Great response; the idea that the Cubans totally failed in the landing so now the US should invade and fight through the streets of Havana is crazy.

Kennedy was pressured / rolled by the CIA who were supremely overconfident (after all, in Guatemala, all they had to do was basically say "boo" and the government collapsed). It was still his mistake to authorize it, and he did note he took sole responsibility.

There was a refusal to understand - the head of the Joint Chiefs opined that we'd need 400,000+ troops to ensure law and order and a stable country and was fired for giving that opinion to Congress.

And then after the US went in light with just 130,000, Bremer disbanded the Iraqi Army. The insane thing is that he just kind of did it on a whim. The pre-war plan called for the end to Saddam's favored units - the Iraqi Republican Guard - but a significant use of the army in reconstruction efforts and the creation of a new Iraqi government. Bremer and his team looked at that and decided it would be hard, so he decided to just order the army to disband (rather than even try to pull things together and establish order), sent a memo up the chain, and it was approved based on his recommendation in Baghdad. But it was never discussed by the Joint Chiefs, by the National Security Council, or the State Department. Nuts.

Just terrible; every major policy initiative of theirs caused major headaches for the US for decades to come.

They have multiple "worse than a crime, a blunder" policy decisions.

When young students learn about modern corporate malfeasance, a historian can only chuckle; they don't have anything on the old corporations like the EIC or VOC.

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please

You're 20. You thought you'd be ok with this, but you aren't. This is also who she is. It's not going to work. Go ahead and end it.

Maybe in a few years you will find each other again if it was meant to be and she is no longer interested in exploring this side of herself. So end things on good terms. But don't hold your breath for this scenario; move on.

If you got a invite, you are wanted; there was a list made of who to invite and you made it. Plenty of others didn't (or are on the 2nd or 3rd level list).

Just go, don't overthink it.

Sorry to hear that; it is over. It happens. Not all relationships go the distance, some of the passionate ones burn up and then once the fire dies down some it ends up falling apart.

He made all his money on Buckaroo Banzai

I work for Dick Jones!

At 50 feet, the clothes have even less of an impact on slowing their descent - the friction from the air increases as the speed increases, and they aren't going fast enough after just 50 feet.

But as I did say, the clothes and the incline would help dissipate the force of the impact. So clothes can make a difference (so if you meant slowed the forces on them at impact, then yes, we are in agreement)

I'd recommend CV Wedgwood, the 30 Years War. Very good .

It should be seen as one of the wars of transition from a feudal state to a centralized state, the same as the English Civil War (which took place during the same time period), the French Fronde, the 80 Years War between the Hapsburgs and the Dutch, and in Iberia (Portugese Restoration War and Catalan Revolt - although Philip IV and then Charles II didn't really try to bring the nobles to heel, and Charles I had earlier dealt with the nobility with a compromise after the Revolt of the Comuneros) .

Religion played a part as one element that the center (the Hapsburg Court) was trying to enforce against its feudal nobles used to greater privileges.

fluffy clothing would have negligible impact to slow their acceleration; a 70 foot drop isn't big enough to reach speeds close to their terminal velocity that the friction would be a major player (although it would lower their final terminal velocity) - a person reaches terminal velocity after about 1500 feet.

They landed both with something that was softer than stone and also at an incline. Their political opponents claimed it was a dungheap, but it certainly could have been something more benign; lots of layers of fluffy clothes would help with the landing a bit.

At least one of them had severe injuries, though.

There are some exaggerations for comic effect, but yes - there was an extensive amount of wealth leading to large incomes based mainly on rent and other investments, so that there was quite a lot of passive income flowing into the families. And many relatives would then receive an "allowance" that still left them quite well off so that they could afford fine clothes, club memberships, easy travel, and personal servants like a valet.

The wage structure and tax structure in the UK changed due to the world wars. There were still many wealthy families, but much less of a large support system with many family relations receiving an allowance, and so less of the "idle rich" that you see with Bertie Wooster and his crew.

But you can also see, in the same episode, the "working rich" shaking their head at Bertie not working. https://youtu.be/Te3SvM-aG04?t=1309

The US employed lots of surveyors. As the government moved west, so did the surveyors. It was an important government (and private) job and the law for it dates back to the 1780s - it was passed by the Continental Congress before the revolutionary war had even ended.

They developed a plan on how to survey the Northwest Territories (which stretches from Ohio to Minnesota). The US created a government post of the Surveyor General of the Northwest Territories in the 1790s. They were responsible for setting markers and would go out west with lots of survey equipment and lay down where all the key points are. There are a ton of "County Line Road" roads out west because the road would end up following the surveyor line.

Before this was systematically laid out, surveys would be based on natural features, like "from the large bend in the stream 1/2 mile from the junction with the Big River, 400 yards to the large, solitary walnut tree." But that's not a great system, as rivers move, things erode, trees die, etc.

No. Odoacer deposed the last Western Roman Emperor (but spared his life), and had been the head of the Foederati for some time - he knew Roman politics and appealed to the Senate for legitimacy, making the existing Roman Senate more important than it had been in a long time and regularly consulting with it, nominating consuls, etc. So as a Italian elite, you were suddenly doing significantly better; he appointed several prominent old Roman families to important positions and issued new coinage.

The Eastern Roman Emperor (Zeno) was afraid that Odoacer might head East as well and convinced Theodoric the Ostrogoth to take his armies and go attack Odoacer. Theodoric was also a romanized "barbarian" who had been raised in Constantinople with the Emperor's kids as a hostage, and had actually been named as a consul by the Eastern Roman Emperor (although he felt like he was not properly rewarded and his people were betrayed by a newer emperor, Zeno, which put him on the attack).

Anyway, Theodoric beat Odoacer and also upheld roman law and administration, and there was actually a flourishing. He instituted a new building program and expanded out his kingdom and made peace with several key "barbarian" allies. He rebuilt the walls of Rome and the Roman Senate built him a statue in celebration.

Ironically, it was the effort of the Eastern Roman Empire to reconquer Italy after Theodoric's death that led to a substantial depopulation as warring armies traded cities back and forth, subjecting them to repeated sacks.

That's not as fun as I thought...

Man, Moses sucked.

That didn't matter; the Romans weren't on the verge of a big tech or science breakthrough by 200 AD.

That's the point of the article; it took the confluence of a whole bunch of unique factors to make the creation of an engine and then decades of further investment to refine it even worthwhile.

And the Baroque Cycle is a fun fictional treatment of it all

I'd say to sum up, it was from being an agrarian slave state vs a proto-capitalist merchant state with heavy interest in scientific advancement.