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:
I’m sure Trump would actually be comfortable hugging and kissing baby Hitler.
That is, unless he’d paid hush money to the mother.
Maybe someone should have taken baby Ben Shapiro out of baby Ben Shapiro’s house and put him in one where he would learn some proper history.
Pavlov’s House:
Also, that “we’ll resume later” remark was in the original Wondermark comic 🙂
Speaking of WWII alternate history, I saw in ca. 2010 some journalistic speculation on how the war would’ve been covered on social media if current internet technology had existed in ca. 1940.
(Since most of the recent high tech at the time was German, the leading social media platform would be named Gesichtbuch.)
As of now, you can follow current war news 78 years ago on
https://twitter.com/realtimeWWII
I think the incident in DC is a little more nuanced
https://eu.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/01/19/covington-catholic-students-indigenous-peoples-march-what-we-know/2626355002/
This may be relevant to the thread: YouTube reviewer Jenny Nicholson has just posted a (long) review of a book called “Trigger Warning” (!) about a right-leaning guy who guy who gets hassled at his left-liberal college until it’s invaded by ZOMG TERRORISTS and then he saves the day and oh shoot I guess I spoiled it for you. Seriously, I imagine the thing is intended to be read one-handed, it’s that much of a wank fantasy for conservatives.
It’s worth watching to the end as Nicholson does some digging into the authors background and it is bananas
(ETA: Can’t get the video to embed for some reason)
@ Eric Cartman
Presumably you’re trying to make a point that Mr Phillips approached the Hitler Jungen wannabes; with the implication that he was somehow the instigator?
Well, let’s take a look shall we…
So basically, the students had already started abusing another minority group, and Mr Phillips stepped in before they got their heads kicked in.
Yeah, what a villain, trying to act as peacemaker; he should be locked up.
South Park troll,
How does that fact that some people think Nathan Phillips deserved to be subject to racist harassment for walking up to them mean the situation is nuanced?
There is no acceptable excuse for racism. None. It is never provoked. It is the sole fault of the person doing the racist thing.
Also, if it been a white man trying to defuse tensions between two other groups, he woukd be treated as a hero by everyone and you know it.
@Lumipuna (nee Arctic Ape)
Wow, I didn’t remember that part when I wrote that! Wish I could change *that* choice of words now!
Oh, so the guy they were harassing had EXISTED at them first?
Crip Dyke, on AOC’s scare-quoted “partner”
I guess partner sounds more dignified than boyfriend, and conservatives are just scornful when such dignity is granted to such undignified relationships.
BTW, if someone partnered like Ocasio-Cortez was elected President, what’d you call their not-husband? The First Partner? The First Spouse? The First Gentleman?
(There was once an equivalent situation in Finland, and the conventional title translating as “President’s Spouse” was found easily applicable in Finnish, but not so easily in Swedish, due to the subtly different connotations of “spouse” re marital status.)
@Eric Cartman, I’m sort of baffled by your comment!
Like – you say there’s “nuance” above what Davids’ links and comments give. But your link only shows this teenage rabble being worse. It shows how the kids were busy harassing another minority, then shifts its attention to Mr. Phillips once he bravely interposes himself.
Why did you say it like that? Saying that “there’s more nuance” is claiming that David and we got it wrong somehow, missed a vital point that should change our perspective.
I mean, gosh, I can scarcely imagine that someone coming in here with the name Eric Cartman might possibly be here to troll or something. I quail at the very thought!
Anyways, that’s fun. Wow, those kids are something else. Mr. Phillips deserves acclaim for his courage and compassion, and those kids need to have some harsh life lessons. Sadly, all I can think of when I look at that smug sneer is “I bet that kid’s gonna look a lot like Brett Kavanaugh when he grows up…”
@Cat Mara
You know… I would love to make a film version of that book and totally “Starship Troopers” the crap! You know, in the final cut, it turns out that the guy’s mind had snapped over desperately begging for an excuse to commit violence and in the end there were never any terrorists and he had just shot up his school.
And then he gets tackled and beaten up by some very large women until the police arrive and “self-defend” the crap out of him.
What? I can be petty too!
Total lunar eclipse visible on Sunday night in Americas, or at dark o’clock Monday morning in Western/Northern Europe. Looks like It’ll be about -15 C with partially clear skies here in Helsinki.
Yay an open thread this is the perfect place. I’m not disrupting a conversation or going off topic or any of those things. That’s awesome.
Firstly, I literally just got home. I had an awesome Saturday which turned into Sunday without any sleep LOL. When I got home around 9 a.m. I was changing into pajamas but then lo and behold my brother and his wife and my brilliant adorable niece Isabelle show up. They apparently had made plans to go to mass with my mom. Since I was not really sleepy at that point I’ve been partying all night and I’m an extreme insomniac it was going to take me at least an hour or two to get to sleep even if I immediately tried to. So instead I decided to spend time with my family and went to Mass and lunch.
Then I let my brother and his wife spend some time with my mom free of child duties. I really definitely never want to have kids because I’m not responsible enough to take care of myself. It would be absurd and Incredibly irresponsible of me to bring another life into the world that I had to take care of when I don’t do the best job of taking care of just me LOL.
But I honestly adore young children. Once they get into their adolescence they are less fascinating and more frustrating in my personal opinion I think because I’ve never been a parent I just don’t know how to handle them well, they confuse me. But young children are so incredibly awesome! Everything is new and fascinating and amazing to them and I love it so much!
She’ll be 4 on April 24th and honestly her sense of wonder and joy and being thrilled with the world in the last few years has been a source of strength for me in a world that became much uglier very quickly starting in 2016 and then accelerating and getting far worse than I expected in unexpected ways that she obviously has no comprehension of thank God. But now I’m home I’m going to bed after playing in the playground for an hour. Wow if you could bottle the energy of a three year old you would be a billionaire in 6 months LOL.
Anyway I’m rambling probably because not only am I stoned like always cuz I’m a pothead LOL but I also haven’t slept in a long time but I tried to do something nice but then I wasn’t sure if I was being excessive and then I was like maybe I’m overthinking it. So I figured I’d just ask.
Contrapangloss, I made you a gift, because the time and effort you put into trying to help me deserved more than words in my eyes. But then I wasn’t sure if that would be seen as excessive and weird. So I have to go to sleep now but if someone can explain kindly like they would explain it to a toddler LOL how I can post a picture of something here I would really appreciate it. I only just figured out how to send GIFs with my texts in the last year so yeah that is my level of technological knowledge.
I make this gift for everyone I become friends with in meatspace as they call it LOL. I want to post a picture of it and if you can tell me where to send it obviously I’m not asking you to just put your address here that would be crazy.
But my email is [email protected], if someone tells me how to put a picture on here, I will take a picture of the gift I made and put it here and if you like it you can send me an email and I will put it in an envelope and drop it in the mailbox and send it wherever you tell me to send it. I assume there are places other than a home address. And I love to make these just for fun. Honestly I need more people to give them to LOL, so if anybody else here would like one just tell me the colors you like, and I would be happy to make you one. I don’t know maybe they’re for children but I still give them to people and they seem to like them I don’t know
And that’s why I asked all those questions for how I should approach the topic that I was talking about previously but then never actually said anything LOL. Because I have literally been busy since I woke up and I’ve barely even been on the internet. But now I am passing out and I hope everyone’s weekend was as awesome as mine and thank you everyone again for being so kind and helpful and explanatory. Especially contrapangloss!
@Katie kitten420: to post an image, you need to upload it to an image-sharing site like imgur, then copy the link to it from your browser’s address bar into your comment on its own line, like this:
http://imgur.com/link-to-image
The real link will be a mess of letters and numbers, and it has to end in “.png”, “.gif”, or “.jpg” or it won’t embed.
I think that’s right?
@Hippodameia
Bingo.
@Cartman
Don’t think we don’t remember the last time you pulled this crap.
@Katie
I strongly recommend against posting your email like that, as spam bots crawl the whole internet looking for email addresses, so you might get some spam as a result. Usually it’s better to put some spaces in like name @ host . com or sometimes people put name (at) host (dot) com. Hope this helps.
From what I’ve read, Nathan Phillips moved between the Covington crew and the Black Hebrew Israelites* in an attempt to defuse the possibility of a violent encounter. The BHI have form as shit-stirrers, and appear to have been deliberately baiting the redhats.
So Phillips succeeded in his efforts, but the BHI scampered away untouched, having succeeded in *their* efforts to make everyone’s day just a little shittier. And some gormless Kentucky yoot now has had his resting Shkreli face immortalized on social media.
*SPLC-certified hate group, neither Hebrew nor Israelite.
Alan Robertshaw, Pavlov’s House,
During the early stages of WWII, the perception among the British public seems to have been: “The Germans could invade at any time!”, but I wonder if this was actually the belief among military and political leaders, given the huge difficulties in the way of a successful invasion. Ian Kershaw, in Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940–1941 argues convincingly that Britain’s decision to fight on in 1940 was not at all the quixotic determination to fight on against impossible odds it’s often portrayed as, but a rational choice based on the actual situation – he notes that Britain did not even redeploy its Mediterranean fleet to protect against the supposedly imminently threatened invasion! Another common myth is that Britain fought on “alone”. But quite apart from the French, Polish, Belgian, Czechoslovak… military and scientific* refugees it could count on, it had the immediate military support of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (despite the pro-Nazi forces there); and could and did make extensive use of its Empire, particularly Indian troops and resources**. Meanwhile, despite its conquest of most of western Europe, Nazi Germany was short of coal, food and above all oil, as Adam Tooze argues in The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy.
*Pre-war Polish work made crucial contributions to the code-breaking successes at Bletchley Park.
**Which at the very least contributed considerably to the devastating Bengal famine of 1943.
There is also the risk of harassment or doxing from the MGTOW/PUG/INCELS who lurk here
@Fabe: Hey! You leave pugs out of it!!!
Also, since my other comments aren’t showing up (most likely because I tried to change my name):
@kupo: I performed at the Denver march!
@Yutaolia
Oh shoot that was suppose to be PUA not PUG ,my bad. Pugs are cool,pick up artists are not
@Fabe
Good point!
Watch out for those PUA pugs.
@kupo
Well that pug could easily get pets from me.