Also between this and knowing he ate cottage cheese with canned pineapple or ketchup has me conflicted on this dweebish monster

  • Red_Sunshine_Over_Florida [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    This actually sounds like something he would do, given his rants on the tapes about gay people in Classical Antiquity. The guy was obsessed with the Greek and Romans. Literally the boyfriend thinking about Rome meme. I wouldn’t be surprised if he also said the same stuff on the tapes to his dates.

        • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPM
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          Nixon and LBJ at the urinals with Nixon trying to flex on LBJ with some “Wot if the Roman’s industrialized” takes while LBJ interrupts him by saying they need to install lower urinals so he doesn’t feel so much splashback on his longdongjohn

          • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            25 days ago

            People really don’t talk about Johnson’s johnson enough. He used to just whip it out and show it to people in order to establish dominance. It’s such a bizarre piece of American history. The guy was a timid school teacher in public, but a tall, intimidating sex pest with a huge dick in private. No wonder he was JFK’s VP.

    • glans [it/its]@hexbear.net
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      maybe one day someone will use the tapes to generate a VR where you can have the experience of going on a date with dick nixon. special just for you.

      • Red_Sunshine_Over_Florida [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        He’s not really my type. Way too sweaty. And he makes me look attractive in comparison. On the other hand, maybe he’d take me on a date to show me the aliens like he did with Jackie Gleason.

        On a related note, one of the earliest moments that I retroactively attribute to being latently attracted to men was seeing photos of a young Eisenhower and Ford playing football. I didn’t understand it at the time and just brushed it off as “those guys were handsome.” I guess I’m like Trump in that regard: I love the handsome generals and football players, lol.

      • Red_Sunshine_Over_Florida [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        I think it does but, I never play PVP either. I know EU4 definitely does.

        He’d definitely have a freeze-gamer moment if his attractive genius heir turned out to be gay after his education is done.

  • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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    the reality of achaemenid rule was very light. Alexander was from the part of the greek world that acquiesced to achamenid tribute. Had Darius or Xerxes crushed the barbarians and emplaced some loyalists it would basically just prevent the peloppenesian war which is only important to “le western civilization” creeps in the first place. maybe more focus would be on the west as the italiotes became the standard bearers for ‘free greece’, probably just in historiography tho unless a spike in immigration made them more able to resist Carthage and Italians.

    in any case a triumph over the poor greek savages doesn’t seem like something that would rejuvenate the empire, as it became vulnerable and retracted from its furthest commitments there’s no reason for its terminal fate not to be sealed from the west anyway. perhaps by the exact same historical personages. overall it’s a pretty lame divergence point, California girls of the 30s clearly knew their althistory and recognized when they rely on racist ‘clash-of-civilizations’ tropes.

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    Real talk sometimes I wish the Persians won just to see how wildly divergent history would’ve been.

    Probably nothing whatsoever would change in a long run, Achaemenid rule over Greece wouldn’t last long, it was too far and Greeks would try to topple the satrapy, so there would be uprisings and it would get scrapped during the next dynasty crisis or civil war. Also Macedonia would remain outside of it anyway.

    • GVAGUY3 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      This is kinda what I was thinking. Nothing much would change. Probably no Peloppenesian Wars. Macedonia would probably have undergone the same path. The Greeks were stubborn bastards. Many of them sided with the Achaemenids during the Persian wars anyway.

      • Formerlyfarman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        The Peloponnesian war was arguably much more impactful than the Persian wars. It did affect the relations of production, almost 2 thirds of Athenian citizens died, and wages for craftsmen went from 7 liters of grain equivalent wich is sort of average for a pre industrial society to 15, Wich is insanely high. This kept slavery, and the associated superstructure economically viable. So no Peloponnesian war probably means Greece transitions away from a slave society into some form of tenancy much earlier. As well as greater efforts for Greek colonisation of Ukraine and the Mediterranean.

        What impact does this have in the world? Probably not much. They would break away eventually and a new war between them may have the same demographic effect.

        On the other hand a Feudal society may be more amenable to Persian rule, and may cause alexander to not exist. Making the empire last longer.

        On the gripping hand, even if there is no alexander the empire is not going to last much longer either. There was an agrarian crisis shortly after Alexander’s conquest, that would have happened anyway. so it’s likely that would cause it’s fall in this alt history, so at best they get 20 years more. And there would still be an Hellenistic world in the eastern Mediterranean afterwards.

    • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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      macedonia was even made a tributary by Darius on his way south, that they and ionians are still counted among the greeks is testament to the fact persian domination would not remove ‘greek-ness’ from greece.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind
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        Yeah and even Anatolian Greeks didn’t lose anything of their culture under Persian rule and even greekised their neighbours and became one of the main pillars of first Hellenistic and then Byzantine cultures.

      • Wertheimer [any]@hexbear.net
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        You ever read Robert Coover’s novel The Public Burning? Some hilarious Nixon comedy in there, like being bullied by Uncle Sam in the flesh and passing out on the couch after eating ketchup packets.

        • mushroom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          i haven’t but it sounds like a good read lol i’ll have to check it out. i like that wikipedia calls its portrayal of nixon “uncharacteristically human” lmao

  • BioWarfarePosadist [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    Listen Nixon was actually correct about the cottage cheese and pineapple thing. I had to try it out after learning that loser ate it every day, and it’s good.

    The pineapple adds a sweet and acidic taste to the cottage cheese and meshes well with the texture.

    So if you’re a non-vegan or vegetarian, give it a shot.

    I know pineapple and cottage cheese is one of the things I will have on my veganversary.

    • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPM
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      huh concidering how every republican successor after him increasingly became more dementedly evil to a rapid degree and generally concidering how the list of “not as fucking evil as he could be” for presidents has an astonishingly low bar, you may be on to something, especially concidering the fact Nixon would be denounced as a communist if he appeared today in contrast to the modern republican and democrat parties.

      • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        I mean he did the EPA, tried to do universal healthcare stuff, and technically ended US involvement in the Vietnam war and reproached with China… Probably the best the US got. thonk-cri

      • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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        ridiculous machine, the persians wouldn’t affect Rome in any way! Rome wasn’t even the master of Latium when that shit was going down

        • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPM
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          I’d disagree somewhat, I think there would be a distinct possibility that many Greeks would migrate into the colonial city-states their respective home cities formed on the southern Italian peninsula and strengthened the Greek foothold to the point they could more strongly rebuff the later attempts of Dionysius I of Syracuse to create a kingdom, but there also exists a distinct possibility that Dionysius could possibly instead focus his conquests on the peninsula moreso than his vainglorious attempts at fucking around in Greece and and soon after finding out.

          • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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            Italiote historiography is pretty sparse, it’s hard to imagine what ‘more’ Greek immigration looks like without any idea how much was happening irl. but they’d need to federate either under a Syracusan domination or the Italiote League to matter much more than they did and have a chance to rebuff the italians (principally romans). simply more greeks living in that bunch of back-stabbing cities don’t seem like they’d pose much more significant of a threat

            • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPM
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              Well you’d have to think about the fact that in the time span of a theoretical victory of the Persian empire over the Greek city states and its aftereffects shortly after would roughly coincide with both the period of plebeian unrest against the patricians and the Celtic raids into the peninsula. A federated italiote league of the magna graecians or possibly more likely Syracusian league/kingdom would have a much easier time securing southern Italy and possibly putting a wet blanket on Roman expansion.

              • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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                Syracuse strikes me as the most ambitious and proactive, if greeks refugees are used to explain a triumph over carthage and final domination of sicily, then they could snake up the boot in time to meet the romans or samnites as they were developing, and have good odds against them. unless some dorkass like dionysius still tries fighting in mainland Greece. or taking armies to africa to pursue the carthaginians. agony-yehaw

                this is a really fun setting, that paradox Imperator game is close, the final dlc for Rome II total war ‘Rise of the Republic’ is also pretty close

                • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPM
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                  the boot in time to meet the romans or samnites as they were developing, and have good odds against them.

                  I think unless they stuck to being wine drinking coastal elitists, they’d have a tough time chewing on the Lucanians for a long time, but I think there could’ve been an angle at trying to use Rome’s Latin neighbors as footholds to come in via the sea and wage a proper campaign.

                  unless some dorkass like dionysius still tries fighting in mainland Greece. or taking armies to africa to pursue the carthaginians.

                  Honestly would be a completely absurd move to try and take the fight to Carthage proper even if a lot of their armies were tied up in managing their growing little kingdom with keeping the peace among the slowly integrating Libiyan tribes. Such a foolish campaign could’ve caused a power vacuum with the fall of Syracuse and lead to an earlier carthaginian hegemony over the Mediterranean before the romans could ever really take off and start their imperial republic

        • context [fae/faer, fae/faer]@hexbear.net
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          yeah the persians were attempting to impose the tributary system and collect taxes from the greeks. probably the only real difference is that alexander the great’s conquest might have played out as a rebellion, instead.

          edit: as you elaborated upon in your other comment

          a persian victory would not have fundamentally changed the relationships to production, this is disguised great person thinking

          • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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            or like a conquest-genocide model of thinking, Persian victory would eliminate the greeks, Greek victory had eliminated the Persians, or at least their influence in the Mediterrean (none of these suppositions are true, of course).