u/cornchev
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31points
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14points
Some questions and thoughts on the Ainulindalë and Gnosticism (self.tolkienfans)
cornchev
cornchev
glidus made a video quizzing preston jacobs, asx, and two other ppl i cant remember the names on what asoiaf theories were real (even if it was obviously a joke post) or made up by him for the video and one of the fucking questions was horse theories, the options being khal drogo is a horse, lyanna is a horse, some other guy, and fucking tyrek lannister is a horse, and it was a trick question because they were all true (the first 3 were warging into a horse theories, or horse soul transfer for drogo)
because an old tumblr post took "tyrek was last seen ahorse" as meaning he turned into a horse and made a moodboard for it as a joke
and then later glidus made a video taking every reference to a character being ahorse and saying they were a horse
cornchev
if they could've blockaded britain they could've invaded it successfully. the reason people say sealion was impossible is because germany had no realistic way to gain naval superiority.
cornchev
cool but this is entirely irrelevant, its not just that using a HSR network for freight is impractical its simply not done in the real world and the idea of doing so is still fringe and theoretical in the current year. it's not like high speed commuter rail is lacking for metrics it increases, and it's only been extensively built by two of the most growth metrics obsessed governments the world has ever seen (20th century LDP japan and the modern PRC) and neither have made freight a cornerstone or even a part of it
cornchev
its more the idea that it would be used for anything else thats offensive, because high speed commuter rail has never been used for anything else and theres no reason on gods green earth why it would be in the 60's and 70's
cornchev
you don't just refit interiors for switching from freight to commuter rail, you need entirely new cars. as for repatriation, why bother? like i said, the existing rail network works just fine without needing to wait like 20 years for the route to moscow from frankfurt to exist.
cornchev
Make the reservoir one tile instead of 9, unless it's become easier to make dwarves vampires since kruggsmash's honeystoker
cornchev
There's a lot of human cultures where the mother just carries their baby around while working, or where this used to be the case
cornchev
values peace
cornchev
I'm perfectly aware it doesn't fit too well. But I would have just said Neoplatonism if I thought it was merely or strictly Neoplatonic. But it's not! Not just in a sense that applies perfectly well to Gnostic creation myths too, that the account Tolkien gives of creation is ultimately much more orthodox in its theology.
Tolkien often writes about evil in a way that doesn't really suggest its the mere absence of good, like for neoplatonists and orthodox Catholicism but alike to Gnosticism. And the same applies for the notion that mortality is a gift, intended for humanity at their creation, that where they go after death is their truer place of belonging and that it frees them from the suffering of the world (and also pre-ordained fate, which isn't particularly Gnostic)
I still don't necessarily think that knowledge of Gnosticism brought him to all three of these, or that the same process led to all three, but I do really want to know what is publicly available about how and why he came to these ideas.
cornchev
Cant ignore the Sino Japanese war here either. The NRA's best forces were destroyed during the course of it, and even the not so good forces it had by the end of the conflict were not just poorly trained and poorly armed and undermanned, but weakened and exhausted. And the nationalists inflicted plenty of atrocities upon peasants in the course of the conflict, most famously when they flooded the yellow river on purpose.
cornchev
That's over simplifying it. The question of his personal knowledge of atrocities was intentionally made quite difficult to determine around the time of the surrender, but the buck did stop with him. His decisions cut through disagreements among the leadership; and his blessing of, for example, the invasion of Indochina and a date for war if negotiations with the US failed were factors in the Japanese leadership treating war with the US, which they knew they were supremely unlikely to win, as inevitable. And obviously most famously, he cut through the disagreements among the military leadership on whether to surrender or try to further bleed the Americans for favorable terms even after the entry of the Soviets made mediation obviously impossible and the atomic bombs made battle look like it may not even be needed for the Americans, and in doing so he ended the war.
So in other words, had he known about systemically organised atrocities on the one hand, and atrocities resulting from (usually officer tolerated) lack of discipline on the other, he had the legal right to order an end to that, and the respect of his person and station required to do so. But, during and shortly before the occupation, the Japanese government and sometimes it seems the occupation authorities intentionally made it very difficult to figure out what he may have known about.
cornchev
way he talked abt him ud be forgiven for thinking trotsky is hitlers alias.
cornchev
I struggle to view idealism as being enough for leaders in both countries to work out an agreement as much as just recognising it may not be worth the extreme cost of war over it. The reasons for Chinese leaders to resent the country being partitioned and treated very unequally in trade are pretty obvious, and the Japanese leaders dont just want to get away with the extremely unequal trade relationship for the laughs. What I mean I guess is mostly just Japanese leaders recognising that a China stronger than Japan aligned with it is much better for Japan than fighting a war for the chance to keep China exploited and weak.
cornchev
Putting it that way makes me wish the GAW could be avoided. Obviously most Japanese leaders in TNO aren't going to be as friendly to China as American ones were to Japan OTL. But even so, Japan accepting an ascendant China that they remain allied with would be interesting.
cornchev
cornchev
Might be because they changed the map so much. A lot of mods that change the map a lot have a lot of difficulties. Until the open beta mods that changed the map size just didnt work, crashed the game without log
cornchev
east germany is not, to my knowledge, notorious for mysterious disappearances of dissidents (although they seem to have had their children stolen often). the late stasi was much more subtle than that. they would engineer personal and career failures in targets, as well as property damage blackmail threats etc., all being done in such a way that nobody would believe the target if they said the state was doing this to them.
the stasi after the 70's was operating in a situation where a positive image was prioritised above an atmosphere of terror.
cornchev
i cant really see the gestapo switching to mostly psychological torture and enormous informant networks like the stasi did tbh
cornchev
This is America’s Dengist path
dont say that, you'll give the devs aneurysms
cornchev
somehow, all seem equally cursed!
cornchev
but how can you be a malewife house husband boytoy if your bf is doing cooking and cleaning too and you both have abt equal income
cornchev
I go supreme soviet bc larp > research speed lol
if they have modern medicine, rather a lot - thats why you see population booms from the 19th century onwards. its just that economic development usually follows these population booms