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?
Its a typical cliche in anti-soviet historiography to claim that a certain organization "actually never existed, it was invented by the NKVD", without actually providing any evidence it was the case.
For example, till this day they deny the bloc of rights and trotskyists, claiming it was a fiction. What a shame that trotskyist historian Pierre broue found a document in trotsky's own archives proving it was a real organization. Thats just one example.
So I watched someone from the UK use the expression "it's in the lap of the gods", and I just wanted to share that in the Philippines we often say "bahala na si Batman".
Is there even any evidence for this link? I am aware that some FBI confidential sources in the files have alleged that he is connected with Israeli intelligence, however to me it still seems speculative as of now.
BTW, the person I am talking about reposts "Israel did 9/11" stuff. I am no supporter of Israel, but you can oppose them without claiming they're behind every single bad thing in the world.
The evidence for conspiratards in 2026 is "the elite are all pedophiles and Israel is protecting them and the US govt is also controlled by them." Even if you take into account that Ben Gvir dated an underaged girl and took her to a terrorist martyr's grave for their first date, it's kind of a reach for any person with even passing knowledge of geopolitics to believe that kinda shit. Actually, my paraphrase in the first sentence is like the ultimate conspiracist madlib because you can switch out "Israel" and "US Govt" and replace it with any political entity or organization and it kinda works in a r/im14andthisisdeep sort of way.
I remember you mentioning the person on your end a few threads ago. Yeah, it's kinda hard to argue against these people because they have an explanation for everything.
In the case of Israel, because the US government has historically been an ally, and also because Christian Rightists in the US are attracted to the whole "apocalyptic Zionism" doohickey (not sure what the terminology is called), they'll just point to that and go "SEE? The US gubmint is controlled by Israel and they basically own us!"
The Epstein thing is even stupider imo, because like, when he was a free man, the dude's entire job was to essentially matchmake rich and famous people and fundraise for projects. I would reckon that 95%, if not more of the celebs/politicians/rich people named on the Epstein list were actually completely innocent as far as the pedo stuff went. Bro's entire career was based around mingling with, financing, and also blackmailing rich people. Of course you're gonna see emails about fucking Obama or Stephen Hawking and shit. But because it's such a hot topic and because pedophilia is probably viewed as the most heinous crime you can commit, trying to argue that the weird "reddit version of events" of what the Epstein list actually is will cop you a good amount of hate mail and pedo accusations.
I would reckon that 95%, if not more of the celebs/politicians/rich people named on the Epstein list were actually completely innocent as far as the pedo stuff went.
There was one user in particular on the Formula 1 and racing subs who kept spamming memes insinuating that Lewis Hamilton and a couple of other drivers were paedos because they were named in the Epstein files. Hamilton's name was in there precisely once in one email and specifically in relation to him being involved with a charity event that someone in Epstein's address book said that he was an attending. And it wasn't like some shifty 'charity event' where abuse is suspected to have happened, it was major mainstream charity gala that loads of people went to. It doesn't help that Epstein would constantly name-drop people as if they were close friends, even when they might have barely known who he was beyond some guy they chatted with once at a social event.
You had a similar thing happen with Harvey Weinstein after his various abuses came out. Lots of terminally online folk relentlessly trawling through every photo Weinstein had taken of him with others and then using that to tar the other person in the picture. You even had a minor 'scandal' here when folks online dug up a photo of the new (IIRC) cabinet secretary with Weinstein from the early 2010s. Nevermind that at the time she was a cultural attache, likely did not know the rumours about Weinstein, and that he was - like Epstein - a notorious schmoozer who liked to pretend he was closer to powerful people than he actually was and would get his photo taken with literally everyone to further that. It actually would have been weirder if she didn't appear in a photo with him at an industry event.
Some people really do just want to see paedophiles everywhere.
Yeah, in the same way like having him somehow be in contact with Mossad isn't weird: Being a guy who hangs around Important People probably makes him a... person of Interest, to a bunch of intelligence services. Doesen't mean he was working for them or anything. But a lot of them would probably try to at least figure out what his deal is and if he's working for someone else.
Henry Hay was the founder of mattachine society the first pro gay organization in the US.
They were militant communists associated with CPUSA who said we shall not kowtow to what's acceptable we'll fight capitalism to get the rights we deserve and it was organized into cells like the FLN or IRA.
So anyway Henry Hay resigned within months because CPUSAs stance was that gay people are a byproduct of degenerate capitalism and he didn't want to taint the movement. Other leaders soon followed.
The mattachine society then became a more moderate liberal education organization that was eventually preaching against communism.
He literally did the if Stalin says I must go i shall self report meme.
I never got how mid century communists squared the idea of homosexuality being the product of capitalism while surely being aware of how gay men and lesbians were treated in capitalist societies.
They obviously would dress it up in a bunch of theory but "Workers not controlling the source of their wages somehow makes dudes like dudes" still seems like something you couldn't state without sounding completely disconnected from reality.
Well, what the Stalinists (but also others) believed, was that the degraded conditions workers were forced to live in, prevented them from having a normal family life and non-deviant relationships. And that they would choose a mid-century nuclear family lifestyle, instead of homosexuality, alcoholism, and prostitution, if their conditions were better.
Definitely one of those cases where a pre-existing bigotry got shoehorned into a newish ideaology. It's also kind of amusing where some modern communists flip the whole concept on its head claiming that homophobia is the creation of capitalism that tries to enforce the mid century nuclear family structure and that true gay liberation is only possible through communism.
In many cases yes, it was pre-existing bigotry. In many cases it was also an idea of 'social hygiene' that was common among almost the entire political spectrum and was considered progressive.
And within the broader socialist movement, the whole ~1930s moment was a very socially conservative turn from, let's say the II. Internationale before WW1.
Also, Stalinism took quite an opportunist position towards the social conservatism of the countries it ruled, and the many people that flocked towards it during that time.
Socotra is occupied by the UAE for almost a decade. It's as safe as it can be (by Yemen standards). According to some comments it's actually suffering from overtourism.
So I mentioned a while ago that I'm getting ads for an "ai gaming waifu" which made me wonder what the algorithm thinks my interests are, and I have one more confounding piece of data:
My YouTube algorithm recommended me a "NATOwave" playlist as well as another whose icon was the Soviet flag. And for some reason, the NATO one bothers me more.
Edit: Think I figured it out. The NATO stuff might be because I follow the NATO twitter account and am an absolute sucker for those "soldiers from Estonia and France try each others' rations" videos, and I think the Warsaw Pact stuff is maybe because I frequently use the songs "Blue Monday" and "Dancing Lasha Tumbai" to test if our projectors at work are functioning.
During this period [the height of sugar production in 19th century Cuba] , the British consumed approximately one third of the world's sugar and also were the dominant Western consumers of tea. It is a likely assumption that these two facts are linked, as the British always consumed their tea with sugar.
Indeed, the solar panels exported from China in 2024 will have paid off their “carbon debt” within an average of just four months
I've read elsewhere that it's a range between four months to a year and two months, but damn, that's still a surprising figure. Much faster than wind. From yet another Simon Clark short. Also the cited article from Carbon Brief.
I've seen some stats to suggest that wind energy may actually become obsolete; the viable niche has already shrunk in many regions, the pace of improvement for solar power has been considerably quicker for years now, whereas improvements to wind power have been relatively marginal... The initial capital costs remain significant.
This might be an extremely hot take on r/badhistory of all places, but i think historical accuracy in art isn't necessarily a good thing for artistical purposes. I was watching Caravaggio by Jarman, which is very anachronistic in both costumes and setting, but it's so beautifully made!
This might be an extremely hot take on r/badhistory of all places, but i think historical accuracy in art isn't necessarily a good thing for artistical purposes.
I think it would be fine for an art to not be historically accurate as long as it makes it clear to its audience that it is in no way trying to be. Problem is many historical media do sell themselves on historical "authenticity" and "realism", and usually only comedies do make it clear that they are not trying to be accurate. Though I will also be honest, that in my case, after going deep into reading historical non fiction books, historical fiction just doesn't appeal much since they always feel too simplistic as stories compared to real history (as much as academic books accurately cover said period till later discoveries introduce revisions).
You say that, but, let's be real, they're not going to go for beautiful costumes, they're going for black leather vikings and mud stained brown medieval times.
Deviating from historical accuracy is fine, as long as you make something that is good in its own right. I liked the Odyssey, but fuck me, I hate the black costumes; if you want black, make a fucking vampire movie! I'm so fucking sick of brown and grey.
"Oh but it's gritty, so the colours should be muted", have you heard of contrast? Contrast is great, it's amazing; if you have all the coloured knights in shining armour being awful people, that is just as effective, if not more so, at showing the hypocrisy in that system than if you make everything dark to begin with. But I guess we should not expect audiences to be smart to figure out juxtaposition, far too complicated for our poor viewers...
I might be the only person in the world who instinctually has the opposite opinion; I find deliberately deceiving people because it makes a better (read usually worse and less nuanced but more tropey) story a lot more insidious than earnestly trying to make something historically accurate but failing because most people who aren't trained historians aren't good at knowing how to understand historiography and which sources to look at that are trustworthy. Providing they actually were clearly trying as opposed to putting in a minimal effort.
(Though in terms of deliberate artistic liberty I also have a lot higher tolerance for when they are doing it to make the narrative work within the format e.g. composite characters for a shorter form media and the like rather than when they are doing it because they want to change the story for its own sake).
Oh, I meant entirely in things that are understood to be fiction. If someone is presenting a story as historical I believe they're obligated to be as accurate as possible, but an "inspired by" story has looser rules.
Like, for instance, the difference between a biography and a fictional story in which (for instance) Thomas Cromwell is a saintly Enlightenment figure.
I understand, even with fiction I think if you are choosing to make something based on a historical event as opposed to just making a fantasy story that's inspired by history you have some obligation to try to be accurate, if not as much as with nonfiction. Though I think that's borne out of frustration with seeing historical events that I think have so much potential to be fictionalized in a way that breathes interiority and life into it but keeps all the complexity of the real events, only for the actual fictionalizations to remove all that complexity in favor of simplistic tropes that were put there deliberately because the writer thought it was better for some reason. And I'd rather someone who is trying to do justice to the historical event however imperfectly than that.
I think for me the catch is that it doesn't matter that much... if the art is good. I really can't bring myself to care that the landing craft in Saving Private Ryan should actually have British pilots dontcha know. On the other hand, I think making say a medieval period drama that even just attempts to make medieval thought and society feel foreign without falling into the standard muddy and brutal cliches would make for better art than many of the ones we actually get.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Sep 10 '26
Or to be extra nitpicky, the rebuilt the D-Day beach wrong, putting the bunkers in Ireland so close to the water. But it makes for one hell of a imposing shot.
They also filmed the trenches of Letters of Iwo Jima in Malibu and having been in Malibu hundreds of times, I can kind of tell.
I think historical accuracy would make most paintings more bland. Like, if you cleave really hard to the reproduction of a historical event, that's reducing your space for theme and metaphor. By placing the life of christ into contemporary, they get to talk about their contemporary world.
Christ and Saint Peter to the right are portrayed in conventional post-Renaissance iconography, i.e. in typical pseudo-antique draperies, while Matthew and the group around him to the left are clad in realistically rendered 1600 Italian garb.
It's a deliberately incongruent, very much unconventional intrusion of the Divine, of Christian historia sacra into 'everyday life', very pointedly staged to highlight the calling of the saint.
Matthew 9:9: "Jesus saw a man named Matthew at his seat in the custom house, and said to him, 'Follow me', and Matthew rose and followed Him."
Caravaggio could easily have stuck to 'historical accuracy' as expected in early 17th Century history painting, as in following the iconographical conventions of his Late Mannerist contemporaries to portray Biblical stories in a pseudo-antique manner.
But IMHO his intention was quite close to what you wrote :
By placing the life of christ into contemporary, they get to talk about their contemporary world.
I think whatever they do it should be done with some kind of intentionality anyway. Are there any movies which have actually accurate historical costuming and backgrounds?
Merchant/Ivory films, Barry Lyndon? Dangerous Liaisons? The Age Of Innocence? There's a fair few of them listed on Frockflicks.com. I guess it does get harder the further back you go in history.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Sep 10 '26
They rebuilt the Waterloo battlefield for Waterloo, though the film indulges in pop culture by having the Prussians wear black and they probably omit the Dutch infantry because their uniforms are the same color as the French uniforms and they show the Old Guard making the final assault, persumably because they didn't make uniforms for the Young Guard Grenadier/Chasseurs, and the Middle Guard Grenadier/Chasseurs.
on one hand they went through the trouble of using an actual period accurate ship, modified to sit into a huge mechanical gimbal. on the other, it has dodo birds in the Galapagos. in 1805.
oh. well, let me save face and say they also present the idea of dressing the ship and flying false colors as completely novel, instead of being a known tactic.
So, the last season of Babylon Berlin came out in Germany. And I am somewhat disappointed.
There are some things in this text that are probably unfair, especially from the POV of people who have not read the books; the series in total is quite different than the books, and, because it now ends in 1933, a lot shorter - six of the ten canonical Rath "cases" are happening after January 1933 (there are also two visual novel prequels and another visual novel which happens in 1973).
This means the series (probably wisely, because this would probably estrange a lot of international audience) has no stories in the NS state - which, quite realistic, means that by the last [NS time] book everybody in the KriPo is also in the SD, meaning the SS. It is a particular mark of quality how the books manage to show people who are on the one hand forced and semi-forced to join with the Nazis, but on the other hand still want to do the right thing. The books are A LOT bleaker than the series exactly for that reason among other things. The books do not shy at all to treat the workings of the NS state as the new normalcy.
[Spoilers for the fifth season of Babylon Berlin following]: The series starts with Adolf Hitler getting treated for his blindness in 1918. He gets hypnotized. This is already historically shaky ground; there is no evidence for this - it would also be quite unusual in the medicinical circumstances -, and, for the conspiracy theory that grows from there, that this was (at least partially) responsible for his later actions, there is no evidence whatsoever. It's also, not that I care overly much, a bit unkind as it is depicted in the series, as everyone treats Hitler like he is a simulant, when in reality, mustard gas leads to inflamation of the eye, which probably means that at least initially, he had a visible injury.
The main mystery of the series therefore are murders that happen to keep the mentioned treatmenta secret. There is a second thread that someone has stolen the documentation of the hospitaland could possibly publish this secret.
Maybe people know this about me by now, but I immensely dislike narratives which imply that the criminal responsibility of NS is diminished. And clearly this is going into that direction. To get a bit ahead of myself, the series does something much more idiotic with it; by the mid point of the series, it has fallen completely on the wayside whether the treatmentchanged something in Hitler, and by that point it could well be left alone; the documentation of Hitler getting treated for a mental illnessand someone trying to prevent publication by itself should be McGuffin enough. By the end of the series, in which they - otherwise laudable I think - have a montage to show what happened to the characters, this is fumbled completely, because the montage expressively quotes the conspiracy theory by saying that what happened was recorded in the real existing novel "Der Augenzeuge", which is the exact RL starting point of that particular conspiracy theory. The story thread also serves as another fuck you (not that this is a bad thing in general) to Schleicherwho ends up having the documentation, but does nothing with it until he is murdered in 1934.
One of the other stuff that happens in the series is that a Dutch communist is planning to burn down something. Really, we know this, it's going to be the Reichstag. There is, of course, a RL debate about whether he did this alone or not. Regardless, the series very clearly takes a stance, he basically gets enabled by the political police [i.e. the later Gestapo], plus some SA people also start fires.This is okay - but depicted lamentably unsubtle.
The problem I have with it is that it is mixed with another story thread in which some of the secondary characters of the series fucking get the Communists and Social Democrats to cooperate. Which is only prevented by the Reichstagsbrand. And this leaves a rather bad taste in my mouth, because it is basically retroactive wish-fulfillment and kind of makes some people look a lot better than they do IRL.
And if that is not enough, the main characters of the series - sans Charlotte, because "it would be wrong" - try to kill Hitler with a bomb. Which doesn't work, but is really jarring in the way it happens.
No Toilet, No Bride is a public health campaign launched in 2005 by the state authorities in Haryana, India. The initiative encouraged young women to refuse to marry men unless their homes had latrines.
The campaign sought to combat fecal pollution and disease caused by open defecation, which was practiced by roughly 70% of rural households in Haryana at the time of the campaign's launch.
It also aimed to combat harassment and staring from men directed at women while defecating, urinating, and attending to menstrual hygiene in the open.[1] As a result of the harassment, women defecated openly only at night, thus leading to "numerous cases of sexual assault" in rural Haryana communities.[2][3]
Even worse is that India was being toilet-mogged by Afghanistan of all places
I feel like talking about any social problem in contemporary India has a very substantial nuisance factor in that it attracts both online deshbhakts and deranged racists, two groups I wish I could bring together in real life so they would mutually annihilate each other. This is particularly true of public sanitation because of the designated streets meme.
Yeah I don't know how much you can trust the results for Afghanistan, given the secrecy of the country and the Talibans governance ability, comparing them to India isn't fair
I looked at the GDP / capita PPP (because you don't import toilets, and the handyman is local) of the time period before 2005 in South Asia
And India (and Nepal!) still look like a very high rate of open defecation compared to their GDP level
maybe the Hindu Belt states carrying the level upwards, Nepal is also a country of Northern Indian culture, so maybe there's something to look there
u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Sep 10 '26
Yeah, but I'm saying, not needing quite so many toilets probably helps that ratio. Trying to sanitize 1.5 billion people is probably a infrastructure mega-project.
Yes, but a lot of infrastructure projects are generally the responsibility of state governments (states are the units of Indian federalism, as in the US). For example there's a tangible difference in road quality on crossing borders between states
I need to stop reading these Reddit discussions on sex in art and sex positivity. The responses are so depressing and upsetting. And they seem so far removed from real life.
There's a guy in the thread I quoted several times here saying that sex should be kept out of art and confined to porn. That's literally Victorian! Lady Chatterley's Lover was published in 1928... (And immediately banned in Anglo countries, but still)
According to biographer Nikephoros, Heraclius had his urethra on the upper side of the shaft of his penis, rather than at the tip, causing the urine to flow upward toward his face. To prevent the mess, he placed a wooden plank on his belly.
However, Nikephoros was hostile toward the emperor and, along with contemporary critics, portrayed this (potentially discredited) description as divine wrath against the emperor for his illicit marriage to Martina, spreading the story to embarrass him.[104]
This can actually kind of happen - it's called hypospadias, and it's a congenital condition. It's easily fixed with a quick surgery nowadays, much like cleft lips and palates. Due to how the penis forms, I believe it's usually on the underside rather than the upper side though.
I was thinking about the earlier discussion regarding the "hate" large cities get in the US. I've actually heard similar things about Russian cities, where you could be living in city with 1 mil people but you will be treated like a villager if you go to Moscow or St. Petersburg.
I think I have an idea of the reason. Basically there are only so many city "archetypes". Depending on the size and centralization of the country they can also overlap. You got the business/finance city, the party city, the university/student city, the culture city. In a smaller country basically the first place that is not one of these things will be a pretty small place, so it would not be surprising that a city with 100k people is not that interesting.
For big countries however, the same small number of main cities for something exist, so you will end up with large/very large places that are not really special. If you want to be the best in any field, you probably need to go somewhere else, so they can end up feeling mediocre. These feeling is not helped by the fact that many US cities are newer and any they probably replaced any interesting buildings/neighborhoods in the 1970's with parking lots or something very generic.
I frankly have no idea what "archetype" my city is, for the most part in Poland there is just a division between the capitals of important voivodeships (500,000+) and everything else.
Based on my experience in Poland, maybe you would have Warsaw - capital, best business/finance/politics place ; Krakow- historical capital, culture ; Wroclow - student city/party; Lodz - former industry city, now trying to reinvent itself. Not sure how to classify Tri-City.
I hate this. The election is way closer than it should be, and even if the right does lose which (apart from that weird Novus poll that has the liberals at 5%) looks like they will it'll be a PITA to get a coalition together. And that's before we even get itno the executing actual policies...
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Sep 10 '26edited Sep 10 '26
Unpopular to admit, but the Republicans do have a leader to coalesce the party around, the Democrats don't have any one leader to speak out effectively and they haven't had one in a long time and it's even harder to discern what major policy the party is champagning beyond being reactionary to Trump, further hurting them is the DNC is in debt and in disarray.
u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Sep 10 '26
Well while I'm on this tangent anyway, that the Republicans still control a huge portion of America with policies deliberately designed to increase the cost of living when that is the number one voter issue, it's almost absurdist.
My son was in first grade last year, and they did almost nothing but syllabic reading, so while it’s true they can decode any word, they don’t learn to recognize the words themselves—as a result, he had trouble understanding what he was reading. I was in first grade 30 years ago, and I don’t remember doing that much syllabic reading. It’s just a thought, and my opinion is biased by my distant memories and my natural aptitude for reading.
Lol might have found the only person on reddit to complain about teaching phonics
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Sep 10 '26edited Sep 10 '26
Podcasts are where I've found the highest frequency of leftist media worth listening to because of how grounded in expertise the work is. With The Fire These Times, UNFTR, The Dig, Know Your Enemy, In Bed With the Right and Ones & [Adam] Tooze being particular standouts.
I really don't like Twitch as a platform for political discussion. I think that, aside from the sites actively run by the far right, it might be the worst major social media platform for politics. Every time I've checked in on politics Twitch it's just been an ongoing years long feud between the same half dozen or so people. And while I certainly agree with some of them more than others, I can't really stand any of them.
I do enjoy some video essayists like Hbomb, Lindsay Ellis, Jacob Geller, etc.
I listen to a few video essayists (none that you've mentioned in your post) and have a particular disdain for political streaming. It was actually Destiny that convinced me political streaming is unsalvageable. There's a somewhat infamous debate with him watching clips of a group of Palestinians waving a white flag and trying to get back into their village, which the IDF recently occupied. Both his and his chat's reactions are...a bit difficult to watch.
Streaming/influencing/video essays are kind of by their nature lowest common denominator shit, and so I find most of them vaguely obnoxious at best. I also have difficulty sitting around listening to a podcast and don't like the common podcast format of "One person reads a book or a few articles about a subject, other person or persons crack jokes while first discusses the subject". Of course that also means I don't care for the non-political ones either.
Probably the closest I come to paying attention to anyone in the general field with any notable politics are Jacob Geller and Noah Gervais, who are video essayists that talk about video games and are not explicitly political but are clearly some sort of left wing. Their channels are particularly good because
Both of them are actual essayists, and I'd go so far as to say Gervais is really more like listening to an essay read aloud while video game footage plays in the background. The visuals on Geller's videos are more neatly tied into the overall piece, but his stuff has still been published as print essays separate from the videos as well.
They both clearly engage with media that isn't video games, shounen anime, and YA fantasy. They also engage with that sort of thing of course, but just obviously enjoying more than schlock written for 14 year old boys makes the whole experience better.
Geller is by far my favourite of all the leftish youtube media critics, mainly because he has actual knowledge of how to do criticism compared to most other youtube critics of this variety. Dan Olson is also very good but he's moved in a very different direction from traditional criticism at this point, and he can be a bit too smug for my taste
I've gotten a lot less interested in keeping up with every flavor of political commentary. In general I've trended more liberal as opposed to more leftist, and my social media consumption reflects that. I'm not on tiktok and I don't watch streamers, and I only listen to historical podcasts (and a Latin language one). There are a few liberals on twitter that I follow up on, but that's it, and none of them are the "big" lefty types.
I've only come across HasanAbi & Chapo Trap House. Both of them I found profoundly irritating -- I think HasanAbi's politics are (maybe?) better than CTH? The dirtbag left thing was stupid. I suspect I'm just too old to get it. Also streaming seems like a job that would turn anybody into a drained, irritable and narcissistic ghoul.
It's also (maybe?) sad re. Hasan -- he's really good looking, and quite talented. He probably[0] will never have a future in politics because he's produced about a million clips -- and that would have maybe been the natural progression if streaming wasn't such a toxic format.
[0]: That said, Trump has led a very clippable life, covering himself in every kind of shame imaginable. Maybe it doesn't matter?
I don't care for Hasan. Not that I disagree with many of his actual positions, but his style of presentation, or really anyone who streams all day every day is not my cup of tea.
I like Behind the Bastards, though I cringe a little when Robert botches the history (to his credit, he will admit when he got something wrong). Majority Report is OK but it really bothered me how they continued to defend Platner. I find their presentation a little flat anyway. QAnonAnonymous is pretty good and they cover topics I wouldn't really investigate on my own. In Bed With the Right has some really good episodes and they approach things in a way I don't necessarily think of immediately.
YouTube I like FD Signifier, The Morbid Zoo, everyone's favorite misanthrope (Atun-Shei, more for his Civil War stuff than other topics). Historically I liked Contrapoints but I guess Natalie took some flak for being insufficiently concerned about Palestine? (I don't know, honestly I can't keep up with everyone's drama) Shaun has had some really good dives into topics as well.
I haven't followed the drama but I did read the initial statement Contrapoints sent out. From what I can tell, she was getting a lot of requests to make an I/P video that she didn't want to do (which is fine). The issue is that what should have been a quick "I am not going to make this video because it is not in my field of expertise. End of story." started to devolve into her own grievances with pro-Palestine and implications that Palestine should be politically sidelined.
There are some that I despise and some that I don't. I can't say it tracks too closely with their politics outside of a relatively small number who I find ideologically intolerable. My most focused hate goes to Destiny, easily, both for his actual beliefs and his presentation. I really wish everyone at TYT had had the good graces to disappear off the face of the earth circa 2019, though.
Ultimately though, regardless of my personal enjoyment of some of their output, the total liquidation of the comedian-streamer-podcaster classes is unavoidable and beneficient.
I enjoy 'Well there's your Problem' podcast which is about engineering failures with leftist presenters. Can't be bothered with others, i find them too banal.
based on the image i saw I think they pixelated that part? But anyway I feel like showing off a picture of the person being rather fit and mostly naked isn't... well I don't really know what it's supposed to be
Trump is clearly too far gone to take orders from anyone. At most he'll listen to whatever the last person told him, but he chances are he'll forget it anyway.
I sort of wonder if it's going to come out that China had a much larger strategic petroleum reserve than thought(maybe for wartime?) and has been tapping it.
It would be the strangest fucking thing if we found out in 20 years that Trump attacking Iran was the only thing keeping China from naval blocking Taiwan in 2026.
u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Sep 10 '26
Did China want the US to try and trade with anyone else but China? They threw away most of their soft power and suddenly Vietnam was given it, now having the largest trade surplus with the US.
The wolf think is obviously infuriating but it is also interesting from an ideological perspective. Wolves do not pose any sort of real risk to ranchers' lives or property, but I think they exist as a sort of stand in for the granola eating long haired hippy who wants to interfere with their lives and spread dangerous ideas of "vegetarianism" and "animal rights" and the like. They exist as a way of saying that the comfortable urban latte sipping possibly gay "activists" don't understand the real world out here where man is face to face with pitiless nature.
There may also be a deeper anxiety around the wolf as a symbol for untamed and untameable nature. Their very existence is a threat to those who demand that nature conform to their wants. That feels like a very old fear.
It's definitely very old. Wolf-hunts used to be almost ritualistic in their cruelty and weirdness (and not very effective until modern technology)
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u/DirishWind power made the trans-Atlantic slave trade possibleSep 10 '26
Depends on what you call modern.
The last reliable observation of a wolf in Ireland comes from County Carlow when a wolf was hunted down and killed near Mount Leinster for killing sheep in 1786.
But that was an outlier. The wolves in Ireland were systematically killed in large numbers in the second half of the 17th century, so much so that they were effectively exinct by the 1700s.
I heard an NPR reporter refer to the Bayeux Tapestry as a comic strip earlier, and while I suppose she isn’t technically wrong, I really want to hold NPR to a higher standard than this.
She also made a comment about William crossing so he could shoot king Harold in the eye with an arrow. I’d have cared less if it weren’t for the other thing. Not everything has to be a joke.
I'm kind of interested to see how Trench Crusade deals with the Americas, when they finally have to stop pretending they don't exist. At the moment essentially the only lore we have is i) colonisation never happened because Europe was busy fighting an eternal war against Hell, ii) the Heretics occasionally try to invade the Americas but are always defeated by the indigenous peoples, and iii) Castille trades with the Americas and occasionally helps the indigenous peoples against the Heretics (lol, lmao even).
There's a neat alternate-history take on Apocalypse Now set in a universe where America was colonized by bishops fleeing Genghis Khan's successful invasion of Europe, and the only Christianity that exists in modern times is this syncretic refugee-religion.
I asked Claude (I know) to brainstorm some Indian faction ideas and it made the point that a Hindu faction might not see the conflict in apocalyptic Abrahamic terms, but more as just another day in the Kali Yuga. Which I thought was uncommon clever for a clanker.
Not to be overly critical your comment in particular, but I find it really annoying how common this style of China-glazing is.
“I used to believe <absurd exaggeration no one with half a brain would take seriously> but now I have been enlightened. Cab drivers who incoherently complain about the government without organizing against it aren’t immediately arrested and fed to wild dogs, maybe single-party rule isn’t that bad after all!”
Do French people actually do this stuff more or is it just an Anglophone "le decadent people in more Southern regions than us" trope? A quick Wikipedia check for rape statistics shows France's is high but for European comparison England/Wales is much higher while Germany is much lower, but that's based on reported cases so there is obviously a large element of unreliability in it.
Pointing to one incident where French handled a rapist badly (without comparison to how often statistically it happens there compared to other countries doing the same thing, let alone all rapes/pimping of minors in general) doesn't really answer my question.
One of the minor things that annoyed me about Nosferatu (2024) was that there's multiple scenes where Nosferatu chants what is supposed to be Dacian. However, because it's basically impossible to actually reconstruct Dacian, the actual script is just pseudo-latin gibberish. Given that Nosferatu/Dracula is supposed to be Vlad The Impalar (I think), just use upper class 15th century Romanian! That's a language that could actually be reconstructed and would fill the role of an old latin-sounding language (I imagine for Romanian speakers it would sound very archaic so still succeeds in its narrative role).
i think the implication is that nosferatu is much older than Vlad the impaler
It's implied in the novel that Dracula has been pretending to be a different man in each generation, so his original life could go be long before Vlad Dracula, who could be just one "persona" that he lived under
It wouldn’t have bothered me if they just said “idk it’s just cool bullshit” but I remember Eggers saying they explicitly reconstructed a language that basically has no fucking corpus to use so it does, in fact, bother me.
We actually don't have records of 15th century Romanian, as only Church Slavonic was used in writing. Romanian started to be used in writing only in the 16th century (close enough), but it would sound quite non-Latin, as the higher register of the language was full of Slavic expressions/words.
Interesting, I didn't know that. I wonder what 16th Romanian would sound like. I've only listened to modern Romanian a few times but I remember it sounding kind of Italian to me even though there were clearly non-latin originating words.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Giscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze Sep 11 '26
Its a typical cliche in anti-soviet historiography to claim that a certain organization "actually never existed, it was invented by the NKVD", without actually providing any evidence it was the case.
For example, till this day they deny the bloc of rights and trotskyists, claiming it was a fiction. What a shame that trotskyist historian Pierre broue found a document in trotsky's own archives proving it was a real organization. Thats just one example.