Why?
Who asked for this?

Can Hollywood either write or at least read some new stories, for adults, and not keep rehashing or prequelling classics…please? There’s plenty of excellent, unique books out there to draw from, and tons of history that seems more fantastical than the silliest fiction. Read some mythology, or old school fairy tales. Ancient religions are more interesting, action packed, gory, and full of unexpected twists than the best action movie ever…and done well you could teach people while entertaining them.
This looks like a bastardization of every feel good sugar sweet musical period piece in the last 20+ years. Not gonna downvote, but no thanks.

Absolutely!! In the last years I’ve reread Beowulf and the Art Of War, and read Gilgamesh, The Water Margin/Heroes of the Marsh, a half dozen good books on Japanese tattoos, 2312, Artemis, two books of Viking mythology, and 3 books of Japanese horror/mythology….I would recommend all….so clearly they’re bad.

*doublepromote a *quality mythology
Marimba making Mephistopheles minion makes music magically making men magnificent musicians.

Yes, shot 5 bystanders as I recall, then they had a press conference where they minimized by saying “some bystanders were injured during the arrest”, never mentioning it was only police who shot….and they shot directly into a crowd of bystanders.
This is why I despise police. They’re often much worse than the “criminals”, do more damage, and walk away without so much as a “sorry” for shooting 5 people, much less accountability….in fact I recall the same chief, after hiding the details failed, blaming the victims for being on the public sidewalk after dark (in a nightclub/bar area) when police opened fire without warning.

I’ve still NEVER seen this mythological “good apple”.
It’s maddening.

Another instance of an entire department covering for their bad apples.
I’m still waiting to see this mythological “good apple”. Never seen one.

@bcglorf
Reading bible passages in class as “something we can all agree on” is the definition of proselytizing to a captive audience….and outside of private religious schools is totally inappropriate.

It’s not “fun” to be ostracized in public because you believe different mythology or are smart enough to ignore all stone aged mythology…..really only disbelieving one more myth than the believers.

Getting the season completely wrong because you don’t know it was chosen to make it easier to use religion as a political tool is a bit different from “the exact date being inaccurate”. It’s an outright, bold faced, well documented lie, created as a political ploy from the 4th century used to degrade and absorb Zoasterism/Mithraism in order to control the masses politically. That is absolutely a “credibility” issue, and if you don’t get it, that’s an education and/or ethics issue. Christianity has many major credibility issues, being “created” (codified) as a political tool is just one of them. Stealing almost every bit of the mythology from previous religions and denying it is another.

Yes, the misuse of Fauci clips out of context is another issue of truthfulness here, but those who are intentionally ignorant of the reality they just lived through are lost and not worth wasting my breath on. As anyone with two brain cells knows, the first, “you don’t need to wear a mask in public” was recommended at that time because a massive mask shortage meant health care workers had to reuse paper masks sometimes for months during a major pandemic, (and clearly they needed priority on the limited supply) not because we had information saying they weren’t useful….but that’s a minor detail of history I feel only brain dead ignoramuses consider in question, relevant, or factual, and they have discarded fact, truth, reason, and logic in favor of their cult of personality….so there’s no real point arguing with them. Just let them get Covid and hope for EIA.

Preaching one religion in a public class room and claiming “we all agree” is a continuation of a much more pernicious, long term, continuing battle for the religious freedom our country was founded on, and I find it outrageous and anti American that you dismiss it as nothing. I can only hope your children’s teachers aren’t a vastly different, contradictory religion than you and they don’t teach your children that everyone agrees with their religion, not yours, and don’t use proveable fallacies to make their point….but if they do I’ll be here to dismiss your concerns.
🤦‍♂️

It wasn’t so much a discovery as a realization, no one told me…I never believed in magic, the supernatural, or mythological monsters, so the first serious examination of what Santa allegedly did was enough to understand it was just a cultural fantasy. I’m embarrassed it took me so long to consider….I might have even been 6.

Eventually I forgave them, but at the time I remember telling them I was very disappointed in them for lying to me, especially over something so dumb.
They were surprised, I think they apologized, and explained they were just trying to make things fun, not trick me somehow. I reminded them of the part about coal and switches if I was bad, and Santa knowing everything. I don’t remember their response to that, but I imagine on some level they were proud I figured out it was really about behavioral control at that young age.

*doublepromote *quality exposing the murderous criminal gang of violent thugs that are the police force.
I wouldn’t piss on one who was on fire. No one should. Just add gasoline.

Where are the good cops? These mythological good apples? Never one in the group. Crazy, isn’t it?

Dox these criminals.

Every one of these lying, violent, murderous, thuggish cops should be in gen pop until they’re raped to death…their assets seized, pensions seized, and life in prison without protection is too good for them.

It's education. A thorough, well-rounded education, free of mythology and with the ugly bits of history included.

Never understood why females scream so easily.

Maybe this?

1 : a piece of equipment that produces a loud, high-pitched warning sound
an ambulance siren
the wailing of air-raid sirens
We heard police sirens. [=sirens on police cars]

2 : a woman who is very attractive but also dangerous : temptress
a Hollywood siren

3 Siren : one of a group of female creatures in Greek mythology whose singing attracted sailors and caused them to sail into dangerous water or toward rocks

That's attempted murder, and any cop there that didn't arrest the cop that shot him at deadly range is complicit.

Where are these mythological good apples?

Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

When we visited Iceland, my wife and I hiked all over Dimmuborgir, the home of the Yule lads. It was a maze of caves and canyons with pathways throughout, some more obvious than others. Various placards had information about them and their parents, but I don't recall anything about their cat.
*quality mythology

listening to religious people talk like this is like listening to psychotic LotR fans try to inject themselves into the mythology and to inject that mythology into their everyday lives.