r/technology • u/NowThatsMalarkey • Feb 21 '25

Social Media Mark Zuckerberg’s makeover didn’t make people like him, study shows

https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/20/mark-zuckerbergs-makeover-didnt-make-people-like-him-study-shows/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANAZlr-hGuhX1KqqPjBTkTce5FHYoTfozy456eW6cuu8YldzC5rpGfIlP07_a0jXdYc_eaaM6DrAXHX5G8e2xGc5SpbfTOxsJAwxR81w_TBGJlcjoLsVnZ8PWO1lNJgWgzm3MMz0BHDbCl-W5ehgrTueoJBD4LubB0aUd2ecJ39Y
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u/martxel93 Feb 22 '25

What have the Romans ever done for us?

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u/littlelordgenius Feb 22 '25

The aqueduct.

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u/Noblesseux Feb 22 '25

Just to be clear here: Rome in fact did not create aqueducts, they're just associated with them because they had a bunch of them that survived in good enough condition for people to document them.

Aqueducts arrived spontaneously in quite a few places because as it turns out: as a species that needs water to live, we tend to treat figuring out how to move it around as a priority. There are examples of aqueducts in places like Crete that go back to like hundreds of years before the Romans, examples in India, examples in South America, etc.

Rome's biggest skill in a lot of ways is that they would see a good idea and go "wait why aren't WE doing that?" and find ways to incorporate it into their strategy.

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u/Actual-Departure-843 12d ago

"Rome's biggest skill in a lot of ways is that they would see a good idea and go "wait why aren't WE doing that?"

A lot like Marc Zuckerberg then!

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u/Noblesseux 12d ago

Except for the part where they were *good* at it.

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u/banjo_assassin Feb 22 '25

And the sanitation.

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u/GiniInABottle Feb 22 '25

Yes, but besides the aqueduct and sanitation and roads, what have the Romans done for us??

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u/phatmahn Feb 22 '25

irrigation?

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u/pirateg3cko Feb 23 '25

Bigusth Dickusth.

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u/Bhuddhi Feb 22 '25

Fun fact all those ideas were taken by Romans not invented by them, they just had a habit of burning books and history wherever they went and tried to gaslight their empire that they came up with shit.

Which is completely on brand

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u/WhisperTits Feb 23 '25

So you're saying for us to have the next revolution in technology we should be stealing it 🤔. I think you're onto something. -Xi Jinping

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u/Bhuddhi 10d ago

I mean that’s how technology is developed 😭 one nation takes another nations tech and rebrands it as its own. Sometimes it stolen sometimes it’s a trade negotiation. I mean we as America do “take” a lot of technology from foreign individuals we end up nationalizing to try to hold a monopoly of said tech. The iPhone isn’t even primarily made in the US but is one of the United States biggest exports. Also kinda ironic because China will most likely get a lot further with AI than us because of all the western restrictions on AI development vs their lack there-of. Speaking of China the west literally took guns from them 😭😭 historically speaking we’ve been in a tit for tat with the eastern hemisphere of taking and developing tech for like 1000+ years at this point.

TLDR moral of the story - humans should just share tech cause someone gonna steal it and rebrand anyways

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u/WhisperTits 10d ago

Yeah but how are we going to make money off each other if we have to share technology for the betterment of mankind? 😂

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u/Bhuddhi 10d ago

See you make a good point and I don’t like being broke. Boutta steal some Chinese tech and rebrand to be the next billionaire

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u/martxel93 Feb 23 '25

All empires across history are built upon the suffering of endless amounts of people. Romans are no different, of course they did a lot of shitty stuff.

But even if they didn’t invent those things, wasn’t it the Romans that extended those commodities across the Imperium?

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u/Bhuddhi 10d ago

They extended a lot of those commodities to seat of the Roman Empire, but there’s some evidence to suggest that they’ve also conquered existing civilizations with their own aqueduct systems and just extended (or in some cases demolished) the network once they took over. It’s more like they had better kept records in a language that they made widely accessible across multiple regions while actively destroying the history and architecture of civilizations that they’ve conquered over time. Over time these people would associate their deeds and triumphs with Rome, and effectively assimilate their history to a Roman centric one (which as you pointed out is the standard practice for most empires). There’s an argument to be made that there is more lost history under Rome than any other empire, as they were also known to take paper texts and write over them/burn them to keep populations focused on spreading Roman history as opposed to local history and religion.

We’ve been lead to believe Rome spread certain ideas throughout the old world but Rome wasn’t exactly as cohesive an empire as they made themselves out to be in texts and written records. As archeologists uncover more about our story, we’re coming to learn that history has been written by the victor, and most of our historical knowledge is Eurocentric/stems from European culture, and we’re uncovering that the world was a lot bigger and a lot more advanced than we initially thought and a lot of our impressions of the world being savage and barbaric around those times was because of a habit of Eurocentric (and arguably most cultures) documents to label most non Europeans or even local tribes as savages and inhuman. Do that for 2000 years and your readers will inevitably discredit other civilizations that didn’t have the same impact as Rome

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u/Bhuddhi 10d ago

Some other comment on this thread put it best, Rome was very good at taking ideas and rebranding it as their own, and once powerful enough they did a good job at decimating civilizations to the level of erasing or assimilating them into history

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u/kingburp Feb 22 '25

The Romans came up with porn websites as well. They would draw comics of the latest videos of people boning then hand them out across the whole empire.

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u/tgwombat Feb 22 '25

The tubes we’ve got today would blow their minds.

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u/ajakafasakaladaga Feb 24 '25

They had tubes that took water from the aqueducts into houses. They were made of lead

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u/tgwombat Feb 24 '25

Sounds nice. I bet they went absolutely mad for them!

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u/Icey210496 Feb 22 '25

I thought one of the more successful early attempts at a Republic was cool despite its flaws. I'm from Asia though and we're just all monarchies.

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u/n_choose_k Feb 22 '25

It's a Monty Python reference. :)

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u/Icey210496 Feb 23 '25

Ah I only watched the Holy Grail one. Life of Brian has been on my list forever!

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u/Elmer_Fudd01 Feb 22 '25

Invented equal opportunity..... Enslavement.