Without a quart of coffee in the morning, I will be functionally retarded. I will stare at the wall like a stunned carp until noon. I will take things out of the refrigerator and put them in the pantry when I’m done with them. I will put toothpaste on my toothbrush and then attempt to shave with it. I will open peanuts, throw out the insides, and eat the shells. People at the grocery store will remind me to run home and put on pants. I will never turn my turn signal off. When my cell phone rings, I will answer my wallet.
Steve H., “I’m Going to Kill Myself: It’s as Simple as That”, Hog On Ice, 2005-03-18.
July 23, 2024
QotD: Coffee
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July 19, 2024
QotD: The value of contemporary music
Bruce Ivar Gudmundsson, “The Timelessness of Elle Cordoba”, Extra Muros, 2024-04-18.
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July 17, 2024
Re:View – The First Punic War
Invicta
Published Apr 4, 2024A parody Re:View episode from @RedLetterMedia on the First Punic War! Mike and Rich react to watching the events of Rome and Carthage’s great wars for the first time.
This video was a work of love which pays homage to some of my favorite RLM quotes from the following episodes:
Best of the Worst: Hawk Jones, Winterbeast, and ROAR
Best of the Worst: Twin Dragon Encounter, American Rickshaw, and Infested
Half in the Bag Episode 43: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Half in the Bag Episode 63: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Half in the Bag Episode 81: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Half in the Bag: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Half in the Bag: Rogue One
Half in the Bag: The 70-Minute Rise of Skywalker Review
Star Trek Discovery (Pilot Episodes) – re:View
Star Trek Discovery Season 1 – re:View
Star Trek Discovery Season 2 – re:View
Star Trek: Galaxy – re:View
Star Trek: Picard Episodes 4 and 5 – re:View
Star Trek: Picard Episodes 6, 7 and 8 – re:View
Starship Troopers – re:View
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly – re:ViewTimestamps:
00:00 Intro
03:05 Backstory
08:13 Outbreak of War
10:53 War at Sea
13:45 Battle of Ecnomus
15:42 Invasion of Africa
17:31 Climax
20:35 Outro
(more…)
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July 15, 2024
QotD: Sticking it to “the Man” in Collegetown, USA
But it made a certain type of college kid, and of course xzhyr professors, feel good about themselves, sticking it to The Man like that, so they kept on keepin’ on. In the grand tradition of puerile student protest, they’d routinely chalk up the parking lot and sidewalk in front of the building with catchy slogans like “this sidewalk brought to you by socialism!” Yes, they really thought that, and if you’ve followed my “inside the ivory gulag” posts, you can easily suss out why: Sidewalks are public services; public services are paid for by taxes; “conservatives” are against taxes; “conservatives” are also against socialism; therefore sidewalks are socialist.
No, really — I’ve heard more than one professor make a version of that “argument”. If it’s a public service of any kind — police, trash pickup, whatever — it’s by definition “socialist”, because it’s paid for by taxes, and “conservatives” think all taxes, everywhere, are totally illegitimate.
College these days runs about $20K per year on average, by the way. What a deal, huh?
Severian, “Caveat Emptor”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-06-16.
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July 11, 2024
QotD: Armchair generals
Robert E. Lee, quoted at American Digest, 2005-08.
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July 5, 2024
History Summarized: The Greek Age of Cities
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published Mar 15, 2024Ancient Greece created a social ecosystem of numerous independent cities to cater to my tastes specifically.
SOURCES & Further Reading:
The Greeks: A Global History by Roderick Beaton, 2021
The Greeks: An Illustrated History by Diane Cline, 2016
Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece by Donald Kagan & Gregory F. Viggiano, 2013
“Revolution” & “Tyranny” from Ancient Greek Civilization by Jeremy McInerney
“Dark Age and Archaic Greece” from The Foundations of Western Civilization by Thomas F. X. Noble
“Dark Age and Archaic Greece” & “The Greek Way of Waging War” & “Greek Language, Literacy, and Writing” from The Greek World: A Study of History and Culture by Robert Garland
I also have a degree in Classical Studies
(more…)
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June 27, 2024
QotD: Televised debates
Nick Gillespie, “Bob Novak: ‘That’s Bullshit … Goodnight, Everybody!'”, Hit and Run, 2005-08-05.
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June 24, 2024
Little humans, from “humorless little poop machines” to creatures with a sense of humour
Ted Gioia cross-posted an article from Daniel Parris that answers the eternal question “when do humans develop a sense of humour?”
… a large body of academic research examines the intersection of humor, aging, and cultural mores. So today, we’ll explore how our sense of humor forms and transforms with age, and the physiological factors driving our comedic sensibilities.
How Does Our Sense of Humor Change Over Time?
We are born humorless little poop machines. We can’t make funny voices, we can’t do bits, and we can’t engage in wordplay — we simply eat, sleep, poop, cry, and poop again. And then, amidst this onslaught of poop, a sense of humor begins to emerge.
The Early Humor Survey (EHS) is a standardized questionnaire designed to assess a child’s humor-processing abilities in the first four years of life. EHS survey data (which is collected from parents) reveals that our sense of humor begins emerging in infancy, typically around the four-month mark. During this period, babies respond to simple stimuli with laughter and begin producing humor.
Even more striking is how humor development differs by task, as comprehension and appreciation of nonsense, puns, and trickery are all learned at varying rates.
Once we exit adolescence, comedic interactions begin to wane, and we laugh less often.
A 2013 Gallup survey documenting the frequency of humorous interactions suggests the existence of a “humor cliff” as we age — each year, we laugh a little less than the previous one. Humor fades until we’re 80, at which point we chuckle a bit more (what a relief).
While captivating, this visualization is also misleading. Popular interpretations of this data suggest that as people mature, their appreciation for humor declines, as if this trait were a single stock trending up or down. Instead, a person’s comedic sensibilities are defined by an assortment of preferences that remain fluid throughout our lives.
A substantial body of research examines how comedic taste varies with age, exploring our reactions to different humor styles at various life stages. One such study published in Current Psychology presented respondents with a series of humorous statements and then assessed each subject’s affinity for four distinct joke types:
- Self-enhancing Humor: finding comedy in everyday situations, often by humorously targeting oneself in a good-natured way.
- Affiliative Humor: using humor to strengthen social bonds and enhance relationships by sharing jokes and amusing stories that make others laugh while avoiding negativity.
- Self-defeating Humor: Involves individuals making jokes at their own expense to gain approval or avoid conflict, sometimes undermining their self-esteem.
- Aggressive Humor: Making jokes or remarks that ridicule, belittle, or demean others, often intended to assert dominance or express hostility.
Ultimately, the study found that with age, people appreciate self-enhancing humor more, and they value affiliative, self-defeating, and aggressive stylings less.
A similar study of 4,200 German participants found that we increasingly prefer incongruity resolution as we age, an approach marked by unexpected or contradictory elements that lead to a comedic surprise. In joke format, this genre includes a setup pointing toward one outcome, with a punchline that delivers a surprising twist, such as “I just flew in today, and boy, are my arms tired!”
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History Summarized: Augustus Versus Antony
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published Apr 6, 2018Now that Caesar’s assassins are out of the picture, which would-be dictator will defeat the other to become the sole-ruler of Rome? In today’s episode of “How Long Before There’s Another Civil War?”: Not a lot … honestly not a very long time … BUT THEN WE GET THE ROMAN EMPIRE WOOOOOOOOO~~~
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June 19, 2024
QotD: Canada’s Liberal Party
Honestly, now, if you moved this metaphor any closer to the bathroom, there’d be no room for anybody to sit down. What have we come to when the communications director for the prime minister of Canada comes within an ace of referring to his own party as a filthy toilet in need of some elbow grease?
Colby Cosh, ColbyCosh.com, 2005-04-09.
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June 17, 2024
Inside the deputy PM’s thoughts
In the National Post, Tristin Hopper imagines what Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland might be thinking as she pushes her capital gains tax increase:
Screencap from a CPAC video of Chrystia Freeland speaking in October, 2022.
On Monday, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland defended her government’s raising of the capital gains tax by delivering a weirdly catastrophic lecture speaking of a Canada beset by poverty, division and angry mobs.
“Do you want to be in a country where those at the very top live lives of luxury but must do so in gated communities behind ever higher fences using private health care and airplanes because the public sphere is so degraded and the wrath of the vast majority of their less privileged compatriots burns so hot?” she said.
[…]
Monday
Rivers of blood. Mothers consuming their offspring. Houses of worship employed only as makeshift storehouses for the dead.Abundance will cease. Colour will vanish. The people you now know as loved ones will first become strangers, and then they will become enemies.
These are but some of the fates that realistically lie in store for a Canada that refuses to raise its capital tax inclusion rate from 50 per cent to 67 per cent on gains realized after June 25, 2024. While I am sympathetic to those who have worked hard and wish to retain what they have earned, I would urge them to consider the value of money in a Canada where the only remaining currency is one’s readiness to kill.
Tuesday
As deputy prime minister of Canada, I am fully aware that carbon taxes are an electoral liability for this government. But this is a problem not of policy, but of messaging.If we’re not able to tax carbon-emitting fuels to a rate of $170 per tonne by 2030, the most optimistic scenario I can offer is the complete breakdown of the natural world as we know it.
Agriculture will become a memory. Cities will become unapproachable due to the overwhelming smell of decay. Language will devolve and then disappear. Any surviving art or culture will only inspire fear, because people will not know what it is.
The air may be breathable, but we will wish it was not.
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QotD: Philosophy
Terry Pratchett, excerpt from “The Life of Wen the Eternally Surprised”, Thief of Time, 2001.
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June 13, 2024
Fun new family game – Who’s the Parliamentary Traitor?
In the National Post, Tristin Hopper presents the rulebook for an exciting new family game literally “ripped from the headlines” – Who’s the Parliamentary Traitor?
“To simulate what it’s like to go to work in a national parliament secretly housing foreign agents, the National Post presents a tongue-in-cheek instruction manual to play this group game: Who’s the Parliamentary Traitor?
Photo by Brice Hall”
WHAT YOU NEED TO PLAY:
- One large writing surface, such as a chalkboard, whiteboard or flip chart (THE ORDER PAPER)
- 20-70 note cards
- A timer
SETTING UP PLAY:
Gather at least five of your closest friends and have them sit in a line facing the ORDER PAPER. They will be divided into two categories: The WITTING AGENTS and the CREDULOUS NAIFS.To choose who among them will be the WITTING AGENTS, prepare a stack of IDENTITY CARDS equal to the number of players. On every fifth card, mark the symbol for the Chinese yuan (¥). In the case of five players, mark a single card, for 10 players, mark two, etc.
Shuffle the IDENTITY CARDS and distribute them among the players. Anyone receiving a “¥” is now a WITTING AGENT.
Set aside another stack of note cards to serve as MANDATE LETTERS. The text for each card is below. Shuffle the MANDATE LETTERS and place them face down.
RULES OF THE GAME:
Each round begins with a CANADA IS NOT BROKEN phase in which all players close their eyes, put their thumbs in their ears and bury their face for two minutes (the elapsed time to be marked with a timer). During this phase, the WITTING AGENTS open their eyes, stride over to the ORDER PAPER and write down a piece of binding public policy that damages Canada to the advantage of a hostile government (suggestions below).Once this act of treachery is done, the WITTING AGENTS return to their seats will pretend to wake up alongside them as if nothing happened.
Now begins the CONCERNED FOLLOW-UP phase. First, players must pull a MANDATE LETTER card that will determine conditions of discussion. Now, the parliamentarians must decide who among them is the foreign cat’s paw who has defaced their ORDER PAPER with disloyal policy. Uncomfortable questions are asked, accusations are made, and at the end of the round the players vote on who among them will be ejected as a traitor.
Only after the accused traitor is exiled will they show their IDENTITY CARD, revealing whether the accusations have been true, or whether they have been unjustly maligned.
Ejected players are then exiled to THE SENATE, a separated area of chairs where they are served port, ginger ale and black liquorice. They continue to participate in the CANADA IS NOT BROKEN and the CONCERNED FOLLOW-UP phases, but they no longer have a vote.
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June 12, 2024
QotD: Wall Street
Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?, 1940.
June 11, 2024
History-Makers: Sun Tzu & the Art of War
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published Mar 1, 2024TBH I prefer “Moon Aquarium” but Sun Tzu is pretty cool too.
SOURCES & Further Reading:
The Art of War by Sun Tzu, translated and with introduction by Lionel Giles (1910)
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, translated by Stephen Addiss & Stanley Lombardo (1993)
“Sun Tzu’s Art of War” & “Sun Tzu Through Time” from Masters of War: History’s Greatest Strategic Thinkers by Andrew R. Wilson, Ph.D.
“China: A History” by John Keay
“Sun-zi and the Art of War: The Rhetoric of Parsimony” by Steven C. Combs, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol.86, No 3, August 2000
“The Art of War” by Mark Cartwright and “Sun Tzu” by Joshua J Mark from World History Encyclopedia
R/AskHistorians answer by u/Iphikrates to the question “Who was Sun Tzu Writing For?” https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ym4yr/comment/duicm6q/
(more…)
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