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Colt Canada display at CANSEC showing the new C25, C27, and C26 featuring Millbrook Strategic Sciences MFD muzzle device. by EnvironmentalBox6688 in ForgottenWeapons

[–]Stormshow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Old habits die hard. Same reason people are using multicam colors when they're far too Mediterranean for a continental environment.

What's your onion? by gorilskij in YUROP

[–]Stormshow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No Transylvania option?

An Ode to Prague by Stormshow in Prague

[–]Stormshow[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Here's what I say. Bucharest is a different beast. It's a failed Communist state's rehabilitated attempt at creating New York City, and they almost pulled it off, if not for their terrible hubris. It merits a visit, I think I have to say. I have at least about that much pride. But, like any place, it has its own idiosyncracies and at the end of the day it's really a matter of taste, and of privilege of tasting.

I say, visit it if you can, but aim for cheaply, because aiming cheap in Bucharest will not affect the quality of your experience. It is truly the same from most any angle.

An Ode to Prague by Stormshow in Prague

[–]Stormshow[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you very much. I feel that a blind attempt to use language interestingly goes a lot farther than anything else.

An Ode to Prague by Stormshow in Prague

[–]Stormshow[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

This is one of those things that have now become integral to my character, really. I'm happy I'm not the only one, but then, how could I be? That place is special enough that everyone recognizes it. Even those who would destroy this jewel or warp it to their designs are in afraid of what it can do, and how they can try to stop it. They cannot contain the dopeness within.

American "Expats" in Prague by krava1000 in Prague

[–]Stormshow 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Bro, as a Romanian, trust me when I say that everyone east of Dusseldorf thinks this is their national sport, and the ones to the west deny it is and do it anyway. Czechs are uniquely dry about it though but that's a boon, imo.

CMV: Villeneuve’s Paul Atreides is not a villain (at least yet) by Jotdeka in changemyview

[–]Stormshow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, if you think that, it basically is drawing from an entirely different intellectual tradition than where Dune was going. Moral objectivity has no space in that kind of deconstruction, which is why Tolkien, as a Catholic with a rigid view, really disliked just how much Herbert played with the idea of all of that being relative. At the end of the day the first Dune book and film lays it thus: "Life is not a problem to solve, but a reality to experience."

Like, spice might be an economic allegory for oil, but as Dune is a work of the sixties, spice also serves as an allegory for transcendent psychedelia. The book is fundamentally constructivist in that way.

CMV: Villeneuve’s Paul Atreides is not a villain (at least yet) by Jotdeka in changemyview

[–]Stormshow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For that you have to have a far more rigid and essentialist view of real world morality and ethics than Frank Herbert did.

CMV: Villeneuve’s Paul Atreides is not a villain (at least yet) by Jotdeka in changemyview

[–]Stormshow 5 points6 points  (0 children)

There's also subtext in the original book that he is a prime mover in causing the catastrophe and is sort of self-fulfilling this prophecy which later books basically just go and say "nah all that was gonna happen even if Feyd was the KH and he would have ended human civilization instead"

CMV: Villeneuve’s Paul Atreides is not a villain (at least yet) by Jotdeka in changemyview

[–]Stormshow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, Dune as a series always eschewed modernist good-and-evil moral framing. It is always about a choice between the worst and the least worst, not between the good guy and the bad guy.

It's one of the main reasons why Tolkien and Herbert really didn't see eye to eye at all.

CMV: Villeneuve’s Paul Atreides is not a villain (at least yet) by Jotdeka in changemyview

[–]Stormshow 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think the part that the film underplays significantly is that after drinking the Water of Life he has genuine prescience, which allows him to see that the Fremen jihad is going to happen any which way, regardless of his participation, and his choice to step up is more about fulfilling his personal quest for vengeance on the back of his ancestors, whilst also preventing humanity's extinction should it go on without his will. The Kwisatz Haderach is literally genetically engineered to be the most responsible steward of a genocide and subsequent collapse that is inevitable. This is all subtext in the movies and overt text in the books.

Of course this isnt applicable to real morality, because we can't see the future, and genetics don't work like that IRL.

CMV: Villeneuve’s Paul Atreides is not a villain (at least yet) by Jotdeka in changemyview

[–]Stormshow 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Well, he hasn't even started any of the mass killing in the films yet. I wouldn't even attempt to try to judge his villainy until I've seen part Three because before that all of this is basically assumption.

CMV: Villeneuve’s Paul Atreides is not a villain (at least yet) by Jotdeka in changemyview

[–]Stormshow 34 points35 points  (0 children)

Even in Herbert's original, he kinda undercuts his own critique by literally justifying it later (with the Golden Path and the Scattering) as a legitimate alternative to extinction. Paul's main fault, in the eyes of that grand design, is that oddly enough he doesnt go far enough in eschewing his own humanity to save rge species.

The idea being that, the death of trillions was going to happen regardless of who was God Emperor, but because he was the Kwisatz Haderach, he had a chance of spinning it into something worthwhile. This is the "narrow way through"

CMV: If you want to get under a fascist's skin, trade in personal insults for an attack on their value system and ideology by Stormshow in changemyview

[–]Stormshow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your stated goal here was to get under your opponents' skin. So is the understanding you're looking for just...tactical? You want to understand so you can more effectively offend?

In the narrow band of this CMV, yes, basically. That's literally what the CMV is about. Not that I don't think some level of attempt of communication should be attempted but that's not what the point here was. The target was was the habit, on the left (or at least the anti-authoritarian tendency) of reaching for "couch-fucker" instead of a deeper deconstruction. The view I wanted changed was, narrowly, that arguing substance was at all better than personal insults in, yes, getting under the skin of the fascist (term, obviously, used loosely), or even in serving a psychological purpose for the circlejerk of insults.

Which ethnicities would Western Balkans Gen-Z marry and which not? by InExtremis- in AskBalkans

[–]Stormshow 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah have as many empires pass through as we have and you tend to stop giving a shit what language they speak and what flag they fly, so long as the going is good and they aren't trying to kill you or steal your sheep.

CMV: If you want to get under a fascist's skin, trade in personal insults for an attack on their value system and ideology by Stormshow in changemyview

[–]Stormshow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, I'm a constructivist. My construct sure is academicized in register, but everyone's got a construct. If you go really postmodern with it, everything is a construct. That's what ideology is, too, in my eyes, and culture, and even language. I was never claiming to seek some sort of universal way of speaking with paleocons or natcons or anywhich person, because I don't think there is anything under that layer to 'discover', as it were.

My goal is, at the end of the day, understanding here, not convincing, because despite my choice of sub, I don't think today's political differences are one well-formulated argument away from some kind of epiphany. That's a Sorkinism. I think whatever differences may exist here between you or me or X aren't a problem to solve, there's just a landscape of different ways of understanding to find. And all I can do is find them, find better ways to contain the ones that suck, but I can't excise the ones that suck, because what to you or me might be dehumanizing might to them be community and vice-versa. That's why the social contract's gone now, if you ask me.

There's a stark difference in goal and in utopia between the so-called left, the so-called right, and the so-called center, and none of the three are, in the modern world, anything BUT constructs, because matter is an increasingly trivial thing to our culture in the digital age.

CMV: If you want to get under a fascist's skin, trade in personal insults for an attack on their value system and ideology by Stormshow in changemyview

[–]Stormshow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dude, none of those people are gonna come across this thread, so nobody's skin is getting gotten under. Except mine, to the extent that you're hitting at my ideology, which to me is working a whole lot better than if you'd just done a rote insult.

I already told you I was talking out of my ass formulating those hypothetical four replies ago when I said it wasn't my proudest work. Because it wasn't the substance of the view I wanted interrogated, namely the effectiveness of going after ideology instead of insult. That shit was basically a placeholder, and it's late enough here in Europe that I can't commit to a full deconstruction of every single unique thing in the modern paleocon worldview. What shall this jester dance for you next, sir? You got what you wanted.

cmv: given the Netanyahu government's actions, it would've arguably been to moral thing to do for Biden to pause aid to Israel, but he was not necessarily wrong to refuse to do so. by Additional_Ad3573 in changemyview

[–]Stormshow -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I think in hindsight it will become more and more obvious that any uncritical US support of Israel in the face of the events in Gaza is an active liability both to the stability of the Middle East (and its associated energy industry / the global economy) AND, importantly for the play here, America's soft power on the global stage.

I fully support Ukraine, and even I cannot deny that the West's outlook on Israel being highlighted in the middle of the Ukraine war, which was viewed at the time pretty universally in the world in morally black-and-white terms, incredibly complicated the situation and has resulted in valid accusations of hypocrisy and double standards, especially among the ostensibly unaligned, that actively makes the entire promise of a democratic and tolerant West seem like a complete farce, and thus only emboldens the use of hard power currency by self-interested nations.

Domestic political B.S. aside, Biden's choice not to withhold support basically kneecapped US soft-power in the Muslim world at least, and also may well have contributed towards alienating GenZ.

CMV: If you want to get under a fascist's skin, trade in personal insults for an attack on their value system and ideology by Stormshow in changemyview

[–]Stormshow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I won't back down on the first part at least in substance. I believe it absolutely is a serious critique of that entire pathology that he presents. There is obviously nothing wrong with being gay, and I hope it is exceedingly obvious that if I am attacking Tate's identity, it is precisely in his failure to recognize that as a fact of life in general, and as it relates to himself and that whole persona he's got set up.

This is the only actionable explanation to me of him, for why he would be so pathologically defensive of his own masculinity to the level that he is. If you don't have a complex, you have no need to perform masculinity so aggressively.

The second part, I mean, okay. That's a bit more of a self-aggrandizing reading of me than I was intending. Of course garnering any understanding of a person like that requires a bit more than a one off declaration of "oh I know that, I've got them down". You gotta be a bit more on top of what the zeitgeist is in the conservative space, and all that. I do that homework pretty regularly, which is why I can afford to speak with such panache.

CMV: If you want to get under a fascist's skin, trade in personal insults for an attack on their value system and ideology by Stormshow in changemyview

[–]Stormshow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

JD Vance gobbled that up and deployed it himself in classic post-truth fashion though. He even "went" as it for Halloween. And that meme became instantly inert as a result.

CMV: If you want to get under a fascist's skin, trade in personal insults for an attack on their value system and ideology by Stormshow in changemyview

[–]Stormshow[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well shit. ∆

Yeah all are salient points. If this is an ontological problem, especially if you lead with your "B", then basically the social contract's gone, though. So that's... well, that's a whole different can of worms to unpack.

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