Ken Burns is in your future

I've got class war, which is a real doozy.

Yooo same. Why the fuck don't these people just fuck off and relax? I can't imagine having that much money and still feeling like I have to go to work.
- Because at some point after the first few million you turn into a dragon that must hoard wealth and the people that generate that wealth become a cost to minimize.
Old and busted: class war
New hotness: culture war

My sheet says "rome"

Uh oh

"So, what's Rome's history like?"
"It's all war."
Republic or Empire?
- Western.
  Not gonna lie my eyes glaze over a bit at the byzantium complexity

Hell yeah, I got the Dominion War. Time for another DS9 rewatch.

The best class I took in college was an intercession course about the Vietnam War. We had to read an entire book pretty much every day, which was great prep for grad school.

I basically learned that the entire war was completely unjustified, it was horrific and brutal on both sides in ways that aren’t talked about, but that ultimately the United States had absolutely no business interfering. Vietnam had spent years under French colonial control, which they overthrew under their own power. They had already asserted a desire to rule themselves.

Tonkin was also a genuine false flag, which just isn’t acknowledged? We manufactured the cause for an extremely unpopular war. So many young man died or were disabled because of something that was pointless.

That class was first that really got me to question the patriotic narrative I was taught about American history in high school.

Of course we can't acknowledge it, because then we can't make the same "mistake" again and people will start questioning real causus belli like saddams WMDs which we'll find any day now.
Vietnam got a rough fucking deal in the 1900s. Shortly after the US left, the Cambodians under Pol Pot invaded, and they were brutal
- And Vietnam ended up kicking Pol Pot off which is impossible to argue as anything but a win for humanity.
- China also invaded.

I'm the War on Christmas guy, and I'm getting my ass handed to me every single year.

i’m the war on advent guy. you don’t know how nice you have it
I'm the war on drugs guy and I... what was I talking about? Man, those brownies were strong! strolls off

I participated in the war on drugs...

On the winning side, I imagine.
- By winning, you meantaking copious amounts of drugs?
- I think so, it's all a haze.

All I got was Star Wars

Due to a typo, I ended up with "The Cod War"

https://www.icelandreview.com/travel/the-cod-wars-in-iceland/

Pretty sure they made a video game series about that.

The seven years war is fantastic and is utterly critical to understanding the US Revolution as well as understanding how the Iroquois pulled a power move on the other first nations that worked, but later led to the current situation with first nations in North America.

On the revolution: Namely that corruption was so endemic in the colonies that when the UK actually started to do something about it the revolution happened albeit with a lot of pushing from the upper crust of the colonies.

Fun couterfactual to consider: how many MPs would "the colonies" have needed to blunt popular support for the revolution?
Probably can't go very high, but maybe one per charter? If not that high (Scotland only had 45, I think), then what would have been enough "representation" to preclude the American elites from making a compelling case, or what paths to personal status would have tempted enough of them that there wouldn't have been a critical mass of will and resources?
The British colonized the Americas, particularly North America, very differently than Spain and France did, but didn't seem to think of the purpose or integration of colonies as any different.
- The answer would probably be "none".
  For example, the factors that led the average member of "sons of liberty" in New York after the initial elite only membership was worried about the elites owning massive tracks of land and driving up the cost of land for them.
The UK trying to section off an Indian reserve as a buffer state after the French and Indian War was 100% a cause of the Revolution. Also the UK trying to step in and say “no, you are not allowed to purchase all of Kentucky from one random person.”
Funny how that’s never talked about in K-12 history. Or even undergrad. It’s all about those nasty taxes (after spending how much on troops to kill Indians who kinda had every reason to be pissed off?)
- Yes, it is more complex than that.
  It was that the UK was saying the Ohio valley, which the entire NA part of the war was over was off limits to the colonists.
  However, the UK could not have won the war when they did had those native groups not changed sides to ally with them. Given the dire state of the UK finances, its questionable how much longer they could have fought.
  That land would also not have been needed had the elite of the colonies not taken ridiculous amounts of land for themselves.
  At least particularly to Pennsylvania, in the middle of the war; the Iroquois interfered with a treaty that would have seen the colony recognize the land held by the Delaware tribe in the Ohio river valley as their land. They did so because they wanted to be the only tribe to make deals with the English and would force the other native groups to work through them. This strategy is also why the Delaware tribe had been relocated by the Iroquois to the Ohio valley in the first place.
TIL:
It is now believed that the Ottoman military was able to maintain rough parity with its rivals until the 1760s, falling behind as a consequence of a long period of peace on its western front between 1740 and 1768, when the Ottomans missed out on the advances associated with the Seven Years' War.[66]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_decline_thesis

WWIII nut here.

Get yourself a Red Cross emergency kit, a lot of water jugs, and ramen. You're underestimating your chances of survival and how much you'll want to.

You’re underestimating your chances of survival and how much you’ll want to.
yes, you too can live out the remainder of your miserable days scrambling for rat meat in the irradiated future.
of course, the desire to live, to survive, overcomes a lot, but 'want to live' I think is stretching it a bit.
- I suspect what they're getting at is: there are a lot of scenarios other than "all out exchange between major powers", and when the fallout starts floating, you can either just hang out at home (and die of cancer in a year or two), or shelter in a basement for a week (and emerge to a troubled but liveable world.)
- I've worked briefly with civil defense stuff and got to visit and learn a whole bunch about bunkers. That cemented my "take out the long chair, open my best bottle, put on some shades, and enjoy the brief light show" approach to a hypothetical nuclear alert.
Mine just says WW15 and has a picture of a green tiger in space
- Is there also a buff blonde dude with a sword in a fur loincloth?

Huh. "Galactic Civil War" and "War of the Ring."

Neat. Wizards in both!

Galactic Civil War
First or second?
- I don't think he knows about the second galactic civil war, PIp

But which civil war...

Second Sudanese Civil War of course (1983-2005)
~~The one about slavery.~~ ~~I mean state rights.~~ I mean Northern Aggression.
- The proper term now is War of the Demonic Democrats Against the Party of Lincoln and Trump
Guns 'N' Roses
- Civil waooaoaooor!

War of the Roses, winner of Best Named War ;)

I'm partial to the War of Jenkins' Ear myself
The Great Emu War would like a word.

Yo professor, which Falkland Islands you talking about?

https://youtu.be/42_oWaWsiYs

i got the soviet-afghan war and wow did that recontextualize a lot of things about the modern world

Such as?
- bear in mind i was 10 during 9/11 so a lot of it was just upending things i had taken for granted. but like, how the US was pretty much allied with the taliban throughout the 80s, giving them training and weapons to fight against the soviet-friendly progressive, secular government of afghanistan.

The seven year war, which is what the rest of the world calls the French Indian war should actually have been called World War One.

It was also started by an incompetent 22 year old George Washington being sent out in his first command who ignored the equivalent of the sergeant put in charge of the new lieutenant advice and executed a French person he shouldn't have.

The taxes that started the revolutionary war? Those were to pay the war debts on the seven year war. Dude literally led an army to avoid paying the consequences of his actions.

EDIT: it's also possible to draw "ALL WARS"

In the Pays d'en Haut Anglo settlers were moving in, French forts were rapidly expanding and militarizing, and both colonial powers were jockeying for Indigenous allies and exclusive trade partners. And in Acadia the oaths issue was still unresolved and considerable swaths of the country that France 'ceded' to Britain was under the control of the French-allied Wabanaki.
Another war was inevitable, Washington just lit the powderkeg.

I got the Cola Wars

pfft. enlist when you're 18, you'll get a whole new war.

Don't you dare close your eyes.

The galactic civil war....

Sweet! I got Star Wars!

But it's the Disney sequel trilogy.
- Andor FTW!

Hey, the Falklands is the one I'm obsessed with and it's actually really interesting. Only "modern" war between near peers before ukraine.

Near peers? Pretty sure there's a whole ocean separating Argentina and Britain, even if the islands where the conflict occurred were "just next door" to mainland Argentina.
- That's not what the near in near peer means...
  It's a measure of military capability between nations. A Near Peer would be a nation that shares similar capabilities for force projection or in otherwords the powerscale is 1:1.
- I think they meant "near" as in "evenly matched".
Iran Iraq war also known as first gulf war?
- Wut
  The Iraqi army got absolutely obliterated
I'm sure you've come across it but David Hart Dyke's book on the loss of HMS Coventry is one of the more vivid depictions of grief I've read.

I listened to Hardcore History's series on World War I in that window, so that was my assigned war of interest.

This was me too. I probably listened through the "Blueprint for Armageddon" series three times. Never really found any other history podcast that piqued my interest nearly as much as that did.
- I like that he’s very open about the fact that he’s not an expert/professional historian. He walks the line between storytelling and rigor pretty well for a pop historian. My favorite episode is the one about the Memnonite (edit: Anabaptist) rebellion that ended with corpses being left up for centuries.

Mine just says WW3, should I be concerned?

So much to learn, we don't even know how it ends yet

They also used actual military tactics to fight the Emus, like mapping their routes and setting up ambushes. In one of these, they managed to get close to a flock of about a thousand emus and attacked them with machine guns only allowing the escape of... lemme check... about a thousand emus.
I typically have a 60% accuracy in Helldivers 2 and I'm fighting swarms of giant bugs. I think I'll forgive the Australians for 10 rounds per bird, especially since winging an emu probably doesn't stop it.

I got the second Punic war, but I think that's just a freebie. I also spent a lot learning about the Falkland's war just to annoy Argentinians online.

the century of war between Berwick-upon-tweed and Russia

I got The Late Night Wars. I'm on Team Coco, obviously.

There are 64 books in the Horus Heresy.

My case was Paraguay War a few weeks ago and I learned so damn much that school completely glossed over. What surprised me the most was just how much of a madman Solano Lopez, the Paraguayan dictator, was. You dare bring bad news to him? You bet your ass you'll be flogged. You failed to follow one of his suicidal orders? Off to forced labor camp. You didn't put him above God and Christ? Say your prayers, you'll be ~~shot~~ bayoneted in order to save bullets.

"WTF is Granada?"

My favourite war was the War on Everything

I got Brood.

I fought in the Cola Wars as a member of Dr Pepper's insurgency

32⁉️

make it 80!

100 if they can

100 years war

Napoleonic wars for this guy.

You know, I don't think there's a single war I Care about more than any other...

Now technological era, on the other hand.... I'm a sucker for anything from Europe/Mediterranean coast from the 1200s-1500s.

And who doesn't love exploring early human history from Gobekli Tepe to Ur.

Fascinating stuff.

It's probably just too broad to treat as one war, but I always return to reading the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Empire. So many poetic, cinematic moments that for western civilisation defined our subsequent history. Where are we if Crassus doesn't desperately need a triumph but gets fed molten gold instead? If Marc Anthony and Cleopatra rule the Mediterranean from Alexandria? If a comet doesn't convince half of Rome that Caesar is a literal God?