Here’s a little case study in alt-right hypocrisy.
Last week, like a lot of people, the wannabe self-help guru and alt-right opinion-haver who calls himself “DarkTriadMan” professed to be outraged by Kathy Griffin posing for photos with a stylized severed head of Donald Trump.
Given that DarkTriadMan’s whole schtick is based on the idea that men should act more like psychopaths if they want to get ahead in life, you wouldn’t think he’d be much bothered by Griffin’s admittedly dark stunt, but he made quite a show of his outrage, endlessly retweeting alt-right attacks on Griffin and adding his own spin to the news:
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/870652822836195328
He was glad to see Griffin brought to tears by the reaction to her photos:
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/870689717049634816
And fantasized about Barron Trump ultimately taking his revenge:
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/869935774883500033
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/869958745186590720
Today, in the wake of latest London attacks, Mr. Dark Triad seems to have gotten over his squeamishness about Griffin’s supposed call for violence against a sitting politician. Now he’s quite openly calling for the mass slaughter of Muslims.
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/871471460543602688
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/871355215215304704
He’s also talking about how great it would be if the mayor of London — a sitting politician, like Trump, with two children — were to be burned at the stake.
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/871354479593091072
Or impaled:
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/871353175466496000
Or torn apart by horses:
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/871352151846658048
Or blinded and hung:
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/871352529262694400
This is more or less what I’ve come to expect from the alt-right; their “moral outrage” is almost always in very bad faith. But it’s still a little surprising to see just how blatant their hypocrisy can be.
RE: Historical tortures
I am reminded of Keelhauling. For those not in the know, good. For those who wish to know…
Keelhauling was a punishment given to sailors. Essentially, a rope was tied to their hands and feet, with the middle part of the rope under the ship. They were then thrown overboard and dragged across the bottom of the hull, the ship’s “keel” and then to the other side.
These data points are to be remembered when considering keel hauling: It was usually performed on warships prior to the advent of copper-sheathed hulls. Sheathing a ship’s hull in copper prevented sea creatures, in particular woodworms and barnacules, from attacking the hull. Prior to coppering, ship hulls would get positively covered in thousands of barnacles so much so that beaching ships and removing the barnacles by hand was considered standard maintenance.
Salt water is extremely painful when applied to open wounds.
Enough pain usually forces someone to open their mouth.
/end data
RE: English
Consider Lead vs Lead, Quarry vs Quarry, wind vs wind, tank vs tank, and etc.
English is lousy with homonyms, as well as homophones.
Such as: Carat, Caret, and Carrot.
Mistakes in english are extremely common, because you basically need to be a language goddess to get it right all the time.
Eh, just go with the Doctor’s own description of who he is.
“I’m a madman with a box”
I don’t know which languages don’t have “verb nouning”, but I still laugh about it when I see it discussed.
“Which doctor?”
“No, I’m not superstitious”
@ ignoresandra
Sailors would ask their mates to man the ropes so they’d pull them round as fast as possible. Eek.
@ Alan
For example, if someone says “I am the Doctor” at a Russian person, the properly phrased bewildered question is “какой (ещё такой) доктор?” where the words in parentheses are optional, depending on your level of bewilderment. This can mean depending on circumstance either “which doctor” in a literal sense (a surgeon? a laryngologist?) or “what doctor” in an uncomprehending sense (what are you on about?), so that seems to me like it would have been a much better translation. Alas, there must be brand recognition, so they went with the extremely awkward phrasing of “доктор кто” oh well…
@Fran:
I am informed by a reliable source* who was speaking at a peer-reviewed event** that apparently the ordeals were made deliberately lurid and unpleasant in order to encourage people to bribe the judge instead. As such, while there are many surviving records about what the ordeals should theoretically be, there are very few records of them actually ever being used.
(I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a learned word for this. Alan, any ideas?)
This was made worse by the sensationalist attitudes of Victorian historians, who wanted to make the medieval era out to be as titillatingly horrible as possible.
* My friend Vanessa, who is doing postdoctoral research in medieval history.
** Drunk in a pub with other academics.
I’m loving this Russian discussion. Now I want to watch “Firefox” again.
I feel really sorry for Barron. He’s just a kid but he’s going to grow up indoctrinated by Toxic Masculinity and entitlement, be brainwashed by the secret society network and initiated into the Freemasons when he turns 18, get spirited away to Boho Grove where he’ll have to take part in God knows what in order to become his daddy’s heir. The sooner the lid gets blown off this patriarchalist bullshit the better. Poor kid. 🙁 I bet he’s terrified of his daddy. Bet Mel is too.
@ EJ
There are other sources?
But yeah, there’s a lot of mythology about supposed old ordeals and punishments. Like you say a lot of them can’t be traced back before Victorian Penny Dreadfuls.
And a lot of time it was ‘violence perceived is violence achieved’. It was the deterrent effect that was the real aim. Like with the Halifax Gibbet referred to earlier. Whilst some people definitely were executed, there was also a ‘rule’ that if you could jump from the platform and run to and cross the boundary before you were caught you’d be spared so long as you didn’t return. Of course a lot of petty criminals did somehow manage to elude the chasers. But basically this was an early form of ASBO. It cleared petty criminals from the area without actually having to kill them.
As to bribery and turning a blind eye, check out the scams involved in claiming ‘benefit of clergy’.
And Alan reminds me of the old Firefox video game. A laserdisc based classic.
Real Russian (and being honest, American) planes of the time were nowhere near that advanced.
@ JS
That’s what they want you to think.
Love that film. It’s the same submarine as “Ice Station Zebra”, and I see that film as an episode of Danger Man/The Prisoner. So in my head they all take place in the same universe.
I’ll just leave this here:
On spelling:
What I want to know is why so many native English speakers think “than” is spelled “then”. Reading stuff like “more then 9000” makes me literally grit my teeth, even more than “alot”.
@IgnoreSandra
My favorite example of English homonym fuckery is “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo”.
A guy opens a chip shop. He orders a sign but when it arrives it says “Fishandchips”.
So he writes to the company and says “You need to put more space between fish and and and and and chips”
But they write back, saying “in your request, you need to put quotation marks between ‘fish’ and ‘and’ and ‘and’ and ‘and’ and ‘and’ and ‘and’ and ‘and’ and ‘and’ and ‘and’ and ‘and’ and ‘and’ and ‘chips’”.
@Wetherby
What annoys me about that poem is that I’m not sure if by ‘diet’ is meant DEE-it, like the legislative body, or DIE-it, like with food…
*falls over and bats at words with paws*
so. much. linguistics… mmm… wordnip
And then there’s the author who sent a short message to his publisher: “?”, and got back the response: “!”.
Alan&Dasha
Honestly when I start english, and also lilttle bit now, I don’t care at all. At school I not interested in english films or music, only when I decide to became officer when i 18 years I thought maybe I should learn this one properly. Problem is then I not know grammar and second I learning from other people by speach so 1. my spelling very bad at first 2. they also not english, they filipino, bulgarian, romanian, thai, chinese etc etc so I end up knowing this ‘ship english’. To me having ‘a’ or ‘the’ or ‘an’ is not really bothering me, but after soon I can hear that it not quite correct. I forget or not care mostly, but sometimes I trying. After maybe at first I can hear that it supposed to be there because now I start watching english films and listen english music and even sail with British people, so this helps. My mum speaks so good, she very good at languages, but also she get to practice with real british people every day.
Charles Napier is reputed to have sent a telegram reading “Peccavi” after he captured the province of Sindh.
Although when I Googled that to check the spelling it transpires other was actually someone called Catherine Winkworth who came up with it.
I have an ex-friend who did this. She did it because she literally never learned the difference between the two words. She used “then” all the time because she didn’t know when to use “than,” so she just didn’t do it.
She had an undergraduate degree in English. Just saying.
Concerning Kathy Griffith photo, how come nobody mentions Ted Nugents daily tweets and calls of violence, both physical and sexual towards Clinton or Obama (I mean Teds a “celeb”). Or the many times morons with AR14s that would show up at democratic rallies? The Dems never call them on it, only call for regulation not bloody genocide. Bogus outrage.
@Valentine
Are you actually Ukrainian or something else? (I ask because Odessa is a very mixed seaport city, so it’s full of people from all over and I’m just curious.) Also, where about do you normally cruise (unless it’s a secret) that you run into so many different nationalities of sailors? Again, not a political question (I’m originally from Minsk, and as you know we do not care about politics unless someone tries to take our potatoes away.)
@ valentine (& dashapants)
As this seems to have developed into a Russian interest thread perhaps people won’t mind me asking about that thing I mentioned a while ago.
Got a training mate who’s ex Spetsnaz. Got chatting to him and some of his mates about their cool tattoos. He mentioned about how there’s a strong link between Spetsnaz guys and the Russian Orthodox Church. And also there seemed to be some sort of Russian mysticism element. But he either doesn’t have the language skills, or more likely doesn’t want, to discuss in any great detail.
Can you shed any light on this?
Maybe the guy’s annoyed because Sadiq Khan won fair and square without having to rely on anachronisms like the electoral college.
@PoM
This shit right here I don’t get.
I know people who are far more educated than myself, are successful, and yet still manage to stuff up perfectly basic tasks like this.
I believe your story 100% because I’ve met a lot of people like this and it just confuses me a lot.
It makes me feel like I spend far too much effort doing things. Apparently you can just slide through life on your butt-cheeks and not put effort into anything at all and you’ll be just fine.