#the Habsburgs

[ashima066-blog]

A small selection of books, some of which have been used as the cover elements for my fic, were the books I read in the past four months.

1. "The Other Richard III" by John Birney

John Birney's book "The Other Richard III" presents a fresh perspective on Richard III, the controversial monarch of England. It portrays him as a more complex and sympathetic character than the traditional image portrayed by Shakespeare and historical accounts.

Birney's extensive research and deep knowledge of historical facts make his argument credible. This adds to the credibility of his revisionist approach, making the book an engaging read for those seeking alternative historical perspectives.

The writing style is accessible, yet it maintains depth and complexity. The exploration of Richard's motives and actions provides a nuanced understanding that challenges traditional narratives about his character. While the book offers an interesting alternative perspective, some readers may find the arguments to be too one-sided, as it at times glosses over the more negative aspects of Richard's reign. Additionally, the style can sometimes feel overly academic, which may discourage casual readers from engaging fully with the text. Furthermore, there are instances where Birney's conjectures exceed the available historical evidence, leading some to question the validity of the conclusions presented. Compared to Philippa Langley's Richard III: The King in the Car Park, which also revisits the reputation of Richard, Birney's approach to the topic is less focused on the physical discovery of the king's remains and more on the political and personal motivations behind his reign. While Langley's work is more investigative, Birney's book is a deeper dive into the psychology of the man behind the crown. The Other Richard III would be an excellent choice for readers who enjoy historical revisionism and character-driven analysis. However, it may not provide the same level of factual evidence as some other historical works.

2. "The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe" by Andrew Wheatcroft

This book is a masterful work of historical scholarship offering a comprehensive and insightful analysis of the conflict between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires over centuries. The book focuses on the pivotal event of the siege of Vienna in 1683 which serves as a microcosm for the broader conflict. Wheatcroft expertly intertwines political, military and cultural aspects of this period presenting a balanced and nuanced view. His writing is clear and accessible, allowing readers to easily grasp the complexities of the situation. The result is an engaging narrative that brings to life the intricate power dynamics of Europe in the late 17th century. One of the shortcomings of the book is its heavy emphasis on military and strategic aspects, which sometimes overshadows the broader perspectives of daily life under Ottoman and Habsburg control. While military details can be fascinating, they can also be overwhelming for readers who are not interested in tactical historical narratives. Additionally, some reviewers have noted that the narrative sometimes jumps between different characters and factions too quickly, making it difficult to follow the storyline. A comparison of "The Siege of Vienna" by John Stoye and "The Enemy at the Gate" by Wheatcroft shows that the latter work covers more extensively and provides a more comprehensive background to the Ottoman-Habsburg conflict. In contrast, Stoye's book focuses exclusively on the siege. Wheatcroft's work, on the other hand, delves deeper into political and military aspects. "The Enemy at the Gate" is an ideal choice for those who appreciate in-depth analysis of political and military events. On the other hand, Stoye's book may be more appealing to those seeking a concise and focused account of the siege itself. Wheatcroft's exploration of events is more extensive and multilayered, making it a more suitable choice for readers with a strong interest in military history.

3. "Blood, Fire & Gold: The Story of Elizabeth I & Catherine de Medici" by Estelle Paranque is a captivating dual biography that explores the lives of two remarkable women of the 16th century, Elizabeth I and Catherine de'Medici. Through an in-depth exploration of their political activities and personal journeys, the author weaves a gripping narrative that engages readers with its vivid prose and detailed historical background. The book dives deep into the complexities of court politics, revealing how these powerful figures navigated the dangerous waters of power in a male-dominated society. Paranques masterful use of vivid language and meticulous research brings this period to life, creating a vivid portrait of the era. Nevertheless, certain readers have observed that the book occasionally appears to be more like an amalgam of incidents than a cohesive narrative, with occasional jumps in time and attention that disrupt the continuity of the story. Despite the authors' meticulous delving into the private lives of these two women, some readers may find the level of detail regarding their public lives to be overwhelming or repetitive at times. Furthermore, there could be further exploration of the interaction between their personal lives and the wider political landscape beyond their court circles. When we compare Paranque's book with Leanda de Lisle's "The Sisters Who Would Be Queen", we can observe a distinct difference in their approaches. While de Lisle delves into the intimate details of Elizabeth's rivals, such as Mary, Queen of Scots and Margaret Tudor, Paranque takes a broader perspective, exploring the lives of these two women in a wider context. Paranque adds a valuable dimension to the genre of dual biographies by offering a fresh perspective on historical figures who are of interest to those intrigued by complexities of politics, power dynamics and gender roles.

4. "The Tudor Murder Files" by James Moore is a fascinating and suspenseful exploration of the dark and often brutal world of Tudor England. The book focuses on the numerous murders that occurred during the reigns of Henry VIII and his children, bringing together a wealth of historical sources to create a gripping narrative. While some aspects of the book are speculative, Moore's writing is lively and engaging, making the historical events come to life. The focus on the sinister aspects of the Tudor dynasty provides a fascinating look at the lengths they were willing to go to maintain their power.

Cons: While the book offers a compelling narrative, it occasionally ventures into speculative territory, presenting theories about motives and events that can be difficult to verify or are not universally accepted among historians. Additionally, some readers may feel that Moore's reliance on sensational accounts of Tudor intrigue distracts from more substantial historical analysis. Furthermore, the lack of in-depth exploration of certain key figures leaves gaps in our understanding of the political and social context of the period. Comparison: Compared to Alison Weir's The King's Reign, which also explores the darker aspects of the Tudor dynasty, The Tudor Murder Files focuses more on the sensational aspects of history. Weir's work, on the other hand, provides a more balanced and scholarly perspective.

Moore's approach is ideal for readers who enjoy narrative-driven exploration of historical mysteries. Weir's book offers a more academic approach to the same period, but if you are seeking detailed insight into the political world of the Tudors, then Moore's book will provide a fun albeit occasionally sensational introduction to the intrigues and violence that shaped this dynasty.

[chaotic-historian]

Well, I'm glad that they've got to the point where they can joke about it, too!

[galahadenough]

私 will que alles hablo es in alles lenguas ich habe. 四 oder màs. Спасибо für leyendo.

[utilitymonstermash]

"Henry VIII wants to divorce his first wife Catherine of Aragon because he thinks the Habsburgs are going to kill him and take over England using his wife as a Manchurian Queen."

[livesouls]

Reading about Habsburg emperors makes me laugh like nothing else

This is Ferdinand I The Benevolent. I am dying

[babyhawk83]

“the habsburgs weren’t even that inbred” What the fuck does he consider too inbred then? Because damn.

“the habsburgs weren’t even that inbred” uh yes they were, why is this discourse it’s just a scientific fact

[tsuchinokoroyale]

That boy you thought was a top? Well he’s brushing his teeth and going to bed taking pictures like this.

Remember that.

[illustratus]

Duke Ernest the Iron rescues Cymburgis of Masovia by Franz Josef Dobiaschofsky

[hoppityhopster23]

Just an odd thought that I’m wondering if people are in the same boat about:

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Coprophagic AI crisis

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TORONTO on Mar 22, then with LAURA POITRAS in NYC on Mar 24, then Anaheim, and more!

A key requirement for being a science fiction writer without losing your mind is the ability to distinguish between science fiction (futuristic thought experiments) and predictions. SF writers who lack this trait come to fancy themselves fortune-tellers who SEE! THE! FUTURE!

The thing is, sf writers cheat. We palm cards in order to set up pulp adventure stories that let us indulge our thought experiments. These palmed cards – say, faster-than-light drives or time-machines – are narrative devices, not scientifically grounded proposals.

Historically, the fact that some people – both writers and readers – couldn't tell the difference wasn't all that important, because people who fell prey to the sf-as-prophecy delusion didn't have the power to re-orient our society around their mistaken beliefs. But with the rise and rise of sf-obsessed tech billionaires who keep trying to invent the torment nexus, sf writers are starting to be more vocal about distinguishing between our made-up funny stories and predictions (AKA "cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion"):

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/11/dont-create-the-torment-nexus.html

In that spirit, I'd like to point to how one of sf's most frequently palmed cards has become a commonplace of the AI crowd. That sleight of hand is: "add enough compute and the computer will wake up." This is a shopworn cliche of sf, the idea that once a computer matches the human brain for "complexity" or "power" (or some other simple-seeming but profoundly nebulous metric), the computer will become conscious. Think of "Mike" in Heinlein's *The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress#Plot

For people inflating the current AI hype bubble, this idea that making the AI "more powerful" will correct its defects is key. Whenever an AI "hallucinates" in a way that seems to disqualify it from the high-value applications that justify the torrent of investment in the field, boosters say, "Sure, the AI isn't good enough…yet. But once we shovel an order of magnitude more training data into the hopper, we'll solve that, because (as everyone knows) making the computer 'more powerful' solves the AI problem":

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

As the lawyers say, this "cites facts not in evidence." But let's stipulate that it's true for a moment. If all we need to make the AI better is more training data, is that something we can count on? Consider the problem of "botshit," Andre Spicer and co's very useful coinage describing "inaccurate or fabricated content" shat out at scale by AIs:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4678265

"Botshit" was coined last December, but the internet is already drowning in it. Desperate people, confronted with an economy modeled on a high-speed game of musical chairs in which the opportunities for a decent livelihood grow ever scarcer, are being scammed into generating mountains of botshit in the hopes of securing the elusive "passive income":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Botshit can be produced at a scale and velocity that beggars the imagination. Consider that Amazon has had to cap the number of self-published "books" an author can submit to a mere three books per day:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/20/amazon-restricts-authors-from-self-publishing-more-than-three-books-a-day-after-ai-concerns

As the web becomes an anaerobic lagoon for botshit, the quantum of human-generated "content" in any internet core sample is dwindling to homeopathic levels. Even sources considered to be nominally high-quality, from Cnet articles to legal briefs, are contaminated with botshit:

https://theconversation.com/ai-is-creating-fake-legal-cases-and-making-its-way-into-real-courtrooms-with-disastrous-results-225080

Ironically, AI companies are setting themselves up for this problem. Google and Microsoft's full-court press for "AI powered search" imagines a future for the web in which search-engines stop returning links to web-pages, and instead summarize their content. The question is, why the fuck would anyone write the web if the only "person" who can find what they write is an AI's crawler, which ingests the writing for its own training, but has no interest in steering readers to see what you've written? If AI search ever becomes a thing, the open web will become an AI CAFO and search crawlers will increasingly end up imbibing the contents of its manure lagoon.

This problem has been a long time coming. Just over a year ago, Jathan Sadowski coined the term "Habsburg AI" to describe a model trained on the output of another model:

https://twitter.com/jathansadowski/status/1625245803211272194

There's a certain intuitive case for this being a bad idea, akin to feeding cows a slurry made of the diseased brains of other cows:

https://www.cdc.gov/prions/bse/index.html

But "The Curse of Recursion: Training on Generated Data Makes Models Forget," a recent paper, goes beyond the ick factor of AI that is fed on botshit and delves into the mathematical consequences of AI coprophagia:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.17493

Co-author Ross Anderson summarizes the finding neatly: "using model-generated content in training causes irreversible defects":

https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2023/06/06/will-gpt-models-choke-on-their-own-exhaust/

Which is all to say: even if you accept the mystical proposition that more training data "solves" the AI problems that constitute total unsuitability for high-value applications that justify the trillions in valuation analysts are touting, that training data is going to be ever-more elusive.

What's more, while the proposition that "more training data will linearly improve the quality of AI predictions" is a mere article of faith, "training an AI on the output of another AI makes it exponentially worse" is a matter of fact.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/14/14/inhuman-centipede#enshittibottification

Image: Plamenart (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Double_Mobius_Strip.JPG

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[skippersthecat]

are we all ignoring how bro is literally royal!?!?

[fufferrrrrrr]

Death and the Crown Prince

[elsalouisa]

"On Saturday we saw the Empress of Austria, and | was perfectly enchanted with her. She has a most lovely, tall & thin figure (50 years old) and such a pretty face & soft voice".

Princess Alix of Hesse about Empress Elisabeth of Austria, 1887.

[bunniesandbeheadings]

Napoleon just ctrl+c ctrl+v’s his genes, huh?

[marianadecarlos]

A memory to cherish (Charles II of Spain fanart)

Authors note: A story based on fact

In October 1700, Charles II's health continued to decline. By this time, he had lost most of his loved ones, and the court was in a state of panic regarding the issue of succession. The days of joy were behind him; he struggled to walk and could hardly travel. His problems with the country escalated, and his wife's attitude only added to his distress. All he could do now was attempt to address the crisis that Spain was facing. However, he felt overwhelmed, bearing the weight of his country's fate on his shoulders. He knew he needed peace of mind before making any decisions.

One afternoon, after his prayers, he walked around the palace, gazing out the windows and strolling down the hallways." I used to run and play here," he thought, reminiscing about the moments in his life that had brought him happiness. As he ventured downstairs to check the rooms, one room stood out. The room showcases a valuable item: the mini-carriage. He gently caresses it, reminiscing about his childhood.

[little-candy-store-of-horrors]

And at the rate things are going, I fear I am not any way inclined at all! *Laugh track*