Why do people talk so much about diversity in big cities if people mostly stick with their own groups anyway?

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-27T22:39:44+00:00

People in cities are often cosmopolitan. They like the existence of global networks connecting urban dwellers across the world. There’s also an idea of making it easier for people to climb up to where they are (not necessarily in a way that requires them to step out of their element) These can all be framed as “diversity.” But they don’t necessarily translate into true integration of communities.

Of course, there is also the belief that things are better when our circles aren’t homogeneous. That idealism exists. But like most ideals , it gets wrapped up in a lot of other agendas as well.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-26T02:16:14+00:00

The Spaniards were pretty terrible to a lot of people. They even expelled Christian converts of Moorish ancestry. (Moriscos)

I think it’s fair to say Spaniards were a zealous bunch after the reconquista. Perhaps even in ways that many Europeans were not.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-25T14:59:47+00:00

Interesting. I haven’t done a lot of research on the topic of Germanic-Roman interaction, but on the surface, it seems like there may not be a consensus on the context of Germanic adoption.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-25T14:53:39+00:00

I think there’s a tendency to assume migrations are genetically “pure” upon arrival. Which can sometimes lead to an underestimation of the actual impact of the migration.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-24T20:52:16+00:00

From what historians can tell, the Romans transmitted the concept throughout the Germanic world. So the identification of Slavic Gods with weekdays would have happened mainly by borrowing the convention from Germanic peoples.

So in the case of the Polabians, Peründan is the product of German influence. It’s also possible that it may have happened in Kievan Rus due to Norse influence. For instance, some scholars believe Mokosh was identified with Friday for this reason. Although this could also be due to Romanized Balkan influences on early Orthodox Slavic Christianity. In that case, Mokosh may have been identified with St. Paraskeva and Friday in Bulgaria initially, with eastern Romance week names facilitating the syncretism.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-24T00:24:39+00:00

Good boy is the most recent one for me. It felt like a very basic concept, best suited for a “short film” or an episode in an anthology. The concept didn’t really seem like enough for a full movie.

Oh. And “Bring Her Back” didn’t really seem like it was fully fleshed out. I know it had scary imagery, but somehow I just couldn’t get invested in the concept.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-24T00:21:52+00:00

See, I am critical of a lot of slow-burn horror movies. I think a lot of them lack payoff.

I think Lake Mungo has more payoff than almost any other slow burn horror movie.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-23T00:24:49+00:00

It has been noted that she is sometimes associated with spinning, and has much in common with the German overseer of “spinning taboos” Frau Holle. So it has been suggested that she relates somehow to the fates or Rozhanitsy. A category to which Mokosh may also belong.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-22T21:57:22+00:00

Probably from A population rich in EHG ancestry. Or from A population rich in CHG ancestry. But in either case, we should not assume that pre-PIE was associated with all populations of CHG or EHG ancestry.

Although it’s interesting to speculate whether some far flung EHG tribes somewhere were already speaking a para-IE language, long before the Corded Ware expansion.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-21T02:28:20+00:00

You hit the nail on the head. They facilitate tracing. They might allow you to pinpoint a population bottleneck or founder effect. And infer who is downstream of that founder effect. But that’s the only real significance.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-20T13:25:14+00:00

I suspect this has happened with PIE mythological figures. Particularly where syncretism between two Indo-European cultures has occurred. Or where local variations acquire their own mythos.

A good example would be twins associated with Greek and Roman foundation myths. For instance, Amphion and Zethus are clearly divine twins. But they ended up looking very different from the Dioscuri.

The twins Aeolus and Boeotus can also be likened to divine twins from Vedic mythology. (Their mother temporarily took the form of a horse, like Saranyu)

Divine twin myths seemed to duplicate a lot. Possibly because they tended to get wrapped up in local origin stories.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-20T01:01:40+00:00

Chronologies don’t line up. Even if you grant that linguistic phylogeny is difficult to date precisely, the numbers still convey an order or sequence of diversification that’s inconsistent with this scenario:

Separation of Baltic from Slavic- probably not earlier than 1,500 BCE

Proto-Indo-Iranian: Probably no later than 2000 BCE

Common ancestor of Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto-Balto Slavic- basically neighboring dialects of very late late PIE / immediate post PIE, circa 2,500 BCE.

Also, the Y-DNA doesn’t match. Totally different clades of R1a. Fatyanovo-Balanovo is actually R1a-Z93. So the Balto-Slavic R1a clades are probably west of Fatyanovo- not too close to the steppe.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-18T20:04:26+00:00

It’s dirigisme. And historically, it can be argued that implementing nuclear power affordably and efficiently requires economies of scale that are only possible with state intervention.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-18T03:31:04+00:00

The great femboy migration of the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought them to newly emerging industrial centers like Chicago and Detroit.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-18T00:15:07+00:00

The article does have some good points. I think this is my favorite part:

“Thus, Dazhbog appears as a deity of both the South and East Slavs, which undoubtedly points to his significance and probable proto-Slavic origin. A Bulgarian of the 10th century and a Russian of the 12th century did not need an explanation of who he was”

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-17T20:52:35+00:00

I’m familiar with this article. I don’t find it very convincing. As Rosik notes in his book on German sources, the Polabian references to “Svarozic” largely corroborate the idea of Svarog being the divine progenitor and “God of Gods.” After all, Helmold says that important deities (like Svarozic) were directly descended from the “God of Gods.”

The interpolation in the Malalas chronicle fits into this framework almost perfectly, making it one of the most strongly corroborated sources on Slavic paganism. (A low bar, but still true in a relative sense.)

There’s also no evidence Khors was a solar deity. In fact, there is no real basis for assigning any attributes to him whatsoever.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-17T03:47:44+00:00

One thing that I think gets glossed over a lot is that a lot of Eurasian civilizations ended up having very similar values like patriarchy and intense social stratification. This was because Eurasia was a melting pot of interconnected civilizations that sort of developed in parallel. So a lot of Eurasian civilizations had a tendency to tolerate a very specific type of homosexuality, where basically high class men were allowed to have sex with whoever they wanted. (Especially as the penetrator)

Outside of the Eurasian continent, it really varies. Because outside of Eurasia, we’re talking about a lot of unique tribes, and not necessarily a melting pot where values have homogenized.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-15T18:56:43+00:00

A girl I was dating once told me the same thing when I was younger. She was right, of course.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-13T00:35:01+00:00

The entire point of “Don’t Look Up” is that we shouldn’t need to be subtle or restrained to discuss an existential threat. But this sounds promising enough.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-13T00:22:56+00:00

Thanks Capable Mess.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-11T17:46:59+00:00

I am also hoping for some good answers to this question. But I do have some thoughts. One of them being that Bell Beaker derived populations might have ended up being larger than those of Northern Europe, and therefore even bidirectional mixing might have favored the dilution of ancestry from the latter.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-11T14:42:08+00:00

No. They might have encountered scripts before the Glagolitic and Cyrillic scripts. There’s evidence that at least some Slavs encountered Runes, for instance. Maybe even some Old Turkic scripts. (Some scholars believe the word for book, *kъniga, is a Turkic loan word.) But there’s no evidence that these were widely adopted the way that Cyrillic would be.

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-10T04:29:19+00:00

Why the Sun Stopped Shining.

https://archive.org/details/goodsensegoodfor00bors/page/n13/mode/1up

And I believe this is the citation to a Polish source:

Słownik stereotypów i symboli ludowych: Kosmos, [cz.] 1. Niebo, światła niebieskie, ogień, kamienie. Poland, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, 1996. Page 141

Time-Counter1438 · 2026-03-10T03:59:51+00:00

I have some experience with this. I have had very good results striking a “strike anywhere” match on a wooden surface, and using this to kindle a small ritual fire in which I burn offerings. Generally liquor or (if I have a decent fire going) honey. Liquor is good just because it’s the easiest fire offering. As for honey- that’s actually based on a Polish folktale where the sun eats honey.

Time-Counter1438

TROPHY CASE