Mostly kind chonky weirdo. Gentle nerd freak of the pacific north west. All nation states are vermin.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • It looks like it’s supposed to be more greek, since the romans weren’t known for fighting naked, whereas we think ‘greek’ and we think shirtless. Also romans weren’t involved in egypt in any serious way till much later. Whereas the ‘sea peoples’ seem to come from roughly the sphere of mycenean influence, even if they don’t all seem ‘greek’.



  • The Mycenian Greeks probably wrestled control of Crete from the Minoans ~300 before the late bronze age collapse of greek and hittite power structures.

    Cultural elements and settlements of these “Eteocretans” remained, but I don’t think the Minoans were in any place to halt anything at that point. During the period we call collapse they seem to have been doing a lot of fleeing into the mountains.






  • Did this person depict lots of mythological figures?

    Nope! It’s been a few decades since my art history lectures but my memory is (and wikipedia agrees) that he did a lot of portraits and battle scenes. IIRC his battle paintings inspired Picasso’s. His late work is especially dark - madness and horror type stuff. Sinister distorted figures. They’re often called The Black Paintings.

    if this is common knowledge

    Quite the opposite. This painting was used in a slide in my greek mythology class during the lecture about the titans and chronos. Then in an art history class I learned the context, which I feel is much less known.




  • Yeah, everyone dreams multiple times every night. I’m sure these days most people mean ‘don’t remember dreams’ when they say ‘don’t dream’, but when I grew up so many people honestly thought they did not dream and wouldn’t believe me when I tried to explain how that’s biologically impossible.



  • I personally believe that preserving a false and misleading picture of reality designed to trumpet a deranged cult that is working to make the world objectively worse for everyone including themselves is not acceptable.

    I would say, “Look mum I love you more than anything in the world but preserving some of these movies crosses an ethical line for me.

    Of course I grew up in a house of atheist jewish academics, so making and justifying personal ethical stances that contravene wider group stances is expected behavior in my family. And we take document preservation fairly seriously.


  • I agree with you pretty much everything you said, I just think that drawing a strong distinction between any one species and every other one mischaracterizes the situation. Evil is a human construct that applies as poorly to human behaviour as to the behaviour of every other animal, for the same reasons.

    If you’ll excuse me simplifying your point, “They’re animals of course they do that, evil doesn’t come into it” is not quite as accurate as “We’re all animals, evil doesn’t come into it”, to my mind at least. Because OP didn’t just misunderstand an aspect of non-human animals, they misunderstood an aspect of how life works.



  • We’re animals. Like all social animals we have behavioral norms and individuals who violate them in circumstances that benefit them.

    Many animals display empathy, both in their behavior and neurology. Many animals understand, remember and display reciprocity. Many animals mourn. Many animals show strong evidence of forming assessments of individuals from other species.

    Our actions are determined by the sum total of our genetics, experience and social expectations, same as any other social animal.





  • I find that liberals are much more dismissive of US atrocities. Most communists I speak to know a wealth of details about the failings of mao and stalin.

    Ask a US conservative about our 20th and 21st century atrocities - torture, massacres, coups, support for genocidal regimes and ecocidal companies, etc. - and they’ll proudly defend our brutality. Ask a liberal and they’ll hedge, deny and justify like an internet tankie who’s never opened a history book.