domain:natesilver.net
jkf
2d ago
This is a bit regional -- pickups are more common for rural tradesman than urban -- partly maybe for high/low trust society reasons as you touch on, but also decreased feasibility of having materials delivered to the jobsite leading to an actual need to, uh, pick things up yourself.
Grauwacht
2d ago
Maybe that's naive, but isn't it kind of stupid to announce a secret stealth bomber mission by putting it before congress? Just seems counterproductive.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
Never Meet Your Heroes, Even Posthumously
When I was a kid, I discovered Harlan Ellison on Sci-Fi Buzz during his Harlan Ellison's Watching segments. They were my favorite segments, and I was crushed when an episode didn't have one. I would have been about 10 years old at this time. Luckily enough, they are all still available on Harlan's youtube. This one in particular I remember, being a comic card collector in middle school, along with most of the boys in my boy scout troop.
For me at that age, there was a lot to look up to in Harlan. He was witty, funny, charismatic, and never gave up on his childhood passions. More over he seems important and respected, his awards always preceding his name. I thought he was simply the best as a young nerdling. But I never read his stories. I can't even remember wanting to. Maybe I wasn't there yet, in terms of reading level. I honestly have no memory of what I was reading at that age. I do recall that by the time I was a freshman in highschool, I had read ample Ray Bradbury collections, and had been dabbling in Iain M Banks. For whatever reason I never circled back to Harlan until much later, picking up a ebook copy of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and being blown away by every story in it, especially Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.
Over the last month, I've been working through The Essential Ellison: A 35 Year Retrospective. It's completely changed my view of the man, and not for the better. The tome really lays bare how autobiographical much of Ellison's short stories are. The barely disguised self loathing, the tireless hatred he feels for all of humanity, but seemingly goys above all others, and the immaturity disguised as worldliness. Qualities I admired as a child watching him on Sci-Fi Buzz I'm profoundly glad I did not grow up to emulate as an adult.
The facts are Harlan's father died when he was very young, he was constantly in and out of trouble, he ran away from home, he worked a smattering of tough sounding blue collar jobs, he spent 2 years in the army, he was expelled from college, he was married 5 times, divorced 4, and he had no children.
Through his fiction, you further learn that he was, imagines, or romanticizes, being the only jewish boy in a small Ohio town relentless victimized by it's shitty irredeemable goy population. He loathes goys, and it rears it's head in story after story after story. He hates their dumb kids, their dumb churches, their dumb music, their dumb bowling leagues, you name it, he hates it. And he hates that they're all bigger and stronger than him at 5'3". Does he really feel this way, deep down? Who's to say. But after 1000 pages, probably 500 of which riffed on that theme, I'm left with the impression some part of him must. Often cloaked in humor, or the virtue of the civil rights movement of his day. But in his fiction, he seems less interested in the humanity of Southern Blacks, and more interested in the inhumanity of the goy.
He returns to his childhood repeatedly in his fiction, and how much better things were then, when radio plays lit his imagination on fire and his father was still alive. This is a strain of stunted growth I too suffer from, as my grumpy rants about video games will attest. I find ample share of compatriots in this regard. But something about Harlan's inability to take on the masculine burden of supporting and raising a stable family casts a darker tint to his nostalgia.
Harlan Ellison's entire public persona was a fraud. Or at least, in many of his writings, his fear that he was a fraud came through. Stories about a 4 times divorced celebrity manufacturing a shameful charismatic and funny public persona to hide how much he hated everyone. Stories about a shameless womanizer who has worked all sorts of rough and tumble blue collar jobs... but only for a few weeks so he could say he did. In reality he (I mean his character of course) has soft hands only barely acquainted with manual labor. Which reminds you Harlan the author never draws on all the odd jobs he claims to have had in his fiction, beyond name dropping them. Lastly, multiple stories where a four times divorced main character convinces his first wife to get an abortion she doesn't want, resulting in her emotional destruction which he treats as a personal offense to himself.
Are all these details that sound curiously autobiographical true? Or angles Harlan plays up for want of something to do when seated at his typewriter? At this point, with enough dots connected, I suspect the worst.
After making it through The Essential Ellison, I'm hurt. Hurt that someone I looked up to so much as a kid was in reality a hateful, developmentally stunted man. And I mean emotionally, not physically, though I suppose there was that too. A man who for 35 years picked his wounds in public, on the page. He kept them fresh, knowing it's what put food on the table. I feel sorry for him, but I also sincerely wish I hadn't known all that. Ah well.
quiet_NaN
2d ago
So I'm planning a trip to China this December. It's a gigantic place with a lot of history and I find myself a bit paralysed with indecision as to where I should go, I've drawn up about five or six different plans in multiple different parts of the country and can't choose between them.
I'm not sure how many people on this forum have actually visited China at all (there's at least one I guess), but anybody here have any recommendations to share? Any parts of the country in particular stand out to you?
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
2d ago
Nah. People have been trained to see “we should do nothing” as being equivalent to “we should support the oppressors”, it’s a tactic that they’re very used to dealing with.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
I did some googling and actually much less than I would have expected. Common L for clickbait media. Good to know though, kinetic deaths feel slightly less gruesome.
I guess I'll amend my sentence above to "and then you look and Gazan civilians are being killed at close to a 30:1 ratio, with no clear end in sight and a guarantee that once the newest generation of traumatized kids grows up, this will happen all over again".
ControlsFreak
2d ago
You cherry picked historical examples of cultural shifts to prove the possibility.
No. I just went through a wide variety of things, some which shifted, some which then didn't shift. We could keep generating a very very very long list, but I figured it was better to not have a 5k word comment that is just a silly list.
"Sometimes it's hard to tell" is a way to frame the discussion to throw out the need to discuss. It's similar to consensus-gathering but for an argument.
Frankly, this is bullshit. As evidenced by your statements:
People did argue that slavery was a societal good (if only because no one wants to be the villain). They argued that back in Africa black tribesman were either lazy or fighting each other, and over here they are productive and safe (so long as they don't provoke the master of course). If you could bring a southern man from the past here he'd probably look at urban black culture and tell you they were better off slaves.
If I had told a pro-slavery person, back when being pro-slavery was ascendant, that mayyyyyyybe they should be sliiiiiiightly open to the idea that it's poooossible that slavery won't stay ascendant forever, would you be there saying:
"Sometimes it's hard to tell" is a way to frame the discussion to throw out the need to discuss. It's similar to consensus-gathering but for an argument.
Would you be there saying:
You cherry picked historical examples of cultural shifts to prove the possibility. The theoretical possibility was never in doubt, the question was over whether the odds are high enough to be worth discussing. It's theoretically possible that in the future society decriminalizes murder, but I'm not about to make a writeup exploring the possibility.
?
no-fault divorce
???
AvocadoPanic
2d ago
We're supplying the knives to some of the children.
As I said in another response, we should let the quarreling foreign tribes fight.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
And yet they did so in Gaza, and all they got for it was Hamas on their borders, shooting rockets.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
idk I'm not the guy above, I just wanted to offer the thought that they don't only retreat
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
Yeah the Israeli government is acting to its incentives, I get that. Every action has tradeoffs and consequences. This is the action-set that the Israeli people (and by extension their government) have chosen. I don't envy their choice, it's a nightmare.
But the consequences of their choices is permanent conflict around them, and a world (which to an extent they depend on) that is steadily losing sympathy for their plight.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. This conflict is so fucking long and there's so much bad blood, I don't ever see it ending unless someone rips the band-aid off and ends it with a final... solution? But that won't happen so instead it'll just limp along. At this point the Israeli's and the Palestinian's deserve each other.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
So their "monomaniac" obsession applies to only one particular spot. It's not settlements in the West Bank which pisses off the Gazans.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2d ago
Gaza also bans abortion and IIRC limits birth control pretty heavily, in addition to promulgating pro-natal memes, even if they are "eventually outnumber the [redacted]."
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
I'm not saying Iran isn't an idiot for being in this situation. Their hostility to Israel is a massive, profound, and decades long unforced error. Although hard to blame them about being mad about the Shah. But we've done worse to countries and now we're chill (Vietnam, Germany, Japan) so if they'd suck it up they'd be better off.
I'm talking about the situation at hand though. Iran and Israel have beef, is it stupid? Yes. But it is real, and Iran getting nukes is bad. And clapping on Iran makes them want nukes more, I think that's also bad.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
What is an example of a piece of history of the conflict that you think would change people's minds if they were aware of it?
This is what gets me. At a certain point once the conflict spans generations and over 100+ years, "who started it" is the most useless question/discussion topic.
Every time someone tries to dunk with "well X did Y so the current Z situation is their fault" it is just so laughable.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
2d ago
I'm not sure how that would work? Wouldn't their obvious reply be that the Palestinians (and the Israelis) were begging the international community for support and aid?
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
It's hard to fault Isreal for blowing up its hostile neighbors. They're hostile after all.
But it's also hard to fault Isreal's neighbors for being mad about getting blown up.
Iran is not a neighbor of Israel, and Iran has been attacking Israel through proxies almost since the start of the Islamic Republic. Despite that, Israel supported Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear weapons program then. Iran attacked Israel twice directly last year. It's REALLY easy to fault them for being mad about getting blown up.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
Doesn't matter, Hamas would already destroy the US given half a chance.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
That said, I also think nuclear weapons are overrated, and while it's likely worthwhile to launch delaying tactics... once Iran has the bomb, what exactly are they going to do with it? Iran already knows that Israel has sufficient nuclear capacity to glass Iran
Israel does NOT have sufficient nuclear capacity to glass Iran. Israel is small and Iran is big, and that counts for a lot in the nuclear game. Certainly Israel could make Iran suffer with their dying breath, but they would still exist afterwards.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
I think it's very unlikely the IAEA action was caused by anything Iran did. Normally they bend over backwards not to find any violations. So I suspect pressure was applied to get them to make this declaration in order to provide justification for the desired bombings.
thejdizzler
2d ago
Well the Israeli government tried to do something about it in the 1970s/1980s. But turns out it's mighty unpopular at the ballot box to bulldoze the homes of your own people after you just won a war.
I liked Xi'an. The terracotta army is genuinely worth seeing, and the centre of the city is surrounded by a medieval fortress wall about 15m high and 15m across - it's pretty unique and impressive. About 5 hours from Beijing by train.
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