on the one hand it makes complete sense, the alternative would make no sense. on the other hand my brain, wired for scriptural concepts of religion, violently rejected it at first

one thing that i found both enchanting and upsetting was becoming old enough (i.e. reaching the age of approximately 18) to learn that pre-scriptural religion does not tend to be codified and as such contains a lot of crap like this where a particular belief exists only in a particular area/time

David M. Perry@lollardfish.bsky.social · 3h ago

"For instance, the Odyssey is the only surviving Greek literary work from the Archaic Period that describes a marriage between Aphrodite and Hephaistos; every other surviving source from this period takes for granted that Aphrodite is unmarried." I did not know this

Dem voters, as far as I can tell, have two priorities: 1. Win the election 2. Fight the Trump admin as hard as possible in cases where they are worried that the two conflict, they lean towards “win” via whatever bizarre view of electability has penetrated their personal information bubble

Michael Caley@michaelcaley.bsky.social · 13h ago

I have no idea if this is what's going on or not but the results tonight are all consistent with my broad belief that Democratic primary voters are scared to death of losing again and as much as they like left/progressive ideas they are fucking terrified of losing again

Johnson County Kansas for the first time in modern election history had Democrats outvote Republicans in the primary

Ben McAdams (The Resurrection Arc)@purrtah.bsky.social · 13h ago

NYT called it, Dems might outright win the WA03 primary vote for the first time ever at this point

Sabato's Crystal Ball moves Kansas Senate to LIKELY R

AP calls a DEFEAT for Kansas Amendment 1, which would have replaced the current merit-based selection of state Supreme Court justices with partisan statewide elections. GOP wanted this change to try to overturn a ruling protecting abortion rights, but voters emphatically said no.

Missourians are also overwhelmingly rejecting the Republican amendment to phase out the state income tax.

Republican power grabs in Kansas and Missouri are going down in flames with 18-25% of votes reported so far. Missouri's Amendment 4 aimed to make citizen-initiated constitutional amendments practically impossible. Kansas' Amendment 1 was designed to flip the state Supreme Court to ban abortion

I don’t know anything about cars, rockets or software, but I do remember seeing his Elden Ring loadout

Comfortably Numb@numb.comfortab.ly · 2d ago

evergreen

extreme income inequality is bad for a lot of reasons but today the one i'm mad at is people having the wealth and power to force me to live inside their delusions

It's been a banner year for digging into the state-specific rules and deadlines for when a candidate can drop out and how / if the party can replace them.

This is maybe my biggest criticism; I think I would liked it better if it was even less of an adaptation, because the parts where it felt like it was just checking off scenes because they were in the story were the least interesting, and the parts where it got weird and personal were the best.

Stephen Nuñez@socio-steve.bsky.social · 4d ago

There is just a lot of stuff like "Odysseus asks to tie himself to the mast." Ok what did that have to do with the story Nolan wants to tell? How is this consistent with the Odysseus character he is presenting? Like he checks off all the boxes of incidents in the poem but in the poem they present...

A certain type of cocky, clever guy (I'll be the only guy to hear the sirens and tell them tale!) but they feel perfunctory in a story about a grieving war vet.

There is just a lot of stuff like "Odysseus asks to tie himself to the mast." Ok what did that have to do with the story Nolan wants to tell? How is this consistent with the Odysseus character he is presenting? Like he checks off all the boxes of incidents in the poem but in the poem they present...

Not for no reason. It's *the* Capitol bible study. She's being collegial. In related news, abolish the Senate

To state the obvious, every city in the US is under siege and held hostage by its own police departments

Erica C. Barnett@ericacbarnett.bsky.social · 5d ago

To state the obvious, I’m sure this payment is a strategy to avoid spending much more on litigation. Still wild to get paid two years’ salary to go away when you weren’t even police chief for that long.

Sometimes the people want blood and you've got to give it to them. Because someone is to blame for all this, and it's important that the blame actually fall on those responsible.

I think that not only is this good politics, but the stability of American society depends on it. Liberal American normies are out for blood, but *everyone* is in an anti-system mood. If we don't feed that beast some sacrifices, it'll find someone who can, and those sacrifices will be innocent.

Jay Willis@jaywillis.net · 5d ago

Chaperoning a preschool trip to the aquarium and one of the other dads who is vaguely familiar with what I do comes up to me and goes “man I sure hope we get some Nuremberg-style trials at the end of all this”

I do just occasionally become overwhelmed with the sheer amount of missing information about all of Greek mythology (or other ancient mythologies) which I learned as being very neatly and authoritatively catalogued, but in a way that's largely artificial.

With five days left and two polls showing him up by 10+ points, Abdul El Sayed has a new ad with AOC being pushed today

The left needs a candidate it can unite around in the 2028 primaries and AOC is the only real choice. Nobody else checks all of the boxes. Every other option is worse. If she doesn't run, it's a missed opportunity of historic proportions. www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/aoc-must-r...

AOC Must Run For President

History is calling. Sorry!

hamiltonnolan.com

Almost missed the Star endorsing Holscher yesterday.

The Kansas City Star@kansascity.com · last wk.

This is our recommendation in the race among Ethan Corson, Cindy Holscher and Curt Skoog.

prominent novelist mad at esteemed classicist and translator for being mad at a theatrical production of a work of ancient greek literature. maybe we can rebuild the pop intellectual middlebrow sphere after all

Alex Says Stuff@alexsaysstuff.bsky.social · 6d ago

Looking forward to seeing the next reporting on whoever criticises Joyce Carol Oates for criticising Emily Wilson for criticising Christopher Nolan.

Bad times create strong men Strong men create good times Good times create postmaterialist politics Postmaterialist politics create bad times

there is an informal “omerta” principle at work for public figures who go batshit crazy on the everything app

*Trojan historian watching as the Achaeans break down the gates* Wow, my civilization is undergoing a complex transformation from a heavily centralized and stratified administrative society to a more socially-fragmented modality of living in which material culture is dispersed amidst smaller sites.

as a society we are well past due in establishing No Content Zones where making shit for tiktok is explicitly forbidden

Hemant Mehta@friendlyatheist.com · last wk.

Evangelist Whitney Lynn says she preaches on planes because she loves “a captive audience.” She's not alone. It's becoming a trend. If spreading your message requires listeners who can't escape, maybe it's not as compelling as you think. www.friendlyatheist.com/p/christian-...

I just think that in most other contexts “expert on a book dislikes its movie or TV adaptation” is one of the most “dog bites man” stories there is.