022-10-04 14:44:27+08:00.

—– 856.1 —–2022-10-04 17:11:19+08:00:

This submission has been removed because it violates the rule on poll-type questions. These questions do not lend themselves to answers with a firm foundation in sources and research, and the resulting threads usually turn into monsters with enormous speculation and little focused discussion. Questions about the “most”, the “worst”, “unknown”, or other value judgments usually lead to vague, subjective, and speculative answers. For further information, please consult this Roundtable discussion.

For questions of this type, we ask that you redirect them to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history or /r/askhistory.

857: What date in 1987 was unemployment compensation considered taxable income in the USA?, submitted on 2022-10-04 15:06:33+08:00.

—– 857.1 —–2022-10-04 17:11:01+08:00:

Please repost this question to the weekly “Short Answers” thread stickied to the top of the subreddit, which will be the best place to get an answer to this question; for that reason, we have removed your post here. Standalone questions are intended to be seeking detailed, comprehensive answers, and we ask that questions looking for a name, a number, a date or time, a location, the origin of a word, the first/last instance of a specific phenomenon, or a simple list of examples or facts be contained to that thread as they are more likely to receive an answer there. For more information on this rule, please see this Rules Roundtable.

Alternatively, if you didn’t mean to ask a question seeking a short answer or a list of examples, but have a more complex question in mind, feel free to repost a reworded question. Examples of questions appropriate for the ‘Short Answers’ thread would be “Who won the 1932 election?” or “What are some famous natural disasters from the past?”. Versions more appropriate as standalone questions would be “How did FDR win the 1932 election?”, or “In your area of expertise, how did people deal with natural disasters?” If you need some pointers, be sure to check out this Rules Roundtable on asking better questions.

Finally, don’t forget that there are many subreddits on Reddit aimed at answering your questions. Consider /r/AskHistory (which has lighter moderation but similar topic matter to /r/AskHistorians), /r/explainlikeimfive (which is specifically aimed at simple and easily digested answers), or /r/etymology (which focuses on the origins of words and phrases).

858: I travel back in time to Ancient Rome, and language isn’t an issue because I have a universal translator chip embedded in my brain. How long until people notice that I don’t worship their gods and goddesses and what are the consequences, if any?, submitted on 2022-10-04 16:28:52+08:00.

—– 858.1 —–2022-10-04 17:09:08+08:00:

Sorry, but your submission has been removed because we don’t allow hypothetical questions. If possible, please rephrase the question so that it does not call for such speculation, and resubmit. Otherwise, this sort of thing is better suited for /r/HistoryWhatIf or /r/HistoricalWhatIf. You can find a more in-depth discussion of this rule here.

859: What are some awesome uncommon history facts?, submitted on 2022-10-04 17:06:49+08:00.

—– 859.1 —–2022-10-04 17:08:55+08:00:

Please repost this question to the weekly “Short Answers” thread stickied to the top of the subreddit, which will be the best place to get an answer to this question; for that reason, we have removed your post here. Standalone questions are intended to be seeking detailed, comprehensive answers, and we ask that questions looking for a name, a number, a date or time, a location, the origin of a word, the first/last instance of a specific phenomenon, or a simple list of examples or facts be contained to that thread as they are more likely to receive an answer there. For more information on this rule, please see this Rules Roundtable.

Alternatively, if you didn’t mean to ask a question seeking a short answer or a list of examples, but have a more complex question in mind, feel free to repost a reworded question. Examples of questions appropriate for the ‘Short Answers’ thread would be “Who won the 1932 election?” or “What are some famous natural disasters from the past?”. Versions more appropriate as standalone questions would be “How did FDR win the 1932 election?”, or “In your area of expertise, how did people deal with natural disasters?” If you need some pointers, be sure to check out this Rules Roundtable on asking better questions.

Finally, don’t forget that there are many subreddits on Reddit aimed at answering your questions. Consider /r/AskHistory (which has lighter moderation but similar topic matter to /r/AskHistorians), /r/explainlikeimfive (which is specifically aimed at simple and easily digested answers), or /r/etymology (which focuses on the origins of words and phrases).

860: [miniature] posting pictures and videos, submitted on 2022-10-07 14:18:42+08:00.

—– 860.1 —–2022-10-07 15:17:02+08:00:

In the Scuffles threads, but not as top-levels. If you have any future questions about subreddit business please direct them to the monthly Town Hall threads.

861: As I understand, it’s well-established that gunpowder and guns were invented in China. Why didn’t this lead to a legacy of Chinese primacy in terms of innovation and dominance in firearms production?, submitted on 2022-10-07 15:20:19+08:00.

—– 861.1 —–2022-10-07 17:11:59+08:00:

This is a question that has perplexed many, and there is unlikely ever to be a perfect answer. What I will offer here is a summary of the chronology suggested by Tonio Andrade in The Gunpowder Age, one which many including myself have issues with, but where it is, on the whole, one of the only major attempts so far at covering the entire period in question and to offer structural explanations for Sino-European divergences.

Gunpowder was not originally understood as an explosive or a propellant, but rather as an incendiary. Different ratios of carbon, sulphur, and nitrate lead to different rates of combustion, and early Chinese formulations generally leaned towards slower and more exothermic mixtures rather than prioritising rapid gas release the way that a specifically propellant powder would. This function is also given away by the name – whereas English gunpowder, French poudre à canon, and German Schießpulver all highlight the use of gunpowder in firearms, Mandarin huoyao literally translates to ‘fire medicine’ or ‘fire concoction’, with its outright explosive properties being a later innovation. This would reach fruition in the fire-lance (huoqiang) in the 12th century, originally little more than a bomb on a stick, but made increasingly sophisticated, with some versions designed essentially as fragmentation devices, with metal, stone, or ceramic fragments wrapped around the explosive charge. But at this stage, the gun did not yet exist.

The gun, if defined as a reusable tube which uses a propellant charge to launch one or more projectiles, is first definitively attested in northwest China in the 1280s in the form of a small hand-cannon. These devices quite plausibly may have derived from experiments in making reusable fire-lances. But the gun also quickly found its way to Europe, quite probably via the Mongols, as guns of various sizes are attested in Europe by the 1330s, appearing in both textual and visual records, and would see considerable use throughout conflicts such as the Hundred Years’ War. In short, any head start China had on firearms development quickly waned because guns were adopted in Europe without much delay.

What then needs explaining, though, is why Europe seems to have developed much more sophisticated firearms sooner. There are a number of possible arguments, some cultural and some material. Andrade’s suggestion is what he calls the Chinese Wall Thesis: Chinese walls were generally earthworks several metres thick, which are hard to damage or destroy with siege equipment, and especially not by bombardment; in contrast, European walls were generally masonry works rarely more than 2m thick, and thus much less resistant to the sudden impacts of cannon shots. As such, European states developed more and more powerful cannon as a replacement for trebuchets to destroy walls, whereas that kind of incremental development couldn’t get off the ground in China. Instead, gunpowder continued to be used for its incendiary properties, with mechanical engines like trebuchets used to lob burning projectiles over the walls and into the wooden structures behind them.

A potential quibble from the cultural side is that trebuchets had never been used to destroy the walls themselves, but rather protective structures on top of them like crenellations; that said, there is a reasonable suggestion that the ease with which cannons damaged crenellations would have been taken as a sign that the underlying structure might also be vulnerable, and as such the leap would not have been considerable.

However, Andrade suggests that East Asian states regained a level of parity with European gunpowder technology by about 1600. Importation and adaptation of Portuguese and Dutch firearms designs, combined with domestic innovations, gave the Ming Empire in China, the Joseon Kingdom of Korea, and the Japanese warlord regimes access to a variety of cutting-edge military tools. Not all used the same weapons to the same extent – the Ming prioritised artillery over small arms, Japan the reverse – but there was a stretch of time from, say, the mid-16th century down to the early 18th, when Europe and East Asia engaged in a sustained exchange of military expertise that allowed the latter to keep relatively up to date. This equipment would be put to use in a whole slew of conflicts that engulfed the region, from the Sengoku conflicts in Japan to Ming and Korean wars with tribal neighbours, climaxing with the ‘Great East Asian War’ of 1592-8 when Toyotomi Hideyoshi led most of Japan into a war with Korea in an attempt to conquer China. While peace reigned in Japan after the last few battles of the Sengoku Jidai in the 1610s, the Asian mainland would see the rise of the Qing Empire in the wake of the Japanese invasion, which secured Manchuria proper by the end of the 1620s, subjugated Korea in the 1630s, and conquered China proper in the 1640s-60s before turning its sights on the Eurasian steppe. Thus, Japan and Korea would fall somewhat behind as their untested militaries ceased to have a major role, but the Qing empire retained the impetus for reform and improvement.

The resumed divergence occurred with what he calls the ‘Great Qing Peace’, and this is where I have somewhat more quibbles. The suggestion is that prolonged peace in East Asia obviated the apparent necessity for military innovation, with the last of the major Qing campaigns being that against the Zunghars, concluding in 1757, and leading to a long period of relative peace until the Opium War in 1839-42 and the Taiping War in 1851-64. This extended peace meant that China simply no longer needed to develop new weapons or keep pace with Europe.

This I can see making sense for Japan and Korea, but for the Qing empire this falls a bit flat. Huge amounts of resources would be expended in campaigns in Burma in the 1760s, against the Jinchuan hill tribes in the 1770s, and against Vietnam in the 1780s, campaigns that were openly championed as demonstrations of the empire’s martial credentials. And yet, the Qing do not appear to have invested considerably in the improvement of military equipment as a result. Nor is it intuitive that the earlier Zunghar campaigns did necessitate better weapons.

So, how do we explain a Qing-era divergence in military technology? One possibility is it was indeed a divergence in technical capacity, in terms of not only metallurgical techniques but also basic underlying skills such as technical drawing and ballistic measurement. But there are also institutional factors to consider: perhaps the Qing, whose regime was incredibly low-tax compared to Europe and lacked important financial instruments such as a national debt, simply could not afford such modernisation; or perhaps concerns over domestic upheaval and ethnic decline made the Qing state unwilling to issue better equipment to potentially unreliable Han Chinese soldiers, as well as prioritising more traditional arts, namely riding and archery, among the Manchu elite corps.

In turn, if there are institutional arguments for why China and Europe diverged in terms of weapons technology from 1700 onward, this could be grounds for reappraising the divergence from c. 1400-1550 in more institutional terms. Whatever the case may be, the critical point is that a technological head start does not inherently last forever: as circumstances change, innovation may occur for some societies much more rapidly than others in the same timeframe.

—– 861.2 —–2022-10-07 18:51:22+08:00:

This is where things move beyond my specific expertise, unfortunately, as I’m someone more on the institutional than the technical side of things.

—– 861.3 —–2022-10-08 05:39:27+08:00:

I’m afraid my specific expertise is largely confined to the period of the Qing and the pre-Qing Manchu ascendancy; that said I do think there is credibility to the idea that the late Ming/early Qing parity was more a process of importation than innovation. However I don’t feel qualified to comment on the full longue duree back into pre-Ming states.

—– 861.4 —–2022-10-08 05:41:20+08:00:

It’s an interesting question and one that may find a more helpful answer from a Europe specialist. My impression is that naval developments certainly did drive a lot of innovation at least in the organisational sphere, but I don’t know how well that translates to firearms technology as well.

—– 861.5 —–2022-10-08 05:42:43+08:00:

We’re talking matchlock arquebuses and cast, non-bored cannons. In terms of basic techniques, artillery was about to lag behind Europe, while small arms were some six decades out of date, with the flintlock starting to predominate in Europe by 1700.

—– 861.6 —–2022-10-08 05:44:13+08:00:

I don’t think the Darwinian argument necessarily holds a lot of water. The Qing certainly did face existential threats but they perceived them as internal. I’d also stress that with the argument as formulated by Andrade, the Zunghar Wars, even in their final stages when the Zunghars did not existentially threaten the Qing, were the last hotbed of innovation, whereas the other late Qing conflicts were not, not even the White Lotus Rebellion which was not a full-on existential threat, but still threatening enough to warrant huge expenditures.

—– 861.7 —–2022-10-08 05:44:26+08:00:

Well, hardly ever.

—– 861.8 —–2022-10-08 05:59:38+08:00:

So this is something that first requires a counter-question: were not the Zunghars, too, not particularly well-equipped? And yet the formulation, as phrased, states that the Zunghar wars were the last one requiring innovation in military technology.

The other thing to note is that Burma certainly did have access to European weapons. Quoting a footnote from Yingcong Dai’s ‘A Disguised Defeat: The Myanmar Campaign of the Qing Dynasty’:

In the 1760s, Myanmar had been exposed to Western penetration for many years. From India, the British were eager to expand into Myanmar, which brought them into conflict with the French, who were also proactive in imposing their influence on this country. Through trade with the Western countries, Myanmar had ready access to the advanced European weapons. During the war, they had used all these weapons, along with traditional weaponry and war vehicles such as elephants to battle the Manchu Bannermen, who still used old-fashioned fire weapons and bows. The Myanmar armies even used land mines in the war, which gave the Qing troops much headache. There are a number of accounts on the Myanmar’s use of the Western weaponry in Mian dang (e.g. the 33rd year, 2/66; 2/89).

862: Duality of cat-dog relationship in hololive, submitted on 2022-10-08 22:14:54+08:00.

—– 862.1 —–2022-10-09 15:48:25+08:00:

Ha Fauna is not gentle, she just doesn’t swear. Zeta’s difference is she does.

863: What are some historical units that deserve table representaion?, submitted on 2022-10-09 04:10:44+08:00.

—– 863.1 —–2022-10-11 06:58:59+08:00:

Second Mexican Empire

Wargames Foundry does a range for it in 28mm, and there’s a free supplement for TooFatLardies’ Sharp Practice covering it.

—– 863.2 —–2022-10-11 06:59:34+08:00:

Also has a manufacturer in 28mm specialising in the period, which makes it easy to get into.

—– 863.3 —–2022-10-11 07:01:01+08:00:

severe lack of miniatures

There’s some manufacturers if you know where to look – Newline does Han figures in 20mm while Khurasan has a variety of ancient, medieval, and early modern Chinese and Inner/Central Asian figures in 15mm.

864: [Hobby Scuffles] Week of October 10, 2022, submitted on 2022-10-09 22:44:30+08:00.

—– 864.1 —–2022-10-11 14:56:32+08:00:

while donning a dinosaur suit

I appreciate the commitment to the bit included wearing a balaclava under the dino suit as well.

—– 864.2 —–2022-10-11 22:58:26+08:00:

But I saw it in the ITV adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express, where Poirot was a lot more callous and judgmental than he came off as in the book.

So I watched that last month as part of a general watch through the entire ITV Poirot series (now finished), and I suspect there’s two elements at work. The first is that the series itself has its own internal chronology, with the stories adapted out of publication order, and by Series 9 at the very least, Poirot has become a mite more cynical and jaded than in the mostly quite light early episodes when the short stories were being adapted. Basically once the Hastings/Lemon/Japp trio stop appearing as regulars, there’s a noticeable tonal shift, but there’s shades even before that, given the specific liberties that ended up being taken with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in S7. Orient Express was adapted during the penultimate series (S12) so it’s well into that tonal shift. The second is that Suchet himself noted that the version of Orient Express he filmed was intentionally much more serious in tone than the 1974 Albert Finney film, so it’s also in large part an attempt to differentiate itself from what was the definitive adaptation of that particular story for the screen.

—– 864.3 —–2022-10-11 23:02:34+08:00:

It’s kind of interesting how Suchet viewed some of his predecessors, or at least what he said in the Being Poirot programme he did alongside the final series. In particular he noted that Peter Ustinov came ‘very close’ to being the definitive Poirot, though in what sense he meant that, the programme didn’t clarify. That said, Suchet quietly elided the fact that he had been Japp in one of the Ustinov adaptations!

—– 864.4 —–2022-10-11 23:04:09+08:00:

Physically unthreatening but still able to take down murderers using only the little grey cells (and also Captian Hastings).

!And, in one instance, drugged hot chocolate and a gun.!<

—– 864.5 —–2022-10-11 23:05:40+08:00:

Philippa Langley does come off as a Richard III stan on the level of vtubers

Please don’t put us in the same league as Philippa Langley…

—– 864.6 —–2022-10-11 23:13:08+08:00:

I guess it depends what ‘well-known’ is. Until Josh Strife Hayes covered it, I suspect very few people would have known about Otherland – I certainly didn’t! It’s very weird and I don’t actually get the plot, but I understand that at least part of it is about cults and WWI until it then becomes a thing in an East Asian fantasy virtual world that is also a hub for a bunch of other virtual worlds and then it was never finished.

—– 864.7 —–2022-10-12 04:32:21+08:00:

There’s also an earlier discussion here with further context (tagging in /u/Anaxamander57 so they know). Shinso-gumi is made up in large part of adult entertainers and is apparently known for being quite edgy already, so it’s apparently kind of par for the course in terms of the nature of the content.

—– 864.8 —–2022-10-12 15:24:28+08:00:

And there are cases of the company taking down something seemingly fairly innocuous like the Mumei celebration video.

Given that the reuploaded version removed references to the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion and the Hindenburg disaster (the latter specifically having Kiara, as in an Austrian, depicted on the Hindenburg-equivalent, when the original Hindenburg was operated by Nazi Germany), I wouldn’t call it ‘innocuous’ as such.

The NDA break is disputed

Indeed, the term ‘NDA’ does not appear in Cover’s statement, it’s entirely an audience interpolation.

Some talents have taken some health breaks. Given Sana, I don’t think one can confidently say that the company always allows the talents to take as long as they need, although again, none of us knows exactly what happened there. It remains the case that a lot of talents work objectively excessive hours.

This is an interesting one – I think the potential critical difference between Sana and, say, Marine, Suisei, or very recently Ina, is the nature of the health issue. Their health issues were/are temporary in some regard and could be resolved with rest, but a back injury can have seriously permanent consequences. A big part of what sets the more notable Japanese agencies apart, Hololive most prominently but far from exclusively, is live concerts and other 3D events. Sana may have recovered well enough for streaming and art, but there’s a potential limit to that recovery, it’s highly plausible that she came to regard this injury as one that prevented her from being involved in the other side of Hololive, especially with a new concert in the cards by early the next year and Council likely being on the list for appearances, given Myth and ID1’s appearance in the 2021 one.

—– 864.9 —–2022-10-12 15:53:33+08:00:

As a friend of mine noted, it says a lot that it’s the cannibalism fetish and not the lack of consent which tends to get picked up on.

—– 864.10 —–2022-10-12 21:26:59+08:00:

A very good point to have added.

—– 864.11 —–2022-10-13 00:52:24+08:00:

STOP THE PRESSES NEW MARBLE MACHINE NEWS

Not much news and not a clear progress report, but Martin Molin finally uploaded a new video showing a test of a new marble gate design, so stuff is now known to be happening with the ‘official’ design effort again.

—– 864.12 —–2022-10-13 00:58:28+08:00:

It’s how William S Gilbert died at the age of 75.

—– 864.13 —–2022-10-13 01:50:56+08:00:

As noted by another user, the weirder thing is that Kiara >!is herself a former idol, along with a few other Hololive members – among them is one of the JP member’s she’s closest with, Gen 5’s Momosuzu Nene!<. So in many ways her relatively ‘traditionalist’ view is one that comes from being on the inside, much as it clashes with what seems to be the modern understanding within idol fandom.

—– 864.14 —–2022-10-16 00:09:57+08:00:

Yikes. Just… just wow.