Y N0t 21 #0-The Final Act

So this is it.  Huh.  As much as I used to hate having to do blogs (since I would always forget to do them), I'm going to miss this thing.  Maybe I can do something with it next year or something.  I don't know.  Anyway, this post's going out to my future self.  Ha, I say that like anyone besides Mr. Schick will read this.  So, this year, well, it was something.  It started off pretty well, got progressively worse, and now we are in quarantine and there are riots everywhere.  As for myself, again, it started off pretty well, then I focused way too much on the social aspect of school and just gave up on everything else.  This quarantine thing, and a bit of common sense, knocked me out of my state of delusion.  I realized that I really needed to work again in order to basically just avoid becoming a failure.  I started really working out again, am currently trying to eat better, and will end this last quarter with three A's and no D's.  Hopefully, if I did well on my math test, I will also have no C's.  I still hate that I convinced myself into thinking that everything would be okay with the grades I had and that every year before this I did so much better.  I really started falling off last year because I knew I was leaving my other school and "no college cares about middle school grades."  Well, they do care about high school and I could have royally messed everything up that I had going for me: my scholarship for academics, baseball, and even a feeling of satisfaction with my life.  Hopefully things really are turning around.  Also, note for the future: DON'T LEAVE YOUR PHONE AT PITCHING LESSONS.  It's the last week of school and I don't have a phone until tomorrow.  Bruh.

Getting away from my life, let's talk about everything else going on.  Twitter is just a depressing thing to look at (that's a surprise).  Some police officers are doing some horrible stuff to peaceful protestors.  Trump is still president, so there's something.  However, people are still calling him a lot of bad things.  I kind of hope the more outlandish ones don't turn out to be true after telling people off and calling them stupid for believing anything they hear from the internet.  Baseball should hopefully be coming back soon.  Even if it's just a 50 game season or whatever, I still want to see the Dodgers win it all.  Do the Dodgers win a World Series before 2045 or whenever I open this (if I do; I hope I do, but I'll probably forget about this).  I also hope that I have a nice job and house and a family and stuff by that age.  Otherwise I think I'm screwed.  I hope you remember to look at this, me.  I hope that you can look back at this from a good place in life, and look at this time as the point where everything started to get better and how crazy the first half of this year was.

I'm pretty sure I took this more seriously than other people, and I'm pretty sure that's a good thing.  Maybe?  I don't know, maybe someone else talking about more than Oh man with this quarantine.  Well, time to bs my way through the rest of this assignment.

I also don't know how to end this.  Is this a good stopping point?  Should I go back and delete this and the last paragraph?  Should I just get rid of one or the other?  Should I just leave it in.  I guess I'll leave it in.  I don't know, maybe I'll just keep this because, Y N0t?

Y N0t 2 #46-Second Set of Caesar Notes

• Octavian the Ravien (I don’t know it was a stretch) took to the throne at the age of 18 

• He was in a triumvirate with Mark Anthony and Lepidus

• Octavian made Lepidus retire

• As a result, he and Mark Antony became rivals 

• Mark Antony buddies up with Cleopatra of Egypt

• Octavian is now ruling Rome all by himself

• …all by mysellllllffffff

• The new and improved Rome became an empire, not a republic

• Octavian started Pax Romana, which lasted 207 years

• He did many great things for Rome including:

• building a network of roads

• collecting taxes

• etc.

• Octavian eventually died of natural causes and his power was passed on to new emperors

• Tiberius

• ruled from AD 14-37 

• Great general but didn’t want to be emperor

• Caligula

• ruled from AD 37-41

• won a power struggle after Tiberius' death

• His name means “booties” because some soldiers saw him wearing little boots

• Wanted to become the next sun god

• Talked to his horse (he was crazy)

• Claudius

• ruled from AD 41-54

• Not a bad dude

• Nero

• ruled from AD 54-68

• Burned down Rome in order to rebuild it, including a giant new palace

• Burned Catholics like candles (covered in wax) to light up his parties
  

Y N0t 2 #45-Test Verification

As much as I hate to do stuff at 8:00 for school, I will take the test on Tuesday.

Julius Caesar.  What a man.  He was pretty cool ngl.  When he came to power, he killed it. He had the whole army commit their loyalty to the nation’s leaders, not the nation. Juli also made everybody else’s lives better and created the first Triumvirate with him, Pompey, and Crassus leading it.  With his military power, he easily took Gaul and crossed the Rubicon while also crossing the point of no return.  After the awesome victory of our lord Juli C, Pompey becomes jealous when Caesar appointed himself as the new governor of Gaul.  This meant he had more power than the other two in the trio.  In 44 B.C., Juli became the emperor of Rome: a job he had locked down for life.  In his reign, he made some pretty good reforms such as and including giving jobs to the poor and giving citizenship to provinces. However, tragedy struck in the same year, as he was stabbed to death by his colleagues.

Y N0t 2 #44-Essay Choice

My choice for the essay is B: 

                                                Analyze the factors that contributed to the fall of the Roman Republic.

Y N0t 2 #43-Rome Notes (#2)

·       BIG IDEA: the building of an empire:

·       the creation of the Roman empire transformed Roman government, society, economy, and culture.

·       why that stuff is important:

·       the Roman Empire has always served as a model for political organization and control.

·       RULERTOPIA

·       *Julius Caesar: a military leader who was elected consul in 59 B.C.

·       Augustus: unchallenged ruler of Rome aka Octavian

·       Pax Romana: the period of peace and prosperity

*I’m pretty sure he had a salad named after him

 

·       most people had to survive on produce from their local area

·       rich people usually got good food by trading for it

 

·       Romans may or may not have (they did) had more slaves than any other previous civilization

·       to distract people from that small detail, the government provided free entertainment 

·       VOCABULARIUM

·       civil war: a war between people in the same country

·       gravitas: a person that withholds the qualities of discipline, strength,
and loyalty

·       numina: the gods, or the divine forces that the Romans believed resided in everything around them

·       triumvirate: a group of three rulers

Y N0t 2 #42-Punic Wars

I thought I'd take a moment to point out the fact that summer vacation is, I'm pretty sure, less than a month away.  Like, what.  What happened?  It might be because I haven't had to worry about exams, but that's pretty cool.  Wack stuff, man.

So, Punic Wars.  They were pretty crazy.  They started in 264B.C. and ended in 146B.C. and were between Rome and Carthage. There happened to be three Punic Wars. These wars were a struggle between these two, at the time, world powers for control and power. The first Punic War consisted of naval battles that were fought over control of Sicily. Spoiler alert, Rome won. Then, in the second Punic War, Carthage has an Empire Strikes Back moment and Hannibal takes over some of Rome’s coastal allies. He comes in from the North and just ransacks the place for 15 years, but he never reaches the capital. In the last Punic War, Rome was basically just done with Carthage and their tomfoolery. So, to ensure that Carthage would stay down, Rome used all its power to destroy Carthage. It was burned for 17 days and everything was destroyed; all their farms were set aflame and, when the fires died down, covered in salt.  This was to ensure that nothing else would ever grow on this now barren land.  When everything was all wrapped up, anyone survived the Carthaginian purge was sold into slavery.  Good times.  Good times, indeed.

Y N0t 2 #41-PowerPoint Notes

The first couple slides all talked about how horrible it was to have to live with a bad leader in power. They talk about Tarquin, his conquests, and all the wacky stuff he did (messed up dude: there was a reason he was the last king of Rome).  Slides 13-22 describe the Roman government and compare to how the U.S. government works. They talk a lot about how officials were elected and what their deals were, plus, they also add on a bit on the gap between plebeians and patricians. The U.S. government and the Roman government have quite a few things in common, such as Roman government being modeled in a very similar way and also having the three branches of government. However, there are still some differences between these branches and the American government's branches.  Like how the most common branches in the U.S. are Red Maple or (Acer rubrum).