FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
8hr ago
I don't think it's really possible.
My wife is reading LOTR for the first time right now, and asked me how much of modern fantasy Tolkien invented. And I said that it's not so much that he invented a lot of things, almost everything in LOTR had some precedent either in prior sword and sandals fantasy universes or in myths both ancient and modern. ((Among other things, I think Tolkien scholars make a concerted effort to connect Numenor primarily to Plato's Atlantis and skip over the various Aryanist fantasies around Atlantis and Lemuria you see more clearly in R.E. Howard's stories.))
But Tolkien is fantasy's Most Recent Common Ancestor on essentially all questions. He settled a lot of different versions of what Elves, Orcs, Goblins, Dwarves were. Before Tolkien they could be a lot of things, after Tolkien they're mainly just the one thing, or if you change it you are in conscious conversation with Tolkien's tradition in changing it.
You just can't get that kind of juice today. The only thing comparable in influence is D&D, which will never get the same credibility.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
It's a literary debate grenade I throw out every few months when someone brings up Game of Thrones, how GRRM set out consciously with the goal of critiquing or debating or surpassing Tolkien, and ultimately failed because he was unable to write an ending.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
World War Z was released on the upswing of Peak Zombie, and now we're well into the downslop. I loved zombie apocalypse content around high school in 2010 or so, but by the time The Walking Dead was big and the World War Z movie came out, it was just so beaten to death and cliche that I was sick of it all.
As an aside, I believe that is what is preventing GRRM from ever finishing The Winds of Winter, he probably had ideas for how to really play with and subvert tropes around zombies in fantasy/horror...and then a hundred other major zombie properties came out between when he started the series and when he got to TWOW, and a thousand more have come out while he's working on TWOW. My personal theory:
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Headlines from the future:
Graham Platner in Hot Water After "Sieg Hiel" Salute at State of the Union: Platner says it was "clearly satire"
Graham Platner Spotted Driving with "I bought it before we knew he was crazy" bumper sticker on his Volkswagen GTI
Controversy Swirls Around Platner's "25 Point Plan" for the Democratic Party Platform
Senator Platner, Secretary Hegseth, FBI Director MIA: The three haven't been seen in public for three days after Platner offered to "get out a bottle" at Oversight Hearing.
Senate Debates Censure or Removal of One of its Own: Senator Graham Platner of Maine faces consequences from punching President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner in the face at a meet and greet; Platner retorts that "everyone wanted to."
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I guess I wasn't clear in my meaning, because I didn't think the point needed to be explicated at length.
People are not objective when talking about former, or current, lovers. There is no "real" and no "truth" to be found in their accounts of their former lovers. I don't know if she's lying in the sense of knowingly telling a falsehood, or telling the truth as she experienced/remembers it, and I have no way of knowing. The testimony of ex-gfs is useless, because they are in most cases incapable of objective truth, it's too close to their self.
This is not an area of human experience that can be explained through litigating facts and evidence.
This is Brett Kavanaugh all over again. Some things just shouldn't be talked about, because it's pointless to talk about them.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
There's two different kinds of fraud. You have a fake election: there are no votes you just make it up. That can be done quickly. Then there's a real election where you insert enough fake votes to make up the difference at the end, that has to be done slowly.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
The incentives are mixed, they want high circulation of their articles and they want people to pay for them, price discrimination not total lockout.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Ok and?
Women criticize ex boyfriends constantly and absurdly. I was confused by this, when I was in high school. Melodramatic nonsense.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
You're probably reaching back to something like LBJ's Texas Senate race, where the candidates and their machines would hold counties in reserve to play against each other like trap cards, with each county having the margin needed to counter your opponent's reveal until they ran out.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Vote blue no matter who was only ever a hammer used to convince leftists to moderate, never a tool used to make moderates move left.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
What does "real" even mean when you're asking someone's ex-gf questions about them?
The baseline expectation should be that if you ask a woman about her ex-bf, she'll describe him as some mix of narcissist/manchild/abusive/idiot/loser. Anything positive is actively surprising.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
This is the level of attack ad the anti-Platner team is running: ex-gfs interpreting bad jokes in the most aggressive way possible.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
He's the real life Almost Politically Correct Redneck:
Rape is about power, therefore I want to rape another man if he fucked with me, for the power.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
Considering he easily has the resources to make this move more surreptitiously if he wishes, I would say that him making it so public belies it being a move motivated by fear.
Certainly, which means that by making it publicly and stating that part of the reason has to do with the state of the US vs the state of Argentina, he's making a deliberate action to make that statement.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
I feel like there's a certain tone that attacks on candidates take, you saw it with Trump and with Mamdani, that goes something like "You aren't allowed to like this guy." We'll see if the pattern holds with Platner.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
Why is Peter Thiel Moving to Argentina?
Some Irresponsible Speculation
Billionaire Investor and ideologue Peter Thiel has publicly announced that he is moving to Argentina. Among a grab bag of explanations that included nuclear war and AI risk, along with the obvious implications of the California wealth tax on his residency, Thiel reportedly was concerned about the political direction of the United States. Given Thiel's ties to much of the American political right, what does this tell us? What should our Bayesian update be from this information?
Some possibilities:
-- Get the obvious out of the way: Nothing ever happens. This is a non-event, Thiel is moving for publicity or tax reasons, and the announcements are just him engaging in punditry.
-- Alternatively, none of this may indicate anything because Thiel himself might be stupid/mistaken/prejudiced/insane.
-- Thiel is in deep with MAGA, but thinks that the wind is changing direction, the MAGA project has failed, and he doesn't want to be left holding the bag in America when the left comes back into power. This seems like a sub implication of the action even if he doesn't believe it, because his very act of fleeing and blaming the political climate will tend to reinforce the idea that MAGA has failed and increase the odds of it failing.
-- Alternatively, Thiel thinks MAGA will be triumphant, but Thiel is on the outs with The Donald, and he is concerned about being targeted after Trump turns on him. Moving to Argentina is an attempt to hedge risk.
-- Thiel is a true believer in the Argentine project, and thinks Millei-ism will succeed beyond all our wildest dreams.
It feels like something big for Thiel, who is intelligent and well informed if perhaps nuts, to make this move and publicly announce it is motivated by the state of the union.
It's sad that the uproar created has raised doubts in my mind that anything about this story is real.
Influencers are largely seizing on the same stories that used to be on network TV (Paul brothers and clavicular reinventing pro wrestling from first principles, romantic and gay drama, etc). Abortion as the big controversial topical episode plot has been a soap opera staple since, what, dirty dancing or law and order?
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