I don’t even know what Mastodon looks like and I don’t know who the guy is, but I’m just assuming he’s lying because it sounds like the usual “crazy pronoun libs” dog whistle.

Wait no go back, you’re getting a lecture filled with maximum toxicity!

The Egyptians have Ramses

Uh? Ramesses was human - all 11 of them were. Egypt has the likes of Ra, Osiris, Anubis and so on, who I don’t think are particularly tyranical in their stories.

For China, the actual mythology stuff is a lot of creation myth, but they do have a few stories about a divine emperor crushing an army of demons, and it turns out a lot of that is actually about conquering less developed, more nomadic cultures to unify China (Japan pretty much did the same, creation myth then crushing foreign demons that are actually literally foreigners not under their rule). And then there’s the whole mandate of Heaven that they used to justify dynasties rising and falling, mixing up history into myth, that began when a government that started well ended up being seen as tyranical after a few centuries (the Shang, ending with Zhou and Daji).

Older, more primordial mythologies just start at world creation myth, and then talk about humans figuring out how to settle the land, and how the universe works. Mesopotamian cultures mostly focus on defeating the forces of nature, which does involve standing up to violent gods or monsters, but that comes from trying to build up a civilization that can survive disasters, and is actually not tied to tyranical human rulers. Any civilization needs to start with things like water control, that’s why everyone from China to Greece also have that. Sumerians specifically have cities that go to war with each other because “the chief god of their city told them to”, which is obviously manipulation to secure resources, but isn’t particularly tyranical against their own people. And then the Bronze Age Collapse happens, after which the myth of Ishbi and Erra shows a war god who gets petty and kills everyone because people didn’t pay attention to him. So again, the stories of tyranical gods come from people trying to survive and explain destruction events, from nature or from outside forces. When the Assyrians go around killing everyone, Sennacherib destroys Babylon out of anger and frustration - he tries to write a story about the god of Babylon ordering him to do that, and another story of his own god putting the same god of Babylon on trial for some crime, but that doesn’t stick and Sennacherib gets murdered.

At some point it’s not easy to distinguish mythology and simply literature. For China specifically, Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods talk a lot about the bureaucracy and hierarchy of the Heavens, the oppression of gods and demons - but they’re 16th century novels, are they really mythology? Those stories clearly became popular because people felt oppressed by tyrants, so the myths about tyranical gods can of course be a reaction to the people experiencing tyranical rule. Sun Wukong’s story famously starts because the various systems of the Heavens can’t contain him (and mankind), only Buddha can - but then that’s still a 16 c. novel that showed up long after the creation of Buddhist “mythology”, its spiritual structure and divine figures.

So there’s multiple reasons for stories to pop up about gods becoming tyrants, either because the people get upset at actual tyrant kings, or because one country tries to justify the destruction of another country. But there’s a distinction to be made about stories written as piece of literature and when they become actual civilization building myths that is a fundamental part of its culture. The older a civilization develops and gets centralized, the more opportunities you get for anyone to write more stories that become myth a few hundred years later. If that civilization has ups and downs, the stories about gods are more likely to reflect that. (I think Egypt got out of that because it actually collapsed 3 times, and kept starting over with new gods doing the same things, none of the unified kingdoms lasted more that 500 years)

That heavily relies on education though. We tend to tell ourselves that hard times make you more lucid and you eventually get where you need, but not really, it’s education. And guess what…

It’s definitely what she’s trying to do, she’ll bring up building a “new Avengers team” but it won’t stick, Red Guardian will keep calling the team Thunderbolts instead, and then there won’t be another movie with them before Secret Wars anyway so that team name will be the running gag for 10 minutes. Maybe someone will make a passing throwaway line about those new weird Wallmart Avengers (just like Yelena with John here) and that’s it.

the people of Europe showing that unlike their governments, they do not tolerate genocidal apartheid supporters

I don’t know the details for each country, but as a Western European, it seems to me that apart from Germany, European governments are generally trying to distance themselves from Israel more and more, so there’s that. I can’t tell what each country does in details and in facts, but it’s the impression I’m getting. I know France has taken a couple punishing actions like banning them from an important military sales show and calling for a ban on weapon sales. Anyone knows if other countries have done similar things or the opposite?

Exactly, they announced earlier this year that they were working on reviving a bunch of licences, including Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, and hinting at a longer list. We don’t know yet eactly how many titles that includes, and which of them will get remakes, remasters, or brand new games, but it was hinting brand new. Early dev footage was leaked at some point for Crazy Taxi and Shinobi.

Project Justice is coming back in the next Capcom Fighting Collection, some time next year. Along with Plasma Blade, CvS Pro and CvS2, etc.

Oh totally, attacking Trump’s age was never going to do anything, regardless of media hypocrisy; it was still righ to mention it. It’s also true that Biden was too old and people wouldn’t have voted for him.

The numbers on that screen contradict the conclusion (of the media): IND voters are rising and DEM voters are decreasing. Those IND are not more conservatives, they’re the Cornell’s and the Stein’s and such (I know, Russian plant, not the point, voters are not right wing). The left wing is leaving the DEM, you don’t get them back by moving right. What the fuck is NBC talking about?

I was thinking it depends how fast Trump’s friends/handlers can get to Vance (how fast Musk can buy him and Bannon can convince him), and how loyal Vance will be to a dead guy. And who knows what Putin has on him. But he might fuck up some international responses (I mean, fuck up the screwing over).

If Europe falls, it’ll be because of our own Nazis coming to power everywhere if we can’t eradicate them, not because of the US.

In the same way it won after the 5 previous mass extinction events I guess (we started the 6th).

Except Harris did mention Trump’s age a few times (after the first debate). If you didn’t see it, you only looked at the disinformation channels, or it got drowned out by them.

It was always over 11k total, but the first time it came to public news in a big article was about a specific shipment of 2 or 3K one or two weeks ago for the first arrivals. Those early articles were already mentioning both numbers without being very clear. In the following week, reports from Ukraine and the Pentagon kept coming public about the total force actually making it to Ukrainian land.

Shadow of Mordor/war scratch the same itsch as assassin’s creed

??? It’s the first time I’m hearing Shadow of Mordor allows you to run around famous places in ultra popular historical periods.

The US interpretation of free speech is not what the world considers free speech.

It is, that was the twist - the Doctor is not the good man.

Yes.

You’re misreading it (unless you’re against gay marriage I suppose) - the article tries to break it down, but it’s still a mess.

The plaintiffs are the pro same-sex couples that complained that the state is wrong to refuse same-sex marriage. They appealed to get a better ruling than what they got at first. The second ruling is still not everything they wanted, but it’s still much better than before the complain.