Gripweed posted:

Lmao no they don’t. They can absolutely just do some nebulous “community standards” thing specifically designed to be vague and open to abuse. That’s how censorship laws have always worked in this country.

quote:

Publisher apologizes for textbook calling slaves ‘workers’
By PAUL J. WEBER
Published 7:43 PM EDT, October 5, 2015

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — One of the biggest publishers in the U.S. apologized Monday for calling slaves brought to America “workers” in a geography textbook used widely in Texas, where the wording went unnoticed during the state’s combative and politically charged classroom curriculum reviews.

Instead it was the mother of a 15-year-old high school freshman near Houston who prompted McGraw-Hill Education to take the unusual step of promising immediate revisions and new supplemental lessons about the Atlantic slave trade. Roni Dean-Burren, whose son pointed out the wording in his world geography textbook to his mom, ignited outrage on social media last week after posting her disbelief.

Roughly a quarter of Texas’ 1,200 school districts use the textbook, according to state officials. The publisher didn’t respond to questions about how many other classrooms in the U.S. purchased copies with the same phrasing.

“We are deeply sorry that the caption was written this way,” McGraw-Hill Education CEO David Levin said in a letter to employees. “While the book was reviewed by many people inside and outside the company, and was made available for public review, no one raised concerns about the caption. Yet, clearly, something went wrong and we must and will do better.”

The caption in the ninth-grade textbook accompanies a map of the U.S. in a section about immigration. It reads: “The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.”

Dean-Burren, a former English teacher who is now a doctoral candidate at the University of Houston, found out about the caption when her son texted her picture of the page, telling her, “We was real hard workers weren’t we.”

Dean-Burren said she struggles most with how the wording wasn’t caught by book editors or the Texas State Board of Education, which approved the textbook last November. The board is dominated by social conservatives and has drawn national attention in recent years over approving curriculum standards that deemphasize the separation of church and state and question evolution. The 15-person elected board has one black member.

“There’s a part of me, the emotional side, that says, ‘Y’all did this on purpose. You did this to sanitize this and to wash it down,’” Dean-Burren said. “But what if this wasn’t on purpose, but it was the result of not ensuring that you have a table made up of what children and people in Texas look like?”

Levin said his company will increase the number of textbook reviewers to “reflect greater diversity.”

Thomas Ratliff, a Republican member of the state board, said the wording of the caption isn’t related to Texas’ curriculum standards.

“People have been looking for something to criticize and if you look for something hard enough, believe me you’ll find it,” Ratliff said. “I think it was just worded improperly. I don’t think this is the tipping point for a whole bunch of other revelations.”

The Texas Freedom Network, a left-leaning group that is the board’s toughest critic, has its own reviewers scrutinize textbooks. But when it came to world geography textbooks, they only checked sections about climate change and religion, said group spokesman Dan Quinn.

Ratliff said local school districts should decide whether they want to remove the current edition of the book from classrooms. McGraw-Hill says it’s changing the digital version, which all Texas schools using the textbook have. The company says it’s also exploring how to quickly change the physical copies.

Nichael posted:

I don't get why it exists.

Willa Rogers posted:

I laughed, bc it's so bog-standard lib poo poo to use that tired phrasing as well as the BUT TRUMP but the youngs fielded her b.s. so well that I can't believe that cnn actually went ahead & aired the clip.

lumpentroll posted:

Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation

Ytlaya posted:

Man, that's a fuckin dire rhyme

It's wild how so many people just straight-up cannot accept - or even consider - the idea that the US might just functionally be a one-party state. The idea that our partisan politics represent a real and meaningful divide is just so deeply integral to most Americans' understanding of the world. You may as well ask them to consider that the Earth might be flat.

Jen heir rick posted:

look, it's very complicated ok? lots of very smart people have looked into it, and this is just the best way to do it. loans can't just be forgiven. you have to apply formulas and poo poo until it adds up. interests have to be accounted for. middle men must be paid. otherwise it's unfair and profits might be lost.

inferis posted:

we went to afghanistan because of the anthrax attacks

PoontifexMacksimus posted:

I am currently seeing this reported by multiple independent sources.

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1778549091737198633?t=jcpU70Rw03i9dERqjmrSmg&s=19

MadSparkle posted:

Latine like Lateen in pronunciation ?

quote:

Using Latine (sounds like "la-TEEN-eh") in the U.S. "makes sense as an internationally used way of speaking and writing in a less gendered manner," says Monica Trasandes, director for Spanish language media and representation at GLAAD.

Raccooon posted:

Liberals are under the impression that the people are going to punish them unfairly by not voting for them. Like it’s a an active thing (which it may be for some). But the vast majority of the non voters are people that have checked out because they suck so much. And maybe sucking less might bring those people back, but instead they just scold people.

PhilippAchtel posted:

An idiot: "My uncle passed away recently"

Me, a genius: "Passed away where, mother fucker? You mean he died?"

HashtagGirlboss posted:

It’s basically the same thing as Charlemagne truthers where if you stop and think about it for a few seconds it falls apart but nobody who is buying into it is the type to stop and think

quote:

These four colors were used to describe all shades of color. Anything pink, orange, green, yellow, etc. would have been described as a shade of either blue, red, black, or white.

The color blue used to include what is now called purple, gray, and green. One example of this that still lives on to this day is the grey heron, which is called a blue heron(青鷺) in Japanese.

The Odyssey, Book 16 posted:

τὼ δ᾽ αὖτ᾽ ἐν κλισίῃ Ὀδυσεὺς καὶ δῖος ὑφορβὸς
ἐντύνοντο ἄριστον ἅμ᾽ ἠοῖ, κηαμένω πῦρ,
ἔκπεμψάν τε νομῆας ἅμ᾽ ἀγρομένοισι σύεσσι:
Τηλέμαχον δὲ περίσσαινον κύνες ὑλακόμωροι,
5οὐδ᾽ ὕλαον προσιόντα. νόησε δὲ δῖος Ὀδυσσεὺς
σαίνοντάς τε κύνας, περί τε κτύπος ἦλθε ποδοῖϊν.
αἶψα δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ Εὔμαιον ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα:
‘

Εὔμαι᾽, ἦ μάλα τίς τοι ἐλεύσεται ἐνθάδ᾽ ἑταῖρος
ἢ καὶ γνώριμος ἄλλος, ἐπεὶ κύνες οὐχ ὑλάουσιν,
10ἀλλὰ περισσαίνουσι: ποδῶν δ᾽ ὑπὸ δοῦπον ἀκούω.

Meanwhile Odysseus and the swineherd had lit a fire in the hut and were getting breakfast ready at daybreak for they had sent the men out with the pigs. When Telemakhos came up, the dogs did not bark, but fawned upon him, so Odysseus, hearing the sound of feet and noticing that the dogs did not bark, said to Eumaios:

"Eumaios, I hear footsteps; I suppose one of your men or some one of your acquaintance is coming here, for the dogs are fawning upon him and not barking."

scary ghost dog posted:

“wine-dark sea” is immediately evocative and poetic, as well as accurate without qualifying. anyone who misunderstands is probably either illiterate or severely autistic

PhilippAchtel posted:

Why do they capitalize NAZI like that? Do they think it's an acronym?

text editor posted:

In Wu's defense, when she started that argument there's no way she could have known Talia was Jewish

sullat posted:

Might be people whose families had to leave in 1979 for reasons

Malleum posted:

if the cost of democracy is 50,000 dead children maybe it deserves to die

Ramrod Hotshot posted:

what’s up with Colorado democrats

they really seem like a unique brand of right wing liberal https://x.com/repjasoncrow/status/1778862496046047710?s=46

Blockade posted:

What do these people think the point of the trolley problem is?

PoontifexMacksimus posted:

I know a lot of historians and related humanities people who would love nothing more than a stable job puttering around in archives and helping to build a digital Library of Alexandria, rather than chase whatever changing trends university admins and grant givers dictate.

Some Guy TT posted:

the bigger broader failure of the live action version that it turns the townspeople into sympathetic characters by also making them victims of the curse this completely changes the tone of the final act from gaston being a charismatic demagogue whipping the crowd into a kneejerk frenzy to him just being a weird...kindof...guy??? who noone really even likes all that much which is very much against the tone of the original which very unsubtly emphasizes that men should be judged according to their motivations not their competency in projecting a good public image which doesnt necessarily have anything to do with whether theyre actually a good person this was a very common third wave feminist idea and you can really see how the fourth wave shifted the conversation that this became toxic but that having gastons sidekick be gay (maybe???) is enough to make him sympathetic too when as gastons hype man hes arguably even more dangerous than gaston himself

SixteenShells posted:

reminds me a little of Brotherhood of the Wolf, but in reverse I guess

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

In the live action version, isn't Gaston implied to be crippled by PTSD from Louis the XIV's wars? I swear there were articles about that.

quote:

Gaston Glock was probably the most influential handgun designer since John Moses Browning. Glock products revolutionized handgun designs, and even how those handguns were used. Barely four decades after the first Glock 17 pistol, Gaston Glock’s firearms dominate the law enforcement and civilian handgun markets, while maintaining a significant military presence as well.

quote:

The gun we see Gaston carrying is obviously a blunderbuss, but there is much more to it that that. The gun is a historical, locative, and economic statement that sheds new light on the world of 'Beauty and the Beast'. Let's over-examine that, shall we?

The basic definitions of the blunderbuss are that it is a muzzleloader [the powder, wadding, shot, and over wadding are loaded and seated into the chamber one at a time], which has a short barrel, and flared muzzle.

It was never a very common arm. All arms could be divided in two lots, military and hunting, with a good deal of overlap between the two, esp. amongst civilians using salvaged, abandoned, and take-home guns from military sources. The guns that would have been more common in the hands of civilians would have been trade muskets. A trade musket was a non-flared smoothbore gun, normally of 20 bore, and with a 32in. barrel or longer. During the colonial era of North America, 90% of all guns, of all types, were trade muskets. The fact that Gaston is using a blunderbuss, originally a cavalry weapon, tells us that there is a strong possibility that Gaston doesn't just hunt for fun - he was a game warden for the state.

In the ancient regime of France, only the nobility could hunt. Serfs were mandated to agriculture, or illegal poaching in hard times. Gaston carries his trophies around with him - highly dangerous should he not be allowed to do so without a warrant.

The flared muzzle of the blunderbuss was NOT to spread the little pellets of lead [called 'shot' - hence the word shotgun], the bell was to help a semi-stable horseman load the powder from a pre-wrapped cartridge, which would have been homemade, and to help pour the shot down the barrel. To get an idea of how hard this is to do - stand on your bed and walk in circles. Pour sand into a half inch PVC pipe segment with spilling any sand, and pour a handful of beads onto the sand. Now try the same thing into a funnel over the pipe, and you'll easily see how the bell end of the blunderbuss was so desired.

But why would a man like Gaston carry a cavalry weapon, esp. when he is never seen mounted on a horse? Well - money. Muskets cost cash, so why not reuse a blunderbuss from the armoury? It's not hard to use, and you loose nothing with the grant of the arm, so why not reserve the muskets for the army/militia, and give the Game Warden something that was not more than a toss away? The gun also had a band - whereas most had pins to secure the barrel to the stock. The gun was probably made of a cut down musket, and a saved blunderbuss barrel. Perhaps a horse stepped on the original and snapped the wrist? We'll never know.

To Gaston's credit, he's not a dummy. He's a swarthy dick, but not stupid. Guns are easy to use, esp. when you get store bought ammo, but Gaston would have loaded his own cartridges, and cast his own shot and ball, and maybe knapped his own flint.

Different types of shot are used for different game animals - small 9,8,7,or 6 shot is used for game like rabbits, partridges, dove, grouse, etc. Bigger shot like 0, 00, and 000 buckshot would have been used for medium sized game and dangerous animals like deer, wolves, and mad dogs. [ps- Gaston was the guy who would have had to risk his life putting down rabid feral dogs that often roamed the street of French cities, which was probably why he was popular.] And large singular spheres, literal musket balls, would have been used for the biggest animals, like boar, and bears. The same balls were made with 10% tin, and 90% lead - which gives us the word 'hardball.' Gaston would have had to know which alloy went to which game, and how dangerous things would have been at any given time. That's a hard skill to learn.

Notice that the barrel is grey, which means it's lower cost wrought iron [not cast iron], and not the shining yellow of a bronze/brass barrel. This was a cavalry weapon, as only the naval forces got copperic alloy barrels that could resist sea water corrosion. The normal calibers would have been 16 or 12 bore [aka 12 gauge], which are still in use today. A pound of pure lead was divided into segments, shaped like perfect spheres, and whichever size would fit into the bore of the gun, without a light gap, would have been it's listed caliber. A 0.729 inch ball of lead is 12 to the pound, so it's a 12 gauge, and so on, The smaller the number, the bigger the gun, and visa versa.

And finally note how much of a flare the gun is making in the tavern [very unsafe to shoot indoors, but whatevs], and how the entire tavern isn't a solid cloud of smoke. Black powder, real black powder, gives off bilious clouds of smoke. His gun had a lot of flare due to a short barrel, and unburnt powder not burning inside of the bore before the shot left the muzzle. But very little smoke meant Gaston was either re-corning standard military powder [probably twice over with his own urine], or making his own powder outright. There would have had to have been a big charge of powder to get any shot or ball to a killing speed with that inefficient, short barrel. Gaston was more a scientist/ physicist that Belle's father!

So yeah, the bravest, most responsible, and really the smartest man in the entire provincial town was a government employee with a crappy gun that he made the most of - and he would have been a great husband if he would have quieted down a bit, which he may have, if we would have socialized more and been in the loving woods less.

quote:

I'll admit right up front that I've always been a Gaston fanboy. I went into this movie with some expectation that they'd make Gaston more villainous (since he was said to be darker), but, in my book, they actually made him vastly more sympathetic than the 1991 version. To be sure, he does take a very stark turn, but I'm most interested in his character before that point. Let us judge the 2017 Gaston on his own merits: (I'll refer to the animated version as Gaston 91, and the live action one as Gaston 17)

Unlike Gaston 91, Gaston 17 approaches Belle with civility and downright chivalry. After making his way through the crowd of villagers (politely asking them to let him by), he greets her, attempts to cater to her interests (books) without denigrating them, without bringing in his own as more important (hunting). He offers her flowers and asks to have dinner with her, again, very politely. When she bluntly shoots him down (perfectly in her right to do so), he accepts it with grace, even if his body language betrays some heartbreak.

While discussing Belle with Le Fou, Gaston 17 explains that what he finds so outrageously attractive (his own words) is that she has dignity. Gaston 91 never expresses any reason for wanting her other than that she is the most beautiful (Gaston 17 also cites this as a reason, in all fairness).

When the villagers mistreat Belle for daring to teach a young girl to read, Gaston chooses Belle over the villagers that, to a man, adore him. He goes to her to comfort her, and (aside from stepping on her garden), is considerate of her once more. He doesn't go into Gaston 91's diatribe about how terrible it is for women to read or think. He doesn't try to convince Belle to accept his life plan of pumping out 6 boys. He does make it clear he wants a family with her, but does so relatively tactfully, without any other expectations set. In other words, no stated preference for boys over girls. No indication that he would have a problem with her teaching a hypothetical daughter of theirs to read. Just reasonable (if self interested) proposition. He wants her to marry him, he wants to raise a family with her, and he wants to take care of her in her old age (referencing the spinster Agathe). Hardly a superficial misogynistic proposal like Gaston 91 barging into her home.

When Belle shoots him down again and in no uncertain terms, he still takes it gracefully and does not yell at her. He goes to drink at the tavern without so much of a 'Belle will be mine!'

When Maurice comes barging in raving about the Beast, in a huge departure from Gaston 91, Gaston 17 goes out with Maurice to save her. Yes, it is clear that he is doing this to impress Belle, though that seems entirely reasonable to me.

While out in the woods with Maurice, Gaston is confronted by the magic of the Enchantress which causes the road to the castle to be overgrown and hidden, and, on top of that, revives the downed tree that forced Maurice off the normal path. Gaston is confronted with a physically impossible scenario, and still humors Maurice for a bit longer. He admits that he is helping Maurice because he wants to marry Belle, which Maurice takes offense to, where Maurice taunts Gaston (the guy trying to save his daughter) by telling him that he'll never marry Belle. Gaston finally loses it, decks Maurice, and goes full mustache twirling villain. From here on out, Gaston 17 is pretty much on par with Gaston 91, quite possibly more evil, but it took quite a bit to get there.

F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:

Scranton, PA likes genocide? First I've heard of that...

Danann posted:

https://twitter.com/Madame_Ennui/status/1780015250005196867

mags posted:

Fetterman loves wearing socks with his sandals, rap rock, and genocide.

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Anecdotally, a lot of smart people I know are crippled by neurosis, I would guess because they're applying the same methods of rigorous investigation and evaluation to themselves? On a personal level, it would be nice if they could get out of their own way, and their professional and educational attainment would certainly have been less painful, probably easier, if they didn't constantly doubt and evaluate themselves.

Is that what dunning kruger is intended to be an explanation of?

Yeats posted:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Willa Rogers posted:

hillary debated him 3 times.

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

quote:

Dahlia Lithwick: What started with a trickle of think pieces has now become a cascade of D.C. press releases and talking heads on whether Sonia Sotomayor is duty-bound to step down before the election. And this kind of cajoling and pushiness and smoke signaling is, by its very nature unseemly. Some would also suggest, including me, that it’s also quite sexist. In fact, I hate this conversation with the heat of a million suns.

how can you continue to run with this poo poo after RBG jesus christ

quote:

The Real Way to Think About Biden’s Age This Run
We’re in a Biden-Trump rematch. And the media is focusing on this?
By Dahlia Lithwick
Feb 14, 20241:24 PM

Because last week’s natterings unerringly become this week’s news, we are now trapped in a mind-numbing collective freakout about special counsel Robert Hur’s purposefully deceptive and broadly misunderstood takedown of President Joe Biden’s possible criminal conduct, a “report” replete with wholly gratuitous potshots about his mental acuity. The freakout has become a national news story on par with former President Donald Trump on Sunday threatening to abandon our NATO allies and let Russia “do whatever the hell they want.” (Note for those at home: these two things are actually not at all on par in terms of threats to world order and planetary stability.) As Margaret Sullivan points out, the Biden story consumed the weekend news cycle, while the Trump comments barely registered as a blip.

Interestingly, all of the #BidenTooOld coverage is about as new and revelatory as #ButHerEmails. If nothing else, it proves that a scandal holding that the president forgets things is always going to go down smoother than a scandal in which a special counsel flagrantly violated a long-standing Justice Department practice and protocol not to “criticize uncharged conduct.” As Sullivan was quick to point out, CNN and the New York Times and every U.S. corporate media entity and its cousin jumped onto the bandwagon. “For the media to make this the overarching issue of the campaign is nothing short of journalistic malpractice,” the former public editor of the New York Times wrote.

Biden is old and he forgets things. Nobody is unaware of these facts, up to and including President Joe Biden, who said as much of himself in his press conference last week. But the ploy worked as intended, with the Hill cheerfully reporting that as a result of the Hur report and the wall-to-wall questions it spontaneously raised, 86 percent of Americans now believe that Biden is too old to serve in office.

So now Americans face the problem that Biden is old, while Trump is an authoritarian who wants to “create a private red-state army under the president’s command.” The purpose of this army, per Stephen Miller, is to deport as many as 10 million “foreign-national invaders” who he claims have entered the country under Biden, and the plan, as Ron Brownstein describes it, is to “go around the country arresting illegal immigrants in large-scale raids.” Then, he would build “large-scale staging grounds near the border, most likely in Texas,” to serve as internment camps for migrants designated for deportation.

One can certainly see why the two stories would weigh the same.

Perhaps one way to navigate yourself through this seemingly insoluble morass would be to ask yourself why Biden, who is stipulated #Old, has managed to helm the most successful presidency in modern history. Booming economy, eye-popping jobs reports, first gun violence reduction bill in decades, $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan plus COVID relief, Inflation Reduction Act, infrastructure prioritized, judges seated. Pick your metric—there have been a lot of wins. And the reason this old man who sometimes forgets things like dates has gotten all this done? He has, for the most part, surrounded himself with experts, genuine scientists, respected economists, and effective governmental actors and advisers.

Governance is not an action film. There is no minute-to-minute psychodrama involving someone in a tight black T-shirt mincing along the outdoor ledge of a skyscraper, ninja-kicking his lonely way down to the stairwell, where he karate-chops the well-armed baddies and then commando crawls his way into an empty vault with the glass chest where the nuclear reactor sits. No. Despite our fascination with the Great Man theory of American lawmaking, the presidency is an office that largely turns on superb staffing, visionary planning, deft political negotiation, and artful execution. Joe Biden doesn’t actually have to remember every single detail himself—he has to use his judgment to employ and empower a large contingent of skilled experts to execute upon their agreed-upon vision.

If you are unconvinced, the best evidence that we keep falling for Great Man fantasy propaganda is the unmitigated failure of the first Donald Trump presidency. Here we had a self-described loner literally trumpeting his I-alone-can-fix-it worldview, all embodied in Great Man megalomania. He managed to accomplish virtually nothing: Almost none of his promises for single-handed economic revitalization, world domination, or intrepid urban crime-solving panned out. His great dreams were either strangled in infancy by staffers or halted by courts. And whether you believe that this happened because Donald Trump surrounded himself with incompetent yes men or steely adults in the room, both versions serve to offer proof of concept: Donald Trump accomplished close to nothing because the people around him were either too inept to put his vision into practice or too skillful at blocking him to allow him to put his vision into practice.

Put another way, if you or anyone you know finds themselves reacting to the Biden Is Old revelations with the thought that, sure, Donald Trump is a 91-indictments-richer, adjudicated sexual abuser, defamer, liar, violator of national security, self-enriching, fascist-boosting insurrectionist, but it’s OK because he will surround himself with people who might check those impulses—well, doesn’t it rather intuitively make more sense to instead vote for the highly effective, internationally respected, but yes, sometimes forgetty guy who is surrounded by people with day planners? Donald Trump may be four-years-less-elderly, but he still confuses Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi. He is also still an authoritarian fantasist who has run through every reasonably competent staffer and Cabinet official and is now turning to the profoundly dangerous ones. It’s really not a contest when you compare him to anyone who has surrounded himself, and will continue to surround himself, with competent, skilled people who get things done.

The real reason we all keep falling for Great Man horse race stories is because they are good for fueling fantasies of all-powerful big daddy presidents who control every tiny aspect of governance in their tiny wee hands. If that is your jam, well, it would make sense to vote for the only candidate who believes in the same dream. If it’s not, the question is reducible to rather simple stakes: Do you want the Big Daddy who surrounds himself with sycophants and nutters and people with shared last names, or the one who surrounds himself with competence and expertise? This doesn’t seem, on balance, like a really tricky call. Do we prefer presidents who can backflip and ninja-kick their way to total world dominion? Perhaps. To my knowledge, nobody ever made a Tom Cruise movie about listening and learning and compromising. But if you still believe governance to be a sober and serious enterprise, vote like the alternative is chilling, because it is.

The Oldest Man posted:

literally a person with the job title "justice of the supreme court" like she's a 7 mana blue/white creature with vigilance and some kind of ridiculous spell interaction and they are whining about how unfair it was that she was expected to show good judgment and had a significant responsibility beyond her own personal high score, i loving hate these people

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Okay, while apply that to discussing any political issue with a liberal. Am I supposed to care how they think or feel the economy works, or am I supposed to discuss the economy in material terms, which means rejecting their priors and anecdotes, and cutesy stories, and half understood talking points? If they want to discuss the economy, isn't it important to establish that we're thoroughly describing a real system of resources and labour, which is guided by political and ideological decisions rather than something that is just-so?

quote:

People who say this suggest that the world is sharply divided into separate societies, sealed units, each within its own system of thought. They feel that the respect and tolerance due from one system to another requires us never to take up a critical position to any other culture, that we can never claim to say what is good or bad there. I shall call this position “moral isolationism.” I want to suggest that it is certainly not forced on us. In fact, I want to go further, and say that it makes no sense at all. It is something you can say, but not believe. People usually take it up because they think it is a respectful attitude to other cultures. But, in fact, it’s not respectful. Nobody can respect what they genuinely do not understand. If we are to take anyone seriously, we have to know enough about him to make a favourable judgement, however general and tentative. And we do understand people in other cultures in this way. If we didn’t, a mass of our most necessary thinking would be paralysed.

I am going to take a remote example, because we shall probably find it easier to think about without getting agitated than we should if I took an urgent contemporary one, such as female circumcision in Africa or the Chinese Cultural Revolution, or the placing of political prisoners in Russian mental hospitals. And I think the principles involved will still be the same. My remote example is this. There is, I am told, a verb in classical Japanese which means “to try out one’s new sword on a chance wayfarer.” A samurai sword had to be tried out because, if it was to work properly, it had to slice through someone at a single blow, from the shoulder to the opposite flank. If it couldn’t do this, the warrior bungled his stroke. This injured his honour, offended his ancestors, and might let down his emperor. So tests were needed, and wayfarers had to be expended. Any wayfarer would do – provided, of course, that he wasn’t another samurai. Scientists will recognize a familiar problem here about the right of experimental subjects.

Now, when we hear of a custom like this, we may well reflect that we do not understand it. This allows us to say that we are not qualified to criticize or judge it, because we are not members of any other culture either, except our own. So we seem to be moral isolationists. But this can’t be so. To explain why it is impossible, I will consider three questions. My first question is this – does the isolating barrier work both ways? Are people in other cultures equally unable to criticise us? The question struck me sharply when I recently read a remark in the Guardian newspaper by an anthropologist about a South American Indian. This Indian had been taken into a Brazilian town for an operation, which had saved his life. When he came back to his village, this man made several highly critical remarks about the white Brazilians’ way of life. They may very well have been justified. But the interesting point was that the anthropologist described these remarks as a “damning indictment of Western civilisation.” Now, the Indian had been in that town about a fortnight. Was he in a position to deliver a damning indictment? If he was, then it seems as if we ourselves would be qualified to deliver an indictment on the Samurai – if only we could spend a fortnight in ancient Japan. That can hardly be right. But if we discounted all such criticism of cultures by outsiders, we would lose the benefit of a lot of splendid suggestions which orient us, and help us understand our own culture. What do we do about this? My own impression is that we believe that outsiders can, in principle, deliver perfectly good indictments – only it usually takes more than a fortnight to make them damning.

quote:

Suppose, for instance, that I criticise the bisecting samurai, that I say his behaviour is brutal. What will usually happen is that someone will protest, saying that I have no right to make criticisms like this of another culture. But his next move isn’t usually to drop the subject. He will try to fill in the background, to make me understand the custom by explaining the exalted ideals of discipline and devotion which produced it. He will probably talk of the lower value which the ancient Japanese placed on individual life generally. He may well suggest that this is far healthier than our own obsession with security. He may add, too, that the wayfarers didn’t seriously mind being bisected, that, in principle, they consented to the whole argument. Now, if my objector talks like this, he is implying that it is possible to understand alien customs – because that is just what he is trying to do. He implies, too, that if I do manage to understand them, I shall do something better than giving up judging entirely. He expects me to change my present judgement to a truer one – namely, one that is favourable. And the standards I must use to do this can’t just be samurai standards. They have to be ones current in my own culture.

Uncle Boogeyman posted:

what if the person who drew the number drew it in an intentionally vague way so it could be either number, as is almost certainly the case in this instance? fuckin dumbass

Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide posted:

"Yes we are," insisted Majikthise. "We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off now!"

"What's the problem?" said Lunkwill.

"I'll tell you what the problem is mate," said Majikthise, "demarcation, that's the problem!"

"We demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not be the problem!"

"You just let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise, "and we'll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?"

"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

Suddenly a stentorian voice boomed across the room.

"Might I make an observation at this point?" inquired Deep Thought.

"We'll go on strike!" yelled Vroomfondel.

"That's right!" agreed Majikthise. "You'll have a national Philosopher's strike on your hands!"

Joementum posted:

Classic Joe

https://x.com/nypost/status/1780686618589897094?s=46

fits my needs posted:

https://x.com/abennett97/status/1780933225990217775

Programmer Humor posted:

obama should just put all the meme quotes on there. gotta have them ribs, buy your own drat fries, ethereal bisexual, we tortured some folk

Ytlaya posted:

No...can't you read? Steel isn't indestructible.

Biden is referring to the fact that, even though the people of Pittsburgh are strong, they still need the painful procedure infusing their metaphorical spine with adamantium.

Bootleg Trunks posted:

what ever happened to THEE khive

Joementum posted: