yesterday was 11 hours door to door and today was 10
I thought maybe traffic would be appreciably lighter at 4 pm but nope, the absolute worst traffic in this area imo remained as such
ok it's possible that I underestimate how bad 520 is since I was very lucky to usually take that during non-rush hours
but either way my first real run-in with the parking lot that's rush hour 405 happened when I stayed over at an ex's house and realized that it took me longer to get to Redmond from Renton compared to how I normally got there from Seattle
admittedly, Seattle-Redmond is a "backwards" commute but still
in about two years there will be light rail that may kind of help
but looking at it, I'd have to take the train into Seattle to then take the train to Bellevue and beyond...
I guess it's at least time that I can enjoy podcasts
I'm finally to the real rise of Rome as an uncontested empire and the parallels between US history are stronger than ever
it taught me that the classic US bullshit of declaring their conquest as liberation is really something classic as it's exactly what Rome claimed they were doing for Greece
you even have the rise of empire leading to oligarchic aristocracy and internal fighting
I'm kind of disturbed with a bit of hagiography of the noble Roman Republic in the podcast compared to a decadent Roman Empire the host is dropping though
like yeah there's a surprising strong sense of legal tradition in the Republic that is going to be thrown out the door but rather than seeing that as an innocence lost, I see it as ultimately the Republic failing to ever address the basic contradictions of the lack of plebian power along with being a slave state
@chimerror Marius and Sulla. And then all the other guys, Caesar, Pompei etc. I think a firm boundary between Republic and Empire is a lot blurrier than say between Severan and say Flavian rulers. But of course the Romans themselves bought the idea that they were these noble people before it went south (see Suetonius).
@chimerror a national myth is useful to state control any time or place (recent Italy is a great example; fascists pulled on long gone imperialism rather than acknowledge Italy’s roots in fragmented states which then only broke from Austria-Hungary because the latter were defeated by Prussia, THEN they lost badly to Abyssinia). And of course “useful to state control” isn’t the same as “ultimately beneficial” or “factual”…
@Leucrotta yeah that's another thing that I've really gathered: just how much self-mythologizing they did and how deeply they too believed their own bullshit like we do