fun fact: Sauron did not create the Palantiri (btw, the word Palantir literally means "to see from afar" in Quenya, Tolkien's high-elven language, the same etymology as the English word "television"), but he was able to gain control of the stones and influence the thoughts of others who looked into them by showing them visions of only the things he wanted them to see, which would bring those who were susceptible over to his side, or for those who were less susceptible, drive them to hopelessness and despair (this is what happened to Denethor, the Steward of Gondor; the movies decided to remove that plot point and make him look like an asshole for no reason). anyway, just a random fun fact about a fictional world, definitely no real modern relevance to powerful malicious actors gaining control of "television" or other means of rapid communication to bend the thoughts of others to their will
honestly idk why Cameron even bothers with a plot. he could just make a faux nature documentary. that seems to be the part he's interested in, and the best-executed and most interesting parts of the movies, but he seems to think nobody will watch it unless he shoves that all into the background and slaps a dumb action flick you've already seen a hundred times on top of it. and maybe he's right, idk
ah, a barbarian
aurochs is the singular. aurochsen is plural. notice the similarity to ox/oxen
nyt spoilers:
the word saturnine doesn't refer to the gloomy atmosphere of the planet Saturn. in alchemy, the seven known celestial bodies (the sun, moon, and 5 observable planets) were associated with the seven known metals. Saturn was associated with lead. saturnine means leaden, heavy, etc. and came to mean gloomy by metaphorical association with those terms
honestly seems wild to me that people are pushing back so hard on the idea of having at minimum a small bedroom, as opposed to a cot in a crowded bunk room, or one of those Japanese pod hotels. y'all never seen a college dorm room?
I'm sure there are better solutions if we assume we can dismantle and rebuild all of society any way we want, along with the attitudes of those who inhabit it, but I think it's worthwhile to consider how current systems could be improved
I'm not talking about my personal vision of utopia, I'm talking about the bare minimum of a society that can begin to be considered just, even in a very hollow sense
I've always believed that everyone should be able to have, for free, a permanent private living space of at least 80sqft, a reasonably comfortable bed, access to a toilet and shower and associated toiletries, clothing suitable for the weather, water and food (even if only some flavorless nutritional paste), and access to medical care both as-needed and on a regular basis. if you have no ambition in life beyond sitting in that little room staring at the wall and eating soylent, then so be it, for a society to provide any less is immoral
true for smaller sample sizes, but for large normally-distributed sets, such as "all people," the mean and median will be pretty much identical. when you take a larger sample, it's more likely that an outlier on one end will be balanced out by a similar outlier on the other end. e.g. when you measure the height of 50 people, you might happen to end up with one person who's 6'8" and have to account for that, but when you measure the height of 50,000 people, you're more likely to also have someone who's 4'4"
that's not illegal actually. if it were, administrations could try to invent felonies for opposition leaders to have committed. now this particular felon should also have been ineligible to run under the 14th amendment, but he was never charged or tried for those crimes, let alone convicted