@tolkienthoughts @paul_jkrause Nah, I vote for Till We Have Faces.
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Daniel Stride
4.6K posts
Daniel Stride
@strda221
Author and geek. Into reading, writing, medieval re-enactment, foreign languages, and cats.
Dunedin City, New Zealand Joined Aralık 2016
231 Following184 Followers
@paul_jkrause Perelandra is the greatest thing Lewis ever wrote. Not the best book necessarily. But the greatest achievement of his writing career.
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@peter_mott @marcportermagee @kekk_96 Fair point, but 1688 was the point where the COE boot truly came down on the throat of Catholics and others, a situation not rectified until the nineteenth century.
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One of the funny quirks of British history is that religious nonconformists weren't allowed to go to Oxford or Cambridge, so a bunch of bright students were tracked into apprenticeships and technical education, and then they invented the modern world
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@RobKeeleyAuthor @TheCyberdevil The fact that we have zero Marco Polo and five DMP is a surreal cosmic joke.
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@TheCyberdevil Statistically they're the least likely as it was never sold abroad, so 5/12 having turned up from so many disparate sources (plus film sequences and clips) is nothing less than miraculous.
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I’m just pondering if we consider episodes of The Daleks’ Master Plan (minus The Feast of Steven) the most likely episodes to be found? Especially seeing as we have had 3 separate recoveries of episodes from this production that have escaped the skip.
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@zephyr_luc56971 @EdLudbrook So it would be grossly unjust to deny such people access to services they have paid for?
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NZ - the start we need immediately...
1. Stop all foreign aid EXCEPT Pacific Islands, then ONLY in physical support, no cash.
2. Stop all low skill immigration.
3. Stop all asylum and refugee immigration.
4. No family immigration. If you get in, you cannot bring in your old parents.
5. Stop all education track for visas [the BS that allowed 100,000 Indians Uber drivers].
6. No benefits, including healthcare, for non-citizens.
7. No translation services for any services. Speak english or leave.
8. 4 times any corruption conviction. And deportation if possible.
9. Chemical castration for rape of child.
10....? what do you think. [conviction for covid liars]
Charlie Smirkley@charliesmirkley
Africa has had more than ten Marshall Plans.
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@EdLudbrook Great crisis manager, terrible at actually enacting anything. But worst PM? In what universe is she worse than Shipley?
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People can vote for a socialist PM. The problem with Ardern was that she was a very poor PM, chaotic management that got little done, tripled government debt in 6 years, enormous Maori and Climate policy damage then claims to be 'empathic leader' when she was the total opposite. She literally was the worst PM in 100years yet parades around like she was the best.
The Redbaiter@TheRedbaiter
Another new book from New Zealand ex Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Following on from "A Different Kind of Power" Ms Ardern has written a children's version called "What If You Could". A question implying that if only kids model themselves on Jacinda, they can be as successful as she was. In the comments, I'll post a video showing how Ms Ardern made it to the top of the political tree in New Zealand. From being a member of young Labour at 17, spending eight years being trained as a Trotsky style Marxist at the International Union of Socialist Youth, taking over as Labour leader and then becoming PM in an election where she only attracted 36% of the vote. (as opposed to the National party's 44%) This first video though explains how she failed in practically every social/ political objective she said was important to her. After quitting midway through her second term, Ardern left her home country a smoking ruin of debt, disunity and economic disaster. That she now chooses to live in Australia tells you all you need to know about Jacinda Ardern's success as PM of New Zealand. Which drives the question- What really is Ms Ardern doing writing motivational books for children or anyone?
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@marcportermagee @kekk_96 It wasn't about what was getting taught, but rather who was allowed to teach and attend the universities.
(Isaac Newton would have lost his job if his non-Trinitarianism had been made public).
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@marcportermagee @kekk_96 Not quite.
The Establishment after 1688 had the Church of England as the state religion. This was to hammer Catholics, but Jews and non-COE Protestants were excluded too.
Oxford/Cambridge were elite Establishment. Ergo, to get in you had to follow the COE.
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@HammerandVajra @FrancoisTheFat Platonism's conception of the One and Evil as a lack was borrowed wholesale by Christianity, albeit it is more Plotinus than Plato himself.
The big difficulty with reconciling the two: under Platonism, the One descending to become a man makes no sense.
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Then you didn't understand what you were reading it or you read it looking for monotheism / were influenced by others.
Not meaning to insult.
This has been addressed over and over.
Every Christian who uses Platonism have to do mental gymnastics to get around the core Pagan elements.
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Christians often try to claim Marcus Aurelius and Plato.
Regardless if a Pagan agrees with these philosophers or not, one thing is clear.
They weren't Christians or Proto-Christians.
Trierarch the Sea Roman 𓊝🔱🏛️@Trierarch81
This is from Book II, section 11 where Marcus Aurelius dismisses atheism and nihilism. Far from being agnostic, he asserts that the universe is not meaningless, BECAUSE THE GODS EXIST and they do care for us. Like Plato, the numerous references that Marcus Aurelius makes to the Gods never make it into pop culture, and people are surprised to learn that these great thinkers were in fact polytheists. A simple word search of any good translation will turn up 65 matches for “Gods” in the Meditations.
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@HammerandVajra Claiming Marcus Aurelius is a bit weird: Marcus persecuted Christians.
The Plato thing is much more understandable, given that Christianity borrowed Platonic ideas wholesale.
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@MaximusMar29826 @HammerandVajra It wasn't Plotinus who attacked Christianity, but rather his follower Porphyry.
But yes: St Augustine (despite the differences) held Platonists and Porphyry in high regard.
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@HammerandVajra I always thought it was interesting because most modern Christian philosophy is based on Plotinus, who argued against Christianity or Philo, who was jew.
Either way.
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@PilpsYT Norway didn't have Margaret Thatcher sell the oil reserves.
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@abby4thepeople In the case of Carnegie, he was doing it as Hell Insurance. The man was terrified of being punished in the afterlife for his behaviour in this life.
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During the last Gilded Age, the robber barons founded universities, museums, libraries, etc., to discourage workers from organizing & staging a revolution. We know this because they wrote it all down in letters to each other, congratulating themselves on being very clever.
Charlotte Alter@CharlotteAlter
During the last Gilded Age, the robber barons saw a cultural value to founding universities, museums, concert halls, foundations. Many enduring institutions were founded by the ultra-rich of the 1890 who felt a sense of noblesse oblige that was also socially rewarded. Not anymore. These people see little social value to founding anything that doesn’t make a profit.
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@Realismusjihad @PortoValhe I've read it - together with the rest of his corpus. Anyone who thinks Plato was in any way a crypto-atheist is dreaming. You might have a point with (the profoundly non-spiritual) Aristotle, but Plato is intensely mystical/religious.
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@strda221 @PortoValhe Read the Euthyphro, instead, and stop annoying me.
If Plato was one thing NOT, it is sincere. You can generally assume he is being mendacious unless there is special reason to think otherwise.
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Laughable. Plato was a polytheist who believed in Reincarnation and that salvation comes from perfecting oneself.
Christianity's non-monotheism would seem incoherent to him, he would reject Islam's monotheism, and would reject both religions claim that salvation comes from submitting oneself to a creed.
Rike ♱ 🪷 ☸@bismarkhen
Plenty of greek philosophers, Plato in particular, would find Christianity and Islam to be great and favour them over the olympian religion
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@theceltsdying @AncPhi Yep. If we're going by language, the major Western Christian Platonist, St Augustine, had issues with learning Greek.
(More seriously: Plato's biggest issue with Christianity is that he would think the One descending would be absurd).
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@AncPhi This is a shallow take. Reducing philosophy to language/culture ignores that Plato’s ideas (ethics, metaphysics, the soul) influenced both Christian and Islamic thought. If language defined compatibility, Plato would “share nothing” with most of the world, which is false.
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Plato could speak to Christ in Greek, with Mohammed he shares nothing.
Rike ♱ 🪷 ☸@bismarkhen
Plenty of greek philosophers, Plato in particular, would find Christianity and Islam to be great and favour them over the olympian religion
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@Realismusjihad @PortoValhe Try reading the Timaeus next time, mate.
Plato was many things, but crypto-atheist ain't one.
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@PortoValhe People do not read or understand Euthyphro and still consider themselves Plato experts.🙄
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@PortoValhe Plato thought traditional polytheism was for the peasants. His conception of the One very much shaped later monotheism.
His biggest objection to Christianity: "the One can't descend and become a man. That makes no sense!"
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@akarlin The limit on Tolkien's dragons is that they are few in number. There is also reason for thinking they are fairly lazy between their bursts of activity.
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This is a Tolkien weakness because OP dragons and the world remaining human-centric violate suspension of disbelief.
Realistically Tolkien's dragons should have been the main characters of Middle-Earth. As apex physical, intellectual, AND magical beings, only the most powerful Maiar should have been able to match them.
Crass as it sounds, The Elder Scrolls is far more realistic, in that the dragons trivially dominated humans through their human underlings (the dragon-priests), and it took a dragon civil war (= elite defections) for humans to break free. GoT is also perfectly realistic, it is more or less exactly how a world in which one faction in a medieval world gains the biological equivalent of bomber aircraft would look like.
LOTR Universe@Lordoftheringsu
Tolkien is superior as always.
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@silvaplum @NoLimitGains The Strait is closed because the USA attacked Iran. Without the attack, the Strait would still be open.
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@NoLimitGains Trump calling out allies to handle the Strait of Hormuz themselves is straight America First.
No more US blood and treasure subsidizing Europes energy while they lecture us.
Time they step up or watch gas prices hit American wallets, too.
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@PronouncedHare Crude lasts rather better than refined. Not that that would particularly help us presently.
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We should just stockpile petrol continuously because it never degrades, not even when it’s in vehicles.
- Source: Zombieland 2: Double Tap
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