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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3204 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 16, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Kendi's How to be an Antiracist. So far, mixed feelings. I have found his attempt to dissolve assumptions of racial difference very humanizing, and of practical merit. On the other hand, while he sounds perfectly innocent when discussing race with other minorities, when prodded far enough it always seems to come back to "whiteness" in the end. In fairness, Kendi's take on white individuals is fairly nuanced.

Paper I'm reading: Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

I just finished the 2018 Marvel Comics series The Immortal Hulk. it started off by reimagining the Hulk as a body horror series, and ended up in some conventional comic book places to restore the status quo to some degree. The fascinating things focused on were identity and destiny, personhood and drive.

By the end, they were using the terms associated with disassociative identity disorder (system, alters) in ways the Internet had also picked up on, and kids on social media had mutated into a fun, jazzy, interesting disorder to have. Still, the entire 50-issue series is an important series in the Hulk’s continuity, and clears up who exactly killed Bruce Banner’s father, as well as identifying the bottom-most Hell in Marvel’s cosmology and its devil: God’s Hulkish alter-ego.

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On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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