Heroes and Hamiltonians

A generator of fluid mechanics, word play, and the collected opus of "Hilbert and Sullivan"

[addiemilfgomery]

sometimes a marriage consists of two bisexual gossips.

[necarion]

True story: so my grandpa was an OB/Gyn and my grandma ran the practice. My grandma was also...a very strong personality, that made her incredibly challenging to interact with sometimes.

So one night, they came home, and my grandpa goes "hey, can I vent to you as my wife and not as my office manager?"

"Of course"

"Great! Because I have a real bitch of an office manager."

My grandma gave him points for the good line.

[necarion]

In our production of Iolanthe, the Peers are a bit more dipshits than usual, and so our super fancy, formal choreography for the "March of the Peers" involves multiple intentional mistakes, with our Willis haggardly grabbing the peers (who obviously haven't done anything wrong, they meant to do that) and putting them back in line.

Anyway, in the chaotic last minute of act one, my coronet got knocked off into the orchestra. I just acted panicked about that in addition to the seven other things I was supposed to be acting panicked about.

I'm curious if anyone (a) noticed, and (b) clocked that it was an actual-accident.

[kata4a]

been musing on "prose with line breaks" recently, and it seems like there are two ideas that get confused in the discourse, and which I think it's worth being precise about:

first, there's the specific contemporary genre of free verse poetry with artlessly placed line breaks and little in the way of rhetorical flourish. "prose with line breaks," though, crucially, I think a lot of this stuff makes bad prose too

and secondly there's the terminological concern of whether that type of thing can even be correctly termed "poetry," or if (really and) we should restrict the usage of that term to metered writing

to be clear about my own position: I've been known to speak pretty freely and harshly on bad poetry, and I have every intention of continuing to do so. but I don't think that the terminological boundary is really the crux here: the line between prose and poetry is genuinely quite blurry, the use of meter is only one of a variety of linguistic devices which I think is fair to consider under the purview of "poetry," and, crucially, all of this bad poetry is still bad even if you call it prose

[necarion]

[alagaisia]

Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?

[alagaisia]

It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!

[alagaisia]

It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.

[watermelon-converse]

Hey. Hey. Tumblr. Ides of March ppl. We can do this

[emi--rose]

Hell yeah moon holiday

[hello-delicious-tea]

Ooh coming up we should celebrate

[ariaste]

PITCH: We call it Moon Day, and then every 7 years when it falls on a Monday, that's an even BIGGER deal and we call that Moon Day Monday and go absolutely apeshit about it (the next Moon Day Monday is in 2026 so we have a couple trial runs first)

[sarostheghostcat]

MOON DAY MOON DAY MOON DAY

[wafflebloggies]

moon day is 20th July!!!

[silly-jellyghoty]

Scheduling this a day earlier to remind you all and myself about the Moon Day tomorow!

[kedreeva]

I scheduled this in 2025 to give you all a week to make Moon Day Monday preparations! I think I will order a little rocket cake or bake some moon phase cookies!

[necarion]

My thesis here is that we kind of have too many summer holidays as it is, even if the Moon Landing could certainly be one of them. We really need some awesome holidays somewhere in April and October ("Day of the Dead" would make a great one on Nov 1, because it's a cultural holiday, and also it would allow kids to have the day after Halloween off school. My mom, a school teacher, hates the day after when the kids are all tired from trick-or-treating way too late). "Smallpox Eradication Day" is another good one, but it's coming Dec 9, right near the whole Holiday Cluster.

[youzicha]

I've been wondering why there's such great support for social media youth bans, but I'm sitting in a Dunkin Donuts right now and the radio is playing an ad along the lines of "is your teenager spending a lot of time on social media? There is evidence that social media companies deliberately made them addictive for children. Research links excessive social media use in children to Body Dysmorphia, Eating Disorder, Depression, Self-Harm, and Suicide. You may be entitled to compensation. Go to socialmedia66.com". I'm guessing this is not helping!

[discoursedrome]

People keep justifying these policies in terms of how incredibly dangerous and destructive social media use is and then jumping immediately to "that's why you need to be at least 16 to use them!" and I just kinda feel like there are some missing pieces to this argument

[eightyonekilograms]

This isn't terribly deep analysis, but the entire push for youth social media bans strikes me as pure "we must do something, this is something; therefore, we must do this". I have a hard time accepting that anyone believes, deep in their bones, that banning social media for teenagers is going to accomplish anything, but we all understand the general malaise around where the internet and technology companies have ended up. I suspect this feels to people like the one thing they can do which isn't total surrender (particularly in America, where pretty much any non-age-gate law one might wish to pass trying to address the deleterious effects of internet use is going to be immediately thrown out on First Amendment grounds).

[necarion]

"Social media" is almost certainly less important than just that kids (and adults) are on their phones all the time and not paying attention in class and not hanging out with friends [yes, lack of third spaces matter a lot here too].

TikTok is...not great...for how it is designed to weaponize addiction, much like the gambling apps. But that's hard to manage!

[necarion]

LOTR headcanon, that is definitely atextual, but maybe not wildly so.

The power of the Three Rings isn't totally obliterated. Yes, they're functionally useless for what the elves wanted them for, for the preservation of the full power of Lothlorien and Rivendell. But a magical item with that much love and care thrown into them, and borne by such loving holders for so long cannot be entirely annihilated.

So the question is, what becomes of the three rings. Who are the most worthy bearers?

Obviously, Aragorn receives Narya with the power to inspire. Vilya probably ends up with Gimli in his quest to build a new home for the dwarves.

And Nenya? Goes to the most worthy ringbearer in the world, to Sam, to help heal the scouring of the shire.

[rhymingteelookatme]

Seeing Iolanthe yesterday was so much fun :D :D :D and I even met @necarion afterward! (He sewed that purple-and-gold upper layer of his costume himself, d'ye know :D isn't it fantastic?) Still working on the proper review, but in the meantime, lovely pics ^_^

[necarion]

Such a delight to meet another in the wild!

Minus the choker digging into my neck whenever the cape shifted, I love the final costume change! Capes are from a 1970s production of Iolanthe, the undercoat belonged to a Pirate King in the 2010s, and the gold coat is my own creation!

This has been such a fun production!

[ayeforscotland]

US Senator and Trump ally, Lindsey Graham is dead.

Source.

[ayeforscotland]

One of the interesting things here is politicians are so old that we’ll inevitably get clusters of high profile deaths.

Imagine Trump and Putin dying within a month of each other.

[necarion]

A man goes to a newsstand every day, glances at the front page of the paper, and throws it in the trash. After weeks of this, the puzzled vendor asks, "Why do you buy the paper every day just to look at the front page and throw it out?" The man replies, "I'm looking for an obituary."

The vendor says, "But sir, obituaries aren't on the front page!"

The man whispers, "The one I'm looking for will be."

[kkinkshamer]

[mhalachai]

“By the first world war, soldiers swore so much that the word “fucking” came to function as no more than “a warning that a noun is coming”. “

Guardian review of Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing by Melissa Mohr 

[jumpingjacktrash]

i would like to take this opportunity to present my headcanon about that infamous “language!” line: steve and the howlies had such dirty mouths that they had to be constantly reminded to clean it up for the reporters that followed them around. so steve heard a swear word over the radio and had a kneejerk stop that we’re being filmed for the folks back home reaction.

in other words, he said “language” not because he never swears, but because if he’s not on guard he swears way too much. :D

[halloweenatasha]

“the word ‘fucking’ came to function as no more than “a warning that a noun is coming”

[jenniferrpovey]

And the interesting thing about actually dealing with people who do swear to that degree, which I have, is that eventually your brain completely tunes the word fucking out.

You basically don’t hear it. It becomes unimportant noise.

[froborr]

I was actually just talking to someone last night about how when I was a kid (the 80s), no one said “fuck” or “shit,” ever, but people casually tossed slurs around like nobody’s business. Now people use “fuck” and “shit” like punctuation, but slurs are increasingly taboo–and that’s exactly how it should fucking be.

[jenniferrpovey]

You can tell we were kids in the 80s in different places…

[laylainalaska]

OH MY GOD I FOUND THE POST AGAIN!!

When I first saw this post go around, I was traveling, but I had something I wanted to say and I could never find it again.

Okay, so, this post isn’t wrong, but what the original gifset doesn’t take into account (though some of the commentary touches on it) is how incredibly situational swearing was in the 1940s.

So, yes, men swore a lot – around other guys, in certain contexts. But they were very heavily conditioned not to swear around women and kids.

I think this might be one of the big reasons why a lot of people my age and younger got the idea that people didn’t swear during the 1940s. Most of us fell into the “kid” or “female” categories, or both, and guys our grandparents’ age would never, ever say “fuck” around us. And those words weren’t usually used in media of the era for similar reasons, so we got the idea that people that age were very prim and polite, when it’s more that they were prim and polite around us.

I remember as a young woman walking in on groups of old blue-collar guys talking among themselves, with profanity flying freely, and then noticing me in the room and immediately clamming up and apologizing to me for swearing around me.

There’s a bit in the Douglas Bader biography I was reading a month or so ago that demonstrates this in a WWII context. According to the book, the squadron pilots swore freely in their radio chatter to each other in the field, to the amusement of the WAAFs (female service personnel) who were listening to the radio in an ops room as they moved counters around on maps (much like we see Peggy doing in TFA) and the embarrassment of their commander:

After awhile, to the regret of the Beauty Chorus [the WAAFs], Woodhall disconnected the loud-speaker in the Ops Room, feeling that some of the battle comments were too ripe even for the most sophisticated WAAFs. (“They laugh, you know,” he said, “but dammit I get so embarrassed.”)

… so, right, even in the middle of a war, pilots saying “fuck” over the radio was something the female staff had to be insulated from.

Say what you will about the baby boomers, but they largely demolished that wall between “swearing around men” and “swearing around women”. Most guys my dad’s age don’t do it anymore, at least not to that much of an extreme. By the time you get to my generation (I’m 40), people might swear or they might not, and they usually don’t swear around young kids, but swearing around men but not around women is just not a thing anyone does anymore. At least I don’t know anyone who does it specifically and consistently who’s not elderly.

It’s not really an individual-sexism thing, more of a socialization thing – sexist on a societal level, sure, but I don’t think Steve would balk at swearing around women, kids, or in a refined or professional social setting because he’s a sexist or a prude. It’s just something you didn’t do as a polite person. Like blowing your nose on the tablecloth in a fancy restaurant. I think he could and probably would unlearn that, but it’d take time.

So, to me, about half the examples up there work just fine (“now why the fuck would I do that” to Bucky – absolutely! Or “Is everything a fucking joke to you?” to Tony) and several jar horribly, because they’re not the right context (like the “there’s only one God ma'am” bit – noooo, you aren’t going to get “fuck” and “ma'am” in the same sentence! not for a Steve fresh from the 1940s! – or “we have our fucking orders” … in a polite, professional context like that, no). Steve would never. Or, I should say, someone from Steve’s culture – who tries in general to be a polite and respectful person, as Steve does – would never. Maybe after he’s had a few years to acclimatize to the more relaxed social climate surrounding swearing in the 21st century, but I think it’d take him awhile; he would sort of instinctively jerk himself back from doing it in all but the most relaxed sort of “palling around with your teammates” environment.

(Headcanon-wise, I could see Steve very quickly incorporating someone like Natasha into his mental schemata as “one of the guys” – not consciously, but on a subconscious level: like, he doesn’t hold back from swearing around her pretty quickly – but taking a LOT longer with someone like Wanda or Pepper.)

tl;dr disclaimer: not a historian, was not alive in the 1940s, so please correct me if I’m wrong on things here.

[glorious-spoon]

I’m so glad someone said this, because this is something I think a lot of the Steve meta about swearing misses. Situational profanity, exactly! He wouldn’t cuss in anything he’d consider ‘polite company’, because you didn’t do that. I’m absolutely sure he’s capable of having a very foul mouth in some circumstances (he was a soldier who grew up in working-class Brooklyn, so… yeah), but in the cultural context where he grew up, you sure as hell didn’t say ‘fuck’ in front of a lady, not if you had any manners to speak of.

/speaking as someone who cusses like breathing, even.

[phoenixtawnyflower]

This is the best explanation of Steve’s ‘language’ line I’ve ever seen.

[necarion]

My grandma (born 1932) had the foulest mouth of anyone I've ever met. But that was still quite unusual for a woman in her life, and especially a PhD-educated woman.

Anyway, it was 1987 and my cousin was being born. And my grandma got pulled over for speeding trying to get there. Got the usual "do you know how fast you were going?" shtick. And as the officer walked off to write the ticket, my grandma said "fuck". Loudly enough that the officer heard it, and walked back to the window.

"Ma'am, did you just say what I think you did?"

"Yes officer."

"I never heard a lady talk like that. You have a nice day." And let her off.

[naturalatdisaster]

They need to introduce laws which limit prime ministers after they leave office. No, you can't have a book deal. No, you can't have your own column in the Daily Mail. No, you can't tour the US to speak at MAGA conferences. You must take a vow of silence and live like a monk for the rest of your life.

[quasi-normalcy]

Every elected official should be compelled to join a monastery after they leave public life.

[alittleminxy]

join a monastery, exit public life, and donate all worldly possessions Or walk off a cliff to prove their convictions.

[the-grey-tribe]

There used to be a social consensus about elder statesmen

[necarion]

I have this draft anti-corruption amendment for the US constitution where we pay the president a truly ludicrous amount of money, possibly a billion dollars per term, which then forbids them for life from making any sort of money in any way for the rest of their life (outside of interest on their existing blind trust wealth). Applies to their families too. Would apply to senators for 10 years and house representatives for 5 (with large, but smaller, maybe a million a year) pay for them.

[sanguinifex]

A whole billion is definitely too much but several million, sure. I don't think barring them from all work is a good idea, but limiting their income after the presidency is fine. Probably phrase it as a special tax that applies only to former presidents, which wouldn't even need to be an amendment--Congress has the constitutional authority to tax.

[necarion]

I disagree. A whole billion is approximately 0.017% of the US GDP for a presidential term. The president can create or destroy a billion dollars of wealth with a single bad tweet. They can easily make policies that do that much damage to individual industries.

You would be compensating them for divesting literally everything they and their family owns (yes, they'd keep the money, but not the assets) and making it so they nor their family could earn money normally ever again (exceptions for public sector work - if you become a school teacher for a public school, you can get paid. If you join congress or the Supreme Court or whatever). You don't get to get your plane tickets or hotels bought for you when you go on speaking tours. You have to disclose every gift and pay 100% taxes on them. You are essentially signing away much of your life to the United States. It would be the country saying "we are willing to pay to make sure there are zero financial conflicts of interest".

[specialagentartemis]

I know I’m a super normie though because I still don’t… understand… how exactly you wield the One Ring as a weapon. Like what did Boromir and Denethor etc. expect to do with it besides turn invisible and get soul-corrupted by Sauron

[ramshacklefey]

Oh! I know this one!! (Lots of preamble exposition here, maybe not helpful if you already know it, but here for other people)

Ok so. The ability to do magic in LOTR is basically the ability to force your will onto the rest of the universe. You want a fire here? Tell the laws of physics to sit down and shut up there's a fire here now. People have different amounts of willpower in this regard based on how close they are in lineage to the Valar, who are the personal first children of the creator deity and helped build the world through song. Gandalf and the other wizards are Maiar, the personal servants of the Valar. The oldest of the elves once lived in Valinor and were created by the Valar as their children, they were close to the light of the Trees and that brought them great force of will. The only elves we ever meet who lived in Valinor are Galadriel and Celeborn.

But elves in general, descended as they are from these origins, have a deeper and closer relationship to the Valar than other species. Humans and dwarves never lived in Valinor. (Not all the elves did either, it was a whole thing, but the Mirkwood elves had never been to Valinor and so were less powerful than the others. This is why Legolas is a relatively low-power elf, though still more powerful than most humans.)

There was, however, a nation of humans, the Numenoreans, who lived on an island halfway between Middle Earth and Valinor. Because of this, they had as much power as humans are capable of. After Numenor sank into the sea, they founded Gondor, and that is why the line of kings of Gondor is so powerful. They are directly descended from the original Numenoreans. Each generation after that first, however, had slightly less of that power, and because human lifespans are short (and grew shorter as they decreased in power), there are many more generations of humans between Numenor and the third age than there are of elves. Though the elves have seen a diminishing of this as well, it's much slighter. This is why Elrond has much less power than Galadriel.

Many many generations of humans ago, but only a couple generations of elves, the elven princess Luthien fell in love with a human, Beren. Because Beren was part of the line of Gondorian kings, this gave a sort of power boost to their children and thus to the line of kings after them. This is why Aragorn is so much more powerful than other humans: he's a direct descendant of an elven princess.

Alright so. Magical objects. Magical objects come in two sorts: those made of a substance with special properties or inscribed with words of power (the Lothlorien cloaks, the Earendil glass that Frodo has, the Mithril coat) and those made by the creator placing some of their own will into the object (the palantir are one example. The Silmarils are another, although Fëanor also captured the light of the trees in them which added to their power).

All the Rings are the second type. Celebrimbor was the one who developed the method for making them. He was the grandson of Fëanor and so had a fuckton of power and will to use for that.

Sauron was a Maiar, like Gandalf and the other wizards. He had been Morgoth's second in command and apprentice, but after Morgoth fell (he was a Valar btw), Sauron claimed to be reformed and became an apprentice of Celebrimbor. He learned the secret of creating the Rings, and had a hand in shaping the Seven and Nine, and he put small pieces of himself into them. The Three elven rings were made after Celebrimbor realized that Sauron was up to shady shit, and so he never had anything to do with them.

Then Sauron made the One Ring, and he poured a TON of himself into it.

But the way these kinds of objects work, anyone can use them if they have sufficient willpower to channel what's already in the object. But there's a catch. Because the source of the object is literally someone else's willpower, the object is always primarily subject to the creator's will. It's literally a part of them, will act in ways that person would want, and responds to commands from them even if someone else is trying to use it.

This is why the people keeping the elven rings (Gandalf, Galadriel, and Cirdan) have to be so powerful themselves. Even though these rings aren't evil, they have a limited level of desire for certain things and would actually eventually take over the mind of someone less powerful. Also they were trying to keep Sauron from finding them. (Aside, this is why the One Ring has no effect on Tom Bombadil. Whatever he is, he natively has more will than what Sauron put into the ring.)

So. If you have the One Ring, whoever you are, you can channel a level of Sauron's will commensurate to your own. Gollum never could use it for anything but turning invisible. Frodo could do hardly anything deliberate with it. But if Gandalf or Galadriel had it, they could fuck shit up. If Aragorn had it he would be terrifying. Even Faramir could have gotten a big power boost from it. And because it's part of Sauron, who craved dominion over others, it wants you to use it to dominate others, and it will tell you that you can, and that it will help you shape the world into something you want.

But here's the catch: it's a fucking liar, just like Sauron. Sure you'll be powerful if you have it, but it's got his will in it, and the more you do what it wants, the more control it gets over your mind. In fact, it's so powerful in that way that just being around it can get to you. That's what happened to Boromir. That's why Gandalf, Galadriel, and Aragorn know they absolutely cannot touch it or even try to keep it safe. They know, or fear, that they would eventually give in and try to use it for good, but it would corrupt them too. Faramir knows what it is, and he rejects the whole idea of having that much power. Sam recognizes it for a liar, and rejects the power it offers him.

(Sauron was also massively weakened when he lost it because once you put that much of yourself into something, you can't get it back out.)

Tolkien, who lived through both world wars, saw a lot of what happens when people are given too much power and influence over others. He was also a devout Catholic, and there's a lot there and in the wider mythos about the dangers of seeking power because at some point you're setting yourself up as a false god, but the prime false god in the Catholic mythos is Satan. And Satan will offer worldly power to people in order to gain control of them.

....does that answer your question?

[onnastik]

It's worth noting that even Frodo is able to weaponize it, in a small and desperate way, as essentially the mind-control device it was designed to be: https://mikkeneko.tumblr.com/post/171469590499/frodo-laid-a-geas-and-other-invisible-magic

So yeah, someone with more will to power over others than a half-dead hobbit could seriously wreck shop.

[internerdionality]

Adding that the ring arguably doesn’t actually turn you invisible. Or rather, it does, but that’s a distant side effect of what it’s actually doing, which is far more powerful.

Putting on the Ring moves you from the realm of the flesh to the realm of the spirit. This is why, for example, the Ringwraiths could still see Frodo when he put on the Ring, and in fact, he could see them far more clearly—because he was halfway out of his world, and into theirs. This is because Sauron created it primarily to suborn peoples’ minds and spirits, which is easier to do from that realm.

[arofili]

Great analysis all around. But being the pedant I am, I have to make a few minor lore corrections - none of which take away from the main points made, and in fact strengthen them, IMO!

The Elves are not the children of the Valar, they are the Children of Eru. The Valar themselves are "creations" of Eru but not his children, per se; there's a distinct difference between the more ambiguous relationship of Eru to the Valar and the firmly paternal relationship of Eru to the Elves (and Men). However, it is true that the Valar act like somewhat overprotective parents to the Elves that live in their domain.

The only Elves we meet in LOTR who lived in Valinor are Galadriel and Glorfindel, not Celeborn. It is true that Tolkien had some drafts where Celeborn also lived in Valinor, but those were retcons written after LOTR had already been published, and do not make sense with the text of LOTR. In the published LOTR, Celeborn is a Sinda elf who never went to Valinor, but he was a relative of Elu Thingol, an Elf king who was married to Melian the Maia, who lived with her husband in Middle-earth and definitely influenced their kingdom.

(Also, Glorfindel is doubly unique in that he came to Middle-earth from Valinor, died in Middle-earth, was reborn in Valinor, and then came back to Middle-earth. Galadriel just went the one time and stayed.)

The power of the Elves and of the Numenoreans has less to do with "proximity to Valinor/the Valar" and more to do with...well, for the Elves, it's connection to and mastery over the Soul, an for the Numenorean Men it's literal direct ancestry from both Elves and Maiar that gives them the foundation to build on that same kind of mastery. This is a complicated subject, and while geography plays a role in power, it's not as important as other aspects IMO.

Elrond having less power than Galadriel is...debateable. Personally I would rank them about equal. He is certainly less flashy with his power than she is, though.

Technically Beren was the ancestor of the Numenorean kings, so yes "part of the line," but again it's more complicated than that... Luthien (daughter of Melian and Thingol, half-Maia and half-Elf) is the ancestress of Aragorn, but it's also important to note that her granddaughter Elwing married another half-elf, Earendil, whose mother Idril was a Valinorean elf living in Middle-earth. Their children are Elrond, who chose to be an Elf (and has a lot of magical power!) and Elros, who chose to be a Man and became the first King of Numenor. Eventually Elros' Numenorean descendants founded Gondor and Arnor, etc etc etc, and Aragorn is the product of all that impressive ancestry - with a lot of human generations in-between to water it down. Arwen, as Elrond's daughter, is much more closely related to the original Elf-mortal couples (and her mother, Elrond's wife, is the daughter of Galadriel and Celeborn, mixing in even more impressive ancestors!).

Aragorn's power is not just to do with his ancestry, though; like with the Elves of old, it's a lot to do with his own internal mastery of his spirit. Faramir, also of Numenorean ancestry, has similar capabilities - but notably, his brother Boromir did not. This is because insight/foresight/"magic" was something he both had talent in and worked to master, like Aragorn. (Aragorn had the benefit of being raised by elves.)

The analysis of magic objects is spot-on, and the most relevant part of this discussion, so great job there. I would just like to emphasize the discussion of willpower, because that's really what it boils down to: yes, proximity to the Valar helps; yes, elven ancestry helps, but when you come down to it, the most important thing is strength of will. Elves, Maiar, Valar, Numenoreans, even regular humans and hobbits (and dwarves) - some might have a leg up when it comes to their innate willpower and connection to their own souls, but any one of them, given the strength of will and the practice of making it stronger, has magical potential.

At the time of LOTR, Cirdan has long since given his Ring of Power (Narya) to Gandalf. The third ringbearer is actually Elrond. (Again, not less powerful than Galadriel, just not as obvious!)

Another example of the Ring's (Sauron's) will dominating its bearer is when Sam briefly carries it, he has a vision of ruling over an amazing garden. Being Sam, he has the practicality to not fall for that temptation, but it goes to show that the Ring will manipulate its bearers with whatever would work best against them.

Again, overall a fantastic bit of analysis! I hope my clarifications added to the discussion; I truly don't just mean to correct things but also continue the discussion. This is a really complex topic and I very well could have missed something or mis-stated something myself!

[necarion]

The big lore question for me is - why would Sauron do this, when it was a permanent loss of some of his will? Unless power was draining from the world really quickly, if Sauron got out of the ring exactly what he put into it, it would be a net-neutral power source. Obviously, would be awesome if someone else could make a magic ring and you could steal it to use *their* will, but why bother to make your own?

[necarion]

The Vatican is releasing a new line of negligee under its "Holy Seethru" brand.

[overseer-picard]

It’s difficult to fully articulate the hold that Patrick Stewart had on audiences when TNG was airing. Between the hundreds of magazine covers, the talk show circuits, and the paparazzi nonsense, the amount of baldness puns editors were compelled to create was astounding.

It was like the media fixated on this man because he had catastrophic levels of charisma and audiences were losing their minds over him (TNG was regularly beating network shows in ratings), yet he was so far removed from the narrow Hollywood standards of beauty that it vexed and haunted these people for years.

Baldness was a joke in Hollywood. 75% of George Costanza's identity revolved around bald jokes. If you were a bald actor, you were cast as a villain or a buffoon, never the hero. And if you were losing your hair, you had to slap a wig on or risk losing your career. Yul Brynner was somewhat of an exception but he was from a much different generation of Hollywood and even Bruce Willis didn't fully shave his head until 1994 (post TNG success incidentally).

In Patrick Stewart's case, there was often an undercurrent of snide putdowns with many interviewers, drawing focus to his baldness over and over and over again with low hanging jokes. It was like you could see their vanity-based paradigms cracking in real time and it was strange to witness. Imagine how bizarre it would be if talk show hosts today could only ask The Rock, Vin Diesel, or Jason Statham about their bald heads.

But karma swooped in to the rescue. In 1992 Stewart was voted TV Guide's "Sexiest Man on Television" with a whopping 54% of votes. He beat out the likes of Luke Perry, John Corbett, A. Martinez, and even Burt Reynolds (with a total of 20 contenders).

The middle-aged bald guy in the syndicated sci-fi show beat out the hottest of the Hot Guys™️ and it wasn't even remotely close.

^ Bald joke

So yeah, today he's an old, revered thespian who is occasionally Charles Xavier, but not only did Patrick Stewart pave the way for other bald actors to be considered leading men, he discombobulated Hollywood with his unconventional attractiveness and it was amazing.

[necarion]

He liked to recall what Gene Roddenberry, the creator of "Star Trek," once said about Picard's character. Upon hearing a reporter remark, "Surely they would have cured baldness by the 24th century," Roddenberry countered, "In the 24th century, they wouldn't care."

(Although apparently Roddenberry wanted a full head of hair too, at first. And Patrick Stewart wore a toupee in some auditions. But it was removed and then the story was justified by Roddenberry's later quote.

[naturalatdisaster]

They need to introduce laws which limit prime ministers after they leave office. No, you can't have a book deal. No, you can't have your own column in the Daily Mail. No, you can't tour the US to speak at MAGA conferences. You must take a vow of silence and live like a monk for the rest of your life.

[quasi-normalcy]

Every elected official should be compelled to join a monastery after they leave public life.

[alittleminxy]

join a monastery, exit public life, and donate all worldly possessions Or walk off a cliff to prove their convictions.

[the-grey-tribe]

There used to be a social consensus about elder statesmen

[necarion]

I have this draft anti-corruption amendment for the US constitution where we pay the president a truly ludicrous amount of money, possibly a billion dollars per term, which then forbids them for life from making any sort of money in any way for the rest of their life (outside of interest on their existing blind trust wealth). Applies to their families too. Would apply to senators for 10 years and house representatives for 5 (with large, but smaller, maybe a million a year) pay for them.

[necarion]

The worst part of "get more sleep" advice is that it is fucking correct.

[necarion]

Started making a joke about/to my favorite actress in the show, realized that if I paused funny it would be a comment on actual weight, and decided the only way out was through.

"So, do you fast during the day so you're hungry for all the scenery come showtime?"

[hymneminium]

They're putting the traveller from an antique land in Smash

[necarion]

Look upon my combos, ye mighty, and despair