[sataniccapitalist]

Opinion | America's (Likely) Violent Future

"Where things go from there is uncertain, but so far there is no credible pathway to compromise and peace."

[tripsn-blog]

We'll just file this in the "No Shit" Section of the office....right next to the file cabinet that contains old standbys like "Water Is Wet, A Treatise" and "The Sun Makes Things Hot In The Summer, A Retrospective".

[notbecauseofvictories]

What do you think Tolkien's Dwarves' religion looks like?

like Terry Pratchett’s, but taken seriously.

[vrabia]

But Terry Pratchett’s is taken seriously. Like, a lot. And it’s basically all darkness-and-stone mysticism, there is nothing else.

I mean of course they have songs that go ‘gold gold gold’ and the right to kingship is handed down via a petrified loaf of bread with someone’s butt imprinted on it.

But in the same breath you’ve got the knockermen, who go down mine-shafts with no source of light on them to face fatal explosions, and the ones who come back are regarded as exponents of sainthood, because they’ve done the impossible. And they talk about what they’ve seen down there, and everyone knows seen has nothing to do with the senses, but with the kinds of things that come to you when you are alone in the silent bowels of the earth with no light. Which. If this doesn’t sound like the perfect setting for the birth of mysticism and religion, I really don’t know, man. 

And this, this seen, changes the profession from something dangerous and full of fear into something sought-after, that young dwarves volunteer for. And then you’ve got an entire category of people believed to walk between life and death at all times and not really part of the mortal order of things. You enter this profession, your family will kiss you goodbye and think of you as if you’ve left this world. 

And then there’s something that Tolkien doesn’t have - religion as politics. By tradition successful knockermen become kings. And other knockermen become fundamentalists to the point where they decree that the amount of time you spend above ground dictates whether or not you’re a dwarf. Like, literally this one thing would bring into question your own nature and, more importantly, whether or not you would belong to a community. You’ve got debates on modernity and traditionalism, the generational effects of immigration and who should rule an entire people and why. There are mentions of social practices that sound an awful lot like religion - like how when a dwarf dies their tools should be melted so they can never be used by a living one, or the fact that it does not matter if you are literally six feet tall, you can still be a dwarf if you performed certain rituals.

And the fact that all of this happens in one of the City Watch books and is pitted against champion doubter Sam Vimes and it still leaves you as a reader kind of speechless and wowed, is saying a lot. 

I will argue this always and forever: compared to Terry Pratchett, Tolkien is a pretty lazy writer. A lot of what he did strikes you as extraordinary because he tried to do it systematically and on such a sweeping scale. But going into the smaller details of his world-building, I think the only things he’s ever taken 100% seriously are genealogies and made-up grammar. Tolkien does a lot, and I say this as someone who grew up as a fan of his work. But at the level of story-telling, he builds histories, not societies. He writes with the underlying assumption that we as an audience understand how his world works, because we’ve read what he’s read and have some notions that the Shire is pre-industrial England and the whole War of the Ring thing is basically feudal warfare blown out of proportion etc. etc. Tolkien’s world is fixed, lives in its own past, moves on in forms but not in substance. ‘The King has returned’ is really more of an end of history thing, because past that point evil has been vanquished and everyone will live in peace in an ordered world. 

In Terry Pratchett’s writings history only shows up if it has to, sometimes as exposition, rarely as plot, mostly creeping up on you in the form of remarks like ‘Ankh-Morpork is built on Ankh-Morpork’. And this is because Terry Pratchett writes societies, with all that writing societies entails, including religion.

I have actually rarely encountered an author of fiction who takes religion more seriously, because what Terry Pratchett does is treat it as a source of world-organizing principles and by extension of political power. Which, underneath its substance of faith and hope and consolation, is what religion actually evolved as.

[robinade]

I feel like anyone trying to claim that TPratchett doesn’t take dwarf religion seriously hasn’t read The Fifth Elephant. Or should read it again.

[ceruleancynic]

Here’s the pertinent section of TFE:

Vimes saw the images in his mind as Cheery explained…

The miners would clear the area, if they were lucky. And the knockerman would go in wearing layer after layer of chain-mail and leather, carrying his sack of wicker globes stuffed with rags and oil. And his long pole. And his slingshot. Down in the mines, all alone, he’d hear the knockers. Agi Hammerthief and all the other things that made noises, deep under the earth. There could be no light, because light would mean sudden, roaring death. The knockerman would feel his way through the utter dark, far below the surface. There was a type of cricket that lives in the mines. It chirruped loudly in the presence of firedamp. The knockerman would have one in a box, tied to his hat. When it sang, a knockerman who was either very confident or extremely suicidal would step back, light the torch on the end of his pole and thrust it ahead of him. The more careful knockerman would step back rather more, and slingshot a ball of burning rags into the unseen death. Either way, he’d trust in his thick leather clothes to protect him from the worst of the blast. Initially the dangerous trade did not run in families, because who’d marry a knockerman? They were dead dwarfs walking. But sometimes a young dwarf would ask to become one; his family would be proud, wave him goodbye, and then speak of him as if he was dead, because that made it easier. Sometimes, though, knockermen came back. And the ones that survived went on to survive again, because surviving is a matter of practice. And sometimes they would talk a little of what they heard, all alone in the deep mines … the tap-tapping of dead dwarfs trying to get back into the world, the distant laughter of Agi Hammerthief, the heartbeat of the turtle that carried the world. Knockermen became kings.

(Fun fact: Knockers, also knackers, are mythical creatures that live/exist/dwell in mines. There are two schools of thought on the knocker: one holds that he is a malicious spirit who taps on the walls and props of the drift to cause cave-ins, and the other believes him to be a friendly and helpful spirit whose tapping and knocking on the walls is meant to warn the miners that collapse is imminent and to get the hell out. They are sometimes considered to be souls of dead miners, but whether they are tapping to get back into the world or to warn of impending danger is up for discussion.)

This isn’t even going into the whole Things Tak Wrote, or that Tak does not require dwarfs to think of him; he merely requires them to think. This kind of stuff that makes you blink and go o-oh… isn’t limited to the main Discworld books. Read The Amazing Maurice for another wonderful, creeptastic, moving description of religion: people going into the dark, alone, for the good of the clan; hearing things, coming back changed.

Aaaahhh I just fucking love Terry Pratchett ok

[thehornedwitch-deactivated20211]

Pratchett looked at Tolkien’s worldbuilding and his assertion that “The Dwarves of course are quite obviously—wouldn’t you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic” (From a 1964 interview with Dennis Geuroult, that is a quote from Tolkien), took it, shook it around, turned it upside down, scraped out the horrid bits, and went “Well… what if they were?”

The way dwarves think of Tak in Pratchett’s universe is VERY jewish, as is the Haredi/extremely orthodox dwarf belief system vs Hassidic/less orthodox dwarf belief system vs the Reform/Mostly above ground system vs the Reconstructionist/Basically Cheery and her group system. The Question Of Woman Dwarves mirrors very well the debates about women rabbis in modern Jewish culture- the first Bat Mitzvah was not performed until 1922, by the first Reconstructionist Rabbi Mordecai M Kaplan for his daughter Judith Kaplan. Cheery is that first Mitzvah’d dwarf in a sense. She is not un-dwarfish. There’s a lot of modern queer politics read into Cheery’s life and world, but I think we do the story a disservice in not discussing how this is a retelling of the story of Judith Kaplan if Judith were the focus. Dwarves talk about women, they know their women, but women are kept very private and far away from life and not allowed to be both public figures AND women. Judith Kaplan, like Cheery, looked at something traditionally reserved for men and said “That’s mine. I will take this, I will say this is my thing, my woman-mitzvah, for I am a Mitzvah and I deserve to declare to the world that I am both a Jew/Dwarf and a woman.”

Hassidic jews don’t have bat mitzvot, and Haredi jews REALLY don’t have bat mitzvot. When I first read Fifth Elephant I thought it was obvious this was about judaism, and it’s been a wild ride realizing that’s not the general consensus. 

I would be zero percent surprised to learn that Terry might have been an admirer of Kaplan and Reconstructionist Judaism, as it focuses not on g-d, but Judaism as an evolving and living culture and people group that deserves to be preserved not because of the faith alone, but because we are a culture and cultures deserve to live. This is the message at the end of the Fifth Elephant. 

The axe of my grandfather and the menorah of my grandmother sit together, and the dwarves of discworld with their scholar-king-workers nod to the Jews of roundworld, and we light our candles and pray in the dark together. 

A quick note: Reading Cheery’s story as a trans narrative is definitely not wrong, interpretation is important. However, my point is to mention that it is INCREDIBLY important to look at what is, to me, an intentional rescue of Tolkien’s Jew-inspired dwarves through text and subtext, up to and including the focus on music and food that Certain People think is weird and inedible. See: Matzah and people who hate it and think it doesn’t count as foodstuffs. Also the werewolves are nazis who hate dwarves in Fifth Elephant. 

[comfortableenma]

Your regularly scheduled reminder that Terry Pratchett was fucking awesome. Go read Discworld.

[prismatic-bell]

Also?

Let’s get real here when we say “taken seriously.”

I know of a religion that takes tiny little taste-of-nothing rice crackers and places them on your tongue and considers this a huge important ritual. You’re supposed to do the ritual at least once a year, sometimes more, sometimes even as often as once a week. You’re not supposed to eat the crackers any time except when one gets placed on your tongue. The crackers are supposed to take the place of cannibalism in an important ceremony.

… . oh wait, that’s Christianity, and they call it “holy communion.”

ALL RELIGIONS LOOK EQUALLY STUPID WHEN VIEWED FROM FAR AWAY ENOUGH.

(Yes, even the one I belong to. We literally have a holiday where we shake a lemon all over the place to demonstrate how awesome we think our god is. I assure you every single non-Jew reading this just went “I’m sorry you do what now.”)

The religions in Discworld only look weird because you’re not used to them. I bet you don’t question a bit the fact that Christians take a brutal instrument of torture and terrorism, draw it covered in flowers, and then make little chocolates out of it to give to kids, do you?

I must remind you all that Pterry was an atheist. There is no question that he was approaching these religions from that perspective, and that’s why they often seem odd and offputting–because while he might have been very big on the concept of acceptance, he was not big on the idea of religion.

[jackironsides]

I always thought that Pterry wrote about religion a lot more sympathetically than a lot of other Christian or atheist writers. When he included it, it felt like something real. I read a series set in Ancient Egypt, where the main character didn’t believe in the gods, as though religion was an optional adjunct to his life (more as it is now), rather than being a foundational part of how he understood the world, and core to the very culture he lived in. And I suspect it was because the author couldn’t make himself have any fellow-feeling with a polytheist.

The earliest Discworld books don’t have as much in them about religion, or take it as seriously, because they’re engaging with the world on a much more surface level. The first two are mostly parodies of fantasy tropes. But the further he goes on, the more social commentary the books contain, the more religion is featured. He shows that it can have a tremendous damaging effect, because it can. But he also shows that it’s an important force in people’s lives, because it is.

In a lesser writer’s hands, Carrot would probably give up his dwarfishness. ‘I was raised a dwarf, but I always wanted to escape so I could come to the city and be myself. I don’t actually believe in it.’

You could argue that Death’s speech to Susan in Hogfather could be about defining a better atheism. Humans want to believe in something, so if it’s not a god, what is it? Religion makes for an easy way to form community and find a communal purpose. If you don’t have that, what do you stand for? I’ve known atheists whose communal purpose seems to be tearing down religion and religious people. I have a lot less time for that than someone who points out that you don’t have to have a god to make you do good things, and who advocates for others, or volunteers in a soup kitchen, or whatever. Whose communal purpose is being part of their community.

(I was also taught in one of my classics classes that the Greeks believed that, too. People joke about how Greek mythology is filled with bad behaviour, but those stories aren’t supposed to provide moral instruction. That’s what philosophers were for. The gods gave you a brain of your own; it’s up to you to reach for arete and use it.)

I think it’s telling that Small Gods, a book which is one of the more explicitly critical of religion (along with Monstrous Regiment, which is about a different kind of fundamentalism) is also one where the main character is religious, and continues to be so at the end of the book. So much that he’s quoted as a religious figure in at least one other book. And if I recall correctly Pterry said that he had praise about Small Gods from Christians and Muslims about how relatable they found the book. They didn’t find themselves criticised; they saw a criticism of a church where belief is absent, where belief in the god has been replaced with belief in the church. I think plenty of religious people would consider that a concern of their own.

I wonder if part of it is that Pterry is often critical not of having belief in and of itself (although obviously beliefs can be toxic) – it’s often power structures that are criticised. And power structures are not something exclusive to religion. Churches can be dangerous because of the power they wield, and the way they can be used (and often are used) to crush minorities. It’s not one person believing in a god and trying to use that belief to live their life in a better way that’s dangerous. It’s the people who use religion to define others as ‘not real people’ that are dangerous. And they’re not implicitly more dangerous than someone who says others aren’t real people by using tradition, or the law, or someone’s race, or the measurements of their face.

Granny Weatherwax says that sin is when you treat other people as things, and it doesn’t matter much if your justification is religious or political. It’s still wrong. I think that’s one reason why Pterry’s critiques of religion don’t read to me like other atheist writers – plenty of them seem to hold that religion is the only force that does that, rather than one of many justifications that people use for that ‘sin’.

[blueymoons]

Not gonna specifically tag anyone...but reblog if you feel like it and put yours in the tags.

[tripsn-blog]

Smbasswood , The Black Mason Jar.

[narwhalertheimpaler]

This is the most accurate description I’ve ever found, thought it was worth spreading ❀

[tripsn-blog]

There aren't enough notes on this

[wickedsick]

today we post everett true

[lux-astralis]

a few reminders because i’m tired and angry

fandom is a hobby, not a form of activism

adult women aren’t inherently creepy for being in fandom and having hobbies apart from raising babies and doing taxes

the vast majority of people pushing back against the worrying trend of instigating harassment over fictional characters and relationships aren’t incest supporters or pedophiles, actually

liking a m/f ship doesn’t make someone a dirty heterosexual invading your space

preferring gay ships doesn’t make you ‘’woke’’ and good

no one owes you a disclaimer that they are a good person who recognizes that their favorite fictional villain’s actions are evil and that they don’t condone those actions irl

liking a fictional villain is in no way comparable to advocating abuse/murder/genocide/etc and you’re a fucking idiot if you believe that

just because a woman is attracted to a fictional villain doesn’t mean she’s promoting toxic relationships or going to end up in a toxic relationship. assuming women can’t tell fiction and reality apart stinks of internalized misogyny 

some rando’s a/b/o fanfics have none of the level of influence that popular tv shows and movies spreading propaganda have

no one owes you a detailed description of their traumas and mental health problems

abusive relationships are not the same as enemies to lovers ships

y’all need to chill the fuck out over people, relationships, actions and events that don’t actually exist and learn how to enjoy and discuss them like normal people

fandom is a hobby, not a form of activism

feel free to add more

[weaver-z]

In Disney's new movie Hunter we learn that the guy who killed Bambi's mom lost his entire family when a herd of evil deer set his cabin on fire

[tripsn-blog]

Or, ya know, a story about a family that didn't starve through the winter because the dad(the Hunter in the name of the movie) had to hunt animals for food, even though every time he did it, he treated the animal with respect, and felt not only remorse, but maintained a thankful attitude throughout his life for these animals?

Nah....too realistic for how a lot of these homesteaders behaved.

(Don't start on me about they treated other people, because a lot of them behaved properly around others including indigenous people....the government is the one that came up with the horrible shit that happened, and the weak willed and honestly evil people jumped on that bandwagon and destroyed and raped and pilliaged.)

[virginiaisforhaters]

Nadine Abdel-Taif, 10, whose home in Palestine was destroyed by Israeli bombing

[virginiaisforhaters]

[virginiaisforhaters]

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

Palestinian solidarity. Always. End the apartheid, free Palestine.

[breelandwalker]

May the Fourth Be With You

Don’t forget to wear glitter, take your meds, and practice self-care in honor of our dear departed Space Mom.

Blessed Be She Who Drowned In Moonlight, Strangled By Her Own Bra

[accalialionheart]

[ratliker1917]

the fact that pro-monarchy arguments have degenerated, over the past few centuries, from “the king rules by divine right and is accountable to nobody but god”, to “uhm the royals generate a lot of income from tourism” will never stop being extremely funny to me

[nicolauda]

#pretty sure we make money from Versailles even tho we killed the original owners (@cactusepique)

the french have entered the chat

[astrodidact]

[scottsmisadventure]

There's literally already vaccine requirements to enter countries that have diseases/viruses not common in your home country. This isn't even new.

[flirting-with-psychology]

The Passover Story in Memes

My family has an annual tradition of telling the story in a creative way so here it is, told through memes:

[bad-with-emotions-sadly]

Holy heck how does this only have 140-odd notes

[anyawchy]

@savtion

[makhash-pot]

אני לא נושמת

[instamatik]

[determinate-negation]

unfortunate that the united states has been very successful at controlling narratives around word war 2 and positioning itself as the polar opposite of nazism and the main force fighting fascism when america was complicit in the holocaust. not only did american press report positively about hitler and the nazi party up until the end of the 30′s, some publications cooperated with nazi germany, american companies had investments and connections to nazi germany that they maintained until american involvement in the war, and companies like ibm in particular gave nazis the technology necessary to make the holocaust possible in the first place. some company owners themselves had nazi sympathies like henry ford and others just saw it as a business opportunity. the us denied entry to european jewish refugees and deported jewish refugees back to germany, many senators and other government officials during the 1930s openly supported nazism and worked to prevent the us from taking a side in ww2, and during the 30s large pro nazi rallies were held across the us. american eugenics movement, american race laws and american genocide set the model for the holocaust and there shouldnt be any discussion of nazism and the holocaust without also discussing the extent of american complicity in it. 

anyways heres some material on it

ibm and the holocaust

hitlers american friends

ap press cooperation with nazis

hitlers american model

general motors and nazi germany

operation paperclip

us reporting on the rise of fascism

[determinate-negation]

can all the nerds stop fucking tagging this with shit about captain america this is actual real life history and genocide. i dont give a fuck how sad it makes that the reality of your country contradicts with the make believe world about cartoon characters that you vicariously live through instead of having a life

[tripsn-blog]

Agreed.....yeah, we had some anti-fascists over here, but nowhere near enough, and a comic book character didn't swing any tides.

[butchscientist]

liberal family members when a woman cuts her hair very short: I respect your decision but I can’t lie, I think you look better with your hair longer. Is this just an experiment, do you think you’ll grow your hair out after this? Again, I respect your decision, but I do think longer hair looks better than you. I think it is very important that, while I know I have no say in what you do with your hair, I need you to know that I think you look better with your hair long. Don’t be offended, but it is of utmost importance that you understand that you look better to me when you have long hair.

[butchscientist]

I’ve seen several replies along the lines of “you’re confusing liberals and conservatives”, which I’m not. I specified liberal relatives because in my personal experience, conservatives are more likely to just straight up say “your short hair is ugly and you need to grow it out” while liberals will go “I am a good socially conscious person and therefore know I am not supposed to try to dictate other people’s appearance, however I still need to make it very abundantly clear that I think your short hair is ugly in hopes that you’ll get the hint and grow it out”.

[tripsn-blog]

Can confirm.... Conservatives say the same ugly shit and want to tell you what to do...they just say it differently....but it's still the same bullshit.

[thyrell]

"ooh you hate cops but who are you gonna call when you get robbed?" uhhhhh your moms house? a great tragedy has befallen me and i need to have sex immediately

[kineticpenguin]

Every time someone’s like “who are you gonna call when you get robbed?”

1. Know how I know you’ve never been robbed?

2. I am going to call my insurance company and file a claim, the only usefulness a cop has at this point is generating a report number for said insurance company to refer to

3. Seriously all a cop’s gonna do after establishing that the robber/burglar/whoever isn’t there anymore is say “what do you want me to do about it?” and leave

[tripsn-blog]

Or the other standby, "If you think cops are useless, next time call a Meth Head,"

Well, I've known plenty of "Meth Heads", and if were to call them and say I just got robbed and there's at least a $50 finder's fee to get my shit back, they would come into my (then) neighborhood within fifteen minutes, probably with friends hanging onto and out of the car, looking like a bunch of Warboys charging into battle.

I would likely end up with my shit back....and probably quite a few things that were similar looking that they would have to return...

[lazyyogi]