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Frame from Monty Python   What have the romans ever done for us   YouTube Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Monty Python What have the romans ever done for us YouTube

degustibus42
Comedy
YouTube
Cited on HN 3 times, 2020–2022, never outright recommended score 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Used as a joke whenever a discussion has someone grudgingly listing the benefits of something they criticize.

The Life of Brian scene in which revolutionaries list what the Romans have done for them, from aqueducts to roads, despite their complaints.

3 jokes · Comedy

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@seer Jan 2020 Makes a joke
on HN thread Health and Wealth in the Roman Empire (2019)
The romans did envy the Greek culture quite a lot - Pompeii and Herculan are filled with “copies of greek statues”. And they did copy the mythology wholesale. But speaking about this I can’t not mention the hilarious sketch from Monty Python - [what did the romans ever do for us]( [this video] ) TL;DR; Quite a lot given the relative cultures and civilizations of the time. Have in mind that a lot of the greeks were themselves a bunch of cruel slaving rednecks too - [link]
@netsharc Jan 2021 Makes a joke
on HN thread Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump
> DNC now has to spend most of the first half of Bidens term trying to rebuild the nations confidence. One hopes, but I'd imagine the people living in the alternate reality will just ask "What have the Romans ever done for us?!"[0] [0] Reference: [this video]
@sterlind Feb 2022 Makes a joke
on HN thread Why does Google still have the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?
I'm reminded of the "what have the Romans ever done for us?" scene from Life of Brian: [this video] I'm not sure the history with workspaces, but Google Docs etc. were very important. Google also gets points in my book just by scaling YouTube, Maps, Gmail etc. To the degree they've published their work it's been revolutionary to the field. Excellent engineering with terrible/conservative corporate strategy, imo.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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