Yes, but the chariot originated as a military vehicle. Fast transportation was provided by horses, while bulk transportation was provided by boats, wagons, or, in China, a vehicle commonly called a "wheelbarrow", though it's very unlike the common modern device by the same name. The chariot, by virtue of holding two men, allowed an archer to travel at the speed of a galloping horse, while also protecting them to some extent from the arrows, axes, and swords of others.
It was an unbeatable battlefield combination for centuries, and the accounts of Bronze Age battles—in Hatti, Egypt, India, and China—are basically accounts of battles between chariot formations.
My question was that while this particular chariot seems like it might have been used for ceremonial purposes, was that true for all chariots? The military context is interesting, but its surely only part of the picture.
To put it a different way, after its military significance faded, was it actually relegated to purely ceremonial uses or was it a popular means of transportation?
Neither! Chariot racing was a popular sport from Homeric Greece (≈01200 BCE, during the heyday of the military chariot itself) through to Classical Greece, Imperial Rome, and Byzantium until at least 00600 CE, for instance, and that's neither "purely ceremonial" nor "transportation". I think the closest modern analogy is horseback riding, which is done almost entirely for recreational and ceremonial purposes nowadays, but is a popular hobby among the wealthy and the rural.
But, unlike horseback riding, chariots were never a practical means of long-distance travel. They have no suspension, they have no seats, they have no cargo space, and they don't stay level. At any time period, if you're traveling all day in a chariot, it's because the chariot is in one place and you want it to be somewhere else, perhaps for a battle or a race. If you and the driver just wanted to get there yourselves, you'd just ride the horses and leave the chariot back home in the stable.
Yes, it's just 600 CE! It's not the notation historians use; it's just a bit of thought-provoking fun. It also has the advantage of really pissing off the kind of mindless conformists who beat up gay people, hackers, and anybody else who seems "odd" or "queer"! See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26291173.
Colonizing and terraforming every single rock in the solar system increases the available land only by a factor of three: https://xkcd.com/1389/
There's just no way every commoner gets their own Caribbean cabin. Unless we find some unlikely physics hack in the last few vestiges of scientific unknowns, any interstellar travel seems impossibly difficult.
An alternative future: we live forever as brains in the vats, plugged into infinite virtual worlds devoid of scarcity, life-threatening danger or physical constraints. Most of the human activity takes place there, with occasional interactions between the virtual and the real. No new physics required, just a series of incremental improvements in biology and computing.
If we're being cynical, it's trivial to ensure that every commoner gets their own Carribean cabin - just reduce the number of commoners by a few orders of magnitude. After all, with some technological advancements, you would not need huge numbers of commoners just for their labor.
A stable future can plausibly take many forms, not all of them are nice.
If reparations for slavery ever happen in the US, it will be a political decision, not one resulting from a lawsuit. That isn't to say they courts won't be involved at one or more points, as you can certainly imagine challenges, but for it to happen it will have to come from Congress first.
I think you are making some rather large assumptions. It's possible that you and 'techsupporter went to similar colleges in similar cities and around the same time, and the only difference is between your perspectives. But if those conditions aren't true, especially the last one, then your experiences may have been objectively very different.
It's not. Google had android users using Google Software, and seeing Google Ads. Having more users on android gives you more value when it comes to data collection and selling things to people.
Given the overall upbeat tone of headline, subheading, and article, is "disingenuous" the word you want to use? Is it your impression that Ars is attempting to deceive or trick its readers?
The funny thing about that it is a perfectly understandable perspective from someone bent on wooing companies to come to his town (i.e. focused on the immediate needs and demands of his perceived clientele), but at the same time completely misses the big picture.
I guess it would be an easy trap to fall into, but you would hope that someone going to the trouble of trying to learn about how another place did things would be a little more receptive to unexpected things.
Is that all? Let us know when you figure it out. I'm joking, but I really like your take on digital privacy and related matters.