Failed Imagineer posted:

September 11, Never Forget (September 11th 1297, when William Wallace defeated the English at Stirling Bridge)

goddamnedtwisto posted:

The Hospitaliers still had the swords, but they didn't go in for quite as much mysticism as the Templars and also had the sense not to start looting Christian cities on the way home from the Crusades, meaning they never got shut down and just sort of hung out in the Med for centuries until someone finally twigged a natural harbour with massive fortifications more or less slap-bang in the middle of the Mediterranean was actually a pretty useful thing and just walked in and took it.

The Knights aren't the most interesting thing about Malta though - the most interesting thing about Malta is that elephants and camels managed to make it across to there in the Messinian Salinity Crisis, when the Med partially or wholly evaporated (which is also interesting because the area would have been an utter hellscape and crossing it on foot would have been almost as difficult as crossing it by swimming) and then when the waters rose again, the mechanism known as island dwarfism - where animals confined to a small island evolve to be smaller to more efficiently use limited resources - meant that by the time the first humans got there by boat (and built the temples on Malta that are way, way older than Skara Brae) the place was inhabited by camels and elephants about the size of large dogs or small ponies, which must have been absolutely adorable, except my great*-uncles slaughtered them all for food within a generation or two.

I want to reiterate this - we could have had pet elephants small enough to live in our homes (although maybe not sit on our laps, they weighed about 300 kilos), but we wiped them all out, and frankly anything nature does to humanity from this point on is richly deserved.

Failed Imagineer posted:

September 11, Never Forget

Borrovan posted:

Yeah but how does that help me dunk on yanks

Guavanaut posted:

24 was a TV series that crossed boundaries in moral ambiguity like "sometimes the bad guys are really bad, and we know they're really bad, and you can trust use when we say they're really bad, because we're really good, so can we please break international human rights laws just a bit?"

Doctor_Fruitbat posted:

I liked the bit in season two where he shoots a guy through the skull then hacksaws his head off, in the middle of his office surrounded by his co-workers.

Convex posted:

I likes the bit where he single handedly saves LA from a terror attacks for 6 consecutive years, always resolving each one within exactly 24 hours, but is still seen as a useless weirdo every time a new one starts

OwlFancier posted:

Wait wait wait hold the loving phone.

Are you seriously telling me that cambridge is built on the river cam?

goddamnedtwisto posted:

I can't remember who said it, but if you reimagine Jack Bauer as a serial killer hallucinating all of these terror plots, and that he's getting orders from a secret government agency (and the President of the United States, personally), then 24 becomes one of the scariest and bleakest horror film series of all time. You just need to fill in the gap between series of him being arrested and managing to escape each time.

feedmegin posted:

Theres a reason the symbol of Oxford is an ox crossing a shallow bit of river too!

Guavanaut posted:

And the symbol of Liverpool is a mythical bird holding a piece of seaweed.

Jedit posted:

Canta, surely? The original name being Cantabrigium.

Ravel posted:

The first thirteen episodes of 24 are pretty good and reasonably self contained.

The episodes written post 9/11 are not great, and the American left really loved it because all the good characters were Democrats and all the evil overlords were Republicans. The American right loved it because the first two thirds of every season involved Sutherland shooting a million non-white terrorists under ticking clock scenarios that literally influenced policy.

Brendan Rodgers posted:

9/11 was too much for Marvel supervillains apparently, they regularly try to destroy the universe or whatever but these towers brought them to tears. This is from when Spiderman sees 9/11 happen:

Brendan Rodgers posted:

9/11 was too much for Marvel supervillains apparently, they regularly try to destroy the universe or whatever but these towers brought them to tears. This is from when Spiderman sees 9/11 happen:

Doctor_Fruitbat posted:

The insane beheading scene was episode one of the first season written post-9/11 and it did not remotely surprise me to learn that.

On the same subject:

https://twitter.com/KikiRosecrans/status/1436126923541913602?s=19

As some of the replies point out, this is a great look at how 9/11 immediately and irrevocably broke America's brain forever.

Brendan Rodgers posted:

9/11 was too much for Marvel supervillains apparently, they regularly try to destroy the universe or whatever but these towers brought them to tears. This is from when Spiderman sees 9/11 happen:

Kin posted:

It's just baffling that Marvel did this. Like I mean it would been a completely fine thing to do if say, it was good guys.

But I'm sure on at least one occasion Magneto alone has tried to exterminate all non mutant life. So attempted genocide basically.

Mr Phillby posted:

They really should have left out the Juggernaut given that in Marvel cannon he blew up the Twin Towers himself back in 1991.

Brendan Rodgers posted:

OwlFancier posted:

Are you seriously telling me that cambridge is built on the river cam?

Gonzo McFee posted:

And all those villains would attempt to do at least 20 9/11's in the next few years after America decided the best way to get past it's trauma was to just recreate the bombings over and over again in every film made since.

Chubby Henparty posted:

Out on the town having the time of my life with a bunch of friends. They're all just out of frame, laughingstrangling llamas too.

Party Boat posted:

My 9/11 hot take is that the image of the WTC towers falling was infinitely more damaging to the American psyche than the number of people killed

Chubby Henparty posted:

Out on the town having the time of my life with a bunch of friends. They're all just out of frame, laughing too.