Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.
So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?
Blade Runner (the 2017 one) is a bad film. The characters are flat, the plot is gimmicky, the visuals are gorgeous but meaningless as narrative. It is a pastiche of themes and images from other films. It's almost not worth comment. The thing that brings it out of the soup of by-the-numbers cinematography is how much it leans into its lack of character.
They cast Ryan Gosling, the most inoffensive and empty actor available, and had him playing an inoffensive and empty character. At one point, it appears as if he might actually be a real boy, but this turns out to be a common delusion for robots like him.
They brought back Harrison Ford, looking old and bored and decidedly thick around the belly, to play himself -- and even the residue of his performance in the original Blade Runner is enough to bring the actual spirit of the film into relief: it's a self-aware comment about the poisoned and cynical desert of late 2010's culture. Character, plot, image: all are subsumed into mistimed incantations of their priors.
It's a film where the images of the past no longer deliver any effect, but we're condemned to repeat them nonetheless.
(PS: the 'sequel' thing is probably what analysis should hang around, from the nitty gritty of the economics)
Blade Runner (the original one) is a bad film. The characters are often wildly inconsistent, the visuals and sound are gorgeous, but the underlying themes are only skin-deep. It is a pastiche of the novel it is based on.
Ridley Scott cast Harrison Ford, the most inoffensive and generic actor possible, to play to Rick Deckard, who has functionally no character. He is such an intense void of personality that it's hard to say what he even likes besides Johnnie Walker Black Label and maybe ramen. Despite Ford trying his best, he gets precisely one (1) scene to stretch his acting chops, when he tries to take out Zora in the strip club. Beyond that, he is an empty vessel. In contrast, the Rick Deckard of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (DADES) has a wife and a sheep he looks after and we learn a lot about how he views the world. The replicants have a greater personality, particularly Roy Batty, but he is also wildly inconsistent to the point of narrative incoherence in his behaviour. In one scene he tries to kill Deckard, then the very next he does everything he can to save him. This makes no sense except that it has to happen for the thematic pay off to work.
At the same time, Ridley Scott's knowledge of the novel's underlying themes is so poor as to render aspects of the film almost a parody of how mainstream directors are incapable of understanding the subtext of the stories they adapt. This is to the point where he opted to use the title of a completely unreleated Sci-Fi novel by David E. Nourse about people who smuggle medical equipment, which makes the title of "Blade Runner" utterly nonsensical in-universe. He had so little knowledge of what DADES was about that at an extremely late stage of production he tried to retcon in a sub-plot about how Deckard might actually be a replicant. This is a twist so trite, shallow and stupidly nonsensical that literally everyone else on set vehemently disagreed with Scott about it, including Ford, who despite not being renowned as a deep thinker, will reportedly go on extended rants about how it undermines the core themes of the film if asked about it. It even gets brought up and very explicitly dismissed in the novel as a potential plot point because Phillip K. Dick was not a hack and instantly recognised that it was a fucking dumb concept that had been done before. Even then, Scott remains so wishy-washy on this idiotic interpretation that he has re-cut the film multiple times as he flip-flops back and forth. Furthering that arguably the worst aspect of the film is Ridley Scott is that the most iconic scene, Batty's incredible Tears in the Rain monologue was heavily edited by Rutger Hauer himself to gut most of the rambling in the original script.
In contrast, in many ways 2047 demonstrates a far greater understanding and connection with the novel's themes. K is explicitly a replicant from the off who hunts replicants. This immediately draws our attention to the question of why society permits K to live a normal(ish) life whereas the replicants he hunts are condemned to death despite not being appreciably different from him. This is a clear allusion to the novel using the LAPD hunting the replicants as an allegory for the Gestapo and other genocidal regimes. 2047 also leans in hard on the thin barrier between reality and unreality that the novel and much of Dick's work has as a thematic through-line. The emotional core for much of the film is K's relationship with Joi and how 'real' it is. We never get a satisfying answer to whether Joi actually felt anything for K or if she was really just a very advanced chatbot. It's uncomfortable in a very particular way that leaves you unsure of how to feel, and is highly reminiscent of much of Dick's writing.
OK, I'm being deliberately facetious about the original film. I love both of them, but they are drastically different films. All the same, I think it's a bit silly to describe anything Denis Villeneuve creates as being 'meaningless'. The amount of detail he crams into every scene is bonkers in all of his films.
I may have chucked out my skincare routine and instead watched Blade Runner in half a split screen on my phone, the other split showing Hasan Piker's takes on Talarico, regularly switching between this and porn which I'm pretty sure is at least partially ai-generated. Like no human face actually moves like that. Through this process, and a nice bump of speed I got from a gentleman I met at the train station, I think I astrally projected into the body of Phillip K. Dick, through the principle of sympathetic resonance. This put me in a place to deliver a couple of observations: neither Blade Runner nor Blade Runner are particularly cerebral works. The difference is that Blade Runner is produced by a decade that has stylistic self-confidence, even stylistic machismo. It's dated, but it's from a date that feels confident in its own predilections. Blade Runner is from a date that feels like the substructure of its own facelift plastic is melting and moving under its skin -- it's just so utterly abject and lacking in self confidence that it's also dated, but just from a date that's more like a state of mind, a kind of atemporal abyss of the human soul.
Cyberpunk as a genre is very much about how soulless corporation suck the lifeblood out of everything. So that the corporate cash grab is visually gorgeous but narratively empty, is very appropriate commentary of our post postmodern condition.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Aug 28 '26
So that the corporate cash grab
But that's not Bladerunner. The first movie flopped, and they made a sequel that also flopped, didn't even reach break-even. There's no cash to grab, this is a cult franchise.
Hard agree. I felt it was very much style over substance but it got so much praise upon release that I wondered if I just didn't "get it".
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Aug 28 '26
At least it had style. Ghost in the Shell 2017 didn't even have the discipline to use the color of the city lights to set a mood or emotional tone, it was just noise filling the screen.
Nonsense. Everyone knows that cities are for driving through or commuting to for employment. How else could you explain the regional governance structure where I live, where 7 million people in suburbs, small cities, and rural areas get to keep re-electing a guy with the power and will to wage a personal battle against the major regional city who spurned him in his past mayoral bid? I love when a bunch of carbrained conservative fuckwits who only come to the city to watch professional sports get to collectively decide to spend $50M of tax money mostly collected from economic activity in the city to make everything slower and more polluted and less safe for everyone! (ripping out existing bike lanes, and moreover making it illegal everywhere to remove car lanes)
God damn it. My hope for this cabinet was already not very high, and every announcement from them sinks it lower. I don't have a crystal ball, but my prediction for the next budget is that they'll introduce some awkward tax grabs to pay for inconsequential shite like VAT cuts, and do bugger all about any serious long-term issues.
I don't know why I tease myself by following politics so closely. On some level I know that the government isn't going to do anything of substance, not least because the public & press would throw a tantrum if they did.
Ratcliffe’s trip to Moscow was “less about Putin being in a corner” because his army has failed to break a stalemate on the Ukraine battlefield “and more because Russia assesses we are depleted and can’t intervene,” one of the people familiar said.
Ratcliffe told Russian officials that if Putin significantly escalated the war in Ukraine, it would push Trump toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, this person said.
A random idea I just had for my sword and sorcery setting is a character who is a firm skeptic in the "there's a rational explanation for this" sense when they keep bumping into things that are clearly supernatural/unnatural/beyond logical or otherwise rational explanation.
Except instead of them seeing a curse, encountering demons or spirits, seeing wizardry and sorcery...they are the one doing magic and insisting that everything they are doing has a perfectly reasonable explanation that is based in reality and not fairy tales or whimsical fancies like so-called "magic".
But it is magic, they're just being extremely obstinate to the point of self-delusion after a certain point.
So seeing other people's replies I think everyone is presuming you're talking about a DnDesque setting where the perception is everyone interacts with magic on a daily basis in some form. Sword and Sorcery tends to be more everyone believing in the power of magic but actual powerful wizards tend to be rare and more often worshippers of evil serpent gods than not? In the latter I can see someone writing off their abilities especially if the source of those powers is often stigmatised.
Replies here really get how odd my background with fantasy is. My introduction was Ranger's Apprentice which had the attitude of "Magic? I ain't gonna say no, but I've travelled everywhere and I haven't seen it". More than a few Conan plots were really light on the magic, one has an elephant alien and another has some proto-human ape instead of anything out and out fantastic.
I think it needs to be doing magic in a fundamentally different way than everyone else that they insist they can't be.
Like a PF2e Investigator insisting their ability to whip up dark vision potions mid dungeon has absolutely nothing to do with magic. That's wizard and sorcerer shit. They're not touching any of that arcane bullshit, by the way anyone want this coffee? Stuffs so good sometimes it feels like arcane answers just come to you. (They really do, it gives you visions on arcane matters when you attempt to understand them.)
Or something like Warhammer fantasy priests. "No, see, these are prayers, nothing like those wizards witchcraft. Nuttin'to it but faith in Sigmar/Ulfric!"
Great comedy concept, especially if he can’t control the magic. Like, having a barn full of humans he turned into animals, who he’s convinced are normal animals, even when they literally start talking to him.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Aug 28 '26
If magic is objective in this world, if Thaumatology is an objective theory and skill and you can't just throw random shit into a pot and make a magic potion, you actually have to follow recipe, then it wouldn't be self-delusion to claim a reasonable explanation.
Why does copper and tin make bronze? Probably an explanation there that the Alchemist isn't fully able to deliver.
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u/ZugwatHeadhunting Savage from a Barbaric Fishing Village Aug 28 '26edited Aug 28 '26
Thaumatology is an objective theory and skill and you can't just throw random shit into a pot and make a magic potion, you actually have to follow recipe, then it wouldn't be self-delusion to claim a reasonable explanation
I keep forgetting y'all have a very different approach and cultural background to magic and I'm getting my initial bit up there is easy to misinterpret but to get what I'm saying across, this isn't "person uses chemistry in a quasi-historical fantasy setting to turn lead into gold according to a chemistry textbook and ritual", it's "person insists that magic doesn't exist in a pre-modern setting and attributing it to entirely natural and mundane, if unusual, phenomenon while at the same time creating literal living shadows running across the walls by using a specific trick meant initially to demonstrate something akin to early animation".
All I know is I saw a TikTok of the Sleepy Hollow movie with Johnny Depp and Christopher Walken and Christina Ricci, remembered Johnny Depp's character was that dude, and that he gave that sort of demonstration to Christina Ricci's character (a little piece of paper between two strings with a bird flapping its wings) and she thought it was magic.
So I thought, "but what if that sort of dude was actually doing magic and deluded himself into thinking it's not when it becomes abundantly clear that he is?"
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Aug 28 '26
There is the concept of "wild magic" in DnD, where the Sorcerer/Barbarian innately casts spells unintentionally and uncontrollably and I guess someone could develop severe denial over it. In the first Harry Potter book, Harry uses a bunch of unintentional magic like shrinking a sweater he doesn't want to wear, without comprehending magic is real.
I would think in a world where magic and supernatural is common, it would be seen as rational, with even wizards and sorcerers studying it like it were a science (which many fantasy worlds do treat and study magic as though it were a science).
So this is where my issue lies as I'm reading these replies: I'm from a society and culture that had a more omnipresent understanding of magic and the supernatural and there are still shamans and medicine people who go about doing their thing.
At no point have I ever encountered this:
it would be seen as rational, with even wizards and sorcerers studying it like it were a science (which many fantasy worlds do treat and study magic as though it were a science).
Which is the point. Delineating what is "magic" versus what can be easily explained over history has usually been rather muddy and more of a spectrum than a clear and easy to define marker.
The idea I have is someone trying to approach it in a more modern skeptic sense is because that sort of effort to explain it away ignores that the spectrum isn't between "completely normal and somewhat less normal" as opposed to "normal and seriously he's summoning spirits and has crossed into the land of the dead but is trying to insist it's actually swamp gas and hypoxia affecting everyone in this room"
Am I missing something or is everyone here taking it as a "we all know magic exists and therefore have a sustained universal theory of development like all magic everywhere ever has so this person is explaining it to the uncultured layman" and I'm pointing out that "dude who does magic is instead attributing it to swamp gas and mass delusion as a result of food poisoning while literally conducting magic but he is deluding himself into it being something else"?
Like the point is in the setting everyone else is already accepting it's magic and the dude doing it is missing the forest for the trees because he's trying to make a rational explanation for how he's doing this outside of magic because "magic isn't real" but it's magic.
It's not exactly what you're describing but I feel like "con artist who thinks he is pretending to do magic but is actually unknowingly really doing magic" would be close to this concept and I think it's been done before, but I'm escaping where exactly.
yeah I understood you were saying the first part, not the second. you're saying like, this guy can snap his finger and produce a flame, and is trying to attribute this to swamp gas? could be funny. edit: like a round earther in a flat world.
You are right that it’s a lazy AI slop ripoff of a ranking from 1948, although I still humbly note that all the listed “great” presidents are on money, which I can only imagine Trump would agree with if he ever knew it.
They were printed in 1934 and weren't for public usage. It's a little weird because they aren't Federal Reserve Notes, but were used basically exclusively by the different Federal Reserve Banks as gold certificates so that they wouldn't have to haul gold between themselves.
The $10,000 Salmon P Chase note was issued in the same run and that was the highest denomination bill that was available for public use (that's almost $250,000 in 2026 dollars).
I'm trying to think of why each of those presidents would be omitted. Nixon is obvious -- some of Trump's base still loves him, but others even with in the base don't, so he wouldn't want to take a stand. Pissing off Democrats is obviously okay, but he's not going to take a stand that might annoy too many Republicans. Ford is closely associated with Nixon, so the same reasoning there.
GW Bush he wouldn't want to put too low since he was Republican, but also has a lot of baggage --in particular Trump might be reluctant right now to remind people of the Iraq war. GHW Bush I'm less sure, but maybe he's staying away from anything that mind evoke wars in the Middle East? Eisenhower I have no clue -- maybe he's avoiding anyone that evokes wars period? Reagan is the most baffling to me though, it seems like throwing him in the "Great" or "Near Great" tier is a no-brainer for a list meant to appeal to Trump's base. Was he afraid that including Reagan would remind people that other recent Republican presidents existed?
The tier list that this is based off of was published in 1948 with Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden photoshopped in. Trump (or more likely Natalie Harp) probably didn't update with the postwar Republican Presidents cause the personality cult has so overridden the party that the only Republican President of any consequence is Trump.
They treated him horribly. Just horribly. In the press, all kinds of things. Wrote all kinds of things. You know he had a list of all the journalists who said bad things about him? Imagine that? It’s a good idea, a Presidents list. Maybe Natalie is working on that. Or Laura. Whatever. You never know. We'll see. You know Nixon grew up on a farm in Southern California? Imagine that. Million dollar real estate and he was selling lemonade at a lemonade stand or something. Sad. You know I tried to build in Southern California, built something real nice, and they were just horrible to me, absolutely horrible, a disgrace, and I talked to Carl and Carl said - with tears in his eyes - never seen that before from this grown man, he said they’re just doing a total injustice to you not let-
I get him putting Obama/Biden/Carter in the lowest tier, but I do almost wish there was explanation for why Grant and Harding get called out with the modern Democrats that Republicans particularly hate.
My surprise is Coolidge in below average. And of course the grant slander but that's not terribly surprising. Johnson obviously doesn't deserve average but again not surprising. Though for some reason there are no cold war presidents besides carter
After Celtic's humiliation earlier in the week, Rangers have now been dumped out of Europe entirely by FK Jablonec. My happiness is immeasurable and my day is glorious.
Hmm, it seems my music listening habits have returned to their old form, random chaos! I will go from VN OST, to classical music, to the Runescape OST, to Yousei Teikoku, to idol stuff, to strategy game OST, to anime OPs. Chaos! It's great though, only took 2 fucking years...
Sometimes I want to become a Youtuber like Spookston if only to have an excuse to pop the most random OSTs into moments in the videos. There's so much good soundtrack out there, it's my first love in the music world, OSTs.
My music tastes have never really changed, just expanded, there's very few things I used to enjoy but not anymore; the real exception to that is Sabaton, it's the first metal I listened to and I don't really like it anymore, I've moved on from that in my taste. I think I kinda lost the taste for "epic" stuff, I heavily prefer melancholic, dark and sad music these days, but also bittersweet and hopeful; I still really don't like happy music, there's very little properly happy music that I enjoy; because I never grew out of my edgelord phase, obviously.
That's like an incredibly uncontroversial take, there will be no fighting.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, HollandegazeAug 27 '26edited Aug 27 '26
There's currently a big free-for-all economic debate on TV where candidates are being tested by the national employer association (because obviously there's only two genders on the economy, Jean Charles-Auguste from the chamber of commerce or overeducated leftist degrowthers)
and all candidates suck
Mélenchon said that "all of the deficit is because of tax cuts", which is false, most of the debt we took on was from putting half the country on unemployment benefits during lockdown and then energy price controls after 2022.
What he said last week "All we have to do is take the 18% held by the Bank of France and chuck it in the fire". You'll notice that this idea is being supported and propped up in media by Mathieu Pigasse, who's was in charge of debt restructuring in Venezuela and Greece, a guy totally unbiased and who does own a few left-media companies. He also want to freeze the part of the debt that's held by the BCE, which is not illegal but I think it's restricted on the good will of the other EU members
And he said he would openly not follow European rules that goes against the "vote of people" (so if he wins with even with a small margin that means goodbye MERCOSUR deal)
Le Pen wants de reduce the pension age and promises billions in cuts (so we know the money won't be taken from pensions obviously)
Retailleau wants to do huge cuts to the evil giant bureaucracy that swallows ressources, despite the fact that 90% of increase in number of state worker since 2000 comes from doctors and hospital workers, the number of bureaucrats and central administrative workers is now smaller than it was before
Phillipe has decided to go full boomer about sick day abuse, which is a cosmetic change at best and risks burdening the healthcare system even more at worst
I don´t see the contradiction between some of these candidates. You can cut government spending by firing half the doctors, and then the pension problems solves itself as no one makes it to sixty years old. Is genius, honestly.
Yes, but cigarette taxes pay for a third of the cost of the National Health service. We're saving many more lives than we otherwise could, because of those smokers who voluntary lay down their lives for their friends. Smokers are national benefactors.
It's still crazy to think that the late Tim Curry (1946-2026) did voice work for the Sonic franchise, thanks to him being in Sonic SatAM as the voice of King Acorn and The Keeper of the Time Stones.
Posted a comment here a little while ago about my conspiracy that video game companies purposefully put out terrible trailers so they can claim to have “listened to the fans” when the final game releases slightly better than expected.
I feel the exact same way about the Stella Lefty (new nepo baby musician) controversy. The more quote tweets, TikTok’s, and Instagram reels there are about her the more her name gets out into the mainstream and those who aren’t chronically online won’t know/care about her connections. All the photos of her dad’s net worth by totally legitimate Twitter accounts are just a ploy to drive publicity!
Like "The Late Unpleasantness," my favorite euphemism for the American Civil War.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, HollandegazeAug 27 '26edited Aug 27 '26
Finally, the Ephemeris attributed to Dictys of Crete, who claims to have been present at the Trojan War, was probably written in the 1st century CE or perhaps a little earlier. It falls into a tradition of anti-Homeric literature, based on the supposition that Homer got most things about the Trojan War wrong by making virtuous people look like villains, and vice versa
Oh so there already were little Nolans at the time
… however, what most stands out in the general atmosphere of reconciliation following the Third World War are the points of contention, the most prominent of which is the infamous Battle of Lauenberg. In a post-war era defined by international cooperation and the formation of strong cultural ties between former belligerents (see, for example, the “Blind Bastards of Bremen” support group for survivors of the war’s sole nuclear deployment) the war of words between the West and East German governments over who is truly responsible for the deaths of more than 600 civilian evacuees during the battle ranks as one of the War’s most noxious remnants.
Given the consequences of this ongoing issue (stalled German reunification, acrimonious debates about war reparations, the continued militarization of the East-West border a decade after the war’s end) it’s uncomfortable to realize that there may be no true resolution to this controversy, no full accounting of the N.V.A’s attempt to force a crossing of the Elbe and the actions of Battery Seven. In this author’s opinion, the arguments on this topic range from the irrelevant (while it is clear that the Federal Republic of Germany’s pre-war evacuation and civil-defense procedures were grossly inadequate, this did not absolve the Warsaw Pact armed forces of their responsibilities under international law regarding the protection of civilians) to the convincing (despite the Muller Administration’s post-war denials, there is overwhelming evidence of Bundeswehr artillery and anti-aircraft positions in close proximity to the civilian evacuation points, including declassified Warsaw Pact reconnaissance photographs, direct testimony from East and West soldiers who participated in the battle, and even forensic analysis of the infamous “Rain of Fire” videotape recovered from the scene). We must further consider….
Explanation: I spent a game of WARNO yesterday just dumping MLRS fire into a town (including some exploratory blind fire) and then was like "huh, probably a war crime. Maybe there's a story there."
It infuriates me when I see people only learn history for nationalistic purposes, do you seriously think history is an unending cycle of chads (your nation/religion/ethnic group) fighting betas (all other nations/reigions/ethnic groups)?
I'll have you know that Charlemagne is a saint, his feast day is in Oktober, as far as I remember.
I really should look up if he is also a saint for the Lutherans and Anglicans, or just Catholic.
Edit: It's the 28th of January and he is venerated by Lutherans and Catholics. The Catholic church is somewhat ambivalent due to him being canonized by an antipope, he is not in the Martyrologium Romanum, but his relics are venerated in the cathedral of Aachen, which is a privilege reserved for saints.
Seriously though, how the hell is this supposed to work? This kind of sanction is really serious -- it's like, life-long de-banking, no-fly, every single institution just not wanting the risk of touching you with a barge pole.
Grim in an interesting new way, though. How does international proscription between sovereign states actually work? Presumably the US proscribing an organization has a lot more weight than the UK doing the same -- does the UK now lose control of how they relate to PA?
The US treasury taking the whole thing too seriously might make things wildly complicated for the UK government, especially if the proscription gets overturned again. Are they then still terrorists due to international agreements? Feels very messy to me.
One of my relatives over on Facebook has lost it after the Ceuta incident. Started with lots of right wing Battle of Britain memes, then someone must have reminded him he lives in Spain, and now he's demanding the restoration of the Spanish Empire.
It's so wild to see so many people, especially Spaniards, go apeshit over the Ceuta situation (TBF, it was really a mess). Even Javier Bardem decided to get in on the action by blaming Israel for the entire affair, which was quite the common accusation repeated throughout this mess. Which kind of makes me feel somewhat sad for Morocco for not even getting sole credit for probably pulling this stunt off, given the fact that they have done this multiple times over the years.
Thing is that he's said he doesn't like using AI to write cause it doesn't feel the same and produces a generic result that is indistinguishable from any other prompter.
A wiser man might have reached conclusions from that
One of my new students for the term is convinced the Egyptian "giant mummies" are real, that there is some other species of hominid that was roaming around in ancient times. And they definitely seem like the type who want to talk after every class. Could be a long/interesting term.
But I may bite the bullet and ask for their sources today, and talk to them about finding reputable information.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Aug 27 '26edited Aug 28 '26
I remember citing a NOVA episode/ Secrets of the Dead that pointed out Jewish slaves probably didn't build the Great Pyramids judging from the remains and I got called a denier by the professor.
I mean, even the Book of Exodus doesn't say they built the pyramids (US Biblical literalists once again proving they dont read the Bible and get all their ideas from Hollywood and slop).
Often? I guess it depends on your definition, but I feel like there's at least one every term. Granted, that's out of a sample of like 150-200 students, so I wouldn't say that's a lot. Complete ignorance or apathy is a lot more common than strong attachment to nonsense.
With the whole "things happen in threes" it was weird when they found Osama bin Laden, Whitey Bulger and Mladic in the same year. Honestly I think Mladic was the biggest POS of those three.
I still think the answer to making Civ and other 4x games more interesting lies in the board games Oath and Arcs. If you're the kind of person that talks about their civ games in historical narrative terms like, "The Romans held the Great Wall against the Gauls using their militias of crossbows leading to later conflict with the Italians using their muskets against the French," then you have to play one of those two games. The way the simple cards can inform the player's faction's identity, and in Oath inform the map's identity, is just so elegant.
It's just so easy for a narrative to emerge from the generic (as in not proper) nouns and verbs the game gives you. Anyway, you guys should try it if you get a chance. Even an older sibling who doesn't play board games or video games, apart from The Sims way back, was able to play it quite competently. Although they probably didn't have as much buy in as me to write down a simple chronicle about the game that happened, but they did get quite competitive.
If you look at US household wealth you can totally see 'why Trump'. From about 2008 to 2016, the household wealth of the lower 50% of the US is generally below 1% of the total share. It's only in 2020 they actually recover to their pre-financial-crisis slice of the pie (slightly over 2%). When you couple that with slow general growth, you can see why political radicalism exploded in this period.
(OTOH, how much is this particular part of the chart just a house-prices index in a trench-coat?)
Considering how Trump went from being re-elected to having worse approval ratings now than in his first term, apparently voters have zero working memory and went from "this outsider celebrity businessman would make a great president!" to "wait a minute, Trump - I hate that guy" in like 20 months.
A house is the single largest asset on most household balance sheets, so yes it's mostly a chart of home prices after 2007 (and things like the decline of homeownership among black Americans afterwards).
2007/2008 does have a lot to do with Trump, but I find "Trump was the result of voters angry about wealth inequality" to be pretty unconvincing. A better (but still inadequate) explanation is that traditional pro-business Republican elites tried to mobilize their base against Obama through right-wing populist messaging and this worked a little too well for them. The pivot back to the center suggested by the 2012 GOP post-mortem was largely blocked by the Tea Party representatives elected in 2010 and again in 2014 - the internal Republican revolt over immigration reform proposals in 2013-2014 was an important moment that is bizarrely not remembered much these days. It's what tanked Rubio in the 2016 primary!
Maybe you could say right-wing populism doesn't have mass appeal without the shift in wealth inequality, but looking at the history of this country I just don't think that's true at all. Trump is basically just Buchanan, except the party elites failed to organize against him effectively. I get the appeal, but I think the inequality explanation is partially an attempt to avoid dealing with the fact that a lot of Americans genuinely hold very reactionary beliefs, and that these are high salience political issues for them.
I largely agree-- I was just looking at the graph for other reasons, and I was shocked at how clear the correlation is. I do think that it does show a failure of Obama as a president, though: you can't be the 'left' option and preside over a historic low in the lower half's wealth. I also think 2016 was close enough, that really any variable would have been enough to tip it the other way. If half the households in the US were, on average, twice as wealthy (as is near-historically normal) would it flip forty electoral college seats? I don't know -- it seems entirely probable.
I also think political tendencies are a bit more like latent viruses than organs. Given the right conditions, they're suddenly everywhere -- academics tend to look at the deep historical and institutional roots, but a lot of the time, you anachronistically assume that some tendency was a big deal back in the day, when actually it was a coterie of cranks and losers (say monetarism).
Obama and Democratic Congress obviously had a tepid and inadequate response to the crisis. That being said, if there’s a home price bubble in the half decade prior to your election, and that bubble bursts right before you’re elected, then you will preside over a decline in the wealth share of the bottom 50% just as a mechanical reflection of the fact most of their equity is in their homes.
Trump’s style of politics was always the preference of a fairly substantial amount of Republican voters, it’s just that in e.g. 1992 Republican Party elites were better at controlling that current. Same could be said of a lot of center-right parties in Europe. Wealth inequality contributes to that in the sense of a background condition, and 2007/2008 in particular helped discredit and weaken those institutional elites, but that’s different than a direct effect of a shift in the wealth distribution.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Aug 27 '26
you can't be the 'left' option and preside over a historic low in the lower half's wealth.
The Great Recession started under Bush and the alternative was McCain, whom was deer in headlights over the economic crisis. Even when he called the economy strong while it was in freefall, he clarified he meant the fundamentals of the economy were still strong...again while the economy was in freefall. The banks were in crisis, the manufacturing industry was in crisis.
All accounts point to Obama being a good technocrat. Accounts also point to the bailouts & stimulus measures being rather upwardly redistributive. On balance, I think a more ambitious president could have achieved much more. Imagine, for instance, if he'd come in with 150 executive orders.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Aug 27 '26
It can be argued that focusing on the working class when the problem lay with a broken financial sector, would have been misdiagnosing the issue. Could more have been done? Sure, but he was already spending vast amounts of money and he was getting relentlessly mocked for interfering with the economy. I think even the Daily Show was mocking Obama for "owning" the auto industry.
Maybe it's both? Material anxiety is partially expressed through/exacerbates reactionary politics if that person already holds some reactionary beliefs.
In the longer view of history, material anxiety leads to frustration with the status quo and a desire for leaders who change things.
In most western countries that has lead to the rise of the far right, because more lefty politics has been so successfully pushed out of the mainstream by centrists.
But you can see the similarity in the popularity of Mamdani and Trump, despite being nominally opposite directions politically. For the “regular people” it is the promise of disruptive political change that is appealing, not any specific leftward or rightward shift.
I agree with the claim that material anxiety leads to frustration and apathy with the status quo, but I think people separate themselves politically (according to their priors and media consumption) when looking for alternatives. Like, with the bizarre exception of Trump himself (???), I don't think there's much warm feelings for Mamdani from Trumpers.
The idea that the near extinction of the American bison was caused by Army policy doesn’t sit right with me.
Most of the killing was done by hide hunters during 1870s, and the idea that the Army could have secretly hired them seems specious.
Much of the idea appears to have originated from “The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865-1883” by David D. Smits. But many arguments appear questionable: most of the cases of soldiers hunting buffalos seems to be for meat or sport; the idea that when Sheridan talked about killing the Native’s stock, he meant buffalos, is extremely dubious; the reliability of memoirs written decades after the events is uncertain.
While there is evidence that many people, including officers, thought that the decline of the Bison would have facilitated the subjugation of the Native Americans, it seems doubtful to me that there was a coherent policy in this regard. Giving the contemporaneous extinction of the Bison in Canada, an official or quasi-official policy seems unnecessary as explanation for the demise of the buffalos.
Hey, Buddy Ebsen was in the Coast Guard in World War II, so if Jed Clampett is the same age then the actual Baby Boomers would be Jethro and Elly May, and yes they *literally* didn't even stumble on the bubbling crude, the World War II vet did. Hell, Jethro is some distant cousin and consistently fails upwards in all the jobs he tries out.
It is to my (admittedly very flawed) understanding of Buddhism that one is ever changing. Indeed, the self doesn´t survive death as the soul takes an entirely new identity after you die. Trying to stop the unstoppable only begets pain, and so one should let go of that attachment and let oneself be transformed.
However, my problem with this premise, more over on a macro soul level, is that if you change so much without holding onto anything, then you stop being “yourself”. Especially if you are on the “seeking enlightenment” train to transcend the mortal coil altogether. I don´t care about my soul´s peace, for, following this definition, it is not myself. Therefore, the further I let go, the more I stop being me, and if that´s the case, why should I care about this future enlightened self more than the wellbeing of any other stranger in the world?
Similarly, there seems to be an idea that to be human is to suffer, which motivates the whole seeking enlightenment to escape pain thing. I do agree that the human experience has baked-in suffering. However, it is not such a hellish experience that I find myself wishing to transcend it all, and I believe that happiness and tranquility are quite attainable in this mortal realm as well.
Thus, even if the happiest form of life in the universe is an unchanging, immovable rock that can technically suffer nothing, I still would prefer to remain my human self.
In short, I massively missed the point of Land of the Lustrous like that “cool robot” Gundam meme and came off rejecting some of the perceived tenets of Buddhism.
there seems to be an idea that to be human is to suffer.
I would argue (as a Buddhist) that it's more of a misinterpretation. There's a bunch of word jumbles happening whenever we discuss Buddhism in English I think (tanha - unwholesome desire as mentioned as the root of suffering vs virya - the diligence/enthusiasm or energy to become enlightened).
A lot of Buddhist texts even argue that being a human is the best pathway to escaping samsara. The divine beings are too obsessed with luxury and comfort to realize that they would one day die like the rest. The animals have limited sapience to do the same.
Your first review of the statement is correct. Human experience has baked-in suffering. We will always experience some form of existential friction (physical pain, realization that our emotions are always transient, or simply just existential stress). We suffer because we hang onto many unwholesome attachments to avoid that reality.
Does have to have a distinction between the various types of buddhism; from my (very limited) understanding, I imagine that more theravada buddhists would agree with those texts you mention, while a pure land buddhist would likely not.
But Samsara is pretty central to buddhism (unless my religion class in college really let me down :P )
To be fair, my impression on the whole “humanity is suffering” thing comes from the fact that the last chapters of the manga have the MC (now with godlike powers) interacting with a race of very happy and not-at-all-suffering rocks that reject her offer to give them legs, eyes, or anything of the sort.
The MC´s main fear during these interactions is accidentally “infecting” (for lack of a better word) these rocks with humanity and therefore ruining their peaceful existence, which, to her explicit relief, doesn´t happen. Then, when the solar system comes to an end and Earth is about to be engulfed by a red giant, the MC saves the rocks by moving them to another world, but she decides to stay and die to finally “burn the bridge” (the bridge being humanity, I think?).
Before that, though, she does give the rock community a “pure” piece of herself (she is also a humanoid kind of gem) to start a new life among them on their new planet. This new MC gem doesn´t remember anything about her previous life, and isn´t humanoid (she´s an inert rock like all her peers), but is finally at peace and happy like she always wanted.
I know LotL is not exactly sacred scripture, but my interpretation of the author´s allegory is that humanity itself can´t ever be happy and only brings out suffering, so one has to transcend it to get a measure of peace. Then again, I could be misinterpreting things. It was quite an esoteric ending.
Re: the “you stop being yourself” bit, that is something that many forms of Buddhism agree with you on. The difference between me and and you is merely an illusion that we believe in because of our limited senses and information while inhabiting this mortal body.
But Buddhism (at least, most forms) does not teach that me and you are the same being, just that we are more strongly interdependent and more similar than our lives and bodies make us think.
This is in contrast to the Vedic religions at the time Buddhism was first written down. Many of those Vedic teachers DID believe that all beings were fundamentally manifestations of a single unified being. See the discussion in this stackoverflow link.
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Second, many forms of Buddhism teach that the human life is optimal for attaining enlightenment. Many Buddhists - especially many of the early Buddhists - believed in an innumerable hierarchy of god like realms above us and an unknown hierarchy of hell like realms below us. They taught that beings reincarnated into the realms of bliss did not have it better than us in the end, because even a long blissful life eventually comes to an end. But because there was so little suffering in those worlds, they could not gain the level of understanding needed to attain nirvana, dooming them to continued reincarnation (likely in a lesser, less pleasant world).
Being Balkan is being Near Eastern, being Rumelian. As Balkans first referred to Rumelia. Balkans is a cultural zone of Ottoman, Byzantine and Paleo-Balkanic cultures for me. Does Slovenia has anything from Byzantine or Ottoman? no
I kind of agree tbh, being in Slovenia definitely felt more like I was in Austria than Croatia, and even Croatia feels more Central-European than Balkan to me in many ways.
Also I don’t think Slovenians generally consider themselves to be Balkan, but I might be wrong.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, HollandegazeAug 27 '26edited Aug 27 '26
Merkel wouldn't have tried that
Come to germany then, many eastern germany women look like that. Dark hair sometimes colored in red, face accessories (earrings and/or piercings), eyebrows too thin, probably a tramp stamp too, overall rather fit body tho but the face can't go without makeup.
u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, HollandegazeAug 27 '26edited Aug 27 '26
I wouldn't be surprised if in the future the US becomes more state capitalist than the EU (in terms of state control not regulation) because in a way the US's owning class is a prisoner in their country, like where are they gonna flee for lower taxes while keeping their SV or WS contacts? And as Trump demonstrated, the US gov can just take what they want from them or force them to sell shares for "national security" or investing in national champions. Trump just did it to pocket money on the side, but what would happen if a real economic dirigist technocrat take power. In addition the USA taxes you wherever you go, so you're also a prisoner of your citizenship
Meanwhile in the EU, wealthy people just fuck off to Switzerland / Malta / whatever is the trend next decade, so this means that they can't be taxed beyond what's already written in the bilateral tax treaty. And EU regulations prevent countries from favorising their national champions too much, although it allows a lot of subsidies as long as the rules make it open to foreign companies too.
I'll also notice they on average the US taxes you less and regulates less than the EU. Meaning than even with the threat of a state, the "ROI" is bigger in the US than the EU if you're in the US .
If you want a good example, compare how Trump threatened Musk's grasp on contracts when he had a crashout vs how France took kids gloves with Pavel Durov
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Aug 27 '26
Why are you a prisoner, just because you pay taxes? When I visited Switzerland, the tour guide kept mentioning all the Hollywood celebrities whom permanently moved there. So what if they had to pay taxes? They're not trapped in the US if they can still live where their heart desires.
I'm talking about the owning class, who have assets and industry pals in the US, not the "just very wealthy guys", these they can move everywhere the heart feels (like in Russia for Depardieu)
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Aug 27 '26edited Aug 27 '26
Many CEOs already live in countries outside of the country their corporate HQ is in. In what way are the "owning classes" prisoners? Prisoners because they pay taxes? Prisoners because they can't move their HQ trivially? Prisoners because Trump can bully them? Prisoners because they have "pals in the US"?
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, HollandegazeAug 27 '26edited Aug 27 '26
Many CEOs already live in countries outside of the country their corporate HQ is in.
Most Americans CEOs live full time in the US.
Most live either in the parts of the US that are little tax heavens, or where their main industry is (most SV tech billionaires live in California).
In what way are the "owning classes" prisoners? Prisoners because they pay taxes? Prisoners because they can't move their HQ trivially? Prisoners because Trump can bully them?
All of that
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Aug 27 '26edited Aug 27 '26
Trump can literally bully anyone. This makes the entire planet Earth a prison and we are all doing hard time.
I feel this is a slight to people who have to endure actual prisons. These "owner class" types are still living at the very extremes of luxury and opulence and possess near complete freedom of movement.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, HollandegazeAug 27 '26edited Aug 27 '26
Trump can literally bully anyone. This makes the entire planet Earth a prison and we are all doing hard time.
Virtually yes, but in reality you're more at threat of losing your business than I am brother
I feel this is a slight to people who have to endure actual prisons. These "owner class" types are still living at the very extremes of luxury and opulence and possess near complete freedom of movement.
Having to suck a manchild off to keep your business working isn't good for capitalism and free movement of capital and workers.
It's a golden cage, a different but in a way similar to subsidy dependent businesses in France, except in their case it's just the law and they're just facing the bureaucracy not an idiot, and they can move out of France if they want or they can even just stop asking for them and let their business fail, Trump won't let your company fail even
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Aug 27 '26edited Aug 27 '26
Virtually yes, but in reality you're more at threat of losing your business than I am brother
Wouldn't this make you less of a "prisoner"? Being completely divested in America? You've conceptualized this as being threatened with freedom. The "owner class" can afford it.
The giant corporations that was willing to do business in Russia and got pushed around by Putin and his government, didn't stick around and were willing to see their assets nationalized. This leverage sometimes only works once, because the wealthy value economic freedom.
My next activity report will be wriiten in unrhymed dactylic hexameters. The monsters the hero encounters will be barely disguised references to collegues and projects.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the only benefit of a legal education is being able to spot fake law stories on social media. They usually either involve last minute evidence, someone’s lawyer walking out of them, and/or a “stunned” judge or jury.
Which now has me thinking that Court stories have to be some of the most faked/embellished, and I suspect military and first responders are up there as well. But then which ones would have a surprising amount of made-up stories? Are scientists and engineers out there spotting people faking stories about those fields all the time as well?
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Aug 26 '26
A lot of content in the 90s and 00s, clearly were filmed and written by people who had no idea how computers or video games worked. You could get away with this more in the 70's: why is there a military AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central panel from the 1950's in a hospital behind Columbo? Because it has blinky lights, more than not.
Are scientists and engineers out there spotting people faking stories about those fields all the time as well?
In physics there are a lot of stories about theorists propose new theory. Well, thing is, that's literally their day job, it's the rough equivalence of the headline mechanic picks up wrench. There are probably good reasons to do that, most likely these reasons have to do with very intricate workings of a very complicated machinery, and it is exceedingly unlikely that any of this is to any interest to the public if put in proper context.
Also science journalists love to write 'scientists baffled by X.' The leading causes of scientist bafflement are loose cables and python bugs, and if you read a headline like that, you should assume that the article is actually about loose cables and python bugs.
It is the right of any born Englishman to be able to build freely upon his own land, any 5ft boundary fence extension, as he pleases. No bean counter of Shropshire county council can remove this God-given right from a man.
My PhD was in materials science - specifically battery chemistry. As a result, I get sent or asked about stories every time someone claims to have invented a revolutionary new battery.
The problem is that energy science in general, and battery science in particular, moves slowly. There are no revolutionary breakthroughs. And the thing that is annoyingly hard to explain to people is that this is not because the people working on the problem are stupid or that no one cares. Literal billions (perhaps as high as hundreds of billions) of us dollars are being spent on battery science in particular every year. A lot of very smart people are trying very hard all the time to make improvements.
But batteries as a commercial product represent a lot of tradeoffs, so it is very difficult but not quite impossible to improve any one aspect without degrading all of the other aspects. However, it is trivially easy to make one parameter look really good by just making all of the other parameters shitty. For example, you can make batteries with really good initial discharge capacity if it just isn't re-chargable. Or you can make batteries much faster to charge and discharge if you don't mind that they might explode sometimes.
As a result, whenever I see battery articles, 90% of the time it is bullshit (either exaggerated or just plain wrong). And that is in scientific journals. In public media journals, 100% of "battery breakthroughs" so far have been bullshit. The only battery news that I look at and think is believable is "big boring company is going to expand production on well studied, boring battery material."
So, thinking about this because of recent events, but I don't like saying RIP. I've seen it used mockingly so often it has lost it's original meaning to me. I don't know if anyone has the same issue, but I can't use it seriously anymore, and when I read it, it reads more like mocking than the serious "requiescat in pace" it's meant to be. Memes really do ruin everything.
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u/passabagi Aug 28 '26 edited Aug 28 '26
Blade Runner (the 2017 one) is a bad film. The characters are flat, the plot is gimmicky, the visuals are gorgeous but meaningless as narrative. It is a pastiche of themes and images from other films. It's almost not worth comment. The thing that brings it out of the soup of by-the-numbers cinematography is how much it leans into its lack of character.
They cast Ryan Gosling, the most inoffensive and empty actor available, and had him playing an inoffensive and empty character. At one point, it appears as if he might actually be a real boy, but this turns out to be a common delusion for robots like him.
They brought back Harrison Ford, looking old and bored and decidedly thick around the belly, to play himself -- and even the residue of his performance in the original Blade Runner is enough to bring the actual spirit of the film into relief: it's a self-aware comment about the poisoned and cynical desert of late 2010's culture. Character, plot, image: all are subsumed into mistimed incantations of their priors.
It's a film where the images of the past no longer deliver any effect, but we're condemned to repeat them nonetheless.
(PS: the 'sequel' thing is probably what analysis should hang around, from the nitty gritty of the economics)