Random Thread

[rotting bones]

And? Values talk is aspirational at best anyway, and "proposition nation" conservatives don't even believe what they say - otherwise they'd advocate for exiling natural-born monarchists. As far as I know, nobody's proposed revoking Mencius Moldbug's citizenship. If what a society is can be defined at all, Benedict Anderson got closer to the definition than Dennis Prager or whoever.

I'm not familiar with Benedict Anderson's work. Regarding nationalism, my primary question would be: Can his work account for the fact that no community can function without doing things that some of its members would complain amounts to working against itself?

Your use of the word "curation" sounds very different from mine - when I say "curation", I mean it in the sense of an admissions board, an editor, or the designers of a museum exhibit. There are more objects in the museum than the exhibit has space for, and more submissions to the editor than the magazine has pages for - someone has to decide what's in and what's out, and out of what's in, what's central and what's peripheral.

If my democratic socialist proposals are implemented, then irrational desire will be the ultimate judge of what is curated in your sense of the word. I see no indication that artworks so chosen would please nationalist sensibilities.

What? I was never a Catholic.

No, of course not. I won't mention it again.

The problem with capitalism is that there are too few capitalists.

Capitalism can't support too many capitalists. This is obvious once you consider that making a profit entails spending fewer beans that you rake in. Even capitalists say Capitalism actively works to lower the numbers of capitalists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvirpCAbGSY You might argue that this is anti-capitalist activity, but consider that the alternative to this "anti-capitalist activity" can only be violent revolution to overthrow it.

(I can't find some of Rudy's most interesting videos. I found those clips in the BreadTube archives, but none of them are from the videos I was looking for. Of the videos that interest me, I only found these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOTFIvxIsEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9dOsDYEN4E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH_0q_F2k38)

[Ares Land]

It looks like a cemetery in pictures. In person? I've been there and I agree with the tourists.

As I said, a matter of taste. I've been there too, and didn't get the same impression at all. Not that I like it or would have picked anything like this had this been up to me, but I wouldn't call it a playground.

Eisenman's Holocaust memorial has similar structural problems to the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the prominent brutalist building in DC which is regarded as a horrid failure by everyone who isn't an architect.

That may be so, I don't know. But that's not true of any and all modern architecture, or any style for that matter.

Again, I don't find, say, Le Corbusier's buildings beautiful. But you can hardly dismiss him out of hand. No matter what architectural style may gain prominence -- and I hope they'll be more beautiful -- they'll be profoundly influenced by Brutalism, among others.

Regarding Heidegger, to some extent ideas can be expected to stand up on their own. As I recall, Watson has mostly been a crackpot and a racist and yet, even so, we don't just dismiss DNA.
(Not that I'm terribly familiar with Heidegger.)

Regarding the Evils Of Continental Philosophy: from what I know of American intellectuals, they seem to take continental thinkers a lot more seriously than we continentals do.
That said, post WWII Continental thinkers did support Stalin, Mao (or even Pol Pot). But it's again not like everything they said is irremediably tainted. (Well, you can, but at the cost of reinventing almost everything social sciences figured out in the 20th century. I would respect such an attempt if it was at least honest. Instead what we get is conservatives countering anything they don't like with appeals to 'common sense' or fairy tales about cavemen evolutionary psychology.)

Capitalism can't support too many capitalists. This is obvious once you consider that making a profit entails spending fewer beans that you rake in. Even capitalists say Capitalism actively works to lower the numbers of capitalists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvirpCAbGSY You might argue that this is anti-capitalist activity, but consider that the alternative to this "anti-capitalist activity" can only be violent revolution to overthrow it.

If you wish to discuss this further, let's take it to the Anti-Capitalism thread. The issue I have with anticapitalism in that it says in essence: 'some people hoard up anything that can be owned, others don't own what they need to survive, therefore no one shall be allowed to own anything ever again.' Which, I mean, is a solution, at least in theory, but doesn't adress what people want at all.

[MacAnDàil]

American right-wing cultural curation surely includes everything from Die Hard to Trump Tower.

Kids sometimes think libraries or classrooms or any other thing are playgrounds, so it's certainly not specific to the Holocaust Museum. It's just more distasteful there.

[Pabappa]

Of all the pets and other animals alive in the world today, I wonder how many have noticed that humans are wearing facemasks a lot these days, and of those animals, how many have figured out the reason why?

[Linguoboy]

Of all the pets and other animals alive in the world today, I wonder how many have noticed that humans are wearing facemasks a lot these days, and of those animals, how many have figured out the reason why?

Given how very recently we managed to figure out the germ theory of disease, I am extremely comfortable setting the upper bound of the latter number at 0.

[rotting bones]

Capitalism can't support too many capitalists. This is obvious once you consider that making a profit entails spending fewer beans that you rake in. Even capitalists say Capitalism actively works to lower the numbers of capitalists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvirpCAbGSY You might argue that this is anti-capitalist activity, but consider that the alternative to this "anti-capitalist activity" can only be violent revolution to overthrow it.

If you wish to discuss this further, let's take it to the Anti-Capitalism thread. The issue I have with anticapitalism in that it says in essence: 'some people hoard up anything that can be owned, others don't own what they need to survive, therefore no one shall be allowed to own anything ever again.' Which, I mean, is a solution, at least in theory, but doesn't adress what people want at all.

Feel free to argue against Rudy* in the Capitalism thread. I'm too ill to answer you right away. However, note that:

1. I'm not suggesting anyone should irresponsibly dismantle capitalism. I proposed a specific tweak to improve the system in the Capitalism thread.

2. Pro-capitalists who support the New Deal have a different definition of capitalism from pro-capitalists who oppose it. I would phrase my argument differently if I were addressing you.

*In case I'm delirious, this is the name I remember for the Alpha Investments guy.

[ratammer]

Of all the pets and other animals alive in the world today, I wonder how many have noticed that humans are wearing facemasks a lot these days, and of those animals, how many have figured out the reason why?

I think more animals would have noticed the change in movement habits (commuting etc.).

[Linguoboy]

Someone had to actually argue on catholic.org that transubstantiation is not actually cannibalism even though their arguments seemed a bit thin...

As opposed to the arguments that it's actually cannibalism? I mean, come on, it's not.

That page is forced to argue from an Aristotelian ideology that was hot shit 800 years ago but no one accepts as science today. It would be difficult, though, to even define transubstantiation using modern science.

Well of course transubstantiation is not cannibalism - it's a damn wafer and wine after all, and consecrating it does not change that. But that article was arguing that Catholics don't actually believe it is cannibalism, even though their arguments sound awfully like they believe they are actually the body and blood of Christ, and it does not do a good job of it.

I've been mulling on this since I wrote my (off-topic) response in the Meet the Mexica thread. It's interesting to me for a number of reasons, not least of which is that the attempt to argue that Catholics believe something they don't actually believe seems as rooted in an outdated Aristotelian ideology as the attempts of Catholics theologians to explain it.

I rambled a bit in that response but my fundamental argument was: Catholics don't believe that the Eucharist is cannibalism because they don't believe that the Eucharist is cannibalism. The proof isn't in the language that they use but in their attitudes and behaviours. They consider participation in the Eucharist routine and acceptable--laudable in fact. It is, after all, a sacrament. They consider participation in cannibalism extreme, abnormal, and sinful. This alone tells us that they're not the same thing. The fact that a description of the Eucharist from a Catholic theologian sounds like a description of cannibalism to a person from outside that tradition is of no consequence--it may tell us something about what that particular person believes but it tells us nothing about what the people engaging in that practice believe about that practice.

And I think this is of vital importance when discussing cultural practices of cultures that one stands outside of. You can't define people into believing something by using terms they don't use or in ways they don't use them. All you can really do is talk about divergent ways of interpreting those terms or those beliefs among adherents of a different belief systems. In this case, for instance, non-Catholics have a varied range of beliefs around transubstantiation, but I don't think any of them actually believe it's cannibalism either or else someone would be pushing the government to end this barbaric practice and, as far as I know, nobody is. If they claim that they do, I think there's a prima facie case to be made that they're only doing so for rhetorical purposes.

This example is a bit specialised, but try applying the same logic to some other common widespread cultural practice--murder, for instance. What separates murder from homicide is various beliefs about what constitutes a person and when killing one is justified. You can argue that you consider various forms of homicide equivalent to murder even if they aren't considered to be murder within the context of a particular belief system, but I don't think you can argue that people who accept that belief system believe they're murder when they don't talk or act like they do.

[karaluuebru]

This is random, and I don't know whether anyone will know the answer, nor if this is the place to ask?

Why has r/conlangs on Reddit suddenly gone to private?

[Yalensky]

This is random, and I don't know whether anyone will know the answer, nor if this is the place to ask?

Why has r/conlangs on Reddit suddenly gone to private?

Answer here. tl;dr: this is apparently the drama that started on the r/ukpolitics subreddit, in which the admins banned one of that subreddit's users who linked to a news article that mentioned someone by name who is now a Reddit employee. This employee apparently has some kind of checkered past and/or associations and Reddit admins claimed to be protecting their employee from potential harassment. The subreddits on the other hand see this as censorious overreach and are protesting.

[Raphael]

Unrelated to any recent discussions, a random silly thought that occurred to me: if the characters in a video game would spend all their time playing video games, the player wouldn't be able to do anything with them.

[Pabappa]

Unrelated to any recent discussions, a random silly thought that occurred to me: if the characters in a video game would spend all their time playing video games, the player wouldn't be able to do anything with them.

good idea ..... it may well be that someone's done it already but .... i could imagine a video game set in a paradise where the gimmick is that life is so easy, people spend all their time playing video games in which the world still has actual dangers in it. *our* ordinary life would be *their* horror game. so you, as the player, have to get them to stop playing those video games and enjoy the paradise they have right in front of them.

[Raphael]

Random question I've been thinking a bit about: how timeless is humor? For instance, are there any really old - let's say pre-industrial - jokes that are still funny today? When it comes to somewhat newer stuff, I definitely remember watching old 1930s and 1940s Hollywood screwball comedies on TV when I was growing up and laughing my ass off. A bit earlier in history, I still find the 18th century "neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire" quip somewhat amusing - not laugh-out-loud funny, but somewhat amusing. (It helps that I know enough about the Holy Roman Empire to understand exactly what Voltaire was getting at.) Same for some of the definitions in the Devil's Dictionary. (While that one was published in 1911, it was the work of a man who spent most of his life, and had his formative experiences, in the 19th century.)

But most of the time, when I see old things that were seen as very funny long ago, I don't find them all that funny. Arguably, all jokes are in-jokes, even if the in-group includes pretty much everyone alive in a specific time and place. So they might all stop being funny after a while.

[Ares Land]

The fart and sex jokes in Aristophanes are still pretty funny, IMO. They'd be even better if the translation wasn't so formal.
(According to the footnotes the political jokes and the puns are hilarious but honestly they leave me a little cold.)

Two subjects that are likely never to get old!

More modern: Rabelais (16th century) is still funny too. It helps that, again, most of the humor aims below the belt. Some of it reads like Monty Python skits.

[ratammer]

Shakespearean comedies can probably give you some laughs if they're actually being acted out, rather than read in script form.

[Linguoboy]

My brother and I thought some of the more extreme scenes in Egils saga were hilarious, like when Egill commits his first murder at age 7 or wins a vomiting duel.

I find a lot of the Zhuangzi amusing. Not laugh-at-loud, but the narrator has a good sense of humour and seems to get the better of other Chinese philosophers.

[zompist]

In the 19C, Mark Twain and Jerome K Jerome are quite funny.

I remember Lucian's Sale of the Philosophers (2C) as hilarious.

I found some of the 1st millennium Sanskrit classics pretty amusing, especially the Ten Princes and the Ocean of Story. The Little Clay Cart has a very funny scene where a thief breaks into a house and explains (to the audience) all the named techniques available to him-- a nice parody of Indian scholarship.

I have a good modern translation of Lysistrata (411 BC), which is funny though I wouldn't say hilarious. It translates the Spartans as hillbillies, which is a clever way to show Athenian attitudes.

Bits of Moliere are very funny; I'm particularly thinking of Le bourgeois gentilhomme.

Oh, and there's a whole genre of Akkadian literature where inanimate objects have a debate; I've only read excerpts but they sound fun. And there's a pretty amusing Egyptian text aimed at scribes which tells how every profession but scribe totally sucks.

But you could easily read all these and have a different impression. A lot depends on your translator or your knowledge of the appropriate language; and satire can go over our heads if we don't understand the targets and references.

[Vijay]

Ovid reminds my brother of Dave Barry and me of Indian poetry. All the dirty humor in particular reminds me of Indian poetry.

There's an old joke about someone cutting off the tree branch they're sitting on (so that they end up falling along with the branch). I'm not sure how old this is, but it's old enough that by now, I've seen some version of it in each of Croatia, Turkey, and India, with the Indian one being associated with a famous Gupta-era poet (I'm going to guess the joke is at least as old as the Ottoman Empire). The Turkish version is a Nasreddin Hoca story, so it's presumably well known in the Balkans and Middle East. The Croatian version is a creative riff on this joke from the time of the breakup of Yugoslavia where not only are all of Milosevic's cronies sitting on different branches of the same tree and each cutting off their own branch (and each other's branches), but in fact, the tree itself has already been uprooted and is already flying midair.

The Indian version is part of a much more elaborate narration of the poet Kalidasa's life story, parts of which I think it's fair to say are pretty clever and funny!

[Raphael]

Thank you for your feedback, everyone!

And there's a pretty amusing Egyptian text aimed at scribes which tells how every profession but scribe totally sucks.

Ah yes, the Satire of the Trades. I guess the reason why so many copies of it have been found might be that writing instructors in Ancient Egypt liked to have their trainees write it down when their trainees kept complaining about how boring their lessons were and how they'd all rather get out and have fun, in order to remind their trainees how good they had it.

[ratammer]

This is really random and unlikely to get a response, but does anyone remember an avatar of a waffle with a face made of fruit that I'm pretty sure I would have used on the old incatena forum early on?

EDIT: Looks like this was the one! This was the highest quality version I could find, though.