Hegar

a collection of wet floppy noodles instead of arms and legs.

That basically describes me now. But my mother was a delicious bowl of liang fen so I feel like it’s pretty understandable.

John pilger was a national treasure.

I always presumed that Montana was telling Idaho, “It’s okay, I believe you’re in the PNW.”

I think you’re confusing approved and appropriate.

Kicking a bigot or a creep off a train is appropriate, if even it’s not done by an official, approved authority figure.

Support for that doesn’t mean supporting behavior that is unapproved and inappropriate, like religious persecution.

Relying only on action from approved authorities doesn’t make it any more likely that the actions taken will be appropriate. As the police show us daily.

The best thing about the super bowl is that it’s the christmas eve of not having to hear about the super bowl. The anticipation! It’s so close!

I do find that very comforting.

It reminds me of a bit in the outer chapters of the zhuangzi that’s talking about fearing death. It points out how bad a lump of iron would be if it demanded to only ever be a knife and never recast into anything else.

How am I to know that the current configuration of the molecules I’m made of is the best use of them? There will come a time where everything that’s me is recast and put to better use.

If you like that character just go watch some Nina Hagen music videos instead.

She was the inspiration for the character, she’s the original punk opera prodigy, she’s crazy and she was once a strong contender to be the german voice of marge simpson.

Smack Jack, So Bad, Naturträne, Imma Lauter are all tracks I still listen to a lot. Her recent cover of 16 Tons is great too.

I’ve heard archaeologists suggest that in far future times this will be known as the chicken age, because of the volume and likely preservation of chicken bones.

Plant: Wait, so you’re going to replant me, in massive numbers, all across the planet? kk nm, go ahead.

At a restaurant in Taiwan they’d hired a guy to do slight of hand magic at tables. He was real good and quite charming. I was asking if he had a stage name so we could keep an eye out for him and he said no but his friends called him Mr Broccoli. Our Taiwanese friend laughed and I asked why Mr Broccoli? He’d made some bad choices when younger, he explained. Ok, I still don’t get it. After we finish eating our Taiwanese friend explained that broccoli is slang for a diseased penis.

I love how much effort christians have put into explaining away things like it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the rich to go to heaven. It’s a mistranslation, you just need to unburden yourself, blah blah blah. When really it was quite a common idiom meaning impossible.

If there’s a bad linear a joke, I haven’t heard it.

Depending on which of the 4 colors bite you, you either become an L, a G, a B or a T.

I was talking more about the general perception of spartan military supremacy, which has come under a lot of scrutiny lately and doesn’t hold up too well. Infanticide specifically seems like a (relatively) widespread human practice.

believe it was Crete

I think you’re referring to athens’ disastrous sicilian expedition? That certainly didn’t help but the peloponnesian war is generally counted as ending ~ a decade later. Sometimes historians count the different phases as different wars, but certainly athens’ ‘defeat’ by sparta wouldn’t come till much later, after sparta allied with persia who were uncomfortable with athens’ resurgent power.

because they had help from

I’ve not heard anyone say that post-expedition sicilian support was crucial for sparta, but athens’ mistakes and losses in sicily were a factor. Again though - not spartan military strength or culture.

I know this is a meme and not a history community, but there’s a very persuasive argument called the spartan myth which points out that spartans were really just absentee landlords with a lot of slaves and very good PR.

The staunch and incorruptible image they sold was belied by all the corruption and losing they did. 300 of them held thermopylae for a while - along with 7000 other greeks. They won the peloponnesian war, but only after capitulating to persia for support against athens. The brutal tyranny they set up in athens was overthrown by popular revolt. The agoge seems pretty brutal, but terrorizing defensive slaves who can’t fight back and taking their stuff isn’t actually very tough.

Working in pharma and getting ready for the day?

Np! Moonboy might be a good place to start, the writer plays his own childhood imaginary friend. Charming and easy going. If you like politics veep or the thick of it. If you like history try the great.

A lot of it is from the UK or Ireland.

What’s your alternative when Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea actively seek their own colonialism?

Why does the existence of multiple evils make you want to defend one particular evil? Why not mention our brutal, murderous or genocidal allies like Saudi or Israel?

Our empire created the problem that is iran, our invasion of iraq showed putin that empires can still destroy foreign countries with no comeuppance, our lack of imperial interests in africa gives russia room to stoke violence and war unchallenged, our antagonism to china encourages them to prop-up NK as a buffer state against our client state on the korean penisula and that same antagonism is driving china to a more belligerent position.

I’m not trying to say that everything is our fault - obviously all those countries are responsible for their fair share of vile behaviour - but our empire has actively contributed to how bad those situations are. All countries are vermin, the more powerful the greater the capacity for evil - and we’re the most powerful.

Of course I don’t have a step-by-step program to a better world, but it’s pretty obvious that we’re a big part of the problem and an alternative is needed.

Thank you! I have to admit I was pretty pleased with that one.

Mostly it was the cheesiest, most overused “twists” appearing with such mind numbing regularity that I honestly thought it was parody. Hence the M Night Shyamalan comparison. Which also made it feel like a 12 year old boy’s idea of deep.

And speaking of 12 year old boys, I remember not being able to tell if the dialogue was supposed to sound like an overly serious 4chan user because that was basically the personality of the main character, or if that was unintentional.

And the daddy issues! Whining about a distant or abusive father figure is the default character arc of US cinema. It’s probably an artifact of boomer screenwriters having dads messed up by ww2 but by now it’s like a painting of a naked lady on a couch - the single least interesting choice that will fill that space.

I honestly mean no disrespect to people who enjoyed it - it makes no sense to judge others based on the stories they like - but hopefully the above gives you a sense of how i experienced the show.