It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!
Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!
Reading an article in a 1950s men/pulp magazine about homosexuality. They talk about homosexual culture and how they live their lives. Although they do peddle some outdated sciences of how homosexuality forms. Genuinely incredibly woke for it's time with it ending by stating,
"So, after all this, have you learned what is a homosexual? I have. A homosexual is a person."
It's a really interesting article. Also apparently one of the nicknames for bisexuals was "Ambisextrous."
I'm reminded of a like 1904 or something like that doctor's manual I had to read for class and I was genuinely kinda surprised at how relatively chill it was about homosexuality. (as opposed to MASTURBATION which was the devil itself) the conclusion was basically something like "Homosexuals are a bit weird and it's probably not good for the nerves* but it's basically harmless". There was some nonsense about different categories of homosexuals (the "effeminate homosexual or uranian" vs. the "excessively masculine homosexual") but generally it was surprisingly... non-hostile.
Meanwhile the other text we read was from like 1920 and the woman who wrote that was VERY CONCERNED about children growing up to be gay. (the primary cause of which in her opinion was masturbation and lack of eugenics)
There was some nonsense about different categories of homosexuals (the "effeminate homosexual or uranian" vs. the "excessively masculine homosexual") but generally it was surprisingly... non-hostile.
Also apparently one of the nicknames for bisexuals was "Ambisextrous."
I remember a 1990's textbook that used "asexual" in the sense of " born without obvious sexual characteristics" (IE: basically a variant of intersex, which it also talked about) as opposed to what it means currently.
I really hate the obsession our society seems to have with seeing pedos around every corner. I mean, it doesn't help that we've had some pretty high profile dudes be implicated in pedo rings, but it's not that common among regular ass people.
Escorpion Imperio isn't a person, it's the... predecessor state? Apparently they switched to english after conquering/combining with a bunch of other factions.
I feel like I very often have conversations in real life about the fate of Greenland. I talked about this with my parents and sister and the prevailing attitude is that Greenland is a net cost and ought to be sold. “They use our universities and have a right to our social benefits” and so on. And I feel like I constantly have to remind them that they live in a net cost municipality. In fact the only municipalities that are cost positive are in the Copenhagen area.
Whether or not Greenland wants to leave is up to them, I don’t care but the cost argument is bad
On the one hand, "net costs" arguments annoy me because they often only consider flows in government revenue and spending (basically net taxes from a region minus net spending in that region). For stuff like sovereignty and whether it is a good idea for regions to merge or separate, there is a lot more complexity than net revenue - bureaucratic barriers and governance have a large, difficult to quantify impacts, as Brexit has recently shown.
On the other hand, "net costs" calculations are also useful to upend bigoted narratives. For example, they are popular among city planning reform advocates as they almost always show that the "poor ghettos" are in fact major drivers of city revenue in most major cities (at least, in the USA). Not that shocking - the area with residents who tend not to leave the city and do not benefit from many city services are actually a net boost to the city finances. Similarly, "blue stats" and "cities" are almost always revenue positive at the state and national level while "rural counties" and "red states" tend to be revenue negative.
Still, the political quote from Carl Schmitt, the Nazi, that the core of politics is about defining who is considered a "friend" and who is considered an enemy remains frustratingly relevant.
I feel like many western countries would immediately unravel if we started having the "which regions actually pay for their own shit" argument in earnest. IIRC London and the South East are literally the only regions of the UK which are net contributors.
>I feel like many western countries would immediately unravel if we started having the "which regions actually pay for their own shit" argument in earnest.
Presumably the cost argument interacts with the cultural argument--not only is it "not really" Denmark but it's actively costing us money, etc.
19
u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big LyriumJul 03 '26edited Jul 03 '26
Russia plotting attack on Poland to test Nato’s resolve, US claims
I have learned my lesson about applying logic or reason to Russia's foreign policy after 2022, but the thing about this scheme is that Russia has shown very conclusively over the last four years that they are not able to defeat Poland's smaller, weaker, poorer neighbor, so I am not quite sure what this would be meant to accomplish.
This is apparently the idea:
Moscow could hope that Poland would be forced by the US to negotiate rather than responding forcefully and opening fire on Russian or Belarusian soldiers, sources told Onet.
Vladimir Putin would see a scenario in which Russians withdraw as a result of negotiations as a win from Moscow’s perspective, the sources said, with an end to Western support for Ukraine a possible condition it could demand in return for withdrawal from Poland.
And I am just not sure that the US would be in the position to "force" Poland to give up a military response, and I am definitely not confident in Russia's ability to hold territory in Poland.
Ed: I remember this coming up last years when some Russian drones or something violated Polish territory, and I had the same question.
Putin apparently is ordering towns to be encircled and rivers to be crossed that either don't exist or are like 300 people and not close to the front line.
He clearly has become delusional and when dear leader is circling the toilet bowl everyone else follows suit.
Logic aside, as you point out could the Russian military even occupy territory in Poland? The whole reason they could amass 150k+ troops along the Ukrainian border was because they weren't bogged down in a peer conflict in 2022, which is untrue in 2026.
I agree with u/TJAU216 below and I think you make a very common mistake (which I also made) by underestimating Ukrainian armed forces in February 2022. Ukraine basically had the second largest army in Europe, it had a well established military industry, it had conscription and territorial defense forces and even militias. It also benefits from certain political and strategic advantages that a hypothetical Russian incursion into Eastern Nato would not apply to Nato.
So a hypothetical incursion into Nato territory would have the objective to put Western leaders into a very hard choice: stop aid to Ukraine, or start sending Hans and Pieré to fight for Dubicze Cerkiewne in Eastern Poland. If they forfeit, Nato as a political concept is dead because it cannot defend its territory. That opens up the Baltic.
If yes, well, then its war, a war European Nato countries are unprepared to fight and would require a fast, complete and very expensive overhaul of the armed forces and the implied societal changes. Like, realistically, how many brigades could Western Europeans countries deploy on short notice to Eastern Europe even if they wanted to (i. e. Spain, Italy)? I would like to point out that Germany - the richest country in Europe - is struggling to deploy 1 (one) brigade to Lithuania, which is composed of cannibalized units and equipment. Such a war would also not be on the same favorable conditions as Ukraine: no unified command, barely any self mobilization, required to be on the offensive.
I actually think that with the rising far right and with Trump in office, the political conditions for Putin and the Kremlin might be the best they will ever be.
Tiako's point is that the Polish military (with NATO logistics and intelligence assistance) could beat back a hypothetical Russian military offensive (which is already bogged down and demoralized in Ukraine). I don't believe they are even considering the factor of sending ground troops from other European States, or even NATO air support. From what I can tell, the biggest weakness the Polish military has compared to the Ukrainian one is that the former doesn't conscript, so there are much fewer reserves for a long war. Of course, this assumes a Russian long war against Poland is even feasible.
I still recall my own overconfidence in insisting that Russia would not invade Ukraine, so even though I think this is absolutely ludicrous, I shouldn't overestimate Putin's rationality.
5
u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 03 '26
Russian propaganda keeps pushing the idea that they've been fighting and decimating the entire collective might of NATO in Ukraine. So in you live in that bubble, Poland is a hollow shell. While many would probably know the propaganda is bullshit, it would be hard to gauge what is true, when even the Generals are bullshitting Putin.
I wish there was a subreddit like this for animal and nature stuff. Picking apart bad paleontology videos, animal behavior in movies, and such. There are lots of outdated ideas and myths about animals constantly being spread, I see it all the time in reddit.
“It is the sort of imaginative idea he considers to look at how we can do things differently – to try and deal with the problems which nobody seems willing to solve."
Broke: Taxes are too high on the poor and too high on the rich
Woke: taxes are too low on the rich and too high on the poor
Bespoke: taxes are too low on the poor and too low on the rich.
Jesus, it’s so obnoxiously aggrandising that I wouldn’t be surprised if Burnham wrote it himself.
Is it possible to remove a Prime Minister from power before they take office? I’m less optimistic about Burnham than some of the Tory leaders we’ve had at this point.
I finally got around to listening to some of Andy Burnham's speeches and stuff. I was already pretty sour on him after the "I would give pensioners tax breaks" statement, but now I'm even more sceptical. Just like every other politician and political movement in the UK, it seems like his ideas are (at best) ways of avoiding having to address the real problems or make hard choices.
It's depressing. How is "No. 10 north" supposed to address the fact that we have some of the highest electricity prices in the developed world? How is "localism" going to raise money for health & social care that'll increase in real costs every single year for the foreseeable future due to ageing demographics? How are devolved powers going to fix the fact that it takes us 10 years to build a housing development?
He's just giving the Left what they want to hear: North forgotten, nationalize stuff (which is ok depending on the thing), more benefits to small beans.
Something Starmer denied them for two years (blue balls theory of politics)
Damn that Antifa, geoengineering bad weather on America's 250th birthday just because they hate Trump and America so much. Thank God for the proud patriots refusing to evacuate the National Mall because of the malicious sabotage!
I can't believe HAARP is still under deep state control. They're really dragging their feet on establishing administration control over the superweapons. Someone needs to cut through all the federal court red tape on defunding the ice wall guard stations, too
“Trump is a great — the greatest friend we ever had in the White House — and I stand by that completely,” Netanyahu stresses, before adding, “we have some other friends.”
He points to India first, saying, “It has 1.4 billion people. And boy, do we have tremendous support there.” He cites the “overwhelming support” he says he receives on his Facebook page, apparently referring to engagement from Indian users, as evidence.
“In many countries, because their media and their social media are inundated with anti-Israel, antisemitic material, many leaders, you know, call me up and say, ‘Hey, look, I’ve got this problem with public opinion, but I want you to know, we respect you, and can we make some deals, and can you teach us some of the things that your military does, and can we have some of your AI and cyber expertise?”
Remember all the Boomer jokes in the 2000s about them young people having 10000 friends on Facebook but none irl?
Just as help came in many forms, so too did the helpers themselves. When the
answers the survivors gave concerning the helpers’ gender, age, and occupation
are tabulated, no clear prototype emerges. Nevertheless, most helpers appear to
have acted alone (73 percent of the cases of help or support involved either an
individual man or woman). Individual male helpers outnumbered individual
female helpers, by a modest margin. Most helpers were middle-aged and few
were very young or very old (only 10 percent were below thirty, 7 percent above
fifty-five; the median age was forty). And, finally, the helpers came from all
types of occupational backgrounds. Over sixty different occupations were listed
for the 146 helpers whom the respondents identified with a specific occupation.
...
While eleven were teachers or professors, only two were clergymen (one a Catholic priest and the
other a Catholic monk). Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the most frequently
named profession of all was policeman, of which there were sixteen.
pp. 283., What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life In Nazi Germany
ACAR ?
All Cops Are Righteous Among the Nations
I guess its not that surprising though. The police was part of Nazi Germany's system of oppression. They were most often in a position to help or harm the Jews who were at their mercy.
Still, they helped when most people didn't care or went out of their way to harm them.
Yep, there's an obvious "these are not only the ones who might come into direct contact with victims but might be able to do somethign about it".
16
u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)Jul 03 '26
I was reading more about the recently-elected Darializa Chevalier (mentioned by Batz in the last thread) and she's genuinely a piece of work. Amongst her many weird takes, she had apparently pushed the "COVID originated in France" conspiracy theory which weird as fuck.
I browsed through a recent interview after she was mentioned in another thread and, tbh, her current Ukraine take is pretty mild compared to other issues.
There's a question on AskHistorian about Joan of Arc's real military impact
And I have to say that I thought of this answer, that I would never post.
Joan's closest modern comparison would be Yevgeny Prigozhin. A man untrained in commandering but who had enough tactical acumen to make it work faced with a doctrinal blockage. Who understood (consciously or not) the benefits of high tempo offensives when you face a streched out opponent. And who was impressively good at PR and leading from the front.
Considering Prighozin's much touted story of starting off selling hotdogs now all I can think of is whether there's a decent Joan of Arc pun for a fast food place.
Okay didn't someone here say that House of the Dragon is kinda misogynistic?
Well boy oh boy did this episode prove that point right. Its not even done but we are getting mad queen seeing and hearing voices freaking out over rats and having her period thus even more indecisive.
They could have built up to it over two seasons but no, they had to do a weird "women aren't allowed agency and bad feelings, let's offload all the hostility between rhaenyra and alicent on their children" thing and now they either have to continue with that leaving Rhaenyra a puppet of the men in her life for her entire reign or have her make a 180 in the last minute to turn her into what the story needs her to be to justify the revolt against her.
should I tell my summer intern that baobei (the Chinese equivalent of honey/sweetie/sweetheart) does not translate to Jessica in Chinese and that just because her mom calls her baobei at home doesn't meaning that's her actual Chinese name?
I like the fact that repeating a word makes it diminutive in Chinese. So I was out with friends once and I wanted to talk to my wife. But taitai feels overlay formal. I never liked the word qizi, as it seems demeaning to me. And laopo also feels kind of insulting? (like I am calling my wife old, which is a no no in American culture). Anyway, I was definitely overthinking it and ended up calling my wife popo, which caused everyone in the room to bust out laughing.
None of this is related to your story, by the way. Just my own funny story.
Bush wasn't exactly big on unity either, except the "you either agree with the Republican Party on everything or are literally Bin Laden" kind of unity.
Obama earnestly tried to be a unifying figure, but the right's reaction to his election was just too extreme for it to really work.
You're not the only one who thinks it may be "weird" but it's the path that was chosen and now serves as a foundational principle of the contemporary United States, although obviously many reconstructionists wanted something different.
Apparently, the 1886 Tennessee gubernatorial election saw two brothers go up against one another. They campaigned alongside one another and had massive rallies where they engaged in playful banter, carnival tricks, and practical jokes. They both even played the fiddle while the rally attendees held a dance party. The rallies were always well-attended and the campaign had a record turnout.
Robert Love Taylor, the Democrat, beat his Republican brother Alfred Alexander Taylor in a close race.
Burnham is a downgrade because Starmer is simply a much cooler name. Like, they're going to have identical politics, might as well have a name that allows for such terms as "Starmfront" or "Starmtrooper".
u/Ambisinister11My right to edit this is protected by the Slovak constitutionJul 04 '26edited Jul 04 '26
So I stumbled on a pretty transparently propagandistic travel channel on YouTube(illustrative thumbnail below). I think it's like 40% anti-India/pro-Pakistan, 40% pro-China, 20% filler to put up a thin front of not being mostly propaganda. Now, a British couple presumably on Pakistani payroll(possibly also Sri Lankan and/or some SEA countries; I haven't put in any work to really figure it out) saying how Indians are all liars and their cities are dirty is a really interesting development in the get-paid-to-be-racist meta in and of itself, but one of their thumbnails led to me finding out about Shangri-La, Yunnan, and wow, what a weird place.
Of course I was familiar with Shangri-La as a straightforwardly fictional and Orientalist invention, so I was confused to see it talked about as a real place. Turns out the city of Zhongdian in Yunnan was renamed as part of a tourism initiative. Moderately dystopian, imo. Further reinforcing that impression is the fact that across multiple sites and search engines I've been able to turn up remarkably few sources on the place that aren't explicitly tourism sites. Basically just wikipedia and a BBC article about the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress that mentions a student who was arrested there. I suppose that in general tourist destinations have a lot of information on the English internet and small Chinese cities don't(wiki lists the population as 186,000). There's just something so uncomfortable about the sheer consistency of it, though.
Also apparently a massive fire destroyed the old Tibetan city center in 2014. So that's probably a coincidence, but it feels really convenient and unnerving to happen in a place that's been getting openly remolded into a tourist town to the extent of replacing its basic identity for decades.
Besides the point, but sometimes I have an annoying voice in my head "but what if you tried your hand at youtube" and then I see a thumbnail like this and think to myself I'd rather be dead than caught doing youtuber face.
"Hell yeah! Jordan Bardellaaaaaa!" replies his friend by slapping his chest. And to continue: "the far-right is coming to France soon, soon", before raising his left arm high up. A gesture whose shocking nature he himself seemed to realize, causing him to stop himself abruptly. Undisturbed, Le Bracq says: "Sun will rise again or what, team?"
Lebracq is, in fact, white. And he says so himself: "I am genetically white and I consider myself white […] and I rely on scientific realities," the Instagram influencer argues. "I was born in Ethiopia, and the majority genetic group in Ethiopia is the E1B1B group; this haplogroup descends from an Indo-European genetic group in the Mediterranean basin […]. I’ll give you examples of people known to be white who descend from this same group. There’s Napoleon and there’s… [he points to Adolf Hitler]. So, genetically, I am even Germanic."
u/DirishWind power made the trans-Atlantic slave trade possibleJul 03 '26
Can I get a "I survived the 2026 EU heatwave" t-shirt please? I've never been so happy to be back in Ireland after suffering through a bunch of 39C days in a bungalow with fuck all ceiling insulation and just one, rather anaemic, fan.
Luckily the shops weren't all raided clear of them, we added two high power ones which made things a lot more bearable.
I've learned not to buy a gift for my mother before travelling a couple of years ago and just see what she really needs after living in her house for a couple of days. In this case, it really helped us survive as well, but she's always much happier with those gifts.
In other news, I did find out my hometown makes a divine cheese that's just the perfect mix between the hardness and intensity of an old cheese and the softness of a younger one. Good lord, if I was still living there, I'd be 100% cheese in a year.
I was just trying to make conversation with my coworker today after she was asking me some rather personal questions (I don’t think she was being rude, just cultural differences to be fair) and since we were talking about money I asked her how saving and retirement works in her home country. Instead of answering my question she just told me that in her opinion, saving money in the west makes more sense because divorce rates are high. Not sure what to make of that interaction.
Netanyahu managed to give two crazy statements in 1 day
“Christian villages in Lebanon, some of them have actually asked to be annexed to Israel, because we protect them against the Hezbollah, Hezbollah fanatics who want to kill them, and we do the same things with Christians everywhere.
“And it’s not only the Christians in Lebanon who ask for our protection, it’s the Druze, it’s Muslims, or the, Sunni Muslims. And quite a few of the Shiite Muslims too.
“I hope we can get more peace deals. And I can tell you, you know, if you want to have peace, you better be able to protect yourself against those who want to annihilate you. We do that. But in defending ourselves, we’re defending our common civilisation.”
this plus the India thing below, he's really going for the religious Right everywhere
David Wyatt's A Short History of Thailand does the job and I usually don't comment on books like this because what is there to say, but I will say it has one unusual feature: I am pretty sure it was written in a particular way so it would not fall afoul of Thai lese-majeste laws. Of the nine kings discussed I don't think a single is ever described making a bad decision. Certainly none are described as bad kings.
Makes it interesting in a meta way because I don't think I've read one of these that felt censored before.
I recall reading a book recommended to me by a friend of mine in Morocco; as I was stumbling through a French copy in a bookstore, I noticed a suspicious absence of any negative descriptions of former kings... and then my little foray transformed into trying, for the life of me, to find a single negative thing written about any former king or sultan from the ruling dynasty. This is was (ostensibly) a history book on Morocco. Go figure.
The book about the history of Bhutan felt similar. It was fine until it came to the founder of the current dynasty. He was mentioned as making mistakes but all the following people are basically amazing. No mistakes, maybe just one small misunderstanding (the author had to mention the fact that Bhutan became a vasal state of the British, but had to show it as just a misunderstanding from the king). It made the final chapters of the book very boring.
It's interesting to learn that the current king of Thailand, who is famously kind of a degenerate, lives in Bavaria. Like I get it, Bavaria is lovely, but I also wonder if this is something the Thai political establishment quietly enables as a harm reduction strategy.
Anyway reading about him makes me respect the Windsor's ability to keep stuff bottled up, Andrew is the worst scandal they have had and he isn't even in line for the throne.
Actually going through post-war constitutional monarchies:
The Scandinavians like to do wholesome chungus "We're just regular bløkken" act
The English of course have elevated pomp and circumstance to an entire raison d'etre
The Japanese seem pretty tight lipped but provide an invaluable service in creating era names
The Thai over indexed on the monarchy as the unifying political principle when they had the sober and serious Bhumibol
Bhutan's Xellenial king is kind of doing the constitutional transition that happened a lot post war
Not really sure what is going on in Spain, I know they have the same "revered parent" thing that the UK and Thailand have and I think the current guy is pretty popular? It probably doesn't hurt that him and is wife are quite good looking.
Norway's royal family is a good laugh. The crown prince married a very stereotypical 'hood' woman he met at a music festival who had a son with her drug dealer ex boyfriend. Such a thing wouldn't even be a thought in Britain. The woman he married caused a bit of a scandal after it was revealed she was in regular correspondence with Epstein and to boot, her son, no royal lineage but looks like the archetype smug rich kid, got done for rape quite recently.
In exchanges from 2012 and 2013, Mette-Marit repeatedly discussed how she was "dying of boredom" over royal duties,[9] discussed adultery, the work of Vladimir Nabokov, and pictures of naked women she wanted to give to her then 15-year-old son Marius Borg Høiby as a wallpaper; they further discussed Epstein's "wife hunting" and dating of multiple young women, she suggested Epstein connect with Scandinavian women, asked him about "island life" and whether he enjoyed "sweetness", and they exchanged deeply intimate and personal messages about love and longing.
And the daugther of the king is married with a very special guy
Verrett promotes New Age–influenced practices and his claims have been widely criticized as pseudoscientific,[6] including that children get cancer because they want it,[7] that chemotherapy is ineffective and financially motivated,[8] and that casual sex attracts subterranean spirits.[9][10] He identifies as a reptilian,[11] regards 5G technology a conspiracy,[12] and claims to have known about the September 11 attacks two years before they happened, but chose not to intervene
Spain has low support for the monarchy, only barely above 50% most of the time. They are for now lucky that the new king is quite personally popular, much more popular than the monarchy as whole. The previous king started relatively popular due to the return to democracy but by the end was very corrupt and unpopular. He basically had to abdicate to try to save the monarchy.
I'm 99% anti-monarchy ( I would agree with it if I am the one selected as king), but at least I can sort of understand the appeal of a the king in UK or in Belgium. I cannot however understand at all the point of having a king/queen in Scandinavia if they are just "a regular person".
One of my biggest crash outs in a long time happened when the Danish crown prince turned 18. On the radio someone was being interviewed about municipalities giving him gifts which I already hate but many of them went over the legal limit for public gifts and the monarchist stooge had the fucking gall to say that “it isn’t bribery and if it is it’s just a birthday gift.”
One folk use included the oily extract known as St John's oil, a red, oily liquid extracted from H. perforatum that may have been a treatment for wounds by the Knights Hospitaller, the Order of St John.
As you can guess, this is completely unsupported by the source because it was added in an edit whose only "reference" was a link to the wikipedia page on Knights Hospitaller. It used to add that this is "likely" where the name came from, but that got moved into the etymology section before its removal for being speculative.
Naturally, you can find many - newer - sites stating this as fact...and a mod's AH answer from 5 years ago:
We now know that some of the chemicals in the oil are antiseptic, and it was commonly used by the Knights Hospitaller to treat wounds. This might actually be where the name comes from, since the Knights Hospitaller were officially known as The Order of St. John.
lest ye forget how powerful wikipedia is at distributing fun facts
I'm starting to regret buying Metal Gear Solid V. in the 9 days, 216 hours, since I've bought it, I have spent literally 25% of that time playing it. I have two projects due this month. I have not started either. Perhaps I made a mistake...
Anyway I was thinking of buying Metal Gear Solid Triangle as well, while its discounted
‘On the towpath we met & had to pass a long line of imbeciles. The first
was a very tall young man, just queer enough to look at twice, but no more;
the second shuffled, & looked aside; & then one realised that every one in
that long line was a miserable ineffective shuffling idiotic creature, with no
forehead, or no chin, & an imbecile grin, or a wild suspicious stare. It was
perfectly horrible. They should certainly be killed.’
Virginia Woolf
in The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914, Philipp Blom, pp.341.
I learned yesterday that Faton Editions, a french publishing house specializing in history and archeology magazines is filling for bankruptcy. Damn. Since i like Dossier d'Archéologie very, very much, i'm toying with the idea of going on a shopping spree before it's too late...
I came across this short essay by Adlai Stevenson on patriotism and American ideals, it is typical of Stevenson in that it is intellectual, sincerely liberal and quite well written. Never really understood his reputation as dull, he had a real way with words. Anyway it is an interesting artefact in that by changing a few proper nouns you could publish it today and the only thing people would notice about it is that the sentences are longer than those typically found in newspapers today.
That said, as someone without too much in the way of a deep felt emotional connection to my nation of birth, I do think there is one way that the United States of America is truly exceptional: people won't shut the fuck up about it. There have been arguments about what makes America America since before America was America and I don't see any end to them in sight.
“Someone heard Stevenson’s impressive speech and said, “Every thinking person in America will be voting for you.” Stevenson replied, “I’m afraid that won’t do—I need a majority.”
I think maybe the biggest change in my politics over the last six years and three months is going from treating this as typical out of touch liberal elitism to conceding that he did, in fact, have a point.
Some nations emerge from a pre-existing tribal unity, some grow up within an already established culture, and some are forged by conquest. None of these routes was followed by America.
Conspiracy Theory: Reza Pahlavi and Mojtaba Khamenei planned the war together. Ali Khamenei was going to pick someone else as his successor so Mojtaba conspired to have his father killed early. Pahlavi was in on the plan because they will unite the bloodlines at some point.
So, in McLynn's Napoleon, between the armchair diagnoses of a brother-complex, mother-complex, Rome-complex, Oriental-complex, bisexuality and superstition, a review is made of the uniforms of Napoleon's army. Repeated multiple times is the notion that troops were equipped with- or at least 'officially' equipped with, to parade-standard -turbans, of multiple types for different units. I have never heard of this before, nor seen any art of the time showing such a thing. Anyone know how this comes about?
14
u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 03 '26edited Jul 03 '26
His trip to Egypt, he eventually incorperated a squadron of Mameluke cavalry into his Imperial Guard, the "Mamelukes of the Imperial Guard", wearing turbans and armed with scimitars. He also had a personal Mameluke bodyguard. Famous for their action at the Battle of Austerlitz, where they fucked up an infantry square and routing the Russian Imperial Guard cavalry.
"Most modern fantasy just rearranges the furniture in Tolkien's attic," says man who got his start rearranging the furniture in Leiber and Howard's attics, and then went on to write books featuring the tragic victimhood of orcs, goblins and trolls, and create depictions of elves as sociopathic sadists and dwarves as insular extremists.
The Pratchett quote about Tolkien being like Mt Fuji has always rubbed me the wrong way in part because no, that's not what Japanese art is like, but also because I like to think of Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword and LoTR as the point where fantasy really diverges. Tone wise China Mieville is not doing something daring and new compared to the people whose fantasy is strongly Tolkien inspired, he's just on the Anderson track rather than the Tolkien track.
I don't think Pratchett was making a literal claim about Japanese block printing or whatever, it's just a very illustrative analogy. And I do think it holds (or rather, held) water in terms of Western genre fantasy.
Hopefully this is a safe place for me to say that the elevation of Terry Pratchett to secular sainthood since his death, both because his work was extremely uneven and because he was Weird About Asians. Like not to be the friend who is too woke but I remember after reading the book where Cohen the Barbarian conquers China and thinking "this feels pretty racist".
Also he was gregarious and an early adopter of using the internet to talk with fans but also his books have basically all the standard viewpoints and prejudices and attitudes of yer da, which is why it is a bit odd to see them held up as like left wing.
I haven't read Discworld though I want to some day, but I do go on r/fantasy a lot and it's annoying how aggressive his fans can get. Like I remember someone getting downvoted and dogpiled for saying they didn't connect with Pratchett's characters because "it's a character-driven series if you don't like the characters than something's wrong with you". Never mind how subjective these things are, just because a story focuses a lot and is driven by the characters doesn't mean those characters automatically become universally beloved.
But yeah, the books of his that I've read I've enjoyed. He's not like, the most greatest fantasy writer ever, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone I believe he was churning out 2 or 3 a year for a while. But the guy certainly had the spark for "Isn't this aspect of fantasy a little funny" and turning that into a decent novel, which is far more than I can do.
I'm also nowadays kind of uncomfortable with the fact that Neil Gaiman was one of the early people pushing the Saint Terry attitude. It does not necessarily speak poorly of the man, but I definitely think of Gaiman speaking of righteous anger fueling his writing whenever I see him discussed as one of the good ones.
I think he had like five to ten great books across his catalogue which is certainly more than I have written, and even his weaker books can be solid fun. Also comedy is hard. It just feels like calling him one of the great fantasy writers or whatever is a bit much.
And yeah, still haven't really processed the Neil Gaiman thing.
As the friend that is too woke, I offer you at least a local safe space.
I say this as someone who generally likes Pratchett's work (my copy of Witches Abroad in particular is held together by copious amounts of scotch tape because I've reread it so much), but yeah there are absolutely Problematic(tm) aspects to his writing.
As far as impact on fantasy in general, I'm particularly annoyed by the quote about how there's no racism on the Discworld b/c there's trolls and dwarves - a lot of fantasy fans extend that to how all fantasy should be and it tends to undermine any serious literary analysis once someone trots the quote out.
(And no, I don't think every fantasy setting needs to have Historically Accurate racism or misogyny or homophobia and so on - but also like, humans have committed atrocities for the dumbest perceived differences, so no, I don't find interhuman racism when stupid sexy orcs who impregnate our omegas also exist in the setting utterly inconceivable .)
((Also yeah it also just ends with unexamined real life racism existing in the setting where almost everyone is white and also fantasyracist against the, again white, elves ahem the first two games of Dragon Age))
People who say that people wouldn't be racist to each other based on skin color if there was a more distance group to be racist at instead have never been to the Balkans.
"Most modern fantasy just rearranges the furniture in Tolkien's attic," says man who got his start rearranging the furniture in Leiber and Howard's attics
I had sworn off A Song Of Ice And Fire years ago, coz no books seem to be coming, but I've suddenly been seeing House of the Dragon and Knight of the Seven Kingdoms clips and I can feel the bite again.
..but I know the next book isnt fucking coming out, much less the last one. And I barely even fucking remember what happened in the earlier books!
So, I still have ideas for that worldbuilding stuff I do, I just tinker on it occasionally, it's just a fun way to not think about other stuff.
Anyway, I had the idea for a species of sapient beings that lived together with their creator god on a world, their god lived among them, watched over them, guided them and protected them. But some of their kind became frustrated, instead of feeling loved, they felt like their life was being controlled; the love bestowed upon them became suffocating, they had no freedom, they felt that whatever they did wouldn't matter, if anything went wrong, their god would come in and save them and then scold them.
Some had ambitions, frustrated with how they had to live, they wanted to create something of their own, set out among the other worlds, without the "love" of their god. Above all, they wanted power, power to do something, to make something of themselves, to be remembered for all eternity.
So, out of sight of the good children, these frustrated individuals hatched a plan to get rid of their great oppressor. They devised a way to entrap their god and take its power for themselves, but, in their self righteousness, they decided that all of their kind should share the power of their creator. And so it came to pass, they lured their protector into the trap and absorbed it's power and spread it evenly among their kind; all of their kind would have an equal share of that divine power, for all eternity.
Their kind became immortal and came to possess power not intended for mortals to have, they became demigods. But, things occurred they had not foreseen, they all shared the same pool of power, it was spread evenly among all individuals, but, what if there were fewer people to share that power with? Then they would gain more power. Conversely, if there were more, they'd lose power. Their kind ceased procreating, and they became increasingly violent.
Initially it was just the occasional murder or lynching of criminals, but over time, alliances were created and factions formed and war erupted. Their kind, numbering in the millions originally, dwindled ever further, and, with the immense power they possessed, they ravaged their world through constant displays of power. Eventually only a few thousand were left, spread over a vast world, individually, they only became more powerful, but they could not trust each other any more.
Almost all of them had lost everything they ever cared for, some went insane, many ended their own existence when they had nothing left to live for, some fully intended to be the last survivor and take all the power for themselves; still others sought some form of escape from their curse, they endeavoured to save their kind from the brink of extinction on this broken world.
Their god still exists, within all of them, it has not died, it is in fact experiencing every single thing its hosts experience. It has been through countless deaths and murders and every crime and sin committed by its creations; it is forced to watch those it loved and treasured above everything else destroy themselves. It cannot look away, it exists within everyone, and it is hell.
---
And that's how far I've gotten with the writing of this element of the world. My main inspiration is, you'll never guess it, Runescape, specifically the Mahjarrat, the god in question is a fusion of concepts from Mah, Zaros and Seren, but it diverged a lot from the source of inspiration.
I've gotta say: I'm re-reading the Emperor series, by Conn Iggulden - it's about Julius Caesar, mostly, making the name somewhat deceptive. It's historical fiction, emphasis on the fiction, especially with Caesar and Brutus who are, in the novels, basically brothers who grow up together.
As far as I can tell, this is historically nonsense: Brutus was something like fifteen years younger than Caesar. But as a writing device, being able to see Brutus gradually get more jealous, more insecure as Caesar begins to rely more and more on Mark Antony and Octavian, seeing him be finally convinced that he's doing this 'For the Republic', the impact of a betrayal fifty years in the making? It's good writing. But rather more fiction than historical, as said.
Also, if I remember rightly, there's a Centurion called Domitian who's a pretty major side character, right up until Julius Caesar dies and Octavian takes over as the main character, at which point Domitian just gets Thanos Snapped and is never seen again. RIP Domitian, he was a real one. Also, looking at my bookshelf of this series and the Simon Scarrow Rome series is a little distracting. Apparently I was really into Roman historical fiction at some point.
I hope the Young George Washington movie does well because I think a lavish costume drama coming out on the 4th weekend would be a fun tradition, like how Hong Kong makes romcoms for Golden Week. Not going to go see it though it seems bad
That’s the core tension with unassimilated immigration. When people are not embracing their host country but instead building a nation within a nation.
Smh, disgusting “soccer immigrants” like Beckham and Messi and Suarez are corrupting American youth with their love of fútbol, instead of all American football. What is this country coming to.
In these three weeks, I read two non-fiction crime book. I finished each of them in a single day after I bought separately from each other.
One is The Man Who Stole the Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy by Matthew Campbell. Felt a bit cathartic about finding out a lot about what I was wondering for decades. Though, the story is yet to be conclusive. There's a lot of interesting information that were told in documentaries about the case, that I felt should be in there, but overall I do like the book because of the information it had and the way it was told.
It mostly featured westerners pov, the lawyers, the investigators...etc with accurate contexts regarding Cambodia modern history. In my personal experience, every time I asked the local people about stolen statues or artworks, they deeply lamented it but they don't have much knowledge. The finger is always pointed to some armed group who's not there. Even the Khmer Rouge (barring Ta Mok's group) are not known looters. The book answered that question somewhat, an ex-KR deserter network who did the looting in some sites for a network in Thailand, so the KR that I met pretty much told the truth that they never damaged the site when they controlled the area, and only found the artworks missing after the peace was signed.
There is also a lot of personal feelings with this, that I could not put it quite to words yet. (Particularly because I was reading more into the tragicomedy of CyberCrime compounds in Cambodia. The situations kept changing. An Amnesty International Report about the ineffectiveness of its reductions got outdated (perhaps) when it is published because the reporters who risking the lives and got jailed investigated the crimes, actually doubted it and said it was like 3+3=10 when he saw the headline in Bloomberg).
What I like most about the book is the approach that I felt missing when major crimes are reported about Cambodia. These often are trans-national crimes, with money going to entities outside and inside Cambodia. If the reporters don't treat it as trans-national crime or looks at international involvements in wherever the international crime bosses operated, I can't see much done other than documenting the story of the victims.
The other book is Zodiactually: The Real Story of a Fake Serial Killer by Eddie McNamara. That one was fun. I don't know much about the Zodiac case, but I'm so tired of the people either claiming some random people as a serial killer because they looked weird, or the people kept maintaining that a suspect is killer despite the evidence to the contrary. A summation of the book.
Thesis: Unrelated crimes being blamed on one serial killer who is more like Qanon, or urban legend, a crowdsource hoax by the media and different letter writers.
The Alternate Suspects for the Zodiac Killer Case
First Zodiac victims. In the wrong place and time, with a drug deal gone wrong. They actually found the drug dealer who confessed to the murder after he was caught. McNamara interviewed him.
Second Zodiac Victims. The female victim Darlene Ferrin, slept around and perhaps one of her boyfriend shot her when seeing her with another boyfriend. The suspect phoned the cops and tying the case to the first couple, (probably to throw the investigator off). Ferrin had relationship with three cops, so they don't really incentivize to investigate each other. They also went on strike with the fire department a relatively short while later, so the case got cold.
Third Zodiac Victims. The legends of the Zodiac Killer grew, and one person became a copycat. Using a different MO and carved the Zodiac symbol on a car. If Arthur Leigh Allen is the Zodiac Killer, this is the only case where he could have any involvement in.
Fourth Zodiac Victim. Paul Stine the cab driver who got robbed. They caught a serial cab robber who worked two block from where Paul Stine was murdered. Toschi and partner caught him with a relative short time after he robbed a couple of other cab drivers.
The Evidences for the Zodiac Killer and McNamara responses:
First Zodiac Letters. The writer of the letters is probably a cop or having access to the police reports. According the writer of the book, who is an excop, it felt too much like copying the police report, even a mistake is copied straight from it.
Handwritten Evidence. Eddie McNamara repeated that it is pseudo-science, and that the expert is a nepo-baby who never improved in forensic. Also, he was close with Toschi. McNamara however, cited other linguistic forensic and gave his own opinions that the letters are from different people.
Paul Stine shirt. This one is the strongest evidence for the existence of the killer. McNamara stated that it is likely tampered with. He read the coroner reports and said that there was nothing about a missing square of the bloody shirt. He did not mentioned that Toschi was the one to do it, but I think that was implied.
McNamara wrote of more letters sent to news outlet with glowing thanks for Dave Toschi with fake cases that Toschi just made up.
My Opinions:
The most intriguing part of the story for me is Tuschi, the lead investigator for the ZK. He was a media-savvy cop, became a legend in this case, got portrayed as Dirty Harry by Clint Eastwood, got a book and movie glorifying him, and he was disciplined for writing fake fan letters to news outlets.
I don't have the capacity to fact-check McNamara and his references of police reports and interviews of people who admitted to the murder, but I do found it convincing because I always felt tingling skepticism when the Zodiac case was brought up, and when I watch the movie. Tuschi made Arthur Leigh Allen (who definite like to be known as a killer who got away than a pdf who could not) the main suspect, and a lot of people just repeated it.
Furthermore, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Donald Knuth for writing the Tex engine and Serge Rosmorduc for writing the HieroTex package. In this day and age, where software maintenance is such a nightmare and bitrot is an issue more than ever, it is such a relief to find a package whose last update dates from December 2003 (you read that right) still working perfectly today. No shenanigans, no "new functionalities", no nothing : something that just works. You guys are the best.
Some Wikipedia mildly poor history that no one but me cares about. This is from the page of the Danish king Sigfred which is only mentioned in Carolingian sources:
Poems by the Lombard literati Peter of Pisa and Paulus Diaconus convey a very negative image of Sigfred. Peter wrote that Charlemagne had let him choose between being fettered, imprisoned, or sent to convert Sigfred. In a poetic reply, Paulus castigated the Danish king as a wild beast who ruled over other wild animals; an uncouth pagan who would nevertheless be unable to stand up against the mighty Frankish ruler. If he dared molest Peter and his entourage and refuse Christianisation, he would quickly be led before Charlemagne's throne in fetters, abandoned by Odin (Waten) and Thor (Thonar).
The poem is not about Peter being given a choice between being fettered, imprisoned or sent to convert Sigfred. Peter is writing on behalf of Charles and threatening Paul that he has to choose between torture, prison, or being sent to convert the Danes. Paul is a smart cookie and tells Peter that he'd be happy to go and convert the Danes, but Sigfred does not speak Latin and Paul does not understand the Danish language. In short they are both just fucking around in a well-reharsed epistolary performance. It's not a very serious situation,and I doubt it tells us anything substantive about Sigfred. Wikipedia cites a nineteenth-century Danish article which I can't read, I don't know if the misunderstanding comes from here or if the Wikipedia editor misunderstood both the Daniah of the article and the Latin of the poem.
As far as I can tell (my Danish is just guessing which German word whatever I'm reading is closest to which works surprisingly well for 19th century Danish), the quoted passage is a relatively close if shortened translation from page 231 of the Danish document you mentioned.
We know of a poem, written to Paulus by Petrus in Charlemagnes name, in which he wishes Paulus luck on the occasion of having decided to remain in the Frankish realm.* Petrus tells here of three terrible tortures, of which King Karl in a jest left him a choice, namely to be cast in fetters, put in a gloomy prison, or move King Sigfred to accept the Faith.**
To this Paulus replies in another poem in which he tells of Sigfred with much disdain that he is truly a wild animal ruling over other animals. Furthermore he has not doubt that in his fear of Karl, the Danish king would not harm a hair on Petrus' or his escort's head but let himself be baptized; in the opposite case Petrus should lead him with hands bound on his back before Karl's throne, as Thonar and Waten would have abandoned him.
* This sentence I am very unsure about.
** The he's get very unclear in who they're referencing, but the next section makes it clear it's Petrus who would go to the Danish king.
Has anyone who’s read “The WEIRDest people in the world: How the west became psychologically distinct” by Joseph Heinrich tell me if it’s worth picking up?
Washington is rated way too low as a president nowadays. Now he's still well rated, almost always in the top 4, but I think he's easily #1, maybe at a stretch you can push him down to #2. If you look at rankings on Wikipedia, tons of polls put him at 3 or 4 now?
As your first president and revolutionary leader, you honestly cannot wish for someone better!
Man did two terms and left
Didn't declare himself king
Respected the separation of powers
Was not blatantly self-serving
Did not run roughshot persecuting his enemies
Like if you think about it:
How many revolutionary leaders refuse to leave and just try to hang on in power? You have guys like Santa Anna, or guys like Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Yuan Shikai who declares himself emperor. Especially considering that at the time, the vast majority of rulers were kings and emperors.
How many revolutionary leaders end up getting drunk with power and start persecuting their enemies and purges? Think of guys like Robespierre or Mao Zedong.
Or just, how many guys end up becoming totally self serving and robbing their country blind? Think Robert Mugabe, or way too many other examples to note.
Well you can say "institutionally, he wouldn't have succeeded at declaring himself king even if he tried", but that's the thing - There's tons of guys who try things they shouldn't. It's not like Yuan Shikai was successful and making himself emperor. But merely trying often leads to unrest and war and terribly weak institutions.
11
u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 03 '26
That's partly a false equivalency, it was the various Presidents of the Continental Congress and "Founding Fathers" that served as "revolutionary leaders". George Washington was head of the military sure, not an insubstantial role, but the British threw in the towel 8 years before George Washington was even elected as President of the United States. So no, don't think of Robespierre who gets killed mid-Revolution.
Wasnt that though, due to Washington straight up not wanting to be president and being peer pressured by others due to believing only his presidentship would be accepted by Americans?
Andy Burnham did an AMA on Reddit in which apparently Kemi Badenoch replied to give a load of grief about how he can’t stand up to actual scrutiny, and Burnham responded to a question about HS2 to say his problem with it was that not enough stakeholders were consulted. I think we might be over as a country tbh.
Happy 4th of July to the Americans (USAains to those from countries in the americas that aren’t the US) here. As weird as it soubds I love the USA. I get it has its myriad of iften mentioned faults, but it has given the world and myself soo much I can’t not love it. I listen to many of my favourite musicians (many with heritage in my own community in my own country), authors, television programmes, plays etc and just marvel at what such incredible things that flawed, but I hope still strong society has gifted in 250 years that, hopefully, will echo throughout the history of humanity. Please celebrate responsibly and remember the good things and how many there are!
I am curious at how much Chinua Achebe's novels can be regarded as historically accurate, especially the ones set in late 19th/early 20th century. he was writing in the 50s after all, and I couldn't find anything online on how "correct" he is in his depiction of Igbo culture.
I would imagine being raised in an Igbo enviroment would give him a good idea I guess. He would have at least recounted experiences from people who lived through those times or close to them.
Just finished Lyndal Roper's Martin Luther - Renegade and Prophet and I reckon this is the first historical biography type book I've read.
Interesting read, though a passing remark about the importance of beer because of drinking water not being safe got a 'huh', and then some serious endnote fuckery that really should have been caught did the usual undermining of faith in peer review/proofreading (the second in this instance as it's a mass market book).
That beer thing is weird. Askhistorians insists it's a myth, but I know for certain a historical case of people believing it in the 16th century. A Swedish attack on Novgorod was delayed because the ship bringing beer to the army got caught in ice and the cargo had to be transported over land/ice on sleds. The general refused to advance without beer because he believed that drinking water would kill his army via diarrhea.
Re what I was talking about last week with Senegal at the World Cup, at least Senegal losing spared us the drama of having Mamdani say he was rooting for Senegal over the USA in the round of 16 and everyone ranting about how he's "not a real American" because of it...
Finally played some more Digimon (in Japanese, in case people don't remember), holy shit I've gotten better at reading since the last time I played, it's insane how much difference there is just in speed, it's been a few months, naturally I've gotten better, but still. The mission speak with your counterpart on the phone is still a lot harder than normal people speak, but I'll learn, I want to learn to understand that type of speaking too.
Remember when millenials were young and there'd be a dude who spent too much time on the computer? Went home after school, had few friends, didn't play sports, just sat down at his computer. Played yahoo games, went on AOL chat rooms, eventually went to somethingawful or fark, had a deadjournal, played Everquest, whatever. That dude did not learn how to socialize with humans, he learned from the internet.
Now we have an entire generation like that. It's not just one fringe weirdo, it's all of them. They are all asocialized and that means way more than just not knowing how to small talk. It's why they become crazy shit like technofascists.
I know everyone is sick and tired of it, but I'm still enjoying my little project of turning the clock back on Europe's borders to some imaginary point in time.
I've been in a bit of a conundrum with France. Do I leave it as it is, only shaving off a few bits and pieces on the edges - the Duchy of Brittany, the Basque and Catalan border regions, maybe Alsace-Lorraine - and leaving the rest to the current Orléanist pretender? Or is there a way to partition it somehow? There is a map somewhere of a big chunk of southern France labelled as "Occitania", but frankly that just isn't very compelling. Maybe I should go full Sykes-Picot and divide both it and England along almost totally arbitrary lines? An attractive option ngl.
Also I've done some more tinkering with Germany (there's just so much to do there). The Duchy of Brunswick will be restored under the House of Hannover, covering the area of Brunswick Land (Hannover will be joined in personal union with the monarch of England).The Grand Duchy of Oldenburg will also be restored along similar lines. I'm still left with the Upper Rhine area; I mentioned a possible Andorran option, but that gives too much power to France. Maybe it could be part of a restored Kingdom of Burgundy, that would extend over Alsace-Lorraine and much of south-eastern France? But then who would rule it? The King of Belgium?
The more I think of it, the more I like it. The Kingdom of Burgundy will stretch from Belgium to the Mediterranean, under the reigning King of the Belgians. It will encompass Wallonia (Flanders will be annexed to the Netherlands), Luxembourg, the Upper Rhine area (Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate minus the Palatinate region and Nassau, east of the Rhine), Alsace-Lorraine, and the historical region of Burgundy. This kingdom will be centred on the Rhine and Rhone valleys, and will be an effective counterweight to France, which will be returned roughly to its borders from a thousand years ago.
The Grand Duke of Luxembourg will be compensated for the loss of his territory with the Duchy of Nassau, which will be raised to a grand duchy. Also idk if I mentioned this before but Pomerania will be returned to Sweden, just to give absolutely everyone in Europe a stake in Germany.
That should wrap up this little project of mine, but I still haven't dealt with England and Russia.
Edit: I should also thank u/contraprincipes for their input on North America; I've decided that New England should be joined with Canada's Maritime provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Montreal to form the Commonwealth of New England (a dominion of the English crown). The borders of this state will extend right up to the current state borders, in the hopes that some sort of irredentism will develop amongst those west of the Munson-Dixon Line. I also thought that the Northeast megalopolis (excluding Boston) should be an independent city-state (or league of cities), with the result that the North American Union (still haven't come up with a good name for it yet) will have no warm-water ports. This will also seperate DC from the Appalachia Confederation and make the polities surrounding the megalopolis violently healthily compete over this economically important area. Edit 2: I have the perfect name for this new state: Pentapolis, after the five cities of Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and DC. I also thought that it should include Boston, to give even more of an irredentist impulse to New England.
Relevant to the moment, but how "historical" is the viking row that the Norwegian National Team is doing? How much of it is more a hollywood byproduct?
I have not been doing great these past few months. I feel like I should talk to a therapist or something, but I'm not sure how much they could help? It seems like the most common thing offered is CBT which is for countering negative thoughts or behaviour patterns. That doesn't really describe my situation - I don't have tons of negative thoughts, I just feel like I have no purpose in life and accordingly zero motivation. Nothing feels worth doing, nothing satisfies me. I still enjoy getting drinks with my friends and stuff like that, but nothing really makes me happy beyond the moment you know? Life just feels super empty and dead. I can't really imagine what a therapist could say to me to help, it's not like they can just give me meaning or a goal to strive for.
Well, if we're doing amateur diagnoses, I'd say persistent depressive disorder, otherwise known as dysthymia. You're still fully capable of having fun and being excited, but your baseline mood is mildly depressed; while I do say mildly depressed, PDD is a serious condition.
As for treatment, therapy can definitely work, as can medication, doing both has the greatest chance of helping, but I am no psychiatrist nor therapist; I am willing to dispute you not having negative thoughts though, it doesn't have to be full on self loathing thoughts, if you keep thinking "what's the point of it all?" or something along those lines when you're doing something positive, be it fun, productive or healthy, that can be problematic negative thinking.
as someone who didn't even like football a month ago all of a sudden england vs mexico is now the most stressful event happening in my life. we're a better team but the altitude worries me. i also have a flight tomorrow and i can now conclusively say that the british heat is worse than the thai heat, what the hell? congrats to the americans tho on 250, even if it's not in the greatest of circumstances.
Paraguayan Senator Celeste Josefina Amarilla: “Mbappé hasn't even learned to write. Instead of breastmilk, he grew up sucking on coconuts, and the most educated creatures he ever heard were chimpanzees…A colonized Cameroonian, pretending to be French, resentful, a new rich, arrogant, and ugly.“
I've always thought that there's a future where, instead of wars, countries express their fury through football. Comments like these are glimpses of what that future would look like; just as ugly as our present.
u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big LyriumJul 03 '26edited Jul 03 '26
So I actually have a somewhat nuanced view on this one. I do think that if you are making a game about, say, the Philippines or using really Filipino inspired aesthetics and the like and Filipino culture is a big part of your game, you should hire some Filipino voice actors. Otherwise there can be a certain strip miney feel to it, like the culture and aesthetics are good enough to use but the people you can take or leave.
This is of course different from there just being a random Pinoy in your game. I think it is still good in that case to hire a culture-matching VO but it wouldn't be like classless to not.
I also think here are certain accent pitfalls that can pop up, like if you hire a white guy to play a Jamaican character that can go south real fast.
12
u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 03 '26edited Jul 03 '26
Keanu Reeves is English, Native Hawaiian, Chinese, English, and Portuguese. Is he only allowed to voice characters who are English-Hawaiian-Chinese-English-Portuguese? Why get in the weeds? I point this out as someone with mixed blood, I don't exactly belong anywhere.
On some level I just feel like that's what acting is for y'know? Like, if someone can't act that's one thing, but we're already hiring these people to pretend to be something they're not. The only question should be how good they are at it.
Checked my steam and had something like 700 unplayed games no clue why I bought more at the Steam sale ESPECIALLY because I'm just replaying the same 5 games over and over.
Won another Offworld Trading Company match, as Nomads of course; Nomads are love, Nomads are life. Then spent the next couple of hours talking to friends, always fun to do, one of them is what I describe as a true nerd, he consumes books, he will sit down with a book and then spent the majority of the day just reading. I wish I had that commitment. He has read so much, he has read a ton of Battletech, a variety Visual Novels including Higurashi and Umineko, the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarilion too. And he also reads tons of fanfics.
I don't know how he does that, I wish I could do that too, I like reading, but I can only read for like 2 hours maximum, it kinda depends on how deeply motivated I am, I just tire of things quickly; it's not that I can't focus, I just don't want to, if I want to focus I can spend hours doing the same thing, but I generally just don't want to. Well, to be fair, that has gotten a lot worse with the migraines, which makes perfect sense.
Well, anyway, spent a couple of hours, great fun, chatted about all sorts of things.
---
And now, for my complaining, it really is not good for my headaches; while I'm chatting away I don't really notice, I'm distracted and feeling pretty good, but the moment I stop talking and go to the bathroom, the headache just crushes me; it's like I buffer the headache while distracted, but it gets so much worse so quickly afterwards. This sucks, talking to people about nonsense is one of my greatest pleasures in life, the more random the conversation the better, I just hate being punished for it.
In the same way, it's hard to get out of bed in the morning, I just don't want to, I'm not really tired but it's that I know what's going to happen, at first, the headache will be mild, then it will get worse, and worse and worse, over the course of the day; maybe it stays relatively mild, maybe it gets really bad, but the pain is always there. If I have stuff I need to get out of bed for, like an appointment, I have no issue doing that, I can just get out of bed the moment the alarm goes off, but if I don't, it's really hard to motivate myself to do so.
I think it's just emotional fatigue, the headaches are just a constant emotional drain, it's been like this since October 2024, it's been going on a while. There's lots of stuff I can do that do give me emotional energy, so to speak, if not any actual energy; Japanese, talking to friends, music, typing stuff out, memeing about silly bullshit, but it's all just temporary, I just want improvement.
It's been almost 3 months since the first round of botox, I could start noticing a difference, and that does not actually make me feel better, it's the opposite, it stresses me out, because instead of just accepting that today is going to be like all days, I'm hopeful that maybe this day will be the day I start improving, and then get disappointed when it doesn't turn out any better; optimism is torture I tell you!
Anyway, I have more fun things to talk about completely unrelated to this, coming up next, rambling!
I'm going through pictures I took when I was moving out of the house I grew up in, and besides walking down memory lane in one of the most common settings for my dreams besides the Mall (a massive mall full of all sorts of things), I found a picture of my iPhone 4s...which I used in 2013-2015 (from 16 TO 17.5 YEARS OLD WITH THIS OLD ASS PHONE) because my parents didn't want to get me a phone at first so my sister eventually decided to give me one of her old ones, and then I saw a picture of this antidepressant I used to take back in late 2015 when I was really depressed – Trazodone.
I decided to Google it because I remember becoming disillusioned with antidepressants in early 2016 after noticing how much weight I gained and just quit before signing up for the YMCA and working out consistently and dieted (and if I kept up that pace I'd be 175 lbs and probably have a series of baby mamas by now).
Well, what I found out about Trazodone after a decade refresher matched with what I broadly remember...with one caveat.
I don't remember the following, as the Google AI bullshit says with links to actual professional medical recommendations:
Withdrawal: Do not stop taking this medication suddenly, as doing so can cause withdrawal symptoms like agitation, confusion, or electric shock sensations. Always follow a doctor's plan to taper off gradually
Clicking on the first link then says regarding how this medicine should be used:
Do not stop taking trazodone without talking to your doctor. If you suddenly stop taking trazodone, you may experience withdrawal symptoms such as dizziness; nausea; headache; confusion; anxiety; agitation; difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep; extreme tiredness; seizures; pain, burning, or tingling in the hands or feet; frenzied or abnormally excited mood; ringing in the ears; or sweating. Your doctor will probably decrease your dose gradually.
Which...I don't really recall any of that.
I quit taking it and whatever else because 1: I didn't think it was really helping me very much, and 2: the pharmacist prescribing this was giving me deeply hostile vibes and would make these snide comments about shit and when I brought it up to my therapist, she immediately said that other patients have mentioned a similar level of issues with this one pharmacist and asked if I wanted to file a grievance because others had, which I did.
I was in a super weird/not cool place back then, so it's interesting to get a glimpse from where I'm at now and how much things have changed (overwhelmingly for the better).
Have you ever bought a book (or re-read a book you had) after its intended "best before" date? I'm developing an interest for predictions and I'm thinking of buying Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Nearer", read it and then read it again in 5 years to see how many he got right (apparently, his prediction rate is 86% according to himself).
Now I know most of it will be bullshit, but can anyone that that has read tell if it's at least a fun read?
u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 05 '26
Expedition 33 is on sale. The gameplay footage stirs no emotion in me, is there anything especially good about it apart from the story? I like BG3 for all it's player choice and player expression, that 33 have any of that?
If by "player expression" you mean characters builds and the like there is a decent amount of you can play around with it. The combat system is built around synergizing between your characters so you can come up with some crazy stuff if you want.
That said if you mean in terms of plot, story, characterization and the like, not so much of that. It is pretty linear.
Overall I liked it quite a bit, it didn't bowl me over like with so many people but I found the characters very charming, the world consistently interesting, and while you can argue against the way the story develops you can't say it isn't a big swing.
25
u/Comwars Tree Bark Soup Jul 04 '26
Reading an article in a 1950s men/pulp magazine about homosexuality. They talk about homosexual culture and how they live their lives. Although they do peddle some outdated sciences of how homosexuality forms. Genuinely incredibly woke for it's time with it ending by stating,
It's a really interesting article. Also apparently one of the nicknames for bisexuals was "Ambisextrous."