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Comment by briandw | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe that they named their protocol SPQR. It's the Latin abbreviation for Senatus Populusque Romanus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPQR Love it :)

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Yes, very clever. I am familiar with SPQR as a common tattoo on Roman legionnaires from the (excellent) BBC miniseries "Rome". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_(TV_series)

Is that what Maximus tried to carve off in Gladiator?

Good timing. My local cinema just ran Gladiator a couple nights ago and I popped by, it still rocks.

And yes, that's what he scrapes off his arm right after being captured by slave traders.

There’s something very Ozymandian about their invoking SPQR for a future-proof protocol

TIL Ozymandian. Great word. Love it. Thanks!

Didn't that empire last over a thousand years? Why is it ozymandian? More than we can say for the current one

Don’t forget the Byzantine Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire.

I’m not sure if they still SPQR’d though.

Update: it appears to have fallen out of favour by 300

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jdrpz/did_t...

From a comment from a 12 year old Reddit post, 12 years being 0.5% of the span of the Roman Empire.

Pre-dictatorship, the Roman Republic was one of history's longest-lasting democracies:

https://www.broadstreet.blog/p/the-democratic-institutions-o...

Lol. You would only see this comment on Hacker News. Reminds me of an old comic I read on how mathematicians memorize their locker numbers. "1975? Oh that's easy. It's just the square root of 3,900,625!"

For this particular one, you could easily see that comment on any community with a sufficient number of Asterix fans. Banners and standards with "SPQR" written somewhere were common enough that they should produce a Pavlovian reaction.

Or any community large enough to have people who have, y’know, visited Rome IRL?

Visiting Rome IRL? That requires money... :')

I was delighted to see manhole covers with SPQR on them in Rome.

Ever since I've heard of the meme that "modern men can't spend 24 hours without thinking of the Roman Empire", I haven't been able to escape it, even on days where my only contact with the outside world is HN.

I guess it's like a curse, once you've heard about it you're doomed.

And for anyone finding out about it just now, alea jacta est

Thank you for reminding me, this is so fun to have bobbing around in the back of your mind! :D

I need an faq or something then, to figure out what's wrong with me for never thinking of the Roman Empire. Except now then.

It's only a certain type of man that they are talking about. We are not that type of men I guess. Can't say I know anyone what that problem to be honest. And yes, I have heard that saying before. Didn't work then and doesn't work now.

It's extremely easy if you're immersed in Southern European culture.

Moru -> Flag of Sardinia, whose Wikipedia page incidentally I was reading yesterday (the Four Moors, "is cuatru morus") -> Sardinian language -> grammatically still the closest language to Latin -> the everlasting glory of the Roman Empire

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Reminds me of the fantastic, unreleased Monty Python sketch about memory association: https://youtu.be/KnpY46lOTX4?si=3Yb17jvGp-1vn6de&t=2058

Also, Monty Python -> The Life of Brian -> the everlasting glory of the Roman Empire

I just lost the game

ugh

There used to be some SF Italian restaurant that showed first if you Googled "SPQR." Their SEO was stronger than Rome. I don't even live near there.

I think this meme has bumped the real SPQR back to the top.

Join the club of people who acknowledge that there's much more interesting history than that, and you'll suddenly forget all about Rome.

I love learning new history and I'm open to suggestions. Any less-trodden paths you'd recommend?

For national history, Chinese is probably my favorite by far.

May I suggest you do a domain-specific history dive, such as the history of computing, the history of science or some other subject you may enjoy more. That's the real good stuff.

For me it's not so much what's interesting as what affects my day to day. I love Chinese history but I'm unlikely to come across anything today with origins in Chinese law, or traverse the path of a Chinese road, or use an interesting word with a Chinese etymology and an associated story from old China.

It's so funny to see this be a worldwide phenomenon. As someone who grew up playing in the ruins of Roman temples & villas and was obsessed with it as a child, it almost feels like people are talking about "some other Rome".

I grew up in a school system which taught us about "our ancestors, the Gauls"...

Which is fun if you're an Asterix fan, but one day you end up asking yourself - wait, we're in an ex-French colony here, but how much Gaul blood does anyone have in this place really?

spqr is a well-known phrase

It's something collectively known as INRI or CCCP.

COOL

Or, maybe, it just sounds like "speaker", because they are a chat app? ;P... not everything has to be framed as a Roman conspiracy.

It’s not a conspiracy, it’s a pop culture reference. Very unlikely it’s unintentional, given that Thinking About Roman Empire was a fairly notable meme of ‘23/‘24 (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-often-do-you-think-about-...).

Could be not a primary cause for the naming - only authors can tell - but I doubt they missed the reference entirely. It’s just way too obvious.

Caesar cipher anyone? Romans knew (bad) cryptography.

I am struggling to believe that the Roman Empire reference for this acronym is "so obvious". I do know about the meme: in fact, what struck me so hard about this is how, for a protocol where you'd almost expect it to be hard for them to avoid the acronym "SPQR" (as, even if it were not Sparse, it is made by Signal; I could even see them having started with Signal and decided to remove their brand from the acronym), there are not one but two top-level posts on Hacker News where "speaker" seems to have wooshed over their head and somehow this extremely niche acronym from the Roman Empire is clearly the reason why this is called SPQR. Is the tech community on Hacker News really this stereotypical?

I dunno, SPQR is fairly obvious for anyone who covered Rome in elementary or middle school history.

Beyond that, if you’re from the part of the world where asterix comics were popular (mostly thr francosphere, but also europe more broadly), it really stands out.

That’s all to say nothing of people who’ve got formal higher education in history or even the classics.

Just piling on to say it's super obvious to me, and I didn't even know of this meme before.

If you've learned even a little about the history of Rome then you'll quickly bump into SPQR, Mary Beard's recent popular, and very good book on the Romans it titled "SPQR", in the city of Rome you'll see SPQR used all over, in films when Romans are depicted, SPQR is always there. While not everyone will have a background where it's familiar, it's also not at all obscure. If you're not familiar with the Romans you won't know, but lots of people like to learn about the ancient past since it's really interesting to some types.

I'm in the opposite position: known about SPQR for decades but never heard of this meme and clearly missed it.

Can you explain the meme please because I didn't understand the hits I got when I just googled it.

I struggle to see how this could be a conspiracy in any form, but maybe you can make it more clear for me? As I see it, it would make perfect sense for a democracy driving app to focus on “Senate and People”, the fact that is sound like "speaker" simply makes it more brilliant.

Strength and Honor

Scotch and soda

Before, and way before.

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