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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4491 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for June 2023

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful. But first, we have a special AAQC recognition this month! If you caught last month's quality contribution report, you may have seen @Soriek's first "International Update." Well, there were five Thursdays in June this year, and Soriek didn't miss one. Pulling multiple Quality Contribution reports on a regular "feature" of the Culture War thread is impressive and bespeaks substantial community appreciation of this user's efforts. Bravo, @Soriek!

We now return to your regularly scheduled programming!

Quality Contributions in the Main Motte

@urquan:

@George_E_Hale:

Gex and Sender

@George_E_Hale:

@ymeskhout:

@5434a:

@raggedy_anthem:

@Sloot:

Contributions for the week of May 29, 2023

@raggedy_anthem:

@HlynkaCG:

Identity Politics

@naraburns:

@Ecgtheow:

@Sloot:

Contributions for the week of June 5, 2023

@iprayiam3:

@raakaa:

@RandomRanger:

@HlynkaCG:

Identity Politics

@Soriek:

@problem_redditor:

@FarNearEverywhere:

Contributions for the week of June 12, 2023

@ApplesauceIrishCream:

@faceh:

@Corvos:

@SlowBoy:

Contributions for the week of June 19, 2023

@felis-parenthesis:

Identity Politics

@CriticalDuty:

@problem_redditor:

@5434a:

@FCfromSSC:

@jake:

@raakaa:

Contributions for the week of June 26, 2023

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

@Walterodim:

@naraburns:

Islamic Exegesis

@ymeskhout:

@Tanista:

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The discussion on the Titanic was unfortunately yet another I've completely missed. To answer the original question, I will cite Cenk Uygur from the TYT, of all people. He raised a point I didn't see anyone in the thread make specifically - namely, women generally love that movie because Jack dies. He'll never age and wither, or go bald, he'll never become fat or an average alcoholic lout. He'll never disappoint, or shatter any illusions. He'll never become less attractive or less exciting than he was before his early death.

@faceh:

"'Failing upward' doesn't even begin to describe it."

This reminds of some Fox News segment about street crime in San Francisco, which I saw pop up as a Youtube recommendation. Being moderately curious about that whole trainwreck of a situation, I watched the beginning of the video, which included a short segment from one of Chesa Boudin's public speeches. In it, he declared something along the lines that "it's deplorable to believe that we can be free by caging others". To be honest, it didn't even occur to me back then what utter bullshit this statement is. Only recently did this dawn on me. Very obviously, "we" (i.e. any human society) do not cage others so that we are free; we do so in order to be safe. Isn't this completely self-evident?

I don't think protecting safety precludes protecting freedom. We cage people for coercing others i.e unjustly limiting their freedom, even in cases where the victim's life or health hasn't been injured. You could say coercion implies the threat of violence and so this is really about safety but the concepts have melded together at that point. You've also got cases like blackmail where you're unjustly constraining people's choices without the threat of violence.

Certainly caging other human beings ensures freedom of movement in that, if you cage enough criminals, it becomes safe to walk through neighborhoods at night and parts of a city don’t become no-go zones.

It'd be interesting to know how many reports did Soriek get. I really like the international updates :)

Reading the contributions, I recognize @Sloot from reddit. Have to say, even enjoyed some of your sarcastic low-effort comments there

Many thanks @naraburns

@George_E_Hale 's comment saying:

As a father myself twice over (both boys) I would say that there is nothing quite like it--you imbue them with the movies you grew up on, your music, your food tastes, your general approach to life, pretty much everything. They will no doubt eventually reject much of it, but there was nothing like that first time I sat my sons down and we all watched the 1963 version of Jason and the Argonauts and they asked to watch it again, eventually knowing the music as well as I do. There was the added benefit that they understood more of the Greek myths that I read to them when they were too young to know anything but sounds.

Made me genuinely sad, because my dad never managed to do the same with me. I struggle to think of a single interest we have any overlap on. I love him a lot of course, he's so hard working it's scary, and through those means he managed to go from a penniless refugee from genocide to being comfortably well off and highly respected by his peers. That came at the cost of atrophying his ability to form hobbies or do much of anything else, and I'm my mother's son, as she and I can relate to a much greater extent.

Oh well, I still look forward to fatherhood myself, and I can't imagine the inferential distance between me and my kids will be remotely as large, even if they're naturalized citizens while I'll always remain an immigrant at heart.

To be frank, my dad and I never had many overlapping interests, either. He was a big football fan, played it in high school. He had been a scoutmaster in his youth. I neither played football nor did he push me toward scouts. I liked watching movies. By the time I began watching them without him he had lost interest and thought movies were mostly silly. I liked reading books. He saw me reading a John Updike book once-- Brazil I believe, and this was the cover of the paperback edition I had. He scoffed and asked me if I really read novels. books like that (he was a type to judge a book by its cover.) My mom was an avid reader of romance novels so I guess he thought that's what it was. I don't know because I put it down out of shame and to this day still have never read it.

My point is I don't think I particularly was close to my dad, even in adulthood when I made efforts to be closer. Friends would come over and he would be garrulous, but once they left he'd sit with me in silence, seemingly completely uninterested. The main question he would ask when I'd come home to visit was "What's the price of gas in Japan?" Once he asked this twice on the ride from the airport. But that was years ago. He did seem to love his grandchildren--my boys. Though the fact that I married a Japanese woman I think always sat wrong with him. He at some point put me in a box that he felt he understood enough that he didn't need to think about it any more, and he closed up the box and that was that. Of course I could be wrong. Maybe that's what I did to him.

He died almost a year ago exactly (off by a few weeks as I write this.) I don't mean to get maudlin or personal, but anyway the way you were brought up doesn't have to be the way you bring up your own brood, should you have any later in life. At least, that's my thinking. My boys are still in the oven; not quite done yet, not quite grown. We'll see.

I'm sorry for your loss, and I'm glad you're trying to be closer and more understanding with your kids! It's perfectly possible to be a good father overall and fail at that particular kind of bonding, though it is slightly saddening, at least you learned from his small missteps.

I can only endeavor to do the same eventually, since my kids are too busy swimming to even go into the oven for a few years haha.

I felt embarrassed by @Tanista replies to my post. You added so much necessary context that I wasn't even aware of.

Funny, I felt a bit self-conscious dumping all of that on that topic.

But yeah, a lot of that stuff rarely comes up. Even amongst apostates. I went full New Atheist when I lapsed and I might never have gotten into it except I accidentally picked up Biblical scholarship and one thing led to another.

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