Hey, everyone. So I sat down to write something about this horrific discussion of domestic violence on The Spearhead – which some of the Man Boobz commentariat have already started discussing here – and, well, I just couldn’t do it.
I need to step back a bit from this blog for a little while to clear my head and maintain my sanity. So I’m going to take a bit of a break – maybe just a few days, maybe a week – and post nothing but interesting videos and other things having nothing whatsoever to do with misogyny or the manosphere. You all, of course, can treat this any any other thread as a totally open thread to discuss whatever you want, including the regular Man Boobz topics of misogyny and general MRA shitlordery.
I’m going to start off with the dance number that first got me hooked on Bollywood music some years ago. This is from the 1998 film Dil Se, a drama about love and terrorism. But in Bollywood, even serious dramas have dance numbers, and Dil Se’s dance numbers are gorgeous and a little surreal.
The music from the film is by A.R. Rahman, a prolific and popular Bollywood music director best known in the US for doing the music for Slumdog Millionaire.
And yes, that is Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan dancing on top of a moving train without any safety harness or stunt double or CGI trickery. (Well, there are a couple of brief bits where a double might have been used.) Enjoy!
David, I want to thank you for trawling through this horrible stuff so I don’t have to. Your blog performs an invaluable service.
Gawd, Argenti, this jackass sounds like an Owly in the making. Get him talking about the Rothschilds (sorry, their even richer and more powerful cousins the Rothchilds) and how the City of London is a sovereign state independent of Britain, where all the US’s money goes.
/been reading old threads again
Didn’t you just run a fundraiser?
Nawh, he’s just a baby’s first debate. He’s too used to being the smartest one in the room and having his opinion taken as infallible. And then I come along with, um, the former without the later. In short, I’ve been around enough to appreciate having friends smart enough to go “you’re infuriatingly wrong and here’s why” whereas he wants to keep it all calm and logical.
If nothing else, I’ve managed to put him off PUA by pointing him towards standard self-improvement that isn’t seeped in misogyny.
Also, he was once a close friend, so I have personal reasons in addition to Duty Calls. And more to the point, he’s got an ASD (wording fail? sorry if so) and I’m not sure he gets how callous he sounds, even when it’s personal the most he can manage is “I should care, because it affects me, but in the grand scheme of things isn’t X more important?”. Meanwhile, I want to reach through the screen and strangle him.
He’s not even remotely as bad as Owly in other words. Owly probably thinks the holocaust was a good thing, whereas dude just thinks there are more important bad things to focus on and that somehow means we can’t still call the holocaust a bad thing.
To a degree, he’s right, current genocide is more important than past genocide, but all genocide is Very Very Bad, no matter how few people are killed. And that more people die of heart disease and cancer is entirely irrelevant to the intentional targeting if minorities. (He really has trouble with the idea that we all die eventually and this is a good things.)
Hey kitteh, do you mind if I try explaining your marital status to him? He’ll probably just get all “the afterlife cannot be scientifically proven” but it’s worth a shot I guess…I get really annoyed at the idea of being stuck in this body forever, and he just gets all “oh we’ll be downloads someday” and it turns into a Doctor Who plot and he won’t watch it and seems to like the idea of being a cyber because he’s never seen wtf “unaging robotic body with controlled emotions that say everyone should be upgraded” actually looks like. (*is totally serious*)
Sorry, I’m ranting, I’m into the whiskey and should stop ranting >.<
FYI, that’s part of why I love you guys. Being the smartest person in the room is no good for one’s ego, nor one’s intelligent. No one learns anything if they’re never challenged. And advanced degrees are not required here, views that I am not familiar with are wtf I mean.
…I’m drunk dialing the internet, great >.<
If we’re going to post Bollywood videos, you can’t not have the divine Hrithik, here in the absurd yet strangely addictive Dhoom2
Haven’t seen White Rainbow but can recommend Water, also relating to the treatment of widows. Lots of trigger warnings on it though.
Argenti – go for it! 😀 We’d love to hear the results (to pinch a line from the Queen, “we, and by that I mean both of us”). Feel free to give him the link to our blog, if you want. He can’t go leaving random comments on it, I moderate everything bwahahahaha.
If he’s on the ASD spectrum, among other things (would I be right to guess somewhat sheltered by age/socio-economic background?) then it certainly adds a level of “more understandable” to the “strangle through screenARRRRRRGH” stuff. Having a genuine barrier to getting it on a deeper level than the intellectual* rather than Being A Privileged Prat makes a difference, at least for me reading from this distance!
Wanting to go cyber? Hasn’t he WATCHED the Cybermen episodes? Being stuck earthside forever, yuck yuck yuck. And downloads? Strewth, now he’s channelling AntZ! 😛
Funny you should ask about the marital situation, my doc appt went way overtime tonight ‘cos she wanted to hear all about how we met! 😀
Instant cure for being-smartest-person-in-room ego: cats. Totally unimpressed. You have opposable thumbs, yes? Then stop wasting time and open that tin. Or door. Or fridge. Or turn on that tap. Or scritch my ears/neck/belly. Or toss that toy for me. Make yourself useful, tailless creature.
Hmmm … do your fish (I’m thinking of the dreaded plec mostly) give off “you don’t impress me, human” vibes on occasion?
It’s funny to see how quickly the standard in Bollywood stars went from curvy for women and a bit chubby for men to super buffed for everyone.
It always amuses me when skimpy clothes and everything-but-kissing is OK, but actual kissing is not. You get this in K-pop too. This is one of my favorite K-pop earworms, but what’s funny about it is that the whole video is girls shaking their asses in tiny hotpants and pretty boy eye candy posing by the pool in swimwear, but they edited out the chaste little kiss at the end because THAT would be going too far.
Plec invented “you do not amuse me” — he can upset the entire tank with one cranky outburst (please knock and wait and then open the door sloooooowly, because he really is that touchy!)
And nope, no Doctor Who, it’s fiction. Not sure dude really gets how much of his transhumanism is influenced by sci-fi.
Yep to privileged, family’s middle class, he’s just over 25 with a degree, white, straight, cis…basically got life set to easy mode other than ASD. Which is certainly not “life handed to him” but he fits in well enough to often just come off as one of those pretentious nerdy types. Usually I don’t want to strangle him for being wrong, but for assuming he’s right (the Dunning-Kruger is so strong he’s specifically said it doesn’t apply to his transhumanist guru)
I’ll explain you and your King and drop a link next time he’s around and not infuriating me. Maybe he can at least manage to step outside his little “science is the height of existence” bubble. Honestly, capital a Atheists annoy me more than religious people who are neither proselytizing nor dangerously conservative. Science can’t explain everything, at least not yet, and insisting it has will only limit future discovery…not to mention piss off people who hold harmless but unprovable beliefs. Eg my father insists the house is haunted and blames the ghost for everything and this is all dandy until he tries to insist I admit it was the ghost when I’m entirely sure it was me (that tng that fell? GHOST! Um no, I bumped it)
Hey Pecunium, yes this is Yudkowsky boy.
THIS, so much.
Years ago, when I was agnostic-bordering-on-atheist, I subscribed briefly to the Australian Sceptics magazine. Didn’t last long, because I got pissed off really quickly with their self-congratulatory, smug, aren’t-we-the-clever-boys’-club attitude and put-downs of any and all non-atheist beliefs. They were the types who were less sceptics than cynics: everyone but atheists were charlatans or gullible, there was no possibility of them being wrong, etc, etc.
And it wasn’t half as toxic and uninformed as the internet would prove to be … shudder.
Yes, so much, to science-doesn’t-know-everything yet (and will it ever know everything? Seriously?)
With beliefs, it’s a simple enough thing for me: is it helping or harming? Is it toxic or life-affirming? It’s what I said to my shrink re: Mr K. I’ve had plenty of doubts about the reality of it all, but even if it were my imagination, I’m hugely happier living this way than I was six-seven years ago. Though after all these years and other people’s validation (if that’s the word) I think it’d be stretching it to say it’s imagination.
I would bet the ghost in your house is a CAT POLTERGEIST messin’ with your minds. Because it can. (Ha, you thought you knocked that thing down, human? I was there a whisker of a millisecond before you!)
Hey, the blockquote monster left me alone for once! 😛
A friend of mine insists that her parents house has ghost cats. She would see them out of the corner of her eye late at night.
Proof, proof I tell ya!
http://youtu.be/vehAyOFIicc
Ghost cats sound so much better than ghost stuffed monkeys. You know the creepy clapper monkeys? With one of those turning up in weird places I can almost understand why the richie richs my aunt works for don’t spend more time in that house. Now that place makes my hair stand up, if this house has a ghost it’s harmless. My father’s all “wait til you look up and see him standing there” and I have all I can do sometimes not to say “I’d rather see an elderly dentist than either rapist ex”. Ghosts, totally less terrifying than flashbacks.
As for science, I really doubt we’ll ever know everything, but even believers of the singularity ought to admit we don’t know everything yet. Frankly I like guessing which deeply held believe will be the next “the sun revolves around the earth” or “the earth is flat”. Penis v vagina is the be all and end all of gender? I keep thinking it’d be bigger than that, but that other thread is right, neither genetics, nor biology, nor presentation, nor self-image is that simple. Maybe we are just doing it completely wrong.
“With beliefs, it’s a simple enough thing for me: is it helping or harming? Is it toxic or life-affirming? It’s what I said to my shrink re: Mr K. I’ve had plenty of doubts about the reality of it all, but even if it were my imagination, I’m hugely happier living this way than I was six-seven years ago. Though after all these years and other people’s validation (if that’s the word) I think it’d be stretching it to say it’s imagination.”
Exactly, nothing personal here, but I neither know nor care if you’re shacking up with a centuries old French King. You’re happy, no one’s getting hurt, so you know what? It doesn’t matter either way. I have an overarching philosophy of: “not hurting anyone? makes you happy? well enjoy then!”
Funny, this is part of what I like about the not-an-ex, we met as psych undergrads, in research methods no less. Zir math is impressive, zir science quite solid, and yet, we’re both various strains of pagan. I absolutely adore a having someone to talk to who loves science, understands empirical evidence and gathering it, and knows when to go “yeah fuck that”
Science stops being right when it’s speculative and hurting people. All the “unproven to exist” things, like Mr. K’s existance, well, you don’t prove that something doesn’t exist by proving that you can’t prove it exists…and at sentence is gibberish! Using Mr. K as a science example:
Null hypothesis: Mr. K does not exist, at least not outside his grave
Test hypothesis: Mr. K continues to exist
*do science* we cannot prove the test hypothesis! Dandy, that doesn’t mean the null hypothesis is correct!
Granted science land would reverse those, say you have to prove that Mr. K does exist. But science and fallacies combined…I’m too drunk to reconcile that, I was just trying to make sense of my horrible sentence!
Anyone want some whiskey? It’s Irish, not French, but maybe we can get a certain French king to deliver it around?
Oh gods, it’s a Bengal! The narcissist ex has one, people would think I was some sort of freak for asking if they checked the cabinet before closing the door, and a good percent of the time when they hadn’t, there was a very cranky cat waiting to dart out from behind the door (if it latched, otherwise you’d just hear a door fly open, an doom just in time to catch a tail flying out of sight)
Gods did she love the fish tanks…all those noises and tubes and vibrations…she never managed to even notice the fish, the filter was too interesting! (This is good, I was really worried she might actually be able to efficiently fish)
They’re total and complete little smarty pants goofs in other words. All that smart, but wrapped up in the curious little body of a kitty. Never ever leave the fridge open even a crack!
There totally are ghost cats! That would explain why the pugs suddenly go crazy and start barking for no reason.
You have made my day. Not only I am extremely grateful for your blog, your conscience, and your vigilance in the face of all sorts of misogyny and hatefulness — but I absolutely love Shah Rhuk Khan and this scene. I watch it whenever I’m in a horrific mood. Both you and Bollywood are a ray of light in any often insane world Take some time, recuperate, breathe deep, and do your own equivalent of a dance on top of a train. I have to take a break sometimes myself from my own work, or it simply gets to be too much. Thanks for the clip and the updates. Hats off, Darlin’.
Ok, I’m drunk enough I just nearly split my drink on the iPad. I’m going to bed before I ruin something, g’night!
AAAAAHHHHH I can’t stand those clapper monkeys, especially after reading the Stephen King short story!
“Exactly, nothing personal here, but I neither know nor care if you’re shacking up with a centuries old French King. You’re happy, no one’s getting hurt, so you know what? It doesn’t matter either way. I have an overarching philosophy of: “not hurting anyone? makes you happy? well enjoy then!””
Exactly, lol! I appreciate that everyone here is courteous enough to either chat just like they would about any other regular’s spouse they’ll prolly never meet, or simply ignore the subject, regardless of their own beliefs. It’s one of the many things I really value about this place. I felt a lot more comfortable when I was able to say (LBT I owes ya) what our situation is, and not feel like I was lying by omission any more.
Plus, hell, we’ve prolly all a few beliefs that others would disagree with, or not understand, or whatevs, but it still comes down to how you just described it.
LOL LOL I love the rest of your paragraphs about hypotheses and whiskey and all. Mr K’s leaning over my shoulder grumbling “Am I a messenger boy?” (Can one grumble while grinning? He seems to be managing.)
😀
Niters, Argenti, and welcome Susan Jane Gilman! 🙂
I’m with Argenti – don’t really care whether or not things are real unless the not-realness is causing some sort of harm. Actually, remember when someone (I think it was one of Mr Al’s socks) tried to dig at Kittehs by being all, omg you are holding a dead king in non-consensual sexual slavery! But it was obviously meant to be a not-real dig. Thing is, if not real, where’s the harm? It was one of my favorite examples of how bad the trolls here ar at their goal of upsetting people, because as digs go that was about as potentially hurtful as being gnawed on by a toothless kitten.
I don’t know if that was one of Mr Al’s socks, David banned his arse* after he pulled that one, and he’d only posted a couple of times, so we never got to explore the issue. Yeah, I thought that effort was really funny/baffling too – it was the dumbest effort (if genuine) and Pecunium’s “if so, then this; if not, then that” takedown was a thing of beauty.
*and the rest of him, mercifully
Though I should say I did ask David to ban him, not because it was hurtful but because the attempted personal attack was over the line generally.
It really is funny how bad they are at riling people up. I think it’s that their social skills are so bad that they can’t figure out what people’s sort spots are, so they don’t know what to aim for.
Sore spots, not sort.