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
20m ago
I think to some extent it does undermine the critique. The contrast asks the question: ok, cool, smart guy, you can critique the noble war made by noble warriors, the noble men obedient to and believing in a noble king, but can you come up with something better? You can critique, but can you build? Which approach is better if one can build an ending, and the other cannot?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
37m ago
Ok I'm gonna need a longer comment on your answer to this question.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
39m ago
There will be no epic poems written down in this house, young man!
We have written evidence of the criticisms of writing down stories and wisdom, as opposed to personal oral transmission.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
45m ago
Related: my opinion that GRRM's failure to end ASOIAF undermines his positioning the work as a critique of Tolkien. You can write the beginning of an interesting story that deals with "Aragorn's Tax Policy" and the grimdark of a fantasy setting...but you can't write the ending, because a satisfying ending to the work GRRM began is impossible, it's ultimately sterile in that way.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
49m ago
You know, Mrs. FiveHour watched The Big Lebowski recently, and I was struck by how much the quirked-up aesthetic has influenced everyone since, and how it must have hit when it first came out, but now it just kind of feels like everything else but a bit better.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
51m ago
I'm all for AI art but right now the state of video is absolutely godawful. Elon is completely delusional if he thinks he can make something good in a year. Than again nano-banana came out and nobody expected it (though most people are still using gpt-image-2 ... YUCK!!!)
If the theory is that in a year video generation will be on a level where you say "Grok make a movie" and it does it, then I agree. But take our current tools and a gifted artistic team and spend a year carefully prompting and editing, and I think you could make something pretty extraordinary. Even when I'm just making a joke image like "grok make me a poster decrying anti-italian discrimination" I have to re-prompt it at least four times. Once to get it to what I actually wanted, once to edit some problems, and twice to remove weird artifacts from the first two edits. For a feature length movie, you'd be prompting every scene dozens of times. Which is basically what a director does now with actors, they reshoot scenes over and over until the actors understand the prompts and the director sees what they want, and sometimes at the end they have to go back and reshoot scenes that didn't come out right or that they have to change later.
On a related but unrelated note, casting a black girl as the green girl in Wicked completely ruined the movie. Because despite being green she was just so black.
I didn't like it because they made her skin color a metaphor for...her skin color. Why not just have her be black at that point and skip the green altogether? Though my bigger problem is Ariana Grande, whose face I find disturbing. She looks, after all the plastic surgery, like a black girl wearing whiteface.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
57m ago
Weird, I haven't seen an unreconstructed "Ancient people's believed myths because they were just so fucking stupid" just-so story in the wild in a long time. Because that's just, like, your opinion, man.
Alternatively you have the "Greek Dark Ages" explanation, that there was a distinct and observable reduction in level of organization and civilization in Greece between the collapse of the Mycenaeans and the rise of the Polis, and that the myths stem from shepherds living among ruins they couldn't build, seeing script they couldn't read or write, knowing these kings fought wars with chariots.
Or the Jungian Ishmael explanation, that the universal myths of Golden Ages and great long-lived heroes of the past are archetypal stories of the distinct downshift in health, lifespan, and quality of life that resulted from the shift to agriculture. It is agricultural humanity's preserved ancestral memory of older nomadic peoples who were taller, stronger, tougher, and longer lived than the early agriculturalists.
Or you could just say that nostalgia for a lost golden age is a universal of human society, present even in those times and places that we call Golden Ages now, and the narrative of infinite human progress is an oddity of the Enlightenment period lasting until WWI, briefly lit and quickly extinguished.
But no, it's definitely just a weird quirk of metallurgy and the myths are stupid because ancient humans were stupid.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4hr ago
Magic? Idk similar to whatever mechanism by which the heroes in the Iliad frequently toss large stones at each other "such as would take five men to lift in these degenerate times."
It's pretty well attested in mythology from China to Israel that the earlier generations of humans were longer lived and generally better than the modern breed.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5hr ago
If Penelope was much older than 40 then it wouldn't make sense for her to have so many suitors.
Typically when this is acknowledged it's explained in one of two ways:
-
People lasted longer then, among the heroes it wouldn't be unusual for her to still be beautiful and fertile at 40 or 50
-
This is precisely what makes the suitors evil, that Penelope is old/infertile, their intention is purely negative, to marry her and become king of Ithaca, but not to produce anything.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
23hr ago
I hope he does both. The Matter of Troy offers an infinite canvas for reinterpretation, and I'd love to see a firm effort from a Grok lead AI team to build a new version. Every work on the Matter of Troy, including Homer, is an interpretation, a new artistic spin on a series of events. The Greeks and Romans fought endlessly about Agamemnon: heroic leader or jackass who would get cucked while he was away and murked upon his return? Odysseus, charming trickster hero, or villain set for the inner circles of hell? Paris, romantic hero or kidnapper?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I might just be overmapping to myself, where i became a strict no-shoes guy once I started vacuuming.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Polo is a fantastic sport that should get more press and coverage. It's incredibly entertaining, more effectively co-ed than any more legitimate sporting event, it has the crash-danger of NASCAR and the player-hotness of Italian soccer.
The patron (team owner) often plays on the team itself, which is achieved by the polo equivalent of a salary cap: the handicap system, by which players are rated in goal-value from -1 to 10, and then the team has a budget of handicaps it can spend. As a result, if a team has one of the Argentine star 10 handicaps on the team, you need to balance it by grabbing somebody who sucks with a 1 handicap. So you get a 55 year old investment banker trying to play a real professional sport on a team with real professionals.
Plus, in America at least, the tickets cost almost nothing and they encourage you to tailgate right on the side of the field! In Newport, $150 gets you 20 people, a tent set up for you, and a place to park your truck. Bring your own food, and the drinks there are strong and delicious and reasonably priced.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
(Conventionally) attractive people don't get involved in Polyamory(tm) they just fuck around. They don't get involved in the local kink scene, they just decide one day that they'd like to choke their gf during sex and their gf goes along with it.
Communities with rules and systems exist so that ugly people can, somehow, maybe, hopefully, talk their way into a situation where someone is required to have sex with them.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I do think it's been a big change over the past twenty or thirty years among American whites, and that it has a lot to do with the changing role of women and men in the household. Historically, women did all the cleaning/vacuuming/sweeping. So men were unconcerned with making a mess of the floors, it wasn't their problem, and men being dominant in the household they didn't worry about it. Now men share in housework and they're not going to make a mess that they themselves expect to clean up.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Soccer is an awesome sport. It has rules that are simple enough that everyone can understand them- but at the same time, they don't let everyone get away with murder.
Except offsides, which will never be understood or make sense.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Tua, for all his flaws and failures on the biggest stage, is pretty much a disproof that Samoans can't produce a QB. He might not have been able to stick around as a top-10 QB, but he played at the highest levels and lead the league in yards one season.
Ditto your theory that HBD dictates black players are necessary for RB/WR/CB, where some of the best players of the past decade are McCaffrey, Kupp, and Dejean.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
So last year I was at a town meeting for my little burgh. And the audience is full of Indians, like twenty or thirty Indian guys of all ages, when the typical public audience of people not involved is like me and two boomers. And I'm thinking, oh, there must be a motel or a gas station up for a zoning exception and his friends came in to support him. But they work through the agenda and the Indians don't stand up for anything. And I start thinking, oh no, they're all here together for the courtesy of the floor at the end, something bad must have happened, I bet something racist must have occurred and they're here to complain about it.
And the end of the meeting comes and the public comment, and sure enough their spokesman gets up and walks to the podium, and says: "We are all here as part of the [Region of PA] Cricket Club, and we are here to ask for a cricket field to be built in one of [municipality's] parks for the use of all the cricket players in [Region] who currently have to travel to New Jersey to play on a proper cricket field."
No. I think we should do everything we can to preserve rituals in sport that honor all competition and fighting for every single spot, rather than the "Championship or Bust" mentality that has destroyed the NBA and is eating away at the NFL and MLB.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Also, just because I found it odd, here's Keturah complaining about a situation where someone invited her into the hostess's home, and Keturah came, and then they judged each other for their stance on shoes, that Keturah wanted to keep them on, and the hostess wanted her to take them off.
Keeping your shoes on in my house after I have asked you to remove them is so incredibly rude that I have trouble taking this seriously.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I actually refer to discussion here with Mrs. FiveHour as today's issue of "The Daily Autist."
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
There was an aphorism, I think from George Burns, that went something like: "There is almost no person who, if the details of their sex life were made public, wouldn't inspire public shock and revulsion."
I think the same applies to posting.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Both association football and rugby come from an attempt to write down the rules of the folk "football" games, which were played by boys and young men of all classes,
All the forms of football (Association, Rugby, Gridiron) were originally called "football" because they were played on foot rather than because you kick the ball. ((Hence the stupidity of the "handegg" sneer))
Prior to the emergence and dominance of the various Footballs, when we talked about sport and sportsmanship, we were largely talking about aristocratic pastimes: horses, hunting, hunting on horses. Football was played on foot, as opposed to the Sport of Kings, Polo. Horse sports require both a lot of money, for the horses, and access to a lot of land. They're unavailable to the urban professional class.
The urban professional classes had a rising sense of their own importance and wanted to demonstrate their athleticism, but they didn't have horse-and-land money, they needed something accessible. This shows us the contrast that they were part of building: the upper class students at British boarding schools or American colleges were upper class, but not Aristocrats, they weren't as capable of participating in the existing cultures of sportsmanship at the time, which were oriented around horsemanship and hunting. So they elevated these townsfolk games, codified them, and made them into something socially valuable in which they could participate.
For Soccer in America, the same dynamic actually recurs in the 90s, when Soccer emerges in America as an athletic alternative to the dominance of football and basketball. The "Soccer-mom" term of the 90s didn't just refer to a mom, it referred to a suburban upper-middle class white mom. Why did her kid play soccer and not football or basketball? Football was too violent, basketball too "urban," (I mean everyone knows white men can't jump). Soccer emerged as a youth sports alternative that was less violent, classier, more European, but most importantly it was just a sport that poor kids and black kids didn't play. This is reflected in the fan dynamic, being a fan of European soccer leagues has long been a blue-tribe coded kind of sports fandom, a sports hipsterdom that allowed not just the players but the fans could sneer at American sports. This dynamic is how we wound up with the "pay-to-play" model that everyone involved with American Soccer has been kvetching about since the World Cup, but people don't understand how it came to be.
Marathon running, long distance running, jogging, are all popular in America primarily as and because they are upper-middle class pastimes. It's got huge advantages as a status-class marker: no contact, solo, primarily about discipline and determination rather than talent, historically finishing is the primary status symbol rather than winning. No large law firm or investment bank lacks a Marathon-Guy since the jogging craze of the 80s; while historically few law firms have a powerlifter or a wrestler (though Crossfit and BJJ might have changed this by now). You can't walk through an office in Boston leading up to April and not hear about someone training for the Marathon, I've never walked through a law firm in Boston and heard about partners training for the Mass state USAPL. You can see this dynamic in long distance running continue as the popular distances have extended, ultramarathons are the new marathons, because the ultras are still competitive for upper-class white boys with discipline and character, rather than the province of professional Kenyans. Finishing an ultra is still worth more than comparing times because so few people run them at all. Sport exists, is popularized by upper-middle class whites, comes to be dominated by other groups as the prestige of the event grows, upper-middle class whites move on to a new sport to enjoy as a pastime.
Jogging craze among yuppies => NYC and Boston Marathons become prestige events => Kenyans come to dominate the major marathons because prestige means monetary reward => yuppies start talking about ultramarathons.
White kids at old Ivy League schools invent modern football(s) as an interscholastic pastime => football becomes a national professional sport with teams at every high school and a path to riches => poor kids dominate the sport because they see it as a path to scholarships and money => white kids at old ivy league schools discover Soccer, Lacrosse, etc and develop those into interscholastic pastimes
This is too long already, so I'll just cede that the Marquess of Queensbury was a slightly different dynamic and I'm a little wrong on that one.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Put this post in the Louvre, for the perfect satire of missing the point and proving it at the same time.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Sure, I can put on the dog-and-pony show for mothers everywhere. But I'd have a hard time explaining the private hobby where I argue on the internet with pedofascists and incels and holocaust-deniers.
While I disdain Starbucks, I frequent local espresso shops and order all kinds of girly drinks. It's tasty, it's fun, it's something I can't entirely recreate at home, it's a fun outing with Mrs. FiveHour or by myself with a laptop to sit for a few hours. I don't think I could go every day, but on the scale of indulgences, I find it perfectly fine.
But I can't understand:
-- Lifted pickup trucks. Nobody drives off-road. Nobody. It's not a real thing people do at the scale where you would need any kind of rig to do it beyond a Subaru Outback with good tires. But I can't go anywhere without seeing trucks that have been lifted to the point where they handle like hell, at a cost of thousands of dollars.
-- The vast majority of DoorDash traffic. I understand the value when one is three sheets to the wind, or ill, or whatever and getting food delivered becomes more valuable. I don't understand how it accounts for such a large share of orders that it's a huge element in the service economy. I'd think the average person would order delivery once a month or less, it appears to be much more than that.
-- Cruises. The whole set-up seems wildly unpleasant, particularly if I'm going to have spend my time on a boat cooped up with other people who wanted to go on a cruise.
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