domain:epistle.us
Takacs did post about how unsafe they felt about attending the con, which is pretty absurd given that the reason they were invited in the first place was to shower praise on them for being the LGBT+ author invited to a panel, and the offence cited was a simple and understandable mistake not meant maliciously. They were the one who blew it up into a minor controversy, and we're seeing the similar reactions of the easily offended playing out still today.
Normal person: "Oh hey, there's a small mistake in my bio, I'm "she" not "he"
Takacs: "I am so threatened and unsafe! This is blatant open exclusion!"
I would very much appreciate a public apology from @worldcon2018 for rewriting my bio to change my name and my gender.
I have never, ever used "he" pronouns.
After many similar exclusionary actions, this is the last straw, I am honestly not sure I can safely attend.
HereAndGone
7hr ago
Yeah, if I wasn't Catholic, I'd be some version of Tibetan Buddhism (there are some practices not a million miles away from practices in Catholicism). But in reality, if I wasn't Catholic, I'd be straight-up atheist, no replacement Christianity or other religion for me - if belief goes, it goes completely.
HereAndGone
7hr ago
TLM which was (inexplicably) contentious.
I think there were several reasons at work:
(1) We've got the Novus Ordo now, we have changed the liturgy, stop trying to hold back time and work within the new framework in your local parish (the majority moderate set)
(2) Are these guys more of those crazy schismatics? Because they're sounding an awful lot like those crazy schismatics (due to some of the commentary around/by the trads being very similar to the Rad-Trads who were a bit too adjacent to the "we defied the Pope way back when for not being sufficiently orthodox, now funnily enough we're ordaining lesbian priestesses ourselves" splinters)
(3) Will we never have progress? Just when we thought we were finally going to catch up to the Protestants and get with the times and dump all those dusty old doctrines, these hold-outs are making us look bad! (the very liberal/Spirit of Vatican II crowd)
HereAndGone
7hr ago
This is level of feigned obliviousness I haven't seen since the last time Snopes beclowned itself.
You do know this guy is editor of a satirical magazine/website? That makes jokes and pokes fun in the religious context?
If I'm gonna have steam pouring out my ears about a humour site dissing the Church, there's bigger targets I'd go after right this minute.
HereAndGone
8hr ago
You mean getting a bill passed to solidify either “DMV respects common names” or “DMV entitled to do what they want”, so that either way we're not stuck squinting at a 1982 court case and trying to guess whether a lawsuit is warranted?
Yeah. Right now it seems to be "this section of the code says A, that section says B, who gets to juggle the hot potato?" Either go to court so a judge makes a ruling or the state legislature clears this up. What is happening right now is ripe for all kinds of problems.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
8hr ago
Other expensive imported whiskey- Black
I would be shocked to see a black dude drinking Red Spot or Yamazaki 12. Are you thinking cognac rather than whiskey?
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
Italy was Erdo’s weakest point in Europe, though.
No_one
8hr ago
If there's a travel ban on North Korea.. does that mean you'd be facing criminal penalties travelling?
Also, funny story when it's a little kid. Tourettes is like that but.. all the time.. There's a twitch streamer who has tourettes. If it's undiagnosed as in her case, it's pretty brutal, she got beaten unconscious in middle school. NHS only diagnosed it at like 27.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
8hr ago
Can't decide if you should be banned or AAQC'd for this.
trying to go for change in the law would work better
You mean getting a bill passed to solidify either “DMV respects common names” or “DMV entitled to do what they want”, so that either way we're not stuck squinting at a 1982 court case and trying to guess whether a lawsuit is warranted?
(But I do agree with @Rov_Scam: with the law as it stands, it seems more likely that the ACLU would address a case of actual anti-transgender discrimination by the judge by simply making the judge do the thing, rather than making the DMV do the thing, if only because it would be a more valuable ideological win.)
TheBailey
soapy mop
8hr ago
But why do we want to surrender a freedom we currently have to the government?
On a weaker but more dialed in note: if we are to get rid of that particular liberty out of arguably valid fraud and impersonation concerns, it should be done procedurally, not just by the Alabama License Director invoking the secret “Who Will Stop Me, LOL” clause of the Alabama Constitution to overturn decades of established case law.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
8hr ago
Speaking from experience, they’re the glue that holds a lot of things together.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
8hr ago
Not gonna watch videos until I’m back at home, but thanks for the links.
How are you assessing Reisner’s reliability? If he were distorting numbers—or selectively reporting, or remaining conspicuously silent—how would you know? It’s easy to spot the most shameless partisans, but that leaves out a lot. I suppose I’m assuming that anyone who spends this much time covering a subject will develop something resembling an opinion.
Dean
Flairless
8hr ago
Berry isn't a marginal figure, certainly more influential at this point than, say, Jonah Goldberg.
Is that a bar to be tripped over? Walked under? An insinuation of jewish nefariousness with a lastname like that? Some white nationalist thing? An epitaph of the National Review's fall from influence within the Republican party?
Barfknuckle
8hr ago
Every random triviality in the book that manages to not blatantly contradict reality is apparently evidence for its validity, but I guess we're just supposed to ignore all the anachronistic horses, chariots, steel, etc. etc. etc.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
9hr ago
Well, it all started in 2078, when a rights dispute within Catholic Studios (formerly Universal, prior to their formal registration as a religion for tax avoidance purposes, with the name chosen in hopes of leveraging support from low-information-voters) resulted in both the LA and New York branches claiming control of the organization. William Pope of the LA office claimed the CEO position, while Dean Pope (no relation) of the New York office contesting the claim. Public disapproval for the whole mess resulted in a grassroots "Anti-Pope" movement, and a sudden outpouring of unauthorized, AI-generated bootleg sequels to many of Catholic Studios' popular media properties, particularly the Fast And Furious franchise. By the time the corporate succession crisis was concluded, then-CEO Charles Avignon learned that due to fine print in the copyright statutes IP rights could be voided unless a property maintained "sufficient narrative cohesion between its most popular iterations", otherwise reverting to the status of uncopyrightable "folklore". Many of the fan-made Fast And Furious films had been fashioned with these factors in mind, leaving Avignon with few options but to attack the fan consensus directly by both releasing new films and attempting to scrub the fan-content from the internet through any means, fair or foul. Thus began the information war over the Reunification of the Fast and Furious universe...
The entire interview-in English- of the German volunteer Freimann about Ukraine, conducted by a military historian & Col. Reisner of the Bundesheer- the Austrian Armed Forces, he leads their officer training school. Note it's 6 months old by now. Not sure why - first posted on Patreon? Excerpts have been posted earlier.
Reisner is notable for being one of the few Western analysts who was, while acting in an official capacity providing relatively unbiased information - probably because Austria is a neutral state. He is not pro-Russian - you quickly get the impression he doesn't like them, but unlike basically everyone and probably due to the neutral status he felt he was allowed to not be overtly partisan and not distort information.
If someone wants some more interesting war interviews, there's the 3:30 hour accidental Azov battalion Florida volunteer video from '23..
A British volunteer interviewed by Lindybeige. Fairly thorough.
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
Thé latin mass went from a minor issue to a big one when cardinal roche started stepping on toes trying to restrict it. Many, many centrist or even liberal bishops saw the Latin mass as a fringe group which paid its rent for very little in return and resented the Vatican attempting to crack down on it. Especially in the rust belt American bishops felt mistreated by the Francis pontificate over the issue- putting a Latin mass in the parish with surrounds too dangerous for people to live in was a common trick for keeping these often historic parishes open and paying their tithe.
Post for testing formatting
Youtube algorithm has recently blessed me with 'The Miracle Aligner'.
The name doesn't indicate much but that guy's specialty is translating modern songs into usually dead languages and then performing them. So, covers, sometimes 'period' covers in dead languages.
So far there's a fair amount of good stuff. I especially like Latin because in parts I almost get the words and it sounds awesome.
Classical latin:
The Little Dark Age (very appropriate)
Everybody wants to rule the world
Medieval latin A Horse with No Name
Middle English Freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd
Poula (Nepalese-Tibetan tribe) Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now (..is that the channel owner's native language?)
Not sure if this is actually an ancient accent, just funny. Medieval (Bardcore) version of 'Fortunate Son'
I feel like I've already posted about this but I can't get any hits. Is the search broken?
Also: one more fun piece of music.
5 minute organ only version of the vapid disco love song "L'Amour toujours" . First found it when trying to find the original music for a particularly extremist meme video. You love to see the guy who performed it signing up for gigs in the comments! Melody is the same but it's quite different.
Also the comment section is very funny full of probably elderly mostly German people praising the youtube algorithm :D.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9hr ago
Cognac brands for reasons mostly unknown or lost to time were some of the first high end brands to advertise to African American customers back in the Jim Crow days. Some historians vaguely posit a further history in the world wars, or French companies willing to ignore American racial codes and advertise to an underserved demographic; but for the most part it's probably just a random event that black consumers saw black models advertising cognac in Ebony and Jet decades before Johnny Walker would think of advertising to the negro market, and developed a taste for the product.
From there it's just become a cultural meme, and high end cognac partakes of the general phenomenon of Nigger Rich, where flaunting displays of wealth and luxury are common status symbols. Of course that itself has roots in segregation: upwardly mobile 20th century American blacks couldn't buy a house in a rich neighborhood or send their kids to a ritzy private school or travel to a fancy resort, but they could buy a Cadillac or a bottle of Hennessy.
American whites largely ignored cognac prior as it seemed a little too effete and aristocratic for the Great Male Renunciation era; the only American white men I can remember drinking cognac in media are Frasier and Niles Crane. After the rise of Hennessy et al as hip hop icons, cognac became too black for most white men, as it drifted too close to wiggerdom to be a white guy drinking Henny, similar to how I inherited a Louis Vuitton monogram briefcase from an uncle and thought "Wow I'd look like a poseur carrying this stupid thing."
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
9hr ago
Have they considered just pushing a few guided tungsten rods out an airlock before they finish decelerating?
My read is that they have, and there's a really strong taboo on orbital bombardment or other forms of weaponization of interstellar transport. The Succession Wars demonstrated that unrestrained conflict costs more than anyone can afford, so a huge part of the setting is finding ways to keep the violence to a survivable level.
Then actual wars start, and things go all Mad Max...
For those who haven't seen it:
Just when people thought mechs were about done, the charger showed up and punched them into the ground or died trying. I personally feel this crazy cycle kept Mach relevant in this era; it suggested that any Mech was potentially better than none, and if boldly piloted to near certain doom, it suggested that a Mech was a game changer in the right if crazy hands.
Because to some people, the rare few dreamers, those few charger Pilots, the 1 in 10,000, they don't see the world like we do. To them, well, the sky is the limit, and space is the place. They believe that anyone can be a real Warrior of the Wasteland, the ayatolla of rock and rolla, the cream of the crop, the hammer of Justice, the people's elbow, that your Noble Wasteland Mech Warrior can walk into the consecrated holy Battle of Mech Warfare like the third monkey on the plank up Noah's Arc and brother it's starting to rain...
Unleashed as such, the Charger is an assault Mech designed for getting in close and then reminding people that being beat to death with your own limbs is always a legitimate concern to have in a war zone. Without the encumbrance of weapons or any delicate anything to worry about, and being very fast and very big, the charger was in many ways almost perfect for this incredibly barbaric Age of War. The mech that was fast enough to chase down just about anything could absolutely, if the pilot were crazy enough, run around the battlefield punching things until they died or everything else did. It was a magic time to be alive in the inner spere, and by surviving long enough the Charger reminds studious Mech experts that survival isn't about being best but rather actually surviving.
CommittedToTheG
9hr ago
I agree that the Filioque is not an irreconcilable theological difference, but the controversy exposed the broader question of authority. Did the Pope have direct universal jurisdiction in the pre-schism church? I would say no, he clearly did not have that sort of "primacy". He could not directly act in the internal affairs of the other Patriarchs. In the lead up to the schism (depending on when you date it), Rome did attempt to assert novel authority over Constantinople, in part based on forgeries such as the Donation of Constantine. Yes, I do realize that the current Creed is the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, as set by the Second Ecumenical Council, and I do understand that the Pope's infallibility is limited and he can be wrong (or even a heretic, in the case of Honorius). Though the idea that any one bishop could be infallible at all is a scandalous thing from the East's perspective (the Eastern Orthodox mind cannot comprehend this lol).
I would ultimately more or less agree with the sentiment Joseph Ratzinger expresses here (quoted from Wikipedia):
In his 1987 book Principles of Catholic Theology, Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Ratzinger) assessed the range of "possibilities that are open to Christian ecumenism." He characterized the "maximum demand" of the West as the recognition by the East of and submission to the "primacy of the bishop of Rome in the full scope of the definition of 1870..." The "maximum demand" of the East was described as a declaration by the West of the 1870 doctrine of papal primacy as erroneous along with the "removal of the Filioque from the Creed and including the Marian dogmas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." Ratzinger asserted that "(n)one of the maximum solutions offers any real hope of unity."
Ratzinger wrote that "Rome must not require more from the East than had been formulated and what was lived in the first millennium." He concluded that "Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox in the form she has always had."
At the same time, this leaves seriously open whether reunion is possible at all, because if "the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox in the form she has always had," then the West would be saying that active, persistent, and stubborn denial of the dogma of Papal infallibility over a century, and of other Catholic dogmas for centuries, has no consequences and requires no renunciation. In other words, it means they're not dogmas!
When dogmas are defined, they're not "suggestions." They're not even "firm teachings," or "infallible teachings." They are solemn declarations that someone who denies this is anathema, accursed, cut off, removed from communion with the Church. The classical ecumenical dogmatic language, "Let them be anathema," comes from St. Paul's declaration that opens Galatians:
So to say that something is a dogma is, in Biblical and ecclesiastical idiom, to say that all who dissent are "deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ," and "turning to a different gospel!" It is a solemn declaration of unmistakable error, and it cannot be relativized -- only affirmed or denied.
Ratzinger seems to be wanting to do a very Ratzinger thing here: to assert the possibility of reform without reform, even to the point of saying dogma can be held -- or not -- so long as you say someone else can believe it's dogma. It's a functional denial of dogma that doesn't actually want to admit that it is.
Conservative Catholics love talking about Pope Benedict as a "defender of dogma," but the man was, abundantly, a modernist. Just a rather conservative one. And I don't say that as an insult -- I love Pope Benedict, and I prefer his vision of modernist-conservative Catholicism to traditional, pre-conciliar Catholicism -- but because everyone has to be clear what's at stake.
Like much of the post-conciliar Church, Ratzinger's views reflect, essentially, institutional intertia in the guise of teaching authority: we cannot say we were mistaken about our dogmas, because that would scandalize the faithful and call into question our entire history, and so we say, with one side of our mouth the Immaculate Conception is dogma! and with the other the Orthodox East, which steadfastly denies that this is a dogma, is perfectly and entirely prepared for communion with us! But both of these things cannot be true. You can't have your bread and eat it too.
My view is that Catholicism has gone halfway -- opened the door to unity on the basis of the first millennium -- without committing, as did Pope Paul VI, when he called the Catholic ecumenical councils of the second millennium "general councils of the West" -- which seems to demote them to the status of the Councils of Toledo, rather than infallible councils. Yet Christ asks that we give him everything, like he himself gave up everything so that: "those who believe in me... may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee," in the priestly words of Jesus in John 17.
I think the real obstacle to unity isn't so much the two Marian dogmas, provided that the Assumption is considered to be a doctrine of the Dormition as well -- and the Orthodox, not that I speak for them, would probably say that the Immaculate Conception can be accepted as a pious belief, so long as it is asserted as a plausible explanation for the moral perfection and grace-full-ness of the Mother of God rather than a fixed, infallible doctrine, and thus open to critique made in the spirit of charity (as even Thomas Aquinas did).
In other words, the pre-1850s landscape could have been a much more fruitful place for ecumenical dialogue. If Vatican II had happened early, in place of Vatican I, we would live in a very different world. But I believe the Vatican Councils destroy each other, like matter and dark matter, and in so doing they also bring to heel the legitimate power of the Vatican -- which should be great indeed, but always in line with tradition, and with the charism of persuasion in the spirit of truth and not "ordinary and universal magisterial teaching" requiring "religious submission of will and intellect."
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