HereAndGone2
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User ID: 4074
HereAndGone2
14hr ago
The term "Negro" is something that is making my eyebrows rise, because unless the latest reshuffle of terms has brought this back, nobody uses it casually. So what is going on here?
HereAndGone2
14hr ago
But Achilles does not have to justify why he's a hero, he just is because he ticks all the boxes. Odysseus is different, he is unheroic by a lot of the tropes of the poems (and indeed by some of our own day) but Odysseus is a much more rounded character.
Achilles versus Agamemnon is not about "but I really love my sex-slave" or "is taking women captive and passing them around like party favours justified?", it's about arguing over The Champion's Portion. Achilles has been publicly disrespected by Agamemnon and his status challenged, and thus his honour is impugned unless Agamemnon makes reparation. Agamemnon is overlord of the combined Greek forces and can't be seen to be weak or to bow to blackmail. That's why all the negotiations between them carried on via third parties.
Achilles versus Agamemnon is of the same kind as Juss versus Gorice; Gorice is attempting to exercise overlordship which the Demonlanders refuse to recognise, and the plot kicks off from there. The fact that it has nothing to do with questions of morality or the right to rule or Evil Lord versus Good Guys is demonstrated at the end, where the victorious Demon lords lament that their mighty foes are dead and so there can be no more heroic battles, and their reward is to have everything reset so that Gorice is once again alive and the entire adventure will re-start. The effect of war and invasion on the common folk? the soldiers in their armies who will die and leave behind widows and orphans? Pffft, that is not the concern of the Supermen, the Heroes!
Gro, ironically, is the only one who thinks about the losing side in all these wars, and that is why he's constantly a turncoat and mistrusted even when personally liked. Nobody trusts him too far because they know he's just as likely to switch sides and be fighting them in the morning.
HereAndGone2
1d ago
It's a great book and a great lead-in to the Zimiamvian Trilogy. If you like Ouroboros, then you'll like Zimiamvia. If not, then you won't.
Everybody loves Lord Gro! Though objectively he really is the worst of them all, he constantly betrays, switches sides, and backstabs, and has no problem recommending dishonourable/cowardly methods (like poisoning the Demon lords) to solve problems. And yet he's charming and appealing. I think it's because he doesn't do any of this for personal gain, he constantly loses by it since he switches sides to the weaker instead of sticking around to benefit from the wealth and status he would gain with the now-victorious side.
The sort of flat characterisation of the heroes is deliberate, I think. Eddison isn't interested in deep psychological exploration or subtleties of that nature. The heroes are heroic the same way Achilles is heroic: brave, skilled, handsome, wealthy, of high status, of high renown and honour, fit to do deeds of daring and extreme feats, aristoi by nature and blood, far beyond the common herd. They don't have to be developed because they're archetypes. These are the Supermen of Nietzsche.
It's a pity the Zimiamvian trilogy was never properly completed; the final novel is just some completed chapters and a lot of notes. The second book is where we learn more about the characters and about Eddison's view of what an ideal world would be like, and the first one (chronologically the last in the series) gives the most complete view of the world.
It's really a realm of the mighty dead, a hyper-version of the Elysian Fields, and is the circular history that constantly repeats itself as hinted at in the title of Ouroboros. Very much something that if you like the prose style, you'll be willing to wade through the metaphysics, but if it's too strong for you, then there's not enough going on to keep you reading.
I'm laughing internally comparing Eddison with, say, Brandon Sanderson who is, or is one of, the new High Kings of fantasy. The difference between Sanderson's functional if cardboard prose and his (very American) carefully worked-out magic system and Eddison's highly-coloured, vividly Jacobean-styled prose - !
I heard her say, faint as the breath of night-flowers under the stars: “The fabled land of ZIMIAMVIA. Is it true, will you think, which poets tell us of that fortunate land: that no mortal foot may tread it, but the blessed souls do inhabit it of the dead that be departed: of them that were great upon earth and did great deeds when they were living, that scorned not earth and the delights and the glories of earth, and yet did justly and were not dastards nor yet oppressors?”
“Who knows?” I said. “Who dares say he knows?”
Amaury said. “You see, you will not answer. Will you answer this, then: It is against the nature of you not to be rash, and against the condition of rashness not to be ’gainst all reason; yet why (after these five years that I’ve followed you up and down the world, and seen you mount so swiftly the degrees and steps of greatness that, in what courts or princely armies soever you might be come, you stuck in the eyes of all as the most choice jewel there): why needs must you, with the wide world to choose from, come back to this land of Rerek, and, of all double-dealers and secretaries of hell, sell your sword to the Vicar?”
HereAndGone2
1d ago
If we don't, in fact, need people around for the AI-run and planned and governed economy to grow grow grow, then it will sooner or later occur to AI that we don't need people around.
HereAndGone2
1d ago
Lewis calling his villains NICE (the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments) and then we unironically get NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence).
He was spot-on about politicians just loving some acronym that sounds, well, nice in order to sell shit to the public 😁
HereAndGone2
1d ago
You want someone who can write, write well, write persuasively, and has people skills. The maths stats and rats people can come up with the theory, now you need to present it to the normies (and you hope, people in power).
(I'm hoping they learned some lessons re: "politicians and people in power" because I'm still laughing about the massive misjudgement of the Carrick Flynn campaign. "It's a bunch of rubes in redneck country, how hard can it be for Smart Intelligent EA-aligned people to win that election?" God bless their good intentions, it took me two minutes looking the race up online to figure out "his opponent has union backing while he's been away in the Big City for years by this point? yeah I know who I'd bet on as winner").
HereAndGone2
1d ago
The discussions are indeed interesting and maybe even worthwhile, but then they start dreaming of carving up the lightcone and we'll all have our own solar systems and be immortal uploaded transhumans working on how to reverse the heat death of the universe thanks to god-tier AI making us all post-Singularity post-scarcity, and I go "goodnight and good luck, boys" because even though I've loved SF since I was seven years of age, I've lived long enough to see the glowing forecasts of the dreams of my fellow nerds not come to pass now that we're in the far-flung glorious future age of the 21st century.
HereAndGone2
1d ago
I can't really comprehend their future in which 100% of industries are really quite rapidly fully automated and constantly growing, while at the same time there is still standard capitalism with some redistribution. Who are the buyers in this market?
That's a question I've been asking for a long time, even before the wiles of AI super growth, and got no satisfactory answer. The day I finally went "I do not fucking understand economics" was when I got slapped down with an answer that reduced to "you don't need consumers who buy things to grow an economy!"
So I think it'll just be more of the same; more of todays "but stocks are worth so much more! line go up! GDP growing! economy to the moon!" enthusiasm by economists, and yet ordinary people are going "but I can't pay rent much less even dream of buying a house, and food is increasingly too expensive, and my job might go to a robot, what do I do?"
Then they get told "we are the richest generation in the history of history and also you should not expect to be able to afford to eat steak".
HereAndGone2
2d ago
No, different articles claim different people might step up or be nominated (e.g. I've seen suggestions that Janet Mills, who previously withdrew from the race, might be persuaded back).
The thing is, can a different Democrat win? Who will they pick?
Traders at prediction markets think it is very likely that Platner will drop out. As of Monday evening, they give Platner just a 3 percent chance of being the next U.S. Senator from Maine. After Collins, at 37 percent, the next-most-likely election winner is Troy Jackson, at 34 percent. (Jackson, a progressive Democrat, came in third in Maine’s recent gubernatorial primary.) Under Maine law, Platner has until next Monday (July 13) at 5 p.m. to withdraw from the race. The Maine Democratic Party would then have two weeks (until July 27) to replace him with a new nominee.
The comments section on the most recent post over at Silver Bulletin is interesting, because there's a range of people on there saying "I'm from Maine and I think they should pick Jackson/No, he's got baggage too! Pick Shah!/They need to pick someone from the left/No, they need to pick a moderate/Mills now has a great chance/Mills was hopeless, that's why she dropped out". I have no idea who they'll select out of all that.
Well, we allegedly got "She texted him that she needed her ass massaged but we kept that out of the story", so yeah: "And it was a night where him and I were texting back and forth and he had taken something that I said as as an invitation and that's not how I meant it."
Before publication, a Politico reporter told the Platner campaign that Jenny Racicot, on the night in question, had been “texting [Platner] about needing her glute massaged.” The reporter added, “That detail didn’t make our story.”
Blurred lines, indeed.
Her: "Man, my lower half hurts after I did something strenuous. I could use a glute massage!"
Him: "Literal booty call, I'll be there in a jiffy!"
HereAndGone2
3d ago
I think it depends. Guy who made his fortune in tech or whatever and now wants a hobby restaurant where he doesn't much care if it bleeds money? Sure. Guy who wanted to be a chef since the age of sixteen, sweated in hotel kitchens and restaurants under star chefs, and is chasing that Michelin star or stars? Hell on earth, if I go by the stories of "when I worked for Marco Pierre etc." other chefs tell. Fallow, a highish-end London restaurant cooking channel on Youtube that I watch to see how the other half live, is a lot more fun and a lot more relaxed, but they also work damn hard (this is why you pay restaurant prices, nobody is going to do this at home). If you're driven, you have demons and the demons come screaming out.
HereAndGone2
3d ago
Are we going to talk about the implication that he was driving a motor vehicle while drunk to her home?
Which indeed yes, I imagine he was drunk driving and yes, this is a serious claim.
HereAndGone2
3d ago
I suppose part of it (a large part) was because I was around for a similar story of "I was raped by X and Y" in my home town that went national, was tut-tutted over by All Right-Thinking People, the accused went to jail to the accompaniment of scorn and derision from everyone from the trial judge on down... and it was later revealed to be all invented for reasons of (a) mental disturbance and (b) revenge by the claimant and the witness she said she had.
Throw in the Kavanaugh case, where we went from Blasey Ford who at least had "it could indeed have happened like that" to the High School Drug Rape Gangbangs (which we were supposed to believe just as unquestioningly) plus at least one accuser who admitted to lying in order to get Kavanaugh off the court, and that put the kibosh on it for me and politically-charged accusations that conveniently come along years afterwards when the guy is on the brink of getting public office.
Jill Schmoe accuses Joe Schmoe of doing bad stuff where the accusation is recent, credible, has some corroboration, and isn't politically or otherwise motivated? I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. Jill Schmoe accuses Joe Bigname just when Joe is going for substantial public office and there are those who would love to see Joe fall on his face? I'm going to need a heck of a lot of proof backing that one up.
HereAndGone2
3d ago
I think Platner is a louse. I think he probably did behave badly. But as I've said, I've been burned by all the political accusations that only show up when oopsies, looks like The Wrong Guy might get elected.
If she's telling the truth, she was an idiot as well. Unlocked front door, could have been anyone coming up the stairs and unless she knew or strongly suspected it was Platner and not a stranger, things might have gone a lot worse. Maybe the news media are just being careful, but they're all reporting it as "sexual assault" and not "rape". Here is an interview she did where she went into more detail. It's still a bit of a grey area, because (for example) how many posts have we had on here discussing how women put men through shit tests? "Don't come over" after texting with him where he thinks she's asking him over could be seen as "Bro, she was shit testing you. Women want dominant men, you backed off like a pussy? You were supposed to head over and convince her to sleep with you!"
I think rape is wrong. I also think, for example, that if you go out and get so drunk you can't remember who you went home with or if you had sex with them, then you too are contributing to the risk whatever might or might not have happened.
Nonconsensual sex? Yeah. Rape? Depends on exact legal definition in Maine or wherever this might be tried.
HereAndGone2
3d ago
The Big Stick of Banning! No, no, not the Big Stick of Banning! I cower before your wrath!
(Yeah, it's funny to me. I'm at the time of my life where I'm "to hell with it" and I've given up worrying my nerves to shreds over 'but did I make them not like me?' If they don't, they don't).
HereAndGone2
3d ago
That does not equal consent. She straight up told him no.
Yeah, but it's much more dubious consent than rape, if I go by the report. She got away from him but didn't run out the door or lock the bedroom door or phone someone to come get him/come get her. Now maybe there will be a fuller account and more details, but the preliminary story is he was drunk and there's no mention of "he broke down the door" or "he grabbed me before I could get away".
HereAndGone2
3d ago
I was thinking enemies inside the party. Collins and the Republicans probably don't care so long as he goes, and the second choice is a squishier Dem they can beat.
HereAndGone2
3d ago
The story, what we've got so far, sounds much more like "ugh, go away okay just let him get off then he'll go away" than "help, help, I'm being raped, somebody help!"
That she left the front door unlocked after texting him "no, not tonight" is more like "well if he does come over and if he does convince me to do it" than "I'm done for the night, just gonna lie here and scroll on my phone".
Is there any sign Platner did chase underage women? All the ones mentioned so far seem to be adults, is this just more "any stick will do to beat the dog" in order to get rid of the undesirable?
HereAndGone2
4d ago
I sympathize with not trying to escalate if you're in a room with a man who could easily overpower you and kill you and be an ongoing source of misery in your life.
Yeah, but there's no sign she tried getting away or locking doors or the rest of it. She heard him coming up the stairs after getting in her unlocked door, and didn't jump up and try and lock her living room door, or grab her phone and call a friend, or the likes of anything to protect herself. Fear of being overpowered, yes, but he was so drunk he was "knocking over an antique sewing kit, spilling small needles everywhere" and she managed to get him off her and then she went into her bedroom instead of running out the door. That is not sounding like "oh no he came over uninvited and I'm scared", that's "dammit I told him not tonight, ugh just humour him and maybe he'll go away".
HereAndGone2
4d ago
Oh, hydro, there are a lot of legal definitions of what exactly is and isn't rape, and judges make comments about it.
I'm now sufficiently burned on "oh wow hey just so happens that at precisely the right moment to help us get rid of this guy we hate, someone comes forward with an accusation of sexual assault that conveniently has no witnesses to support or, for our purposes, prove it never happened, gosh what are the chances, eh?" stories of this kind to be very dubious.
Lack of consent is not in itself rape. Suppose it hadn't been Platner walking in her front door. Would she have fought that guy off, called the cops, tried to get help? Because the story can be interpreted to be "she kinda would have gone along if he'd been sober, but because he wasn't, she just shrugged and let him get some so he'd go away in the morning". There's nothing there about "and I tried fighting him off, and when I got into my bedroom I locked the door but he broke in, and I tried calling for help but he grabbed my phone" etc. in the story.
Could have been rape. Could have been choice she later regretted. Could be "I don't want this guy in office, so here's my story". Could be a lot of things. I don't like Platner, but this isn't enough in the story to say "yep definitely rape rather than dubious consent". A lot of women (and men too, I guess) have sex out of a sense of duty or obligation, that doesn't make it rape.
HereAndGone2
4d ago
Nate Silver suggests it might be this guy:
Traders at prediction markets think it is very likely that Platner will drop out. As of Monday evening, they give Platner just a 3 percent chance of being the next U.S. Senator from Maine. After Collins, at 37 percent, the next-most-likely election winner is Troy Jackson, at 34 percent. (Jackson, a progressive Democrat, came in third in Maine’s recent gubernatorial primary.) Under Maine law, Platner has until next Monday (July 13) at 5 p.m. to withdraw from the race. The Maine Democratic Party would then have two weeks (until July 27) to replace him with a new nominee.
HereAndGone2
4d ago
it is beyond normal levels of shitty
I dunno, there's a lot of shitty in the world. Read her story and it's possible to take another angle on it. This was back when Platner was drinking. The pair of them hooked up and were on-again off-again. She's at home texting him and tells him "Don't come over tonight, not feeling it". Her door is unlocked. She hears him coming up the stairs. She does... nothing. Lies on her couch. He comes in. She does... nothing. He's groping and trying to get it on, she can tell he's drunk, he's so unco-ordinated he knocks knick-knacks off the table. She does... apparently nothing except tell him stop and no and go away.
She manages to get up and away from him and goes into her bedroom. Where he follows her, because apparently... she didn't lock the door or call a friend or call the cops or anything.
Is this sounding like "Oh no I'm scared he's gonna rape me" or more "Oh crap, I told him I wasn't in the mood"?
They have sex. He falls asleep. She... lets him stay there and sleep it off, because she wanted to wake him up but then changed her mind because she didn't want him driving drunk.
Again, is this the story of "I was just raped"?
Morning arrives, he wakes up, he tries to be friendly, she tells him "Do you remember last night?" but he doesn't because he was drunk. She... tells him go away and don't contact me again. He leaves, it would seem. She... does nothing, doesn't call cops, doesn't do anything so far as can be told.
Because, she says later, she didn't want to think of herself as a rape victim and didn't want to go to the cops. (What the hell would she have done if it hadn't been Platner coming in her unlocked door and walking up the stairs? Which now makes me think she had half an idea he might show up, and was maybe half inclined to be 'well if he does turn up and I'm kinda in the mood we might...' but then he was drunk not sober when he showed up).
Now that last, didn't want to call the cops because that would make her the victim of rape, okay maybe. That happens. But the rest of it? Sounds more like "ugh, it's easier to just let him have his drunken fuck and kick him out in the morning" than what could be called rape. Non-consensual, maybe. Not enthusiastic consent, definitely. But rape? Well, if we stretch the definitions, which seems to be what is going on here.
And I'm going off what her story is in the reports, I've seen nothing of what Platner himself has said.
HereAndGone2
4d ago
Yeah, the movie is about "love potions and love charms are bad and here's why: mind control is not a nice thing and if you call up demons, you get demons".
HereAndGone2
4d ago
The story is patchy. Front door unlocked? Hears someone coming up the stairs but doesn't even get off the couch? Doesn't mention trying to push him off or fight him off? Gets away from him into the bedroom but doesn't lock that door? Doesn't call anyone to come over and help her? Sticks around while he's passed out/asleep until the next morning, then tells him go home and don't call her again? Doesn't wake him up because she doesn't want him driving drunk but, y'know, doesn't call the cops after he forced himself on her?
It's not impossible, but that sounds less like rape and more like "hook-up I regret".
There are also people who want to have healthy limbs amputated and feel the same way about their leg or arm as the 10 feels about their penis. Should we accommodate them? Some surgeons would say "yes". Even though for some of them, being a wheelchair user is also bound up with some kind of fetish? Again, some would say "yes".
But if we consider it a sign of mental unwellness to think your left arm is an alien appendage and you want it cut off, then the same applies to the penis. That's where we're coming from: a 10 person can be completely sincere in their feelings but also mentally unwell.
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