Hacker News: alcuin

New comment by alcuin in "Why were Victorian elites so effective?"

alcuin — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 02:37:47 +0000

>but the UK is the most powerful Empire to ever have existed.

Interesting to see this popular myth still being regurgitated when someone as perceptive as Bertrand Russell who lived through part of it admitted it was self-aggrandizing propaganda. In truth 80% of the British "Empire" were impoverished Indians. While back at home the Blue Books were churning out shocking reports of the misery and physical state of the British working class compared to their American and European peers. Read the archives from the early 20th century for a real eye-opener. And to top it all off, the "rule the waves" trope when Britain lost the Battle of the Chesapeake, aka the one naval battle that truly mattered in its history.

New comment by alcuin in "Mistral Large 4"

alcuin — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 14:29:55 +0000

As far as your sense of humor goes, perhaps you can find a different niche than disrespecting the memory of the 100,000 French soldiers who died in the early weeks of WW2 precisely because none would surrender? That 90s revisionist trope to shame the French for not being neocon enough is beyond stale.

New comment by alcuin in "Mistral Large 4"

alcuin — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 22:54:03 +0000

Is this based off that one revisionist trope?

New comment by alcuin in "Delacroix's Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople Restored"

alcuin — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 13:13:49 +0000

It's a nice vibe history you've got going on here but unfortunately it has little to do with reality. I recommend starting with the disastrous reign of Alexios III who had drained Constantinople's treasury years before the Crusaders arrived to understand the bigger picture. Ransacking their own capital in the name of internal strife has been a Byzantine specialty since the Nika riots of 532.

New comment by alcuin in "England Runestones"

alcuin — Sat, 16 May 2026 13:37:09 +0000

King Sigurd is a bad example for two reasons. One being that you are implicitly conflating Scandinavians with Vikings, when the latter were a subset of pirates largely disjoint from the aristocracy to which Sigurd belonged. The second is that Sigurd and his men did in fact attack and plunder fellow Christians on their way to Jerusalem when they stopped in Galicia in the winter of 1108. You can read about it in the Historia Compostelana.

New comment by alcuin in "Modern mathematics emerged from “The House of Wisdom” in the 13th century"

alcuin — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 00:16:38 +0000

I don't know where you are reading about his work, but his Aristote au mont Saint-Michel isn't about his ideas or beliefs, it's about providing historical evidence of significant intellectual developments in the early middle ages as well as translations of key ancient texts in French monasteries half a century before they were alledgedly imported from the Arab world, which completely changes the narrative of knowledge transmission. That's his main thesis as far as I can recall.

New comment by alcuin in "Modern mathematics emerged from “The House of Wisdom” in the 13th century"

alcuin — Sat, 05 Dec 2020 19:51:42 +0000

> That story begins in a palace library nearly a thousand years ago, at a time when most of Western Christendom lay in intellectual darkness.

Laughable revisionism already thoroughly debunked by Sylvain Gouguenheim many years ago. A real shame as it makes me doubt the objectivity of the entire article.