The Goofus Knight

Gather around the campfire folks and let me tell you the story of Rodney Glassman. Once upon a time, there was a member of the Tucson City Council who was a diehard Obama supporter and a progressive. He was the AZDems sacrificial lamb against McCain in the 2010 Senate election

A 7-year study of 3,900 social science papers found that only ~50% could be replicated. There was significant variation across fields, however. While more than 60% of political science & econ papers were replicated, only ~25% of sociology & 0% of education papers were.

Trans Florida Student Arrested After Explosive Meltdown Over 'Misgendering'

IMHO, a lot of conservatives are missing the Biblical forest for the woke trees in Nolan's Odyssey. Yes, the casting of Elliot Page is silly and egregious. But here's the thing: Nolan's "The Odyssey" is an apologia for Christian morality poured into a Greek vase. The entire movie is rooted in what Nolan terms "Zeus' law." That law is: "Treat others as you would want to be treated, because anyone might be a god." Now, clearly, there's nothing like that in Greek mythology. It's not implicit in Homer. It's a direct rip from Biblical morality, substituting "because anyone might be a god" for "because man was made in the image of God." Nolan then takes this rule and uses it as his moral glue: the idea is that Odysseus, in utilizing the Trojan Horse, violated Zeus' law and led to full-scale slaughter. That sin has led to the unleashing of broader globalized sin (the "sea peoples" who don't respect Zeus' law and are invading surrounding areas). This is a highly Biblical message: that sin is infectious, and that sin also affects the world at large, not just the sinner. Odysseus has sinned, and he must atone for that sin through self-imposed exile. He must also sacrifice his own aspirations to restore the possibility of a moral universe: because he has unleashed catastrophic violence and violation of Zeus' law -- manifest in the suitors' cynical use of Zeus' law to eat Penelope out of house and home -- he must violate Zeus' law one last time and then accept the penalty, which is exile. This is a not only a movie that will make millions of people go read classical literature again. It also reinforces the idea that violation of the Golden Rule has disastrous consequences. I dunno. I'd consider that, on balance, a large-scale win for civilizational values, when weighed against the woke casting of Elliot Page or the dumbass discussion over whether Lupita Nyongo is good-looking enough (she is, and for the record Diane Kruger is German, not Greek).

Art aside for a moment. Every house used to have a dictionary, thesaurus, some type of encyclopedia from some year, and then various other reference books and materials like a world atlas, maybe a generic few science books, "The Way Things Work", etc. That all started to end around the 90's with a shift to "teh internet". What we see now, again not on the art side, is in a way a return to having those references around again in a convenient way.

There's a lady on TT who inherited a house in a 55+ senior community, and her neighbors are now harassing her to sell the house.

For those who skipped the context : Someone requested me and sent an AI reference that they made from a VROID model they commissioned. This is disrespectful to the artist that made the Vroid and to me.