Tanista
9hr ago
The Conservatives were in the Labour position: certain to win, so they decided to shut the fuck about anything controversial to avoid being tarred (as your AI says the Liberals are the natural governing party, the media is very favorable to them, every single conservative leader is prima facie suspicious and a possible Trumpite/American wedge to them). Whether they're leaving a highly motivated immigration voting bloc on the table or were right to avoid pissing off Boomers who don't want to be like America I don't know. But I think the latter fear is very reasonable.
But it isn't a Tory situation where people seem to actively want to punish them. Trudeau's handling of the immigration system was so over the top that even hardcore immigration restrictionists would likely welcome a turn back to Harper's already large numbers. And because they knew that, the CPC did nothing. Fuck were they going to do, vote PPC? Okay, maybe it isn't the late Tory situation.
The minute Trudeau dropped out though, the immigration argument stopped making itself and the CPC didn't want to touch it. PP's abrasive personality was also no longer a plus when it seemed like Trump was the only person it didn't apply to. But, then again, he wasn't in office and couldn't pull any stunts (like Doug Ford, another person you could consider an asshole at times who directed that at the US and scored some points, despite having to pull back on some of his stunts).
Beyond Carney's already noted talents, he is good at another thing and it's not doing anything radical while being seen to do stuff. Immigration has come down, especially temporary workers, but then there's also going to be a one-time speedup in PR for protected persons of about 100,000 (and he's assuming that the temporary workers let in by Trudeau will all just leave). Then the method of calculating the budget changed to split the operating budget and investment, which theoretically makes sense except Carney is in control of this distinction which has obvious consequences (like a supposedly balanced budget with a massive deficit)
On top of all of the right noises on interprovincial trade barriers and pipelines, I can see not only why he's popular but gaining defectors. If he's going to hang around for 5 years you might as well go to the popular party that can do something.
Anyways it seems like the era of third parties and spoilers may be coming to a close, so we may see Canada simply become a one-party two-bit petrostate.
A petrostate with a loud minority of people who loathe building infrastructure to support and sell oil.
Tanista
9hr ago
What about delivering on prosperity? Has Carney actually lowered cost of living, made things more affordable?
Nope. But then, this war may bail him out of responsibility to do that.
Tanista
19hr ago
In the context of romance, I don't see a problem with calling high standards unrealistic, since reproduction is necessary for the perpetuation of society.
So is friendship.
Even worse, the risk-takers in that demographic were already killed or jailed in the previous wave of repression.
I really don't understand why, if Trump was considering attacking, he didn't do so when the protests were closer to their peak and he threatened intervention if people got shot.
I've seen attempts to praise Trump for holding to his red lines, unlike a certain other President, but what good is it if you dither long enough that it doesn't matter? It was always a long shot that you could stop this stuff from the air (we apparently have to go through cyclical phases of optimism about regime change/victory via air power) but same goes for collapsing this regime.
This is probably more true for the fate of the hobbits than that of the elves.
The Elves in LOTR are just a standard tale of hubris. It is their desire to recreate Valinor in Middle-Earth without being forced to subject themselves to the authority of the Valar that caused the entire mess with the Rings. Celebrimbor's pride is what led to him helping Sauron, despite Galadriel and the other Wise being suspicious.
They were supposed to either stay and fade or leave, passing the world to Men. It was pride and a desire to stop the inevitable that made them make the rings.
Passivity isn't the problem. It's rejecting hope in God's plan. The world is degenerating and becoming disenchanted, but Eru is still at work (Numenor's destruction is actually hopeful in one way because it's clear evidence that Sauron is wrong: Eru has not abandoned the world and isn't some inert deist god) and is supposed to make it right at some point. Evil will not triumph in the end but you have to trust (and fight). It doesn't matter if you're worse off than before you fought, not fighting would be even worse.
Most everyone who becomes corrupted or grievously fails in some way rejects hope in that plan and creates problems. Celebrimbor decides he knows better, Saruman decides to bandwagon because he sees no rational path to victory, Denethor won't join Sauron but simply gives up out of despair and tries to kill himself like a "heathen king", the Valar themselves arguably fail by refusing to confront Morgoth early enough to stop him corrupting everything (which is why the Elves fade so fast in Middle Earth) for fear of destroying Arda despite knowing that Eru proclaimed Morgoth could never triumph...
Because people have free will, they fuck things up. But it's not over until it's over.
Tanista
3d ago
The United States exists in the first place because a bunch of people committed treason. Treason is not automatically bad. It's kind of incoherent for an American to criticize treason. What even is treason? It's a very "in the eye of the beholder" thing, isn't it?
If it's in the eye of the beholder then where's the problem in finding some actions unjustified and others not?
I think he's talking specifically about the "you can just wait, there's IVF" messaging which leaves out mention of any of the difficulties you might face.
It doesn't create the attitude, but it does help reinforce it by implying there's an easy fix to the downsides of not having kids early.
Thanks to the internet, its actually millions upon millions of third world males obsessed with bobs and vagene.
These sorts of Third World males select into red pill and Andrew Tate fandom more likely. Obsession with vagene + low patience for Western women's complaints is already pushing you into "misogynist" spaces that are pre-discredited.
I also see no reason to doubt that there aren't Western simps driving this because you see it in other cases, e.g. all of the celebrities crying and taking responsibility after George Floyd's death, and all of the stuff significantly less famous people did in its wake. All of the people "listening and learning" show the same outgroup preference simps do.
Tanista
9d ago
The Terminator sequels were all hoping to set up a timeline they could squeeze/mine. That's why they usually have some sort of stinger or tease (IIRC Genisys had a tease with Arnold becoming a liquid metal Terminator which...ugh).
They simply failed every single time and had to reboot.
This is a one-and-done idea. That's fine for fanfiction but are you going to pay Arnold and Hamilton's likely extortionate fees in order to try to successfully end the Terminator franchise? Look at the MCU: a good ending can be its own curse.
Tanista
9d ago
Man discovers that the
RepublicanRevolutionary Guard isn't going to send back tens of thousands of Americans in body bags, instantly starts to sound like Karl Rove.
First time?
Give it a bit.
"The future is not set" was part of Reese's message in The Terminator, and the villain's entire plan hinged on the idea that changing the future is possible.
Reese isn't the guy to ask, he's the pawn of the guy who actually has a holistic view of time travel, a reverse Isaac sent to his death by his son as a sacrifice.
Connor's actions in the film heavily imply he believes time is a flat circle, correctly. That's why he can blow up the machine and feel secure he won't need to send Reese any reinforcements.
Tanista
12d ago
They would be, if we weren't decades downstream of anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist education. People know just enough to feel they can slot each group into the appropriate ethical slots.
The Jews are Jim Crow Southerners and the Palestinians at worst are the Nat Turners of the world: righteous freedom fighters (ignore any nasty stuff of course) driven to evil by oppression. Any complaint by Jews that they'll be murdered if they ever give the concessions the other side wants are obviously just a repeat of what the Southern slavers said.
Is Islam pagan because its origin involved pagan elements and pagan characters?
People who believe those are pagan elements (as opposed to elements corrupted by paganism*) absolutely believe that about Islam. It is one of the most common attacks used against Islam actually.
* In Islam monotheism is ancient and paganism is the degeneration. The Kaaba is supposedly a house built by Abraham and Ishmael and then corrupted by pagan worship and restored by Mohammed. If you don't believe this, the Hajj (which predated Islam) really is just a pagan ceremony that was given a face-lift. There's a reason Muslims insist on it.
I'm not much for Jewposting but...the explanation for why progressive feminists and pro-LGBT people support it is basically the same and it's not any more flattering to them either. If they can be accused of being short-sighted, why not Jews?
Tanista
16d ago
Leviticus 26 is Yahweh telling the jews that if they fail to obey him, he will punish them grievously
The Moab stele makes the same claim about Chemosh. This isn't actually incompatible with the people being punished being the chosen of that God. Hell, it's kind of the point. Divine favoritism comes with a cost.
My naive take was that it's almost impossible for the game of partisan tit for tat to not end with the filibuster gone.
But the Senate has been resistant to going all the way despite Trump suggesting it. I suppose their desire to matter outweighs their desire to stick it to the other team.
Yes, many historians make the argument that the Islamic focus on pagans is polemic. Mohammed's supposed home was surrounded by different Christians and many Arabs were Christians. Yet it makes it seem like it was mainly a struggle with pagans.
I'm not so revisionist that I'm sold that Mohammed's followers were all Christians though. I think one reading is that the Qur'anic author saw the Christianity was already winning and, like Paul, saw a chance to both convert pagans (who already accepted Allah as a high god ) and assimilate the "god-fearers" who were interested but for whom the lack of an Arabic Bible was a problem with the rest of the monotheistic faiths. The Qur'an explicitly backs the old religions (until it doesn't) and outright states that the point of it being sent down was to give Arabs their own book in "clear Arabic", the Bible not being translated at this time.
One reason I don't believe that they were all out and out Christians is the ignorance of a lot of Christian material. The author of the Qur'an is not only very ignorant about Jesus (his polemics against the divinity of Christ are amateur hour) they can't quite tell what's apocryphal or not. There are other mistakes that are stunningly ignorant for either Jews or Christians.
It would also explain the absolute arrogance of trying to weld together Christianity and Judaism without accounting for all of the reasons Paul had issues with the law or the wide divergence over centuries: they just didn't know what they didn't know.
(Now that I think about it: if it was just the path of least resistance why not abandon the strict monotheism? It would only piss off the Jews but it would bring in far more Christians as allies, it wasn't like most of them at this time were Ebionites)
Incidentally, the five Christian Pentarchs were the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. Rome is Catholic, Constantinople was Orthodox up until the 1400's but is now Muslim (and called Istanbul), while Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem fell to the rising Arabs. In other words, 4 of the 5 original Christian holy cities are currently under Muslim control.
Huh. In Paradox's games set when paganism was still a thing one of the ways to get your religion reformed and recognized as a stable equal of the organized monotheistic faiths is to capture - iirc - 80% of the existing holy sites. I wonder if someone was influenced by this.
While I do think that at its core masculinity implies a responsibility to be willing to use force to defend the good if necessary - and thus all men have a certain responsibility to embrace the capacity for violence - it's a big world and it's okay if some guys are skinny nerds who read a lot.
I mean, it's a big world and fat chicks get laid all the time too. I don't know that it's irrational for them to want to improve their status despite that fact.
It's also okay to be a skinny nerd iff the situation isn't so bad as to justify the deployment of force at scale and the entire point of the meme is that the growth in the number of such men will make it necessary. He has reason to strike back.
Tanista
21d ago
That would fit the the "empires win except for RNG" claim.
The most likely outcome was the Arabs converting to one of the other existing monotheisms. Most likely of the two being Christianity. It was incredibly lucky (or it was providence) that Mohammed existed and he could draw on the Biblical description of Arabs. And even then they benefited from both nearby empires having dragged each other to death's door.
Without this, they continue as they were with groups like the Ghassanids being aligned with the Christian Romans and being mercenaries for them.
I ran it through ChatGPT and /r/askhistorians for a source and apparently it isn't a pure invention. The rumors about a person peeing on themselves weren't about Marie Antoinette either (though the below book's assertion that it was cheerfully accepted is weird since the original source is unflattering). Tony Spaworth's book on it does mostly complain about the smell leaking from nearby latrines so maybe the regularity of that was conflated with people in the public galleries "pissing in all corners" as Princess Charlotte apparently complained being standard practice.
Sanitation, or lack of it, did something to level these differences in living conditions. Although French people of the time saw Louis XIV’s Versailles as a gold standard of refinement, older habits died hard. Versailles “cheerfully accepted” the princesse d’Harcourt, whose obnoxious behavior—she sometimes relieved herself in her skirts, nonchalantly leaving a foul trail behind her for the servants to clean up—was like a throwback to a less polite age, when aristocrats had bothered themselves less with self-restraint.
Even members of the royal family—women as well as men, the king included—thought nothing of giving audiences or chatting to intimates while installed on the closestool. In 1723 the high-living Regent received Saint-Simon in this way at Versailles the morning after one of his late-night suppers, horrifying his friend by his befuddled manner and thick voice. Within a month the Regent was dead.
The privies of Louis XIV’s Versailles have so far escaped close study. In the eighteenth century there were public latrines placed in the corridors and stairwells of the palace, the Grand Commons, and the other annexes: these latrines consisted of a room with a wooden seat, or lunette, closed by a cover in a vain attempt to shut in the odors, and connected by a waste pipe to a cesspit. Some were kept locked and the key distributed to nearby residents.
Versailles was no different from Paris in the squalor of this type of latrine. For instance, in 1785 we find seven lodgers in the attics of the Grand Commons, among them one of the king’s dressers and one of the queen’s chaplains, petitioning for the closing down of a fourth-floor privy because “the smell penetrates the lodgings … and infects furnishing, clothes and linen,” as well as “serving certain riff-raff who use it as a meeting place.”
Noble courtiers fared no better. In 1766 the king’s daughter, Madame Adélaïde, demanded new rooms for a lady-in-waiting lodged above the queen’s apartment, “far too near the privy.” Two years earlier the comtesse du Châtelet, who lived in the attics of the south wing, complained of the smell from the nearby privy and also—a glimpse of the cheek-by-jowl living at Versailles—of the fact that she could be seen in her cabinet from its window.
To the smell was added the risk of leaks, whether through the floor of latrines to lodgings beneath them, from which not even the rooms of the royal children were safe, or from iron or lead pipes prone to blockage and corrosion, like the ones that let their contents “leak and poison everything” in Marie-Antoinette’s kitchen.
If people found the latrines closed, they would relieve themselves in the public corridor, as happened in 1741 after a privy in the attics of the north wing was converted into a lodging. People did the same in the first-floor gallery of the south wing. When the newly married dauphin and dauphine were lodged here in 1745, iron barriers were placed in front of the arcades opposite their rooms “to prevent indecency and dirtiness.” In 1762 the comte de Compans complained about the passersby and kitchen boys who “attended to their needs” in an inner courtyard in the same wing, “often breaking his windows,” presumably because he remonstrated with them. Bombelles, an admirer of Versailles under Louis XVI, wrote in his journal that more effort could be made to address the “dirtiness” of the public galleries.
Yes, it's a coordination problem.
But the issue is that there's no benefit to solving said problem. Why would Ridley Scott make his movie slightly worse to correct the impression that the Vikings dressed like goths?
Especially since the misconception may last precisely because it is of no great importance to anyone. People can find counterarguments to all sorts of sacred truths today...when they care.
If that happens, you might end up with a legitimate secessionist movement (assuming the stink from Trump wears off).
It's treated as absurd, as if QC has the exclusive right to agitate so, but we'll see.
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