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tanadrin

@tanadrin.bsky.social

190 followers 71 following 1.4K posts

I also poast at tanadrin.tumblr.com. Fiction, worldbuilding, and other nonsense at tanadrin.de. Aurë entuluva!

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tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 12h

communism must be understood as a historically progressive force destined to be supplanted by liberal democracy

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 12h

It is especially bad because the court seems very selective about enforcing rules about standing.

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 14h

It really is the transition point for the franchise. And a lesson on why prequels are always a bad idea.

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 14h

Interesting. I think I agree with many of the diagnosed flaws, but not quite the intensity of the criticism, since they prefigure things that would become 10,000 times worse in Nu Trek

Reposted by tanadrin

Djinn & Tonic 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇲🇽 🇬🇱 @djinnandtonic.bsky.social · 1d

"please don't go forty-eighter mode in front of my parents"

me:

An engraved eagle from a recruit poster for the Union army aimed at Philadelphia area German speakers. The eagle flies downward witha radiant pattern behind him, as well as an American flag on a pole topped with a Phrygian cap. In its mouth, a German language inscription in Fraktur font, translated as "Union and Freedom forever! 👉 Death to the Traitors!"

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 20h

...explain?

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 20h

i think ms rachel probably just doesn't like it when kids get shot. i think you'd have to work really hard to infer something else, as a matter of fact.

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 20h

one of the ways people abuse the term virtue signaling is applying it to expressions that are obviously deeply sincere and not really about signaling at all, in that there is no ulterior meaning that someone is trying to communicate.

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 20h

"i bet this person whose professional life revolves around thinking about and working with kids is insincere in their public display of discomfort with kids getting killed" also just seems like terrible theory of mind.

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 20h

equally it seems legit to me to be skeezed out by people relishing fictional scenarios where they imagine how fun and cathartic it would be to call wizards of non-magical parentage "mudbloods," because of what social dynamics bigotry in the harry potter universe deliberately echoes.

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 20h

(and sometimes not even *in* non-hypothetical situations, like the tiktok gyges keeps having to link to people) seems like one's theoretical commitments have gotten so tangled up they're of no use in describing the actual terrain anymore

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 20h

and while in general i feel like the answer to getting too in the weeds of "is X a discourse object of type Y or not" can be just the wiki page on prototype theory, pretending that categories of discourse objects are suddenly totally inapplicable outside contemporary non-hypothetical discourse

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 20h

which of course is *why* it can make the jump to being a slur applied to real people so easily. the whole joke is that the term is a functional drop-in for other racial slurs. you cannot invent an imaginary waterfowl that goes 'quack' and complain when it is classified as a duck

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 20h

but the scenario invoked is "imagine sentient robots existed and people treated them like they treated racial minorities." well, if it functions in discourse like a duck, prototype theory says it's reasonable to concede it is, in fact, a duck

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 20h

"is a fictitious slur a slur" seems like to me it resolves to "yes," in the same sense a fictitious animal, like a unicorn, is an animal: supposing a thing existed, what would be it be? "clanker" is not fictitious; it's a real word applied to fictitious things, so it's not conceptually identical

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 1d

the real bad guy in astronomy is kepler. what do you mean there's no way to directly compute the position of a body in an elliptical orbit from time elapsed alone? what is this transcendental equation bullshit??

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 1d

idk man, it's a nightmare down there

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 1d

all scientists can be classified according to just two variables: whether they're more mad physics or mad biology, and whether their hubris is in calling up what cannot be put down, or seeking to understand what no man was meant to know

we were definitely not meant to know about that worm with a hundred buttholes, for instance

Reposted by tanadrin

The Lincolnshire Poster @desiderratum.bsky.social · 1d

"At long last, we are pleased to announce that we have built the brass head, from Robert Greene's beloved play 'Thou Shalt Not Build Ye a Brazen Head'"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friar_B...

Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 1d

"you know, mad scientists, like shakespeare wrote about!"

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 1d

what on earth does his mental model of european history look like, i wonder

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 1d

older than that. 17th century is 1600s. he's back-porting an extremely mid-20th-century archetype to (generously, assuming the very end of the 1600s) the time of the golden age of piracy and the glorious revolution.

Reposted by tanadrin

Kozy Raccoon @kozyraccoon.bsky.social · 2d

I think we need to face the fact that:
- the dangers of migrants are largely mediatic fiction
- immigrants are the central scapegoats of the far-right
- a far-right that has a monopoly on the media
- and this is all used to push a Gramscian project to re-establish reactionary thinking

Reposted by tanadrin

Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 2d

updated, disappointing version of the Odyssey where a shitposter goes on a quest that takes them far from home [having to post like a grownup]

by the time the return, none of their mutuals recognize them anymore

tanadrin @tanadrin.bsky.social · 3d

i guess it'd be hard to craft a legally useful entrenched clause that said something like "don't put highly contingent policy that amounts to stupid culture war shit in the constitution." would save a lot of trouble if you could, though. might've avoided that whole Prohibition mess, for one.