The claims about sugar seem so overblown compared to its consumption. The whole "it's literally a poison" thing just doesn't seem to track with the fact that e.g. Coke's been around for 120+ years, yet the bad effects ascribed to sugar consumption seem to be a phenomenon of the last 35-75 years (depending on which effects you're tracking).
I get that sugar consumption has gone up a ton since 1900, but my point is that it went up almost infinitely between 1500 and 1900, but without accompanying cancer/obesity/fiery death. So ISTM that there's likely a threshold effect, but that's not really consonant with "poison" claims. Very few things we call poison have safe dosages in the 2 oz./day range.
This makes me so mad. My father loved food, and he spent all too many years of his life feeling guilt for enjoying foods he loved and eating shitty, low fat alternatives instead.
Anyway, the whole thing with nutrition scientists certainly accords with my predilection to think that expert consensus can often be ruinously incorrect. The trouble is remembering that sometimes the consensus is right, and that cheap cynicism isn't actually enlightened.
but my point is that it went up almost infinitely between 1500 and 1900
I think Taubes disputes this, but I can't remember the details. He had some argument as to why all the estimates of diet breakdown circa 1900 were actually flawed, having to do with the motivation and methods of the people who put them together, and offered some very different estimates.
Not happy about sugar being the bad guy again, though. I frickin' love sugar.
4: But basically any non-nobility person in 1500 would have had, literally, zero access to refined, or even brown, sugar in 1500. By the 1700s, merchants would have had a tablespoon or two a day (and the poor that much per month or something), and by 1900 basically everyone was having a tablespoon or four per day, with the upper half of the income distribution rather more. I mean, this is potted history, but can it really be all wrong? Were poor children in Elizabethan England getting the same daily sugar intake as their counterparts in 1900 Boston?
Again, if they want to say that the safe intake is way lower than what people typically consume, that's fine*, but knock off the "poison" talk. It would be a really weird response to the last 50 years of nutrition science to say that hysterical exaggeration of nutritional risks is something we should totally rely on.
*and is, indeed, the latest gov't recommendations
I took an interdisciplinary course on food and nutrition in college, taught by a biologist but bringing in anthropology & history. One of the takeaways is that the reasons humans have overpopulated the earth is that we can do ok on all sorts of diets, and there's no one "right" way of eating which guarantees health. The low fat stuff in the 90s was bullshit, but a lot of the sugar hatred is also probably bullshit. There are parts of the world where people's main subsistence is sugar cane, and they're not markedly less healthy than Westerners. There are probably a million reasons why we've gotten fatter (my guess is chemicals from plastics leaching into water and soil and messing with our endocrine systems plays a much bigger role than we've acknowledged to this point).
my guess is chemicals from plastics leaching into water
OMG yes, that's why I only drink bottled water now.
If the dose made the poison we all should long ago have perished of a surfeit of nutrition advice.
10: I suspect it's mostly that we eat more and move less, and for some people, a low-fat, highly processed diet increases hunger, and with food widely available, it is really easy to overeat.
You don't have to eat the newspaper, Flip. Composting is an acceptable alternative.
Omg yes about the plastics and the chemicals. I am also 110% willing to believe that the reason so many people suddenly seem sensitive to wheat is that we've started drenching it in roundup just prior to harvest.
From the article:
Since the proportion of energy we get from protein tends to stay stable, whatever our diet, a low-fat diet effectively means a high-carbohydrate diet.
I found this interesting because whenever I've tracked macros, I'm extremely consistent in my protein intake unless I make a conscious effort to increase it (and I feel stuffed -- I imagine if I aimed for more protein I'd probably lose weight because I'd not want to eat as much.) Fat and carbs trade about 7% back and forth, depending on activity level.
Lean protein tastes pretty meh. That's why I can only eat chicken breasts if they are fried or on a sandwich with cheese and mayo.
18: Yeah, I thought that was interesting.
Fatty meats ftw.
One thing I've seen relevant to 10 is the idea that the body can adapt very well to all kinds of deprivations - not enough of one thing or another and we're still suffering along. But dealing with too much of something when there's generally enough nutrition isn't handled nearly as well. It makes sense (in an admittedly just-so way) that the body is better at handling malnutrition than abundance.
Beer and chicken wings is looking better and better, so long as you eat the celery. Half off Sunday and Tuesday nights.
Cala mostly nails it in 13, and I'm also willing to believe that a high carb/sugar diet tests our self-control far more than a high-fat diet.
The link in 16 is utter shit. The main scientist quoted in it is an anti-vaxxer. She's always listed as a "senior MIT scientist", but she is a Senior Research Scientist in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, not in Biology. Not that smart people can't learn biology, but she's been on the wrong side of well-established scientific debates.
There's also this.
The connection between easily measurable markers like cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and BMI and actual health outcomes has not really been rigorously established.
25:
LDL levels, on the other hand...
When I was working at Prestigious Med School it really did seem like they, and other Prestigious Med Schools, were working on creating nutrition departments that did really rigorous science. One of the co-PIs in the lab I was involved in was affiliated with them, I think, and he was a first-rate scientist.
In fact, I remember seeing a letter from UC-Berkeley on the jobs board recruiting faculty members to their department of nutrition, which they went way out of their way in the letter to assure applicants would not be bullshit like all of those other departments of nutrition.
Those are important questions, but first they need to test the Ted Cruz Canned-Soup-and-No-Sex-Toys plan. It's interdisciplinary.
Ted Cruz doesn't exactly seem like a model of good health.
He doesn't believe in deficits be they fiscal or caloric.
I hope Cruz said something like "No more masturbating to Andy Warhol" when he brought the cans home.
And his wife was like, "Oh God what I have I gotten myself into?"
13 gets it right. AIMHMHB, when I was a kid, every morning my father, who counted as reasonably prosperous middle class, went out in all weathers to the coal bunker and brought in 50lb of coke; then he cleaned out the kitchen stove, took the ashes out to the bin and reloaded it. In winter he'd bring in another 50lb of coal and start a fire in the dining room. THEN, he would wash, shave and eat breakfast, after which he would walk 20 minutes to the bus stop and go to work. Etc.
He ate about as much as I do now, with central heating and hot water on demand 24/7.
We have to be eating more or moving less, pretty much by definition. The law of conservation of energy has not been repealed. The question is why? Moving less seems self-explanatory, but why do we eat more? The obvious moralistic explanation that it's a collective personal failing in the face of increasing incomes is certainly tempting -- I love judging humanity as harsh as anyone -- but who knows? We're nowhere near the level of knowledge to say for sure.
One hundred pounds of coal for just one house? No wonder you guys had no non-chunky air until the 90s.
Maybe not 100lb but not far off in winter. Burning 3 fires, heating the water... No it was not healthy, but it was mostly "smokeless" fuel, so at least some particulates were avoided. London became smoke free by law in my lifetime; have you ever seen pics of a real pea souper.
Speaking of moving more, I'm on a traffic post for the marathon at about mile 10 or so where it does an uphill stretch. So far only bikers but in a bit I'm going to be seeing 100 percent uncut despair on some faces.
in a bit I'm going to be seeing 100 percent uncut
Shouldn't you be going presidential with that kind of admission?
People, if you are walking your bike before the halfway point then maybe this isn't for you.
Biking 26 miles doesn't sound like that much. Aren't you supposed to run?
There's a bike tour that starts before the runners. Also a contingent of roller bladers.
We only allow bikes as escorts to the wheel chair marathon.
re: 32
I did that, until I left for university at 20. Both the pre-divorce, and post-divorce house had coal-fired heating. So the morning routine usually involved cleaning out the fire, taking the ashes out, building it back up again, etc.
I don't remember the quantity of coal being that big, though. A bucket or two, not 50lbs. Although I suppose the stove wasn't coal, just the living room fire, which in turn heated the boiler that heated the water for the house.
Our living room fire, in the first house, was one of these:
https://ssli.ebayimg.com/00/s/NjAwWDgwMA==/z/~k4AAOSw3KFWcQfg/$_86.JPG
Set into the wall, but I distinctly remember taking the vertical glass slats out of the door to clean them with vinegar.
I don't think I even saw coal close up until I moved to Pittsburgh. And here I've not seen it used. Just in a museum or on the ground.
People really have not changed that much since the 60s or whatever. I think it is something in the environment.
For me, I just can't lost weight, whereas until about age 30, it was pretty much no effort at all to stay fit looking.* I do occasionally find the claims that obesity is infectious, or environmental, attractive, at least in part because they are exculpatory.
But, in my case, I'm pretty sure it's having half a thyroid, not getting enough sleep, and doing much less physical exercise. I don't think my diet has massively changed. I probably eat slightly more sweet/carby things than I once did, but I drink a lot less booze, so I expect overall calorie intake is similar. My protein and fat intake won't have changed much.
* I say fit _looking_ deliberately, because there have been times -- not now, though -- since I got fat when I've actually been much fitter than I was throughout my late 20s and early 30s.
The linked story in 25 (and its links, too) deserves more attention. The study that tracked nursing home and mental hospital patients is fairly unique in that the diets of the subjects were completely controlled. Most "epidemiological" nutrition studies are done with self-reports, which are subject to all sorts of biases.
Reading the Grauniad article reminded me of "The Emperor of All Maladies," which was about cancer; doctors who were trying to treat cancer did and probably still do exhibit a sort of us-against-them tribalism that sounds exactly like what has happened in nutrition science. (Of course, a climate change "skeptic" would probably say the same thing about climate science, or a young Earth creationist about geology, etc. Science is hard.)
Are we actually eating more, or just moving less? I recall reading that a 19th century American farmer ate something like 5,000 calories a day. But maybe things change if you take into account the quality of the calories.
We'd better be linking this to the last weight/food post. Testing food regimens on people who do not have autonomy over their eating choices is leaving out a huge part of the equation.
It's also hard to get IRB approval to do.
46: Aging results in about ~100 calories reduction in metabolic rate per decade over 30, IIRC. Not enough to make one obese if nothing else changes, but enough to explain the extra 10-15 pounds we tend to accumulate.
"This study was conducted in accordance with the ethical principles that have their origin in the Declaration of Helsinki except the one about respect for self-determination."
"The design, except for the parts about not letting people eat what they want, was approved by the IRBs at all participating institutions."
In addition to chemical endocrine disrupters, 32 reminds me that better heating might be making us fat. Living in a cold place where it's cold/drafty all the time requires more baseline calories just to keep up body temperature. Eating heavy calorie dense winter foods when we can heat our houses to 75 degrees (F) in the winter is probably making us fat.*
*When I lived in rural China where everything was permanently 45 degrees (F), I lost weight and kept it off despite eating more. Also when I got cholera I lost an unhealthy amount of weight and kept it off for two years, despite eating normally. Part of it was I moved home and my bedroom had no heating or insulation during a PNW winter, so for about 15 minutes before going to sleep I'd lie in bed shivering until the bed got warm enough to actually sleep.**
**As a kid our grandmother upped our butter consumption exponentially during the winter, telling us if we didn't eat enough fat we could die. She wasn't convinced that rural Norway with no indoor heating =/= PNW with indoor heating.
"If only the people who designed on-line training sessions in human subjects laws were better at their jobs, this sort of thing could have been avoided. What are you going to do?"
She wasn't convinced that rural Norway with no indoor heating =/= PNW with indoor heating.
Possibly she was looking at the sky not the thermometer.
I remember when I was living in the U.K. in a dorm. They just shut the heat off at midnight or something and left it off until morning. It made studying all night really hard.
56
Yeah but the sky was 40 degrees and rainy, not -20 and snowy. It's not exactly "To Build a Fire."
Have people seen this amazing video of Kasich? I think he may actually be worse on a personal level than Ted Cruz if that's possible, which I'm told it isn't. Still...
49: The study in nursing homes and mental hospitals happened 30 or 40 years ago and the data only came to light recently.
Eh, I think nursing homes seem like an OK place to try diet studies, assuming proper permissions from residents or their POA. I'd think it wouldn't be very representative of a general population, but I'd happily enroll my mother in something like that. It's not like nursing food is known for being delicious or really healthy.
My mother keeps eating because she can't remember she ate.
Which is less of a problem than the thing with the car.
Mine did that. Better than the alternative. Now, she's forgetting how to feed herself. My grandmother had to be switched to sparkling cider as an aperitif, because she kept forgetting she'd had her pre-dinner sherry.
Right. She'd have her pre-dinner sherry, then forget, then have another, then another. This ended with drunk dials to my aunt, who requested that her aides buy sparkling cider as an alternative so she could keep the habit but not the alcohol.
I do something similar to that, except I'm lying when I say I forgot how many I had.
(NB, this only happened a couple of times before my aunt figured out what was happening.) Ice floes look increasingly humane.
If you drank still more, you could be honest!
They say that only lying about drinking, and doing that by no more than 50%, is the foundation of a good relationship.
The marriage counseling places in strip malls.
Ice floes look increasingly humane.
Better hurry before they're all gone.
Or worse, you have to share with bob.
Your last words would be very meta.
When my generation dies, it will be especially poignant because we'll be the last generation to automatically reply "And they was right" to "They said you was hung."
OT: How should one prepare an earnest, socially unaware other for the eventuality that a comedy show did not fly them out to LA to laugh with them?
Liquor, PowerPoint presentations, and a tape of the show.
Old clips of Daily Show interviews done by Stephen Colbert before everybody in the whole word knew what he was up to are maybe the best examples.
79 is exactly why I find it excruciating to watch humiliation television. Very, very few people deserved to be publicly shamed.
79: be as blunt and forthright as possible. "They want to humiliate you for entertainment. These are not good people. Don't sign anything." If possible find other episodes of the show and show it to them.
||
The only good part of this evening has been convincing a stranger to get a 20th Century in a bar.
|>
Neb flies people out to the Bay Area to convince them to have fancy cocktails. It's a very niche reality show.
Wait, am I paying for the plane tickets here? Seems like a bad deal.
89 Yeah, but you get all the airmiles.
You lose money on every transaction, but you make it up on volume.
I finally got around to reading the article. It's very anger-up-the-bloodifying. I don't know how fairly it represents Keyes, but he comes across as a certain particular product of elite universities. There's a certain kind of person who, because of their elite background, assumes that they have earned a claim to expertise for whatever agenda they're pushing. The only way to do social science is with a spirit of humility in the face of complexity, but this isn't something that you learn at Harvard. And of course the humble never set the research agenda.
when I got cholera I lost an unhealthy amount of weight and kept it off for two years, despite eating normally.
That is basically the dieter's holy grail. "Yes, you will shit yourself and vomit uncontrollably for 48 hours and think you're going to die, but then you will be able to eat what you want for two years and not put on weight!" I reckon if you could achieve that result predictably you could make billions.
Friends in the Peace Corps got similar results, in a slightly more chronic and less drastic way, from giardia.
Via the Drab Gnole, Harry Truman's press conference from April 1946:
Q. Mr. President, what is your reaction to the proposal that Americans voluntarily, one day a week, go on a diet similar in caloric content to these European countries -
THE PRESIDENT. I think it would be a wonderful thing for them to do that--for 2 days a week.
Q. 2 days?
THE PRESIDENT. They would know, then, exactly what it means to go hungry. Most of us are eating too much. We throw too much away. There is enough wasted every day in this country to feed all the starving peoples for the time that we have to take care of them.
Q. Is that every week, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT. Every week--until the famine is over.
94: Local Dieticians Hate This Third World Country's 1 Weird Trick.
"Don't pour so much syrup on your fried chicken and waffles. There are people in Europe without Type 2 diabetes."
Anyway, all this stuff about cholera or giardia distracts us from the real solution: Good Old Fashioned Willpower. That's what I'm going to call my tapeworm pills.
OT: Why is the Czech Republic changing its name to Boaty McBoatface?
The excuse given is that it's easier and quicker to spell. The spokesgeek said that "Czech Republic" didn't have the history and familiarity of long names like "The United States of America" or "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (those were the examples given, one can thing of others). Czechia looks like a horrible neologism to me, but maybe not to Czechs. ttaM?
To be fair, lots of people want to shorten that last one.
And I think "Boatface" would be a nice compromise between whatever sort of person answers on-line polls and the sailors and scientists who don't want to list "Boat McBoatface" on their resume.
Or maybe "Faceboat" and see if you can't get Zuckerberg to pay for it.
100: If they're changing the name, why not go with Bohemia?
Never mind. I had it confused with Bavaria.
Bohemia is the left half of Czechia. The right half is Moravia.
The left half of Czechia is populated by hippies; the right half by Hussites.
For reasons I can't recall, there are whole bunches of Moravians who moved to North Carolina to sell cookies.
Moraemia. Sounds like a disease.
Being Czechs, with the weird Czech sense of humour, they will probably end up going for "Tlon" or "Syldavia" or "Other Brazil" or something.
re: 105, 107, etc
My wife told me last night that Czechia is controversial because historically, Czechia (Čechy) didn't include Moravia.
My wife is from north central Bohemia.
Isn't the name the czech word for Bohemia?
I should type faster.
I've been saying Saudia for several years now. Sometimes other people do as well for a bit.
Does Czechia have a coast?
Why stop at Czechia? Why not Czechmatia?
Why stop at Czechia?
Beer, history, nice architecture.
I liked the idea of abandoning the local name / foreign name divide and insisting everyone use Česko. If one has problems with the orthography, the alternative spelling can be Czesko, as a nod to the old version. And I bet it would raise the international profile to have something educated people can feel superior about getting right. But are there also domestic political issues with using Česko, perhaps?
I've also been campaigning to get a collective noun for a flock of Bohemian waxwings: a defenestration. Not much traction; I should probably stop trying to make words happen.
Isn't the name the czech word for Bohemia?
But Bohemia sounds cooler.
93, 94
The advantage of cholera over giardia is it's a lot more efficient. No need to endure weeks of diarrhea and vomiting when you can do it all in a weekend. It would work much better for a busy Americans' schedule.
My grandmother up to her death (in 2006) would refer to that area of central Europe as Bohemia and Moravia, and its inhabitants as Bohemians and Moravians, no matter how many times we tried to get her to say Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic. As in, "There was a nice Bohemian family down the street and they always kept their lawn trimmed."
Also, part of Czech Republic is the Czech part of Silesia. I refuse to believe that Silesia isn't made up to make Eastern European history sound more intimidating, let alone that it had parts.
So Moravia and Bohemia just secede from each other. It's not like the haven't done it before.
+y
And both those names are cooler than any other proposal.
|| IANACL, but I think Justice Thomas is probably right in his dissent in Welch today. Except that for the idea that we ought to be keeping human beings in jail longer than our understanding of the law now dictates because Finality is some sort of paramount value, to be pursued even at the complete and obvious failure of Justice. |>
Also, part of Czech Republic is the Czech part of Silesia.
Silesia is part of Prussia!
126. Silesia has parts in a big way. There's Upper Silesia and Lower Silesia; Lower Silesia is split between Poland and Germany by the Oder-Neisse Line, while Upper Silesia is parceled out between Poland and the country formerly known as the Czech Republic according to some bizarre Stalinist logic that nobody can remember as far as I can see.
So stupid. If I were Moravian I'd be pretty pissed off.
131 -- I think the current Czech Silesia is basically just the rump remnant of Silesia that Frederick the Great left the Austrians, plus some fiddling around after 1918.
Only test-tube babies and centenarians aren't the results of some fiddling around after 1918.
Accorrding to Wiki there's only a moribund Moravian national movement and no "restore Silesia" movement at all. So lame.
135: The world is definitely in need of more vigorous nationalist movements.
Oh wait I read the wrong thing. About 800,000 residents of Poland declared themselves of "Silesian Nationality" in the last census, which is rad.
Isn't the real problem with Czechia the similarity to Chechnya?
If you're worried about the bad effects of Silesian nationalism, what about making it part of a movement to restore Germany to it's former borders?
138: Isn't Chechnya technically the Chechen Republic?
Apparently the leader of the main Silesian nationalist party in Poland is an art historian. They want basically autonomy from Poland, but the Poles claim that they are somehow quasi-Germans.
Obviously, the best solution is to use names that already confuse people enough that extra care is needed regardless. The Czech Republican can become Aaustria and Chechnya can be Austrilia.
"Aaustria" is pronounced with a sort of stutter at the beginning. A-austria.
141: Art historians are dangerous because they have nothing to lose. They know there is no way they are ever going to get a real job anyway.
I feel like Moravian nationalism should use the hashtag #feelthebrno
How about "Frank"? Vaclav Havel was a big Frank Zappa fan, so that would be a nice tribute.
Almost as dangerous as actual artists that way.
The world would be a better place if there were a movement to agitate for Cech Cohomology to be known as Boho Coho. Just sayin'.
146, 148 -- being an ethnonational activist for a dubiously-existing ethnicity is the Eastern European version of law school.
Bob Ross did more to keep the world safe from a new Hitler than the Marshall Plan and all the armies of the post-WWII period combined.
I was looking up the history of Bohemia to discover (per 116) whether Bohemia had ever actually had a coast, and I think the answer is no; in addition to Bohemia itself, the king of Bohemia ruled, at various points, the Margraviate of Moravia, the Duchies of Upper and Lower Silesia, the County of Kladsko (after the end of the reign of the Anti-King Philip of Swabia), the Duchies of Austria and Styria, the the Duchy of Carinthia, the March of Carniola, the Windic March, and the Carolingian March of Friuli.
And the last-named March is up in, basically, the armpit of the Adriatic, and therefore does have a coastline. Although Bohemia's flag had long since ceased to fly over the Patriarchate of Friuli by the time Shakespeare wrote The Winter's Tale.
139: including returning land to France.
And everybody thought he was joking when he told them to clean the brush by smacking it hard and trying to "beat the Devil out of it".
Anyway, Bohemia would be stupid not to secede. It would be the definition of cool.
Czechia, a.k.a The Kingdom of Bohemia and Moravia, but not a Monarchy Anymore, Plus Some Silesia
I always ask for the Silesia on the side.
And let me say I am embarrassed, on behalf of both myself and the blog, that 155 only arrived after 56 comments.
"Sleazy" actually derives from "Silesia", via Silesia cloth which was notoriously thin and poor-quality stuff.
My favorite "dude, where's my coast?" Eastern European figure is Admiral Horthy.
There ought to be a territory called "Dimes" so we can have a "March of Dimes"
He was the scourge of Lake Balaton.
I'm still waiting for some fool to crack a joke about the Paraguayan Navy so I can school them on the importance of river transport in 19th century South America.
Is there some generic term for the countries formerly part of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata? I've seen 'southern cone' but that sucks.
160, 162 - the KuK Austrian navy, unlike the army, actually performed well above expectations in WWI, winning its major battle, and by its mere existence tying up the French and Italian navies in the Mediterranean. So its no surprise that both Horthy and Captain Von Trapp from the Sound of Music traded on its prestige.
Was Horthy sharp enough to use the prestige to marry his teenage nanny?
'Admiral of Castile' is one of my favorite historical titles.
168 was in the wrong thread maybe.
This is still one of my favorite things.
Fun fact: in 1866, the Austro-Hungarian navy won the last naval battle in which ramming tactics played a significant role.
Old school style.
"Baby, you must be an Italian warship, because I'm ready to ram you all night until victory."
Did think pieces exist in 1866? Because that there would have spawned many.
The editorial was invented in 1842 by Edward Itori.
IIRC the etymology of "Honkey" is: Bohemian --> Bohunk --> Hunk/Hunkey --> Honkey.
It's always nice to know our slurs against white people really derive from racism against central European Slavs.
There were people we called "Bohunk" when I was growing up. Usually not to their faces.
We weren't very nice and mostly Irish.
Not even sort-of nice and partly Irish?
132 and sequelae. Coming late to this-- Moravians generally pride themselves on speaking slang-free, grammatical Czech, in contrast to what you might hear elsewhere, also enjoying wine rather than beer. You can get a sense of the vitriolic undercurrents present in Moravian regional identity by "enjoying" this catchy ditty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOqv-VBrXeA
Friuli??? Bohemia was a duchy, power relations between the Přemyslids and the holy roman emperor before Otokar I are, I thought, not that well documented-- chroniclers mention border squabbles, and there are copies of treaties, but mostly the land was forests with a few castle-towns and outpost forts. The idea of controlling something that far away, just no.
The recent english name change, no idea of the motivation or why it made headlines-- honestly, I suspect that the main motivation is avoiding a repeat of this shirt. Many Czechs are sports fans, and want to see uniforms with a word that does not bother them.
He played for the Penguins for a long time.
181: just going from Wiki and its list of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown. March of Friuli acquired by Ottokar II in the late 13th century.
159: The OED thinks otherwise ("the evidence seems to be against any original connection with sleazy n.").
183: In the few areas I have expertise, I've found Wiki to suck badly at history.
FWIW Britannica says "Otakar was elected duke of Austria in November 1251 and succeeded his father as king of Bohemia and Moravia in September 1253. In 1254 he conducted a crusade against the pagans of East Prussia, where later the Teutonic Knights named their citadel of Königsberg (modern Kaliningrad, Russia) after him. He also conducted another crusade against the Lithuanians (1266-67). He seized Styria (1260) from the Hungarians and in 1269 took possession of Carinthia, Carniola, and Istria. His domains then stretched from Silesia to the Adriatic" - so Wiki is at least not alone.
178
We're they Bohemian?
Now I wonder what the etymology of Cracker is.
Something Slavic or German. Who knows?
I enjoy that the correction repeats the error.
183, 186 -- I think lw got confused because you said the "Carolingian March of Friuli" even though according to Wiki Ottokar II, then King of Bohemia didn't take that (very briefly) as personal territory until the 13th century, or roughly 350 years after the Carolingians (who created the March of Friuli in the first place, so everyone is right).
I just like using the word Carolingian. I don't get to very often.
Anyhow even then saying "Bohemia" had a coast is arguably a stretch. It's like saying "England once bordered on the Pyrenees" because Henry II had personal rule over Aquitaine.
"Merovingian" comes up more often, because of The Matrix.
Merovingian is I think French slang for incredibly medieval and outdated. Or I read it used that way somewhere once, which I liked. I used it in a brief once in that sense as an adjective and got the editorial comment ?????, very justifiably.
I had to Google "KuK", since I'd never heard it before, but it's now a useless piece of trivia firmly lodged in my head, and I will be boring either my wife or kids with it within the next 48 hours.
The very briefly is the source of the difference, I think. "My army passed by here, and I told a nephew he could try to keep it" is I guess looked down upon by the historians I had read. Probably if I looked again, I would see the paragraphs that mention it-- I'll claim that no lasting impact is the reason it didn't register.
I knew about Otto's expeditions to the north, which were part of many waves of armies against the remaining pagan forests.
198.last: the last Lithuanian trees were baptised only in 1703.
147: In the same spirit, but maybe an even better idea --- The Velvet Overground.
199: Even then the Anabaptists wanted to wait.
Wiki Ottokar II
Ruler of all Crowdsourcia
