the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Watched a remarkable miniseries on the History Channel

The Men Who Built America (TV Mini-Series 2012- ) - IMDb
Miniseries shines a spotlight on the influential builders, dreamers and believers whose feats transformed the United States, a nation decaying from the inside after ...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2167393/

It shows capitalism at its best and worst. One part was of particular interest: the contest between Edison and Tesla I assumed this was personal but in fact they were pawns , surrogates of Morgan and Westinghouse. The risks they took were enormous, the effect on the world of a few men incredible, creating the modern world. The recent struggles between Microsoft, Google, Amazon etc are a continuation of this activity, albeit in a compressed time, for example the smart phone has transformed the world in a decade.

the compression itself is also extraordinary.

supposedly machine learning and AI are the thing now (and surely the innovations will spread much faster than any of us actually expect, since this process has been getting much faster as time goes by, according to Ray Kurzweil and others).

Thanks for sharing! Sounds like a good one.

Yes the Edison (vs) Tesla part of the series is very interesting, their "rivalry" I think most know about but who and what was behind that at least I didn't know about....The men who built America did not only build America they had a big impact on a global scale

At times it was sick, for example when DC current was used to operate the 'electric chair''and literally fried the criminal. It may have dissuaded a few people from pursuing a life of crime

It is a fantastic series.

But I think it needs to be said that the past is a strange land that no man truly understands.

Most people living today would have a hard time navigating life if magically transported back to the US of 1900.

And any earlier than that they would probably find absolutely alien.