English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

jlliagre

00:45

Connections
Puzzle #595
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Connections
Puzzle #596
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Cerberus

Wow, you're good!

jlliagre

01:26

@Cerberus Thanks. Today's connection was easier for me, except for the purple, obviously.

Cerberus

Yeah.

But you also got yesterday's, which I failed at.

And you got both blue AND purple before yellow.

Mitch

01:39

@Cerberus I actually meant 'That F'ing Guy', @Xanne

Cerberus

Ah, and this is about the Orange Lord?

Mitch

01:52

@tchrist it's more like el que no debe nombrarse.

@Cerberus Sí!

I'm more important news, I commend you all on your color combinations.

Yellow and purple is quite a brave choice.

Cerberus

It is new.

It is unique.

What's your colour combination?

Xanne

@Mitch @Cerberus TFG is an acronym easy googled because it was used on social media for quite a while, to avoid using his name . . .

>Mitch Sep 17, 2021 18:38 TIL that TFG is a TLA for 45

Mitch

02:24

@Cerberus a mix of blue and purple is very nice. Very safe though. Not remarkable at all.

Cerberus

@Xanne Not everyone is on network sites, and even more people don't follow trends there...

@Mitch Is that what you wear to a meeting?

Mitch

@Cerberus at times I would wear the near universal uniform mimicking medical residents here in the states, namely a light blue Oxford shirt with tan khaki pants, and an innocuous tie, no blazer (that's for administration). For business business, it would be a plain dark suit. For everyday business casual it would be what I like to call 'Amazon Assembly Line Manager: a plain bright yellow golf shirt and Dockers.

There. You couldn't distinguish me from a million other people with that.

@Cerberus I don't tend to hang out at trendy sites (or rather I don't follow trendy people on those trendy sites). I just Google for stuff I don't know.

But yes, sometimes it is annoying to be forced to Google things.

It's a difficult line of etiquette to learn.

'tfg' is intentionally obscurantist.

Like referring to the president of china with Chinese words that are nearby 'poih' because people referred to him as Winnie the Pooh and he didn't like that.

He sorta looks like WtP from the side.

Like Arthur Hitchcock

Cerberus

02:42

@Mitch Hmm I will have to look up some of those terms.

I had heard of the Pooh insanity.

It show how primitive a person is if he then tries to censor Winnie the Pooh.

HippoSawrUs

02:55

Quote of the day (NJTODAY.NET): "However, the two sides will pretend to fight over the health of the nation because politics has become a form of entertainment that distracts citizens from demanding real change."

3

Yep

Mitch

@Cerberus it's probably deputies of deputies ordering sublevel IT directors based on a misheard off hand comment by a top aide to Xi.

@Cerberus which is to say mostly lacking in color, or a color combo that is innocuous.

Oh my own personal flair for business casual is a v-neck sweater, which allows a tie without being so formal as with a blazer, for the quasi-academic look.

HippoSawrUs

03:34

Murdertown, Dundee: Sadly, a 15-y/o kills a woman in the woods. A kid (in a field-trip group) notices him b/c he's dressed all in colbalt blue. The police go to the suspect's house; he's washed the blue sweatsuit, but the socks he was wearing are rolled up in a drawer with a spot of the victim's blood on them. So he gets life which means around 20 years there because he gets a "tariff" (Who knows what these people are doing or saying.)

A few days after he's released, he walks back into the woods and attacks a woman, fracturing her skull with a nickel-plated barbell.

People come to her aid immediately. She gives a description, a man all in black with a barbell.

So the police encircle the woods (there's a Scottish word for that) and see the suspect leaving the woods. When they enter his apartment, the washing machine is running and he's standing there in bloody boxer shorts. Not black ones, I suppose.

And the nickel-plated dumbell (or dumbells?) is in a cabinet. Neatly tucked away while he's walking around sorting colors and sh*t in bloody underwear.

alphabet

03:56

@HippoSawrUs I wouldn't call it entertaining at present. But hopefully the MAGAites demanding change get distracted.

HippoSawrUs

He mixed weapons but not colors. Laundry is serious business.

alphabet

That actually does sound entertaining in the way that politics is.

Also involves tariffs.

HippoSawrUs

I guess tariff is like parole in Scottish English.

And there was some word for flanking, I guess.

I dunno, I'm not going there. Scary.

cobalt

alphabet

Lesson learned: always wash your socks.

Just stay away from anyone in a sweatsuit. The standard lazy perv murderer outfit.

I have an unhealthy obsession with true crime. Just preparing for when I get myself serial killed.

HippoSawrUs

@alphabet The black outfit was like a cat burgular suit complete with backpack, for a walk in the park on a sunny day.

cat burglar

alphabet

04:10

True crime makes me feel better about myself. Sure, I may be slightly obnoxious sometimes, but I never murdered any neonates.

HippoSawrUs

I'm gonna need some law about no night-stalking clothes allowed in broad daylight or something

@alphabet Yes, I'm just hiding out and never walking a dog in the UK.

They literally have no cars and walking as their #1 cause of death.

The drivers are murderers/milkmen or whatever.

I probably need a true-crime break… GN.

alphabet

@HippoSawrUs Will I be able to keep wearing my rhinestone-studded balaclavas?

A guy in a burglar suit definitely one of, like, the top 20 weirdest things you can find in the woods.

Imagine how traumatic witnessing that would have been for any nearby raccoons.

Anyway, is that from a podcast? Gimme, I need to be scared a bit.

And feel better than that guy.

HippoSawrUs

04:50

@alphabet Absolutely. In Scotland you can just go anywhere in your murder suit whether you're between jobs or not.

It's Amazon Prime, Murdertown

Probably not a great choice

alphabet

@HippoSawrUs Good to know

I mean, as a raccoon, I just strut around naked in public. If you feel uncomfortable, that's your problem.

What are the cops gonna do, come and pawcuff me?

HippoSawrUs

That was truth stranger than fiction, but most of them are just young women without rides and before cellphones.

alphabet

I'd like to thank Jeffrey Dahmer for bringing some level of gender equality to the business

I just noticed that the Wikipedia page for Jeffrey Dahmer lists, under "Categories," the category of "LGBTQ people from Wisconsin"

HippoSawrUs

05:06

I had a Milwaukee boyfriend before; they do not appreciate Dahmer jokes as much as you'd think they would.

alphabet

Aww why?

HippoSawrUs

I was expecting Laverne & Shirley happily skipping in the street. Milwaukee was just pork and no parking.

alphabet

I mean, aside from all of the obvious, very good reasons

HippoSawrUs

Oh, and cheese

It stunk to high heaven

They said it was the John Morrell plant

I think China owns the meat packing in America now.

IDK, I think I only need poultry and fish from now on.

HippoSawrUs

05:35

Oh, they're saying cordon as in police cordon. Like cordoned off but a noun meaning the area or the process of cordoning, it seems.

Cerberus

06:52

@Mitch That is also highly primitive.

@alphabet You're just a snob at night, caught you again.

GratefulDisciple

10:32

@jlliagre Today's connection is quite easy; I also got it without mistake

Connections
Puzzle #596
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@Cerberus Yup, it would be hard for those who have not spoiler. Thankfully the other 3 are easy.

@HippoSawrUs I remember when I was a kid my dad watches reruns of Laverne & Shirley broadcast on TV.

@Mitch That's what I love being a man. You can wear the same kind of attire over and over.

@Cerberus An innocent child would have blurted it out "the emperor looks like Winnie the Pooh!" He does look and act like Winnie the Pooh in public.

If the Chinese are smart, they would follow the Western way: don't censor but put out a plausible alternative narrative backed by an authoritative figure in power with money.

GratefulDisciple

11:08

@Robusto So far, I'm always served with 2 stacks. I just hope the tradition continues.

@Cerberus You mean this? Looks like a sacrilege to me despite its being a "horror parody". It won a number of "worst" awards. I wonder whether the producer deemed it a "success" since they produced a sequel.

Wow, the enabler is Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain in 2022 (see here which seems to follow the 95 year rule, see here for another example). I generally support having patent / copyright expires after the author's death (or several decades after), but in this case, it seems the public cannot be trusted with continuing the legacy.

jlliagre

12:55

@Cerberus As suggested, do/dono answer updated :-)

tchrist

13:26

When you wrote ‘international’ in “You have an international background’ here, hadn’t you instead actually meant one or more of the following:

alien
guest
exilic
shifty
foreign
migrant
unhomed
belanded
emigrant
overseas
unstable
uprooted
immigrant
itinerant
unsettled
unstabled
allopatric
ambulatory
bicultural
binational
expatriate
unnational
peripatetic
antinational
cosmopolitan
intergential
polycultural
extranational
multicultural
multinational
pluricultural
transnational
nonindigenuous
transregionate

HippoSawrUs

13:37

@GratefulDisciple We loved it, a spinoff of Happy Days.

GratefulDisciple

@tchrist Very good list of words that I can relate to; some words more than others. At the moment, I feel I'm an American expatriate or as a binational (dual citizens of USA and Canada) living as a cosmopolitan, moving on from feeling as an overseas Indonesian (in the beginning) to being an immigrant or foreigner or nonindigenuous in the first decade or two, to being bicultural / multicultural / polycultural as I identified more with America.

But never itinerant, unsettled, unnational, peregrinational, ambulatory, etc.

tchrist

@GratefulDisciple This is precisely why I asked: I could not tell which synset @Mitch had meant to conjure up in our minds.

GratefulDisciple

@HippoSawrUs really? Haven't watched Happy Days only heard of it. But yes, I like the free spirit of Laverne and Shirley, Mary Tyler Moore, and Perfect Strangers.

@tchrist Guess Mitch simply wanted to ask an open ended question, which is how I took it. But being more specific is better, of course.

tchrist

@GratefulDisciple Ah yes, that storied show. Alas that @HippoSawrUs shall never have seen the original version, yclept Idylls of the Fonz: being the reconstructed tales from The Lost Lays of Ritchie Cunningham.

Robusto

#travle #775 +0 (Perfect)
✅✅✅
https://travle.earth

GratefulDisciple

13:48

Perfect Strangers helped me somewhat during my early status as "resident alien" (the official title of my green card) adjusting to America. When I became US citizen about 10 years later, I no longer felt as an alien.

tchrist

@GratefulDisciple Good!

Robusto

13:59

#WhenTaken #335 (27.01.2025)

I scored 889/1000🏆

1️⃣📍3.0 km - 🗓️1 yrs - 🥇199/200
2️⃣📍374 km - 🗓️8 yrs - 🥇177/200
3️⃣📍2.8K km - 🗓️4 yrs - 🥈138/200
4️⃣📍502 km - 🗓️7 yrs - 🥇176/200
5️⃣📍6.2 km - 🗓️1 yrs - 🥇199/200

https://whentaken.com

Wordle 1,318 3/6

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Connections
Puzzle #596
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Strands #330
“Viva Las Vegas”
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HippoSawrUs

14:18

@tchrist We loved Opie and Richie. Ron gave his odd-looking brother lots of bit parts, but he was a cute kid. Their dad was named Rance, unique.

I'm not going to work up a buncha "bias" towards a stupid wanna-be book…

WTH?

Like, 'You're reading crap; it's fine. Crap is always fine.'

Like the Fonz would say: "Correctamundo."

Robusto

@HippoSawrUs Quoted by Jules in Pulp Fiction.

Daily Octordle #1099
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Score: 71

Must of Got Lost

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HippoSawrUs

'All this crappy context has led me to believe…it's all correctamundo. You're welcome. Fare thee well, humble reader.'

Robusto

What's Fonzie like?

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HippoSawrUs

@Robusto LOL

I forgot about his Jheri curl

I don't think we ever spelled it that way

Robusto

14:35

Daily Sequence Octordle #1099
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7️⃣8️⃣
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Score: 74

@HippoSawrUs You have to be of a certain age to know about Jheri curl, I think. Which, of course, Tarantino is.

And was when he wrote the film.

HippoSawrUs

@Robusto I'm that age, but it was going out.

Robusto

Definitely Sam. L. Jackson's best role.

Daily Extreme Octordle #1099
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Score: 62

Finally a decent score.

jlliagre

15:04

@Robusto Is #2 AI generated ;-)

Robusto

@jlliagre Whoa, I did not notice that.

I was just looking at the building.

jlliagre

Likely a panorama mode artifact.

Robusto

Well, it looked to me like a wide-angle panorama, but it could have been what some cameras do, which splice together several images.

jlliagre

15:22

@Robusto Yes, that's what I meant.

#WhenTaken #335 (27.01.2025)

I scored 774/1000🏅

1️⃣📍383 m - 🗓️0 yrs - 🥇200/200
2️⃣📍445 km - 🗓️3 yrs - 🥇183/200
3️⃣📍1.6K km - 🗓️21 yrs - 🥉108/200
4️⃣📍512 km - 🗓️11 yrs - 🥈167/200
5️⃣📍4.7K km - 🗓️6 yrs - 🥉116/200

https://whentaken.com

Mitch

@tchrist I didn't mean anything so specific. All the words in your list are just as vague (or specific) as mine.

@GratefulDisciple I wanted to see what @Conrado's family's language history had been without being too prying. They've been back and forth which is enough to have an idea.

@Cerberus yes. same repressive results as if the leader is a dictator micromanaging with a paranoid personality.

GratefulDisciple

15:56

@Mitch @Cerberus I'm not supporting the censorship, but to do it justice it's not entirely innocent either (i.e. not just an off-hand remark of the similarity), see here and here. It's balancing allowing satire and tamping down a movement, albeit in an unproductive way. Anyway, I'm glad to be in America.

alphabet

@Cerberus I'm just concerned about my safety. Safety from people in sweatsuits.

Conrado

@Mitch That's what I thought. And I also thought that the clearest way was to add those particulars.

An additional anecdote related to code switching (?): My paternal grandfather worked in a construction company in Asunción for a short time. A Paraguayan, upon seeing his work, admired it with the following words: "Qué cabeza, Mister <Roberts>!"

alphabet

@GratefulDisciple Movements to oust dictators should never be tamped down.

If the residents of Beijing started even a campaign of violent riots to overthrow the regime, I'd give it my unconditional support.

And if acts of violence are justified, any level of nonviolent protest is surely justified also.

America wouldn't exist as a country had its citizens not started a war to overthrow a monarchic government.

Robusto

16:12

@alphabet That alone should be enough to secure victory. /nod

alphabet

@Robusto It worked in Ukraine back in 2014.

Robusto

For the Russians?

alphabet

You do know what happened during the Maidan protests, no? They weren't exactly peaceful.

And I think it's safe to say that, if they had been peaceful, the Ukrainian Revolution--or whatever you want to call it--would have failed.

Robusto

16:31

@alphabet Oh, I thought you were talking about Russia's annexation of Crimea in that year. My bad.

Anyway, my original comment was a joke about your unconditional support being a deciding factor. ;-)

GratefulDisciple

@alphabet I doubt that it was even intended to oust Xi. I'm not familiar enough with Chinese mainlanders' feeling toward Xi. The outspoken ones seem to be typically from Hong Kong / Taiwan who have a grudge for their territories being overrun by Beijing policies. But I think even they would acknowledge some "extended family relationship" with the mainlanders and acknowledge the benefits from having good relations (economically) with Beijing.

As for feeling toward Xi by the overseas Chinese in SE Asia, etc. I have lost touch for far too long and would personally see Xi's censorship primarily from the angle that it hurts free Christian expression & mission there, or complain bitterly how the State interferes in doctrinal matters.

alphabet

@GratefulDisciple I just mean: if it'd be OK to oust Xi by violent means, then surely a fortiori it's OK to make somewhat tasteless jokes about him.

CowperKettle

What is the most effective way to quit being vegan?
Cold turkey

Robusto

@CowperKettle If that doesn't work, try Cold Duck.

Cold Duck

Cold Duck is a sparkling wine made in the United States. == Origin == The recipe was based on a German legend involving Prince Clemens Wenceslaus of Saxony ordering the mixing of champagne with unfinished bottles of wine. The drink, as it evolved in Germany, became standardized as one part wine from the Mosel region, one part wine from the Rheinhessen region, and one part champagne, seasoned with lemons and balm mint. The wine produced was given the name Kaltes Ende ("cold end" in German), until it was altered to the similar-sounding term Kalte Ente meaning "cold duck". Modern Cold Duck w...

GratefulDisciple

@alphabet I don't think violent overthrow would be condoned by most Chinese though. It's a matter of Hong Kong and Taiwan citizens are more used to Western free speech than the rest of China. I would see the conflict more in terms of harmonizing the two cultures and CCP trying to integrate them slowly, i.e. "managing" it.

I see Russia very differently though; it's not the same at all, though it's often portrayed as though China would be attacking Taiwan the way Russia did Ukraine. I don't think China will ever destroy Taiwan and cause her population to suffer like Ukraine; it would have completely delegitimized Xi no matter how strong the censorship is. Nor is it similar to North Korea vs. South Korea.

alphabet

16:48

@GratefulDisciple I don't know whether or not a majority of Chinese citizens support it. But people have an inherent right, and in some cases an obligation, to resist tyranny and defend civil liberties.

@GratefulDisciple I don't mean the invasion of Ukraine but rather the 2014 revolution. (Somewhat of an imperfect example, since they were overthrowing an elected leader, albeit one enacting extremely unpopular policies and leading their democracy down a very dark path).

GratefulDisciple

@alphabet Most are struggling to support their families, they are not in position to do that. Maybe the middle class has to grow further as a prerequisite.

@alphabet That's more likely, maybe by a revolt inside CCP.

alphabet

Incidentally, one of the first people to defend this sort of view was Aquinas, who raises at several points in the ST the claim that people can justifiably overthrow tyrannical governments in some circumstances.

> A tyrannical government is not just, because it is directed, not to the common good, but to the private good of the ruler, as the Philosopher states (Polit. iii, 5; Ethic. viii, 10).

> Consequently there is no sedition in disturbing a government of this kind, unless indeed the tyrant's rule be disturbed so inordinately, that his subjects suffer greater harm from the consequent disturbance than from the tyrant's government.

> Indeed it is the tyrant rather that is guilty of sedition, since he encourages discord and sedition among his subjects, that he may lord over them more securely; for this is tyranny, being conducive to the private good of the ruler, and to the injury of the multitude.

From the end of ST question 42.

He says similar things elsewhere--he's pretty OK with people overthrowing tyrants in certain circumstances: media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/…

GratefulDisciple

17:09

@alphabet I have yet to study Aquinas's view of politics (only the philosophy, theology, human nature, and natural law). But even with Xi's repression of free speech, free association, and freedom of religion that do not harmonize with CCP, his government is STILL directed to the common good. Very different than North Korea. I'll have to see first the evidence that CCP policies result in gross neglect of the masses before thinking it is justified to throw away the existing order.

alphabet

In fact, if the tyrant passes laws that suppress proper religious practices, you have an outright obligation to disobey:

> laws may be unjust through being opposed to the Divine good: such are the laws of tyrants inducing to idolatry, or to anything else contrary to the Divine law: and laws of this kind must nowise be observed, because, as stated in Acts 5:29, "we ought to obey God rather than man."

Aquinas is pretty insistent on this, moreso than I think pretty much anyone from the Greco-Roman world.

GratefulDisciple

@alphabet As for Q96 Art. 6, notice the context of "I answer that" and even so notice how in the "Reply to Objections" the stance is measured, basically giving a Christian "an out" individually (not to foment a revolt) when the rulers become "robbers who oppress them with violence" as an individual (obj. 3) or when secular power forces them to disobey divine law (obj. 2). So it seems you are overgeneralizing here.

@alphabet This "on the contrary" section (which often contains either a Scripture reference, like Acts 5:29 here, or a Patristic citation) is serving as a clue that there is a contradiction between the Objections and the Christian position, that Aquinas will flesh out in "I answer that".

So yes, Acts 5:29 principle stands: "ought to obey God rather than man". The question is HOW and WHENCE? Prudence is presumed, and then there are other texts that tell Christians to obey government (such as Romans 13:1-7) assuming it's relatively able to fulfill its duty for the common good. Even Paul didn't tell Christians to rebel against the Roman government who has executed his Lord.

tchrist

17:29

@Mitch What do you mean that his family have been and forth?

GratefulDisciple

Also, early Christians were known not to rebel against government, but when the government forces them to worship Caesar, they refuse. And only after cajoling and persuasion failed, the Roman magistrate would condemn them to death but here the martyrs must have chosen to die rather than to worship another God. BTW, Acts 5:29 context is disobeying a rule to preach at the temple, hardly related to fomenting a rebellion.

So the proper analogue is this: If Xi enacts a rule that a Christian / Moslem should erect a shrine to worship him, then it is crossing the red line and the Christian has the divine right to refuse, although the guidance by early church fathers was that one should NOT risk oneself to be caught and forced to do it, but should try to run away.

In this modern society, there are other means: powerful foreign entities, diplomacy by strong soft powers like the Vatican, journalistic efforts, think thanks, etc. This should be preferred to rebellion that has great risk of throwing a social order into anarchy that cause countless weak to suffer.

alphabet

17:44

@GratefulDisciple The second of those quotes is from the "I answer that..." section in Q96.

GratefulDisciple

@alphabet (I gotta to do some work now, will read the entire Q96 and Q42 later and respond better to you. That's what I like about this chatroom, always be challenged to learn. Have a good day.)

alphabet

@GratefulDisciple His interpretation of Rom. 13:2 is explicated in Q104 a bit later. Of course he doesn't say that early Christians should've started an armed rebellion against Rome (though it's not clear to me if he'd see that as wrong or just imprudent).

But he is pretty clearly against obeying "usurped" authority and unconditionally obeying human laws, and he pretty clearly thinks that outright violent resistance is OK in at least some circumstances.

That said, like pretty much everyone, he sees that sort of violence as justified only as a last resort. (In the case of China, I don't think there's any way you could kick out the CCP nonviolently.)

alphabet

18:15

(But of course Locke was the one who really developed this view a few centuries later and ended up influencing American history a century after that.)

Cerberus

18:33

> Languages that use “ciao” or a similar version descended from Italian as a greeting or an informal goobye

Present in: Portuguese (tchau), Spanish from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Catalan, Sicilian, Maltese, Venetian, Lombard, Romansh, German (tschau), Swiss German, every Slavic language except Polish and Belarussian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian (tsau), Greek, Albanian (qao), Romanian (ceau), Hungarian (csaó), Somali, Amharic, Tigrinya, Malaysian. The Vietnamese “chào” is not related to Italian, so it’s unmarked there.

MetaEd

20:12

@GratefulDisciple How are repression of basic freedoms directed to the common good?

Mitch

@GratefulDisciple And here I thought going to church today I would get a sermon on adultery.

@Cerberus Russian, really? @CowperKettle is 'ciao' the most common greeting/goodbye there?

CowperKettle

@Mitch Yes, quite common

Cerberus

I didn't know about Russia either.

In Portuguese I knew.

But all of Eastern Europe, Slavic or no?

CowperKettle

20:27

БКП - Чао-какао! - Какао-чао…

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How to open a door - Finnish instructional video from 1979

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jlliagre

20:44

@Cerberus Tchao is very common as an informal Au revoir in France along with Salut and Bye.

GratefulDisciple

@MetaEd I am all for more citizens obtaining greater basic freedoms, but "common good" here is fundamental social order that if there is a revolution (like in Chinese Cultural Revolution 1966-1976 where up to 1-2 million died, many innocents would suffer. It's not an either-or, there can be improvement over time We don't want a failed state, do we?

Even in America, it took at least 100 years for slavery to be abolished, women rights to vote, and then civil rights, but the federation survived. So I think it takes time for China to become more democratic and more capitalist. I think there's such a thing as revolution without civil war.

Even when a "failed state" is relatively managed, like the Sukarno to Suharto transition in the 1960s, many Chinese Indonesians died and I heard stories from my relatives, including some physical danger to my mom's family when she was a teenager. It's not safe to simply pull the rug under a dictator.

MetaEd

@GratefulDisciple I'm all for the trains running on time but not when the cost is erosion of institutions that protect basic freedoms.

GratefulDisciple

@MetaEd All I'm saying is that we in the West take much infrastructure and stability of institutions for granted where our experience in Iraq should have taught us that there are great social costs for disorderly takedown of a dictator.

MetaEd

And capitalism is orthogonal to basic freedoms. More than one economic system is compatible with democratic institutions. I don't think we need China to be "more capitalist" to better protect its citizens.

CowperKettle

21:06

@GratefulDisciple You would find this book interesting, I'm relistening to an audio version now:

The Origins of Political Order

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman times to the French Revolution is a 2011 book by political economist Francis Fukuyama. The main thesis of the book covers three main components that gives rise to a stable political order in a state: the state needs to be modern and strong, to obey the rule of law governing the state and be accountable. This theory is argued by applying comparative political history to develop a theory of the stability of a political system. The book covers several regions (China, India, Papua New Guinea as well as Western and Eastern Europe separately), and uses case...

alphabet

@GratefulDisciple Certainly both the start of American democracy and the abolition of slavery required massive wars in which hundreds of thousands died. Not exactly bloodless.

Mitch

@CowperKettle I would say it is quite common in the US too, but no where near the -most- common.

GratefulDisciple

@MetaEd Of course I agree with you. But I barely know about China's older history under a series of emperors and later subjugation by foreign power and then by Japan, when it became communist, and now, to know to what level the citizens themselves are capable of governing themselves under a democracy. The transformation of Singapore may be a good example (it's top down by an enlightened Western-educated "philosopher-king" Lee Kuan Yew) but I doubt it will be scalable to China.

Cerberus

@jlliagre Can also use ciao here informally.

GratefulDisciple

My point is that there is not yet the foundations of basic democracy in China; the citizens are used to authoritarian form of government. Maybe similarly in Iraq the people were not ready.

Cerberus

21:13

But there are so many competing greetings and farewells.

GratefulDisciple

@alphabet Yes, but there was ALREADY a solid foundation of democracy to be the fall-back while China has none. Thus the millions dead in the 1960s Cultural Revolution.

@CowperKettle Thanks for the tip.

Mitch

@Cerberus same here.

Cerberus

Noted.

Mitch

@CowperKettle Aren't there -many- varieties of saying goodbye there? And is 'ciao' really the most common out of all of them?

Cerberus

I think the commonest informal greetings are probably hoi and hee.

And the commonest informal farewells dag and doei.

Though it also depends on the region.

I'm quite sure you will hear different things in the north, the east, the south-west, the south-east.

MetaEd

21:22

Wordle 1,318 4/6

⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛⬛🟨🟨
⬛🟨🟨🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

alphabet

@GratefulDisciple I can't say, of course, what the result of overthrowing the CCP would be; it would depend too much on the exact sequence of events. But I don't think that the risk of complete societal collapse is so high that people are obligated to tolerate the current system.

GratefulDisciple

@MetaEd I would love to study history of politics in the past 2,000 years in the west and also in China. Based on the very little I know, I think the best model would be what England went through with its Magna Carta of 1215 protecting the rights of English barons against the king. The equivalence here would be the high ranking members of the CCP.

Then the rights will trickle down to every citizen with the Petition of Right (1628) and Habeas Corpus Act (1679) like how it was in Britain and then became the basis of constitutional monarchy later on. I think education of citizens on a large scale NEEDS to accompany changes in institution. So I think China (having a growing number of Chinese students tasting the freedom in the West) is on the way there.

@alphabet I'm afraid I don't know enough societal data about China, as well as the real issues on the ground, and how prevalent it is, and about how the educated class in China themselves aspire to transform China (I'm sure there are a lot going on in that department in their universities). So I cannot argue with you substantively, only conjecturally.

I'm just happy to see that several Chinese universities are celebrating the 800th anniversary of Aquinas, having a conference last year from 30 universities in mainland China, HK, TW, and Macau. To me that's a great start.

alphabet

@GratefulDisciple The Magna Carta was an attempt to prevent an all-out civil war; it was signed only because rebels were threatening violence. (It failed to do so, incidentally, and was reinstated after a small-scale civil war.)

MetaEd

Strands #330
“Viva Las Vegas”
🟡🔵🔵🔵
🔵🔵🔵

CowperKettle

21:38

"Common Sense, How to Exercise It by Yoritomo Tashi: Practical Wisdom for Everyday Life"

►

A book on common sense written in the 12th century

GratefulDisciple

@alphabet Yes, as I said earlier, I think rather than a revolution that deposes Xi at a popular level, it's better that the high ranking CCP members to threaten Xi (CCP being modern feudalism), thereby insulating the general public from instability. Let them be the ones threatening violence while individually doing their duty to protect the segment of population under him.

MetaEd

@GratefulDisciple When institutions start celebrating Pyrrho of Elis please let me know, I'll get excited about that.

Connections
Puzzle #596
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨

yay, perfect game there

Cerberus

21:56

@GratefulDisciple Will there ever be fundamental change while the party remains in power?

@GratefulDisciple We saw this happening in China, since the death of Mao, but then it was reversed when Xi came to power.

You can't count on this happening in China.

Chinese society has a very different mindset from Europe.

GratefulDisciple

@CowperKettle Wow, will be interesting. Found the written version.

Cerberus

@alphabet Generally, when a revolution happened in China, there was a civil war with millions of deaths, but no collapse of society (except locally, of course). I don't know what it would be like now. I think they are still capable of immense violence against the common man.

Mitch

@CowperKettle Nice. How did you find it?

GratefulDisciple

@Cerberus Well, Soviet Union fell, Eastern Germany fell, and (a lot earlier) the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire fell. I have trust in the growing Chinese middle class. They are not the revolutionary types, but not happy with the government either. Transformation from feudalism to modern democracies took several centuries in the West, I think Western exposure to the likes I met in US and Canada (emigrants from mainland China) and their descendants will be the engine of change.

Mitch

@GratefulDisciple 🫡

That's a long video (2 1/2 hrs) but I bet it's a faster read...

Quora says:
> the average speed of speaking is about 130 words per minute, while the average speed for reading is about 250 words per minute

so reading is twice as fast as speaking.

I wonder how the vocab compares... I mean the term 'common sense' has a lot of particular associations in English, and I suspect the term it was translated from is equally vague and has an overlapping but distinct set of associations.

GratefulDisciple

22:06

@Cerberus True that. They probably will go back to their history of emperors and aspire to "elect" one that can rule the country well with Confucian principles that are so embedded in their cultural "gene" (ast least my dad thought so) as much as classical civilization has been an irrevocable cultural "gene" of the West.

MetaEd

@Cerberus "They" meaning "us".

Because absolute power corrupts.

Mitch

Like 'use your common sense' was a phrase I feel like I heard my parents use with us kids when we did something stupid.

Cerberus

@GratefulDisciple Why do you mention the changes of government in those states, what does it mean?

The Chinese are fairly happy with the government, of course helped by massive censorship and propaganda.

China is doing relatively well.

That is rarely when revolutions happen.

Mitch

Could the European 'world wars' simply be civil wars amond descendants of the Roman Empire?

That would be a bit of a stretch.

also Turkey doesn't really fit.

The oven is too small.

haha

Cerberus

@GratefulDisciple It is still possible that China will be influenced by Western democracy, as you say. But that would be far away.

Mitch

22:10

making light of peole killing each other.

GratefulDisciple

@Cerberus As counter examples to your skepticism that there will never be fundamental change while the party remains in power. Wasn't there "fundamental change" in each of my examples before the government fell?

Mitch

If only we could convince China and Japan to start using 'ciao' as a gretting/farewell, then we could have a real United Nations.

2

GratefulDisciple

@Cerberus That's my sense as well.

Cerberus

@GratefulDisciple What I mean is that their citizens do not rebel so easily as ours.

Mitch

What is wrong with Peru though? Why can't they say it like everyone else?

GratefulDisciple

22:12

@Cerberus Yes, I completely agree with that. But their history has shown that they were capable of causing "fundamental change" causing changes in dynasty.

Cerberus

@MetaEd Well, I think there are socio-cultural elements that make suffering a bit less of a problem form them there than for us.

Robusto

@MetaEd If you don't have a miss, they're all awarded "perfect" status by the NYT. Me, I don't have the time or the inclination to perfect beyond that.

Cerberus

@Mitch A lot of people who live in Europe now are descended from people who never lived in the Roman Empire.

Mitch

Like most of Germany?

MetaEd

@Cerberus You said "they" are still capable of "immense violence" like it's endemic to China, and I'm saying it's not "they". It's us. It's everybody. Not limited to anywhere or anybody.

@Robusto I like to get purple-blue-green-brown in that order. That's hardest to easiest according to their scale, so while it's more than a winning game, I consider it a perfect game.

Robusto

22:16

@MetaEd I understand that. Glad you have the time for it.

Cerberus

OK. In the Soviet Union, the party lost all power. So that is incomparable. Eastern Germany, idem. The Ancien Régime in France, the same. In the case of the Holy Roman Empire: a lot of its territory had been conquered by France, and France was pressuring it to change things internally. This caused a lot of problems between the constituent states. Pressure was mounting. At some point, the Emperor simply dissolved the Empire, if I remember correctly.

So in none of these cases was there the gradual evolvement of a dictatorial party strongly in power into a more constitutional and even democra…

MetaEd

@Robusto Ouch.

Cerberus

@MetaEd Well, I never said that we cannot do it. Just a comparable difference.

MetaEd

@Cerberus This is one reason democratic institutions need constant effort to protect -- they are always under attack because of the corruptibility of the powerful.

Cerberus

@GratefulDisciple This was about the gradual constitutionalisation and democratisation that you laid out, not any change.

@MetaEd Yes.

What I would be afraid of for the intermediate future is when Xi no longer needs civil servants.

When he alone can rule most of the country using A.I.

Then there will be nobody who could rebel.

Just fire them all and have the computers implements your decisions.

And do the surveillance.

GPT, please watch these 100,000,000 security cameras day and night, will you? And arrest anyone who behaves suspiciously.

Robusto

22:29

@MetaEd And what we have now is the worst I have ever seen.

MetaEd

22:51

@Cerberus Here's the hole in this logic. It's really fire the civil servants and have the hardware and software developers implement your decisions. It's a trade of one civil service for another.

Cerberus

23:02

@MetaEd But those will not be in the powerful positions that the top civil servants were once in.

They would not be making any policy decisions, but rather doing technical maintenance.

And eventually A.I. can replace them, too.

MetaEd

23:14

@Cerberus The front-line civil servants, uniformed police and so on are what you are replacing with intelligent machines. You haven't taken policy decisions away from them because they never made those decisions. The people who do make those decisions are higher level bureaucrats, and those will still be there doing what they did before.

Cerberus

@MetaEd Umm, no, you will replace everyone at the top and keep the ones lower in the tree.

That is the idea.

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