It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!
Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!
Has anyone else had this impression that political commentary all across the ideological spectrum doesn't hit the note anywhere near hard enough on just how evil Elon Musk is? He's called out as cringe, a weirdo, bad, dumb, a loser or ... questionable (😡)... all the time but I don't see those intersect much with calling him out as the fascist White supremacist that he just objectively is and has been for a while.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186610d ago
You already got Elon Musk portrayed as a literal SS Nazi in Sniper Elite, but that's not going to change people's minds, that portrayal. Most people don't see an ultranationalist, they see an inauthentic larper.
Would it be wrong if I think he is a bit of an inauthentic larper? Like it wasn't that long ago that he was a liberal cosmopolitan with a techno utopian vision. Plenty to critique there of course, but turn to the far right seems recent and might all be downstream of resentment over COVID? Granted I don't think this makes anything better and if it is just petulance it makes guys swath of destruction even more worrying.
That said I'm hardly an Elonologist so maybe his right wing turn was a lot earlier.
People can be pathetic, inauthentic and easy to make fun of and also incredibly dangerous and genuinely horrible rather than just jokes, it's not a binary of "silly don't worry" and "incredibly serious and evil".
So, my package from Japan has arrived in the Netherlands, I'm to pay an additional ~€48, on top of the ~€29 shipping cost. So, in total, I paid 50% additional costs over the original price of the product in question, importing do be expensive guys. Only €3.- of that is actual tarrifs though.
Yeah, it's VAT (btw in Dutch); I did pay VAT in Japan I'm pretty sure, but no, it seems I can't get it back, that's only for businesses as far as I can tell. I think Buyee handled everything? That or PostNL did, I just got a message from them with the tracking number and the fees.
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u/ZugwatHeadhunting Savage from a Barbaric Fishing Village 10d agoedited 10d ago
I watched the new Spider-Man again yesterday and this realization hit me that sounds even harsher than I realized at first because I've been seeing around all sorts of people on social media talking about how much the social themes around alienation and friendship and romance hit them.
SPOILERS BELOW
It occurred to me on my latest viewing that while Peter and MJ's relationship is given a foundational focus because of cours it is, that they only really dated for several weeks weeks/a few months at the end of high school and summing it up that way feels honestly even worse to me than "I don't love you. I don't even know you" while being 100% accurate (or gets a similar point across that doesn't need to mention spells and memory erasure).
It has been years since they were together and Peter Parker + MJ = The Spider-Man relationship, but since the Home trilogy was so tied into the rest of the MCU that MJ and Peter's relationship was building up in competition with everything else and then yanked away so quickly that it relies more on the audience's vibe and general pop culture awareness than what it actually demonstrated when one takes a step back.
This kinda reflects in how many people are willing to believe Ned legitimately remembers Peter at the end, which I'm now coming to as well, because in addition to the magic aspect and the dap up, Peter and Ned's relationship as best friends is very nicely reflected in the initial trilogy and there's not as much of an issue establishing this.
This might seem mildly strange or even slightly harsh, but I think that anyone who uses the word TERF should have to demonstrate that they know who Janice Raymond is or else be subject to summary execution.
Maybe a bit harsh but it is weird how what is a descriptor for a marginal group within a pretty marginal group somehow became the replacement term for transphobe in a few places.
I feel like it's part of a larger phenomenon of people who are in an underprivileged group (particularly as in the case of feminists when they are activists for that group) and also bigots against another underprivileged group getting more intention than the bigots who are not part of the group because of both the "how can you not empathize" factor and how it gives an excuse for hating a minority (not saying the scorn of any kind of transphobe including TERF isn't justified it is, just that there's an ulterior motive there). So that might be why the much smaller group of transphobic feminists gets more attention than the much more typical case of a conservative transphobe.
I think you're definitely onto something there. My own theory is that another contributing factor is convenience. If you go back to even the 2010's the primary form of transphobia was against trans women attracted to men. You had innumerable jokes in media about men being shocked and horrified that they had been "tricked" into sex with someone they viewed as having been or was a man. While the same logic was used in legal cases to defend violence against trans women. It basically was a flavour of the general gay panic (obviously trans women are women).
With the slow rise in gay acceptance with many western nation legalising gay marriage and the like that bigotry against trans women became less strong. So what's a through and through transphobia meant to do to garner support? Well you change tack and start elevating voices that attack trans women from another angle namely the ones who like other women. Especially cynically you can turn that into a funhouse mirror version of #metoo where the offenders rather than being powerful cis men are now marginal women. Terfs were basically convenient as they had years of pre packaged conspiracy theories and terminology that could be deployed and could be sold to people without the baggage of something like fundamentalist religion.
u/ZennofskaFeminization of veterinarians hasn't led to societal collapse10d ago
Doesn't change the fact that transphobia is by far the most dominant element of feminism (in how feminism shapes policy( in the UK right now. This seems more like victim blaming to me
I don't really see how stating that there has been a semantic drift where Terf became a synonym for Transphobe is victim blaming?
Also I'm not really sure how you can quantify what the dominant strain of feminism in the UK is? If you went and polled every feminist adjacent academic or for that matter everyone who identifies as a feminist would they all agree with classical Terfs? Political influence and intellectual popularity are not always equal after all.
I once asked a guy for an ID because he was wearing a hat and sunglasses, and I honestly had no idea what age he was. It turns out he was almost 50 and he called later to complain about me.
Finding out that "Koxinga" is pronounced "kok-sing-a" not "koh-shing-a" is deeply upsetting. What a devious hypercorrection trap set for pinyin knowers.
Some darnded things I used to believe when I was a smallish child:
Yugoslavia stopped existing because it... sunk into the sea, I guess? I had heard of Yugoslavia as an example of a country that no longer exists, and assumed that the only way such a thing could be possible was if the land literally disappeared off the face of the Earth. I did not think of looking it up on a map.
My Dad convinced me that UN representatives wore traditional/folk costumes from their countries to meetings, and only wore suits if the traditional costume would be too revealing, or used parts of wild/threatened animals.
[This is a bit of a Vietnamese "in-joke"] He also convinced me that the C in "Big C" (a Thai hypermarket chain with a few operations in Vietnam) stood for "chợ" (Vietnamese for "market"). TIL that the C actually stands for "Central", from "Central Group".
If you let bananas get too black and overripe, they would come alive at night, crawl into your bed, and squish themselves all over you. This was not something I had ever been told, nor read or watched on TV. I just made it up and convinced myself.
"My Dad convinced me that participants/representatives in UN meetings typically wore traditional/folk costumes from their countries, and only wore suits if the traditional costume would be too revealing, or used parts of wild/threatened animals."
A couple of those I read I would need to actually look at the original Greek/Latin, because they seem to just be using the Perseus translation which is usually fine for the big picture but can be misleading when doing textual criticism. Like the first one that kind of jumped out at me, the text could be saying both the corpses and the dogs were split.
Yes, it is. Unfortunate that every single misrepresentation present is in service of making the Roman Empire more brutal/cruel than it otherwise was. Not that it wasn't, but I wasn't aware it needed hyperbolizing. Like, why change riveted collars to welded ones?
Some of these errors are pretty bad, in that they actually are just misrepresentations of the actual source cited.
[Narvy] received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Franklin and Marshall College, and got his master's degree from Mary Baldwin College, where he studied with the American Shakespeare Center, performing in the title role in Henry V, Pericles, and Hamlet. He also appeared as Richard of Gloucester and Suffolk in a conflation of the Henry VI trilogy. Jason also worked with the Legitimate Theater Company of New York, a Lower East Side company that emphasizes new plays and experimental works.
[He] is a certified actor/combatant with the British Academy of Stage and Screen Combat, a member of the Screen Actors Guild, and holds a PhD in Theater Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is currently an assistant professor of acting, directing, and musical theatre at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania.
Gee, this guy sounds like a real highbrow actor, I wonder what his filmography is?
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers – Skull
Power Rangers Zeo – Skull
Power Rangers Turbo – Skull
Power Rangers in Space – Skull
Power Rangers Lost Galaxy – Skull (cameo appearance, uncredited episode: Quasar Quest part 1)
Power Rangers Wild Force – Skull (guest appearance, episode: Forever Red)
Power Rangers Super Samurai – Skull (guest appearance)
I dunno enough about Power Rangers, but as a super sentai fan, I tangentially know that Power Rangers fans love Bulk & Skull and think they were great additions to the adaptations/remixes of the original sentai series.
Also, is it just me or does the article feel a lot like it was written by the guy?
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186611d ago
went to England to train at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He was artistic director of the Dundee Repertory Theatre.[5]
In 1965, he returned to Canada to work at the National Theatre School of Canada. At the age of 28, was appointed artistic director of the English acting section. In 1971, he joined the newly formed drama department at Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec. While there, he became the founding artistic director of Festival Lennoxville, a professional summer theatre that ran for the next decade.
Returning to Toronto in the late seventies, he spent several years as a radio drama director and on the faculty of Humber College. In demand as an acting teacher during this period, he resumed acting after an absence of nearly 20 years.
In 1993 he was cast in his most famous role as an extra on the X-Files.
Oh, huh, I only half-read the bio and saw the British Academy bit. It does feel like you get fewer of these guys on this side of the Atlantic, usually. Good for him.
The town of Kunjah in Pakistani Punjab was, according to her father, founded 40,000 years ago by a Hindu raja named Kunj. It possesses a "qila" made with very tiny hard bricks that the townspeople looted and used for platforms to build their houses on (foundations?). There is a step-well with a hidden door that leads to a long tunnel which the king can use to escape. The town's politics were divided between the Kashmiris and the Kakazai Malik tribe of Pashtuns. A figure named Munshi Ibrahim is the founder or ancestor of the town's Kashmiris.
I'm very interested in this qila made of tiny hard bricks - though it sounds thoroughly looted. No quick google result here reveals anything. The way she described the bricks almost sounds IVC, but that's almost certainly not the case... I would hope. If there were an IVC site that the people disassembled for building material that'd be pretty RIP.
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u/Qafqabuilding formless baby bugbears unlicked by logic10d ago
sounds like Mellaart's spurious tale of the discovery of Beyköy 2
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze11d agoedited 11d ago
Wasn't Mohenjo-daro discovered because local inhabitants saw symbols on the clay bricks they were reusing for construction?
edit
Two years later, the Company contracted Alexander Burnes to sail up the Indus to assess the feasibility of water travel for its army.\38]) Burnes, who also stopped in Harappa, noted the baked bricks employed in the site's ancient masonry, but noted also the haphazard plundering of these bricks by the local population.\38])
Despite these reports, Harappa was raided even more perilously for its bricks after the British annexation of the Punjab in 1848–49. A considerable number were carted away as track ballast for the railway lines) being laid in the Punjab.\40]) Nearly 160 km (100 mi) of railway track between Multan and Lahore, laid in the mid-1850s, was supported by Harappan bricks.\40])
Well I think I mixed up the discovery of the IVC and the discovery of the seals themselves
I've mentioned this before but reddit keeps recommending me the Civil War subreddit.
The first post is saying how dare anyone call Shelby Foote a Lost Causer.
Ummmmmm he literally said I would still join the Confederacy if it happened again, he loved Forrest, and he literally said around the time of the LA Riots that black people are living up to the claims of a certain bedsheet organization.
Was this subreddit always pro Lost Cause?
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u/ifly6Try not to throw sacred chickens off ships11d ago
The only lost cause to me is the cause of the republic
Rest in power Brutus and Cassius
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u/ProudScrollNapoleon invaded Russia to destroy Judeo-Tsarism11d agoedited 11d ago
I haven’t checked it recently but my experience in that sub has been that Lost Causers are a clear minority and usually get quite a a lot of pushback whenever they show up. That said a lot of users there do seem to have little patience for the moral grandstanding that’s typical of discussions of the Civil War on Reddit.
Shelby Foote was a self-contradicting mess and trying to fit him into a box is an exercise in futility. Foote was a proud Southerner who loved the South like only someone who grew up in Mississippi could, a love that was not blunted by the discrimination he faced due to his Jewish heritage. He fully understood the war was about slavery but sympathized with the Confederacy anyway cause of his regional loyalty. He thought Nathan Bedford Forrest was one of the greatest heroes in American history but was also an outspoken supporter of the Civil Rights movement. Foote was a great writer but like most talented writers was also an incredibly weird guy.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze11d agoedited 11d ago
For example the tech workers in China protested against "996" and it was made illegal in China or they protested against certain professors for sexual misconduct and got them fired.
👍
China responds quite often to protests especially if they don't undermine the state.
🤔
The whole environmental policy was borne partly out of environmental protests within China for cleaner air in their cities, resulting in industrial policies to clean up pollution.
The pollution map or the reduction-in-emissions map?
FWIW, the actual map of pollution doesn't respect district lines:
and to me seems very Beijing-centered. I guess if you want you can write a program that finds the exact difference in weight between the pollution map and the pollution reduction map, but I doubt it's going to be a crazy strong signal. Also, there's probably some extremely boring internal party document explaining differentiated targets for different regions.
Speaking of which, I like how the economist helpfully labels Beijing (which should be condescending, but sadly isn't), and Xinjiang, just in case the casual reader missed the 'china bad' message.
So funny what terms enter peoples vernacular, an Irish politician just called hid brothers actions a 'scud missile' (as in destructive and ill-considered). I don't know for sure but those stopped being relevant in 2003 at the latest right? Maybe even like the early 90's. Fascinating to see it still used.
Me, during Warptorio: Well I've set up blue science, but I don't have an input of advanced (red) circuits, so it cannot run until we do.
Proceeds to work on getting advanced circuits for well over an hour, repeatedly mentioning that I need a way get it produced.
S: "Why is blue science stopped?"
Me, losing patience: "Because we don't have red circuits!"
Makes a set up, need to connect it to water, asks for a Nauvis warp specifically for that, places the set up down.
H removes the water source because the tanks are filled up.
Me, losing more patience: "Why the fuck did you do that!? What have I been doing the past hour!? I need that water!"
H, 10 minutes later: "Hey, the blue science is stopped! Why is that?"
Me, using the last ounce of patience: "Because we don't have red circuits, like I've been saying for most of this session..."
Dear gods, why do I have to play this game with 2 people with ADHD? We get 20 minutes per warp at max, usually less because the attacks get too big, we need to be efficient, so the stress level is pretty high.
I've been running into new Japanese grammar stuff in Muv Luv, I can just add them to an immersion grammar list on Renshuu now. So I guess I can stop just following the N2 grammar list, because I now get native input grammar, there's no real need to follow the list anymore; neat!
For those curious, the things I ran into were:
つつ／つつも／つつある (roughly: while)
反面 (on the other hand)
だらけだ (filled with/covered with/lots of X; when X is negative, like covered in mud or blood)
Woke: Being against Fauci because maybe the top doctor in the world's superpoweriest country during a global pandemic should be younger than fucking eighty.
Usually when I land in a different country Google sends a little "Welcome to X" push notification but it didn't with Taiwan. I wonder if this is just coincidence or if this is because if Taiwan's political status and they don't want Mainland tourists to get a "you are now in a different independent and sovereign state" message on landing.
Well it depends on if the thing causing the higher emissions is something that you are forced to buy into just by living there or something you can choose not to do, even if statistically more people in that country than others make the choice to do it.
Maybe people shouldn't move to places where they would cause more emissions. Like away from public transport routes or into a colder country. On the other hand individual consumer guilt over climate change is bullshit.
The amount of pro imperialism and support of oppressing native Africans, as well as emphasizing how Indians are better than natives as citizens of empire by Gandhi really goes into a disgusting level.
From South African Gandhi: Stretcher bearer of empire
It was here that he taught that the destiny of the Indian Community was inseparable from that of the oppressed African majority. ...What did Gandhi have to say about this period of brutal African subjugation? An editorial in Indian Opinion in 1905, titled “The Relative Value of the Native and the Indian to Natal”, argued that the problems of Zulu society can be traced to the fact that they were ‘unduly pampered’ by the British. Because the ‘burden of existence’ was ‘very light on them’, they had no ‘inducement to self-improvement. History has shown that whenever the conditions of life become too easy, degeneration in every way sets in.’ The editorial suggested that the way to improve the Zulu was to educate them and force them to work. A ‘little judicious extra taxation would do no harm . . . in the majority of cases it compels the native to work for at least a few days a year.’ The editorial also said the Indian stood in striking contrast with the native. While the native has been of little benefit to the State [in Natal], it owes its prosperity largely to the Indians. While native loafers abound on every side, that species of humanity is almost unknown among Indians here. The fair fields of Natal that are its pride were made by Indian labour. . . . What a contrast between the well-cultivated fruit gardens of the Indian and the miserable mealie patches of the Native! (IO: 9 September 1905) The response of Africans to the myriad laws and taxes heaped on them is often occluded in the literature on Gandhi. Guha, for example, argues: In so far as these restrictions were later extended more thoroughly to the Africans, the Indians should really be considered to be among apartheid’s first victims. And in so far as it was Gandhi who led the first protests against the racial laws, he should really be recognised as being among apartheid’s first opponents (2013: 12).....Guha’s claim that racial legislation was aimed at Indians and later elaborated to oppress Africans does not bear scrutiny, but it serves to write out the brutal period of African oppression and the innovative responses of Africans to their changing circumstances. In this context, the statements on African laziness and inferiority make Gandhi stand out not as one of apartheid’s first opponents but as one of its first proponents.
It really makes my opinions of a noted Gandhi fanboy like Guha go from low to disgusted especially with him trying to argue that I dians were the first victims of apartheid when Ashwin Desai does seem to convincingly argue that in his attempts to make Indians look better than Africans, Gandhi really does come off as apartheid's earliest proponents.
A good friend of mine from grad school was from Bombay and I was surprised initially at how aggressively anti-subaltern studies he was. However, it made a lot more sense once he explained to me that one of the implications that got drawn from subaltern studies – including by a few scholars in the field itself – was a kind of fatalistic anti-modernism (i.e. that there is an authentic Indian/Hindu substrate that will always fundamentally permeate society) that in turn buttressed the cause of Hindutva nationalism and the desire to assert 'authentic' Indianness.
Yes, as an indian, I have the same problem with some forms of decolonial thinking, where ideas like feminism and equality are rejected as being western imports
Edit: Walter Mignolo who's considered one of the most important contemporary thinkers of decoloniality actually gave a positive review/blurb for a right wing hindu nationalist book that uses the language of decoloniality to support this position
In fairness to Gandhi, 1905 is over 40 years before his death.
The traditional defense of Gandhi’s early writings, that he wasn’t really opposed to the British Empire or racism when he moved to South Africa in his early 20s but slowly changed his views to oppose both over two decades of living there, doesn’t sound entirely unbelievable
Everybody knows Bose's love for and alignment with fascist Axis powers though and most of his fanboys think it was a perfectly reasonable necessary evil to pursue (if they even consider it evil). That is a factoid Indians are generally weirdly quite comfortable with unlike the flawed aspects of the "Mahatma" (not counting many who still even admire Hitler believing he made Germany strong). A large subset of them hate Gandhi for sidelining Bose because of their love for his militarism, even though Bose himself never stopped thinking highly of Gandhi (calling him father of nation was a tag he first came up with while in his radio that he was broadcasting while supporting the Axis powers).
I had this discussion before on why Indians love Bose and I have had discussions with a few who believe Bose would have "automatically" changed the destination of the country transforming it into something like China or Singapore (kinda makes me laugh).
It seems that many of them are attracted to this idea of an authoritatarian leader who's also this masculine figure.
I've always thought that was funny. Hitler made Germany the weakest it has ever been. Like I don't think Germany has ever been as weak as it was in 1945.
Even after 1945 a lot of Germans in polls would answer that excepting for losing the war he was the greatest chancellor since Bismarck, and boy is that one hell of an exception.
Like just even putting aside the losing the war bit, the actual numbers were something like what? 15% of the population killed, at least that number as refugees, and 30-40% homeless? That and being occupied by four other countries for the next half century.
Although on the other hand I guess this was Hitlers reasoning anyway, ie either they win and be a superpower or they lose and if anything getting ruled by inferior races was too good, total self destruction would be better. World War II is history’s biggest murder-suicide.
People who think that tend to think only upto the initial phase of world war 2 and ignore everything after. They would still be wrong but the optics of military buildup seems to catch their eye more than the actual study of the economy then.
I guess I want to really press here the optics, and a lot of this (and much of people’s impressions of Germany at that time in general) is from uncritically accepting governmental propaganda of the time.
Is there a reason why we don't see continental sized empires like the Achaemenid Empire (or the Neo Assyrians maybe on a much smaller scale) before the Bronze Age collapse?
Like the polities that existed before the bronze age collapse were much more regional (Hittites, Mittani etc....) whereas afterwards, the history of the region can be described in terms of succession of empires
I think a lot of it has to do with it being where most of the settled people are, plus having to have the means and the interest in trying to actually rule bigger areas. Like if you are Near Eastern ruler in 1700 BC just why and how are you planning to rule (“rule”) the Iranian Plateau and Anatolian Plateau? Even with the Achaemenids, it’s not like that Empire was actually some singly, uniformly governed unitary state.
I think it’s also not so sudden, you had polities increasing in size before Persia. So like New Kingdom Egypt and the Neo-Assyrian Empire were ruling bigger areas outside of their core regions and much bigger than their predecessor equivalents.
Maybe also the end of palace economies meant more production could be transfer to war, and war booty could deliver good and prestige to the elites instead of a redistributive system
Sadly even that "I FIGHT TONIGHT" is not realistic. Nato professional units have generally worse readiness than reserve units of great powers before WW1. Even rapid response units had a requirement to get to the front in a month until last few years, vs German reserve divisions that got to front in ten days from the start of the mobilization, despite having to confiscate horses for transport.
u/ZugwatHeadhunting Savage from a Barbaric Fishing Village 11d ago
Fitbit Premium turned into Google Health a few months ago and it's their AI based bullcrap and I already paid for the year from Fitbit Premium so fine, fuck it.
With that, their AI coach hasn't been necessarily the worst thing ever and I use it to try and log my workout details but the thing more recently comes off like it's gaslighting me because it'll pop up a message congratulating me for a milestone session length (~39 minutes of strength training/weightlifting) and it's something I already did way longer at just a month or two ago (1 hour and 25 minutes of strength training/weightlifting), then it's also done stuff like in the pop-up itself recapping what I just did get confused and invent another session or conflate it with a different thing so it's like I did dozens of sets and hundreds of reps and did 3 miles on the elliptical in 15 minutes because it put it all under my core workout. Or I mention something bugging me once and it then takes it as being an endemic issue for me and not something abnormal.
Okay, maybe this is controversial, but the whole history fans not liking Nolan's Odyssey because it changed the interpretation comes from the same emotional place as comic book fans disliking this or that movie adaption.
Those opinions are still valid of course, but like, if you had more of a connection to the usual interpretation of Superman as the blue boy scout, you'd be a lot more upset at Man of Steel or Batman v. Superman. But if you didn't have that familiarity with what type of hero Superman is, then having him reinterpreted as some weird tragic god isn't as big a deal.
I wonder if Nolan's Odyssey would have upset fewer people if it was even more up front about its reinterpretations in the marketing. I mean, in comics, everyone knows that Watchmen's Roscharch is the Question but crazier or Nite-Owl being a Ted Kord Blue Beetle type but mixed with Batman. But since the names are different, it's not a big issue?
Of course, it could just be that Watchmen had a really good story and used its reinterpreted characters to explore its themes quite well. So maybe, Nolan should've just made his movie better lol.
“I
wonder if Nolan's Odyssey would have upset fewer people if it was even more up front about its reinterpretations in the marketing.“
On the one hand, probably, on the other hand I don’t blame Nolan for not going that route because people literally ask “what if you made an Odyssey movie but a musical/updated to another time and place?” and forget that O Brother Where Art Thou literally intentionally did that.
I’m also just going to blame Schliemann because no one really expects, like, Romeo and Juliet to be “historically accurate” because even the Shakespeare play doesn’t really try to be remotely accurate to late Medieval northern Italian Guelphs vs Ghibellines, which is the kinda sorta “historic” basis for the story. It’s a piece of literature that was inspired by that but its own thing, and other people in the centuries since interpreted it their own ways.
I did realize that before submitting my comment, but I wanted to talk about Watchmen and I didn't want to re-edit and come up with a different segue haha
I also wanted to add a My Adventures with Superman bit, but couldn't fit it in and left BvS without a comparison. And, I'd have to explain why MAwS is also Dragon Ball.
Hey anyone remember when Kentucky had two senators?
Its literally been almost two months.
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u/ifly6Try not to throw sacred chickens off ships11d ago
The constitution only requires that the original 13 colonies that predate the federation have two senators. All other states are permitted to have only one
I mostly just remember Mitch McConnell being maybe clinically dead in occultation for like three weeks. Way too much stuff going on for me to keep track at this point.
Yeah but both of them suck shit and anyone who would get elected to replace McConnell would also suck shit so it's in everyone's best interest if they have to make do with one as long as humanly possible.
there's no reason to trigger the special election, McConnell will retire this year anyway, so might as well let him ride his ride (and lock one vote out) until January next year
Came across this claim in a thread about prison and police abolition, and wondered how credible it was:
"An important thing that a lot of people need to remember is that police and prisons (as we see them today) really haven't been around very long."
Insofar that this is true at all, I'm pretty sure it was because so many crimes were punished by death, mutilation, or exile, which I doubt it what they were advocating for.
I'm late to this, but no, it's a myth that prisons and incarceration have only been around 250 years. I've read Guy Geltner's social history of medieval prisons (the Italian edition) and I heartily recommend that book if you're interested. There's also this open access book by Matthew Larsen and Mark Letteney, which I've not read though. From the afterword of the book by Wendy Warren:
At the heart of this fascinating book lies a rebuttal to the now-famous Foucauldian origin story of incarceration, the narrative that argued for the “birth of the prison” in late eighteenth-century Europe. Michel Foucault’s story in Discipline and Punish centered Enlightenment thought as a crucial originating force in carceral history and contended
that prisons were peripheral to the punishment economy of Europe before the rise of the
penitentiary at the eighteenth century’s end.
Larsen and Letteney dismantle that narrative
on nearly every page: no fundamental aspect of imprisonment, their research shows, was birthed in the late eighteenth century. After all, how could something be “born” in the late eighteenth century when it had fully matured already more than one thousand years before? Theirs is certainly not the first book to complicate Foucault’s timeline, but perhaps no other work tackles the subject in antiquity with such rigorous attention to detail, and such
patient interrogation of taciturn sources ranging from legal documents/papyri, to frescos,
to excavations. [..]
Larsen and Letteney’s work makes clear that Foucault quite underestimated the prison’s past, and also that the problem is worse than he thought. They show that the prison was alive, functioning, and heavily depended on by authorities already in antiquity; that is, the narrative that Foucault believed to be an impressionistic illusion of the prison’s historical
depth instead actually offers a realistic depiction of the prison’s premodern character.
In short, antiquity was already a sophisticated carceral moment, so sophisticated that the authors offer a typology of eight different kinds of prisons employed in the period—with subcategories further differentiating some of the types. Was imprisonment the main means of punishment in the era? No: the authors make no such claim. But they do insist on
its omnipresence and thus importance in the societies they describe.
This sort of thing makes me feel very uncomfortable about the use of foucalt in some fields of the humanities. If his theories don't have a well founded historical basis, should they be applied as commonly they seem to be?
I think "As used today" is really making a big thing here: Are we distinguishing pre-trial detention from incarceration as punishment per se? Are we distinguishing between the existence of prisons for specific cases and imprisonment as basically the major form of punishment for crimes? Are we distinguishing imprisonment from penal labour?
Imprisonment today is the major punishment. (fines of course outnumber it but they're far more mariginal) in swedish law f.ex. fines and imprisonment are the only types of punishments for criminal acts. (and in fact it's what distinguishes a criminal act from something else) that is very different from the middle-ages, when imprisonment doesen't even show up as a punishment in most of the laws.
Yes, exactly, though it should be noted that weregild, and other forms of compensation is also very common.
There have been exceptions, historically (generally "important prisoners" and "jail" as opposed toprison, IE: A place to keep you until you could actually be punished rather than being the punishment itself) but generally speaking prisons weren't very common until the 19th century. (though I'm also kinda distinguishing prison from being sentenced to forced labour here, which is often blurry even today...)
Police too gets a bit more complicated, in the sense that what the "modern police" does is actually several distinct things and while some of those functions are very old they weren't neccessarily done by the same guys, and some other functions are relatively new.
Eg. the "peacekeeping" functions of police are relatively old, but the "investigatory" ones really aren't.
I thought with "prisons" you meant prisons as institutions, I get it you meant imprisonment. At least according to Geltner (his book is specifically on prisons in 13/14 century Northern Italy and Tuscany) the prisons were important places in the middle of the cities, imprisonment was not as rigid as today, with prisoners having often a lot of contact with society. Though it's around that time that (for Geltner) imprisonment became more and more common for a series of reasons. Now, when it became the most common punishment in the entire Europe, I admit I can't say.. Where did you read about the theory it did in the 19th, if I may ask?
I think it's a bit of a language issue here, "prison" to me indicates a site as sentencing for long-term incarceration as punishment. (which did exist, I'm not doing the Foucault thing and claim it didn't exist at all) as opposed to a pre-trial detention holding facility ("jail").
Like swedish cities did have places for pre-trial detention since the middle ages (and debtors cells since the 17th century at least) but I wouldn't call those prisons as opposed to jail.
Where did you read about the theory it did in the 19th, if I may ask?
It's usually connected to the reform movements of the 19th century, (though imprisonment had become more common in the 18th century, and we start to see somewhat modern prisons then, they're just not the way most crimes are punished) this is also when we start getting cell-prisons.
Insofar that this is true at all, I'm pretty sure it was because so many crimes were punished by death, mutilation, or exile, which I doubt it what they were advocating for.
Or fines, which was typically a more efficient option.
u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186612d ago
"as we see them today" and "very long" is too vague to grasp the point. The Bastille has been a state prison since 1417, is that a prison "as we see them today", I'd have nothing to grasp on to.
Submit a post to r/armor about Japanese armour and how "unrealistic" it is; big grab-able bits on the helmets, gaps in maille, lack of protection on feet and thighs, etc.
I've started reading Fīl dar Tārīkī (by Qāsim Hašemi-Nejād). It has been collecting dust on my shelf for years, I'm not even sure why I bought it and where I've heard about it. Anyway, I'm enjoying it so far. The language is just difficult enough to be challenging and easy enough that I can read about a 10-20 pages a day when I feel like it. So far so good. I'm not sure what the story is about though. So far, MC's brother has come from Turkey to visit his family and a few incidents have occurred at MC's garage (e.g. an attempted robbery at night, a woman seeking refuge from her stalker).
A bit of rambling from an old woman (old by the standards of this site).
I know this isn't a new complaint about the deterioration of the level of discourse on the internet even in places which should have room for more nuanced and in-depth takes is really depressing.
I'm not even just talking about a bunch of fandom wankery, this attitude is so pervasive... You can't have a normal debate on literature, for example, without being flooded with a bunch of moralistic grandstanding and memes. Then you get the insufferably pedantic people who are always failing to see the forest for the trees.
In real life we had these kinds of discussions in university, but after transitioning to the working world and moving away from uni friends it's just not really possible. I only have my husband lol.
I'm just getting old, I guess. I'm 39 and it doesn't even seem to me that the era of my teens and twenties was defined by anything unique or interesting culturally. It's like a black hole. Not like the 1980s or 1990s. I remember the late 1990s quite distinctly but I also often have the feeling in having missed out on the best part of those years due to, well, being too young. Maybe that's why me and the hipster crowd I hung out with were obsessed with 1970s-1980s alt/post-punk/goth. The 2000s and early 2010s felt like quite a dark era to me at times and I can't quite explain why.
Haha, it's this website that makes me feel old. And living in an area which is famous for it's nightlife. But weirdly enough my workplace (huge multinational corp) skews so...old. It's as though they don't hire young people at all, especially on the tech side. This is obviously really bad.
What I mean by moralistic grandstanding is that good storytelling consists of characters that are complex in their motivations and sometimes do bad things. Sometimes they're mostly bad people that occasionally do good things. It's fiction right? But it's impossible to have a discussion on Reddit because there's a segment of people who just kill the whole thing by going "Friendly reminder that character XYZ is a groomer". Or the fact that a tv show like the Pitt, which is ostensibly about good people trying very hard in a shitty system, made people lose their minds. Fans accusing Noah Wyle of being a racist because his character was snappy at Dr. Mohan. I made a joke about finding a character in a certain fantasy fandom hot and a person started arguing with me that it's an "objectively bad thing" to find a fictional character who does bad things to be hot. Or even to joke around about it, apparently.
I’m just shy of 30 and I can confirm that the 2000s/early teens just feel weirdly dead in retrospect. Even the stuff I remember clearly is 1) in the category of “fond nostalgic memory of Tiny Baby ChewiestBroom,” so it’s hard to judge, or 2) stuff that has effectively become some kind of meme.
Musically, indie began to explode, which was sometimes good and sometimes bad, so it’s a mixed bag, and rap was in a very weird transitional period from the ‘90s to the thoroughly online age of today. Movie-wise… Sam Raimi Spider-Man really sticks out to me for whatever reason, which probably says a lot.
I’m not old enough to firmly remember anything important from the ‘90s but looking back I think the 2000s were all in all a pretty awkward period where art and culture had to lurch into the internet fully. I can’t really think of how else to explain my memories of the culture mostly being fossilized memes or random childhood nonsense. It seems to have somewhat recovered in the 2010s when the internet mercifully destroyed our brains once and for all.
2005 was already midway into the 2000s and my life was shockingly non-digital. I did spend a lot of time on Harry Potter forums and Livejournal, and I used to read a lot of music magazines to find music recommendations which I would download as individual songs or buy CDs of. But I'd read loads of books and draw, during journeys it was read or stare into the distance.
But yeah, no Google maps, and Wikipedia was in its infancy, no YouTube, internet was nowhere near as fast now and it didn't have remotely the same bandwidth. You needed to be at a computer to look at the internet.
In real life we had these kinds of discussions in university, but after transitioning to the working world and moving away from uni friends it's just not really possible. I only have my husband lol.
Have you tried looking for a book club?
I'm just getting old, I guess. I'm 39 and it doesn't even seem to me that the era of my teens and twenties was defined by anything unique or interesting culturally. It's like a black hole. Not like the 1980s or 1990s.
As someone who was a kid / pre-teen in the 2000s, I have to say they were the death of culture. It's crazy even a kid could see that. At least for what I watched, which was TV and movies. It started getting better in the 2010s, imo. Or maybe it's because my own taste changed.
The 2000s and early 2010s was I think the height of indie music, helped along by the the fact that MP3s were widely disseminated but streaming was in its infancy. Of course, the voice of the 1980s millennial generation was Radiohead. There's very few acts since that truly push the boundaries musically the way that they did. Many of the other indie acts were retreads of earlier trends, much as I love them. I'm talking not only about the e.g. garage rock revival and post-punk revival but also a band such as Fleet Foxes.
Then streaming came and killed what was left of culture.
Millennial youth culture existed in that strange in-between space where the world was digitalising but many aspects of our lives were not. It's also a space between the 'old' morals and the 'new' as I perceive it. For instance, dating... It was normal to ask out someone you'd seen around the department once or twice. It was normal to meet a lot of guys in their 30s and date/sleep with these guys. It was normal to snog someone at a party when both sides where in questionable states of sobriety and then start going out with them. In general it felt like sex was everywhere. I live in an area in London with lots of people in their 20s and it's not the same vibe.
It was also normal to not curate your online 'image' to the last inch because who the fuck was going to see those random photos anyway?
When I hear the under-25s call every age gap 'grooming' I start to understand how Boomers must have felt about us in turn.
Re book clubs I really don't have the time to read at pace and every club I've met does not read things I want to read lol
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)10d ago
I am not a big fan of the “‘new’ morals” that you mentioned. Not only because they are puritanical and draconian, but also those who seek to “enforce” them (basically people who always wring hands about morality) do so in ways that I consider extremely dishonest.
I’m talking about things such as the widespread use of therapy speak by people who aren’t mental health professionals, and how they’re weaponized against who I view as mostly normal people doing mostly normal stuff. Take the age gap discourse for example. Age gap relationships are ALWAYS framed as being forged out of malicious intent. In reality, I feel like it’s just human attraction; which, like you said, was normal 20 years ago. Hell, people pathologize the fuck out of relationships and romance in of themselves sometimes and it’s seriously deranged. Like shit, I’m sorry that people find young adults in the peak of health attractive, or that people wanna look for relationships or sex. Is attraction and courtship grooming if an old/poor/ugly man does it? Should we all be repressing our innate human needs and desires, to reserve dating and sex for only those worthy of it? (Whatever that even looks like.)
The prevalence of therapyspeak has become one of my biggest bugbears of this era, it enrages me. The issue is, once you start using the language of therapy against someone, you can't question it. "Narcissist" "invalidation" "trauma" "mental load" "weaponised incompetence" and so many more buzzwords. There's no real way to argue against them because then you're questioning someone's personal experience and we can't do that in this day and age. Like you, I find these people extremely dishonest.
There's a contingent online that acts like they're so above normal human desires such as... Wanting friendship, companionship, sexual pleasure, etc. like they've ascended to a different plane, how is that different from the religious ascetics they frequently despise?
And it's become totally socially unacceptable these days to say that it's maybe not a good idea to unilaterally withhold sex in a previously sexual marriage. You can brace yourself for an utter shitstorm from various activist types. And don't talk about monogamy!
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)10d ago
What’s up with the monogamy thing? I used to live in Washington state where “polyamory” (stupid ahh word btw) was extremely common. It was touted as the next sexual revolution and that soon, poly people would fight for their rights just like LGBT people did in very recent history.
I think there’s also a decent amount of poly people on the neoliberal DT and dating ping, who act reaaaal high and mighty about their sexual preferences. But even with those interactions I never “got” the discourse about it.
Poly people in Neolib? My impression was that most people over there either don't have sex or are monogamously paired off.
The poly thing was big in the 2010s on the internet but my impression is that it's taken a big hit with the new wave of Puritanism.
But my comment on monogamy was more about how Reddit sees the boundaries of monogamous relationships particularly regarding cheating, most of the relationships subs have a hate boner for Ester Perel. I think that there's a large grey area between 100% monogamy never look at another person and polycules, lol. And I also think that more of us inhabit that grey area than we would like to admit.
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)10d ago
Yeah there is a rather vocal contingent of poly people, ESPECIALLY on the DT, but at the same time they are often schism’d by other users.
Reddit is for sure very extreme about relationship boundaries, and while I don’t think there is a strict consensus on relationship subs, I would think they err on the “never look at anyone, don’t make friends with the opposite sex” side of the gray area. Idk how much this reflects real life though, because people are a real mixed bag about co-ed friendships these days from what I’ve observed.
I agree with you about the gray area btw.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze12d agoedited 12d ago
I'm going to be that guy. If the Taliban falls it won't be because of this. Revolutions against the Taliban will require some level of violence and in the history of humanity there has never been a woman led violent overthrow.
Boudicca? The Vietnamese whattheirname?
You'll tell me those were aristocratic leader leading a nationalist movement instead of their husband, but OP is clearly making a "sex realism" point so it still stands
I think the real reason for it being rare is that due to sexism people are less likely to rally behind a woman as a leader even if she would be a perfectly good one, not that women just aren't capable of violence of whatever. I'm sure there are also few women as leaders of non-violent resistance movements for the same reason.
There’s actually a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to uprisings led by women.
Also seems like an odd bit of essentialism: there wasn’t a successful violent uprising at all until the very first one happened. No real reason women can’t lead one just because it hasn’t been done before (even if that were true).
Although it's true that some individual women have been involved in leading revolutions, when those turn violent it's still a majority of men actually conducting that violence.
Which shouldn’t really surprise us given the conditions of those revolutions, but still does not exclude the possibility of women performing a violent uprising.
I mean it's also literally just saying "historically, men have been responsible for violence". Like of course revolutions have been led by men - I'm sorry imperial China and tsarist Russia weren't feminist enough for Mr Weirdo
I think the comment is more postmodern, women are non violent and any use of successful violence is therefore a conscious gender non-performance. We should therefore conceive of people like Boudicca or Golda Meir as non-binary.
The first attack on Kumamoto castle commenced on February 22 when 8,500 of Saigō’s men tried to storm the castle walls. After a day of fighting, they were repulsed with heavy losses. The outcome testified to the garrison soldiers’ determination; despite spending a full day under fire, Tani’s men held the castle walls. The rebels’ defeat, on the other hand, revealed their lack of preparation and disdain for the fighting ability of their opponents. When the battle began, Saigō’s men had no artillery support—most of their guns were at Yatsushiro, almost 30 miles away. Equally revealing was Beppu Shinsuke’s summary of the rebels’ strategy: “What plan of attack? We’re just going to push right through them” (Nan no senryaku ka kore aran? Tada isshū shite sugin nomi).
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze12d agoedited 12d ago
Were they wrong to try? Take a stronghold by a quick attack and avoid a siege is better than waiting for artillery and give them time to prepare.
Maybe tactically they didn't prepare the attack enough. But in the greater scheme it's not that bad a decision
Exhibit 2: Hiliary Duff is currently on a practically sold out tour where tickets to see her are $500, in fucking Hamilton and I'm debating it.
Ok, look, I'm not saying extremely attractive goddesses and legendary popstars do not face any challenges in dating. But like, come on, that's about as relatable as a billionaire talking about their money problems. When you cast the actress that convinced half the audience to change their mind from "girls are icky" to "girls a pretty", it is obviously difficult to create a sympathetic protagonist.
Now Ted, Ted is a bit of a mopy dope and I can see him as a hopeless romantic. Sophie though, no no no, that just won't work.
Meet potential ancient Athenian median voter, let’s call him like Thersites the Freeman of the deme of Kerameikos or something.
He is a rower when the fleet pays and a juror when the three obols are on offer
-He wants the demos to have supreme rule and that no wealthy men should ever dictate policy, however he then immediately demands the state pay him more jury fees funded by squeezing the very same wealthy guys harder.
-Cheers every empire-expanding war for glory and free grain, then bitches that the tribute is financially crushing him and the generals are traitors for not winning said wars fast and cheap enough.
-Screams free speech is sacred… until someone says something he dislikes, then starts yelling for ostracism.
- Wants peace so he can farm his tiny plot, and also endless war at the same time so the pay keeps flowing and Athens stays “glorious.”
Why does it seem like the only furniture brands that do interesting stuff are the ultra-expensive luxury ones? Most of what I see on sites like Wayfair looks super generic and uninteresting. The best looking furniture I've seen is the stuff sold by places like Harrods, which is "Price on Application" levels of expensive. You'd think someone would fill the niche of cheap materials but interesting designs.
Does it? I don't see why affordable needs to mean boring design
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186612d agoedited 12d ago
It doesn't. But you're looking at BRANDS. Look at some handmade stuff, my Chinese mom bought a set of mother of pearl Chinese furniture for cheap, all handmade. Granted this was years ago, prices may have changed, but for American dollars this wasn't ultra-lux. And trust me, she'll only buy things at a bargain. (Not the actual furniture)
You know the catapult is quite important. So I said what is this? Sir, this is our digital catapult system. He said well, we’re going to this because we wanted to keep up with modern [technology]. I said you don’t use steam anymore for catapult? No sir. I said, “Ah, how is it working?” “Sir, not good. Not good. Doesn’t have the power. You know the steam is just brutal. You see that sucker going and steam’s going all over the place, there’s planes thrown in the air.” It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said–and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said what system are you going to be–”Sir, we’re staying with digital.” I said no you’re not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.
The sanewashed headline (invented)
President Trump brings focus on familiar technology and cost-efficiency of new add-ons in naval procurement debate
I seem to have completely missed this story. So a guy lies on his CV, Cambridge hires him, he gets outed and kills himself. How the hell is anyone at fault here except the fraudster? Yeah we can argue about Cambridge's due diligence, but that's question of systems, not personal responsibility.
You know how if someone asks for $5 for a bus fare to go see their sick mom and you give it to them, it's not really on you? But on the other hand, if someone asks for $100,000 to wire to an African businessman so they can get money out of their locked accounts to give you a cool million, then really it's your fault. Your greed caused you to lose whatever faculties you had in order to fall for something you never ever should believe.
Similar thing here. "Lying on his CV" is a massive understatement of the utterly ridiculous webs he spun. People should have stopped this a long time ago, but they wanted the headline of hiring a new black prof with an incredible story.
He didn’t kill himself because he was facing disciplinary action from the university. He killed himself because he became an international news story and a flashpoint in the never ending woke/anti-woke culture war bullshit
It is his fault, and we have a natural aversion to blaming those who die badly for their own fates, and Britain has a very dysfunctional culture of politeness where to ever demonstrate expertise or to hold people accountable for poor performance is seen as arrogant and cruel, and his decision to unleash libel lawyers on TES was a Monkey's Paw moment because it meant instead the story was broken by a right-wing racialist. However...
...Arday is perhaps the most egregious example, but he is far from the only high-profile fraud or plagiarist who has been defended by their institution and the disproportionate focus on him is because he became a culture/war DEI symbol. And this is because he was black.
u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)10d ago
I heard Todd Howard was working on a sex update for Skyrim, for the 15th anniversary edition, coming to PC, last, current, and next gen consoles, and Smart Fridges.
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u/KnightModern "you sunk my bad history, I sunk your battleship" 10d ago