#columbusing

[sucka99]

[peridot-tears]

Big smooch to my Lianluo people, Lian Hua Lou/Mysterious Lotus Casebook has been such a lovely little fandom to be a part of.

[racefortheironthrone]

Are you familiar with Peter Turchin’s work and if so, what are your thoughts? Is he considered a serious historian?

After researching this guy’s bio for a bit, I can say that he’s not a historian - his PhD seems to be in Zoology - and this whole cliodynamics business seems to be a discipline that he invented in a brazen act of academic columbusing/academic imperialism. Historians do not consider him a serious historian, and nor do I.

The problem with Turchin’s entire academic project is twofold: first, there is not enough data to do the kind of precision mathematical modeling that he purports to do. When it comes to pre-modern history, there are huge swathes of time and space and human experience for which we do not have records, either because the records didn’t survive to the present, literacy rates weren’t high enough to produce the desired types and levels of records, or the literate classes simply didn’t consider worthy of being written down. When it comes to modern history, things are a bit better because modern societies tend to produce written records at an incomprehensible volume, but here the problem is that the sheer mass of records plus certain specialized problems in library sciences that are too complicated to go into in this post (but I’ll explain if someone asks me) means that only a tiny fraction of these records are digitized, let alone digitized in a way that they can then be put into a database and modeled upon. As my old professor Eric Foner put it during new major orientation: “the difference between ancient history and modern history is that in ancient history you know all your sources but there aren’t any, and in modern history there are tons of sources but you don’t know them.”

Second, even if there was enough data, trying to accurately and meaningfully model all of human history is a futile endeavor. This is something that we discuss in introductory theory courses - the complex interplay of historical forces and individual agency/contingency, the literally infinite number of factors that influence human society and behavior, and so on. The historiography of ideas is littered with failed attempts to construct total theories of history - the Hegelians, the Marxists, the objectivists (which isn’t the same thing as Randian Objectivism, it’s complicated and I’ll explain in another post if anyone really wants to know), huge swathes of sociology but especially the structuralists, significant swathes of political science and psychology, and oh my god so many economists. It’s pretty much a cliche at this point for social scientists to say they were inspired to become social scientists by childhood dreams of becoming a psychohistorian like Hari Seldon. The problem is that psychohistory is science fiction, it’s not real, and it can’t be real because humans are too damn complex and contradictory. It is a massive red flag that Turchin has explicitly compared cliodynamics to psychohistory; it’s like when some Silicon Valley disruptor starts talking about how their latest project was inspired by their favorite sci-fi series.

So yeah, this guy seems like a total quack.

[siliquasquama]

Elon Musk ditched the Twitter trademark so it's mine now. Sili Twitter Squama. Tweet tweet chirp tweet.

[nobuverse]

"Tch! Him again-! And so many this time! D-don't worry, I've dealt with him before!"

[julio-claudian-saberface]

Bird is the Word

“So to summarize: his True Name is Robert Stroud, he’s used a Holy Grail to turn Alcatraz into his private aviary, and we didn’t see much of him before the smell of bird poop got too much to handle but what we did see wasn’t poor meow-meow Burt Lancaster.”

Mash shuddered. Billy the Kid pulled a face.

“He shouldn’t have the birds at Alcatraz, actually.” Gudako brandished her tablet at the assembled Servants. “But Alcatraz isn’t supposed to even exist in 1783, so! Here we are! Once they manage to rayshift the respirators, Operation Attorney-At-Law is a go.

“Apparently he’s into theosophy so Helena, your job is to play visitor and talk Mahatma at him. Butter him up. Compliment his spiritual insight. Bring presents. Cigarettes maybe. I asked for them to send some along, you don’t have to break into your stash. Yeah, I know about your stash.

“Serenity, while Helena’s keeping him busy, you sneak in and look for the Grail in the canary crap. I know it’s gross even with toxin resistance. I swear I’ll make it up to you. Cuddles and headpats for days. Mash, sit down.

“And Billy, if all else fails… have him take a seat over there.”

Billy smiled and chambered a round in meaningful fashion. “Hello, Bob.”

[limetimo]

*narrator voice* he did kill a Christopher Columbus, 1952-1999, Ohio

Bucky: I killed Christopher Columbus

Sam: No you absolutely did not

Bucky: Don’t tell me what I did or didn’t do I killed that man

Sam: Steve back me up

Bucky: Steve back ME up

[notreallyimportant]

White people have discovered the hot comb and is calling it a straightening brush.

I’m not joking

Hot combs are a staple in the Black community and they done Christopher Columbused it. And none of that “ Well a white French man invented it” we know, thats why I said it’s a staple in the black community. I just find it hilarious.

But do be carful because it can cause alopecia if you’re carful.

[nero-draco]

Which is more shocking, finding a baby dinosaur at 1700s on Caribbean islands, or finding an army of Columbuses.

[mat2modblog]

Bruh, the mere existence of those mass-produced Columbuses are giving you a -15 sanity debuff and you're in the Nasuverse so there's no spells to buff it because the Nasuverse is insanity incarnate. The DC would be well above 20 with no advantage. There's no way you'd win that roll.

[rainbowfic]

One thing that changes with the decentralization of online media is that the original speakers can become more visible. While a white person in the sixties listening to Elvis might have had no idea that he was singing a style heavily influenced by black performers like B.B. King and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, it’s easier to see that mainstream America’s adoption of “on fleek” came from a post on Vine (a now defunct service for sharing short videos) by the user Peaches Monroee. Still, it’s tempting to mislabel the many words currently being appropriated into general American pop culture from African American English as “social media words” simply because they’re used by young people, and young people are on social media, without giving due credit to the words’ true origins. Fittingly, the internet has come up with a word for this: columbusing, or white people claiming to discover something that was already well established in another community, by analogy with how Columbus gets credit for discovering America despite the millions of people who already lived there.

Because Internet, Gretchen McCulloch

[nando161mando]

really annoying to see the young white commentariat columbusing that the New York Times is at its very core, a yellow propaganda rag.

that "All The News That's Fit To Print"? they took this motto on, all the while failing to report on the USA govt atrocities in the islands they invaded during the Sp-Am War; incl Puerto Rico.

NYTimes are masters at lying by omission. that's exactly what they did with the WMDs lies they sold to help Bush & Cheney invade Iraq

[esther-dot]

'Why are Aria stans so obsessed with her becoming QITN and write increasingly deranged metas about that happening?'

So, ok, as someone that watched this shit unfold in realtime back in 2019 let me jump in. Aria fans are now fixated on QITN being her endgame because it was Sansa's endgame. Her stans are like toddlers. You know when a toddler hates apples but then sees a fellow toddler at the playground eating apples so now they want an apple too? Yeah, this is literally what is happening. Trust me if Sansa never became QITN and instead become Lady of the Vale or something Aria stans would want that for her endgame too. I'm sorry but Aria was a literal book fan and show fan fave and there would be weekly viral tweets with tens of thousands of likes praising how BaDaSs she was for 8 years and her fans think that GRRM told D and D Aria became QITN in this triumphant moment and they were like '.....Nah, we're going to give that to Sansa who half the fanbase spent close to a decade hating on....thanks for the input tho George.' Like, really? Really?

This is how I know all those endgames came from Martin. Fan fave Jon gets exiled North and White Soccer Mom Feminist icon KhAlEesI goes dark, carpet bombs a city, and gets killed by another fan fave and people think this shit came from D and D? It killllls me how half the fanbase is still committed to this fiction that D and D just totally pulled those endings out of their ass. It makes no sense.

D and D knew all they had to do to stick the landing on GOT for it to be hailed as one of the best shows ever on television was to give Jon and/or Dani some triumphant coronation after defeating the Evil Queen Cersei and that shit would have been praised by every normie that watched GOT for a decade and their legacies as good, or at least competent, showrunners would have been secured. But they had to stick with those endgames to make GOT still seem like an adaptation of Martin's vision. I would have loved to be in on the meeting where Martin told D and D 'So, yeah it's King Bran, Dani goes dark and Jon kills her, Jon then goes back beyond the wall, and Aria goes off columbusing into the new world....btw, I'm not finishing the last two books so even I don't know how to get to those endpoints. Have fun!!' D and D knew they were fucked in that moment lmao.

(about this ask)

Lmaoooo. Can you imagine? So funny.

Someone said shortly after GoT ended that D&D should have just taken the story in their own direction because their interpretation of the characters and the plot points were so misaligned by the end that even if you accept the endgames as Martin's (which I do), you just can't wrap your mind around them in GoT-verse. And I think if they had, they would not have had Jon or Dany on the throne, so the possibility amuses me. They probably would have had Cersei kill them and stay queen or something😂 I think they're personally too into shock value to have ever been down for a HEA for anyone except a Lannister!

Everyone I knew who watched GoT loved Arya (I did too!), but I have seen comments about her being underappreciated by the fandom which baffled me. I guess it's because her endgame wasn't in political power, so the theory is she didn't get what Martin intended for her because D&D were doing fanservice, but that makes no sense. Sansa was hated, Bran had no fanbase to speak of, Dany would have ended up on top if that was the only factor. Oh well. I think most people reject part, if not most, of the endgame, so I guess I can't act shocked. Jon's ending hurts me a lot, so his is where I allow myself to dabble in a little delusion. My poor boy.

[magickfromscratch]

So, last night I was talking to the group of friends I do big dick magick with. And we were discussing a particular new piece of tech we're putting together.

But relevant: the experience you expect to have of finding super secret magic words in a book, and speaking them aloud, unlocking a new magick you never conceived of is more or less not real.

You have a min and a max in your head for what can happen. And most people in most places doing most magical things are mostly going to get warm tingles and see coincidences, or have bad dreams and bad luck, and that's what they call "magic."

Magick can do a hell of a lot more than that. You can conjure storms, and stop blizzards in their tracks. You can pin-point summon electricity or light, throw dice, change traffic lights with the snap of your fingers, turn ordinary canned soda into an intoxicant and more --- and the reason you know this is true is that there are a whole lot of people who get royally pissed when you say what's actually possible.

But don't think for a minute that the magic lies in the words or reagents. If you take those same herbs, candles, lamb fat, grave dirt, or whatever it is your tradition uses, and put them in a laboratory, and had a robot recite the correct words, no magic would occur.

A tradition of magic includes these things because each object, word, and gesture is bound together into a rich tapestry of meaning. Taking sacred symbols out of their context (Kabbalah and its words of power, Tatwas, phrases in Greek) will not produce optimal results.

You need to be working from your own cultural context with symbols that mean something to you, because symbols are not universal to all cultures, and the primary magical tool is the mind, and ritualized magic is just dreaming out loud.

Put another way, you won't get very far Columbusing bits of other people's cultures. The idea of finding some tome in a foreign temple and taking the magic home to Albuquerque is a colonizer's fantasy.

Neither can you make up a bunch of nonsense words and chant them with intention and gain optimal results, no matter how officious you may appear. Rather, the words spoken, the rituals used, the colors and their contexts, the tools and all must be consecrated to your tradition, and ideally no other.

And so if you want a new magic, you need to be working in a tradition that is fully yours, and that gives you the authority to add to it, and to consecrate new meaning to it. That's more difficult in some traditions than others.

I'm very blessed to be working within a context that not only permits but encourages innovation.