The phrase “crossing the Rubicon” is an idiom that means “passing a point of no return”. Its meaning comes from allusion to the crossing of the river Rubicon from the north by Julius Caesar in early January 49 BC. The exact date is unknown. Scholars usually place it on the night of 10 and 11 January because of the speeds at which messengers could travel at that time. It is often asserted that Caesar’s crossing of the river precipitated Caesar’s civil war, but Caesar’s forces had already crossed into Italy and occupied Ariminum the previous day.

Caesar’s civil war (49–45 BC) was a civil war during the late Roman Republic between two factions led by Gaius Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey). The main cause of the war was political tensions relating to Caesar’s place in the republic on his expected return to Rome on the expiration of his governorship in Gaul.

Before the war, Caesar had led an invasion of Gaul for almost ten years. A build-up of tensions starting in late 50 BC, with both Caesar and Pompey refusing to back down, led to the outbreak of civil war. Pompey and his allies induced the Senate to demand Caesar give up his provinces and armies in the opening days of 49 BC. Caesar refused and instead marched on Rome.

The war was fought in Italy, Illyria, Greece, Egypt, Africa, and Hispania. The decisive events occurred in Greece in 48 BC: Pompey defeated Caesar at the Battle of Dyrrhachium, but the subsequent larger Battle of Pharsalus was won by Caesar and Pompey’s army disintegrated. Many prominent supporters of Pompey (termed Pompeians) surrendered after the battle, such as Marcus Junius Brutus and Cicero. Others fought on, including Cato the Younger and Metellus Scipio. Pompey fled to Egypt, where he was assassinated upon arrival.

Caesar led a military expedition to Asia Minor before attacking North Africa, where he defeated Metellus Scipio in 46 BC at the Battle of Thapsus. Cato and Metellus Scipio killed themselves shortly thereafter. The following year, Caesar defeated the last of the Pompeians, at the Battle of Munda in Spain, who were led by his former lieutenant Labienus. Caesar was then made dictator perpetuo (“dictator in perpetuity” or “dictator for life”) by the Roman senate in 44 BC. He was assassinated by a group of senators (including Brutus) shortly thereafter.

The civil war is one of the commonly recognised endpoints of Rome’s republican government. Some scholars view the war as the proximate cause of the republic’s fall, due to its polarising interruption of normal republican government.[4] Caesar’s comprehensive victory followed by his immediate death left a power vacuum; over the following years his heir Octavian was eventually able to take complete control, forming the Roman Empire as Augustus.

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  • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    2 minutes ago

    blah. I got cut another day. Bad money feelings.

    Speaking of which, I overheard manager/supervisor chatter saying that we’re getting the downstream disruption of the Teamsters/ALU strikes going on in the warehouses.

    So at least I can appreciate the larger context.

  • SoylentSnake [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    13 minutes ago

    tav seems so fcking boring compared to the dark urge im sad for peeps that so many dont get to experience that whole storyline (i think a lot of players arent even aware it’s an option based on my friends ive talked to about baldoors gate three)

  • LanyrdSkynrd [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    2 hours ago

    Massachusetts released a list of the top 15 highest paid state employees recently. All of the people of the list worked at UMass(coaches, chancellor, etc), except one person.

    Massachusetts State Police Detectives Captain Thomas McCarthy, made a salary of $548,072 with $349,815 of overtime pay. He’s an pig with a long history of misconduct, including a recent incident where he fled a traffic stop by a local police officer after the officer said he smelled like alcohol. He has collected over 4mil in compensation over his career and will get a pension based on this inflated pay.

    Massachusetts has this corrupt system where officers can get assigned traffic details. These were originally meant to be for road projects that needed someone directing traffic, but most details now consist of a lazy pig sitting in a police car on the side of the road.

    • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      3·
      2 hours ago

      not to reveal that I’m very cheap, but so far my favourite is the one that said she works on a sliding scale so she’ll just bill whatever my insurance covers.

  • blight [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    2 hours ago

    bit idea: guy who keeps saying ze is “on the spectrum” but nobody understands ze means the gender spectrum and not the autism spectrum

  • Moss [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    5·
    3 hours ago

    My friend said that whenever I see an octopus or squid I point to it and say squid game. Which I find very funny because I have never seen an octopus or squid in his company and I have never done that. I would though it just hasn’t happened yet

  • Wmill [they/them, fae/faer]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    5 hours ago

    Watched the Jim carry Grinch last month and kept thinking how fr relatable he is. Antisocial ✅, hates consumerism ✅, freak ✅, raw sex appeal ✅, and super strength ✅. He’s literally just like me fr denji-just-like-me

  • doublepepperoni [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4·
    5 hours ago

    I’ve been watching some Law and Order: SVU reruns lately (don’t ask me why, it’s probably just my unquenchable thirst for garbage) and some of the writing has been even worse than the “funny bad” stuff I was expecting.

    One case involved the murder of a an underage female transgender sex worker, and Mariska Hargitay’s character says this incredible line when inspecting her body:

    [CW: Transphobia]

    spoiler

    She’s not a “she” …not physically, anyway"

    After the autopsy, they conclude the body “wasn’t transgender” and proceed to refer to the victim as “he” and “the boy” for the entire rest of the episode. There could be some kind of in-text justification for the confusion about the victim’s gender since it turns out she had been hired to pose as a reclusive author who turns out to be an elderly Jewish guy who lives in a dilapidated mansion with his brother and the frozen corpse of their mother writing semi-autobiographically about his experiences being molested as a small boy in the 1950s. Alternatively, the crusty old liberals who write for the show don’t know what the fuck they’re doing

    In another episode, Mariska Hargitay’s character tries to not-so-subtly push a pregnant SA victim to keep her abuser’s child

      • doublepepperoni [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        4 hours ago

        In the opening they first assumed the victim was a cis woman, then the main detective crouches next to her clothed body and immediately determines she’s not “physically female.”

        Then we skip to after the autopsy and they ditch the possibility of the victim having been transgender due the body not having been transgender (???) and they just start referring to her as male.

        There’s a whole plot where a pseudonymous author has been writing about their experiences as an underage sex worker. A shady literary agent wants to sell the movie rights to the book which requires him to have someone pretend to be the author at an event, so he hires a transgender sex worker off the street for the job.

        Due to the ruse, the cops initially believe the victim to be the author. However, the actual author is an elderly man who was sexually abused when he was 12 at a youth center and who draws upon those experiences for the book.

        I guess his pseudonymous author persona was also a trans woman, because why else would’ve the agent picked a trans woman to pose as them? But the elderly guy was a cis male who was abused as a boy

        It’s just very confusing monke-beepboop