Recent content by LostInNewDelhi

Sure, and there's definitely times in which Catholic "hierarchy" is more live and let live. After the LatAm independence wars a lot of places lost contact with the pope's representatives, who didn't want to end up on the wrong side of a civil war, so a lot of parishes and dioceses ran on...

I've been trying to quote what I remember as being the most relevant bits of the story, but this still involves rereading stuff I haven't looked at in years.

We all have to make decisions, and maybe we're consciously trying to do good. But we may not be able to satisfy everyone, and we may even "fail" by some standard, maybe a self imposed one. So whether you succeed or fail, you not only need support or reasoning for taking a particular decision...

That's not a solution, though. Vulgarity's mission statement is that in ceremony it wants to engage the people and not fool them; in governance it wants to represent the people and not submerge them. Its success in both partly depends on who counts as a "learned man/elder" for the purposes of an...

Cool. So then you could theoretically run a motor or pump at the other end, but the voltage could very low, in the end it would probably be less energy than goes in at the other end. Even in the best case of water power, you're left dependent on the river current, which could be too slow, so...

The rotational energy for the spinning magnet in the generator has to come from somewhere. If not an engine, then human, animal, wind, or waterpower. But then, there has to be enough copper for the wires. And then insulation, or you'll just have raw wiring everywhere. Could wax be used for...

Fair enough. I just think there might be many ways to drive up expense, either in absolute or relative terms, besides the number of people or what's considered a "reasonable" wage. Qing China had a number of big civil war and regional revolts in the mid 1800s, and the armies to quell these were...

But if they stuck it out they could get deified, their figurative descendants in the people of Hainan wishing them a wonderful afterlife long after their actual bloodline has disappeared The Qing didn't really care about developing Taiwan even after they got it, they just wanted to make sure a...

But there's limits on what you can do with the wages, which limits the value of "money" as a means of exchange or even a store of value-- can an industrial slave open a bank account? If money can't serve as capital, is there really such a difference between it and company-town scrip? Aside from...

If they have the power to do so, which-- if they build up enough force they can do whatever they want, but their opponents may be supported by powerful patrons. If the Anglish develop a reputation of giving no quarter, the first thing natives will do if they see they're losing is head right to...

Except it wasn't constant, diplomacy was what held Northeast Native confederations together and secured them a place in the world. There's almost never a case in which a treaty wasn't eventually signed, although it could then be broken by either side. But OTL points to a pattern of understanding...

The South restricted that wherever possible, even requiring that manumissions be confirmed by legislatures. Their free black community was very small, and regulated by derivations of slave codes of conduct. Maybe a form of "parole" might inevitably develop in industrial slavery-- an advancement...

Northern China gets cold in the winter, large cities like Beijing have relied on coal and charcoal (as well as fur coats, purchased from northern peoples and eventually the Russians) to keep warm. That coal did come from far away, but it was also subsidized by the state...

The Himalayas don't act as a moisture barrier for India-- India shares the same side of the barrier as the Indian Ocean itself. The Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau are a moisture barrier for the Taklamakan. But I do think North India would be much more arid without the source of all of its major...

I don't know, they didn't get welfare and universal suffrage until later in the century or the next century respectively, the timetable on those could be sped up with an insurrection. Maybe a third US-British War plus Anglophobe France dividing up the Ottoman Empire with Russia. Polk gets more...