johnfabian
1yr ago
I finally caved and watched it. I had seen Malarchuk, I had seen Zednik (much less worse), wasn't particularly interested in seeing this one until I became aware there was a debate over whether it was intentional or not.
Do I think Petgrave deliberately kicked him in the throat? No. Do I think he deliberately raised his leg? That's harder to say. I play hockey and I flatter myself into thinking I have a generally decent understanding of this sort of thing. It's really, really difficult to try and parse intent by slowing down a video frame-by-frame. Hockey is a very fast sport and these sorts of collisions occur in fractions of a second. It is extremely tempting to read into these sort of things more than is actually there.
A little bit of background: about 15 years ago pro hockey started cracking down on hits to the head. There were a rash of bad concussions to high-profile players like Sidney Crosby and the general rumblings about the concerns of CTE, so the NHL, fans, and the general public were supportive of further restricting what was legal. (Before you could more or less hit people in the head without getting penalized, provided you did not commit another penalty in the process - this resulted in hits like this being entirely legal and generally celebrated). Before players were generally held to be responsible for themselves - don't want to get hit in the head? Don't skate through the neutral zone with your head down. Now the onus was reversed; it was the responsibility of the player hitting not to target their opponent's head.
This created two general trends: first, since the ban players have been generally less "heads up" in their play. It used to be keeping your head up was important for not getting concussed by the meathead on the other team; now you can more safely watch the puck while you're stickhandling. Part of the reason Johnson gets caught in the neck here is that he's looking down as he comes across the blueline (previously a very risky move), and so he's both unaware of the player coming at him and more crouched over.
Secondly, it has created a professional and hobbyist enthusiasm for watching slo-mo videos. In order to determine whether a hit merits a suspension, the league would look over video repeatedly from different angles and with different speeds trying to parse intent, and when they would announce the results of an inquiry they'd produce a handy film, JFK style (example). Similarly every time there's a big hit in the NHL you will see on social media fans poring over every frame trying to prove or disprove intent to injure. Very frequently you will see very absurd manipulations by fans to try and conjure up something that isn't there. A favourite tactic is to slow down the video before impact, and then speed it up at impact; this gives the impression of more deliberation by the hitter and a more violent impact.
So for Petgrave's hit: no I can't say for sure either way. It looks somewhat suspicious; he may well have been trying to stick a leg out to sort of block or hamstring Johnson. He might have lost his balance. He might have been trying to stick a leg out and then lost his balance. I think it would be fair to rule out any deliberate intent to hit Johnson so high, but whether the play itself was dirty I feel like I could be convinced either way.
What this incident reminds me of is a play about a decade ago where Matt Cooke, notorious head-hunter, severed the Achilles' of superstar Erik Karlsson. This was another incident where a notoriously dirty player injured a star, and there was an intense debate over the time whether it was deliberate or accidental. The discussion on it was inevitably coloured by the reputations of the two players.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I think you're underestimating how much one can do with makeup. Among my siblings, me and my younger sister have brown hair, brown eyes, darker complexions, and at least with my sister I've seen her very convincingly go "mock Indian" with the right makeup/style/accessories (we're like around 5% Métis or whatever; multiple full-blood indigenous relatives from the early 19th century, by all accounts more than Ms Ste-Marie).
My older sisters are both fair, blonde, blue-eyed and would not pass muster as indigenous even though we all have the same parents and otherwise resemble each other strongly. Similarly Ste-Marie looks very much like her (fairer) brother
johnfabian
1yr ago
Your post about Aurora was the inciting incident for this post. Is all you've read of KSR Aurora? Because I'm sure the context would be rather lost on someone new to him given it's essentially KSR meta-critiquing himself by reversing all his usual tendencies. It's not really his best work, especially given that it is so inward-focused.
I've read about half the Culture books (whenever I come across one in the library), and I really should start hunting down the rest.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I think you know that's a rather markedly atypical use of the word "liquidate". I'm inclined to think you are trying to be deliberately inflammatory, and (poorly) pretending otherwise.
"Ah you see officer, when I said on twitter that Hamas should liquidate all the Jews I simply meant that they should be provided with refreshing beverages!"
Canada's most famous indigenous woman: not indigenous, not even Canadian
Buffy Ste-Marie is a musician. She has a deep discography of folk music that incorporates her indigenous identity and activism. She has lived a long and productive life as arguably the most famous Canadian indigenous woman. For Americans she's probably better known as the first woman to breastfeed on television, an interesting milestone in its own right. It's also good that this proves she's a woman, as it's the only element of her public identity that is still standing. In news that should shock exactly zero people who are tangentially aware of the notion of "Pretendians" in Canadian high society, the CBC has rather convincing evidence that Buffy Ste-Marie's version of her life's history is fraudulent.
The details have changed over the years - a sign in itself, if anyone would have risked official censure to point it out - but in general Ste-Marie has claimed herself to have been born to a Piapot Cree woman, and then subsequently removed from her birth mother (either because of her death, or forcibly as part of the "Sixties Scoop", which should have itself been a red flag considering she was born in 1941). She claimed to have been adopted by an American family, and later reconnected with and adopted by her birth people in Canada. Well, the documentary evidence seems fairly irrefutable: her "adoptive" parents were her birth parents. Her siblings are her full-siblings. She was born Beverly Santamaria in Massachusetts, and has no ancestral connection to Canada at all. Her father was Italian, her mother English.
She appears to have begun claiming Indian ancestry in her early 20s, first claiming to be Mi'kmaq, a perhaps more believable white lie having grown up in New England. Alternatively, she said she was Algonqiun. A few years later she claimed she was Cree, which prompted her paternal uncle to correct a local newspaper on that fact in 1964. In the next few decades as her career began to take off, coinciding with a general surge of interest in Native American arts and culture, she increasingly resorted to legal threats to silence her family members from contradicting her self-constructed origin story, including threatening her brother that she would tell the world that he had sexually abused her.
I've been watching the trickle of responses over the past day on reddit as news this piece was coming out spread. This thread on /r/indiancountry is generally defensive, arguing that irrespective of the exact circumstances of her birth that she is legitimately indigenous via ceremonial adoption in her 20s. I think these kind of arguments will melt away now that the CBC investigation has been published. It seems clear to me that Ste-Marie's story was not borne of confusion or innocent mistake, but was rather a deliberately and cynically constructed narrative that was upheld through threats and intimidation. The investigation was much more thorough and dug into a lot more nasty stuff than I expected. Ste-Marie was a Canadian legend, and had been endlessly fêted by the CBC (and other Canadian media) prior to this. I would point out that although the CBC has generally gone mushy progressive, its investigative journalism programs, namely Marketplace and The Fifth Estate (who undertook this project) have remained excellent and provide very good value for taxpayer money.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I read The Left Hand of Darkness earlier this year and was sort of surprised to see the amount of reading into it of exploration of trans topics. To me the novel did not really address what I could recognize as transgender/sexual themes. Rather Le Guin seemed much more interested in exploring masculinity/femininity as social constructs, and how a culture might be affected without "true" masculinity/femininity. Besides the toying with the reader of seeing the characters as male by default, the introspection seemed mostly to focus on what the cultures lacked in their essence by not being sexually dimorphic. E.g., Karhide is a society that simultaneously lacks female affection and childrearing, but also male obsession and capacity for war.
Maybe I have a sort of inherent bias against reading things as trans metaphors, but some of the reflections I read afterwards trying to tie the novel to contemporary trans politics seemed like rather clear misreads of the novel to me. Just my impression
johnfabian
1yr ago
Kim Stanley Robinson, science fiction, and the limits of what you can imagine
A couple times on this forum Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR, for short) has come up. He's an American science fiction writer who plies mainly in hard(er) science fiction, and especially likes to play with themes that explore the interactions between technology, culture, and economics. He takes some limitation of humans and imagines: what if it were not so? How would we change, what could we do, what new things would we discover about ourselves? He's a bit of a granola-eating utopian socialist so I'm sure some here would have certain ideological objections to his writing. But it's nice sometimes to read work from someone who has a fundamental sort of optimism for humanity, that we might one day be able to put aside our differences and Figure It All Out.
His "Mars trilogy" (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) might be his masterpiece, and extends his inquisitive nature. A depiction of the colonization of Mars over centuries, there is an endless series of problems for the characters to solve; some scientific in nature, but more than that organizational and cultural. The colonization of a virgin world yields all kinds of conflicts where there can be no true compromise between people with differing fundamental values. Alongside the geoengineering of Mars proceeds the genetic engineering of the human race, as scientists begin to unlock the ability to greatly extend the lifespan of humans. This might just have originated as a conceit by KSR to keep most of the characters across the centuries required for the geological drama to play out, but he dives fully into imaging all the upheaval such an advance would yield.
There are Luddites, reactionaries, those who wish to monopolize longevity for themselves, a great and deep anger from the masses at the prospect that immortality might be denied to them. There are myriad complications and problems; certain limits prove tricky to overcome. But technological progress is an unyielding wave, and by the end of the series humans dabble in every kind of imaginable self-customization, from the crucial to the trivial: yes, all sorts of environmental adaptations to Mars' ecosystems are quickly developed, but so are custom mixes of psychoactive drugs. People create physical backups of themselves so they can do dangerous sports. All sorts of modifications can be sought to fill the spiritual and emotional void. People delay their physical decrepitude indefinitely. Women put off having children into their 300s.
But what people don't do is change their sex. The trilogy was published between 1992 and 1996; KSR likely would not have understood the concept of "changing gender". Despite the near-infinite possibilities of changing one's physical form that is offered, no one seeks to transform themselves; no woman decides to father children, no man bears a child. There is no mention of purely cosmetic alterations to simply imitate the opposite sex, or become some even more complex sexual entity now that technology enables them to do so. No character ever feels any deep or emergent desire to push past this one final barrier, when all the others have already been crossed. And it's not like KSR is some prude or philosophically opposed to it; his more recent novels feature trans and non-binary characters, and in those that feature similar types of possibility with respect to genetic engineering people freely experiment with switching sexes even if they do not have some form of dysphoria. The simplest answer is that the notion that people would want to change their sex simply did not occur to him, and this is remarkable in the context of the books trying to imagine all the possible physical and societal limits that humans could push.
Most of the original hundred colonists are either American or Russian; one might speculate that if the books had been started five years earlier, the latter would have been Soviet, and if they had been started five years later, perhaps Chinese. To some extent this is the problem of all science fiction that deals in the near future (the the trilogy begins in the far-off future of 2026); it is far enough away to be unable to predict with certainty but close enough that mistakes seem obvious in hindsight. But I think this is also somewhat of a humbling notion that we just might not be as good at predicting societal changes as we might flatter ourselves to be. I used to feel that they were more strongly tied to material/economic forces; in recent years I've become less sure. When it comes to predicting the grand arc of human civilization it is a lot easier to look a fool than a wise man. I'm glad that there are people who are willing to ignore that and take a stab.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Really, if Lenin was as influential and powerful of a figure as he was claimed to be, then Russia would've gotten off much lighter at Brest-Litovsk; he was the one pushing for peace, and Trotsky ended up convincing the rest of the Bolsheviks to follow his harebrained "neither war nor peace" strategy instead.
johnfabian
1yr ago
The difference being that 95%+ of that figure was Iraqis killing other Iraqis without American involvement (besides setting the dominoes falling in dismantling Saddam's government)
It would have been another story if American forces had killed a million Iraqis themselves
johnfabian
1yr ago
In the short run: Jacques Parizeau, leader of the Parti Québecois (the provincial separatist party) and premier of Québec announces victory in the referendum means secession from Canada. He probably immediately starts a tug of war between himself, the federal government, and Lucien Bouchard (head of the Bloc Québecois, the federal separatist party). The PQ leaders were "hard" secessionists in favour of quick and if necessary, unilateral secession; the BQ leaders were largely "soft" secessionists who wanted a negotiated exit with specific details determined by further referendums, and envisioned a Québec that was still largely within Canada's economic sphere.
This would've presumably created a three-way media battle, with each side claiming the referendum results as validation of their own perspective. Indigenous groups and anglo-dominated neighbourhoods/cities would announce their own secessions. The Canadian military would've likely secured important federal property but not be required to take any aggressive position. The western-based Reform party and the out-of-power Progressive Conservatives would likely demand a new federal election if PM Chrétien did not form a unity government.
In short it probably would've been a mess with no one side having a clear advantage in popular support. Any slow-moving legal proceedings would've doubtlessly favoured the government of Canada. I think there was little chance of serious violence; very high chance of a kind of political gridlock between the various factions. Antagonism and generally shit-slinging between anglo and French-Canadians would've reached a zenith and maybe pushed the needle towards more support for secession. On the other hand, political uncertainty and economic chaos might push support back towards federalism instead. Hard to say.
It's pretty wild to imagine how different history may have been if that vote had swung another half percent in the other direction.
The result would not have been Québec leaving Canada, but there probably would have been a marked increase in French/English antagonization, as well as presumably French/indigenous strife. The 1995 referendum question was much too vague; while the PQ fully intended that a 50+1 Yes vote would allow them to proceed with a negotiated or unilateral secession, how it would have played out in reality is doubtful. Subsequently the Supreme Court adjudged that provinces do have the right to secede, but it requires "a clear question and a clear answer" (neither of which the 1995 vote had), and that would oblige the federal government to negotiate an exit for whichever party was seceding.
But one could certainly imagine a lot more social strife and culture war if the vote totals had been reversed. For reference here is the referendum question:
Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign, after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership, within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995?
I imagine that for many it was very much less than clear what this entailed. This was of course, by design.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Israel has gotten a lot of egg on its face, but I do not think it has in any way been meaningfully "weakened" by the Hamas attack. If anything it is more likely it has been strengthened through greater public unity
johnfabian
1yr ago
Would that really be necessary? There's millions of Ukrainians who already lived within Russia's pre-2014 borders, and unless I'm very much mistaken I've not heard of much repression or resistance from them.
johnfabian
1yr ago
KSR is a sort of utopian Marxist, and so he very much thinks that technological advancement is married inextricably with social and cultural change (similar to another sci-fi great, Iain Banks). This makes for some very interesting science fiction because his future societies are not merely the 21st century, but in spaaaaaaace. He's an interesting author to read through the decades because the futures he writes about shift as the technology and culture of his own time shifts. I might write a short thing in the culture war thread about one specific element of this
johnfabian
1yr ago
As an add-on, food media. The internet (and youtube especially) has allowed cooking shows to escape the ivory towers of the test kitchen, meaning it's not just the tastemakers you have to go to for insight and instruction. This has not only allowed for a proliferation in the types of recipes and cuisines you can find on the internet, but it's also meant a rather systematic dismantling of a lot of culinary school traditions and myths. There has never been a better time for the curious mind to enjoy making their own food.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer. But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem.
Israel would not have this specific problem of Hamas launching attacks from Gaza (that up until now, had been quite comfortably handled). But they might have other problems: a revival of pan-Arabism, a withdrawal of US and western support, the fervent determination of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and maybe Egypt to pursue development of nuclear weapons, etc.
Brutal, overwhelming force might solve one problem, but if in the process that creates three more, you are no farther ahead than when you started.
Israel has long-term plans. God, after all, has promised them the Holy Land, and they see a long-term way to achieve it. Incrementally expanding settlements in the West Bank every year and fighting off a spirited attempt from Hezbollah/Hamas once a decade might be a slow way, but so far it looks like a sure way. They no longer face an existential threat. They've mollified and bought off their formal rivals, and in the process surpassed them. They have ironclad security guarantees and economic support from the world's most powerful countries. Why risk all of that?
johnfabian
1yr ago
I don't think the compact was the same. Psychologically-speaking, the United States had lived through decades of peace. An attack by an outside enemy on the homeland was practically unthinkable. It was not the covenant of the government of the day to prevent something that was unimagineable and unpredictable (at least to the average citizen). This was why in part the American bloodlust after 9/11 was so extreme.
By contrast Israel has been under a siege mentality their entire existence, and after 1973 the threat shifted from outside state actors and their conventional armies to terrorism. The threat of the Second Intifada in particular was that violent death could visit any Israeli at any time. The border wall, the Iron Dome, the hostage trades; the government of Israel (under various parties) has undertaken immense cost and effort to save the lives of handfuls of citizens. I'm not sure there's been another government so willing to spend money to save the life of the individual at the margin (at least at the hands of their enemies).
johnfabian
1yr ago
I think this will be bad for Bibi. It's one thing to have occasional rockets slip through the Iron Dome and kill a civilian or two per year. It's another thing to have this happen on his watch. The legitimacy of Likud is that their hardline approach delivers results with respect to the security of Israel. When the dust settles opinion might turn on him; I think this might happen regardless of whether there will be a general political shift.
I think the decision to slowroll settler expansion in the West Bank in exchange for petty violence from Palestinians was a very deliberate one, but this level of violence will probably force some kind of shift in Israeli strategy, one way or the other.
johnfabian
1yr ago
My aunt and uncle had a place in Florida for the past decade until they sold in June this year. Like a lot of retired Canadians they live half up north, then go somewhere warm in winter. It wasn't the only factor in their decision to sell, but the forthcoming election was another push to convince them to get out. They felt in general people had gotten a bit more aggressive, rude, and generally unhinged in their time there. Aggressive driving seemed to be up as well as casual/threatening handling of guns. They didn't live in an expensive part and if you just walked around the neighbourhood you could see a number of sort of gauche displays of political affiliation. They decided that it was best to leave before you leave with bitterness.
johnfabian
1yr ago
- Extroversion: 70
- Emotional stability: 66
- Agreeableness: 51
- Conscientiousness: 18
- Intellect/Imagination: 96
Not sure what this means exactly.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Speaking of Cromwells, last week I read through Hilary Mantel's trilogy about Oliver's distant ancestor, Thomas Cromwell (Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, The Mirror & the Light). Really enjoyed it. Historical fiction is often saddled when it deals with famous individuals but the incidents involved are simultaneously famous enough and factually unsure (like Anne Boleyn's fall) that it still finds itself with plenty of space to maneuver. Great prose too.
johnfabian
1yr ago
In a broader sense than what the commenters below added, there are various scenarios where market failures exist because of information asymmetries. I.e., person A knows about x and person B does not, so they can't come to terms they both find agreeable. In this case there has to be some kind of intervention by the government or another third party for things to work; classic examples for this would be used cars and health insurance.
Insurance companies have a much more sophisticated understanding of wildfire risks than the average person. Throw in some other cognitive biases (humans generally don't organize their finances in 50 year windows), and there are going to be places where insurance companies essentially feel obligated to raise rates to the point where humans will not pay them. Hell, auto insurance is something comparatively much simpler for both issuer and seller and governments generally still have to force drivers to buy it.
From what I remember from summer 2021 mostly the former. They were typically churches on or near rural reserves, and in general indigenous Canadians are more church-going than your average Canadian of European descent. One of the amusing results of this was that indigenous elders tended to be much more outspoken against the church burnings (some links: 1, 2, 3), while you practically had to drag condemnations out of Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh (leaders of the major center and center-left parties, respectively).
There were a few exceptions, like an Egyptian Coptic church that was targeted, or a Vietnamese church..
johnfabian
1yr ago
certainly I've heard of various otherwise dim-seeming elite athletes having savant-like memory (LeBron James and Steven Stamkos are two that pop to mind)
The other thing to understand is that hockey developed on the Canadian frontier: it was the game of soldiers, hunters, fur-traders, trappers, prospectors. Hard men, violent men, playing a sport that was adapted from indigenous stick-and-ball games that were themselves proxies for war. The need for a self-policing element to the game was clear, and fighting was already entrenched enough in the culture of the game that by the time it established itself in "civilized" areas, the first official rules accommodated it.
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