Roy

"As a construct, history is too often revised to match contemporary views. It has been said that each generation must rewrite history in order to understand it. The opposite is true. Moderns revise history to make it palatable, not to understand it." - T. R. Fehrenbach

@eigenrobot @exedexes1 What do you mean by being eaten?

just realized you never see nature documentaries about mentally retarded animals but I bet many exist and play important roles in their ecosystems

@TechnoPulp @NathanpmYoung Ask any scientist, physicists are famous for this sort of thing. They show up and they know everything and when you point out the problem they tell you to figure it out for yourself. We are supposed to be grateful for the gift of their insight.

@NathanpmYoung It’s funny / sad that she seems to imply being a PhD physics means her POV is more relevant. Then seems to imply she shouldn’t be expected to answer a basic question bc she’s only a PhD in physics. Is she trolling perhaps?

@webdevMason As a person needing a kidney, the hostility this, along with other abuses, generates towards organ donation is a serious issue.

This specific claim is disputed, but to me organ donation in a non-terminal assisted suicide patient is obviously ethically fraught. You are offering the patient a way to make meaning in death when they may be struggling to find their meaning in life. It's a *huge* nudge.

@Kneesock1 @Empty_America Oh, I had friends who were into Kate Bush too, but they were well known for “obscure” musical taste. Not at all like in the UK

@moheroy @Empty_America Yes in the US. I was in Los Angeles. I guess I just had obscure taste in music then? It wasn’t just little old me listening to her, I know that.

The Smiths didn't used to be a major band, mostly listened to by low-rider Chicanos for some reason. Jennifer Connelly was sort of a B+ celb in the 90s. Few Americans knew who Kate Bush in the 80s, she wasn't even on MTV much if at all. Retroactive Celebrity.

@AndreaAmati9 @EricRichards22 I’m in the hospital a lot, and they get the Encore Westerns channel. Audie Murphy is one of the only good things about going to the hospital, aside from the not dying part.

@EricRichards22 Or, just run a westerns channel!

Honestly if they would make Hallmark Channel quality movies for men, they'd print money Every genre that was like this has been pozzed or prestiged or both Cheap westerns or noirs or sci-fi or swords-and-sandals. Deliberately, but earnestly shitty and low-budget

@David_____1 @EricRichards22 Rhonda Shear

@EricRichards22 I just remember some sexy chick saying “USA’s *up* all night.”

@Ruf_Omn_Rex @lefineder You have to assume all parties genuinely believed in the efficacy of holy relics.

@lefineder It wouldn't been quicker and easier to just take a random skull from the ossuary and declare it to be that of a saint.

"The monk joined the monastery and spent the next ten years working his way up the ranks, until finally he was put in charge of the relics."

@Kneesock1 @Empty_America Not in the US

@Empty_America And Kate Bush was that bitch in the 80’s. You’re talking about the wrong decade son.🙂‍↔️

@WinstonVane @PincherMartin8 He started exploring the idea after famously being told in Austria: “Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility.”

@WinstonVane @PincherMartin8 He was from Maine but he had already gone to Europe before he invented the thing. He was driven there after a bunch of pstent excuses with Edison. His original interest was chemistry. Soon after coming up with the idea he was partnered with Vickers who also had trouble selling it

Just complete mindless open borders nonsense. First, Arikan was educated and worked in the U.S. for nearly a decade. His problem was not U.S. restrictionism - which was hardly a problem back in the 1980s - but that no one recognized his talent. He couldn't get a permanent academic appointment or work. So Stapp must believe the US should keep every unemployed STEM graduate in the US. You know, just in case. Second, Arikan went back to Turkey. He didn't go to China. So there was nothing preventing US companies from later taking advantage of his work except they - once again - didn't see it. A Chinese company recognized the potential in his ideas, but not American companies. How would that have changed had he stayed in the U.S.? This case is no different than W. Edwards Deming, the engineer and statistician who invented lean production, except Deming wasn't an immigrant. He was an Iowa boy who was completely ignored by Americans, but not by the Japanese. And that's okay. It's not possible for Americans to invent everything or see the importance of every idea before someone else does, and our immigration system should not be based on such a silly conceit.

@owenbroadcast Goldbricking was widely used in the services, the sadly forgotten comic novel “See Here, Private Hargrove” greatly popularized it among civilians, so many American men were in the service in WW2.

there’s a concept in the book ‘the refiner’s fire’, by john brooke, called something like the hermetic-folk triad: essentially that any aspect of “magic” that bleeds into common culture contains a threefold meeting point of: 1. real believers, who believe the process to be genuine 2. a productive aspect of the practice - i.e. its practical application 3. and scammers, people there simply to defraud a perfect example of this is alchemy. you have guys who really believe transmutation of lead into gold is possible, the practical applications of their discoveries (medicine, metallurgy, and so on), and scammers - people using the cover of the previous two folders to scam people. one implication of this is: the place where these three things meet is extremely murky - it’s often impossible to assess people’s real motives, and, on the other end of the causal chain, it’s often impossible to tell what the reality about the practice is (what, if any, legitimate aspects it had, and how commonly known these were). once you recognize this, you start to see it everywhere that something magical and secretive intersects with the fabric of a society. one of my favorite examples is moonshine: you have people who were genuinely “in it” - they found some artistry in it and saw it as a legitimate aspect of their culture. then, you have the practical element - people simply needed or wanted the alcohol, and the alcohol was often easier to transport and sell than that which it was made from. and then, due to its secretive hidden nature, you have the scammers - people there just to make money, often in unethical ways. aside from its own history, moonshine and its production is clearly somewhat alchemical. from my perspective, these murky meeting places of true believers, practicality, and charlatanism (really the proper term for what i am describing) formerly served as a kind of ladder backwards through time. america is separated, physically, from its european origin - and thus physically from much its spiritual or esoteric history. this triad used to, especially in our first two centuries, help bridge that gap. it’s very easy to imagine a local american boy in the 1800s encountering astrology from a traveling charlatan - but then becoming so interested in it that he ends up researching its history, the stars themselves: this leads back to greek myths and ancient civilizations, and so on. often, getting enmeshed with charlatans or people outright looking to scam you can be dangerous. but (my actual point with all this) - this triad and its ladder used to be embedded, safely, into our language. the terms that we used could and did carry a person naturally right into this difficult to explicate but very culturally real space, where complex spiritual and higher ideas were embedded and preserved. one example of this is the term “goldbricking”. virtually unknown today, this term was previously common enough that it could be used by comedians or in comic strips as late as the 1950s with no explanation. to “goldbrick” was to work at a job and give the appearance of working as hard as possible, without actually doing so. the term came from a scam where someone would pass off a brick of another metal as solid gold, usually through a veneer of gold on the outside. the amount encoded into this term is really incredible. you have gold as the ultimate standard: your labor is like gold. you have the transformation of a lesser metal into gold, via a scam - as opposed to a genuine transformation of something into gold (your physical energy) via a virtuous process (honesty, work). this is basically an alchemical term, but was commonly used on labor sites by people who presumably had no knowledge or interest in alchemy or the history of chemistry itself. the internet says this term was replaced by: “cyberslacking” or “cyberloafing”. horrendous terms, carrying nothing. so, no one uses them and the term is gone and one more link to a magical past is severed.

@eigenrobot Ecept to me, I need a kidney here

idk who needs to hear this but please do not sign away rights to your vital organs

@sidewayskoyote @eigenrobot Nobody has sold out like NZ

@eigenrobot Reading the comments. Anzac should just leave. UK will always sell out. Canada will *give* yall to China.....partner with the US and deal with it..

interesting thing about drowning people who havent slipped into unconsciousness yet is that they'll seek out other swimmers and push them underwater to try to keep themselves afloat occasionally lifeguards have to save entire groups of people engaged in drowning each other

@St_Rev The fact that all of us could be grandparents today without any of us, or any of our children, getting hitched before college is significant. Even the Cold War only really lasted about 45 years.

@St_Rev I remember as a little kid digging a hole with some friends and the day before some adult had asked us if we were digging a hole to China. So we decided we should dig it to Iran to free the hostages, but then we got into an argument over which direction to angle it to reach Iran.

One thing I have to keep reminding myself is that most millenials/Zs, having grown up in government schools and come of age with lefty media, don't seem to grasp how bitter an enemy Iran has been since 1979. The idea that this is Israel's war is ludicrous.

@francesmartel @emmma_camp_ The Eurovision jury is the enemy

@emmma_camp_ This Eurovision entry youtube.com/watch?v=nBtQj1…

Question for the group: has there been any great art about Covid? Any incredible literary novels or films? I can't think of anything off the top of my head but my cultural knowledge is not limitless.

@wx_brady @MatthewCappucci @mattbramanti You are correct in the sense that at 180 miles away an object would only need to be about 21,000 feet away to be seen, but those 180 miles are pretty densely populated so one would hope they would find something closer, and lo many many better videos exist

@moheroy @MatthewCappucci @mattbramanti So do yall just think every cloud you see outside is in you general vicinity or?

the beautiful rolling hills of Houston

@pegobry_en @politicalmath The greatest control freaks I have ever met were Italian. Or don’t you think Botticelli was a control freak?

@politicalmath Counterpoint: Italy

My entire worldview is that Calvin's dad is not only correct about the definition of "control freak" but that people like Calvin's dad are the key to every good thing that we collectively enjoy

@mattbramanti @MatthewCappucci The heterosexual ones generally even more pervy

@moheroy @MatthewCappucci every weatherman is dumb and homosexual

@mattbramanti It’s a dhsme they couldn’t have gotten thd shot over Mont Belvieu