FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
User ID: 1175
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2hr ago
Per his Marine record, Oswald achieved a rating of 212 with the M1 rifle, two points more than that required for a "sharpshooter" qualification, which indicates that he could hit a ten-inch bullseye from at least 200 yards away, eight times out of ten – and that's without a telescopic sight, only using the M1's iron sights. The FBI considered his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle a very accurate weapon and found that it never misfired in numerous tests. The distance from Oswald's sniper's nest in the TSBD to the point on Elm where the fatal bullet struck Kennedy was, as you say, less than 90 yards, and Oswald had the benefit of a telescopic sight mounted to his rifle. And for all the talk of the supposedly "miraculous" shot, Oswald's first shot missed Kennedy entirely. You can count the second shot a miss as well, assuming that Oswald was aiming for Kennedy's head and struck him in the upper back instead (which might have been survivable). Firing at your target three times and only striking it on the third attempt hardly sounds "miraculous" to me.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4hr ago
It's a great character and a great performance in search of a better movie for both.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
5hr ago
"It's not what you know. It's what you can prove." - Alonzo Harris in Training Day.
I once read a theory about road rage. If you're walking on the footpath and someone walking the other way bumps into you, they will usually acknowledge their error in some way. They may not actually say "sorry" or "excuse me", but they will at least raise their hand, make an apologetic facial expression, or make some kind of gesture to indicate they know they're at fault. Whereas if someone knocks into your shoulder without even acknowledging their error, we tend to interpret it (understandably) as a personal insult, and react accordingly.
When driving a car, you often can't see the faces of the drivers in the other vehicles (and vice versa). The person who cut you off in traffic may not have intended to do so and may feel very embarrassed about their error, but there's often little they can do to signal their remorse other than maybe sticking on their hazard lights for a second, which you may not even notice. What this means in practice is that drivers are far more likely to interpret mishaps on the road as deliberate personal slights about which the perpetrator feels no remorse, rather than unfortunate errors made in a split-second by flustered drivers who feel embarrassed by their own carelessness.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
10hr ago
Well, it certainly wasn't a miracle shot, and he didn't have to run faster than Usain Bolt, for starters.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
10hr ago
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
10hr ago
(I originally posted this in the Small-Scale Questions thread, but @Primaprimaprima thought it might be a better fit here.)
Last week I finished reading Gerald Posner's Case Closed, his attempt to set the record straight on the JFK assassination and prove that Oswald acted alone. Posner reserves plenty of ire for the assorted conspiracy theories that mushroomed around the assassination over the last six decades.
I dislike the terms "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist", as they're generally used as terms of dismissal or abuse: characterising a particular hypothesis as a "conspiracy theory" is tantamount to saying that it's untrue, and characterising the person who espouses it as a "conspiracy theorist" is tantamount to calling them paranoid and unserious. But this shouldn't be the case, because conspiracies do happen! Some important historical events really were the product of conspiracies. Imagine if a public figure was killed, you thought he might have been murdered, and I rolled my eyes and said "oh, you're one of those 'murder theorists'." Murders really happen! There's nothing intrinsically ridiculous about the hypothesis that a given dead person might have been intentionally and unlawfully killed by another person; nor is there anything intrinsically ridiculous about the hypothesis that a given event might have been the result of multiple clandestine actors working together to bring it about. As many have noted before me, theories about history or current affairs are rubbished and dismissed as "conspiracy theories" – right up until the very moment they're proven true, at which point they simply become historical fact.
However. We're all familiar with the type of person described by the term "conspiracy theorist". The people in tinfoil hats, the people who never believe the official story, the people who attribute every setback (no matter how trivial) to the dark hand of da Joos/the CIA/the Illuminati. These people may not be paranoid in a clinical sense, but they reflexively jump to the conclusion that there is more to every news story than meets the eye, and the conclusion seems effectively predetermined. They arrive at the conclusion first, then go looking for evidence to support it.
I wish we had better terms for "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist", respectively. When we use the former, what we're really getting at is that a historical event is being attributed to a vast nefarious conspiracy on the basis of little to no evidence. "Conspiracy theory" should be a neutral term which expresses no judgement on whether the theory is true or not, but I think it would be genuinely helpful to have a separate term for how the term is used nowadays i.e. as a particularly far-fetched and implausible example of same. "Truther" is starting to catch on ("9/11 truther", "Lucy Letby truther"), but it would be nice to have a noun for the theory itself, as opposed to the person espousing it.
And when we characterise someone as a "conspiracy theorist", we don't usually mean that they espouse one conspiracy theory and no others. We usually mean that they advance conspiracy theories habitually and reflexively, that there are vast swathes of human history they attribute to the machinations of nefarious organisations operating in secret. People to whom the term "conspiracy theorist" don't, as a rule, endorse the mainstream historical narrative except for one little wrinkle: it's an entirely different worldview, a paranoid style. I think "tinfoil hat wearer" is a much more apt term for people with this worldview or mindset than "conspiracy theorist", except that I'm not sure if anyone actually wore a tinfoil hat in complete sincerity.
What do ye think? Any ideas? What would your preferred terms for these concepts be?
(Reposted in the Culture War thread.)
Reading Case Closed has got me thinking about conspiracy theories. I dislike the terms "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist", as they're generally used as terms of dismissal or abuse: characterising a particular hypothesis as a "conspiracy theory" is tantamount to saying that it's untrue, and characterising the person who espouses it as a "conspiracy theorist" is tantamount to calling them paranoid and unserious. But this shouldn't be the case, because conspiracies do happen! Some important historical events really were the product of conspiracies. Imagine if a public figure was killed, you thought he might have been murdered, and I rolled my eyes and said "oh, you're one of those 'murder theorists'." Murders really happen! There's nothing intrinsically ridiculous about the hypothesis that a given dead person might have been intentionally and unlawfully killed by another person; nor is there anything intrinsically ridiculous about the hypothesis that a given event might have been the result of multiple clandestine actors working together to bring it about. As many have noted before me, theories about history or current affairs are rubbished and dismissed as "conspiracy theories" – right up until the very moment they're proven true, at which point they simply become historical fact.
However. We're all familiar with the type of person described by the term "conspiracy theorist". The people in tinfoil hats, the people who never believe the official story, the people who attribute every setback (no matter how trivial) to the dark hand of da Joos/the CIA/the Illuminati. These people may not be paranoid in a clinical sense, but they reflexively jump to the conclusion that there is more to every news story than meets the eye, and the conclusion seems effectively predetermined. They arrive at the conclusion first, then go looking for evidence to support it.
I wish we had better terms for "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist", respectively. When we use the former, what we're really getting at is that a historical event is being attributed to a vast nefarious conspiracy on the basis of little to no evidence. "Conspiracy theory" should be a neutral term which expresses no judgement on whether the theory is true or not, but I think it would be genuinely helpful to have a separate term for how the term is used nowadays i.e. as a particularly far-fetched and implausible example of same. "Truther" is starting to catch on ("9/11 truther", "Lucy Letby truther"), but it would be nice to have a noun for the theory itself, as opposed to the person espousing it.
And when we characterise someone as a "conspiracy theorist", we don't usually mean that they espouse one conspiracy theory and no others. We usually mean that they advance conspiracy theories habitually and reflexively, that there are vast swathes of human history they attribute to the machinations of nefarious organisations operating in secret. People to whom the term "conspiracy theorist" don't, as a rule, endorse the mainstream historical narrative except for one little wrinkle: it's an entirely different worldview, a paranoid style. I think "tinfoil hat wearer" is a much more apt term for people with this worldview or mindset than "conspiracy theorist", except that I'm not sure if anyone actually wore a tinfoil hat in complete sincerity.
What do ye think? Any ideas? What would your preferred terms for these concepts be?
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
As an aside – could anyone give me a quick rundown on what we currently know about the case? I haven't been following it that closely since the story first broke. Is there any chance of criminal proceedings?
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
I finished Case Closed on Tuesday. Couldn't put it down, fastest I've read a book all year.
I was in a bookshop last month and impulsively bought PG Wodehouse's A Gentleman of Leisure, having heard from everyone and their mum that Wodehouse is hilarious. I read the first couple of chapters during the week. I was disappointed to find that it's not one of the Jeeves and Wooster novels. So far there haven't been any laugh-out-loud moments.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
My wife wants me to make her a biryani. Anyone have a good, authentic recipe? Spicy, but not too spicy.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
I'm trying to make a very narrow argument that vaginoplasty is disanalogous to amputation because a neovagina has some subset of the capabilities of healthy genitals while a stump has no subset of the capabilities of a healthy arm.
Well, that isn't true. Even if your arm is amputated below the elbow, the shoulder is still functional. You can still wear a backpack.
Indeed, the primary schism in trans-affirming circles boils down to "trans women aren't really women, but we should treat them as if they are, to spare their feelings" (i.e. consubstantiation) and "no, trans women are literally women, with all that that implies" (i.e. transubstantiation). The more things change, the more they stay the same.
And the frustrating thing is, sometimes consubstantiation is the motte and transubstantiation is the bailey. Catholics rarely pretend to be Protestants in order to make their beliefs seem more palatable to the godless.
Now I'm wondering if there has ever been a horror movie which was actually based on (not "inspired by") true events and didn't take major dramatic license. I suppose Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, although it's more of a thriller than a horror film. Likewise assorted films about real-life serial killers (Gacy, Dahmer etc.).
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
No idea how people can enjoy going to one of these stadium-sized concerts.
You spend half the time just staring at a screen, you might as well be watching it on the telly.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
Among its many virtues, the movie Cruising explains the bandana code. Worth a watch.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
Digging into it, it seems it was closer to the latter than the former.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
That's definitely part of it. The difference in this case is that I think a lot of the people saying "men have the male gaze and women don't" would be unable to define the original meaning of the term "male gaze" if put on the spot. They literally think that "male gaze" refers to the way men look at women and have absolutely no idea what this term means in the context of cinema and TV.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
I meant appeal as in sex appeal. But yeah, based.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
Interesting, any idea who it was? Sounds like the kind of thing Jessica Valenti would do.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
(YMMV on whether Banks casts people as hot as the 2000 cast).
Cameron Diaz is gorgeous, as is Lucy Liu (but then, I would say that about an Asian woman wouldn't I?). Frankly, I never understood the appeal of Drew Barrymore: I've legitimately never found her a talented actress or sexy. She's even in one of my favourite movies, Donnie Darko, but every scene she's in grates and her line-readings sound so forced and uncomfortable.
As to the reboot, Kristen Stewart was gorgeous in the Twilight films, but in more recent movies she's received a succession of unflattering haircuts, each more butch than the one preceding it, and Charlie's Angels was no exception. (It's amazing the difference a good or bad haircut can make.) Ella Balinska is pretty hot. I thought the name Naomi Scott sounded familiar, and it turns out she played Jasmine in the live-action Aladdin remake. When I saw clips from that film I thought she looked absolutely stunning, but in photos from Charlie's Angels she looks hardly recognisable and nowhere near as good-looking. I'm calling it a wash.
So I'm impressed with your ability to continue writing at your Substack.
There are honestly periods where it feels like pulling teeth, and I end up just digging out a comment I posted here and polishing it up a bit. One of my new year's resolutions was to write a new post every two weeks, and while the average interval between posts is 13 days, there have been several weeks where I fell behind schedule. I don't know if I'll keep up this pace in the new year, I haven't grown my audience as much as I was hoping to.
Probably my favorite post I've ever written was my Junebug Review.
Not having seen it, is it worth seeing unspoiled?
One thing that frustrates me about media criticism is how interesting and nuanced concepts get abused and boiled down to lowest-common-denominator imitations over time, and how the people who should know better aren't rigorous enough about gatekeeping these concepts.
Take the "male gaze". Anyone who's studied film at an academic level would understand that it's an observation about camera perspective in visual media: that, while movies and TV shows often act as though they are presenting the characters within their works from an objective and disinterested perspective (a "view from nowhere"), in practice, the camera is often positioned in an implicitly heterosexual male posture, and female characters are shot and framed in a systematically different manner than male characters. This is an interesting observation! Once it's pointed out to you, you can't unsee it, and in Western cinema it's damn near omnipresent, to the point that it still feels surprising and fresh when movies go out of their way to turn it on its head (depicting female nudity in a deliberately unsexy fashion, or lusting over the male characters and not the female e.g. Magic Mike).
But decades since the term was coined, it's become corrupted from "the ostensibly objective and disinterested (but implicitly male and heterosexual) camera perspective used in Western movies and TV shows" to "something about the way men look at women, which is bad". I saw a post somewhere in which a young lesbian said she felt guilty about looking at other women she thought were attractive, and someone consoled her saying that she shouldn't worry, because sapphic sexuality isn't aggressive like male heterosexuality and she "didn't have the male gaze". No one "has" the male gaze. The male gaze is a property of cameras, not of people. While I have little doubt that Laura Mulvey, the academic who coined the term "male gaze", would agree that men sometimes leer at women in a sexually intimidating manner, that wasn't what the term "male gaze" referred to.
But in any case
Whereas the only times I ever saw it used was to imply or outright state that the book/show/game was bad and wrong.
As ever, stated vs. revealed preferences. It's easy to say that a movie is good because it passes the Bechdel test, or that a movie is bad because it fails it. But I'd hazard a guess that if you were to look at these feminists' favourite movies, they'd include a lot more movies that fail the Bechdel test than that pass it. I think this would actually be an effective rebuttal to this line of argument – just ask someone to name their top five movies. Better still, consult their Netflix history to see which movies they've watched most. Back when it was still good, The Onion had a great article about the gulf between the media feminists claim to enjoy and the media they actually enjoy.
Not to mention that the efficacy of Australia's gun buyback programme in preventing mass shootings has been radically overstated. Even after multiple such programmes, a random American is only 21% more likely to die in a mass shooting than a random Australian.
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