No.

I'm not certain that the opinions of adults can be changed except by reflection after something traumatic happens to them personally or sometimes a loved one.

I didn't know that about your childhood. Thanks for sharing.

> I've deeply offended several people I've known almost the entirety of my life for being rude to people who say their own child's healthcare should be paid for but not those people's kids because they are brown. For being rude to antivaxxers who are trying to spread their misinformation in a community that is protected from dangerous infections BY vaccines and masking precautions.

Have you had any success in changing anyone's mind? I could use some pointers for climate skeptics down here.

It was a water main that pinholed, and then that pinhole became a waterjet.

When I found it - under ten inches of water - it took some skin off my thumb from sheer pressure.

This is the new place? So was the water actually coming from guttering / piping / leaks etc or was it surface runoff getting trapped under the house?

What was that shit newspaper in France? Charlie Hebdo? Ain't nobody said anything nice about Charlie Hebdo until AQAP started shooting cartoonists.

Couldnt resist the chance to correct you. Charlie Hebdo was well revered in France before the shooting.

Not only for its carton but for a lot of articles who proved some corruption in France politicians, and ruined some career.

Very local corruption affair, and very french newspaper , but revered in the country.

Your point stand, never heard about Rushdie before the Fatwa. Still he probably was revered in his home country

Bloody hell. Sounds expensive. Hope the damage wasn't too extensive.

Kriwaczek makes the point that from an external perspective, civilization can be evenly divided into "Babylonian" and "not Babylonian" as civilization centered in and around Babylon had about a 2000-year hang time. He also argues that they were nasty - a lot of their recorded cruelty to others is likely hyperbole meant to scare the provincials but theirs was a nasty and brutish empire, to themselves and to others. They were also highly regimented - the modern analog Kriwaczek uses for Babylon is the USSR, with its politbureau, its nomenklatura and its cronyism-based welfare state. Babylon didn't use coinage for internal trade, everything was state diktat; not only that, their language and math was deliberately obscure and cloistered so that their technology couldn't be stolen by the barbarians they relied on for luxury goods.

We don't know exactly how the Babylonian empire fell because they started using papyrus rather than clay to write on and all the records are gone. We do know that they were superseded when their trading partners in Anatolia developed a pidgin Babylonian to trade (and do math) among themselves which effectively cut the Babylonians out of their monopoly status. Babylonian was lost as a language for over 2000 years while the barbarians kept at heel for a millennium proceeded to invent science and culture.

History is a push/pull between old and new. Old never wins. You can be mad about that but ultimately the point of language is for dialog and the easier that dialog, the more successful the language.

I wonder if we will have elections again or not

I don't think Joe ran on it, but Kamala did announce that she would legalize weed veryyyyy late in the campaign, to the point where even if the press would have been willing to make a big deal of it, it wouldn'ta mattered. The campaign was.. it was OK. Almost! It was almost OK. It was certainly not great, but again, clearly Trump has proven that the quality of campaign largely doesn't matter. Like five days ago Walmart was like "oh btw, tariffs would probably be mostly passed on to the customer, simply, yeah", and it was just... no one's job during campaign season to explain that. Nobody's. Same guy we gave "reasonably explain what mass deportations likely entail" to. Again, the press's true failure in this moment cannot be overstated.

But yes, as elsewhere has been mentioned, the dems are definitely a controlled opposition party. There was just a quick wrest within the oligarchy, the south africans struck in the twilight of the campaign multiple times, and with large investments.

Unsolicited, semi-concrete predictions, you say? Great idea. I suspect they'll 25th Amendment Trump, but I don't know when. I don't know when I'd want them to, or if. They're all too socially inept to realize that JD doesn't have the juice, and maybe handing Ozempic Jr. "whatever [donuts] work[s], I guess" after Trump has done god knows what for even one year is gonna be like Peter Theil's suicide, for starters.

No, no we are in no man's land. And one thing, li'l silver lining, is that I don't have to give one flying fuck what the dems do or say anymore, because that's all about to be completely irrelevant.

But thank god, nuclear war averted, Ukraine will be surrendered af and Russia will threaten Moldova and the Finns, and fuck, we might join 'em, maybe bomb Mexico, it's big peace time cunts.

edit: history will probably show that the Israel shit was singularly Biden. Singularly. Yeah I'm real torn up to see him go. This fucking country deserves itself, honestly. It's fine

I think before investing on getting a message out, they should have one to begin with. I actively sought out what their platform is and as far as I can tell they don't have one

Yeah totally. Everything feels hopeless

I genuinely don't know what the Dems want to do.

Kamala's climate change policy was some of the most baffling word salad I've ever had to read. It seemed like every week they shifted positions or compromised on something I figured was a core Dem value.

Doesn't matter either way cuz they lost in a landslide lol

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this is hitting the nail so square on the head that it splinters.

half of the oligarchy can't even put out a good liar except maybe Pete, who is phenomenal, and secretly a radical socialist.

just believe me, i will repeat it a lot, for effectivity.

"Mayor" Pete Buttigieg is secretly a radical socialist

hey man what do you think about Pete (some people call him "Mayor" Pete) Buttigieg?

no but fantastic comment, I am trying to give you a rhetorical treat I guess

Elect Mayor Pete for socialism

edit mk: the SOROSBUX pay interface is broken there is nothing in my account for this

Other problem is, unless you're willing to let the president be a tyrant, one person with integrity in government is barely going to help at all. You'd need to kick out all the existing corporate dems first before anything could get accomplished.

Yeah totally, its just hard to be surprised when voters resent voting for people who promise to do nothing that they want.

For that matter, what have the dems accomplished in my lifetime?

I guess Obamacare which despite being half assed garbage ripping off the Republicans plan entirely is still better than what was there.

Not sure I can come up with a second example.

They let the Voter Rights Act die with them at the helm though. And did nothing for BLM. And shot the Occupy protestors. And voted on the nonprofit killing bill.

I think LotR was the first to have elves and hobbits and dwarves and orcs in the way that's instantly recognizable.

I agree that its a cozy story, and 1000% caste system, though imo LotR is a lot more thoughtful and I'd argue that the whole 'magic is fading and evil will eventually win but we'll fight while we can' tone makes it not all twee feel-good fluff.

Now I'm curious - what "modern takes" have you read?

I'm of the opinion that LoTR fucked up fantasy the same way Star Wars fucked up sci fi, but there are a few bright lights.

I didn't say it isn't thoughtful or as thoughtful, just that it doesn't flow as well. I think most people who aren't pretentious literary students would be pro Tom Bombadil's removal, and it doesn't take a lot of digging to find it's a remnant from the time Tolkien wasn't sure if LotR would be a full-on children's book or not. The book could easily lose about 50 pages of descriptions and scarcely anyone would care? I could go on, but to me at least, it's simultaneously polished and rough as hell.

EDIT/Addendum: Maybe to elaborate and add a bit of comparison with GEB (you CS folks love it): GEB waxes poetics about recursion for pretty much its entire body, comparing recursive changes of a structure to fugue and drawing parallels. I have no doubt that, just as SICP, it was mind-blowing at its time. But today? I learned about this shit in high school CS and middle school music classes, respectively. Putting it together is perhaps non-trivial, sure, but with the benefit of GEB doing a lot of the work, people who came after can do it all in a matter of 3 hour lecture. So a lot of their impact is just lost on me: I got it in a refined version before, so the progenitors feel clunky.

I also just finally read LotR after bouncing off it a few times. I had the opposite takeaway though, at least having played a lot of D&D but not having read a lot of fantasy novels, that - wow it was so much better and more thoughtful than the modern take.

Yeah totally - see what you mean about the Tom Bombadil & that. I like the prose now, but especially the first chapter is very long and academic and not exactly a page turner.

Re: GEB also haven't finished it despite starting but I totally agree with you there, nothing felt like 'mind blowing'. For LotR though, I went in expecting to not be that impressed since I had all the cultural osmosis already and had seen the movies etc and, for me at least, it had a different tone and character and earnestness that I think the modern versions lost at some point. (I do still love the movies though).

Recently read some Sherlock Holmes and did get that feeling though- everything was such a predictable trope, but I suppose at the time it was a lot more new

I think LotR was the first to have elves and hobbits and dwarves and orcs in the way that's instantly recognizable.

And I would argue that counts for less than you think. One of the things I like about modern fantasy is the trope that Elves are assholes. Tolkien was basically at "look how cool this lost race of ubermensch are" while modern fantasy is basically "elves love the smell of their own farts."

I agree that its a cozy story, and 1000% caste system, though imo LotR is a lot more thoughtful and I'd argue that the whole 'magic is fading and evil will eventually win but we'll fight while we can' tone makes it not all twee feel-good fluff.

On the one hand, it's a bunch of children's books. On the other hand, it very clearly reflects Tolkien's understanding and trauma of The Great War. I think it's the duality that bugs me; by trying to be both it does neither well.

The thing about American fantasy of the era is the good guys and the bad guys were human. You couldn't hide your actions behind ethnic tension. America fought a war over slavery; the British didn't think it was worth fighting a war over genocide until it was on their doorstep.

Just Dungeon & Dragons and associates, plus of course the movies.

As well as vague awareness of like, video game plots & tropes.

What struck me the most was how LotR was very anti-war in a lot of ways which absolutely does not carry over.

I can completely agree it was like Star Wars, especially in that: Star Wars (4 at least) was good! It had an incredible aesthetic that I fell in love with instantly, the story is simple and nice, every line is iconic. But more Star Wars just isn't that interesting and it did seem like everyone was trying to make their own worse version for a while at least.

GEB waxes poetics about recursion for pretty much its entire body, comparing recursive changes of a structure to fugue and drawing parallels. I have no doubt that, just as SICP, it was mind-blowing at its time. But today? I learned about this shit in high school CS and middle school music classes, respectively. Putting it together is perhaps non-trivial, sure, but with the benefit of GEB doing a lot of the work, people who came after can do it all in a matter of 3 hour lecture.

"Cognition emerges from hidden neurological mechanisms" being the author's summaries of not only GEB (1979) but also Dawkin's The Selfish Gene (1976), I am fully ready to argue that GEB was an intellectual's retreat from Reagan. American culture was big on trite wordplay back then. It was largely insufferable.

Recently read some Sherlock Holmes and did get that feeling though- everything was such a predictable trope, but I suppose at the time it was a lot more new

I'm not sure, but it was certainly influential. That's why we see it as trite and need its retelling repackaged.

By the way, if you like British humor (humour?) with commentary on (among others) writers stealing and redoing things, I recommend Upstart Crow.

Yeah my enthusiasm for Bernie is more the symbolism of someone with at least passably good values in office. No pretense that he could get anything done. Which is another baffling thing about the Dems- if you're going to do literally nothing, why compromise all your values? Why have a stupid hedged weaksauce plan that you don't do instead of an exciting cool plan that you don't do.

Honestly the IRA passing at all was a shock to me, weaksauce as it was.

My only hope from the Trump admin is that the Dems exploit all the broken norms to 'fucking do something' but god knows they haven't ever in my lifetime, idk about yours but sounds like not then either.

At this point I kinda want to see America fall before I do, just for the schadenfreude

cgod. Hang in there, pal. Always rooting for you from afar.

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