IJBMer Updates

lrdgck · 2015-05-21 18:03:08

^Don't all of them?

Santa as a character in... about any story, when I think of it, sounds like bit hard to pull off as serious. I mean, at least if we count warm family stories as not serious.

vandro · 2015-05-21 19:00:30

Feliz Cumpleaños, ciudadano.

Noimporta · 2015-05-21 19:34:18

This year it feels particularly empty.

You already know the answer

InsanityAddict · 2015-05-21 20:21:15

lrdgck wrote: »

^Don't all of them?
Santa as a character in... about any story, when I think of it, sounds like bit hard to pull off as serious. I mean, at least if we count warm family stories as not serious.

Example?: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9915682/1/The-Last-Christmas

SigurdrifaAnduril · 2015-05-22 10:30:48

@fourteenwings: Enslave the kids. Only they don't see it as exploitation since
quite a few of the kids' relatives can't be found so they work in return for education and shelter. Some of the helpers were originally kids who were taken in by the saint as well. Nicholas' ideas of moral behaviour when it comes to the kids he adopts are essentially still 4th century ideas. Since he's basically an elf his morality is kind of Blue and Orange (elves are humanlike and mostly average human height) but that's because it's so old - fashioned.

@lrdgck: Yeah the modern day image of Santa is kind of hard to make into a serious character. But "my" version of Santa looks and acts more like the historical/legendary Nicholas of Myra. He doesn’t even live at the North Pole but in Turkey and rides a horse or drives a horse-drawn cart instead of driving a reindeer-pulled sleigh. So he's a very different take on Santa (understatement).

glennmagusharvey · 2015-05-22 11:31:25

Stormtroper wrote: »

Today's my birthday.

This year it feels particularly empty.

Happy belated birthday.

Though yeah I feel that way too as I've grown older...it's almost like, don't celebrate my birthday, that just reminds me I'm not a kid anymore.

SigurdrifaAnduril wrote: »

Just sitting around trying to figure
out a couple of assignments. They’re overdue even with an extension

I know that feel, yo.

lrdgck · 2015-05-22 11:46:34

Nicholas of Myra. I'm not sure if this raises fewer issues than plain ole' Santa, but this does sound like he'd work better. And I certainly approve the choice (heh heh).

Now, back to old age.
I've passed that threshold myself... you know, the one when folks call you mister and stuff. Though what most hit me recently was a person declaring oneself old while being the age of my younger bro. Not that he's that much younger. Matter of perception, you know.

SigurdrifaAnduril · 2015-05-22 15:14:48

lrdgck wrote: »

Nicholas of Myra. I'm not sure if this raises fewer issues than plain ole' Santa, but this does sound like he'd work better. And I certainly approve the choice (heh heh).

You probably know that one of his legends was that after his death he took a boy kidnapped by slavers home, dragging him by the hair and flying, on his feast day. There's a whole lot of folklore attached to him, with lots of good story ideas. Up until the early 20th century in the Tyrol and Switzerland he was accompanied by Saint Lucia of Syracuse;

In Tyrol she plays a more graceful part: she brings presents for girls, an office which St. Nicholas is there supposed to perform for boys only.

Saint Lucy, btw, is associated with magic, light and elves. In what I've got worked out so far she's "Mrs. Claus" and the Winter or Midwinter Queen, a ruler of the Svartalfar along with Nicholas and St. Catherine. She has her own personal guard, the Lussiferda.

InsanityAddict · 2015-05-22 20:07:26

>new law is a burqa ban in all but name

>there already was a ban on face-concealing clothing in case of safety issues

>"people need to be able to look each other in the eye in public places, or else you might get situations in which someone might steal a kid when bringing the person home from school"

>there's like perhaps a 150 or so peeps who wear it in a population of 16 million, also what is posture/voice

Why the everloving fuck is this even needed? It's been nothing but a pendulum of whinos and overreaction this year. "Oh noes, wrapped kebab, now I feel unsafe!" "Boo hoo, cartoons portray me in an unflattering manner!" "He insulted the king, that's an insult to the Dutch identity!" "We need to make a countrywide database for people using slurs on social media so they'll never work for the government!" "Oh no, they're tweaking our tradition by leaving it entirely up to the local municipalities whether Pete keeps his blackface or not!" "The muslim mayor of Rotterdam tells people who are so disaffected with Dutch society that they want to join ISIS to fuck off to the caliphate, that's too harsh!"

I wish there was a bleeding heart libertarian party here instead of the Randroids who currently occupy that political space.

SigurdrifaAnduril · 2015-05-23 02:29:59

InsanityAddict wrote: »

>new law is a burqa ban in all but name
>there already was a ban on face-concealing clothing in case of safety issues
>"people need to be able to look each other in the eye in public places, or else you might get situations in which someone might steal a kid when bringing the person home from school"
>there's like perhaps a 150 or so peeps who wear it in a population of 16 million, also what is posture/voice
Why the everloving fuck is this even needed? It's been nothing but a pendulum of whinos and overreaction this year. "Oh noes, wrapped kebab, now I feel unsafe!" "Boo hoo, cartoons portray me in an unflattering manner!" "He insulted the king, that's an insult to the Dutch identity!" "We need to make a countrywide database for people using slurs on social media so they'll never work for the government!" "Oh no, they're tweaking our tradition by leaving it entirely up to the local municipalities whether Pete keeps his blackface or not!" "The muslim mayor of Rotterdam tells people who are so disaffected with Dutch society that they want to join ISIS to fuck off to the caliphate, that's too harsh!"

I wish there was a bleeding heart libertarian party here instead of the Randroids who currently occupy that political space.

How would they even keep track of everyone who used slurs?

InsanityAddict · 2015-05-23 07:47:51

A cyberpolice unit making screenshots of Twitter and Facebook, I kid you not. They want to focus on racists, but other vulnerable groups probably want in on it too. They have no idea how they're going to implement it, but the response was so overwhelmingly negative that it will probably be quietly scrapped come election season.

Update on burqa ban: police spokesman said the law reeks of a symbolic gesture and they're going to enforce it on a case-by-case basis depending on how suspect a situation looks(which basically means never).

lrdgck · 2015-05-23 09:06:57

So you have dumb politicians and sensible police force. That's, like, 50% better than one would hope.

SigurdrifaAnduril · 2015-05-24 01:48:02

Really sunny here in Sydney today. The weather keeps on changing. On Friday I thought it would flood.

Kraken · 2015-05-24 10:12:43

[user deleted]

lrdgck · 2015-05-24 16:02:26

Ah yes, from Sydney as I've just noticed. Plenty of 'em Aussies on the webs, seems like.

In other news, just been vote in the second round. Voting for the right-wing wacko this time. Not gonna hide I don't consider it a rational pick, but hey, told myself some time ago I'm doing it. Reasons are... stuff.

----

Update: seems like the wacko won, heh eh heh heh heh=)

InsanityAddict · 2015-05-25 14:27:34

>Some test subjects turn out to be Jewish and they're having a convo on how to recognize a Jewish nose

I can't stop laughing.

lrdgck · 2015-05-25 21:39:10

Random thought: does Dark Knight Rises sound like bad porn flick title to you too?

SigurdrifaAnduril · 2015-05-26 06:03:23

I'm nearly at the end of my first semester of my first year of uni. And I have an essay due in a few days...

lrdgck · 2015-05-26 19:16:21

There's always some time left to be wasted on the internet, trust me.

glennmagusharvey · 2015-05-27 18:36:01

Well, I certainly never expected Polish politics to show up at Daily Kos Elections: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/27/1387764/-How-the-1815-Congress-of-Vienna-determined-the-outcome-of-last-week-s-Polish-presidential-election

lrdgck · 2015-05-27 19:49:16

Fun, eh? The creepy part is that it isn't even post-WWII border shift (would be blue further west), it's the Russian and Austrian versus Prussian parts.

SigurdrifaAnduril · 2015-05-28 00:03:03

Wow. That Daily Kos article was unexpected.

Also, I've been reading this book by Fridtjof Nansen. It basically put forward the theory that parts of the Vinland sagas are mythic or folkloric; the Norse really did sail to part of North America but the descriptions eg of "Vinland the Good" are based on other sources, as in Skraelings were trolls and the word might even originally mean "fairy" or "troll" or "pygmy". So the Greenlandic and Vinlandic Norse settlers associated the Dorset culture of Greenland and Canada (and the Saami of Norway/Finland/Sweden in Ketils saga haengs) with trolls. Inuit legends associate them with giants. Traditionally trolls and elves were regarded as "other ethnic groups."

lrdgck · 2015-05-28 15:34:12

^ You familiar with Farley Mowat? (Or what was his name.)

And now, a fun fact that I've just learned. Somewhere in the videos thread, there's that Russian "Mad Max" tanker rig. Apparently it belongs to a biker club. Geddit? Biker club, and they get their own war rig. It's like, all they're waiting for is a nuclear war, everything else's already in place.

SigurdrifaAnduril · 2015-05-28 23:11:20

^Nope.

Maybe they're a survivalist biker club.

lrdgck · 2015-05-29 09:12:34

Canadian dude who wrote about Norse settlers in Greenland and Vinland. Had some unorthodox views on stuff like where were the Vinland settlements located. He also came up with a theory - this is pretty much why I thought of him when you mentioned weird interpretations of the sagas - that some awkward statements that show up a couple of times in the text, actually speak of Celtic Christians who fled west before the Vikings.

SigurdrifaAnduril · 2015-05-29 11:25:02

lrdgck wrote: »

Canadian dude who wrote about Norse settlers in Greenland and Vinland. Had some unorthodox views on stuff like where were the Vinland settlements located. He also came up with a theory - this is pretty much why I thought of him when you mentioned weird interpretations of the sagas - that some awkward statements that show up a couple of times in the text, actually speak of Celtic Christians who fled west before the Vikings.

Ah, thanks. I didn't know that. I've heard of Celtic Christians (Papar) in connection with Iceland.

Also, my dad works in Singapore, where some of my relatives live. He just got back this morning and he's going to be here till Tuesday.

InsanityAddict · 2015-05-29 20:33:55

>old money frat using Colin Cassidy in their intro week vid

I'll laugh if they have to sell another one of their buildings for that.

SigurdrifaAnduril · 2015-05-30 03:00:27

^Can you explain?

InsanityAddict · 2015-05-30 06:35:16

They routinely go broke every few years, until they're bailed out by the rich alumni, sometimes by selling one of their houses. For this year's fresher introductory week, the five big student associations each make an intro movie. This year, Minerva forked over a shitload of cash to make Colin Cassidy do the narration.

SigurdrifaAnduril · 2015-05-31 23:10:41

^Thanks.

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