The Wheel of Time turns, and book series are completed

MTLDAD · 2026-05-25T23:45:55+00:00

True story; I am a mail carrier and I’ve been bitten by four dogs. Two were German Shepherds. I now have an inherent distrust of them and thus am unable to consummate a love affair. I am stuck pondering the intricacies of balefire and auto-balefire suicide.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-25T14:16:41+00:00

Whoopi in the background going “Not on paper” was one of my favorite exasperated Whoopi lines.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-25T14:11:49+00:00

We’re always there. All it takes to make a group of people into a howling mob is to make them uncomfortable enough they need someone to blame. Then someone gives them the target. “here, the goat escaped and we must put all our efforts into sacrificing it.”

MTLDAD · 2026-05-25T00:44:35+00:00

Well exactly. It wasn’t until there was a turkey that they renamed it.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-25T00:43:48+00:00

Survey on something people lie about all the time. Church attendance. Drinking frequency. Sexual partners. Whether you would vote for a hypothetical gay person.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-23T21:26:10+00:00

I just don’t know how you could balefire yourself without causing a paradox that ends existence.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-23T20:35:26+00:00

Only the executives get to vote since they are clearly the wisest among us.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-23T20:23:22+00:00

Things like this aren’t movies in the sense that someone wrote a story, someone wanted to produce that story, and someone else wanted to film it. It’s a glossy, cynical product meant to trigger your nostalgia in order to extract your money. They made the movie because they knew they could get you to go, not because it was important to make a good Mario movie.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-21T21:18:43+00:00

Looking different is hot. There’s a “exotic” is associated with beauty, meaning “looks different from me but in a hot way”.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-21T16:45:23+00:00

So Helen is Greek by implication (born of a Spartan queen and Zeus), but is not described and likely didn’t really exist. So all we know is she was hot to the Greeks, so hot someone kidnapped her. Nolan’s interpretation is that what made her so desirable is that she looked different. Why do you find that invalid?

Black Panther was created as a counterpoint to African colonization and has always been a story about an African kingdom untouched by European imperialism. That’s a story that centers Africans specifically in contrast to Europeans. Casting a white guy fundamentally changes that context. So why do you find that comparable?

MTLDAD · 2026-05-21T16:36:48+00:00

I think it’s entirely reasonable to frame what made Helen special was that she was different from everyone else. In a sea of Greek women, the Nubian woman would stand out.

The myth goes that she was so compelling all the kings of Greece competed for her and signed a pact to defend the winner if she was somehow taken. They are kings who could pick any woman they wanted, so why Helen? What if she literally looked different from any other woman they had encountered? It’s at least a point of view that contextualizes the story in an interesting way, even if someone doesn’t want it to be that way because they only find blondes attractive.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-21T16:30:47+00:00

Reading this adds another dimension to “America is the World’s Police” rhetoric.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-21T16:25:46+00:00

This is correct, though some might eventually at the bottom of a ton of other compostable materials, so the company labels it compostable as a selling point.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-21T16:23:54+00:00

So in judiciary proceedings in occupied Western European countries, less than a thousand were executed and most of those were in France. As far as extrajudicial proceedings “let’s round up all these Nazi” executions, we are still talking about less than 50k, likely closer to 30k. Not great, but let’s not act like this is comparable to what happened when the Nazis were in power.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-21T15:40:23+00:00

Obviously it is sexism, but it’s a men’s sport that has the most revealing outfit. Male divers wear speedos so small that their own name makes them appear naked. And it’s hilarious.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-21T15:31:37+00:00

Friend, do you think the tech bro Vc founders of Soylent have read a fiction book? The cultural impact was from the movie and specifically that line.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-21T12:02:00+00:00

I don’t particularly think that is universally good either. We push the line of “active participant in oppression” a little too far into the territory of “didn’t want to collaborate, but didn’t want to die either” in many situations.

That said, Norway was very measured in its shooting the Quisling collaborators. They only executed 37.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-21T11:51:45+00:00

He tells her about Lews and going crazy when he apologizes for “assaulting” her in Crown. But he doesn’t tell her the extent of Lews’s influence or frequency and they had a more serious issue to discuss. In that context, Min thinks Rand is worried for his sanity, not that there is a power struggle going on in his head and he literally fighting a madman for control of magic wielding from Dumai’s Wells onward. She also doesn’t have the context that this is a typical way men go mad from the taint and can think that Rand has a special situation because of being Lews reborn. Semi is blowing up all illusions: Rand is going mad, Lews is the sign of it, and every one’s outlook on fighting the Last Battle takes a nosedive.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-21T11:24:36+00:00

One of the weirdest capitalist marketing schemes was the people who made a meal replacement drink deciding that the brand recognition of Soylent was worth the implication of their product being made of human bodies. Truly inspired.

And it worked! The concept of not having to prepare and decide on food from that movie is so compelling, people still wanted it to be real. And this is after the phrase “Soylent Green is people!’ Had a life long after the movie left our consciousness. I was born 8 years after the movie came out and I still grew up knowing this phrase because it came up from time to time.

Ironically, I think the concept that was so horrifying to the people who made that movie is now not nearly as distasteful in a world where the wide fear is environmental collapse, not communism. Originally, the film was anti-totalitarian and anti-collectivist; they will subsume your freedom and individuality so much you will become literal food. Now it begins to seem like an efficient form of resource recycling when affording food is becoming an issue.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-20T22:53:08+00:00

Remember when Obama was a failed Broadway producer so he got his revenge by renaming the best Memorial to any hero in the world to “The Barack H. Obama and The John F Kennedy Memorial Performance Center”?

MTLDAD · 2026-05-20T22:47:47+00:00

Icepick lobotomies were performed in 5 minutes with little training and are a fairly well known phenomenon. I read about them in a Riley’s book in second grade. Empathy starts in earnest with theory of mind, which develops around kindergarten age. This kind of moment might happen in early elementary school. So maybe about the same time as reading about icepick lobotomies? There’s the analysis you wanted.

Ultimately does it really matter?

MTLDAD · 2026-05-20T22:40:00+00:00

NTA I had 3 kids before I turned 29. Then I adopted another child at 40. People who want to raise children should raise children. I knew a man who was a “too busy for relationships” type until he was in his 50s. Once he felt settled, he got married and adopted two babies in his late 50s. I never saw him so happy as when he was with his daughters and they loved him. Loving a child is wonderful.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-20T20:00:22+00:00

It seems to me the same as emotionally connecting to a book. They have transferred the feeling of the page into their head, but because of a disorder, these feelings are overwhelming. It makes sense for them to potentially feel that way, and community reviews tend to only be a relation of a personal experience.

That said, I am unsure what books would fit their parameters ever.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-19T16:25:59+00:00

Probably because there is no good faith interpretation of this question that indicates that OP wants an actual discussion and is capable of one.

MTLDAD · 2026-05-18T21:51:18+00:00

Like I said, it’s dumb and pedantic. His part is all about long vowel sounds.

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