/b/ - Random

Here's an example of social mobility in Russian Empire. Lenin's father (born Ilya Ulyanin - MATERNAL surname!) was the son of a former serf based in Volga region. He received hereditary nobility in 1882 for his work as an educator. He started and managed a lot of schools for Volgan ethnic minorities and was likely some minority himself, but nobody is quite sure which one.

Also, I'm reading Bracewell's article on Fourier transform, and Fourier lived under Napoleon's France, he accompanied Napoleon's expedition into Egypt, and I believe it says he created Fourier's transform after the French Revolution. A lot of his contemporaries were skeptical of his findings, among them are Poisson, Laplace and Euler! I did notice they sounded French-y in my uni years, but I had no context that they actually lived at the same time and kinda knew each other. So, Napoleon's France has some cool contributions to mathematics.

Kinda randomly had this idea, that now that everyone records their life activity in a smartphone or pc (basically), it's possible that we can study historic figures in much greater detail in the future.
Idk how to explain it. You know how in the past we only had the person's writings, but now we will have the photos they took or saved, the cached messages they will have on their phones? Crazy stuff.

One wonders if Snowden regrets throwing away his life to warn ungrateful Americans about unconstitutional NSA wire-tapping.

>>325495
with the way everything is forced onto a paywalled cloud and tech becomes more brittle (SSDs are unable to keep data for years if unpowered), it's unlikely

>What was social mobility like in European and maybe some other countries?
Low, but i guess that was usual in most societies until the late 19th century. Some countries that are very young, like the USA, might be slightly different since people had a better chance to rise during the 19th century (if they were white, and by white i mean english and german).

During most of the earlier times, being granted a noble rank was something that made you nobility by name, but didnt really come with any benefits and wasnt hereditary, as you described. Until very late in the middle ages, there wasnt even something like a capitalist class that wasnt noble, but wealthy.

>among them are Poisson, Laplace and Euler
this sounds strange, because the Laplace transform is a generalization of the Fourier transform into the s plane

Saw these things at the MET Cloister and I’ve been kind of obsessed. They’re called Tecpatls, and they were stone daggers used for ritual sacrifice within the Aztec Empire. They added these little eye-and-teeth designs, because they thought these knives embodied the living will of the gods. Still looks a little adorable though, I’ve got to admit.

>>326213
What is wrong with you, this is creepy even before you know what it is.
Imagine being killed by that.

>>326216

I mean, they’re a little endearing, I’ve gotta admit. Kinda remind me of The Minions a tiny bit.

>>326218
A new conspiracy theory is born.

>>326213
>>325492
Following this aztec theme, the aztec society had some sort of bourgeoisie-like class of merchants that could hoard wealth and power which could even rival those of the noble classes, while also engaging in intelligence and counterintelligence tasks for the aztec empire because of their ability to travel through territories and check out on info of other groups, tribes and rival empires
I'm not sure how hereditary this societal standing was, but it's probably the closest dynamic they had to the concept of social mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pochteca