@Robusto Tomayto tomahto

@M.A.R. Well, not all popular music is at that level, necessarily.

Yeah sometimes they're breaking up

@Robusto heh, I'm gonna bring that up next time some b a s i j i here tries a brave thing like burning the US flag 6500 miles away from the US

Well, assuming I'd be unfortunate enough to stumble upon a demonstration like that

@M.A.R. To pick a semi-random example, the Queen song "Under Pressure". I think it's quite good, though I have little idea what it's supposed to be about. But I think that's normal for a pop song.

@Mitch the way I recall it, they were ratted out to something like the security forces of Elysium, and were shot down?

Here's the cast of the Magicians performing "Under Pressure".

I like this better than actual Queen performances.

Well, no VPN works well enough for me to watch that for the moment

@M.A.R. Huh?

@M.A.R. Biology and Medicine are in Science

I tried listening to Queen, but they're kinda too . . . Jolly?

@Mitch oh YEAH, I am STEM, destroyer of beakers

One of those super brilliant people folks on Reddit are so teary eyed towards

@M.A.R. Jolly?

@M.A.R. It -is- brave.

Biphenyls, chlorinated free radicals, carcinogenic plastic microfibers.

@FaheemMitha I can only listen to "Don't Stop Me Now". The rest I don't listen to often

@FaheemMitha Jolly holiday

Mary Poppins

Dick Van Dyke

@M.A.R. Ah. Well, I don't really know Queen's music. But I like that one song. Just an example. Or perhaps, more accurately, I like the video.

@Mitch I don't think that is a Queen song.

@Mitch eh, I dunno.

@Mitch Still not Queen.

@FaheemMitha Maybe Queen did a cover?

@Mitch Anything is possible.

People get wroked up over imaginary things those pesky Americans do and forget about the real things they can be angry about

@M.A.R. That's part of the reason those imaginary things exist. As a distraction.

Often they are surprisingly effective.

@M.A.R. Like Dick Van Dykes awful attempt at a Cockney accent?

Bread and circuses, people.

I like bread

Circusses can be fun. I don't care much for cotton candy anymore though

For example, you won't find many nutjobs angry over the 1953 coup because Mosaddegh had a falling out with Kashani (An ayatollah) before it happened. So for the crazy religious people, he had strayed from his path and it wasn't a great loss.

Instead of gladiators, we get Jason Statham.

gets your face all sticky

@Mitch I like good bread. But it's hard to find here. I suppose one could make it.

@Mitch I think the Roman variety was different.

@M.A.R. Interesting perspective. But you weren't alive at the time, so how do you know?

I'm satisfied with the quality of bread I can find

@M.A.R. Maybe Iranian bread is better?

@FaheemMitha yeah. more blood

@FaheemMitha I'm talking about now. Back then, for more than a decade, every literary figure was super depressed and composing poems and musical pieces about how progress is impossible and everything is hopeless.

@M.A.R. I'm not sure I follow. People are angry at Mosaddegh now?

This regime is very disinhibited when it comes to doctoring history or at the very least shoving down people's throats its own maniacal interpretation of history

@FaheemMitha back then, people understood what they lost. Now the official line is Mosaddegh was a great guy with a lot of potential but he ruined it when he had a falling out with an ayatollah

@M.A.R. Sounds familiar. We have that sort of thing going on here too. Unfortunately.

@M.A.R. Seriously? That's weird.

BTW, is the Congress Yatra making world news? Anyone?

I'm the wrong person to ask

I am at the same time trying to avoid the news and being overexposed to it

@M.A.R. Sometimes I wonder if these people have a copy of Nineteen-Eighty-Four on their nightstand. In translation, naturally.

@M.A.R. I'm trying to monitor the news in case there is a nuclear war. Though my options would be severely limited in that case. Probably restricted to regretting all the things I didn't do when I had the chance.

1984 has sex and is super haram. We do have plenty of Animal Farm translations because they don't see much harm in it

@M.A.R. super haram?

Oh, "forbidden or proscribed by Islamic law."

the opposite of halal?

@M.A.R. Doesn't mean the Ayatollahs don't read it.

If that's what you still call them.

It's just seems increasingly common to see people seemingly using it as an instruction manual.

If you are as familiar with it as I am, it's quite disturbing.

Very few of them are the sort of people that would seek knowledge. Those ayatollahs are boring scholars that lock themselves away in their reading rooms and turn a blind eye to what's going on. I don't particularly care if they read It

@Mitch censoring twitter and tweeting nonetheless, for example, is just normal haram. If you're a good enough person, such as the president, you can afford it

The good you do for the world, for example not being able to give a simple speech to inflame the conservatives that already support you, forcing the state TV to use footage from older demonstrations to show people's support of the regime, easily outpaces the minor haram things you have to endure for the betterment of the Islamic society

Yuck, that was the prednisolone talking

@M.A.R. It doesn't really matter, but I'm curious. What's the problem with sex?

In this specific context, I mean.

@FaheemMitha hey I didn't ban it, ask them. Same reason hijab is mandatory I suppose, or people can't show skin in movies

@M.A.R. Sorry, my list of acquaintances does not include any Ayatollahs.

Admitting your biological gender corrupts your soul somehow. You should spend that time praying or asking for forgiveness for possessing normal levels of hormones

Does the Koran actually have anything to say about depictions of sexual activity?

I'm technically Muslim, but the amount I know about Islam would fit on a postage stamp with space left over.

I always wondered how any of this leaves room for, say, marriage. But no one was ever going to answer me, so

@M.A.R. Yes, hormones are EVIL.

@FaheemMitha well, probably, but now I'm drawing a blank

I recently discovered that one of the five pillars of Islam is Zakat, or a form of charity. That was news to me.

It all goes downhill when spirituality gives way to masochism

@FaheemMitha yeah those are the good parts. But there's also Khoms, which is a bit more controversial, depending on the implementation

Though apparently not exactly charity.

@M.A.R. Is that still a thing?

@FaheemMitha charity with extra steps. I mean, you have Sadagheh too, which more closely resembles what we think of charity. Zakath would be some form of tax that is supposed to go directly to the poor. Well, most times.

@FaheemMitha in books only.

@M.A.R. Hmm. OK. Sounds... complicated.

Often just the Arabic labels for familiar concepts.

But overall Islam does emphasize community and charity a lot

@M.A.R. Is it Zakat or Zakath?

@M.A.R. I guess that's good. At least it's better than all the sexism.

My limited experience of Muslim people is that they are quite social.

Well, at least the men. Perhaps the women are supposed to know their place.

The former. Well, Arabic has this letter, ه with two dots on it, that often indicates a feminine noun gender. It's pronounced /h/ when it's a stop, and a /t/ when it's followed by a vowel

In Persian, that letter is often just replaced with plain t

@M.A.R. OK, so the former?

@FaheemMitha that's true. A social woman is unislamic and modern

@FaheemMitha Often Zakat, rarely Zakah

@M.A.R. Even in India, Muslim women aren't exactly encouraged to be independent.

@M.A.R. OK.

Though Islam isn't as oppressive here as it can be in other places, of course.

India is still a multi-cultural place. For now.

@M.A.R. en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D9%87#Etymology_2 ?

@FaheemMitha well, it gets confusing for me. Mullahs can probably update their interpretations of Quran to be less patriarchal, except for the places that they can't. Would it mean they were wrong before, or now, or that even the most rigid of "rules" are context-dependent? I have no idea. They say Islam is supposed to be flexible, but then beat up peaceful protesters.

@M.A.R. Well, I've never seen any sense in any religion, so I have no useful comment to make.

They pay lip service about all sorts of things that follow common sense, but then contradict them.

I mean, I find them sociologically interesting, of course. And they are clearly of immense significance in human affairs. But I've never found any meaning in them per se.

Surely not the sort of folk that should run things. Not everything is vague.

I've occasionally had people say that there are interesting things in Hindu religious philosophy. But I don't know of anything concrete.

And mostly they just seem to cause trouble.

@FaheemMitha this one: en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%A9

Religion is waning in most developed countries.

Including China.

Well, we've been socially reverse developing the past few years

@M.A.R. The one with two dots on top?

@Cerberus That's been the case for a long time.

Regressing doesn't seem to cut it, because people are becoming less obnoxiously politically illiterate

Since the Second World War, at least.

@FaheemMitha yep. The version without is another letter, making the h sound only

@M.A.R. OK. Dumb question, but do you know Arabic?

I mean, can you speak and/or write it?

@FaheemMitha sounds familiar. They're just saying there's some course material for Philosophy 101 in there.

@FaheemMitha Indeed, and it continues.

@FaheemMitha a little bit.

@M.A.R. I guess it would be useful where you are.

@M.A.R. Though I don't know any Philosophy either.

Studied it at school. It was horribly taught, and the textbooks were horribly outdated. So for six years of Arabic learning, I have nothing substantial to show for.

@M.A.R. Oh. That's a shame. Sorry to hear that.

@FaheemMitha bah, it's eeeasy. Consequentialism blah blah informal fallacy blah blah labels more labels. And the rest is 'navel-gazing' if you want to be provocative and 'promising in a century or two' if you wanna be hopeful

@M.A.R. Heh.

@FaheemMitha I've heard that, German, for instance, is taught the same horrible way in the Western bloc.

Loads of grammar, nothing to develop conversational skills. A lot of vocabulary, but dispersed and impractical.

@M.A.R. Don't get me started. Language teaching is an abomination, like so many things in education.

@FaheemMitha speak, not really. Write, maybe a few broken sentences. I can understand writings fairly well, spoken Arabic, not so much

My theory for why education is so terrible? Because the people who run the world like it that way.

@M.A.R. So you can read Arabic newspapers?

@M.A.R. It was taught quite effectively at my school.

@FaheemMitha with some effort

Helped me a lot later, when I began to read German in earnest.

@M.A.R. OK.

@FaheemMitha Why an abomination?

What's wrong with education?

I think it is very important.

Languages are hard, because there is so much colloquial stuff in there.

@Cerberus A school in the Netherlands teaching German is kinda cheating

@Cerberus I think you misunderstand. It's the quality of the education I'm talking about. The quality is terrible. Generally speaking.

I mean, Persian and Arabic have very different syntaxes at least

@FaheemMitha I think it's fine.

Could be better, of course.

@Cerberus What is fine?

The topic of your sentence.

@Cerberus Sorry, I don't follow.

@FaheemMitha and the funny part no one talks about is because we're taught Arabic to read and understand Quran, we never learned about the different dialects spoken in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq etc.

I was just trying to say that the standard of education internationally is terrible.

@FaheemMitha I don't follow you either.

It's obviously a general statement, but a lifetime has mostly confirmed it.

@FaheemMitha I don't see that, though.

@Cerberus Do you travel a lot?

Do you meet many people from different cultures?

Higher educaton is sorta a "could be better" thing, as far as I've seen. High school education is abominable wherever I've looked though

@M.A.R. So if you visited Egypt, your Arabic skills would not be so useful?

@M.A.R. I was talking about basic school education.

@FaheemMitha Online, sure.

Up to 18 or so. You know, the standard school leaving age.

@FaheemMitha for reading things, maybe not much would be different. Wouldn't understand a word they speak though

@Cerberus OK.

@M.A.R. Yes, I see. It can be hard to understand people when they talk.

Maybe Asia is especially bad

@M.A.R. In what respect?

@FaheemMitha school education

@M.A.R. Well, I lived in North America for many years, and I don't think so.

I mean, India and Iran qualify, and they cover half the continet already. I don't think Pakistan has a very stellar educational system either

The school education there is also fairly terrible, I think. It also comes with copious amounts of brainwashing, but that's a whole other story.

@M.A.R. It probably doesn't. Pakistan is a basket case, by all accounts.

China, who knows what's going on there?

@M.A.R. I also tried to teach young Americans. Both in Chicago and Chapel Hill, to some extent.

@M.A.R. They seem to be working hard on their education systems.

Or that's the impression one gets.

My impression with young Americans is they're disincentivized

But I know very little about China.

Well, they sure complain a lot about their subjects

Of course, the Chinese system probably also comes with copious amounts of brainwashing of a different variety.

The less sugar coated kind I presume. But they also probably have something resembling caste systems like in India, especially in provinces less talked about

Probably less specific than in India?

> From the Qin dynasty to the late Qing dynasty (221 B.C.E.- C.E. 1840), the Chinese government divided Chinese people into four classes: landlord, peasant, craftsmen, and merchant. Landlords and peasants constituted the two major classes, while merchants and craftsmen were collected into the two minor.

Apparently modern China has this Hukou system which has divided people into landlords and tenants

@M.A.R. Ah, but were those inherited?

@M.A.R. Does not sound very Communist...

Of course almost all cultures have or had classes, as in nobility, clergy, serfs/slaves, the rest.

But it has always seemed so oddly specific to me in India. But I don't know enough about it.

Well looks like it's more a rural vs. urban thing, as soon as I can find a link that's not blocked

Right, they have something like that.

People in the country aren't even allowed to travel at will...

This article argues that the opposite is happening, i.e. the rural hukou is now becoming more valuable, but I don't know if they're biased or not: jstor.org/stable/43974667

Hmm.

@M.A.R. What is b a s i j i?

@Robusto Member of a kind of police force.

Irregular police, I suppose.

Known to be cruel.

But I think it is also a kind of Revolutionary Jugend.

Youth guard kind of thing?

Probably though I'm not sure what that is.