By David Futrelle
Sorry I’ve been AWOL for a couple of days; I’ve been taking care of some personal stuff (nothing dramatic, just very time-consuming). But there’s so much going on in the world I thought I’d put up an open thread.
Talk about Trump’s shittiness, the shutdown, the dueling Fyre Festival documentaries, the blizzard here in the US, or maybe those snot-nosed racist high school students harassing Native American elder Nathan Phillips, a veteran conducting a ceremony to honor the war dead in DC
On that last point, here are some videos; watch only if you are ready to be enraged. The students, from a Catholic high school, were in DC for the “March for Life,” evidently ran into Phillips by chance, and decided to harass him for being Native American, I guess.
On a somewhat lighter note, there was the whole Ben Shapiro/Baby Hitler thing. Here are several , er, enhanced versions of his remarks at the March for Life on the classic time-travel quandary — “would you kill Hitler when he was a baby?”
Despite Ben’s qualms about killing baby Hitler, he doesn’t actually give a shit about babies and other civilians from enemy countries killed in wars.
In other news:
Speaking of crappy food:
For example this is how someone in YT comment section on the long video understood the situation: “Oh shit, none of this was mocking. They were doing this in solidarity. It was twisted, but the boys were trying to be in sync with the Indigenous group in order to drown out the Black Hebrew Israelites. Nathan Phillips apparently thought the boys were about to attack these men, and wanted to step in between to prevent something. The boys thought he had come over to participate in the drowning out of the Black Hebrew Israelites, and were NOT mocking them. The whole thing was confusing, and it seems some of the boys were also confused as to if the Indigenous group was there to help or contest.”
I don´t see why that interpretation is necesarily false, at least for most of the kids. That should be reason enough to careful when reporting it.
Ive been reading Dr Doidge The brains way of healing. Im not a scientist but its been very fascinating and explains of brains are dynamic and CAN heal themselves. It has given me some hope regarding my health issues and I highly recommend it for people that have a risk of degenerative brain diseases.
@hapnadsmannen:
So by your own admission, you lack the necessary cultural context to understand what’s happening in the video but felt the urge to come here and ‘splain at us anyway? Well, you’ve some neck on you, my friend. A neck like a jockey’s bollocks.
Yeah I mean´t someone else wrote earlier they ask all new posters “have you read any good book lately?”.
@cornychips OH, that s a good one! May I also suggest “The malleable brain”. An insightful book. I read it after I did an internship on a ward for appalic patients. It was amazing to see a man, who had spent 2 year in wake coma walk in and read stories to the patients. The brain is amazing
It’s possible that the parents were all taking a break simultaneously and none of them were there to observe or intervene.
OR some/all of the parents were there as they were supposed to be, and either didn’t care or were proud of their little bigots. This second one doesn’t require the relatively unlikely event of all parents being absent simultaneously, so by the principle of parsimony, we should favour it.
Children get their behaviours from the social environment around them. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Etcetera.
Oh! I can answer that one for you, at the least make a solid guess. Can also answer why you “like to argue where you suspect people won’t agree with you.”
You’re here to demonstrate how right you are and how wrong we are. It’s a dominance display. It’s a common instinct behind committed centrists, the ones who proudly poke holes in other peoples’ beliefs “for the fun of it.” The reason it’s fun is because it asserts social dominance. Often the person will claim to be “seeking truth,” but they’ll also rarely listen to critique of their position or methods.
I’m obviously doing a lot of extrapolating here, but the basic idea that people engage in arguments to assert social dominance is pretty fundamental, universal stuff. It’s a mold that very much fits the cast you’ve put down here.
I hope that helps illuminate the motivations behind your behaviour!
@hapnadsmannen
You are assuming that students from a Catholic school, which has a problematic history with regards to race relations, who have traveled to Washington DC specifically to attend a march in support of taking abortion rights away from women, wearing hats that are associated with a fascist movement, would behave in a such a manner when confronted with a culture that they don’t understand… out of cultural ignorance.
Exactly what premises would you base this presupposition on? Put another way, why are you so willing to give the students the benefit of the doubt? What information are you admitting into or omitting from your reasoned consideration of this matter?
hapnadsmannen:
That was me. And I mentioned that this happens on another blog. Should perhaps mentioned that it was a SFblog. 🙂
It was to ilustrate that talking about somethink else not the controversal topic is somethink that seems to be really dificult for some people. Interesting that it seemed to be interesting for you.
Aint that the truth.
Tangentially related to the Third Reich, I was testing some new wireless headphones and decided to do it with John Williams’s fantabulous score to Last Crusade and as I was listening to it and replaying the film in my head, I was like “You know, I really like the leitmotifs that Williams works with.”
Basically leitmotifs are little musical phrases that are keyed to a particular person, place or thing. Think the flourish from the Indy March whenever Indy’s doing something action-y. But Williams works others in, like a Spanish guitar trill whenever the Cross of Coronado is on screen or that kind of reverential horn drone when the Holy Grail is made the focus of the action. It makes certain tracks really stand out and just made me appreciate the score to that film so much more.
Another set of leitmotifs that have stuck with me was the ones from the Myst games, particularly the first one. It was probably the first video game I can remember that I played just to listen to the music, and in-game, each of the brothers have their own unique musical phrase that plays whenever you’re in one of their rooms, but Robyn Miller combined those with a leitmotif of the Age you’re in, so if you’re in Sirrus’s room on the Mechanical Age, you’ll hear the metal clang of the Age’s leitmotif intermingled with the strings of Sirrus’s theme, while in Channelwood, you’d hear the bongo drums of its theme intermingled. I recall the leitmotifs also pop up in the fourth game where they escape their prisons.
A tangent to be sure, but just something on my mind. 😀
@Who? A couple good books, now that you mention it. I’m currently chipping away at “McMafia” by Misha Glenny, about the rise of organized crime in the power vacuum left by the collapse of the Soviet bloc (and Yugoslavia). It’s quite the eye-opener, especially in light of what’s been uncovered in recent investigations (note that the book was published in 2008). It’s also a hell of a lot more readable than “The Balkans” by the same author, but that one’s still really good too.
Before that, I had just finished books 8 and 9 of Patrick O’Brian’s “Master and Commander” series–they’re supposedly set during 1813, but O’Brian started getting vague about the chronology when he realized he was running out of war. For context, “Master and Commander” starts in April 1800, and by book 6 we’ve gotten to 1812. The next 11 books take place in “1813…ish.”
AOC on income equality
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1085293594603339776
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
re: good books
just finished “Lone Survivors: How We Became The Last Human Species” Chris Stringer
started “The First Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of the World’s Oldest Symbols” Genevieve von Petzinger
earlier read “The Righteous Mind”, Jonathan Haidt… really interesting, but I think his conclusions about neophiles and “Authority” and “Sacred” are a bit stunted.
If being called a “filthy quisling” is something you consider a gratuitous personal insult worthy of moderation, you haven’t been insulted very often.
At this point, it appears to be a “fair and clear description” of our ‘new’ apologist.
Hapnadsmennen,
If you didn’t know the significance of the tomahawk chop, maybe you could have asked the first hundred times we mentioned it instead of just barreling ahead with your argument? Maybe it’s significant? Maybe it’s a hand gesture made by white Americans to mock or (in the case of Atlanta Braves fans) appropriate indigenous cultures? By maybe, I mean definitely.
Scildfreja Unnyðnes:
That is interesting. I mean arguing can be fun. (For me with other topics, hurting people is not fun)
And Centrist do this more than people on the right or on the left? I mean I come from a country were the center (or the people defining themselves as center) are pretty much a majority.
Sorry for the doublepost, but combining those 2 posts in one, seemed so wrong.
People claim to be centrist so they can argue their point as if it’s being done from a neutral position (it’s not).
@ Katamount:
and WW2 ! I remember from “Victory at Sea” series, the same general score was used in several places and when the scene was dealing with Japanese, there was that “minor key-gong-y” (???) sound. I noticed it the first time I saw it, of course, but later when I started becoming aware of cultural appropriation, etc., it started getting creepy.
I’m a team sports fan, mostly college and high school. In my weblog a couple years back, I did a piece on Hoxie High School’s girls basketball team, who had beaten the state record for consecutive wins set a couple decades back by Little River High… the touchy part, Hoxie is the “Indians”, and Little River is the “Redskins.”
When I talk about programs with recist nicknames, of which there are MANY… I make every effort to avoid using the nickname… which in that case was… (wait for it…) doubly difficult.
Both schools have had fans bring up changing the name, and in all cases, the fans got death threats…. MAGA!!! (sarcasm intended)
I looked at the Covington High basketball tweet that wwth referenced, I have seen that behavior dozens of times in the 50 years I have attended high school sports events. WAY more often, it is an all- or-overwhelmingly-majority white school engaging in the behavior.
RE Margaret Murray: The witch-cult hypothesis has been pretty much discredited, as far as I know. Interesting stuff, though.
Kupo: Thanks yeah that makes sense.
Good books: I start with my favorite that I read last year: Six Wakes (Mur Lafferty (One year late) and even older the Riddle-Mastertrilogy (Patricia McKillip).
Lastly read (and enjoyed): Magisterium (Holly Black and Cassandra Clare) The first one (because my brother asked me to not read it, because he wanted to use it for a roleplay but this one is on hold.
Currently reading The Human Devision(Scalzi).
I am also asking myself if giving Redshirts as a present to a trekki is a good idea.
People who are actually interested in the topics will ask questions and will try to seek understanding. They’ll ask people “why do you believe x?” and then try to actually understand how they came to that conclusion.
That’s not how our, uh, guests approach things, though. They come in with criticism up front, and behave as if they believe they already understand the various positions in full. They’re not here to learn or understand, they’re here to argue and assert. When they say “I don’t understand what [toxic masculinity] means, I came here to understand,” they’re sort of lying. They didn’t come here to understand, they came here to try to convince us that their definition is right, and ours is wrong.
They’re right in that they don’t understand what [toxic masculinity] is, though.
(Oh, hi, Ambrose, didn’t see you there.)
Speaking of the “centrist” trolls we get – not sure if that’s our current guests or not, just general blather,
Calling themselves centrist is sort of misleading, I find. They’re generally not interested in the moderate middle road. They’re interested in being contrarian. They don’t really stand for anything, they stand against things. They make arguments against progressive policies, and they claim to make arguments against reactionary policies too – I don’t see those ’cause those don’t usually get a voice of support here. But they don’t really make any positive statements.
Strategically it’s wise – don’t defend any ground, because it gives opponents a point they can attack. But it’s also a pretty hollow, gutless sort of a thing – believe in nothing, only seek to destroy the beliefs of others. It doesn’t really help all that much either. They claim that it’s to make sure only the best ideas survive, but they’re also generally pretty terrible with logic, too.
In the end, they’re doin it because it makes them feel superior.
@ Scildfreja:
good cartoon.
A key point with the trolls we see here is “whatever’s in place right now is what ‘good’ is… the fact that I particularly benefit from it is irrelevant to my belief, tho… My point is supported by science and evidence, and this is true because science and evidence support my point.”
Speaking of books and indigenous appropriation,
I just read and greatly enjoyed the 1977 Australian fantasy novel The Ice Is Coming by Patricia Wrightson. Found it in book recycling at my local library.
It’s about Aboriginal folk-spirits and monsters discreetly living their lives in modern (1970s) Australia, some of them suddenly trying to freeze the whole land and some others teaming with humans in order to save the land. In her foreword, the author claims to have attempted to utilize Australian indigenous folklore in the same way that European folklore is utilized in a lot of fantasy literature (leaving out the more sacred religious elements).
I couldn’t evaluate how problematic exactly this book is, but I do like how the mythological creatures are fairly strongly localized in different homelands – albeit without naming the corresponding human nations. The human protagonist is a young man from an unnamed east coast nation, who travels from land to land and consults elders of other nations. There’s some frank commentary on modern Aboriginal poverty, and on fraught ethnic relations with rural white folk, and on cultural conflict with modern cosmopolitan city people.
Haven’t read much by way of novels lately. Womp womp. Have been painting instead. I guess i look at enough letters during the day, I have been enjoying looking at colours during the evening instead.