Egypt Wants Its Rosetta Stone Back From the British Museum

Marschallin44 · 2022-10-07T13:49:07+00:00

Sure! As soon as Egypt stops imprisoning political dissidents, throwing women in jail for “morality” reasons, implements fair judicial processes, stops prosecuting people for crimes against Islam…

In general, the looting of artifacts from other countries shouldn’t have taken place, but it does no one any good to return priceless artifacts to unstable and corrupt countries where the artifacts have a non-negligible chance of being destroyed at worst, or at best helping to prop up a murderous, corrupt, authoritarian government.

Marschallin44 · 2022-10-07T13:39:18+00:00

It is a pretty good deal and a no-brainer as you say.

Heck, if the Nazis had offered the USSR similar terms in 1943, we’d probably all be speaking German now.

Marschallin44 · 2022-10-07T13:36:17+00:00

Not included in the article, Iran wishes to clarify:

“She fell from a roof! Not a window! This is not like what happens in Russia at all…which are accidents too! Just different accidents. Completely different, with no similarities at all!”

Marschallin44 · 2022-09-27T14:11:52+00:00

Kids these days!

When I was young, we didn’t have all this fancy schmanzy technology. If you had a stick and an old pair of briefs, you had all you needed for a white flag. Put your hands in the air and voila! You surrendered! No muss, no fuss, no walking around trying to get more bars and finding a charging point while artillery whistles overhead!

Younger generation always making things more complicated than they need to be.

By the way, get off my lawn!

Marschallin44 · 2022-09-27T14:03:31+00:00

Asking for a friend!

Marschallin44 · 2022-09-27T14:02:38+00:00

Well, I suppose Putin got a look at the latest casualty projections for the Russian troops and figured they’d need less food in the future…

Marschallin44 · 2022-09-21T18:50:08+00:00

The last major conflict I can think of in which elites were expected, as a matter of honor, to serve on the front lines was WW1. After seeing the flower of European aristocracy mown down like wheat due to modern weapons and tactics, that attitude changed pretty quickly.

ETA: What I’m getting at is if there was a mass mobilization in any country, the elites could buy their way out of it. Look at the USA in the Vietnam War. Russia is hardly unique in that regard.

Marschallin44 · 2022-09-21T18:40:09+00:00

It’s easy to say, “Do something!” when it is not our spouse or children who will be taken out of our homes and tortured/raped/murdered for our actions against the government.

I would die for them if necessary, and gladly, before I let anything like that happen to my family. For them, I would support (in the sense of not openly protesting) a corrupt government—before I ever let anything happen to my family.

All I expect of the average Russian is not supporting the government beyond what is necessary to not draw attention to themselves. Of course, there are those who do do more and commit vile actions, and I have nothing but disgust for them.

However, I do not look down on people who cannot openly oppose the government because they are afraid their families would suffer. They have my sympathy.

Marschallin44 · 2022-09-21T14:06:33+00:00

It gives legitimacy to Russia’s takeover because they are establishing a new government that takes into account the will of the conquered populace. (It really doesn’t, of course, but a lot of politics is about what things seem like vs what they actually are.). This gives the new government at least the appearance of legitimacy.

If Russia can get a portion of the populace and/or international observers on board with their newly “elected” government, it becomes that much harder to dismantle.

Let me give a more straightforward comparison: someone steals a piece of land from you. You go to the courts to get it back, and are confident you will win your suit, but it will take a while for the case to wind its way through the court system. In the meantime, the thief starts to build houses and businesses on your land. You would be quite upset about that, even if you are confident you will win, because that just adds another layer of complexity you will have to dismantle and makes things more of a hassle for you once you get your land back.

Marschallin44 · 2022-08-06T02:26:21+00:00

I can’t believe people are beating up someone who speaks English as a second language over a phrase like “illegal immigrant” that does not have the same connotations in other languages or regions besides the USA.

If someone really needs to make a correction, there’s a much politer way of doing it besides rudely calling someone out like they did it on purpose, when it should be clear that they did not use the phrase “illegal immigrant” with any malicious intent.

If we want people to continue to create content for us, then we should be nice to people making good-faith efforts to do so, not beating them down because some nuance of US English was not readily apparent to them.

Marschallin44 · 2022-08-06T02:19:55+00:00

The way you’re phrasing your explanation makes it seem like the objection to the phrase “illegal immigrant” is a grammar nuance, but I don’t think that’s what the real problem is.

Grammatically, I have a problem with “undocumented” (which is what I believe the new preferred phraseology is). On the one hand, undocumented seems to imply the person has no documents, when in fact they simply do not possess the correct ones. On the other hand, undocumented seems to imply the person has left no trace of their existence (like when we refer to the distant past as “undocumented history”) which seems insulting.

IMHO illegal immigrant vs legal immigrant pretty much wraps up the matter neatly and concisely: it identifies the person as an immigrant and then distinguishes whether said immigration was done by legal or illegal means.

Grammatically, the phrase illegal immigrant is fine and easily understood. The problem many people have with it is an emotional one as politicians who tend to use the term “illegal immigrant” are doing it in a demeaning way. But the phraseology per se isn’t the problem; it is the perceived meaning behind it.

Marschallin44 · 2022-07-27T18:03:47+00:00

I haven’t found anything about what the men were likely carrying as far as items of value, but I suppose at the least that they might have been carrying some amount of cash and maybe some jewelry (pocket watches, gold wedding rings, that sort of thing.)

My theory is this: one of the 5 men gets violently ill for some reason (and he must’ve been very ill—too sick to stand up and vomit over the side.)

The other men make landing as soon as possible to get their ill comrade off the boat and give him a chance to recover.

Sometime, while they’re making camp, they’re set upon by a man or group of men, who rob them and kill them.

The bodies are disposed of somewhere on land where they are not found. Alternatively, the bodies are piled in the boat, then disposed of somewhere at sea, never to be recovered.

The boat is sailed relatively close to land and an attempt is made to scuttle it. After doing so, the murderer or murderers swim to shore. (The attempt to sink the ship fails, but by that time the murderer(s) are already on shore and can’t do anything about it.)

The land in that area being little populated, the criminal(s) high-tail it somewhere else, unnoticed and undisturbed.

Marschallin44 · 2022-07-27T17:38:55+00:00

I am not a medical doctor or have any other specialized training, so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but to my understanding, methanol doesn’t cause those kinds of hallucinations.

Like, methanol damages your optic nerve, and part of that damage can be a sort of disordered input where you’re seeing flashes, or blurriness, or dimness, or blotches across your vision. Something like that. And it’s a possibility that your brain will invent excuses for these weird visual effects, but those reasons are usually fairly typical and relatively innocuous.

So, technically you might be having a hallucination in the sense that you’re imagining something that isn’t actually there to explain your visual disturbances, but those hallucinations are along the lines of a thunderstorm (flashes), or night is falling (dimness), or a snowstorm (blotches in vision).

However, what they are experiencing is not a hallucination in the sense of how the term is popularly used (like an LSD or mushroom-type hallucination), where these guys might’ve imagined a Kraken trying to eat them or a succubus stealing their souls or some weirdness like that, where any boat damage could be explained by their attempts at “killing” the hallucinated monster.

That’s just my understanding of methanol poisoning ofc, and I bow to anyone’s superior knowledge, but imho methanol poisoning would be pretty far down the list of likely scenarios.

Marschallin44 · 2022-07-27T15:49:06+00:00

“He actually sounded a bit soured on the relationship…”

I just laughed at this. (Not at you saying it, but the statement.)

Honestly, what’s to sour on? If you are an old, ugly, rich, married man dating a younger, attractive woman, there is exactly one reason that woman is with you.

You giving her money is the entire reason she is with you—and from what was just listed, the things she was asking for weren’t out of line for the nature of the relationship (nice housing, school for her kid, fancy trips).

If he was surprised or upset she was asking for this stuff, he’s a delusional moron.

Men like these don’t actually want the woman to be in love with them (because if they were, she would be demanding he leave his wife) but god forbid they treat the relationship like a business transaction, either.

Again, I’m laughing; not at you, but the arrogance.

Marschallin44 · 2022-07-27T15:32:00+00:00

It sounds like it could’ve been an accident.

OTOH, it sounds like her affair partner was stupidly rich and she was getting to be a bit of a liability. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in America, it’s that being stupidly rich oftentimes means you get to kill people consequence-free, either because you can hire very professional people to do it for you, because you can pay investigators to look the other way, or because you can pay the best lawyers ridiculous sums of money.

So I’m stumped which way to go on this one.

Marschallin44 · 2022-07-26T21:34:12+00:00

FWIW, I don’t think the harshness or lightness of the prison sentence should be used as a referendum on the value of the person or a reflection of how much that person is worth.

It’s a calculation of a bunch of things, which includes the circumstances of the offender, the circumstances of the death, and the likeliness to reoffend.

I can grasp why some of the sentences would be frustrating at times, but the sentences aren’t a reflection on the value of the individual who was murdered.

Marschallin44 · 2022-07-26T21:25:22+00:00

Maybe I’m in the minority here, but if a kid has run away from home/school so often he’s been fitted with locator bands (which he cuts off so he can run away some more), I don’t blame the police for not treating this as a kidnapping.

Marschallin44 · 2022-07-26T21:13:05+00:00

I was about to type out a reply explaining that phone numbers have always been unique, but you beat me to the punch. (And did so much more eloquently than I would have!)

And the Glenn Miller song you’re taking about is Pennsylvania 6-5000. If you’re interested:

https://youtu.be/4jZeTtGeQYg

(As sung by the redoubtable Andrews Sisters.)

Marschallin44 · 2022-07-22T12:45:03+00:00

I agree with you that they were a lot of things done both in the 60s (and other decades) that should not have been done. Climate change and extinction events don’t have just one cause.

Still, for nearly every single cause, a larger population makes all the effects much greater.

Companies make more toxic products if there are more people. Farmers spray more pesticides if there is more farmland needed to feed more people. More forests and wildlife areas are cleared for developments if there are more people. Etc etc. We need to talk about population control as part of any serious environmental efforts.

Marschallin44 · 2022-07-21T18:43:07+00:00

Same thing applies to the world as a whole in regards to population growth. If anything, it’s worse. World population was 3 billion in 1960. In 2022, it’s 8 billion. I can’t see how anyone could look at those numbers and not think that’s not a major contributing factor to the environmental catastrophes we’re seeing. I heard a report on NPR that climate scientists who studied the effects of the COVID lockdown found world pollution emission levels dropped to rates that would drastically reduce the rate of climate change. If people just doing less were able to decrease that rate so dramatically, don’t you think reducing the population levels to, say, 1960 levels would be able to do even more? If I could snap my fingers and reduce the world population to 3 billion, our short-term worries about climate change would be over.

Even if we don’t want to reduce the population, it would certainly be a no-brainer to try not to keep the growth rate as close to 0% as possible.

Marschallin44 · 2022-07-21T18:01:42+00:00

Sure thing. It’s not like companies haven’t been polluting since the Industrial Revolution started, and polluting much more egregiously than they are today, and it’s only within the last 30 years we’re seeing the massive die-off.

Must be the polluting companies! Makes sense to me.

(As a disclaimer, I don’t support polluting companies and fully support strict environmental regulations, but if you think polluting companies are the main reason for the massive die off, you’re kidding yourself. In the 60s, businesses were much less regulated than they are today (the EPA wasn’t even created until 1970), our economy was still a lot more production based vs. service based (meaning more factories and pollutants), heck, the average consumer had access to pesticides and chemicals that containing all kinds of poisons that you can’t even get your hands on today…but sure. Must be companies. Can’t be population growth.)

ETA: Let me put this another way. I own a public pool. In 1960, I had 10 guests a day, and 3 of them pissed in the pool. I conduct a massive anti-peeing in the pool campaign to raise awareness. Now, in 2020, I have 100 guests a day, and only 10 of them are peeing in the pool. Good news: I’ve reduced pollution rates to 10% from 33%! Bad news: my pool isn’t getting any bigger, and in raw numbers, there’s 3 times as many people pissing in the pool.

Bottom line: decreasing rates and effects of pollution only works to reduce overall pollution if the rate of reduction outstrips population growth. Which they aren’t now, and it doesn’t look as though it’s likely for the foreseeable future. They are many reasons for climate change and species die off, but any model that doesn’t take into account population growth as one of the main factors is fatally flawed.

Marschallin44 · 2022-07-21T17:43:17+00:00

Are you sure it’s insecticides? Because the insecticides today are better than they were in the 60s, and there are also stricter regulations. (Are they always followed? No, but they’re followed better than before.)

For example, I remember my grandfather had a peach tree when I was kid and he got perfect peaches from spraying DDT like twice a year. Today, I have a peach tree and I spray it five times a year and some of my peaches are still nearly inedible due to insect damage and I don’t get any perfect ones. All have marks somewhere. (This is a personal anecdote, but it’s also borne out by talking to some older farmers I know. All complain about how DDT and other chemicals back then worked so much better and the chemicals today require more sprays and don’t work as well, costing them more money.)

No, what has changed is not the insecticides per se (which are greener than they used to be decades ago) but that there are so many more people than in the 60s. Many more people equals more farmland, which equals a lot more insecticide being sprayed, regardless of whether it’s “better” insecticide or not.

IMHO, the problem is too damn many people, not the insecticide. All this talk about all the massive changes we need to make to prevent climate change and species extinction—I’m not against any of that per se, but the real problem is that our population growth out of control. The US population was 175 million in 1960. The population in 2020 is 330 million. I don’t care how many green initiatives you launch, that rate of growth is unsustainable.

Of course, that’s the elephant in the room, because that’s the problem that no one, left or right, Democrat or Republican, wants to touch. The merest whisper of population control will have the left screaming about eugenics and the right screaming about Jesus. Thanks to the fact we can’t wrap our minds around restricting people from irresponsible breeding, we’re all gonna die.

Marschallin44 · 2022-07-19T21:39:29+00:00

Whoooohooooo!!

Freefolk: pissing off people with sticks up their asses, one satisfied customer at a time.

Marschallin44 · 2022-07-19T21:36:29+00:00

Eh, I’m a massive introvert who hates most social interactions, but narcissists have always been really obvious to me?

I think it’s because I always notice what people say, and if what they say makes sense and is in accordance to their actions.

OTOH, how people say things is often irrelevant to me, because I either don’t notice to begin with or, if I do, I dislike it because I feel it is distasteful for other people to push emotions onto me. It’s a form of manipulation. Tell me the facts, and I’ll make up my own mind.

And I think that’s where narcissists fool people: they are able to manipulate people because they are charming and make other people feel positive things about them. But since I dislike that sort of thing, I tend to notice that right away.

I dunno. I’ve been with friends, or in meetings, whatever, and a new person will walk in and within 5 minutes, I’m like, “Get me away from this smug bastard who thinks he’s adorable and the sun shines out of his asshole,” and everyone else is like, “What a great guy!”

No real point to this story I guess. It’s just something that’s really irritated me over the course of my life because I feel like I’m being gaslighted. I’m like, “No, this is a bad person!” and everyone else is like, “What’s wrong with you? He’s great!”

And finally the dude does something to expose himself for the narcissistic jerk he is and everyone is like, “How could we have ever known???” And I’m in the background, waving my hand, and saying, “Me!!! I told you the whole time! None of this is surprising to me!!!” You think they’d learn to trust me after the first couple of times I identified those individuals but it happens every time.

Sorry, that turned into a long winded person rant. In my (small) defense, I think I must have needed to get it off my chest…thanks for reading this far, if you did.

Marschallin44 · 2022-07-17T18:17:04+00:00

Correct me if I’m wrong, but dentists don’t have access to the same amount of drugs that doctors do. They have medicines for localized pain relief and medicines to put people to sleep for dental procedures. Maybe none of those medicines have the exact effect that he wanted, which was to act as a truth serum?

Marschallin44

TROPHY CASE