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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 3h

Pantagruel seems like it’s referencing Law & Order. Lots of court cases resolved through sustained legal reasoning.

aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 3h

The book seems like it could have been thinking about adaptation to Hollywood Prestige TV format — but I can see the references to Eliot, Dickens, and Sopranos, and would be missing any k- or j-drama references!

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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 5h

“All those who love learning agree that words are superfluous when the facts are obvious to everyone. Words are necessary only when the things we discuss don’t clearly reveal themselves.”

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The Little Red Podcast @littleredpodcast.bsky.social · 4d

... by Feng Qu, an archaeologist from Nanjing Normal University and Mayfair Yang, a cultural anthropologist from UC Santa Barbara.

Listen to the full episode: omny.fm/shows/the-li...

Wolf Spirits and Wild Shamans: The Revival of Spirit Mediums - The Little Red Podcast

In the latest episode in our series on belief, we’re exploring the surprising revival of shamanism in China, which has made a comeback despite Mao's best efforts at eradication. Ritual healers and spi...

omny.fm

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Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 17h

I am further down the modal melody rabbit hole and have not yet found a Taylor Swift song you could not play using only the white notes. One is in Mixolydian D: (this is not that weird, just a flat seventh in a major scale -- but she rarely sings those, except in this song where she ONLY sings them)

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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 7h

Pantagruel meets Panurge (Raffels tr., 1990). One of Panurge’s final speeches sounds like something a chatbot, or neoliberal technocrat, might say! 😂

And Panurge said:

(In classical Greek: "Dear master, why, why don't you give me some
read? You see me virtually dying of hunger, and you have no pity for me, none at all, and you ask me improper questions. Yet all those who love learning agree that words are superfluous when the facts are obvious everyone. Words are necessary only when the things we discuss don't
clearly reveal themselves.")

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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 7h

Pantagruel and Pachinko!

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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 17h

Vice-verse is fun too: AI Capone, AI Gore, AI Giordano

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Django Wexler @djangowexler.bsky.social · 1d

My boss: so how's our fourth quarter looking?

Me, the sales manager at the company that makes inflatable frog suits: well, you're never going to believe this, but

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Levi McLaughlin @levimclaughlin.bsky.social · 1d

Japan, ostensibly one of the least religious countries in the world, had its political order upended by the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai. That is THE story about Friday's epochal shift in Japanese politics (thread follows):

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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 1d

This isn’t to exonerate agents’ bad choices. We should continue to say, “that’s a [bad] choice.” There is always responsibility to not do bad things. It’s just that the “choice”-frame is a very narrow one for making sense of systemic evil.

aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 1d

An author might confess to feeling compelled to do so. Why? Money? Respect? The sense that if they didn’t, someone else would, or already has? Habit (of, say, lying continuously?)?

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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 1d

The internetism “that’s a choice” for when somebody says or publishes something awful is interesting to me. I don’t know. I think the awful choice to say something harmful is in many senses predetermined by many structural forces, including karmic ones.

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Stephen Collins @stephencollins.bsky.social · 2d

All my comics have happy endings!

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Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis @jeffjarvis.bsky.social · 2d

Well played, @theguardian.com
You won’t believe what degrading practice the pope just condemned
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

You won’t believe what degrading practice the pope just condemned

Communication must be freed from clickbait and misguided thinking, head of Catholic church tells journalists

www.theguardian.com

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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 2d

Mark Lilla. Ryan Lizza. Chris Cilizza.

(The highest evolution of a pokemon.)

Chris Cillizza @chriscillizza.bsky.social · 2d

What if...Donald Trump actually deserves the Nobel Peace Prize?

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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 2d

Can Zohran tik a tok? (yes) Can Donnie deliver a speech? (sometimes) Can Bari write an email? (no)

aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 2d

But I honestly don't know. Can a 20-y.o. Japanese identify the main idea in a paragraph? Can an 18-y.o. Swede read a Knausgard volume, in translation? I'm very much a frog-in-an-Anglophone-well in my observations about reading skills decline.

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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 2d

Curious how the "post-literacy" moral panic is going down in other democracies, say, Sweden, India, and Japan. Indian democracy functioned, more or less, before the majority of the electorate was "literate."

Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 2d

This is as good and urgent as others have been saying. I don't think it's possible to sustain anything resembling mass democracy in a post-literate society. musgrave.substack.com/p/a-post-lit...

A Post-Literate Society is a Too-Literal Society

Directness is a virtue and subtlety is lost

musgrave.substack.com

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ti zhang @zerochilltea.bsky.social · 3d

so the frog is 卖娃青蛙。https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_23101624 it was designed by a mom with the last name Tong in Nanjing, inspired by the toad in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calabas.... it is a mascot of 躺平culture (lay-flat, against capitalism)