• 0 Posts
  • 181 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

help-circle



  • Not even anywhere near that long. There have been humans for probably more than 200,000 years. Probably more. It gets confusing when you go back that far. But our written history only accounts for maybe 10,000 of those years. So 5% of total human history, if we take the minimum estimate of what it takes for us to be human. We have no evidence to support the fact that human advancement even lasts as long as written history. I mean, shit… the Romans had central heating and cement, and then they died out and we forgot how to do those things for 1,000 years. Our knowledge, and the acquisition of same is not exactly linear. Lots of fits and starts over the course of the various human civilizations that have occurred.












  • I love this book! I first read it, I don’t know, maybe 20 years ago, back when Pargrin (he went by David Wong then) posted one chapter of it at a time on his website. A few years after he got it published, Don Coscarelli (director; does mostly indie movies including the “Phantasm” series) read the book, flipped out about it, and decided to buy the rights to the story and make it into a movie. It’s a pretty great adaptation, too! I’d rate it as mostly faithful to the source material. It’s got Paul Giamatti, Clancy Brown, and Doug Jones in it.

    Anyway, if you like JDATE, you should check out Coscarelli’s movie of the same name. And also read the rest of the books in the series (book 4 was published about a year ago). And if you like the movie, you should also check out another Coscarelli classic, “Bubba Ho-Tep”, starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis.


  • Hey - I read through some of your post history to get the back story. I know we’re strangers, but I just wanted to say that I’m proud of you, and I’m happy that you’re seeing positive progress on your journey, even if it’s just a “simple win”. It’s rough not being able to count on your parents to have your back. I hope you have someone else in your life to at least partially fill that hole, but if not… just keep posting, and keep going. Strangers on the internet being proud of you and happy for you is a poor substitute for parental affection, but hopefully it’s at least something. You got this. <3



  • You know what’s hilarious? According to the book “The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History 1962-1976”, During the height of the Chinese cultural revolution, it became the fashion to wear pins that featured Mao in profile. In fact, if you didn’t have one of these, you were seen as a pretender; someone who didn’t take the revolution seriously. The problem is, these pins were made of aluminum. Due to the popularity of these pins, China was temporarily denuded of available aluminum. Workers were stripping aluminum shielding off of their machines to make these pins, and there was a thriving black market where people could buy them. So basically, to show off how good they were at communism, they went to the most capitalist of places (the black market) to buy these things. Mao even, at one point, decried the industry, lamenting the lack of available aluminum to make airframes for fighter jets.

    But that’s the thing - as important as the struggle was to the people in the revolution, it paled in comparison to the need to prove to everybody else that you supported the struggle. If you didn’t have one of those pins, you might as well just sign up to be part of the next struggle session.