To Imane, pt 68

I'm curious how many people know that Russia's president has a black belt in judo. Sometimes, articles will mention the fact in a way that suggests the writer thinks everyone knows it, but people often do not know things that other people expect them to know. If there was a like YouGov poll with 5k responses, how would the demographics look? Would the percentage of older people who know that he does be higher than the percentage of younger people? What percentage of people with a 4-year college degree know this?

I've mentioned this before:

I was fascinated by the technique of the basic foot sweep while walking, where one becomes airborne before noticing that the foot is not firmly placed on the ground.

About my recent post, Taxes. Trump posted something, I think, about Democrats in the US trying, unsuccessfully, to raise taxes. So if people (voters) think that lower taxes are good, and reward the Republican party for lowering taxes, why not lower them even more?

Recently read about the Cimbrian War. There is limited information about those times, as seen with the topic of the "Marian reforms", and also with how there is limited information on many of the major battles, with the date and sometimes even the location unknown.

I will just mention the Battle of Arausio, "the worst defeat in the history of ancient Rome", which I had never heard of before, to show that it was not all defeats for the opponents of Rome, who later became like Germany and France or something. I was going to say that the Roman victories are more interesting because we have more information about them, because Rome had better records, and I think this is true, but the exact date of the Battle of Aquae Sextiae, a Roman victory in which the Teutons and Ambrones had 100k~120k dead, is still unknown.

Compare this random article: 10 Deadliest Days on WWI’s Western Front

The article even says,

World War I happened just as the world was industrializing. This new technology allowed the nations involved to apply industrialization to the slaughter of their enemies. This, and the amount of soldiers packed together in the trenches, allowed for casualty numbers that had never been seen before. Historically the most soldiers killed in a single day, for most countries, were during these battles on WWI’s Western Front.

It says,

Deadliest day: August 22, 1914
27,000 KIA

(It also says, "It got so bad along the French lines that in 1917 there was a series of mutinies that were barely contained by the French military authorities.")

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population says Europe had a population of 13m in 1000 BCE, and 32 million in "year 0" (I know that the world uses a numbering system in which 0 does not appear when going from negative years to positive). Estimate 30 million in 102 BCE, and 100k people dying in one day was 0.33% of Europe's whole population. In 1914, Europe had 448m people, so 27k French people dying in one day (ignoring German losses) was 0.006%, or just 2% of the relative population loss from the Battle of Aquae Sextiae.

The Mémorial de Verdun says 163k French dead, 143k German dead. Wikipedia lists a bit lower losses, which could reflect dates and locations included in the total etc. (Also, I liked how in Edge of Tomorrow (2014), "Verdun" refers to a more recent battle against the Mimics, not the battle in WWI.) So even that total, of 306k dead, is just 0.07% of Europe's total population at the time, or 20% of the relative deaths in a single day in the Battle of Aquae Sextiae.

A point of interest with the Battle of Vercellae is the negotiations for where the battle would take place:

Eventually Marius chose the optimal location for the battle, an open plain (the Raudine Plain) near Vercellae, and then met with the Cimbri leader Boiorix to agree on the time and place of battle.

The point I want to make in mentioning these is the importance of leadership. A simple phrase shows it: "feigning retreat." Morale was very important because of the bad organization of the times, compared to now: a soldier who survived a battle had a reasonable chance of just escaping. A soldier in WWI had no chance of escaping the war. So if an army thought they would lose, their behavior changed from everyone trying to win, to many people trying to escape, which was bad for the group. A leader's job was often to prevent people who thought they were going to win from doing stupid things as a result and falling victim to tactical ruses.

But actual strategy also played a role. The description of the Battle of Aquae Sextiae suggests that the surprise attack by 3000 troops was important, even though it was 3000 attacking 100k.

Back to judo: the Democratic party in the US should announce that they are willing to support any decrease in taxes, as long as the Republican party is willing to take responsibility for the decrease and any effects it will have.