Book and Sword

Meta-analyses such as the 2023 study need a lot of attention to interpret correctly, and I can't spare that time right now. Have you read the 2005 study? Note 25 of the 1945 article says that its stature estimates are based on a total of 63 males from all periods, but when Angel returned to the problem in 1985 he cited 52 males from the classical period alone, so clearly he had acquired more data. There are many different ways of estimating stature by measuring bones and best practices may have changed from 1945 to 1985. Here is the table 4 from his 1985 article. https://www.bookandsword.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screenshot-fro…

Not the author, don't know him, no connection – but I caught a glimpse somewhere on the blog that he is currently unemployed. As an open-source maintainer, I feel like it is my duty to plug him so he can perhaps get some patrons or donations, the blog is great. https://www.bookandsword.com/support/ He is also not a software engineer or in tech in any meaningful way, so his 'tip to total income' ratio is probably off the chart compared to, say, me. As an aside, now that everybody is asking for 'tips' of some sort, it is getting quite difficult to figure out for whom these tips are essential (i.e. him) and for whom they are just gratuities. I wish I had a good answer for this.

> and a pretty short view of history Great lets see an example! > To claim that all of the benefit isn't going to naturally accrue to a thin layer of people at the top isn't a speculation at this point - it's a bold faced lie. Except that innovation has lead to more jobs, new industries, and more prosperity and fewer working hours. The stark example of this: you arent a farmer: https://modernsurvivalblog.com/systemic-risk/98-percent-of-americans-d… Your shirts arent a weeks or a months income: https://www.bookandsword.com/2017/12/09/how-much-did-a-shirt-really-co… Go back to the 1960's when automation was new. It was an expensive, long running failure for GM to put in those first robotic arms. Today there are people who have CNC shops in their garage. The cost of starting that business up is in the same price range as the pickup truck you might put in there. You no longer need accountants, payroll, and your not spending as much time doing these things yourself its all software. You dont need to have a retail location, or wholesale channels, build your website, app, leverage marketplaces and social media. The reality is that it is cheaper and easier than ever to be your own business... and lots of people are figuring this out and thriving. > Do we really think that most of the American economy is just going to downshift No I think my fellow Americans are going to scream and cry and hold on to dying ways of life --…

If it was made in the US with a $7.25/hour wage sure, now do it in cambodia for $200 a month, at 48 hours a week that's barely a dollar an hour, all of a sudden it's a $500 shirt already. Anyways I don't think you can use inflation over 700 years to come up with a tshirt price based on modern min wages, even peasants had clothes and they sure did not spend 6 months of labor to get a single item of clothing After spending some times looking about more info on this topic you very quickly find people who debunk the original claim, and the inflation adjusted price the list is about I came up on my side using cambodia: https://www.bookandsword.com/2017/12/09/how-much-did-a-shirt-really-co…

Did you catch this article from the other day? I don't know much about Diocletian's monetary reforms (I'm still busy reading up on the history of the Republic), but his Edict of Maximum Prices was mentioned in it. https://www.bookandsword.com/2021/05/08/how-much-did-a-tunic-cost-in-t…

Bits per [cm²|cm³|kg] is interesting like you get with cuneiform ceramic tablets[1], this one get about 1 word per cm² and cuneiform is crazy dense, I have no real grasp of how sumerian or akkadian words worked. I think it was heavily context based because from some lecture[2] at the British Museum. I have seen people do ceramics where information was stacked in layers and had to be destroyed to extract. The ultimate form of shifting media to preserve and read information. I guess that could done with better resolution with 3D printed Zirconia (0.1 mm³ blobs) so 1Mb /cm³ Edit: this idea of a cold storage is from Footfall by Niven and Pournelle, where information was stored on monoliths where layers could be incrementally extracted with tools documented on the above layers. i.e. start with 0.1 bit per m² and go down, done with the hand wavy handling of practical problems in science fiction. [1] https://www.bookandsword.com/2016/10/29/the-information-density-of-cun… [2] https://youtu.be/XVmsfL5LG90

No, because what he described actually works. Clothing used to be hugely expensive: https://www.bookandsword.com/2017/12/09/how-much-did-a-shirt-really-co… > So the shirts of humble servants at Henry VIII’s court cost between 3 and 10 days’ income. That would be similar to someone who earns 10 dollars or Euros an hour spending 240 to 800 dollars or Euros on an item today. (Of course, in the 15th and 16th century, people spent much more of their incomes on food, fuel, and clothing than they do in Europe or European settler societies today, and much less on rent, transportation, and medical care … but it seems that most people could make or obtain one or two new shirts every year or so). https://www.bookandsword.com/2021/05/08/how-much-did-a-tunic-cost-in-t… > In the Edict, the simplest linen tunic could be sold for up to 500 denarii, whereas a linen weaver was to be paid 20 or 40 denarii per day plus maintenance. Fine linen tunics could be sold for up to 7,000 denarii. Elsewhere in the Edict, workers without maintenance (food and possibly fuel and shelter) earn about twice as much as those with. So a linen weaver would need to work for (500 / 2×40 to 500 / 2×20) 6 to 12 days to earn the price of the simplest linen tunic. That is not so different from the 3 to 10 days’ income for a worker to buy a shirt at the court of Henry VIII of England, considering that the ancients did not have spinning wheels. The linen tunics in 301 CE were…