Julian Lapostat

[julianlapostat]

A Tvtropes Confession.

I used to be JulianLapostat on tvtropes. This is a confession about my time there:

TVDopes

Online Holmgangs #3

[bunniesandbeheadings]

You know the shittiest part of napoleon being on Saint Helena is that he was demonstrating all the signs of depression and his doctor, who was otherwise shitty, was all “have you tried gardening about it?”

And, unfortunately,

It was good advice and Napoleon’s mood drastically improved and even his guards are writing like “holy hell the vibe here just did a complete 180”

Touching grass really did help

[racefortheironthrone]

So on the subject of rumours about Renaissance playwrights what are your thoughts on the theories about Marlowe, as if one would believe them he was a gay atheist spy?

Whether Marlowe was one of Walsingham's men is unclear, but he certainly was doing something in government enough to get the support of the Privy Council - which is not something they did for your average twenty-three year old potential recusant - and he was definitely up to something shady in the Lowlands.

I think there's a bit more evidence that if he wasn't an outright atheist, he was a religious skeptic and iconoclast at the very least.

As to his sexuality, it wouldn't surprise me if Marlowe was a Kinsey 2 at the very least.

[julianlapostat]

My feeling is that Marlowe was Exhibit A of "bad fans ruining author's life". Some psychos wanting to run Protestant refugees out of London called themselves Tamburlaine, because that was The Dark Knight of its time with everyone rooting for the anti-hero Tamburlaine who defied custom and norms, and started as a base shepherd and rose to the top, just like people rooted for Ledger's Joker (a very Marlowean character all things considered). That works either way, whether he died in a pub argument gone wrong or if it was a hit disguised as one (which I for one think is likely). Shakespeare put it best in AS YOU LIKE IT, where Touchstone glosses on Marlowe's fate, "When a man’s verses cannot be understood nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. "

Still the curious thing is that the government never censored Marlowe's plays posthumously and continued to allow it performed. Kill the poet, keep the poems it seems.

[warsofasoiaf]

If you find socialism a failed economy system, what's the best economy system that needed to be implemented then?

The most successful economies have largely been based in free markets, privately-owned property, and free enterprise with a role for the government to intervene in sectors for strategic or social purposes - the mixed economy. That role can vary in size and scope which offers trade-offs that can be examined.

-SLAL

[powercoreact-deactivated2024100]

I think I disagree partially, since these systems do have a very extensive history of exploiting areas around them, and introducing "exploitable" governments that are usually more autocratic and not democratic, in order to keep up their economic growth.

Most systems do have effects on those around them and that should not be ignored.

WAIT:

"the mixed economy"

Which one(s)???? You know how open to interpretation that is?

[warsofasoiaf]

I don't think the argument of "exploiting areas around them" and "introducing 'exploitable' governments that are usually more autocratic" is the slam dunk that you think it is. The Soviet Union was infamously imperialist and exported autocracy to exploit the intellectual resources of Eastern Europe. I'd go so far as to say that, in practice, governments which practiced socialism were enthusiastic exporters of autocracy and utilized extensive measures to co-opt natural and intellectual resources for their benefit.

Yes, the idea of the mixed economy being open to interpretation is deliberate. Depending on what you prioritize, certain models may be seen as more beneficial. It all depends on the metrics, such as life expectancy or GDP per capita.

-SLAL

[racefortheironthrone]

I have to admit I’m confused, because for vast swathes of the European left, “mixed economy” = “socialism.” (Roughly.)

Whereas I would certainly agree that “actually existing communism” was a “failed economic system,” I would take issue with describing “socialism” as one, both because of the above and the whole “state capitalist” critique of the USSR.

As an adherent to the ideology that had to put up with tankies calling us “social fascists” in the 1930s, I’m quite insistent that they don’t get to use “socialism” now that they’ve tanked their own reputation.

[julianlapostat]

From a broader perspective, the failure of the Jacobin Republic didn't discredit Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, right? Like the radical positions advocated there became mainstream in a century despite the disrepute graced it by Robespierre and his friends (including the ones he guillotined and who guillotined him in return). Could it not be said that eventually the same might happen with socialism or communism? Or already happened with socialism or social democracy That some day, in the same process of fatigue and exhaustion described by the centrist Francois Furet, you might bring the ship of revolution into port.

While there's definitely tankies Post-Cold War, it kind of amazes me there are "sore winners" like @warsofasoiaf for whom winning the Cold War is about denying the existence of any kind of alternative to any problem ever.

[racefortheironthrone]

How come William Randolph Hearst turn so hard on Franklin Delano Roosevelt from his biggest booster to his most prominent enemy?

Because Hearst was a wild egomaniac with simultaneous strongly-held right wing and left wing views. An object lesson that red-brown alliances just end up brown.

[julianlapostat]

As Orson Welles said, “I made Charles Foster Kane a more sympathetic character than Hearst ever was in real life. I always surmised that Hearst would be pleased.” But even a sympathetic spoof of Hearst, like Kane (nominally) is, still makes him out to be a big jerk.

[bunniesandbeheadings]

Also said it once, gonna say it again

Napoleon should be played by an unknown. Yeah, give the starring role of your blockbuster biopic to some unknown 30-something actor (so makeup can have him play old or young Napoleon), who hasn’t appeared in anything more prestigious than a Denny’s commercial

And then give all the other Kings and Tsars to A-listers. Have this fucking nobody lording over, like, Leonardo DiCaprio.

The audience would go “wtf”

And see, it would be close to how people felt at the time. Yeah there’s this 30-something year old weirdo we’ve never heard of straddling Europe. That’s Odd.

It would’ve been cool! You can’t tell me there’s no starving artist 30-something who could’ve killed it as Napoleon better than Phoenix. I mean it’s a low bar but still

[queer-as-city-folk]

List of Urbanist songs

Big Yellow Taxi

Probably some others that I don't know

[chloerie]

lmao what

[queer-as-city-folk]

The song says "they Paved Paradise to put up a parking lot" and that sounds like an urbanist thing to say

[racefortheironthrone]

It's an oldie by this point, but "Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds (popularized by Pete Seeger) has got to be the ur-urbanist song.

[julianlapostat]

SHANGRI-LA by The Kinks, and also their album Muswell Hillbillies (the full album, but Muswell Hillbilly title song especially).

[racefortheironthrone]

Is there any way for governments to respond to a pandemic such as Covid 19 or something worse without provoking considerable public resentment? Take no measures to prevent the spread and you’ll be blamed for the resulting public health disaster. Try to prevent the spread, and you’ll be blamed for the inevitable inequities and negative effects taken to do so, and the (mitigated, but not entirely avoided) public health disaster.

I don't mean this to come off as pessimistic or overly negative, but I would say as a matter of historic record, public health campaigns (especially anti-pandemic campaigns) tend to be quite unpopular - and my suspicion is that the mid-20th century moment where public health experts like Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin became folk heroes with enormous amounts of popular support from the middle-class parents of the Baby Boom is probably the exception that proves the rule.

You can go all the way back to the very earliest days of public health measures - the Venetian invention of the quarantine during the Black Death - to find one of the first anti public-health backlashes. Conservative Venetians felt that the free food packages that were an essential part of the quarantine process (because you don't want potentially sick people wandering the city looking for food) would make people lazy and economically dependent on the government.

Likewise, when advances in medicine and state capacity in the early 19th century led to one of the first modern pandemic campaigns during the cholera outbreaks of the early 1830s, the public's response was not one of orderly compliance and gratefulness. Instead, you had what were called the "cholera riots" in both the U.K and Russia. Buoyed by conspiracy theories about shadowy cabals of doctors working hand in hand with an autocratic government to kill the destitute, mobs attacked symbols of public health (public hospitals, government doctors, public research clinics, anatomical colleges, health boards) and government authority (governors, police stations, quarantine cordons, court houses, etc.).

By contrast, all the anti-vaxx insanity of the past couple years seems a bit tame - at least in COVID-19, most violence has been rhetorical and abstract rather than involving the targeted murder of doctors and government officials.

Ultimately, we may just have to come to grips with the fact that public health/anti-pandemic policy is always going to be unpopular and that the correct approach is to use hard power rather than try to chivvy people into doing what's in their best interests. I certainly remember how California started to make strides against the anti-vaxx movement prior to COVID-19: it ultimately required legislation like SB 277 and SB 742 that made vaccinations more mandatory and made anti-vaxx harassment punishable with six months in jail.

[julianlapostat]

A rare L for Team Smallfolk, huh?

[racefortheironthrone]

Do you ever find someone in history who you can't really help but pity? For me, reading about the reign of Heraclius in the Byzantine Empire hurts; he manages to save Byzantium from the Persian Empire, only to watch it fall into peril again with the rise of Islam. Just imagining the anguish of recovering Jerusalem and returning the True Cross to it, before having to take it away when Jerusalem was lost is almost enough to make me cry.

Yes there are plenty of people who seem to have been set up by history to get constantly shit on. Heraclius got dealt a particularly bad hand.

[racefortheironthrone]

Piggybacking off a previous ask, what was Toshi Hasagawa's view of the atomic bombings?

Toshi Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy argues that, although it's absolutely true that the end of WWII in the Pacific was driven by Cold War concerns, Japan's decision to surrender unconditionally was driven more by Soviet entry into the war than by the dropping of the atomic bombs.

In this view, the dropping of the bombs was both immoral and unnecessary, since Japan was going to give up the game anyway.

Toshi's rather provocative, and initially controversial, position is backed up by some very impressive work in both the Japanese and Russian archives, so I find it persuasive.

[racefortheironthrone]

This is a Comics related Watchmen question...which touches on some issues. Do you think that Rorscharch condones the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but opposes Veidt's plans because the victims of the former are Japanese and the latter are white? Do you think Moore is trying to suggest a kind of unquestioned racism that makes it easier to condone and accept military justifications against non-white people?

That’s definitely part of it. Moreover that Roschach views wartime presidents like FDR, Truman, etc. as emblems of a morally pure, masculine America, in contrast to the decadence of the present day.  

[omgthatdress]

It would be incredibly tasteless for me to do a "Titanic" spam rn, wouldn't it?

[thatdisasterauthor]

The sub is named the TITAN.

THE CEO IS SUPPOSEDLY ON BOARD.

IT. WAS. BOLTED. SHUT. FROM. THE. OUTSIDE. They could be on the surface and still die from running out of oxygen because they literally can’t get out and the sub is, obviously, air tight.

Rich people be fuckin’ around and findin’ out.

[thatdisasterauthor]

IT WAS CONTROLLED WITH A SINGLE BUTTON AND A VIDEOGAME CONTROLLER. THERE AREN’T EVEN SEATS.

[racefortheironthrone]

This is what happens when you let billionaire CEOs ignore maritime safety regulations. From their own website’s section about the design and construction of the submersible:

“by definition, innovation is outside of an already accepted system. However, this does not mean that OceanGate does meet standards where they apply, but it does mean that innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigm."

[opinions-about-tiaras]

Usually they’re smart enough to let other people take the bullet for them, though. Like, I guarantee you Elon Musk isn’t climbing into a Tesla and hitting Autopilot; that’s for the plebes to spend their blood to improve his faulty product. This dude actually got into his death tube!

[racefortheironthrone]

That’s true, but Bezos did go up on his own rocket, so I think it’s about the unique distribution of arrogance and caution.

[julianlapostat]

Howard Hughes test piloted his planes. Eventually crashed a plane and got so many drugs that it hastened his mental decline that inspired Aerys the Mad. 

[racefortheironthrone]

Was the whole black only thing among the Dutch a snub at the Spanish because of religion or just to flex being wealthy or did they just like the color?

I don't see how it could be a snub at the Spanish over religion - the extremely Catholic Spanish Habsburgs were really, really into wearing all-black, because while they might have been Catholic, they also liked to remind everyone they had all the silver of Mexico and all the gold of Peru.

Mainly, it was a status thing. It's a bit weird from modern sensibilities, but in the Early Modern period, poor and working-class people wore vibrant colors made from cheap natural dyes and wealthy people often wore black because the dyes and fixatives were really expensive.

[julianlapostat]

I’m reminded of Hamlet described as wearing black (and his nickname among Shakespeare scholars is “the Black Prince”). Did they find black dye for the production of that play or was it a kind of knockoff black?  I wonder if the current fixation on “stealth wealth,” where we see rich folks on Succession dress in drab no-label slacks made from high fabric, is a continuation of that? And also the common use of the phrase “motley” to describe (low class) group of gathering is a judgment on the color worn by the poor?

[racefortheironthrone]

So The Last Kingdom is a good representation of historical vikings?

It’s more that, as a show from the perspective of the Anglo-Saxons trying to fight off Vikinger conquest, it’s something of an opposing view to “Vikingers are awesome badasses” media (which often take an odd angle on the topic of colonization - see Brett Devereaux’s essay on AC Valhalla.) So it balances things out a bit.

[julianlapostat]

Devereaux’s essay is deeply wrong in my opinion (not on his judgments on the game, which is indeed weak brew on a lot of levels), but its argument views the Viking as “other” when everything the Vikings did (Slavery, Colonization, Sacking Monasteries) was done by Christian rulers in Anglo-Saxon England before and after the Vikings. And I think using the word “colonization” is ahistorical and hypocritical in that light. To me the “Vikingers are awesome badasses” is mostly adolescent compared to the inherent glorification of all things Anglo-Saxon England and Alfred of Wessex, since it falls under the fallacy of “Christians never practiced slavery”. Anglo-Saxon glorification underpinned Brexit after all (and Alfred was only called “the Great” anachronistically centuries later as a Whig History way of rooting the British Empire).  PS: These comments (backed with citations) are a more considered historical look at Vallhalla than Devereaux’s pearl clutching.  (https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/10jnxor/historical_inaccuracies_in_the_ac_series_the/)

[racefortheironthrone]

Yeah, I don’t buy that. 

Yes, Anglo-Saxon England had slaves, but what they didn’t have was a slave-trading empire that stretched from Dublin to Constantinople and that moved human products along “the Highway of the Slaves” on an industrial scale, and was so extensive that it gave us the word slave. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to put up with whataboutism when it comes to trans-continental slaving - no amount of “glorification of all things Anglo-Saxon England” excuses the Vikinger slave empire. 

And yes, it was colonization: Danes conquered big chunks of England, Scotland, and Ireland and rather than just a small ruling class, lots of families came over and settled and became a fairly significant part of the DNA of the British Isles as a result. It wasn’t the only episode of colonization in the history of the British Isles or other parts of Europe, but it was colonization. 

And yes, the sacking of monestaries was a big deal. Certainly, Christian rulers had occasionally sacked monestaries (and gotten lots of shit for doing so), but the scale of the Vikinger sackings and the repeated nature of the sackings was unprecedented. Regardless, these were still acts that should be condemned - unarmed and defenseless people were murdered, sites of religious and cultural importance were destroyed or defiled. 

In sum: people should not glorify Vikingers, and people should not excuse Vikingers. They sucked, even by the standards of the time. 

[julianlapostat]

I don’t think qualifying the Vikings is the same as whataboutism. My feeling is that the Vikings versus the Anglo-Saxons was basically a disagreement among gangsters, based on culture and religious bias, and not on anything political. And that given these events are far away. As those comments in that link above mentioned, London was already an international slave trading market a century before Lindisfarne, so a slave trade existed and the Vikings fit into an existing role. And likewise the majority of monasteries sacked in Ireland during that period, before/after the Vikings raids was by local Catholic Irish lords. That didn’t happen often in England but even English monks objected to Alfred of Wessex taking land and stuff from them. So I do think the bias against the Vikings is essentially religious, and if not directly confessional, it’s based on the idea of Christendom as a bastion of Western Europe.

[racefortheironthrone]

No, I’m sorry, it’s the definition of whataboutism - people are calling out the Vikings for having committed acts that are immoral, and you’re saying whatabout this other group they did bad things so the aggressor and the victim are actually morally indistinguishable. It’s the same kind of shitty rhetorical move that white supremacist defenders of European chattel slavery make when they bring up Arab slavers in East Africa. 

There may well have been slave markets in London, but they weren’t the biggest in the damn world, @julianlapostat. They weren’t part of an empire that stretched from Dublin to Constantinople. 

Being pagan is not a defense for slaving. It’s not a defense to colonization. It’s not a defense to murder and robbery. You need to seriously re-examine why you’re trying to die on this hill, because “sticking it to the Christians” is not an adequate rationale. 

[julianlapostat]

I understand your perspective. I don’t think I made my case well there.  Thanks for responding regardless.  

[racefortheironthrone]

So The Last Kingdom is a good representation of historical vikings?

It’s more that, as a show from the perspective of the Anglo-Saxons trying to fight off Vikinger conquest, it’s something of an opposing view to “Vikingers are awesome badasses” media (which often take an odd angle on the topic of colonization - see Brett Devereaux’s essay on AC Valhalla.) So it balances things out a bit.

[julianlapostat]

Devereaux’s essay is deeply wrong in my opinion (not on his judgments on the game, which is indeed weak brew on a lot of levels), but its argument views the Viking as “other” when everything the Vikings did (Slavery, Colonization, Sacking Monasteries) was done by Christian rulers in Anglo-Saxon England before and after the Vikings. And I think using the word “colonization” is ahistorical and hypocritical in that light. To me the “Vikingers are awesome badasses” is mostly adolescent compared to the inherent glorification of all things Anglo-Saxon England and Alfred of Wessex, since it falls under the fallacy of “Christians never practiced slavery”. Anglo-Saxon glorification underpinned Brexit after all (and Alfred was only called “the Great” anachronistically centuries later as a Whig History way of rooting the British Empire).  PS: These comments (backed with citations) are a more considered historical look at Vallhalla than Devereaux’s pearl clutching.  (https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/10jnxor/historical_inaccuracies_in_the_ac_series_the/)

[racefortheironthrone]

Yeah, I don’t buy that. 

Yes, Anglo-Saxon England had slaves, but what they didn’t have was a slave-trading empire that stretched from Dublin to Constantinople and that moved human products along “the Highway of the Slaves” on an industrial scale, and was so extensive that it gave us the word slave. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to put up with whataboutism when it comes to trans-continental slaving - no amount of “glorification of all things Anglo-Saxon England” excuses the Vikinger slave empire. 

And yes, it was colonization: Danes conquered big chunks of England, Scotland, and Ireland and rather than just a small ruling class, lots of families came over and settled and became a fairly significant part of the DNA of the British Isles as a result. It wasn’t the only episode of colonization in the history of the British Isles or other parts of Europe, but it was colonization. 

And yes, the sacking of monestaries was a big deal. Certainly, Christian rulers had occasionally sacked monestaries (and gotten lots of shit for doing so), but the scale of the Vikinger sackings and the repeated nature of the sackings was unprecedented. Regardless, these were still acts that should be condemned - unarmed and defenseless people were murdered, sites of religious and cultural importance were destroyed or defiled. 

In sum: people should not glorify Vikingers, and people should not excuse Vikingers. They sucked, even by the standards of the time. 

[julianlapostat]

I don’t think qualifying the Vikings is the same as whataboutism. My feeling is that the Vikings versus the Anglo-Saxons was basically a disagreement among gangsters, based on culture and religious bias, and not on anything political. And that given these events are far away. As those comments in that link above mentioned, London was already an international slave trading market a century before Lindisfarne, so a slave trade existed and the Vikings fit into an existing role. And likewise the majority of monasteries sacked in Ireland during that period, before/after the Vikings raids was by local Catholic Irish lords. That didn’t happen often in England but even English monks objected to Alfred of Wessex taking land and stuff from them. So I do think the bias against the Vikings is essentially religious, and if not directly confessional, it’s based on the idea of Christendom as a bastion of Western Europe.

[racefortheironthrone]

So The Last Kingdom is a good representation of historical vikings?

It’s more that, as a show from the perspective of the Anglo-Saxons trying to fight off Vikinger conquest, it’s something of an opposing view to “Vikingers are awesome badasses” media (which often take an odd angle on the topic of colonization - see Brett Devereaux’s essay on AC Valhalla.) So it balances things out a bit.

[julianlapostat]

Devereaux’s essay is deeply wrong in my opinion (not on his judgments on the game, which is indeed weak brew on a lot of levels), but its argument views the Viking as “other” when everything the Vikings did (Slavery, Colonization, Sacking Monasteries) was done by Christian rulers in Anglo-Saxon England before and after the Vikings. And I think using the word “colonization” is ahistorical and hypocritical in that light. To me the “Vikingers are awesome badasses” is mostly adolescent compared to the inherent glorification of all things Anglo-Saxon England and Alfred of Wessex, since it falls under the fallacy of “Christians never practiced slavery”. Anglo-Saxon glorification underpinned Brexit after all (and Alfred was only called “the Great” anachronistically centuries later as a Whig History way of rooting the British Empire).  PS: These comments (backed with citations) are a more considered historical look at Vallhalla than Devereaux’s pearl clutching.  (https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/10jnxor/historical_inaccuracies_in_the_ac_series_the/)

[racefortheironthrone]

Just wondering if mutinies like the one of "The Bounty" were common or it was singularly unique event? Guess wondering why this mutiny is so compelling that gets revisited on the big-screen over and over again?

I think there's a bit of undistributed middle between common and "singularly unique." Mutinies happen, and are more frequent at some times than others.

As for the Mutiny of the Bounty and why it's so famous, I think a lot of it had to do with the level of documentation that's available, the incredibly dramatic circumstances of Bligh's voyage back to England, and the relatively unusual fact that so many of the mutineers managed to escape naval "justice."

[hedrigal]

The bounty also has the advantage that the only other comparably well known mutiny in history is the one on the Potemkin. Which is both a subject it would be hard to make an apolitical movie about, and became so deeply associated with Soviet film making that I doubt a historical adaptation could have been made during the cold war for a western audience.

[julianlapostat]

The Battleship Potemkin is a far more famous and influential film than any movie about the bounty, so it’s a bit of an odd reach there. Anyway the film is about a lot more than a simple mutiny and the most famous sequence there doesn’t happen on the ship or feature the mutineers (and an incident that specifically didn’t transpire in that direct location). Anyway way off topic either case.