#LONGPOST IS LOOONG

[seriously-mike]

I zalegalizowali nam Castel Majtolfo

Taka sytuacja, niby nie ma się z czego śmiać, ale jednak kurwa jest. OTURZ Naczelny Sąd Administracyjny zalegalizował budowę zamku w Stobnicy, należącego do synów właściciela firmy odzieżowej Solar Company, Dymitra i Tymoteusza Nowaków. Dziedzice gaciowej fortuny są oficjalnie, prawomocnie niewinni, żadnego przestępstwa się nie dopuścili, więc nie ma potrzeby ukrywać ich personaliów, wiecie. ;)

Powiem tak: gdyby oni tam sobie na krzywy ryj pierdolnęli zwykłą obciachową willę-carringtonkę, z betonowymi tralkami, lwami na podjeździe, kolumienkami i innymi takimi chujami mujami, to wkurwiłbym się bardziej. Głównie dlatego, że takich obciachowych willi mamy w kraju od pyty i trochę, a po co nam następna, i to jeszcze w chronionym obszarze cennym przyrodniczo. Ale ci kolesie po pierwsze mają kolosalne jaja ze stali, a po drugie, w porównaniu z przeciętnym wsiórem który w najntisach skręcił miliardy na handlu tombakiem i skarpetami (oraz, prawdopodobnie, spirytem z przemytu), normalnie IQ 200, big brain time i w ogóle. Ten zamek wygląda jak zamek. Jak taki gotycki kanciak z Toskanii czy znad Loary. On się architektonicznie trzyma kupy i bardzo składnie imituje funkcje, bezczelnie stojąc na jeziorze. Patrzę na to i mam takie "No kurwa."

Porównajcie sobie pensjonat w Łapalicach, też budowany na krzywy ryj z rozmachem pijanego ułana. Te łuki i wieżyczki gdzie bądź wyglądają jak willa-carringtonka na kwasie i srogich pigułach, wizja na miarę skrzyżowania barona cygańskiego z baronem narkotykowym. Jakieś takie to pierdolnięte, pospinane krużgankami na odjeb, z jakimś kościołem po lewo, i w ogóle z czym do gościa.

Tak samo ten bułgarski wycisk w Rawadinowie, niedaleko słynnego kurortu w Sozopolu. No ja pierdolę, przecież to jest skrzyżowanie Sagrada Familia z Hogwartem.

I w przeciwieństwie do tych dwóch pokrak, sytuacja taka: jesteś sobie pan dochtór jężeniór architekt, dłubiesz sobie pizdryki w stylu minimalistycznego modernizmu a la Minecraft, i nagle jakichś dwóch ziomków pyta, czy nie zaprojektowałbyś im zamku. Na jeziorze. Patrzysz na nich jak na debili, bo jesteś pewien że jeszcze nie zeszły z nich sobotnie piksle, ale nie, oni mówią całkiem serio. I wymieniają kwotę, której jak dotąd nie słyszałeś. A że taka kasa piechotą nie chodzi, a nawet nie jeździ mercedesem, to walisz dwa głębsze na rozgrzewkę i jedziesz z towarem.

Biorąc pod uwagę, ile gorzały napierdala się na polejbudach (skąd zresztą nazwa tych szacownych instytucji), po dwóch głębszych zrobić jaskółkę to nie problem - ale chuj tam z jaskółkami, prawilny zamek musi mieć dziedziniec, donżon, mury obronne z wieżą bramną, kaplicę i takie tam duperszwance. W ko��cu jesteś pan dochtór jężeniór wykładowca na polejbudzie w Poznaniu, a nie jakiś ciećwierz strugający świątki z drewna. I cyyyk, i jeeeb, i walisz donżon górujący nad okolicą jak monstrualny pytong nad obliczem Sashy Grey, wysoki na jedenaście pięter, z fikuśną acz stylistycznie pasującą bartyzaną na rogu. Plebs nie doceni, ale docenta Drewniaka jasny chuj strzeli jak zobaczy że ktoś według twojego projektu zbudował legitny zamek w średniowiecznym stylu, a jego pomysły na rewitalizację kamienic co rusz upierdala jakiś debil z urzędu konserwatora zabytków!

Mecenas daje złoto, mecenas chce Castel Majtolfo. No to się nie pierdolisz i projektujesz takie Castel Majtolfo, żeby wyglądało jakby tu zawsze było, tu zawsze stało. Ma wyglądać klasycznie, a nie jak jakiś jebany gargamel, więc basen dla jaśnie panów dziedziców króla majtasów będzie miał łukowe sklepienie i kolumny. Wielka sala wysoka na trzy piętra też, nawet oklepiemy kwadratowe żelbety ozdobnymi panelami.

Oczywiście jesteś dochtór jężeniór z polejbudy, więc nie odpierdalasz maniany po połówkach. Mamy takie modne angielskie słowo, accessibility - no to żeby nie nosić gości ani mebli po typowo średniowiecznych wąskich a krętych schodach, przebiegle wbudowujesz w wieżę okrągły szyb windy. Z zewnątrz średniowiecze, wewnątrz cywilizacja nowoczesnego Zachodu. I jeszcze te okna stylizowane na otwory strzelnicze. Drewniak obsra się świątecznym twarogiem, jak to zobaczy.

Jaśnie panowie muszą być pod wrażeniem od razu jak wjadą na włości. Ten zamek nie będzie wyglądać jak chujówka z pieczonego błota postawiona gdzieś w dziczy z której Rycerze Marii Panny przeganiali Prusów i Jaćwingów - opierdoli się go solidną kamienną elewacją i będzie wyglądał jak King's Landing czy inne Kaer Morhen. A gdyby się okazało, że książątka herbu Galoty przeceniły swoją zdolność kredytową, to na wjeździe pierdolniemy most zwodzony - wystarczy go podnieść i już można bezkarnie krzyczeć na komornika, że jego stary był chomikiem, a jego stara śmierdziała skisłymi jagodami, i pierdzieć w jego generalnym kierunku.

Zresztą niech taki komornik wie, do jakiego mocarstwa szura - zanim w ogóle przebije się przez lasek i zobaczy, że most zwodzony został podniesiony i nie ma wjazdu, to najpierw musi przejechać przez bramę godną cara Mikołaja. Tego pierwszego, który za podobny wypas wystawił warsiafce rachunek na jedenaście milionów rubli.

[sockatoothewafflebird]

AHEM AHEM SO i have been provoked. oh my god this got long. like. loooong. oh man i am SUCH a yapper. so like 60% of it is under the cut. oh also @robotgutzz you asked to be tagged in this so here ya go buddy

first things first my hatchling is named Elbaite. the best way to introduce them to people, in my opinion, is just: they're a slightly taller (and gabbs would say prettier if you managed to get it out of them somehow) feldspar with added geologist and linguist interests. basic info, ellie is a linguist first, geologist second, an an astronaut... well, for about seven hours (how long the loops last in their universe).

they're reckless. they put themself between danger and other people, which has gotten them plenty of scars and plenty of fun stories to tell hatchlings. (tephra is their favorite, the little troublemaker, but you didn't hear that from me!) they legit got a chunk of their ear taken off by an animal attacking their group on a camping trip. they fought it off while the others ran.

basically they're a mini feldspar, except they're a nerd as well as a hero. the people around them think of them as a hero, anyway. they,,,, uhm.. dont really have much respect for themself.. and they cope by having no self-preservation instincts and joking a lot and being a people pleaser..... yaaaayy (a sad little poof of confetti appears out of nowhere)

so, now, gabbro! putting the rest under the cut because i wanna explain how i characterize gabbro before i explain how they work together so. teehee this gonna get longggg

*ahem ahem* just saying this right now so it's blatantly clear: gabbro is autistic when i'm the one writing them. i autism-beamed them and now they're an artistic, autistic, astronaut. AAA if you will.

with that outta the way, gabbro is first and foremost an artist. in every sense of the word. they write more than they draw and they sculpt or carve more than they write but they Make Things. lots of things. that's why they were so excited about the statues- proof the nomai were the same as them, in a way. oh boy when they find the quantum trials they freak tf out because "OH MY STARS??? IM NOT CRAZY LETS GO"

and WHY do they think they're crazy. well. that's because everyone made them think that way! because their autism makes them Weird. they like to be alone, they enjoy their own company just as much as the company of others. and in a tight-knit communal society that values togetherness immensely, that just won't do! so as much as the others care about gabbro, they don't really understand what they need, and that leads to some interesting issues (that i plan to touch on eventually).

(AND. they're one of the only members of OWV that doesn't officially have a profession. gossan trains astronauts, slate is an engineer, hornfels is an educator and curator. riebeck has archaeology, chert has astronomy, even elbaite has linguistics and geology!)

they found it hard to make friends when they were younger. they tried, and failed, because they simply didn't get it. so they instead made friends with trees, bugs, rocks.

aaand this is where elbaite comes in. this is there the time buddies become buddies.

so, elbaite has a very strong sense of justice. everyone should be included, everyone's needs matter (except their own, in their opinion...) no matter what, and there should always be compromise. this leads tiny little hatchling elbaite to feel bad that hatchling gabbro is never included. so, a little eight-year-old hatchling with bandages all over their body from their escapades, approaches a twelve-year-old in an oversized sweater holding a bug in their hand, and says, "let's be friends."

gabbro is confused. "uh... why?" they say, because no one has ever asked to be their friend before. and they're like a lot younger than them. elbaite says, "because! i wanna!" thinking this plan will go perfectly, like half of their plans don't end in them getting hurt somehow. and somehow it does. and now gabbro's got a little buddy that drags them into games and activities, and they don't know what to do with that because half the time the social interaction ends up stressing them out (though they appreciate the effort ellie puts in. they appreciate that they try.)

gabbro does make other friends eventually. spinel and chert. and by association, halite, though hal has opinions on gabbro that they simply keep to themself. wahoo.

anyway, yeah, long story short they're buddies before they're time buddies. when people say things about gabbro behind their back, ellie is there to give them a death glare or flick them in the ear or however they decide to defend their buddy that day.

on with The Big Thing. this refers to gabbro's launch day. they graduated the program a lot later than most as previously mentioned. their disability paired with how others treated them made the last bit of training a lot harder for them, and they had to take a break from it.

long story short, a lot of STUFF happened right before they launched, so they left without any goodbyes. and then a year later, at 20 (they got their sapwine ceremony done early because they wanted to get it over with(and launch slightly early lmao)), elbaite launches.

(THIS IS WHERE I ACTUALLY GET TO THE POINT SMHHH WHY DID I DUMP SO HARD)

so then the loops start. and this is where my ramble actually gets to the point stars above this is wayyy too long--

ahem. ahem. so the loops start. and at first, elbaite is like, okay, this is something new i can do. i have a goal, a mystery to solve, so i'll be okay. i can figure this out, and i can get us out of it, and i'll be fine. we'll be fine! everything is fine. i am fine. (ellie is not, in fact, fine!!)

gabbro is kind of, well, stuck, so. they just chill. the wind threw a rock straight into their skull and knocked them out for a loop, once, but other than that they just chill on their island. they don't even know what's happening, just that chert says something about the sun over the radio every loop and hornfels doesn't remember that they lost their ship.

their mindset? eh, guess i'll die.

the first twenty-two loops ellie aboids giant's deel like the plague. eventually they get over themselves and the find gabbro. they talk, establish that yes we are still friends, have a couple insane revelations because holy shit i'm not alone in this? and decide to start traveling together.

here's the gist of it: elbaite always takes the brunt of the most brutal deaths. they keep shielding gabbro from space debris with their body and getting hit, or pushing them out of the hatch of the ship when the reactor explodes, or.. a lot of other things. elbaite is naturally inclined to put themself between gabbro and whatever danger is hurtling towards them. they cant handle when someone else suffers, if they could have helped it, or suffered in their place.

meanwhile, gabbro is just along for the ride. they adapt pretty quickly to the whole "death doesn't matter" thing and they often have to remind ellie that it's not the end of the world (figuratively, i feel like i should specify) if they run out of time. gabbro notices how hard ellie is overworking themself, and they know if they say "ellie you gotta take a break" they'll just brush it off, so... they use things like "ugh can we have a break loop? im starting to get a headache" or "ugh im soooo tired, i need a nap, buddy." as excuses and stuff. and of course because ellie cares about them they comply. teehee.

while gabbro naps (they do actually sleep a lot, true to their word, but if they didn't want ellie to take breaks gabbro would try to stay awake for them), ellie studies nomai text, and starts to teach themself how to write in nomaian. (which becomes very helpful in the au idea i have where they are able to travel with solanum due to funky quantum time business.)

they keep each other sane, unintentionally, and in the process they become ride-or-die besties. and they begin to appreciate each other more. and more. and become closer. and closer. until they start making flirty "jokes". and eventually neither of them know if they're joking anymore.

and then ellie has an "...oh... oh no" realization moment when they discover their feelings have, indeed, become romantic. and gabbro is like "...huh... hmm..." like they're just letting their emotions do their own thing. long story short they're both inexperienced but gabbro's mindset is "woahhh... feelings are weird..." and ellie's is "i CANNOT let this distract me from The Goal."

...im gonna end this here, probably make another whole post if i feel like it and people want it. if i do it'll mainly focus on the romantic parts of their relationship.

so.... toodles!!! time buddies for life!!! sorry for yapping so much lmfao i cannot believe how long this is and its so terribly organized.... i promise i'll flesh these dynamics out in fics soon enough!! pinky swear!!!!! i shall offer more snippets and yaps if provoked!

(ahem ahem part 2 here)

[seriously-mike]

History Was Written by the Victorians

or: How Our Image of the Middle Ages Is (Mostly) Bullshit

Close your eyes and imagine a medieval executioner. Without effort, I can tell you imagined someone more or less like this:

Man in a red or black face-covering hood. Most probably fat and shirtless, or wearing some kind of black tunic or apron. Wielding a big-ass axe. Tell ya what, it's bullshit.

This post was supposed to explain how that image came from one Jan Mydlář, a Czech executioner from 17th century, but that claim, stated by one Czech website and repeated on Wikipedia with no actual verification, is also bullshit. And rather obvious one, because Mydlář is famous for executing 27 Czech nobles in the aftermath of the Battle of Bila Hora in 1621 - an event presented in several illustrations, and in none of the contemporary ones the headsman is wearing anything resembling a hood. Better yet, most supposed facts about Mydlář's life come from four novels written by Czech novelist Josef Svátek and published between 1886 and 1889 - even the Czech Wikipedia notes the difficulty in telling fact and fiction apart in them, which kinda proves my point.

I recently mocked the modern historiography as tainted by fanciful 19th century interpretations and outright fabrications, saying that the history was written by the Victorians, and the entire imagery of a hooded executioner is such a fabrication. Along with the supposed torture implement called the Iron Maiden, by the way. So how did the actual executioners dress over the ages? I do recall a post by someone on Tumblr with "history" and "POC" in the username that I can't find right now, and there's also a thread on Quora that answers "Why did medieval executioners wear hoods?" with a long explanation that begins with a paraphrase of "LOL no, they didn't", but let's have a go at it one more time. Particularly that there will be pictures. Yay.

Let's start with this 14th century miniature from Les Chroniques de Froissart, that I picked on purpose: in this one the executioner is wearing a hat that isn't red (by some odd coincidence, three other illustrations from the same book depict executioners as wearing red or brown hats, but still, no hoods in sight). No rule about clothing either - also on purpose, I didn't pick the image where the executioner is wearing a black shirt and grey hose either. Iconography from other sources also has executioners wear all kinds of rainbow pimp gear including slitted shirts and pants not unlike the Landsknechts (and I do remember that the Tumblr post I can't find now also contained several of those images).

This one comes from 19th century, sure, but is supposed to depict the clothing of the Cologne judiciary of 16th century. Now, pick the executioner out of the lineup.

Nope. Not the guy on the right, that one is just a herald. The executioner is the guy in brown coat and red pants. Which also lines up with the contemporary depictions.

Next up, we have a name: Franz Schmidt, the executioner of Nuremberg who worked in the late 16th and early 17th century, shown here beheading a woman for "harlotry and lewdness". In both this illustration and the better-known sketch that shows up if you google "Franz Schmidt executioner", he's wearing fairly spiffy clothing like this blue and gold number or all frills everything in the sketch, and someone quotes books by historians Anna Sunden and Ulinka Rublack that an executioner was allowed to take his victims' clothes unless expressly forbidden (for example, the city council of Augsburg forbade the executioner from taking the clothes of an infamously flamboyant guildmaster he executed).

Even closer to the Victorian age, the executioners still had no intention of wearing hoods, like this illustration that I already made fun of. According to @bizarrepotpourri's research, this is the official executioner of Wrocław, one master Thienel, performing his first job in 1800, which gives me even more ridiculous ideas for a caption, again stemming from the guy on the left tipping his hat. But still - no mask, no hood, not even a hat or a coat.

Similarly, this illustration that @petermorwood brought to my attention depicts the 1820 beheading of Karl Ludwig Sand, a student who assassinated writer and diplomat August von Kotzebue. No hood at all, again.

If anything, the only hint is this display of the gear of Giovanni Battista Bugatti, the Executioner of the Papal States - we have a white hooded robe that would not be out of place in the American South and a red one along with an axe. Curiously, contemporary depictions of Bugatti show him in ordinary work clothes and I wouldn't be surprised if the white robe was intended for some kind of processions or didn't belong to Bugatti at all - it turns out that the confraternity of penitents of the Santa Lucia di Gonfalone in Rome who were tasked with burying the dead back in the day do wear white hooded robes like this, and where an executioner works, there are always enough bodies to bury.

This piece by our national artist Jan Matejko, famous for his portraits of the kings of Poland and the absolutely fuckhuge epic painting of the battle of Grunwald, looks like video game concept art, and of The Settlers slash city builder kind. From left to right, we have two builders, a butcher peeking out from behind an executioner, a senior city guard, two city guards carrying polearms and two trumpeters of which one is wearing armor for some unspecified reason. Okay, so the executioner is wearing a gugel and a cloak, all red everything, but much like the more faithful illustration of the officials of Cologne above, still no mask.

And then, we have this drawing from the June 25th, 1864 issue of the British magazine Once a Week, depicting the execution of King Charles I. Forty years from the last example and what the fuck is this? The guy is wearing an unbelted tunic and some weird-ass handkerchief with holes for eyes that just floats in front of his face. What.

And that's not even the weirdest take of the era. Look at this 1840 colored engraving by caricaturist George Cruikshank, depicting the execution of Lady Jane Grey. WHAT IN THE FUCK. The headsman looks like Dr Neo Cortex in a gas mask and even if we blame it on a bad photocopy, the lighter black-and-white version you can also find online is even worse, because with more details revealed, he's apparently wearing blackface.

"Artistic invention" continues in those two images from cigarette cards - on the left we have a 1887 card from the US, and on the right a 1925 British one based on the costume from Gilbert & Sullivan's Yeomen of the Guard, which kinda absolves the artist as stage costumes tend to be ridiculous like this. On one side, we have a domino mask, on the other a stiff black mask of some kind, both still remaining in separation from reality because it wasn't working out.

You might find similar masks to the one on the right on the internet, either displayed in museums or being sold as former museum exhibits, but curiously they never show up in contemporary art, and neither do some of the more curious torture implements. It's like the Victorian historians and artists misinterpreted old stuff they found, had no clue what it even was (much like the Roman glove knitting helpers) or pretended to have no clue because stating the actual purpose outright was considered indecent (imagine all the well-worn dildos throughout history). This head-up-the-ass tendency continues to this day, as Peter Morwood's post points out in an example of an executioner's sword being described on an American museum's website with several incorrect assumptions, the worst being a claim that it must have been ceremonial because it's pretty - engravings, gilded hilt and pommel, the works. Well, shit. There are tens of extant executioner's swords photographed and most of them are engraved with fairly typical phrases and execution-related iconography, a lot also have gilded or silvered hilts and/or pommels, and museum curators don't usually discount that as "proof" that the swords in question weren't used.

[seriously-mike]

How The World Was Made Boringly Efficient

I have already reposted several posts about history under the tag #history was written by the Victorians, about the misconceptions that entered the public consciousness during the early modern era (mostly the Victorian age, indeed) and refuse to leave. That and, I promised a post about the modern perception of government and public services that just can't line up with fantasy worlds and, even, the ideas of some historians.

It hit me in @milkywayan's post about medieval food, the typical idea of which is heavily tainted by Victorian ideas that, unsurprisingly, came from then-contemporary poverty food. And I really don't want to sound like Ted Kaczynski, but: blame the industrial society for that. And capitalism.

There will be a lot of things in this post that I copied from an unfinished draft of mine tentatively titled "Writing Fantasy in the Information Age" - mostly because back then I focused on the modern times entirely too much and a lot of the issues come from earlier eras. This is a general disclaimer for the tangents that will appear further on.

For the King and... That's It

The medieval (and earlier) concept of government was heavily personal, and with a lot of independence involved. I do remember, for example, scenes from the Asterix comics where the Roman governors did as they pleased and as long as their duties towards Rome were fulfilled (for example, paying the set taxes and pocketing much more for personal gain) they were left unbothered. The same can be said about patriotism, or more precisely the loyalty to the ruler, because the concepts of patriotism and nation as we understand it are Enlightenment-era ideas. And when I'm saying it was personal, it was personal. For example, the entire clusterfuck that was 17th century Poland started with the overly inflated ambitions of Swedish Prince Sigismund Vasa, a fanatical Catholic (oh shit) elected the king of Poland. His fanaticism caused us no end of trouble and wasted opportunities - for example, in order to hold the Swedish throne after his father Johan III died, he had to be forced to sign religious liberties for the local Protestants and never really gave up ideas of Catholic reconquista of Sweden, leading the regent, Sigismund's uncle Karl IX to oust him and take the throne, which led to over half a century of violent dynastic shin-kicking as both sides tried to take over the other without much success. Mostly because Sigismund refused to allow his son, prince Władysław, to change his faith for political reasons - neither to secure the Swedish throne nor, after we thoroughly kicked a lot of Muscovite ass, the throne of Russia. Just fucking imagine: we forced the Russian tsar Vassily Shuysky to pay homage to king Sigismund and accept prince Władysław as the new tsar only for the king to go "lol, nope" and scuttle the whole plan. All that despite two centuries and a half of wide-ranging religious tolerance introduced by king Casimir the Great and reinforced by various acts throughout the reign of the Jagiellonian dynasty.

And since we're at the 17th century clusterfuck, there's the issue of Cossack ataman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who caused us a lot of trouble because nobody gave a shit about his personal feud with noble Daniel Czapliński. Basically, Czapliński stole part of Khmelnytsky's land, Khmelnytsky filed complaints to everyone higher and higher up culminating in an audience with the king, and achieved fuck-all. Much like a lot of people trying to get any help from the Polish government ever since. Worse yet, he was given a lot of shit for being that old-school Ruthenian Orthodox Cossack with a stupid haircut, mostly from the local prince Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, who was as much of a Polish Catholic poser as he could be. So, unfortunately, Khmelnytsky made some hasty and truly weird alliances, started a war and lost it, much like a lot of neglected Cossack leaders before and after him. Neglected, you ask? Well, I told you it was personal: the local nobles weren't willing to accept the Cossack leaders as people of equal standing, for various reasons, and treated them like uppity peasants.

And as for filing complaints to the King, we don't have the greatest track record about that either - for example, @bizarrepotpourri cited an example from the 15th century chronicle of Jan Długosz, regarding robber knights in southern Poland, that apparently never saw a resolution, as the stories of supposed punishment have multiple contradicting versions that don't line up with any records and sound like a smear campaign orchestrated by a rival noble family that was unsuccessfully tempted into treason by the Hungarians.

So, don't be surprised by all the free-for-all fuckery that goes on in A Song of Ice and Fire, for example. GRRM, while being laughably inept in some fields and rude and unreasonable about others, nailed the ambitions and liberties medieval nobles had, the way kings had to rely on the nobles by bribing and threatening them when necessary, and not really giving a shit as long as the internal conflicts didn't threaten the Royal house. Also, back to the elevator pitch for this post, and the quote by historian David Sturdy, don't expect the peasants to feel much loyalty to the land or country - they obey their local noble, and the king just in case, but apart from that they'll focus on defending their heimat - mostly their village and some lands around it, and if dragged into a bigger conflict by their liege (whether on the orders of the king or because of some dick-measuring contest against the neighboring noble), they'll be fairly confused about the whole thing. Forget the enthusiastic cries of "For Temeria!" from The Witcher 3 and other nonsense like that. They're more likely to raise torches and pitchforks against unjust taxes and services forced on them.

Guards! Guards! ...Guards?

While the concept of a Guild of Thieves as some kind of organized crime in the fantasy city of your choice is farfetched, don't expect any serious police force either. The city guard was usually tasked with manning the city gates and towers, also for fire watch duties, and, as I read in a book fragment helpfully photographed by @jurian-is-cinnamon-roll, the enforcement of some decency laws fell directly on the local executioner - for example, a too deep cleavage could get you a whipping. The judiciary role was fulfilled mostly by the city's government (unless some Serious Shit happened, as that required the appeal to the next instance higher up) and, unsurprisingly, the guards were often used as the Group In Charge's personal enforcers as well, meaning they were widely disliked and corrupt as fuck. So, getting caught by the onlookers and dragged to the nearest guard in the name of public safety was as or even more likely than being seized by the conveniently close patrol.

Another very important issue related to the city guards is that there was no municipal lighting to speak of - as in, no street lights, meaning that after sunset, the whole city was pitch-ass dark and you had to bring your own lamps and/or hire servants (called link-boys) to do it for you. And even then, with understaffed and corrupt city guard, you risked getting robbed by gangs of thugs.

Out of the cities, it was even worse: with the traffic few and far between, because not really that many goods had to be shipped long way away, there was nobody to come to your aid on the long stretches of roads, particularly through uninhabited terrain like all the vast woodlands or bare, rocky areas. Typical robbers weren't the Merry Men of Sherwood, but brutal thugs if not outright homicidal maniacs. Sometimes even minor nobles, particularly in German states, supplemented the income from their fiefs by ambushing trade caravans, at least until they became too much of a nuisance and had, for a lack of a better word, a posse sent after them. Then, there were pirates - while a lot of the current pop culture focuses on the late 17th-early 18th "Golden Age of Piracy" on the Atlantic, there are also the earlier North Sea pirates preying on the Hanseatic ships in the 14th century and Barbary Pirates operating on the Mediterranean Sea for over a millenium - from the 8th to the 19th century.

Million Ways to Die in the Medieval Times, A Lot of Them Embarrassing

I once said jokingly that “in Bismarck’s time, they made a lot of babies in the countryside because they wore out quickly”, a reference to many infant and child deaths that unsurprisingly skewed the statistics and led to the “barely anyone lived past 30 in the Middle Ages” myth.  Sure, there’s five centuries between Middle Ages and the Iron Chancellor, but as opposed to other things mentioned before, we had to wait for the important changes in the field of medicine all the way to late 20th century. Here's a page from a 17th century document listing the number of deaths in London, 1632 AD.

So, what was I saying about "making a lot of babies because they wore out quickly"? Over two thousand dead babies that year in London alone, not counting stillborn ones. Almost 1800 cases of tuberculosis, an illness pretty much unheard of in the modern world because we vaccinated the ever-coughing shit out of it. Over a thousand cases of fever, over half a thousand cases of pox and almost as many deaths by the notoriously neglected British teeth (read: abscesses, infections, inflammations, etcetera). In a city of about 250 thousand inhabitants.

Of course, any medical help was entirely private, small-scale and fully paid for by the patient - be it actual physicians, resident or itinerant barbers, herbalists or whoever had any medical knowledge or at least conviction of it. There was also a lot of mad science and outright quackery going on, not to mention treason - I do recall a case where the court physician of a Pomeranian duke was executed because somehow, strangely, the duchess' every pregnancy ended in stillbirth - until it was found out that he conspired with the neighboring state (I can't remember whether it was Denmark or one of the German states that had their distinct identities back then) to prevent the duke from siring a legitimate heir.

There were also no hospitals to speak of - what was called a "hospital" was, in fact, an almshouse - part asylum, part housing for the poor and elderly who had to express their gratitude by praying daily for the almshouse's founder good health and fortune. This also means that monks running those places didn't necessarily have any medical knowledge to speak of.

And since we're at embarrassing deaths, let's go back to the previous sections that regarded justice and law enforcement. You're probably thinking that in the Middle Ages, the lawmakers were going out of their way to have people hanged for just about anything and, well... that's bullshit. Not quite Victorian bullshit, as the stereotypical harsh law dubbed the "Bloody Code" was introduced during the reign of king George III - you know, the crazy one - although it has been entirely the doing of the British parliamentarians taking it out on the poor, as they're wont to do even now. While earlier penal codes like the Holy Roman Empire's Constitutio Criminalis Carolina did warrant the death penalty for grand theft, they also defined fairly high value of the stolen items - if I remember correctly, one golden ducat. The Bloody Code, however, aimed at a value about twenty times lower, and that would be 12 pence, or one shilling. Even with over two centuries of gradual depreciation of coin, that value was bubkes, and so the juries often undervalued the stolen goods, as not to hang everyone dragged before the court. For example, a sheep that was worth six shillings could be valued at ten pence, just so the thief could be hauled off to Australia instead and get pressed to work there. And while I know that other Tumblr users know the subject better than me, I learned long ago that being hanged was indeed embarrassing, certainly much more than having your head chopped off in public.

But, a lot of punishments weren't meant to be an embarrassing death or even maiming - if you ever saw the device known as the stocks, that one was meant mostly for embarrassment. Not only you had to be locked in them for several days, but also everyone around knew you and could give you a couple of harsh words or rotten produce. So your reputation was most probably dragged through the worst kind of shit by that, and if you kept going at it, you could be chased out of the area with the promise of a very embarrassing death if you returned, or just skip that and die a very embarrassing death. There were also other creative devices that made your life hard and made you look stupid, but I think I should leave that for some other time.

Mostly Rural and All-Natural

Now, let's focus on the post that started it all: the food. The Victorian age is well past the time when the majority of people started moving to cities, meaning that a lot of stuff had price tags and not many people could actually grow their own food. The Middle Ages, well, they were mostly rural and all-natural, like the title of this section says. This meant that, as the post about the food mentioned, people not only had a well-rounded diet that included eggs, milk and cheese, but also a large variety of vegetables and herbs, plus a lot of stuff found or caught in the wild - now, while venison and boar were the meat of kings and you would be royally fucked up for poaching those, nobody was particularly bothered about hares, for example. Also, when it came to clothing, homespun wool and linen were common materials and they could be dyed using various plants growing in the wild. The little display I linked should give you an idea of what was possible - and what, unsurprisingly, people refuse to acknowledge due to historical misconceptions.

This, of course, doesn't cover a lot of sumptuary laws that were common through history (and moreso in the Far East, particularly Japan). For example, the Ancient Romans had strict regulations as to who was allowed to wear silk clothing and clothing that was dyed purple, and multiple sumptuary laws in medieval Europe regulated the permission to wear certain furs, most importantly ermine that is now archetypical of royalty, and the amount of precious metals. So don't be surprised at the story I mentioned in the post about medieval executioners: I'm guessing that sumptuary laws were the reason why the infamously flamboyant clothes of a corrupt guildmaster were off-limits to the executioner who would be permitted to take them otherwise.

And Then What?

Okay, let's finish this. What's the deal with "boringly efficient" of the title? Well, for starters: the urbanization, industrialization and flight to cities that led to the simplification and unification of clothing, food etc. through large-scale production. That moved the burden of making clothes or growing food from single families to large enterprises, but also changed the whole structure of people's diets due to logistics. Our vegetables aren't the medieval vegetables, our dairy is not the medieval dairy and most importantly, our meat isn't the medieval meat, for better (no parasites like tapeworms) or worse (being pumped full of veterinary medicine, water and salts, for example). We also have access to incomparably more fabrics and dyes due to the progress of chemistry and textile industry. But still, those things are produced elsewhere, by someone else, and most of us just have to buy the same standard stuff from the store instead of creating bespoke outfits or at least hiring someone skilled to do it. Boring, right?

While luxury imports were well known since the ancient times, the formation of trading companies that at one point could rival governments and noble houses in their power did increase the range and volume of imports, and colonization of far-off regions also added a thing or two to that. And with the increase of volume, the prices tend to drop, so a lot of extraordinary stuff like all the exotic spices, now being grown in large-scale plantations, became boring. I mean, I can have cinnamon any day now - a lot of medieval nobles would die of bloody flux at the sight of such impertinent flamboyance.

Then, there's politics and sociology running forward full-blast ever since the late 18th century. The Enlightenment redefined a lot of fundamentals, like the concept of a nation divorced (or sometimes widowed) from the reigning monarch and his lineage. The necessity to include first the bourgeoisie and later even the peasants' representation in the government also required surveillance and maintaining order among them instead of just, well, keeping them around and sending the troops to beat the shit out of them if they became unruly. Hence the development of modern police forces, intelligence agencies and, on the other hand, social services to make sure the poor aren't wallowing in desperation and lawlessness (mostly). So most of the time, everything is peaceful and boring. Of course, there's still exploitation going on, but fortunately nowhere near the scale that caused large-scale uprisings in the medieval times (unless some government spectacularly fucks up and causes nationwide riots, which happened even in post-WW2 Europe) - mostly because of the necessity of representation I mentioned above.

Also, governments need people alive and working to pay taxes and, sometimes, wage wars. So they can't just ignore epidemics, dishonest food companies causing mass food poisoning by cutting costs, etcetera. Hence the rapid progress of medicine and incomparably more chill approach to law and its enforcement (mostly). Hard to believe the Medieval times were way crazier, right?

[seriously-mike]

What Will Destroy AI Image Generation In Two Years?

You are probably deluding yourself that the answer is some miraculous program that will "stop your art from being stolen" or "destroy the plagiarism engines from within". Well...

NOPE.

I can call such an idea stupid, imbecilic, delusional, ignorant, coprolithically idiotic and/or Plain Fucking Dumb. The thing that will destroy image generation, or more precisely, get the generators shut down is simple and really fucking obvious: it's lack of interest.

Tell me: how many articles about "AI art" have you seen in the media in the last two to three months? How many of them actually hyped the thing and weren't covering lawsuits against Midjourney, OpenAI/Microsoft and/or Stability AI? My guess is zilch. Zero. Fuckin' nada. If anything, people are tired of lame, half-assed if not outright insulting pictures posted by the dozen. The hype is dead. Not even the morons from the corner office are buying it. The magical machine that could replace highly-paid artists doesn't exist, and some desperate hucksters are trying to flog topically relevant AI-generated shots on stock image sites at rock-bottom prices in order to wring any money from prospective suckers. This leads us to another thing.

Centralized Models Will Keel Over First

Yes, Midjourney and DALL-E 3 will be seriously hurt by the lack of attention. Come on, rub those two brain cells together: those things are blackboxed, centralized, running on powerful and very expensive hardware that cost a lot to put together and costs a lot to keep running. Sure, Microsoft has a version of DALL-E 3 publicly accessible for free, but the intent is to bilk the schmucks for $20 monthly and sell them access to GPT-4 as well... well, until it turned out that GPT-4 attracts more schmucks than the servers can handle, so there's a waiting list for that one.

Midjourney costs half that, but it doesn't have the additional draw of having an overengineered chatbot still generating a lot of hype itself. That and MJ interface itself is coprolithically idiotic as well - it relies on a third-party program to communicate with the user, as if that even makes sense. Also, despite the improvements, there are still things that Midjourney is just incapable of, as opposed to DALL-E 3 or SDXL. For example, legible text. So right now, they're stuck with storage costs for the sheer number of half-assed images people generated over the last year or so and haven't deleted.

The recent popularity of "Disney memes" made using DALL-E 3 proved that Midjourney is going out of fashion, which should make you happy, and drew the ire of Disney, what with the "brand tarnishing" and everything, which should make you happier. So the schmucks are coming in, but they're not paying and pissing the House of Mouse off. This means what? Yes, costs. With nothing to show for it. Runtime, storage space, the works, and nobody's paying for the privilege of using the tech.

Pissing On The Candle While The House Burns

Yep, that's what you're doing by cheering for bullshit programs like Glaze and Nightshade. Time to dust off both of your brain cells and rub them together, because I have a riddle for you:

An open-source, client-side, decentralized image generator is targeted by software intended to disrupt it. Who profits?

The answer is: the competition. Congratulations, you chucklefucks. Even if those programs aren't a deniable hatchet job funded by Midjourney, Microsoft or Adobe, they indirectly help those corporations. As of now, nobody can prove that either Glaze or Nightshade actually work against the training algorithms of Midjourney and DALL-E 3, which are - surprise surprise! - classified, proprietary, blackboxed and not available to the fucking public, "data scientists" among them. And if they did work, you'd witness a massive gavel brought down on the whole project, DMCA and similar corporation-protecting copygrift bullshit like accusations of reverse-engineering classified and proprietary software included. Just SLAM! and no Glaze, no Nightshade, no nothing. Keep the lawsuit going until the "data scientists" go broke or give up.

Yep, keep rubbing those brain cells together, I'm not done yet. Stable Diffusion can be run on your own computer, without internet access, as long as you have a data model. You don't need a data center, you don't need a server stack with industrial crypto mining hardware installed, a four-year-old gaming computer will do. You don't pay any fees either. And that's what the corporations who have to pay for their permanently besieged high-cost hardware don't like.

And the data models? You can download them for free. Even if the publicly available websites hosting them go under for some reason, you'll probably be able to torrent them or download them from Mega. You don't need to pay for that either, much to the corporations' dismay.

Also, in case you didn't notice, there's one more problem with the generators scraping everything off the Internet willy-nilly:

AI Is Eating Its Own Shit

You probably heard about "data pollution", or the data models coming apart because if they're even partially trained on previously AI-generated images, the background noise they were created from is fucking with the internal workings of the image generators. This is also true of text models, as someone already noticed by having two instances of ChatGPT talk to each other, they devolve into incomprehensible babble. Of course that incident was first met with FUD on one side and joy on the other, because "OMG AI created their own language!" - nope, dementia. Same goes for already-generated images used to train new models: the semantic segmentation subroutines see stuff that is not recognized by humans and even when inspected and having the description supposedly corrected, that noise gets in the way and fucks up the outcome. See? No need to throw another spanner into the machine, because AI does that fine all by itself (as long as it's run by complete morons).

But wait, there's another argument why those bullshit programs are pointless:

They Already Stole Everything

Do you really think someone's gonna steal your new mediocre drawing of a furry gang bang that you probably traced from vintage porno mag scans? They won't, and they don't need to.

For the last several months, even the basement nerds that keep Stable Diffusion going are merely crossbreeding the old data models, because it's faster. How much data are Midjourney and OpenAI sitting on? I don't exactly know, but my very scientific guess is, a shitload, and they nicked it all a year or two ago anyway.

The amount of raw data means jack shit in relation to how well the generator works. Hell, if you saw the monstrosities spewed forth by StabilityAI LAION default models for Stable Diffusion, that's the best proof: basement nerds had to cut down on the amount of data included in their models, sort the images, edit the automatically generated descriptions to be more precise and/or correct in the first place and introduce some stylistic coherence so the whole thing doesn't go off the rails.

And that doesn't change the fact that the development methodology behind the whole thing, proprietary or open-source, is still "make a large enough hammer". It's brute force and will be until it stops being financially viable. When will it stop being financially viable? When people get bored of getting the same kind of repetitive pedestrian shit over and over. And that means soon. Get real for a moment: the data models contain da Vinci, Rembrandt, van Gogh, and that means jack shit. Any concept you ask for will be technically correct at best, but hardly coherent or well thought-out. You'll get pablum. Sanitized if you're using the centralized corporate models, maybe a little more horny if you're running Stable Diffusion with something trained on porn. But whatever falls out of the machine can't compete with art, for reasons.