Tanista
1mo ago
I'm not even sure it holds for the pre-Christian world? The philosophers at the time criticized the traditional depictions of gods as immoral and you could go to a philosophy school or learn something like Stoicism parallel to your existing religion and not replacing it. Religions did have moral content (the first commandment being to be good to your god so they'll be good to you) but they don't seem to have been totalizing.
The inordinate focus on morality in all dimensions seems to be a particularly Judeo-Christian thing.
He wants to be a hero, to soak up all this adulation and special treatment that he's been craving all his life, and it's down to him being basically a decent kid and making the right friends that manages to steer him along the right path.
Problem is that JK speaks through a magical macguffin and the Mirror of Erised makes it clear that his real desire is to be with his family.
It's Ron who sees himself as a hero who finally outshines his many brothers when he looks at it. Harry simply doesn't seem to value that in the same way, which makes sense because he already has fame and adulation and it has nothing to do with him: in his mind his fame is unearned, creates insane expectations and is frankly grotesque in that it was born out of the death of the life he could have had.
To try to reconcile both views: I think Harry's drive is less about getting the adulation of being a hero and more just a sort of instinctive mistrust of authority figures and the sense that he should do things himself (he also doesn't like the idea of friends suffering for him which is how Voldemort finally gets him). It being a YA novel, he's at least sometimes right which makes things worse.
But here’s where it makes implicit assumptions that are highly contentious. First it assumes people only labor for material gain.
This brings to mind Bill Burr's joke (responding to claims that commentators over-index on black sportsmen's athleticism compared to whites and not their intelligence):
You're acting like we can't be scientists.
"No. All I'm saying is, if there was a race to the microscopes, you fuckers would win!"
It doesn't matter if you don't labour for material gain. You have or don't have the advantages you have. If there's two groups of people competing for the few jobs studying 14th century Buddhist mandalas the ones with the higher IQ probably have an advantage.
Human beings don’t solely labor for extrinsic reward and the corollary of that assumption is to assume that if human beings didn’t, the mass of them would simply sit around and vegetate.
No, the argument would be that almost everyone has to work because most of us don't have nest eggs and our economy doesn't favor the people who drew the short straw cognitively (who knows, maybe AI will flip this). And people naturally resent this.
And how do we rank IQ and merit in this sense? Along what axes? Is a call center clerk of less social value than an NBA player or a software engineer? Why do any of these racial or phenotypic distinctions matter except under the assumption that we’d want to live in a racist society.
Ah yes, the old "who's to say?" I think this is the fat acceptance of intelligence discourse.
Tanista
1mo ago
I think it is a Democratic loss, though a few more victories like this and the Republicans are undone.
I think Democrats are looking at the polling and recent elections and figure there's no need to risk themselves. Trump is and will continue screwing himself in their eyes, the subsidies will expire anyway and he'll be blamed and they'll win the midterms.
We're supposed to pretend that such moves done in the past by Republicans weren't seen as massively norm breaking and a violation of normal politics?
It is literally called "the nuclear option".
Hell, Democrats cried bloody murder (and still bring it up with no small amount of bitterness*) about simply not holding a vote for Garland.
* Understandably. I'd be mad too if I allowed myself to be so outplayed.
Tanista
1mo ago
Republicans have a Senate advantage. It's by no means clear that nuking the filibuster (especially in Trump's term) is a good idea in the long run.
Though I grant it'd allow Democrats to pull more shenanigans like the ACA subsidies and then dare Republicans to take away the gibs.
Tanista
1mo ago
It's one group that doesn't trust the BBC and another group that insists that, yes, the BBC has problems but it's also the bulwark against barbarism and the target of a nefarious right wing plot (sotto voce: maybe driven by American lackeys) to destroy it. A similar dynamic exists with the CBC: any talk of funding becomes a matter of the sort of paranoid patriotism that would otherwise be mocked from the other side.
So I think the situation is actually worse for the BBC than uncritical trust of half the electorate. They don't even have that.
Tanista
1mo ago
Is that actually the explanation or is that (the oldest) fanon?
Obviously 007 is a codename but "James Bond" being a codename (is "Felix Leiter" also a codename? Do all Bonds and Leiters end up as friends?) doesn't seem to have ever been canon AFAIK. The Craig Bond films certainly reject it.
It just seems like canon just doesn't matter that much to Bond. New actors allow soft reboots and that's that. Getting tangled up in the history is how you get a mess like Spectre or the need to give a definitive ending in No Time to Die. I'm not sure that form of modernization is actually better. That's how you eventually end up with MCU kudzu-canon.
For having such a bulk of population, Africa has nearly literally zero cultural force.
Afrobeats did have a moment with artists like Burna Boy being successful and working with members of the diaspora in Britain. From South Africa Tyla is probably the most prominent artist that's making waves in the US?
Their momentum seems to be stymied in the US though which might explain why it doesn't feel like it has any impact. In both cases their promotional runs seem to have poisoned the well a bit either because they were perceived as lecturing American blacks or not responding correctly to awkward questions - the whole colored category in SA apparently sounds awkward to AA ears and Tyla really failed to give a soothing answer, or any answer at all. Now every time she comes up in the hip hop media so does this issue and they're not kind. Probably doesn't help build up a head of steam.
In her defense, it's kind of a no-win. The answer that I see is that "colored" is a different thing from black and saying that might be even worse than appearing uppity.
Tanista
1mo ago
What end could James Bond expect?
(Pretty funny that the one time we have a consistent canon they just kill him off)
Tanista
1mo ago
I think policies should also have a "needless stupidity" modifier.
Some things are bad implementations of policies that are at least somewhat necessary. Some things are just needlessly stupid and never needed to happen and that makes them more egregious because of what they imply about our systems.
Tanista
1mo ago
As with eSports, female participation and competence in war will increase with the deployment of the tranissaries.
I don't see it as particularly more incoherent than when right-wingers, who are generally hardly known for wanting to improve the lot of imprisoned criminals, develop a strange and very isolated compassion towards women prisoners who are forced to share their prison tracts with men.
Maybe I'm so tough on crime I just don't want men escaping to a comparatively nicer female prison.
(I do truly think a significant amount of the backlash and the gulf in male-female trans support is legitimately just disgust that some men, specifically the sort of man other men know to distrust or contain, think they get to defect)
Tanista
1mo ago
Not sure what you mean by “raises your standards,” maybe you can elaborate.
That the more homogeneous a society the more small differences stand out.
The other question is to what degree already being homogeneous raises your standards.
The common argument is that nativism is just a standard reflexive response that you have to power through and people react the same way to visible Muslims and visible Irishmen.
You have to wonder if what are now considered irrelevant differences mattered more because people were more similar. Which would mean that you can't really safely assume it'd apply to Pakistani Muslims.
(That said, America is doing much better than, for example, Britain here anyway because the filter for such groups that were barred from immigrating before is still relatively strong)
Tanista
1mo ago
You can also bring in Star Trek influenced works.
Battlestar Galactica is a direct response to Voyager, 9/11 and the Iraq War (the New Caprica arc with an outright suicide bombing insurgency especially feels dated) and is progressive in a very particular way that is both familiar and distinct from how things were done post 2020.
Tanista
1mo ago
Tanista
1mo ago
Can't wait to have another "is Hillary Swank Zendaya hot?" discussion when Dune 3 drops!
Outside of that, it's rather obvious KJP is carrying water for Biden. But to what end? Is he not out of politics? The earnest defense of his honor, whilst admirable, is a political dead end. Suicide, even.
Biden is clearly relitigating his legacy. Which is why Hunter came out not too long ago or we get comments when Jake Tapper releases a book.
But it is interesting that the two people who seem most willing to public go down with the Biden ship are black women.
It makes some sense with KJP since she'll never get another major role in the party.
But Kamala seems to be making noises like she'll run for something again and she's still providing cover for his health issues. She was also a late addition that wasn't particularly loved in Bidenworld apparently so one wonders what she gains.
To steelman KJP: Running with Biden through the election and then benching him and getting Kamala in as VP was probably the best choice given they did not have a better candidate than Kamala. My guess is that the people behind the scenes got greedy, pushed Biden aside and went with Kamala to their detriment. To that extent, KJP defending the honor of Biden is just as much a political dead end as the interviewers defense of the current democrat establishment. Two political losers fighting over lost scraps.
This is not actually a defense of KJP and her ilk.
What most likely happened was that Kamala was already on the ticket and so could use the money raised. The other issue is that many of the other Democratic candidates that did seem viable saw the situation was a mess and knew they could run in four years (when Trump might have nuked his popularity again) with a full campaign. Once Biden spitefully endorsed Kamala it was especially not worth it.
But that's not the reason it's not a defense of KJP. Another factor was people like Jean Pierre who deliberately tried to poison the well on any sort of contested primary by making it about the denial of a black woman her legitimate role. That was another reason candidates couldn't jump on.
If that had happened, KJP would be complaining again as a black, queer woman.
Try to get their American cousins to not launch a 20 year long pogrom against the demographics that most strongly supported Israel
Why would we assume that Ezra Klein class of Jews give a fuck what the mostly right wing current rulers of Israel do?
Especially without some inciting event.
If right wing white Gentiles can't prevent their own progressive brothers from championing that alleged ethnic cleansing why should we assume that progressive Jews could be talked down?
But, if I would raise a criticism myself, maybe Netanyahu's treatment of Obama and his lining up behind his American opponents, was slightly unwise.
We can argue that most of the outcome is baked in because of immigration but the absolute last thing you want as a foreign nation is to be seen as an ally to one side of America's culture war. It's a demented game with no clear rules but always two sides and it's insane to play it for real stakes.
Taking the invite from Republicans and rejecting any attempt by Obama to slow down on settlements didn't play well on the left, especially since Netanyahu seems to have the hardiness of a cockroach.
This naturally involved becoming harsher towards Ukraine. It didn't work, because Putin was intransigent and possibly took this (as many of Trump's opponents seem to have) as Trump being a pushover.
A risk raised by his domestic opponents when he suggested his solutions.
It even seemed to have worked in Gaza, where the ceasefire came right after the Trump administration got publicly pissy at Israel over attacking in Qatar.
Well Israel, the stronger party here, is closer to Ukraine than to Russia so it isn't really the exact same problem (putting aside whether Trump's vocal support emboldened Israel into that blunder or if the later apology was all theater)
A few celebrities have jumped in. Interestingly, no Americans. They're all from the anglosphere. Ruby Rose has no career so her bitterness makes sense. Dan Stevens never really hit the big leagues in America after leaving Downton but he still had good movies like The Guest and Apostle and apparently Legion. Aime Lou Woods just had a good turn on the trendy White Lotus.
Nothing really seems to unite them. They seem to range from has-beens to actually successful. Maybe it's just random internet addiction/radicalization.
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