Why the Ride of the Rohirrim is SO EPIC - The Stories that Really Matter - YouTube - "Frodo is captured by the Orcs of Mordor. Denethor in a fit of madness and despair is about to join the still living Faramir atop a funeral pyre. The gates of Minas Tirith are broken and its walls overrun. The foes of Gondor wreaking havoc and death within the streets of the White City. Gandalf himself is unhorsed, his staff broken, his failure appearing complete. But then Rohan has arrived. The sun, previously hidden behind the black pall that spread from Mordor across the land of Gondor is beginning to rise. It appears there may yet be hope for the world of men... This, is not a fight the Rohirrim can win. Nonetheless Eowyn tries to embolden Merry... Theoden steels himself and pushes away the fears that have assailed him. He knew that riding to Gondor's aid would mean a swifter end to the war one way or another and he cannot retreat now, even though it means leading only 6,000 Rohirrim against the whole host of Mordor... This is it. This is the end, and they will ride to meet their end head on. The men of Rohan will not sit and wait for the forces of Mordor to come for them after Minas Tirith is thrown down and Gondor destroyed... At first Eowyn flinches, pulling close to Merry, instinctively wanting to protect him from the dark and somber chorus, from the inexorable doom that approaches. But then. Merry joins in. This hobbit, this simple halfling who loves pipe weed, beer and five meals a day adds his voice to those of the war hardened Riders of Rohan and inspires Eowyn to join them as well. The whole host now with one voice proclaiming their refusal to fear, their acceptance of their fate. And this moment is so much more beautiful than that. And maybe even more beautiful than Jackson even intended. Death in Tolkien's world is not merely an inevitability for men, it is a gift to them. Tolkien writes in the first chapter of the Silmarillion, But the sons of Men die indeed, and leave the world... Death is their fate, the gift of Ilúvatar... Men are meant for something more. Death is not the end for them but merely a passage from one life to the next, in which they, perhaps not until the end of time, will participate in the second music of the Ainur, the creation of a new and perfect Earth. Men were supposed to embrace death, but their view of it was twisted by Melkor, so they feared it seeking long life and even immortality such as belonging to the elves. These discordant desires would cause the downfall of Numenor and weaken the race of men, degrading their ability to resist the dark lord and his servants. Though they may not even know it, the Rohirrim, with their cry of death do not simply defy their own fears, do not merely declare in one word with one voice that Melkor the corrupter and deceiver has no power over them, but they accept the gift of Ilúvatar their creator and father who has destined them for far more than they know... This is why we read and watch fantasy. We do not want these stories and characters to reflect our own world: we want them to inspire us, to give us hope, to make us want to be more than we are... in barely four minutes Peter Jackson, Howard Shore, Bernard Hill and every actor or extra involved in this scene inspires us in a way that I've never seen before nor since"
Garit Boothe's answer to In Lord Of The Rings, why doesn't Aragorn allow himself to have fun with Eowyn and sleep with her when she clearly wants his affections and is a beautiful woman? - Quora - "Everybody seems to get some action in GoT. There’s whoring a plenty, adultery, even incest and rape. On the other hand, The Lord of the Rings barely even has women in it. LOTR is a an epic tale. Think Beowulf. It tells a story with lofty ideals and legendary heroes. Aragorn is an ideal - he is not real. He is the perfect medieval king. His lineage is flawless, ancient prophecy foretold him, and he’s blessed by the gods (Valar). He always chooses the morally correct thing to do. So Aragorn is as likely to sleep around as Sir Galahad the Chaste was... I think the practical, in-universe explanation would be that Eowyn was a princess, and that taking her to bed and breaking her heart could have resulted in a serious political mishap. Beyond that, many women are not real in LOTR. They are a mythic ideal. Arwen is like an untouchable goddess that really only exists in the Appendices of the books. She is an idea in Aragorn’s head for most of the story, nothing more... The Lord of the Rings was Tolkien’s war therapy. He fought in the World War I meat grinder. There are no women in LOTR because there were no women in the trenches. Women are the goddesses you dream about going home to if you survive the war. That’s what Arwen was. Eowyn was the mythic ideal of an Anglo Saxon princess. And in Tolkien’s mind, you don’t mess with her. Because Tolkien was a die-hard Catholic obsessed with epic poetry and medieval tales. His Legendarium isn’t going to see princesses deflowered. Even by the hero. Remember that Tolkien was born in the 1800s. When he was growing up, it was inappropriate for a man to kiss his wife in public. There were still plenty of all boys schools and all girls schools. The sexes had a lot less interaction with each other than they do now. Romance movies with nudity and internet porn were not available for public consumption like they are now. So no, Aragorn and Eowyn didn’t have premarital sex. I wonder if it even crossed Tolkien’s mind."
Meme - "The Model 12 was eventually replaced by the Model 15 (19) printer. Here is a photo of an operator using a Model 15 in the 73 ham shack in 1963... note key for Morse ID, We've always had nice operators. *woman in bikini*"
'I asked my wife for open marriage and now regret it - I can't stand the attention she gets' - "A man has revealed that he regretted asking his wife for an open marriage as he "can't stand the attention she gets" from other men. He now admitted he was an idiot for proposing the idea when he felt as if the "spark" between him and his wife had dwindled, but now she has so many dates she doesn't know what to do - whereas, for him, it's the opposite. He even claimed he had lost his job after asking a colleague out for a drink, and when he tried to close the marriage she said no as she was happy with how it was going."
Meme - "Do you like sleeping?"
"I do"
"Wow me too. We should try it together sometimes"
How to Stop an Avocado From Going Brown - "There are several common solutions to this problem, including leaving the pit in the center, covering the avocado with lemon juice, placing a skinless avocado in water, or storing a cut avocado in an airtight container with a cut onion. All of these methods will slow down the browning process, but because they affect either the flavor or texture of the avocado flesh, they are less-than-ideal solutions for many cooks. A better method for preventing avocados from going brown is to blanch the fruit whole before cutting it. Once the fruit is cut, its flesh can be exposed to air for several hours without significant browning. This technique is taught by the famous French-born British chef Raymond Blanc. As Chef Blanc explains, this method works by killing the enzyme that causes browning when the avocado flesh is exposed to air."
The Red Cross Challenged Gamers To Not Commit War Crimes
Should gamers be accountable for in-game war crimes?
Weird. I thought people played real games to get away from reality
Meme - scary tall bart @TallBart: "Going to the womens shelter to pick up a wife. 10 of them immediately jump up and start rubbing my shoulders & asking how my day was. But then I see the runt of the litter at the back of the room, shyly eating Doritos by the handful. A tear runs down my cheek. "that one" i say"
Meme - "Being in a relationship is about solving problems together. Problems you would not have if you were single."
The fortune cookie's origin: Solving a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a cookie - The New York Times - "Fortune cookies, Yasuko Nakamachi says, are almost certainly originally from Japan. Her prime pieces of evidence are the centuries-old small family bakeries making obscure fortune cookie-shaped crackers by hand near a temple outside Kyoto. She has also turned up many references to the cookies in Japanese literature and history, including an 1878 etching of a man making them in a bakery - decades before the first reports of American fortune cookies... "The weakest part of the Chinese menu is dessert."... By 1960, fortune cookies had become such a mainstay of American culture that they were used in two presidential campaigns: Adlai Stevenson's and Stuart Symington's.
Meme - Squirrel Hunting In America: Jeff LeCompte - "My favorite way to eat squirrels. Smoked at 275 until meat flakes off the bone easily but has a little crispness to them. You have to baste with oil, or better yet some garlic butter."
Casual sex was dying out before the pandemic - "Friends with benefits are getting harder to come by these days, according to a new study that says a decrease in alcohol consumption is reducing the rate of casual sex among young adults. The research, published in the journal Socius , discovered that the number of men who reported having casual sex in the past month dropped from 38 to 24 per cent between 2007 and 2017. Women of the same age experienced a similar drop, from 31 to 22 per cent. “We find that about one quarter of the drop in young women’s propensity to have casual sex is attributable to a decline in their frequency of drinking alcohol,” the researchers wrote. “Of the various sources of the decline in sexual activity considered in this analysis, the decline in alcohol consumption is the only factor that explains a significant portion of the decline in young women’s probability of engaging in casual sex. A somewhat different story emerges for young men.”... While alcohol reduction accounted for 33 per cent of the drop in sexual behaviour among young men, a growing gaming habit was right behind, contributing to 25 per cent of the decrease. Young men who play video games on a daily basis were found to have just half the chance of a casual hookup as those who don’t game. Living at home obviously didn’t help matters much and was the only other significant factor for men, accounting for 10 per cent of the developing dry spell. Those still sharing a nest with mom and dad hooked up at just 63 per cent the rate of those who had already flown the coup... In the case of young women, a decrease in alcohol consumption was the only significant factor found to increase abstinence... Young women would likely have experienced a sharper cutback in copulation if not for the mitigating effect of an increase in internet usage"
The huge problems of causality are not even mentioned - men may play video games because they don't hook up (not vice versa)
Meme - "To win 3 billion dollars, you have to survive 24 hours getting chased by a horror villain of your choice. Who are you picking?"
"The Predator. I am old and out of shape and unarmed. Not honorable prey."
Meme - Eowyn: "Never thought I'd die fighting side by side with the great love of my life."
Aragorn: "What about side by side with just a friend?"
Eowyn: *crying*
Meme - Alexander Hull: "ACAB includes gym bros who tell you you just need to have" discipline" and "make time" when you genuinely just find the gym boring and would rather use that time for actual hobbies"
Meme - "Godfather's Lounge Games
Cocktails
Sat 6-23
Jerk off
Contest and
Fish Fry 6-24"
Meme - *Car back*: "Position open *wife missing*. *Third finger waved *Jody*
License plate: "PHKJODY""
Meme - "Update Not Successful. Unfortunately, a recent software update was not. Your vehicle cannot be driven. Please call customer support: Ford Customer Relationship Center 1-833-926-3287. We sincerely apologize and will work to resolve this situation as quickly as possible. For the tow truck operator: When ready to load the vehicle on a flatbed:"
Move fast and break things. Innovation!
Meme - "Ashley"
"I love you."
"I love YOU. We've been here 5 minutes."
"*legs tied with Christmas lights* See you soon"
Meme - "When I was a kid, I thought those pillars went down to the sea floor. In reality, they usually go down to some large submerged floats."
"I dislike this."
"2 mins ago, I thought those pillars went down to the sea floor."
"Pillars and floats like that are pretty stable, compared to regular boats, so there's even a research vessel, called FLIP, that purposefully capsizes itself to be more steady when conducting research."
"I just can’t help imagining someone forgetting to close a cabinet in that ship before capsizing. How do you even design a ship like that? Obviously it’s not made for long term stays but I’m assuming it has bathrooms, and you’d need to be able to use the controls in either position. I really want to see the inside of that ship"
"since @hyperactivehedgehog brought it up, here’s the only inside photo in the Scripps Institute of Oceanography’s FLIP Slideshow on flickr:"
"Imagine being unexpectedly teleported here"
Jung on X - "The Chilean communist activist Valentina Muñoz threatens those who refuse to yield to the Agenda 2030: "This is no longer a negotiation. That's why it's called an agenda and not a wish list.""
Governments Must Act Now to Save Lives, Foster Holistic Change across Societies, Speakers Say, as Economic and Social Council Opens High-Level Political Forum | UN Press - "she said countries cannot postpone the Sustainable Development Goals. Actions must be taken now, not when political leaders — “that is you” — decide they have the will to do it. The 2030 Agenda is a global agreement; it is no longer a negotiation and never was a “wish list”, she said."
Damn far right conspiracy theories!
Ex-Mississippi House candidate charged after Satanic Temple display destroyed at Iowa Capitol
Auron MacIntyre on X - "The side that spent years tearing down statues of founding fathers for social justice would like you to know that statues of Satan are sacred"
Meme - Libs of TikTok: "The Satanic Temple of Michigan put up a Satan statue in front of the Michigan Capitol. Michigan Democrat staffer Samantha Skorka @skorkasammi posed with it and praised it calling it “s*xy” before quickly deleting her tweet. The internet is forever! .@MIHouseDems support Satan!"
Samantha Skorka @skorkasammi: "In the name of Satan, I claim the sexy satanic baphomet goat altar at OUR Michigan Capitol. Amen."
It's ok to draw the line at statues of Satan - "This one elicited multiple responses from liberal fundamentalists warning me darkly that if we do not tolerate statues of demons in our legislatures, freedom of religion itself will be imperilled. “First they came for Satan…” I guess. I have two responses: first, the statue wasn’t erected for a religious purpose but by some juvenile atheists and rational humanists who enjoy trolling the Jeebus people; second, for those who don’t read closely, it was a statue of Satan. If our society can’t draw a principled distinction between benign expressions of religious pluralism and the literal embodiment of evil, then we might as well pack it up"
Meme - "So wanna makeout ? I mean hangout** damn autocorrect"
"So wanna sit on my face. I mean grab a drink** damn autocorrect"
"Autocorrect clearly just wants us to bang. I mean hang**. Everytime"
Imtiaz Mahmood on X - "When Muslims claim that Islam has improved the status of women, remember that Muhammad was a simple laborer for a woman boss, the widow Khadijah, who was a wealthy and independent merchant who employed many men. He married his boss and did not dare marry another woman until after her death. By @Ofer_binshtok
Women before Muhammad and Islam were independent and liberated. Then came Muhammad and Islam, and Muslim women were forced to cover themselves from head to toe (Qur'an 24.31, 33.59), becoming the inferior property of men, who could marry four wives and have as many concubines as they wanted (Qur'an 2.228, 4.3, 38.23). For women whose husbands could rape them (Qur'an 2.223) and beat them (Qur'an 4.34), until Aisha, Muhammad's young wife told that she had not seen women suffer and be beaten as much as Muslim women (Bukhari 5825), Muhammad also beat his young wife Aisha (Muslim 2127). When Mohammed was 25, Abu Talib said to him: I am a man without wealth, and we are passing through hard days; here is a caravan of your people going to Syria. Khadijah Bint Khuwaylid sends men from among your people with her commodities; if you go and offer your services to her, she will readily accept them. The news of this conversation between his Uncle and the (Prophet) reached her; she sent for him and said to him: I shall pay you the double of what I pay to others from among your people."
Professors allow students to pick their own grade - "A literature class at Davidson College this fall will use “contract grading,” allowing students to pick ahead of time their grade for the class and the workload they need to complete to earn it. The offer is posed by Professor Melissa Gonzalez for her Introduction to Spanish Literatures and Cultures course, SPA 270, at the private liberal arts college in Davidson, North Carolina. She is one of several professors across the nation who allow this pick-your-own grade method, billed as a way to eliminate the student-professor power differential and give students control of their education. But critics contend it is just another example of how colleges coddle students from the harsh realities of the real world, which includes competition and goal expectations. As for Gonzalez, she argues there is “a strong pedagogical rationale for contract grading” in an Aug. 1 email to students obtained by The College Fix. “It can help students focus on learning more than on grades, and therefore make more progress in their learning, with less anxiety.”... not all students are convinced it’s a good idea, including Davidson College senior Kenny Xu, who is majoring in mathematics. “It degrades trust in your achievement by outside authorities, including employers, grad schools, scholarships etc.,” he told The College Fix. “Imagine if an employer saw that you got an A not because you were truly one of the best in the class but because you fulfilled some requirement YOU personally set. Would he really trust that A? I think not.” “Colleges are increasingly viewing themselves as a support system rather than an institution of learning,” Xu added. “Learning is not supposed to be easy, or comfortable. Excellence requires that you step out of your comfort zone and compete. Colleges are becoming shelters, which is not what this country nor what this generation needs.”"
Meme - "There's a spider in my bathroom I've had around for a while now and I've taken to putting other bugs in her web or trapping them in there so she can catch them. She was just dining on a little black beetle I left for her last time I visited. I pretend we're dating and tell her about my day while she eats. I have showered in front of her, act shy about it, and sometimes get hard under her gaze. Just sometimes."
AITA for not participating in my fiancés weird Xmas underwear tradition? : AmItheAsshole - "This year, I celebrated Christmas with my fiancé’s family for the first time. Before we went to my fiancé’s parent’s house, my fiancé warned me that his parents usually come short in the amount of food they cook for Christmas dinner and that there’s often not enough for everyone. What I didn’t expect though was to be expected to participate in the family’s weird tradition. Apparently they have a longstanding tradition where instead of drawing straws, they’ll throw all their underwear in a bin and then go act take turns wearing a blindfold and drawing a pair of underwear from the pile, and drawing the smallest pair of underwear correlates to drawing the smallest straw. I had never heard of this tradition, so I felt blindsided when right before Christmas dinner, my fiancés mom yelled out that it was time to « pull the straws » to decide the order of who got to plate up their food first in case there wasn’t enough for everyone. At first I thought the family was joking when they announced this, so I laughed, which made my fiancé get real defensive. I volunteered to get my food last, so I wouldn’t have to participate, but my fiancé just got more annoyed and asked me to just try to be a bit more agreeable. The whole thing was just kind of weirding me out, so I called an Uber and went home. Now things are real tense between me and my fiancé since he now says I made a bad impression by acting like I was too good for their family tradition. Aita?"
Who's More Prone to Conspiracy Theories, Left or Right? - "Liberals and conservatives are both prone to conspiracy theories; they just prefer different ones. That, at any rate, is the conclusion of a fascinating recent paper by Adam Enders and colleagues, looking at the relationship between conspiracy theories and political orientation. The researchers set out to test the hypothesis, popular in the social sciences, that conservatives are uniquely prone to conspiracy theories. (It’s probably worth noting that most social scientists are on the left.)... As Enders and colleagues concluded, “In no instance do we observe systematic evidence of a political asymmetry.”"
Meme - Steve Stewart-Williams: "Leftists and conservatives are both prone to conspiracy theories; they just prefer different ones. >0 = more common among conservatives <0 = more common among lefties 0 = equally common on both sides
More Conservative to less Conservative in descending order: COVID Threat Exaggerated, Birther, Global Warming Hoax, Mueller investigating Clintons, Soros Control World, Dems infected Trump w/ COVID, Conspiracy to Kill Police, Epstein Murdered, Spread COVID on Purpose, Bill Gates Caused COVID, COVID Anti-vax, Elite Pedophile Rings, Deep State, FDA Promote Cancer, Vaccine Tracking Devices, Sandy Hook Faked, 9/11 Truther, 5G Causes COVID, Government False Flags, RFK Assassination, Gov't Mind Control
Equally common on both sides: MMR Anti-vax, Pharma Invents Diseases, JFK Assassination, Cellphones Cause Cancer, Holocaust Denial, Danger of GMOs, Intentionally Spread Cancer, Rothchilds, Fluoride in Water, Single Group Control, Banks Manipulate the Economy, Fluorescent Lightbulbs, Intentionally Spread AIDS, FDR Pearl Harbor
Less Liberal to more Liberal: MLK Assassination, Alien Cover-up, Faked Moon Landing, Gov't Assassinate Entertainers, Putin Poisoned Clinton, Frame OJ Simpson, Bush Breached Levees, Koch Brothers World Control, lran Hostage Conspiracy, Processing Mail-in Ballots, Bush Faked Employment Stats, Russia Manipulates U.S. Policy, Trump Faked COVID, Trump is a Russian Asset, Trump Made Deal w/ Putin, GOP Steals Elections, Trump Cover-up Symptoms"
Given that most people thought covid was more deadly than the IFRs showed it was, that can't be called a conspiracy theory. Ditto for many of the other "conspiracy theories"
So much for dangerous conservatives denying elections
Meme - Twitter: "Celebrities acting like retards"
Instagram: "Retards acting like celebrities"
TikTok: "Retards acting like retards"
Reddit: "Retards acting like intellectuals"
Conventional twin studies overestimate the environmental differences between families relevant to educational attainment - "Estimates of shared environmental influence on educational attainment (EA) using the Classical Twin Design (CTD) have been enlisted as genetically sensitive measures of unequal opportunity. However, key assumptions of the CTD appear violated for EA. In this study we compared CTD estimates of shared environmental influence on EA with estimates from a Nuclear Twin and Family Design (NTFD) in the same 982 German families. Our CTD model estimated shared environmental influence at 43%. After accounting for assortative mating, our best fitting NTFD model estimated shared environmental influence at 26%, disaggregating this into twin-specific shared environments (16%) and environmental influences shared by all siblings (10%). Only the sibling shared environment captures environmental influences that reliably differ between families, suggesting the CTD substantially overestimates between-family differences in educational opportunity. Moreover, parental education was found to have no environmental effect on offspring education once genetic influences were accounted for."
Does Wealth Inhibit Criminal Behavior? Evidence from Swedish Lottery Winners and Their Children - "There is a well-established negative gradient between economic status and crime, but its underlying causal mechanisms are not well understood. We use data on four Swedish lotteries matched to data on criminal convictions to gauge the causal effect of financial windfalls on player’s own crime and their children’s delinquency. We estimate a positive but statistically insignificant effect of lottery wealth on players’ own conviction risk. Our estimates allow us to rule out effects one fifth as large as the cross-sectional gradient between income and crime. We also estimate a less precise null effect of parental lottery wealth on child delinquency."
Clearly, poverty causes crime
