Zompist Bboard Again

Both many of Israel's supporters and many of Israel's opponents like to talk about how important Israel is for Western and specifically US interests, but frankly, I'm not seeing it. Israel directly or indirectly controls a, geographically speaking, tiny part of the Middle East, and outside the area...

I don’t really know much about French Algeria; could you elaborate on why you think it’s a more suitable analogy? (Insofar as any analogy is suitable here.) With the big caveat that I don't think the colonial analogy is entirely satisfying, sure. Algeria was a settler colony, with a large-ish popul...

So I'd suggest the overall scenario: Constantine gets hit by a bus, and turning the official-favor machine from paganism to Christianity is delayed. This proceeds long enough that a more fervent, more personal paganism can arise. (There are candidates: the Magna Mater cult, the Mysteries, Mithraism...

OK, everyone, I need a second opinion: I had a general health checkup at my GP's office on Monday, and the result was apparently that I'm mostly in fine health, but seriously lack Vitamin D, presumably because I don't get out enough. So now my GP wants me to take Vitamin D supplements. Is that legi...

(Mostly staying out of this for now, but this caught my attention) I think there have been some serious changes in Western right-wing attitudes towards international politics over the last 20 years. Didn't you yourself once mention that neoconservatism is a spent force these days? Or am I misrememb...

As I recall, Zarathustra is very misogynistic. I'm inclined to think that's a huge flaw; Nietzsche basically ignored half (if not more) of human experience. Too put it very loosely, Nietzsche was an early example of an incel, drawing from the fact that the woman he desired didn't want him the concl...

I don't think that the positions or politics of individual emperors would have been decisive. There clearly was a desire for a religion with a message of a personal, mystical relationship with a deity, with a message of personal election / salvation, something going beyond the "If I'm doing th...

Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire due to its popularity with the urban masses and many soldiers; by Julian's time, it had gained wide influence also with part of the elites, especially women - who mostly didn't play an official role, but influenced the thinking of their ...

I'm not sure whether Roman paganism could have survived, but I'm quite sure that by Julian's time it was too late to save it. I'm curious as to why you think that :) I don't know if Christianity would have gotten a monopoly, so to speak, without Imperial sanction. And Julian hypothetically living t...

Hmm… but were they really part of the same wave which propped up Trump, Johnson, Morrison, Meloni, the current Netanyahu government, Le Pen, et al. ? There may be a connection, but I’m not sure it’s quite the same thing. I'm inclined to think so. I think intellectually all of this proceeds from the...

I read it as a teenager and it made a strong impression on me. Now that I'm Zarathustra's age -- and Nietzsche's age before he took up horse-bothering - I should re-read it and compare my impressions. The idea of the superhuman was impressive back then -- it's really not some sort of Nazi, testoster...

There is a connection, yes, but I do feel that conservative authoritarianism is distinctly more entrenched in Israeli politics than in most other Western countries. Trump became president in 2016, but Netanyahu has been PM since 1996 (albeit not continuously). Yes, Israel got the disease earlier an...

I read Thus Spake Zarathustra again. I liked it much better now than when I read it as a teenager. I even liked the symbolism. This book really is the Antichristian bible. I think, like Nietzsche, my misanthropy has made me completely uninterested in finding points of agreement with the opinions hu...

TIL that an exclamation point in front of conditions on a sound change means it occurs unless the condition is present. Despite being midway through my thirties and part of the conlanging community for about twenty years. At least it's nice to know I still have things to learn even in the basics of...

I'm not sure the left-wing=pro-Palestinian correlation is as strong as it appears to be. Plenty of counter-examples when you scratch the surface. To begin with, there are plenty of left-wing Jews and right-wing antisemitism is still alive and well. *paints big target on his back and chest* I'm not a...

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 5:19 am

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 4:53 am 'Plant based' feels a little annoying too - why not market it as vegetarian or vegan?

Technically petroleum is plant-based...

A friend of mine used to object to the 'biologique' label ('organic', that is). 'Of course it's biologique. What else can it be? Nuclear?'

This makes me wonder, has anyone here read Catherine Nixey's The Darkening Age (I haven't), and if you have, what do you think of it? I haven't read it; but I'll add it to my reading list :) well, its hard to undo once a monarch is a convert to it...see also Georgia, Armenia, and Ethiopia(sp). So m...

So recently i watched a Youtube short about how people would be more willing to try plant based items if they were marketed as environmentally friendly instead of as plant based. The thing here is i would consider it false advertisement if i would buy say an "environmentally sustainable ice cr...

Movies and books would be a longer list, especially for France. Though I'm not sure if any French novelist is known here past Camus. Houellebecq, I guess, though I think he's obscure. Very rarely the Oulipo writers. The deconstructionists were the terror of the academy in the 1980s... you couldn't ...

I like to play with alternate history now and then... That's not quite the main focus of the board... then again I always appreciated the sound advice I got here. Some recent talk about religion got me thinking. Would a scenario where 'paganism' in whatever form would survive to the present day make...