Tollund_Man4
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User ID: 501
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Knife is incredibly useful for all types of things: making stuff from wood, serving as scissors to cut rope when you construct anything, when you gather some type of fruit or shrooms and myriad of other things. I carry knives with me very often, I have multiple of them in various places such as a car or work, etc. And it is not only me but also my wife.
Maybe this is just my domestication showing, but here in Ireland (very similar to the UK) I have almost never needed a knife for anything outside the kitchen. I might get a Swiss Army knife today because they're cool, but I'll probably just use it as a can opener.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
† A proposal for reconcilliation in Leicester: a flag with three coloured stripes, one orange representing Hindus, one green representing Muslims, and one white in the middle representing lasting peace. Stop me if you've heard this one before...
The resemblance of Leicester to Leinster is fitting.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
I was thinking that might be the case. I guess I'll find out.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
I had a similar childhood, just with more ramshackle bunkers I guess. I'm with you on the demonization of tools, and self-defence law here is woeful when it comes to carrying any kind of weapon.
Though here we have a real enough problem with gypsies fighting in the streets with garden tools (think Gangs of New York but much less stylish, I'm not joking) that you wouldn't be wrong to be wary of someone carrying one openly.
But if we lived through COVID we will get through this
Which is the worrying slogan I expect to see repeated (and added to) over the years.. the fact that governments can now expect people to tolerate and even support extreme interventions rather than call for the metaphorical heads of the decision makers who got them here is a precedent I didn't expect to become relevant so soon.
Would the EU countries have been as confident in endangering their energy supply if they weren't also confident that it would be tolerated? Will the policies which lead to an over reliance on Russia be overturned and the advocates discredited, or will the same wartime fervour we saw in the pandemic ensure that only bad people ask those kinds of questions?
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
There is no analogue, because generally men describe ugly women as having good friendly open personalities, and thin women as having relatively arrogant personalities.
What makes you say this? Sounds more like a media trope than anything else, especially when attractive women benefit from the halo effect.
That depends on whether the dialect actually hinders communication no?
This may or may not be the case, I might understand your accent perfectly well but still not like it for prejudicial reasons, e.g because it outs you as a backwards farmer or a privileged type worthy of resentment.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
The populace at the moment of lockdown had a deep desire for a rational, moral explanation of why thousands of people were dying.
If it weren't for all the media attention would most people have been able to tell? Where was their deep desire for a rational moral explanation of why thousands of people were dying of heart disease?
How about this, rather than filling a gap, lockdowns created the need for lockdownism. I'm coming round to the idea that the most people are simply statists (maybe less true in the US), and such massive government action created the deep desire for a justification. Not in the sense of demanding a justification, but rather wanting to justify it. It is perhaps the same psychological mechanism that allows totalitarian governments to survive for so long just by going big: The state acts, victory!
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Are you saying that concern for dialect based discrimination is always a motte-and-bailey or just that it's exploitable as one?
The latter I don't doubt, the former I have to disagree. Sometimes it really is just about class, other commenters have already mentioned cases where intelligibility isn't an issue.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Aristotle's The Nicomachean Ethics. Should have read it a long time ago really.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Brexit was supposed to be massive, but I don't see that much of a course change in the UK
It might eventually mean the dissolution of the United Kingdom given that it has given the Scottish nationalists a lot of energy and they're pretty eager to hold another referendum.
Similar (but to a lesser extent) in Northern Ireland where most voted Remain. I'd say it's early for anything to happen yet, but given the recent demographic tipping point some economically minded pro-EU Protestants would be an important cohort for nationalists to court.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
But when it's paired with "vote until they vote right" it seems hardly honest
Same thing happened with the Lisbon Treaty referenda in Ireland. The first try it was rejected in 2008, they held it again the next year and it passed.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
What's the use of the follow function?
It’s easy to see that nationalism runs contrary to this goal. If you only ever can be accepted in one country, if you can only be permitted to run important businesses or organisations in the country of your birth; and doomed to be an irrelevant outsider in all others — well, then your government has you by the balls — you have no real negotiating position with the state.
I don't think the policies you mention are inherent to nationalism. What's to stop me from saying "it's simple, we just have a nationalist state without those specific dysfunctional policies"?
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Except no one feels threatened by that
The Irish are as there are apparently some important undersea internet cables connecting Europe and America off the Irish coast which Ireland doesn't have the naval capacity to protect (the US, UK, and France have been patrolling the area but that still leaves Ireland's territorial waters).
Russian vessels were in the area a few months back. I'm not saying that's what they were there for, but that's what people here are saying.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Similar to Trump being supported by evangelical Christians.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Many people I know take serious pride and work, and in fact for a lot of people their work is the most important thing in their life. I’m talking people who don’t even really need the money, or who claim that even if they had enough money to retire they would continue working just as much as they do now.
Are those people working the same jobs that people are leaving in large numbers? I don't think many would work in fast food if they didn't need the money.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
I'm not sure if the bar is same in each scenario, the average man who just comes up and talks to her is going to be displaying more confidence than the same guy texting her online.
In first impressions you are only what you signal. Even if you are swiped left on she's not ruling you out as much as ruling out a handicapped version of you who hasn't had the opportunity to show he has the balls to talk to her. You can't presume the latter is disqualified because the former was.
What is that quote about the British empire having such effective administrators because they had a broad education and so could draw on the lessons of ancient history to improvise a solution instead of floundering in the face of anything outside of their narrow expertise?
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Just worried I'll embarrass myself doing it the first time
That's a pretty common feeling. People are mostly just going to be focused on themselves unless you're doing something that looks dangerous.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
I found it! It's from Roger Scruton:
Moreover, the pursuit of irrelevant knowledge is, for that very reason, a mental discipline that can be adapted to the new and the unforeseeable. It is precisely the irrelevance of everything they knew that enabled a band of a thousand British civil servants, versed in Latin, Greek, and Ancient History, to govern the entire Indian sub-continent—not perfectly, but in many ways better than it had been governed in recent memory. It is the discipline of attending in depth to matters that were of no immediate use to them that made it possible for these civil servants to address situations that they had never imagined before they encountered them—strange languages, alphabets, religions, customs, and laws. It is no accident that it was a classical scholar—the judge Sir William Jones, founder of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1788—who did the most to rescue Sanskrit literature from oblivion, who introduced the world, the Indian world included, to the Vedas, and who launched his contemporaries on the search for the principles and repertoire of classical Indian music.
Just finished a book about W.B O'Carolan, advisor to Éamon De Valera. It's got an awful title (O'Machiavelli: Or How to Survive Irish Politics) but some funny stories:
I once made a promise to an old woman I met in the Comeraghs. She was dressed in an old coat and shawl and had a face etched out of granite. She appeared to have been waiting for a public representative for many years. I took immense pity on her.
"Are you the senator they sent from Dublin?"
"Yes, ma'am, I am a senator from Dublin, but this is not my constituency. I'm canvassing for a good local man called Dinnie McDermott.".
"Mr Dimmie Mac? My hearing is not that what God gave me."
"DINNIE MCDERMOTT, OUTGOING TD FOR THE AREA."
"And what does he mean to me. Mr Senator?"
"He represents your interests in the national assembly which is part of our democratic system."
"He's never done anything for me, a leanbh. I ne'er set sight on him or his breed in these parts."
"Will you vote for him in next week's election?"
"How can I vote? I'm a poor widow woman without a pittance to my name."
"Have you not got a pension or medical card?"
"Ne'er the bit. No one looks after a poor widow woman."
"Have you heard of Mr de Valera?"
"Who?"
"MR DEVALERA, TAOISEACH OF OUR COUNTRY."
"What has happened to Mr Parnell? He passed this way the once and ne'er laid sight on him again."
I can arrange a pension, medical card and rent allowance for you, ma'am. Just sign here."
As it turned out, the woman was as rich as Croesus and had five houses, two bank accounts and a mechanically-propelled motor vehicle. The press got their hands on the story and ran it under the banner: Politician Grants Medical Card and Butter Vouchers to Rich Woman. It was the last promise I ever made (or kept).
There's also a bit in a letter to DeValera that makes me wonder how old the idea of the deep state is:
P.S. Did you know that Mac [Machiavelli] was a civil servant? The other Mac (MacEntee) says they're the permanent government!
A Chara,.
Ennis, Clare. 8-IV-36
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
- These people are free to do whatever they want with their wealth, even if they just inherited it all. If you disagree, I would have to ask you why you don’t believe in property rights
Believing in property rights doesn't obligate one to not criticise how people make use of their property the same way believing in free speech doesn't obligate one to not criticise what people say.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Jews have a high IQ and HBD would tell you that getting rid of them is a bad idea.
Would it? Of course it was an evil thing to do for other reasons, but the Nazis didn't persecute the Jews because they thought they were stupid, they did it because they considered them to be dangerous. Jews showing smarts could only make them seem more threatening.
History surely allows for some change in the public symbols whenever an old conquerer is undone.
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