u/soozerain

Sotomayor writes the majority opinion and is joined by Alito, Kavanaugh, Jackson and Thomas against Gorsuch, Kagan, Roberts and Barrett. I’m listening to the case audio on Oyez and I’m surprised at the twists and turns it’s taking. I’m not a lawyer of course, nor do I pretend at being one, but I do love hearing extremely well educated professionals debating each other over arcane matters of constitutional law, federalism and separation of powers.

This is a crazy ass case right? I’ve never seen such team-ups before!

If any at all. I’m not a historian and perhaps there are some larger conceptual issues with grafting a concept forged in colonial North America onto late imperial China. But I can’t help but be tempted when one considers the wildly different, yet eerily similar, experiences of native peoples under both Chinese (be it Qing, KMT or Communist) and American govts.

I’m more familiar with the 18th and 19th centuries so I’d volunteer Guangxi, Guizhou and perhaps Yunnan as prime examples. But then again, I could be wrong!

I’ll go first with a few of mine.

• Daisey Jones and the Six - “Its badly written fanfiction about a lame band!” I enjoyed the structure of a faux oral history and the attention The structure and interview style format of the book really lends itself to a full cast reading which, luckily, it got on Audible. It’s peppered with tasteful references to the 60’s and 70’s music scene. And it’s clear the author did her research in writing the character of Billy because she uses a paraphrased line from Bruce Springsteen’s memoir about how bands don’t work well as democracies. I also appreciate the characters of Daisey, Camilla and the keyboardist whose played by Judy Greer in the audiobook. They all feel like real, distinct people. Each with their own sets of likes, dislikes and goals. Even Camilla, who, out of all the characters, was at the most risk of being either a cardboard cutout, a harpy or a passive tradwife waiting for her man to get back from tour.

• The Silent Patient - “Anyone with two brain cells could see the twist coming from a mile away!” I enjoyed the twist and the mystery for the course of the whole book and was very surprised. This was also a great listen as well. It had only one narrator but the man’s presence and performance more then made up for the small cast.

• Ishmael - “Awww, that’s cute! It’s babies first philosophy book. Lol. Call us when you have something serious to read.” This blew my mind as a senior in high school and actually helped me with a lot of anxiety I had about the state of the world.

In all three cases I was shocked and slightly hurt to realize this book I’d thought was great (or at least fun to read) was actually hot dogshit lol. It didn’t change my opinions on them but it is funny looking back on it. I find the grey zone between finishing a book, forming an opinion on the text before talking to anyone else about it really interesting. It’s not bad or good. It’s just funny to see how diverse and wide ranging our tastes can be. For what it’s worth, I don’t think any of those criticisms are invalid. They just didn’t change how I felt about the books.

I’m curious to see if the phenomenon of business owners, in general, favoring economic liberalism through conservative political parties is a broader trend in Western Europe the way it is in the United States or if it’s more of an American phenomenon.

I’d also take examples from South American or Mexican context too.

Broadly speaking, it feels like the "blood sports" we associate with antiquity in the West — Gladiator fights in the Coliseum, Chariot races in Byzantium, jousting tourneys in Medieval England — seem relatively absent in China. This isn't to say that they never had them -- I've seen some of the old Chinese chariots and they're amazing —  but it never seemed to develop into a deeper obsession the way it did in the West. Confucian gentlemen, while not averse to fighting a war on behalf of their Emperor or for the sake of defending their home province, took pride more in the fulfillment of their military duty rather than an appreciation for their skills as soldiers. 

The phrase/saying:

> "You don't hammer good iron into nails and you don't hammer good men into soldiers." 

Has come up a few times in my research and I’m wondering if that’s a key for why the connection between violence and masculine virtue seemed to fade so early. It was of course a necessary evil but not something someone should take great pride in.

So, random fact: China, or the nation that would become China, has waged a long, bitter struggle against the practice of female infanticide stretching back to at least the 18th century. Female infanticide broadly means sex selective birth practices in which parents would smother, drown or expose newborn daughters until they’d died. Because of their perceived burden and the preference across society for male heirs. This wasn't something authorities in China — meaning magistrates, govt officials and even the emperor himself — wanted to happen. Speaking in purely generalized terms, they didn't value women but they didn't believe infants should be needlessly killed either. To try and prevent this you saw various grassroots efforts on the part of educated elites to teach the poor and illiterate as well as the learned middle classes what would happen to parents that killed their newborn daughters.

Widely published folktales, probably gathered or at least inspired by real events, told stories of the grisly punishments awaiting such misdeeds. Mothers would give birth to hideous abominations, fathers would watch the sons they'd chosen over their daughters starve from evil curses, parents would be reincarnated as pigs and dogs to be slaughtered just as callously as they had their own children. All of it uniquely Chinese in its telling, approach to morality and in recognition of a problem. All of it extremely fascinating and ripe for interpretation in movies, tv or literature and yet there seems to be a gaping hole instead. This is in large part do to the censorship laws of the Chinese state. They turn a jaundiced eye to movies that are hyper gory, supernatural or horror -- outside of adaptations to Journey to the West — and this naturally suppresses creative output from filmmakers looking to make their version of Train to Busan or Ringu.

It does make me wonder....whose palms did Warner Brothers have to grease to get Final Destination Bloodlines released there last year.

In most firsthand civilian accounts of the Warlord Era, Japanese Invasion, and Civil War that I’ve read there seems to be a running theme theft, robbery, rape, and, for the young men, conscription by Nationalist forces well into 1947.

In stark contrast to that was the testimony from many on marked discipline, respect and overall control of Communist Armies in conquered cities and towns. Even Muslim villages and their mosques were given, mostly, good treatment. Not unlike Tito’s partisans, albeit in wildly different — not to mention smaller — context, they seem to benefit less from the persuasiveness of their Marxist platform then from the moral bankruptcy of their opponents.

However, the KMT weren’t fools. Chiang had held his own against the brunt of the Japanese Army. He knew the value of having troops that didn’t rape and pillage. So, why was their reputation so poor up to the flight from the mainland?

I just got back from seeing Coyote vs Acme and it was one of the trailers right before the feature presentation started. It’s so Halloween coded it’s not even funny. Everything from the plot, to the protagonist, to the music, to the animation. It all screams Halloween.

So, why is it being released nearly a month later? Is it scheduling? Are they still doing VFX? Am I totally off base and this actually screams November? What gives?

This is kind of an embarrassing confession cause it sounds so stupid but I as an American I’d literally never heard the name Keir outside the context of the show. So I thought it was just an unique name the show came up with to show how the Eagans are really weird. Like Jame lol.

To be clear, this isn’t a hard and fast rule through every dynasty but it does kind of feel like the Mediterranean Sea played a larger role in early Western civilizations like Greece, Persia, Rome and Egypt then the South China Sea did for early Qin, Zhou or Han Dynasties. That role is filled by the steppe, at least in the beginning. But I admit I could be totally off base. I could certainly see it being true for the various Vietnamese dynasties, Thailand or Burma but less so for China.

Thoughts?

Rhaposody in Blue, the Firebird Suite, the Flamingo Yo-Yo short, (ignore my crude name for it, the music and animation is fantastic) even the Donald Duck Noah’s Arc short. In my opinion they’re all the more then a match for Night On Bald Mountain or Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Yes, I’ll grant you Fantasia 2000 is not nearly as consistent a film as the first nor does it have quite so stylish an opener as the first, but it still stands tall on its own merits. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I will say that this was my first Fantasia. I was born in 96 and spent most of my childhood under the Eisner era of Disney. So yes, this could just be nostalgia talking.

But I still find the animation, the music, the storytelling, the visuals — my god, this visuals — just impeccable from beginning to end. Firebird in particular. I’ve never seen flames depicted like that before or since. They move like liquid, like wind, like its living being with vengeance in its heart. Lol the burnings looks so vindictive and personal and it imbues it with a real sense of menace. Rhapsody in Blue I credit with introducing me to jazz and New York city. To this day, more then two decades later, the glissando that opens the song and the short is branded on my mind. At least once a year or more the melody will pop into head my head and I’ll have to go listen to it again.

All in all 8/10 film imo and I really hope I love to see Fantasia 2060.

So it’s been some years since I’ve listened to the audiobook version of The People in the Trees but I remember feeling taken by the writing, the flair and style — the faux memoir was a brilliant narrative tool and the footnotes littered throughout the story give it a more “scholarly” feel — and finally, the overall plot.

The inciting incident for the whole story is the efforts of a friend/colleague of the disgraced protagonist — Doctor Abraham Norton Perina — to clear his name. He does this by publishing the Doctor’s own, unfinished memoir in hopes of setting the record straight. The reason the “good” doctor is in disgrace is the accusations of sexual abuse on the part his adopted children.

I understand the symbolism at play here and what Yanagihara is trying to say about capitalism, western culture, pollution, environmental degradation, imperialism and white supremacy. It’s clear the sexual abuse Perina is guilty of is supposed to be seen as a bad thing, a very direct metaphor of sorts for the violation of the developing world and the twisting of their cultures, but Yanagihara remains mum on the abuse that “inspired” his actions. Which is taken from a manhood ritual seen on the Ivu’vu.

That where I have the issue: she never reckons with what the abuse means outside the context of the West. She normalizes and seems to casually accept the claims of the People that their version sexual abuse is normal and right. It’s nonjudgmental to the point of parody.

At least as far as I can tell, she seems to take less issue with the act itself as with the act being done by a white, anglo-Saxon male in the west. Yanagihara seems to accept it as a natural and normal part of their culture but at the same time your critique of sexual abuse loses a lot of its bite if you make it conditional on the time and perpetrator.

What am I missing here? Is there an added element I’m not appreciating?

So it’s been some years since I’ve listened to the audiobook version of the story but I remember feeling quite taken by the writing, the style — the faux memoir was a brilliant narrative tool and the footnotes littered throughout the story give it a more “scholarly” feel — and the overall plot.

One thing did bother me after I finished and that was Hanya Yanagihara’s unwillingness to reckon with the abuse at the heart of the novel. The inciting incident for the whole story is the efforts of a friend/colleague of the disgraced protagonist — Doctor Abraham Norton Perina — to clear his name. He does this by publishing the Doctor’s own, unfinished memoir in hopes of setting the record straight.

I understand the symbolism at play here and what Yanagihara is trying to say about capitalism, western culture, pollution, environmental degradation, imperialism and white supremacy. It’s clear the sexual abuse Perina is guilty of is supposed to be seen as a bad thing, a very direct metaphor of sorts for the violation of the developing world and the twisting of their cultures, but Yanagihara remains mum on the abuse that “inspired” his actions. Which is taken from a manhood ritual seen on the Ivu’vu.

At least as far as I can tell, she seems to take less issue with the act itself as with the act being done by a white, anglo-Saxon male in the west. Yanagihara seems to accept it as a natural and normal part of their culture but at the same time your critique of sexual abuse loses a lot of its bite if you make it conditional on the time and perpetrator.

What am I missing here? Is there an added element I’m not appreciating?

I’m curious because I just rewatched Apocalypto for the first time in over a decade and man, does it still slap. Great movie. But I also know that it was critiqued by historians and archaeologists for a racist, overly bloodthirsty portrayal of the Mayan peoples. Human sacrifice — the argument went — was an infrequent occurrence among the maya and it rarely provoked the level of excitement depicted on films. People took issue with both the content and the way it was portrayed.

However, I feel like I’ve read multiple papers published in the 20 years since its release showing that yes indeed human sacrifice was quite common among the Maya. Wars for both conquest, political control and sacrificial victims was a regular feature of life in the years leading up to Spanish conquest

But this is an amateur history buffs understanding from google scholar. What do you guys think?