#ranting ranting

Like, I see all these posts that will be like “i can’t x because the light is too loud” or “my scalp hurts” or something, and that’s fine because those are the reasons that these feelings are happening, but oftentimes when I’m in a situation I have just mentally unconsciously blocked out whatever it is, like say it’s a repetitive buzzing from a light, i’ll just be PISSED and I won’t know why, and then i’ll realize i’m pissed, and then maybe I’ll step too close and hear the light buzzing and be like “OH”.

Like I feel like I’m never right away conscious of what’s bothering me, or even that something IS bothering me, I just start acting out for what feels like no reason.

What I mean: in regards to melos, athenians decided that they should make an example out of them, because they refused to join their league, by besieging it and then killing all the men and selling the children and women. They wiped out the entire island. Alcibiades may or may not have played a very big part in this.

But we see him later, after he has rejoined the athenians and they're besieging cities and taking back the islands they had lost, and his tactics are completely different. He takes cities mostly by short sieges and negotiations. Of course, now he can afford to do it because his military prowess is known and people don't want to fight him. But he also deliberately doesn't let parts of the army that he knows are prone to pillaging to even enter the cities they're besieging. If he has to take them by force he uses tricks to avoid big battles. He asks the cities to pay tax and he mostly leaves them alone beyond that. There's also the anecdotal accusation that he had a child with a slave woman from melos, after they killed everyone there, and that he raised that child as if it was a legitimate son.

I like to think of him as a young general eager to show off his power and lacking much empathy, potentially going to melos in person to oversee the operation, and having to face the mass slaughter and enslavement he helped bring about.