johnfabian
2yr ago
The written word is vastly more information dense than any other medium. Say you want to know something more about a subject: maybe it's wormholes, maybe it's the Taiping Rebellion, maybe it's about music theory. Well if you want to get even the slightest bit of insight it requires reading a text. A youtube video cannot approach virtually any subject with the required depth. Listening to someone read a text is just inefficient; the audiobook version of the book I read over Thanksgiving weekend runs 53 hours. And some subjects require a combination of plain and pictorial text/illustrations to get across key concepts.
If you want to learn anything about any academic subject, there is no substitute for reading.
johnfabian
2yr ago
Definitely a thing among male (and otherwise white) academics in Canada, especially because they're the ones most vulnerable on identity grounds.
johnfabian
2yr ago
Kanye in his prime (haven't listened to his last few albums) had a very fun lyrical delivery with interesting rhyme schemes. example from "Golddigger":
Eighteen years, eighteen years
She got one of your kids, got you for eighteen years
I know somebody payin' child support for one of his kids
His baby mama's car and crib is bigger than his
You will see him on TV any given Sunday
Win the Super Bowl and drive off in a Hyundai
She was supposed to buy your shorty Tyco with your money
She went to the doctor, got lipo with your money
She walkin' around lookin' like Michael with your money
Should've got that insured, Geico for your money (Money)
If you ain't no punk
Holla, "We want prenup! We want prenup!" (Yeah!)
It's somethin' that you need to have
'Cause when she leave yo' ass, she gon' leave with half
Eighteen years, eighteen years
And on the 18th birthday he found out it wasn't his?!
then in the last verse the perspective flips:
Now, I ain't sayin' you a gold digger, you got needs
You don't want a dude to smoke, but he can't buy weed
You go out to eat, he can't pay, y'all can't leave
There's dishes in the back, he gotta roll up his sleeves
But while y'all washin', watch him
He gon' make it to a Benz out of that Datsun
He got that ambition, baby, look at his eyes
This week he moppin' floors, next week it's the fries
So stick by his side
I know there's dudes ballin', and yeah, that's nice
And they gonna keep callin' and tryin', but you stay right, girl
And when you get on, he'll leave yo' ass for a white girl
johnfabian
2yr ago
At the time it was claimed more than 40,000 had died in the terror bombing of Rotterdam, but the actual figure was more like 1,000.
johnfabian
2yr ago
I always envisioned in the sense that if you can think of a single exception, then otherwise the rule is sound.
If you were to say "humans don't have brown hair" that's immediately false because you can think of dozens of examples otherwise. But if you could only think of one exception to a rule, then in general it's fairly sound.
johnfabian
2yr ago
I actually think it will be a big missed opportunity if Galadriel doesn't fuck Sauron. Like if this is going to be shitty Tolkien fanfic, push all the chips into the centre of the table. Let's get crazy!
johnfabian
2yr ago
I've seen it referred to as "CW casting" (in reference to a channel that pumps out mostly teen soap operas). Just blandly generic handsome people
johnfabian
2yr ago
even in the Medieval era elective monarchies like Bohemia and Poland practically preferred to pick foreigners rather than from among their own nobles
johnfabian
2yr ago
Just as a gauge of the fan response, House of the Dragon gets on the order of 3-4x as many comments for each episode thread on /r/television than Rings of Power. Similarly on their main respective subreddits (/r/houseofthedragon and /r/lotr_on_prime) participation is about 4-5x higher on the former. For example the "no book spoilers" thread for HotD episode 5 has 11,399 comments at the moment, compared to the no spoilers thread for RoP episode 5 which has 2,586.
At least on reddit it's obvious what is driving more organic fan participation.
johnfabian
2yr ago
Deviations from the source material are about problem #500 with this show. It's really shoddily made.
Plus, it is not as though RoP is actually a Waterworld or Heaven's Gate or similar; as you say, the perspective is that it isn't a "ground breaking masterpiece".
Quality-wise, it's really bad, and given that they're on the hook for five seasons of this it might yet turn into that level of disaster if they're paying for all five seasons of it.
How to exactly gauge the success of a streaming show is difficult; what does a Waterworld/Heaven's Gate-esque flop even look like in the streaming environment? But this might be the one.
johnfabian
2yr ago
I was bemused, and subsequently not amused.
johnfabian
2yr ago
There was an amusing article linked on /ssc the other day (since deleted) which decried those who supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine as "brainwashed empire automatons" and "imperial apologists."
Whoops, I got that mixed up. The author actually meant that if you opposed Russia's war of conquest you were an imperial apologist.
All it is is that that some people hate western liberals (the people they know, and meet, and talk to on the internet) more than they do people committing war crimes. You've read the SSC essay.
About a decade ago I read a history of the Third Republic and found myself bemused that there were so many French who hated the opposing political faction that they would very literally prefer a German or Russian takeover (and the ensuing bloody purge of their rivals) than trying to work together and prosper. Now I don't find it so amusing.
johnfabian
2yr ago
My dad went to two Indian residential schools in his youth (he's white, just grew up in the north). Every now and then I mention it and it kind of breaks people's brains because they never consider it a possibility. Because 1947 was the end of mandatory attendance most of the indigenous people around where I live don't have parents who went to residential schools (or at least my three friends in high school didn't).
Though let me say I never use this as kind of a trump card or whatever. My dad's experience was fairly out of the norm and it doesn't really have any relevance to the years (mostly the 1890s-1910s) where the residential schools were pretty awful for students.
johnfabian
2yr ago
It just all seems so ugly. Most people have poor taste so radical self invention will be mostly just ugliness like architecture ripped from its patrimony and place. If politics ultimately springs from aesthetics, this liberalism is eventually doomed (but not before it wins and destroys what little of left of pre-modern life).
I've wondered whether I should make some kind of post about why neoliberal (so to speak) visions are so ugly. Like when the Soviets or Nazis dreamed big they dreamed a perfect world, where people were strong and brave and smart and beautiful. (nevermind the pile of corpses just out of frame)
But then you compare that with whatever the hell this is. This was a Green poster for the most recent German election. Forget about whether or not it's feasible. Their idea of a utopia is just ugly (and never mind all the weird elements that frankly make it look like a far-right parody of what a liberal would want)
Liberals at the moment seem very bad at articulating what kind of a world they want to create. More and more I wish the Soviet Union hadn't fallen; we've just gotten so pathetically complacent without a rival ideology
johnfabian
2yr ago
Firstly, tactical nukes would be used against formations in the field, not cities. That's what strategic weapons are for (of which Russia has 4000).
In the context of anything except a global thermonuclear exchange, there is effectively no distinction to be made between strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. Either would be a massive escalation of force and perceived risk. And even the yields on smaller tactical nukes make large civilian casualties/devastation inevitable. Little Boy would qualify as an unusually small tactical nuke in the modern context, and it killed 100k+
johnfabian
2yr ago
Yes, LEDs ended up being much better peformance-wise and were introduced shortly enough following fluorescents that the weird culture war element of it fizzled. But back in the day there were a lot of bizarre op-eds written about it
johnfabian
2yr ago
I have been wanting to do an effort post on the Culture War clashes of yesteryear that have since fizzled for various reasons.
Some good ones I think of from time-to-time:
-
incandescent bulbs vs. fluorescent
-
Terri Schiavo
-
stem cells in general
-
Israel/Palestine (comes in waves; gets forgotten for five years then comes back)
-
creationism
johnfabian
2yr ago
It's especially ironic in that Redditors have done a 180 and now are all for companies using their power to discriminate
johnfabian
2yr ago
(e.g. Aragorn wasn't played by an Anglo-Saxon actor, a lot of the music was Celtic...)
Mortensen is Danish, so it's very plausible he's a direct descendant of the Angles.
johnfabian
2yr ago
Eh, I think that's underselling Paul's position. Her chief-of-staff was saying that all Green MPs have to be Zionists, and she was backing him.
johnfabian
2yr ago
Yeah, I'm on the same page as you are. If you make a genuine attempt to present male/female I'm all good with it. No neopronouns and no they/thems though.
johnfabian
2yr ago
I should also add that this individual is kind of a stereotype of a "trender"; she's gone from being a woman in 2019, to agender, to nonbinary, now to ftm trans and nonbinary, with pronouns shifting every time (as she's gained increased prominence within the Green Party/national politics). She now uses he/they/ille pronouns (that's a French neopronoun), so wow, quelle surprise that someone misgendered her.
(I would say that normally I'm fine with going along with someone's preferred pronouns, but when it is so obviously farcical you have to draw the line).
there is absolutely a section of youtube which is just people pumping out long-winded rants about contemporary "woke" media. Which whether or not the criticisms are correct (and they often are because much of it is dire), it's nevertheless just an endless sea of performative negativity, at its heart not much different from the ones who are playing the reverse game with the algorithm by endlessly fêting the newest Disney/Marvel/whatever product. It can't be mentally healthy to just watch an endless stream of videos bitching about the casting of The Little Mermaid
More options
Context Copy link