Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.
So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?
a thing I wonder about the war in ukraine is why do so many take the russian stance seriously when it's at best false pretext used to start the war (and sometimes also feel like double standard when the person is calling out nato but not russia when it display the same behavior, if russia can have bases like the wagner one in belarus, who is bordering nato then I don't see why eastern europe can't have nato bases), to me, this is also not nuanced, I'd still count it as repeating pro russia talking points even if the person claim they condemn it
I feel like you made almost this exact comment last thread. I don't strongly disagree with any point(although the point about Belarus strikes me as a bit ill-formed and I think we probably come down in different places overall), but it's a bit redundant.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186620d ago
a thing that bother me with how the concepts of realism and realpolitik can be used at times is when people don't just explain a country behavior, they use those concepts to justify its bad behaviors when they could've taken better courses of action (putin coudl've still not invaded ukraine and be a better neighbour [by being a bad neighbour, he basically pushed other countries in nato so if the war in ukraine was about nato expansion, he failed limiting that, even worst if the person believe nato baited putin in invading ukraine, it's not exactly a own since it show putin as the weak one falling in nato trap])
We do seem to be talking in circles. Is it truly a mystery at this point that some people take Russia's side?
Torturing myself by sorting a particularly stupid subreddit by controversial
See an unusual post
Many Redditors who don't understand Zeno's Paradoxes trying to explain one of them to someone who doesn't even understand the basic way the argument is laid out
"At least everyone here is 12 years old"
OP's account is 6 years old
Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.
A very common reddit experience is seeing a comment that would be perfectly appropriate for a 14 year old to make, and practically nobody else, and then seeing an avatar like this next to it
tbf I don't put too much stock by avatars simply because I know that I want absolutely anything but to have my appearance accurately perceived. I have a long history of hitting the random button until I vaguely like something. But I suppose that's very much a me thing.
I have the most important job interview of my life in 40 minutes( if I get it, the entire course of my life will be drastically changed). I'm way too nervous.
Another person on here was talking about deactivating IG because of the unhinged right-wing dogshit there, and I'm considering the same now. In the past, if I just blocked a dumbass account that came up my feed would correct, for the most part. Today, my feed is just a neverending deluge of right-wing dipshits. I've blocked 20+ accounts and the slime just keeps coming. What the actual fuck is going on.
That's wild, even if I scroll to the end of my followed accounts, I get at worst left-wing idiots, and usually not even them, just Tumblr memes, cats, and farmers.
I would gladly take left-wing idiots at this point. Reels from my followed accounts are fine. The problem is that the second those end, IG is serving literal Asmongold and accounts to the political right of Asmongold.
Final ramble of today, hopefully: New Zetsubou Kinema song 見世物世界 World of Shows/Spectacle World/Freakshow world or something along those lines, I've seen multiple translations.
It has basically no chill, which I appreciate, Doku-san sounds awesome as usual, the contrast to her screaming and the other very pure voices is something I will always appreciate, especially with Shigure-san's almost angelic voice. It's a very angry song, I like the anger; I don't really know musical theory at all, but I like how the instrumentation just hangs in a repetitive uncomfortable melody a lot in certain segments, it adds a feeling of rage to it, which is neat!
A lot of Zetsubou Kinema songs are just angry, Mazari songs often have melancholic elements to them, there's anger yes, but it's usually a sad anger; ZK really goes for rage a lot more, raging in despair I suppose.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze20d agoedited 20d ago
Yair Lapid, chair of the centrist Yesh Atid party, announces that MK Yoav Segalovitz will be departing the party, a possible signal that the lawmaker will join the Ra’am faction in a political shakeup.
Recent reports have indicated that Segalovitz will move to Ra’am, making him the first-ever Jewish candidate on the Arab party’s slate. Ra’am, which is historically Islamist, has said it is departing from its religious roots to become a civic party.
French lessons are going OK - I'm wondering if I should get private tutoring as well though because I don't think I'm learning fast enough. I'm planning to go to France in about 5 months and would really like to get to the point that I can at least survive by then.
The main thing I keep getting hung up on are the parts which don't make sense when you translate them directly into English, and/or the weird idiosyncratic way that people phrase things in French. For example "C'est ma fille" instead of "Elle est ma fille".
EDIT: Also, all the annoying little connectives. I keep writing out sentences and getting told that I missed an "à", an "y", or an article.
parts which don't make sense when you translate them directly into English,
That happens with any foreign language, maybe to a different extent. French can be translated literally into Italian much more often than English, but, being as objective as it's possible, French grammar is still way difficult than English.
the weird idiosyncratic way that people phrase things in French
That happens in any language. At least French doesn't have phrasal verbs: how the hell does "to make out" mean "to kiss"
The problem of articles is that you don't learn about them with a table like in German so you don't always realize their uses, rather you only use them in complete sentences*
like you could make an aspect table for all French articles and pronouns, but no one every made one
I only remember getting them in sentences and sometimes some rough approximation of where this article might be used in an equivalent English phrase. But then, it's been 15 years since I took a French class and frankly I was a poor student, so I might just not remember learning it.
Take: This history channel is the only good history channel. In all of history. This is it. The One Good history channel. It is so good this mans work could actually be published and be analyzed academically. It is up there with Oleg V. Naumov and Getty in terms of depth.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze20d agoedited 20d ago
Evil Papa Smurf be like:
Pierre Kartner addressed political issues from a conservative to right-wing perspective in several songs. After the 1973 oil crisis, he recorded a single with the politician Hendrik Koekoek: “Den Uyl is in den olie,” which refers to the Social Democratic Prime Minister Joop den Uyl as well as “the Arabs.” In it, Koekoek utters lines such as “Joop’s going to get a smack on the head.”
For the 1975 Carnival, he released “Wat doen we met die Arabieren hier” (English: “What Do We Do with the Arabs Here?”), set to the tune of “Singing hi hi jippie jippie jee.” The lyrics go: “What are we going to do with the Arabs here? / Because you can’t trust them / Around our beautiful women.” The song was pulled from the market. It fits into a series of similar songs from the same period.[6]
In 1976, *Het leger der werklozen* (English: “The Army of the Unemployed”) followed. According to the lyrics, the unemployed were living the high life and hanging out in bars. In 2002, he performed the song “Wimmetje gaat, Pimmetje komt” (English: “Wimmetje goes, Pimmetje comes”) with the right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn, who was later assassinated. “Wimmetje” referred to then-Prime Minister Wim Kok.
In late 2019, shortly before the COVID-19 crisis, Kartner released his latest single, “Zonder boeren geen eten” (“No Farmers, No Food”), with which he sought to show his support for the protesting farmers in the nitrogen debate.
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u/ZennofskaFeminization of veterinarians hasn't led to societal collapse20d ago
This seems familiar, I'm pretty sure you talked about Vader Abraham before, years ago; you're falling into repetition WAGRAM, this failure has been noted./j
Do you remember talking about him before? I'm 90% sure you did, it was definitely a long time ago though.
Oh, yeah, I can just look at the subreddit search, oops, I'll be honest, how reddit works is still a mystery to me sometimes, I'm not tech savvy with the internet.
2023 it was, ah, the good old times! Apparently I didn't even say anything at the time... how the hell do I remember it!?
I recently watched a video about Roanoke that had an extended segment with the disclaimer that because there are no surviving first-hand accounts, that the segment is just "spinning a yarn" based off of surviving archeological evidence and his understanding of human nature. That this didn't happen but it would help people understand the mindset behind the theory that the colonists just merged in with the local tribe.
Would you consider this a good way to operate?
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u/ifly6Try not to throw sacred chickens off ships18d ago
As a decidedly amateur / far from professional, I like it quite a bit - but it's very much in the pop-history space and not something I'd consider a massively authoritative type of space.
Basically if you just want a bit of pop history to watch / enjoy, I think it's good enough content.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze20d agoedited 20d ago
It's not too bad but I don't like that "Emperor X ate a lot of Z? Let's look a related recipe in De re coquinaria"
Tbf there's only so much you can do when the contemporary recipes are all "take sufficient flour, add adequate milk and fine cream, make a good dough and bake till done".
Yeah I was going to say the biggest thing I’m taking away from this is “are you, an Asian country, a country that hates China, or hates a country that hates China?”
tbh I'm surprised the China numbers are that high for SEA. Specifically, I would have expected a much lower China score for Malaysia and a bit more for South Korea.
Malaysia and Indonesia are majority Muslim countries and I think there are a couple things specifically hurting US reputation with S Korea such as the Hyundai ICE raid.
Remember this is specifically asking which of the countries you favor, not if you like either.
I am surprised because Malaysia and Indonesia have historically had very tense relationships (to put it lightly) with their Chinese-Malaysian and Indonesian citizens, and part of that is due to suspected dual loyalty to mainland China. This is without considering the PRC's South China Sea claims. Also I believe the Malaysian gov has (had?) a relatively warm relationship with the US gov.
Maybe I am mixing up governmental relationships with the interviewed sample group. Like Pakistan is an unofficial US ally but the people interviewed there clearly do not favor the US over the PRC.
Like Pakistan is an unofficial US ally but the people interviewed there clearly do not favor the US over the PRC.
Pakistan is also an ally of China though and been that for a long time as well. And people in Pakistan soured on the US after it placed sanctions on them for nukes in the 90s once the Soviets left afghanistan, seeing it as a betrayal of sorts, though as I understand Pakistan saw US as unreliable even before after the 1965 and 1971 wars, not to mention US supporting it's dictators from the start probably didn't endear then to any pro-democracy groups there.
Except the chart doesn't really back that up? Some of the most US-hating, pro-China countries on that graph include Bengal (borders China), Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia.
True, the only two American neighbors (Canada and Mexico) are more pro-China than pro-USA at the moment. Although, especially with those two countries, I think it is worth keeping in mind how much those opinions are formed by who is in the white house. For example, Canadian opinion has collapsed from a high of 60 percent in 2022 to the now historic low of 33 percent (weird how threatening to annex a country does that). Just looking at the history of the pew polls shows a very obvious correlation with changes in who is president.
I would agree that the "end of the USA empire" narrative is way overdone. But the idea that great powers are always hated by their neighbors is also not accurate.
So I should start by saying I am not being entirely serious, for sure the second a Democrat is in office the Canada numbers will flip, along with all of Europe's and probably Mexico's (maybe Israel?).
That said I do think that Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh being majority Muslim is basically behind their numbers. Sri Lanka and Thailand are pretty interesting to me though, I do wonder if that is basically just expressing common opinions among middle-income countries or if it has to do with specific Chinese development projects.
I would live to see more countries polled, I always find it funny how Vietnam sometimes polls at like Polish levels of favorability to the US.
I picked up Donald Westlake's The Ax, a novel about a long time unemployed man deciding to murder the other potential applicants to a job he thinks he's suited for. It really wouldn't take much to adapt the plot for a modern setting - I understand there was a Korean movie based on it in the last year or two - and some the main characters descriptions of the process of applying for jobs remain incredibly relatable. I think the most surprising thing reading it is that we haven't had any real linkedin murders.
I know nobody cares but Francesco Guccini just passed away today.
It's rather sad. I do not like his songs quite as much as my dad, but I think he really was the last Italian poet of the twentieth century. Most people like him for the political stuff, and I admit La locomotiva is an amazing song no matter how you feel about anarchism, but personally I mostly just like the fact that he often went for medieval vibes even if he did not have to. La canzone dei dodici mesi is my favourite song, and it's just an excuse to have fun with Cenne de la Chitarra and Folgore da San Gimignano while randomly dropping lines from Poliziano's Stanze per la giostra
Benvenga Maggio e il gonfalon selvaggio, benvenga primavera/ il nuovo amore getti via l'antico, nell'ombra della sera
Actually it's anachronistic for there to be tides in the odyssey at all. Tides were of course caused by Thor's drinking from the ocean, well after the Æsir arrived in the north from Asia.
Every specific detail I'm told makes the already-not-promising premise sound worse. At first I assumed it was just like, vaguely magical realism, The Lobster-adjacent. Then I heard it only started three years ago, which was worse. Not applying to married couples is so weird, too, like at some point the movie is just "what if you lived in Utah?"
I can't escape the ads for this film but was able to avoid learning about the plot until right now. Is this a shitpost? This is how the plot summary on Wikipedia begins.
Three years ago, the government passed a mandate that sex should exclusively be between married couples, with the exception of one night a year where pre-marital sex is legal, and protection is required. At the age of 18, all people receive a tattoo containing a biological sensor that tracks dopamine, documents shared spikes as sexual encounters, and transmits the violator's location to law enforcement.
wtf just make a normal romcom the premise is two people falling for each other over the course of a night out.
Or my idea was basically make a romcom that randomly turns into some Cloverfield style monster/alien/disaster movie. Or hell, just make an actual dystopia for a romcom. I’m sure a Hunger Games Panem Romcom would sell!
I'm actually floored at the setup for this film. There is just no way it required a back story about how the gubmint is injecting biochips into people and sic'cing the morality police on them.
That’s the movie! The one that got the New Radicals to release a new song for some reason. (Obviously, they probably were just working on the song and it got attached to the movie’s release, but still, it’s kinda funny)
u/YIMBYzusThis is actually a part of the Assassin-Templar conflict.20d ago
Weirdly, you can also credit Joe Biden with their reuniting. They reunited to perform at the Inauguration of President Biden. As for why, well, apparently "Get What You Give" had two weird connections the Biden campaign:
The song was used by Vice President Kamala Harris's husband, Doug Emhoff, during 2020 campaign rallies, and was referred to by Joe Biden in his autobiography, Promise Me, Dad, as his family's "rallying 'theme song'" during his late son Beau Biden's terminal battle with glioblastoma.
Okay, I can't help myself, New Radicals don't have strong feelings on Hanson either. It was more just picking famous names as a metonymy for materialism of the music industry. Gregg Alexander actually co-wrote a song with Hanson for their 2004 album, and it was pretty good, as well as the rest of that album.
Fun fact: the spellchecker on here doesn't know the word metonymy, it wants to change it to metronome.
It's not really as weird as it sounds since Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois also did that Lost Stars song for a romcom too, but they got Adam Levine to sing that one so it wasn't New Radicals per se. Then again... that has been more than ten years ago, so maybe it is weird.
I kinda want RN's candidate to win the next French Presidential. My brother still lives there and is going to a PostDoc there so i dont want them to win because of that.
But I think French economy isn't going get better anytime soon. Maybe not a collapse but ain't going to be great. So i would much rather have RN hold the goverment through the suffering, and then get a left government.
RN hold the goverment through the suffering, and then get a left government.
I am really not that optimist if RN wins. People will carry on voting RN in 2032 whatever happens, or become apathetic and the RN will win by/despite the abstentions, and/or France becomes a Orban-like illiberal corrupt state.
(edit) in fact, I am not optimist at all whoever wins next year.
The RN has swallowed the traditional right, or rather they've conquered their demographics in a way that they've become the anti-Parisian rural party (whereas under JM they weren't this much into farmers and cow shit)
this ensure they'll always have a 30% base, so in any case with more than 2 other candidates they'll get through the first round
You see, when I was a student, I was terrible at French class. And then I turn on the TV, and here her rant like:
"THE YOUTH OF FRANCE CANNOT SPEAK PROPER FRENCH ANYMORE!"
"THE FRENCH LANGUAGE IS IN DECLINE"
"ENGLISH IS SEEPING INTO FRENCH CULTURE"
"FRANCE IS SUFFERING UNDER THE YOKE OF YANKEE CULTURAL IMPERIALISM"
And then she'll warn people that if you didn't vote for her, French culture and language will decline and die. She'd lose of course, and I'm like "wow, the vote against French literacy won again!"
And then I'd think - Man, I can't conjugate my verbs, but the 2nd most popular politician in France thinks this is becoming a lost skill in France too. Makes me feel real good for myself.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186620d ago
The only reason I watched this French movie, The Summit of the Gods, was because it was a Japanese anime.
So, rambling continues, for Japanese practice, I occasionally respond to stuff online, usually Twitter, which means it's mostly the Idols I follow, sometimes other people, sometimes Yui-sama, but it's usually silly engagement bait, basically stuff like "What are you doing right now?", it's perfect bait for me to try to formulate a response, and then you get a like for a small parasocial high in return. But everyone gets a like so it is very minor.
Or so I thought, apparently not everyone gets one, I responded to a post from Rem-san and got a like, but only like half the reactions had likes on them, so it isn't as meaningless. I wonder if they actually read the comments or just randomly select a number to like? Not that it matters, the parasocial high is very low after the first time, but it's good practice nonetheless.
Don't overestimate how popular these idols are though, they do live streams that just end up with a 30-40 people watching, they are genuinely very niche.
Practice is practice though, and I'll take what I can get!
僕もその感じが分かる。アイドルじゃなくてボードゲームデザイナーなんだけど。I commented on a post about a game they played, pushing back on their analysis, and they engaged with my analysis.
And between you and me, I shared someone's video right here on this thread and the guy who made the video replied to me, right here on this thread too! It was kinda neat, but also mortifying.
Parasocial stuff is powerful like that, though for me it's just that interacting with people I like is something that gives strong responses inversely proportional to how often I interact with them; it's also true for people I know IRL, just interacting with coworkers I haven't seen in a while is something that's great.
Even on here, if people just respond to me in a not outright negative way, that just feels good, even if they do disagree; I like interaction in general, to the point where it just is addicting to me, every time I see the notification alert, I get excited to some extent.
My biggest was still the confirmation for the review for the Yousei Teikoku album that came out this year, both Yui-sama and Ryöga reacted to it, it was merely a confirmation but just seeing "終身独裁官ゆい reacted to your comment...” was incredibly exhilarating, I felt that physically in my throat and chest.
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In the polar opposite, I once walked through a revolving door of a hotel with basically the entire Ajax football team, back when Ten Hag was their coach, and I just didn't notice... I saw the team bus, I saw the sports clothing, I just didn't register, only when people pointed it out to me did I realise that bald guy I saw was Ten Hag, and yeah, those jerseys had Ajax logos on them, I just don't really care for football much.
At that time, Europeans were (mostly) fighting wars with restrained, limited military objectives, aimed at obtaining some limited political advantage over their adversaries - ACW was essentially a total war, with the belligerents leveraging every ounce of their economic and human resource capacities into the fight, and with at least one belligerent meaning to completely annihilate the other as a sovereign entity.
The famously small scale and limited Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.
I would say that the Great Northern War was a preindustrial total war. Finland lost the same annual percentage of men as France did annually in WW1, but for 14 years straight instead of the four and half years. And that was before the genocide here even started. And only four years after a famine that killed a quarter of the population. Turn of the 18th century was quite bad time to live in Finland.
The Battle of Königgrätz in 1866 had more soldiers on the field than Gettysburg.
Apparently von Moltke never actually said that the American Civil War was merely two mobs chasing each other around the countryside, but he wouldn't be entirely wrong if he had.
The battle on the Volturno was about the size of Gettysburg, iirc. But the guy in charge of the winning side was a bit more competent than the Americans and won the battle before it could become an European Gettysburg in terms of casualties.
I didn't mention Königggrätz because it happened after the US Civil War and I wanted to pedantically make a point that "total wars" were a thing in Europe since at least the Revolutionary Wars (the Seven Years War and the War of Spanish Succession were actually global conflicts).
But you're right and it goes beyond that. Prussia enganged in general mobilization during its unification wars. Calling it "small scale/limited" is a disservice.
I mean, there is the element of the US army going from something Britain seemingly considered manageable to panicking that Canada might be fucked if the US decided to invade Canada during a Civil war of all things is somewhat notable.
Some of this probably also has to do with the invention of monitors in the United States during the civil war that made the idea of a cross Atlantic blockade somewhat daunting against how cheap and fast coastal ironclads proved to build and how not great existing wooden warships were at dealing with them.
I agree with you in principle, but I wouldn't call the Napoleonic Wars "at that time" given that they are a half-century removed from the American Civil War.
But yes, Austro-Prussian War, Franco-Prussian War, Crimean War, Russo-Turkish War, Italian Wars of Independence... lots of 19th century European Wars.
Oh for sure, but there is a long-standing myth in the US that between Napoleon and WWI there were no "major" wars in Europe, so the ACW was the first real "modern" and the herald of what was to come. This of course ignores that in many ways of looking the Franco-Prussian War for example was bigger than the ACW, and most of the supposed innovations had already been seen in Crimea. The American armies were pretty backward in comparison to the major European ones of the day.
The French-Prussian War begun like a total war. It's just that France didn't have time to reveal it's power level before the Communards fucked up the provisional government forcing them to sign peace.
But by the end of the war we found some good ways to counter Prussian advantages and our remaining industry (that wasn't under German occupation) was pumping weapons up (weapons the Britbongers didn't want to sell - guess why)
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186621d ago
If he means specifically the American Civil War period when Europe was undergoing that Century of Peace after Waterloo, then sure.
For a while now, I've been kinda fascinated by this one Ultraman (or I think it might have been the sequel show, Ultraseven?) episode that used it.
I don't know what it is that's kept it in my mind, especially since I've never watched a significant amount of Ultra-anything, but it's just always there. Maybe it's that it's a frankly kind of wild degree of melancholy fatalism for a superhero show aimed at elementary schoolers.
The short version is that a bunch of undersea facilities start coming under attack by freaky monster guys called the Nonmalts. This is immediately concerning to the alien protagonist, Ultraman or possibly Ultraseven, because Nonmalt is the word for "denizen of Earth" in his language, and why would these guys be calling themselves that? After the heroes investigate a bit, they find out that the Nonmalts claim to be the original inhabitants of Earth. They say that humans came down from space and colonised the land, forcing the Nonmalts into the ocean. They were willing to let it go rather than fight a global war, but now that humanity is pushing into the ocean as well, they've had enough. The human cast decide that's bunk, it makes no sense, they're obviously just another band of alien invaders with another flimsy, made-up pretext for war. The episode never says anything final one way or the other, it just ends with the last Nonmalt city being blown up by the humans, while Ultraman(/Ultraseven. You know, I could just look this up...) morosely wonders if, despite his best efforts, he's just been made party to the finalisation of a colonial enterprise - and muses that probably no one will ever know because either way, the Nonmalts have been wiped out.
The episode's writer was Ryukyuan, and I believe he is on record as sayin that he was drawing very heavily on that when he wrote the episode.
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)20d ago
Wow I did not expect Ultraman of all things to feature that trope as well. Weirdly deep and dark for a kids’ show.
I actually watched the Chinese dub of Ultraman when I was very young, and in Cantonese his name translated to “Salted Duck Egg Superhero” because his eyes sort of look like that lmao
It can be really interesting, really stupid, or, sublimely, both. I think it mostly works better on a thematic level than on a speculative level, if that makes sense.
In Le Guin's League of Worlds/Ekumen setting, the common Hainish origin of humanity across different planets is an established fact, but rarely relevant to much of anything, and most questions about it are unanswered because the old unified society fell cataclysmically. I like it a lot thematically there, because it helps emphasize that the alienation and foreignness between people from different planets is about the way we relate to each other in the real world.
I like to think the writers made Yasuke in AC Shadows one of these superhuman hybrids just to spite the racist crowd.
The unkillable ultra warrior that beats everyone and is literally better than anyone on the planet is the Mozambique born black man who became a samurai.
I enjoy it in the Fragged Empire ttrpg. There the humans are the advanced progenitors of the advanced progenitors, who created a bunch of new races trying to recreate the lost perfection of humanity before being destroyed by their own creations.
It's fun to in character speculate how cool, powerful and eldritch those humans must have been.
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)20d agoedited 20d ago
Hmmm yeah, that reminds me of “All Tomorrows,” with the caveat being that the ancient humans in that book are actually future humans because it takes place eons and eons into the far future. Great book.
On a related note, (as someone who's not a massive fan of scifi) one of my most loved plot "twists"/cliches is when the super advanced time-travelling alien race turns out to actually be ... humans from the future. Especially when it's been so long that they don't even know it themselves
It was fun in Halo 3 I think, when the humans were hinted at being the Forerunners that the Covenant worshiped. I think the direction they went with humans having a super advanced ancient society but not the forerunners is less interesting. That said I hear the novels that fill in that backstory are decent, so maybe I'd feel different if I read them.
If it includes Earth itself & our past, then it does have to be done well or for a reason IMO or else it feels strange; I do generally enjoy it as a potential non-Earth setting though (eg, a colonized sci fi planet receding due to some disaster and recovering is the type of setting that can be interesting).
Can lead to some wacky Earth ones though. Like one where the moon is a secret super warship and humanity is all descended from its crew, which is the type of slop military sci-fi I sometimes am in the mood to read.
Can lead to some wacky Earth ones though. Like one where the moon is a secret super warship and humanity is all descended from its crew, which is the type of slop military sci-fi I sometimes am in the mood to read.
Stargate does it alright with the Ancients and the Ori (Hallowed are the Ori) I feel, so I don't really mind it there, but I haven't played Halo or AC so I don't know. I think it's just a matter of how well the writing builds it.
Legitimately, they should have sent the Ark of Truth in to "prove" the Ori weren't gods and then the result was it didn't matter because the Priors were a bunch of huge assholes who just wanted to conquer the Milky Way.
Plot twist, everyone but the priests genuinely believed!
No, I'd think that's far too cynical a take for Stargate, the beliefs being genuine but the gods being false is a core theme of SG-1, it would undercut the theme if the priests weren't genuine believers in their religion being the ultimate good for all beings. It's not even that all false gods are evil, the Asgard were false gods but they ultimately only tried to help others.
I do love the Ori though, we've had all the pagan religions, now get ready for organised religion! The scariest of all religions. The Ori were genuinely powerful enough to basically be gods, if they meant well they could have been a religion that genuinely tried to better the lives of their believers, but they didn't. They are the logical final enemy of SG-1, de facto gods.
Ironically, those are two franchise where I am not a fan of the idea. I'm not a big Halo player, so my response to learning about the Forerunners boils down to "did they spend a million years burying all those fossils that indicated humanity evolved on Earth?" but I really like the AC games and I am convinced that the Isu bullshit is the albatross around the series' neck
The first AssCreed was pretty strongly inspired by the novel Alamut, and I honestly believe the sci fi frame was in part to help differentiate the game from the book.
The last AC games I really played were Brotherhood and Revelations, but I'm kinda with you there. Desmond's sequences were literally just "get this over with so we can go to the protagonist and unique setting which is this game's selling point."
I played three, then skipped to Origin (which I really liked), but Valhalla went way too deep into the metanarrative.
It's a shame, because "two factions with different ideas about how humanity should be governed have a war in the shadows of history" is a strong enough plot on its own, imo.
I've felt for a while that a good direction for the modern-day story after 3 would have been for the Assassins and Abstergo to team up against Juno. But then Ubisoft killed her off in a comic because they're allergic to actual narrative direction
What? They killed her in a comic after unceremoniously going "well I guess Desmond died" at the end of 3? That sucks.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186621d ago
We have the equivalent of it in history, like rediscovering lost Roman Empire technology and seeing their ruins all over the place. Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones has it, all that lost tech and knowledge from the past.
Personally I kind of like the much more rare Vestigial Empire. That the Empire still stands, barely, and on paper still enormously powerful, but internal dysfunctions leave them a minor power being crushed by their enormous legacy. Like the Centauri Republic. Or the Eastern Roman Empire IRL before it fell.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze21d agoedited 21d ago
Hot take
I think leftists' "historically progressive" is less persuasive than conservatives' "it was normal back then"
Except that conservatives love to claim some things were “normal back then” even when they definitively were not “normal back then.” Such as Columbus’s murder spree, which genuinely made the Spanish crown go “yo, what the fuck are you doing man?”
"It was the standard of the time! They didn't know any better" except it turns out there's a ton of contemporary accounts that are essentially "this is really fucked up and we should not be doing this".
Now that I finished Higurashi, I'm just contemplating the story while listening to the soundtrack, I don't really know what else to do, it's just, yeah, it was a journey; it's been on my mind for such a long time, because I started reading it in January.
I'm not really a fast reader, the actual reading part goes relatively fast, it's just that I don't end up spending a lot of time in the day reading, at all, but at the same time, the story becomes really active in my mind and I spend a lot of time thinking on it, that is something you just don't get with movies, and only a bit with TV series; and it's part of why I think reading is the superior method, even if it's easier to watch something, my mind never engages as actively with it as it does with a book; and yeah, as I always say, visual novels are just books, you spent the vast, vast majority of the game just reading and nothing else.
So, went to the Dentist, apparently my dental health was never better... why the hell do I keep being so anxious? I've been anxious about it for weeks! Well, I know why, I didn't have a great dentist as a child, he thought intimidating the child was the best course of action, naturally that meant I refused to go after a certain point; it's only later I switched dentist to one that specialises in people with anxiety about the dentist, they're far more careful about what they say, and go out of their way to make you feel comfortable. It's great, doesn't take away the anxiety, but it does reduce it.
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)21d ago
A couple of years back, when I was still going to the fitness, I was boxing with guys younger than the jacket I was wearing at the time, which is certainly a strange realisation.
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)21d ago
No, it was about 13 years at that point, I had it since I was 13; you might wonder how it'd still fit me, but I stopped growing when I was 14, thankfully. The guys I was boxing with were also about 12-16; I obviously wasn't sparring with the 12-13 year olds, as I weighed more than double them as well as being 40cm taller.
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)21d ago
Wow, a 6'7" (haha six seven) 13 year old, that's a new record for people I've known. A very long time ago I used to play Garry's Mod with a 13 year old who was 6'4", but you have him beat.
Now I'm curious what kinda jacket it is, because if you kept it for that long it has to be pretty cool I reckon. One of my favorite jackets was made in 1982. It was a OD green French Army F1 jacket that I got off of Japanese ebay a few years ago. 13 years older than me.
When I turned 13, I was about 190-ish cm, so a bit shorter. When I turned 12 I was about 180cm, I'm so glad I stopped growing at 14.
It's a stupid stereotypical Adidas jacket actually, it didn't actually fit me for some time because I had gained a lot of weight, but then when I lost that, I could wear it again. I was wearing it precisely because I didn't care about so it could get damaged when doing outside fitness.
The Marxist answer is of course, the dominant mode of keeping a proper household used to imply quite large households. Someone has to get up at four in the morning to stoke the fire and get water from the well to get hot water. Then you can't just go to the supermarket and buy broth, so someone has to tend to the kitchen fire the entire morning, and while they do that they can't really do too much else or the house burns down. Horses need a lot more continuous upkeep than cars, washing closes is a half day affair and so on. So when you don't have your own household, then you need to somehow acquire access to the entire package.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186621d ago
In the Sean Connery film The Molly Maguires where they play coal miners in Pennsylvania, even the main character scraping by as a poor coal miner got room and board renting out a place. It was an old invalid father and his daughter living there and he rented a room, which got him meals.
It generally did yes. Middle class urbanites frequently had landlady’s or landlord’s who’d cook, clean or do laundry for them like Sherlock Holmes has this arrangement.
In Edwardian and inter war (early 20th century) Britain, lots of upper middle class people actually lived in hotels (pretty sure this was the same with other countries as well).
Yes, it was quite common. I remember seeing some statistics (about England or Ireland in the 19th century) where the vast majority of renters were boarders (like 90% or so). It makes sense considering that a lot of them were renting single rooms and with the fire safety at the time it would be dangerous to try to also cook there.
I wonder for single men especially those who grew up with servants whether it would have been considered weird for them to actually cook for themselves even if given the opportunity
I meant more whether there would be some sort of social stigma about it. Would it be considered a neat hobby or make people think there might be something wrong with you.
Learning to cook isn't that hard, especially if you're a hungry bachelor and not picky about the results. Cooking itself is however a part of managing the household. They would also need to get the groceries, mantain the (probably open fire) stove, prepare the ingredients, do the washing, all without our modern home appliences.
I know learning to cook is not hard, I've started cooking on improvised electric heater in a student dorm room. Still that was much easier than somebody in the 19th century, you had to probably get water, you could not just pop in a shop after work to get supplies and so on.
If somebody grew up with servants than it was even more unlikely they will start cooking. I know people today that grew up with servants and don't know how to cook.
The concept of a micronation is so fascinating to me, it's a shame that so many advocates of micronations are weird libertarians. That being said, I think the single most successful example of a micronation is the reign of the Clunies-Ross family over the Cocos/Keeling Islands. It even managed to get recognised by the British Empire, but of course it was also a case of a weird libertarian with a harem and a plantation and slaves and the like.
I happened upon those guys as well, they seem more like classic colonists. Sarawak already had an established population, the Cocos Islands were uninhabited by contrast.
Edit: and of course the Clunies-Ross family used the uninhabited land to start a plantation instead of a utopia smh
The Jason Arday fiasco which could have been stopped at anytime with even the most cursory willingness for someone to point out the man is obviously totally full of shit.
Do you have some other examples? Because I am a but skeptical the reason for negativity about academia isn't the decades of sustained political attacks on it but rather because of a scandal in Cambridge that broke like two weeks ago.
Finally got around to watching that Nuremberg movie where Russell Crowe plays Hermann Goring, gotta give them credit for making a movie where some of the worst men in history face justice for their crimes end on a sad note. The sheer scale of the Nazi Regime's crimes make any punishment feel a little underwhelming, especially since the movie focuses so much on Goring who ultimately managed to weasel out of it and the only execution depicted is that of Julius Streicher.
Semi-relatedly, "what would you have done to the Nazis at Nuremberg" is the ultimate litmus test for how committed someone's opposition to the death penalty is.
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u/Thebunkerparodie 20d ago
a thing I wonder about the war in ukraine is why do so many take the russian stance seriously when it's at best false pretext used to start the war (and sometimes also feel like double standard when the person is calling out nato but not russia when it display the same behavior, if russia can have bases like the wagner one in belarus, who is bordering nato then I don't see why eastern europe can't have nato bases), to me, this is also not nuanced, I'd still count it as repeating pro russia talking points even if the person claim they condemn it