fishtwanger
No bio...
User ID: 2896
fishtwanger
2mo ago
I'll second the request for finishing up the section about the evening, if you get a chance. As a frog being slowly boiled, it's nice to get an outside perspective.
fishtwanger
2mo ago
We really really really don't give a shit about race compared to Americans.
If you find the time, would you care to talk a bit about the Dreyfus Affair? I'm quite curious about how it's interpreted in modern France.
fishtwanger
2mo ago
The question is, if the police do something that has the potential for looking bad, and then things go wrong and it does look bad, will the city government have their backs? And, if the city government does support the police when something goes wrong in a way that looks bad, will they remain in office?
It comes down to what the voters are more willing to tolerate. I bet the voters in Dallas have different answers than the voters in Seattle.
fishtwanger
2mo ago
Please do! I only know about it on a surface level, from some Wikipedia reading and a bit of Zola. But it seems to strike directly at what you were saying, about only caring about culture. I'm not French, but to my surprise, my understanding of French ideals matches your description very closely. But I only have an outside view, and of course no society ever completely lives up to its ideals. And so I'm wondering what it looks like from the inside, today, and how it fits into the national myths of France. What lessons do French children learn from it? What do intelligent adults make of it?
My (American) historical education barely touched on it, and the more I learn about it, the more I think that omission may have been a huge mistake. Even on a purely practical level, it seems like Americans ought to learn about how other republics dealt with that sort of thing. Especially now that our own republic is starting to look unstable.
fishtwanger
2mo ago
I don't think so? I haven't examined the numbers, but the core of the district is the same, and the borders are more compact. I'd naively give Sawant better than average odds that she could have won again, if she'd run again. It sounded like there was a last-minute push to do something like that, but it got shut down. From the article below:
“We did it. We won fair, legal, equitable, renter-empowered, community-led Seattle City Council district map in the first-ever redistricting process,” the Redistricting Justice for Washington group said in a statement.
However, maybe if you dig you could find something? Halfway down this article is a map overlaying Sawant's performance in the last primary with the district borders in this primary, and it does look like she would have lost some strong areas. (The white area in the NE is the arboretum, and no one (legally) lives there.
But for context, this guy came in third in our jungle primary, and he's about the most conservative possible in the area:
fishtwanger
2mo ago
1: Those who argue that racial differences (on average) outweigh individual differences are effectively arguing for racial identitarianism.
Alternatively, you could accept that the differences (sadly) exist, work on creating a society where people who differ (in any particular way we're talking about) will be treated as well as possible regardless of race, and fight back against anyone trying to use equality of outcome as a measure of racial discrimination (at least, without controlling for base rates).
On average, men are bigger and stronger than women, but the bell curves do have some overlap. We can try to create a world where shorter people can reach the top shelves, and weaker people can open jars, and where hand-to-hand violence isn't a way to resolve conflicts, without turning society into an identitarian battle of the sexes. And we should not look at jobs that require physical strength, see that they're almost entirely male, and claim that this is the result of discrimination against women.
Nor should we classify the job as "a man thing", or try to keep qualified women out of it, or criticize a strong woman by saying she's "acting like a man". But this is all about drawing fine lines and reaching for societal norms which have never existed and which we will only ever imperfectly approximate.
And yes, there will be some people who, for various reasons, attack even reasonable things that can be said. Possibly even an entire political movement full of them. Those people are still wrong. And yes, maybe there's actual discrimination going on, using the word in the bad sense. That's bad too. And yes, so are the people who manipulate or misunderstand statistics to justify the bad discrimination.
It's a long slow process of understanding the world and trying to make it better, without breaking it too much along the way.
fishtwanger
2mo ago
The Fremen canonically originally roughly from the Nile area
I know the Fremen have a lot of Islamic imagery, but I'd thought this in particular was a Jewish reference? They came out of Egypt, they were slaves on Salusa Secundus, they were persecuted and chased from planet to planet, all the while preserving their ancient beliefs (or at least, they think they did, but getting actual Reverend Mothers on Arrakis probably helped). And look, they're waiting for a Messiah!
fishtwanger
2mo ago
For what it's worth, I don't consider the Harry Potter movies to be "stories" as such, but rather an "illustration" of the books. I'm not an art snob, and I'm not using that term derogatorily. They're very very good illustrations. But I don't think they stand alone the way Game of Thrones did. They were like "Passion of the Christ", but with wizards.
fishtwanger
2mo ago
Well, yes, but the themes can be reused repeatedly? This is literature (or about as close as sci-fi gets), there doesn't have to be a one-to-one mapping to the real world. The Fremen are clearly a mashup of a lot of things, most especially Arabs and Islam, but why not toss in certain elements of Jewish history, too? (As distinct from "Judaism", which I don't think the Fremen borrow much from. They've got various private rituals, and hold themselves apart from other people, but that may be as far as it goes?)
fishtwanger
2mo ago
Stilgar planted the staff in the sand beside Paul, dropped his hands to his sides. The blue-within-blue eyes remained level and intent. And Paul thought how his own eyes already were assuming this mask of color from the spice.
‘They denied us the Hajj,’ Stilgar said with ritual solemnity.
As Chani had taught him, Paul responded ‘Who can deny a Fremen the right to walk or ride where he wills?’
‘I am a Naib,’ Stilgar said, ‘never to be taken alive. I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes.’
Silence settled over them.
Paul glanced at the other Fremen scattered over the sand beyond Stilgar, the way they stood without moving for this moment of personal prayer. And he thought of how the Fremen were a people whose living consisted of killing, an entire people who had lived with rage and grief all of their days, never once considering what might take the place of either – except for a dream with which Liet-Kynes had infused them before his death.
‘Where is the Lord who led us through the land of desert and of pits?’ Stilgar asked.
‘He is ever with us,’ the Fremen chanted.
And the Glossary:
Hajj: holy journey.
Hajr: desert journey, migration.
Hajra: journey of seeking.
What I find interesting about that "They denied us the Hajj" phrase, is that it's clarified to mean that it was denying them the freedom to go wherever they want. It seems to have lost the significance of a pilgrimage to a specific place (although Muad'dib's religion recreates that in the next book), and instead means something more like what a nomad or one of the traveling people might hold important, as one of the fundamentals of life.
fishtwanger
2mo ago
It's strange. Villeneuve clearly gets the story on some level. The cuts seem reasonable to me (even Alia), and a number of the changes, as someone pointed out, externalize the internal conflict. But at the same time, it's all wrong.
It's as though everything is a symbol for itself, to be displayed with maximum impressiveness no matter how little sense it makes. There's no subtlety, it's just beating the audience over the head. And the dialog is horrible, lacking gravitas and the nuances found in the book, with no distinction between formality and familiarity. And the delivery, especially by the two leads, makes them sound like whiny American children, sulky and pouting. But Chalamet breaks out of that at the end of the 2nd film, after he gets his vision, so it doesn't seem to be the actors' fault, and some of the other actors do give good performances. Frankly, I wonder about Villeneuve's command of the English language. And then the music is, well, dramatic, if not actually what I'd call "music". More like creaking bed springs turned up to 11, or an old house settling. And the architecture was as though someone thought "big" was a sufficient description.
On the other hand, the anisopters were cool. Shields were cool. The hunter-seeker was cool. I'm glad they gave the Fremen some sand-colored cloaks (although IIRC, in the books the sand on Arrakis was grey, but that's not important). The worms were great, especially the riding. (Although I still wonder at the dimensions of the worm described in the book: "a small specimen, only one hundred and ten meters long and twenty-two meters in diameter".) I like the military use of portable suspensors. I thought Ferguson did a great job as Jessica, and I thought Duncan-Brewster did a fine job as Liet-Kynes in the first one.
Irulan was just wrong, with again no gravitas and no sense of grace. She seemed practically autistic, very intently focused on some aspects of what was going on, while speaking in a quasi-monotone that made it clear that her history recordings were performance. I actually laughed out loud in the theater when the Reverend Mother described her as one of her best students (or whatever it was she said to that effect), since her portrayal in the books is quite the opposite (or at least, everyone likes to put her down by telling her that).
I get why it was convenient to externalize some of Paul's decisions by making the south be full of people who will follow him without question. But the repeated use of the term "fundamentalists" was jarring. What fundamentals, exactly? Obviously everyone in the audience gets what he means, but again I think it symptomatic of the problems with the dialog. It's not timeless, it's dated. "True believers" would be a more appropriate term. Same with Chani's argument about how the Fremen don't need an outsider to save them; it's trying to use current politics to inform our understanding of characters, but it sounds like a rant that came out of nowhere.
And the slow motion. And the endless scenes of people descending ramps. Or people arrayed in grids. Or slow motion people descending ramps in front of grids of other people. I came out of the first one thinking that if they'd just kept everything normal speed, they could have shaved half an hour off of the movie, and saved everyone in the audience half an hour of life. And the combat, ugh: I blame "300".
fishtwanger
2mo ago
I just re-watched the first half of "Blade Runner 2049", and I found a lot of the same visual tics in there, but for some reason they didn't bug me as much. I still recall ranting a bit, whenever it was that I first saw it, about how the original "Blade Runner" had a packed, bustling, "lived-in future" on the ground level, but we don't see much of that in 2049; it's mostly a series of trips to scenic vistas, interspersed with K's apartment or the police office, like a video game where you explore a new level and then hang out in the vehicle/lobby in between levels. (Also Hans Zimmer's bedsprings sounded like an acceptable substitute for Vangelis.)
Possibly I've gotten more jaded over time. I never saw the TV show "Lost", but from what I've heard, it was infamous for there being no "there" there. The mystery never led to anything, because it was purely there to create an effect in the audience. In "Dune 2", I'd contrast this with the sandworm riding, which I think was great, and which gave me that sense of awe while being an integral part of the story.
One of Greg Cochran's random theories that may pan out, is that they're slightly more related than that. The idea is that about 20k years ago, there were a bunch of people in north-central Siberia; IIRC his daughter, being a Dr. Who fan, dubbed them "Sibermen". One group migrated E to NE Asia, mixed with the locals, and eventually their descendants crossed the land bridge and became the first wave of Amerinds. A few thousand years later, another group migrated SW to the Pontic steppe, mixed with the locals, and their descendants were the Yamnaya, the ancestral Indo-Europeans.
Apparently big beaky noses were their thing?
fishtwanger
1mo ago
Compare this to the 80s and 90s when every action-oriented movie ever had sex scenes, if not also completely gratuitous nudity.
I'm still amused at how "Demolition Man" had gratuitous nudity that was completely separate from its "sex" scene.
One note about HBO is that 10 years ago the app had a "Late Night" section that was soft-core porn. And given the amount of nudity in its flagship series, including having parts of The Sopranos and The Wire set in strip clubs, I strongly suspect that a certain amount of female nudity was a requirement, at least for early seasons of a series. Nowadays HBO presents as more respectable, but I lay that mostly on Warner and AT&T exerting more influence - HBO went from a sub-sub-brand that had freedom to innovate and pursue quality, to the face of the media conglomerate owned by AT&T, and I fear that their glory days are over.
fishtwanger
1mo ago
Going from memory, it seems like the fun may only be on one side. In the 1st book, Feyd-Rautha thinks he's having sex for fun, but he was being seduced and brainwashed by Margot Fenring. In the 3rd, Alia has sex for fun, but spoilers mean that it's not actually a contradiction. In the 3rd and 4th, various Duncans do have sex for fun, but they're mostly being used for one reason or another. I don't know if you count books 5 and 6, but at that point sex is a weapon, to such an extent that they've made me wonder about Frank Herbert's kinks, much more so than any other author I've read.
fishtwanger
1mo ago
I wasn't trying to present a full counter-argument, but rather an expansion and slightly more detailed look at what you wrote a one-liner about. :-) I think the books do imply a fair amount of sex for fun, but it's all off-page and barely even talked about. Only the sketchy stuff is ever mentioned at any length, let alone depicted or made important to the plot.
For example, and again I'm going off memory here so forgive any lapses, I'm fairly sure that it's implied that Leto and Jessica have a good, healthy, fulfilling sex life, but we don't see it, and I don't recall anything more than a few mentions of how each feels about the other, very occasionally in relation to bedrooms or intimate moments. But when Jessica is talking with Thufir, she points out that it would be very easy for her to manipulate Leto, and her strong implication is that it would be during or after sex. That's what gets the focus.
And I think there was a mention that Feyd-Rautha had been spending "too much time" in the pleasure slave quarters, so as part of a punishment for something unrelated, the Baron had him kill them all with his bare hands. Any modern feminist would call F-R's sex "rape" due to the slavery involved, but I'll go out on a limb and say it was almost certainly more ethical than anything the Baron does, and more honest and less harmful than F-R's getting brainwashed by having a control word implanted in his head. But we only hear about it in the context of F-R having to kill them all.
fishtwanger
1mo ago
In film, probably something from Tarsem Singh's "The Fall".
In literature, probably John Steinbeck's "The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights", the scene where Lancelot and Guinevere pass on the stairs.
fishtwanger
1mo ago
Do both! Before and after, belt AND suspenders.
You get peace of mind, accurate information about the habits of the people who share the dryer, and the warm fuzzy satisfaction of doing a good deed. Any time spent in optimizing this trivial life detail is wasted. Just check before and after, never think about it again, and you'll come out ahead.
fishtwanger
1mo ago
I understand that Christian caritas is not a guiding principle here, but from a secular perspective, I still value allowing people the opportunity to grow and improve, even if people rarely take it. It feels like the right thing to do. Humane.
I'm not a mod, I don't want to be a mod, but I've been mod-like elsewhere at times. I don't know you, but in your shoes I've felt weary; worn down. And who knows, maybe this is one of those cases where enforcing the line with one person can help others veer back before crossing the line themselves. @HlynkaCG would probably appreciate how that works. But I'll go on hoping for the mods to collectively show mercy, or grace, or something like that.
fishtwanger
1mo ago
He insisted that all of his ideological opponents, whether they be Rationalists, woke progressives, fascists, or anything in between, were all really "the same" underneath
From the perspective of a space alien from another galaxy, all us 4-limbed Earth critters are alike. From my perspective, I barely comprehend why Trotskyist communists disagree with mainline communists, or what the substantive differences between the different Interantionals were. And there's absolutely a strain of conservatism that views all of us here as the spawn of the Enlightenment, and of a particularly virulent offshoot at that. We love defining, categorizing, systematizing, and playing games with Venn diagrams and 4-quadrant memes. We like reasoned and clear argumentation, we want evidence, and objective evidence at that, but all we really get is words words words. And even when we don't care about evidence, we pretend that we do.
We're the type of people who have a bunch of different ethical philosophies, but they all boil down to different varieties of consequentalism, clever hacks to work around the problem that we can't directly comprehend consequences, and so we've called these hacks by a salad of different names. But (and this is just a metaphor) when we encounter someone who's not actually a consequentialist, we don't even have the words to describe what that means, because we've used "non-consequentialist" to refer to other varieties of consequentialism.
He could be pulling this out of his rear, but the shouldn't the Mottely response to that not be to insist on the primacy of our nice little distinctions, but instead to question why he thinks he's so different? Maybe he can't put that in words, in a way that we can understand. Maybe we can't parse his binary blob*, but at least we can stick a wrapper around it and say "this dude has a Thing about politics that we don't understand". And maybe some of us conclude that there's no "there" there, that he's failed at constructing a perfectly rational system of the world from the bottom up, and that his views are fundamentally incoherent. But wasn't part of the problem that we don't want people claiming that they know what's going on in other people's heads, and ascribing views to the other people that the other people explicitly disclaim?
- Yeah, yeah, "ATM machine".
fishtwanger
1mo ago
There was even a great opportunity for me to have a punch-up with one particular post if I wanted
When I saw that, my first thought was that this seems to be engaging on the wrong level, but my second was to wonder what you'd make of it. I'm still curious, if you're up for a non-argument explanation of what you personally think?
fishtwanger
1mo ago
My mother ran into a problem where her family recipe for cranberry jelly stopped working. After a few years of debugging, and experimenting with things like altitude, it turned out to be the sugar content of the cranberries. Apparently the modern commercial breed has a lot more sugar than the old breeds. I don't know about 50 times, but it was definitely enough to cause pre-20th-century recipes to stop working.
Watermelon rinds have shrunk, too, causing problems for watermelon rind pickle.
And brussel sprouts are no longer as bitter as they used to be.
fishtwanger
1mo ago
After a few years of heavy coffee abuse, and at times low levels of amphetamines (generic adderall), I no longer get jitters or sleep problems from coffee, no matter how much I drink. There's only a subtle perking up which may be simply be conditioned reflex. Maybe something like this could happen to you, too, although I don't know whether you'd consider that good or bad.
One thing you might try is vigorous exercise after work. In my experience, that tended to drown out any residual effect of caffeine. Although some of the effect may have been the extensive hydration required.
fishtwanger
1mo ago
Sandman, of course. Nausicaa, The Dark Knight Returns, Kingdom Come, and Red Son are all classics. From Hell might be worth reading, especially if you can find a collected edition with all the notes in the back where he explains his process. Astro City (intermittently ongoing) is a favorite of mine, but some people don't get into it.
Congratulations, you've successfully de-lurked me by writing about my city. I largely agree with what you say about it, but there's some stuff I'd like to add.
For context, when 2020 hit, the city's mayor was Jenny Durkan, who as a white lesbian former-prosecutor lacked the identity credentials to shut down the George Floyd protests. Our new mayor is Bruce Harrell, a half-black half-Japanese man, who does have those credentials. And believe it or not, the city's been getting better since then. Everything you saw was worse a year ago, and worse a year before that, etc. Downtown is positively bustling now, compared to the wasteland that it used to be, although it's nothing like what it was before 2020. The radical DSA councilwoman retired, and was replaced with the "more conservative" of the two choices, a progressive black small-business-owner (pot shop) who wants more policing, probably because she doesn't like her neighborhood getting shot up.
Still, I think national businesses have correctly gotten the message that Seattle now lacks the consistent political will to create a good business environment. By which I mean, keeping the streets clean and sane, and criminalizing looting and shoplifting. It's a shame, because for quite a while the city had competent, business-friendly governance, which allowed all the "cool parts" to flourish. Perhaps chalk it up to ideologies which fail to propagate themselves.
If anyone wants to see a microcosm of what this looks like, check out this article from a neighborhood blog. Pay attention to what's said, and how they say it, and the range of views expressed in the comments. https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2023/12/how-joy-hollingsworth-flipped-city-council-district-3-seattles-most-progressive-district/
And yes, I regularly visit Portland, and it is worse. Although like Seattle, it is starting to recover.
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