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We just visited it, that's what's cruel. The one genuinely great meal I had during our holiday in Dorset. It had a great staff too, warm, friendly, professional, efficient. I bought beer there and a sandwich for dinner later that day. Best cheese sandwich I had in a while too. I just find it really sad.
This.
You read my mind, sir. I loathe temperatures above 20 degrees centigrade. I start dripping like a pierced water balloon, I feel tired, and I can't sleep at night. Last Summer was pretty okay for me. I had hoped that it would stay this way. And now we're looking at a blazing hot September. Darn. I agree, October can't be here soon enough!
Probably quite a change from "Arkhangelsk" :-)
Zukovsky's knee could attest to that. :)
Ah, now storms I like! No, I'm not a Goth. I said I'm not a...oh...
@ImpertinentGoon
I visit the dentist once every year. It's the best way to keep the suffering to a minimum. ;-)
Hang in there, friend. A storm in the mouth is hard to ignore.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/opinion/columnists/james-bond-woke-uk-progressive.html
Perhaps I read it wrong, but that article had very little to do with Bond. It was a political rant more than anything else.
Yeah, it's just the usual right-wing nonsense from Ross Douthat, the guy the NYT keeps as an excuse for even David Brooks and Bret Stephens showing some sort of democratic sense and decency (which is what I expect from true conservatives) and therefore no more reflecting the entire political spectrum enough, since there are people that think MAGAts should also be represented.
If you're interested in Bond's alleged wokeness: This is only about the novel "On His Majesty's Secret Service", and even that really only in the first paragraph. The rest is the usual "conservative" (have to put this in quotes, as it is a misnomer of the first degree for those people) whining about the alleged leftists no longer letting them degrade people of different colour or gender or whathaveyou. Really, really uninteresting, so save your time. As DarthDimi correctly mentioned, it has nothing to do with Bond other than mentioning the new novel as its trigger.
And by the way, I have never voted for a left-of-center party for my entire voting life. But certainly also never for anything as borderline right-wing radical as what once was the GOP.
At least Ross Douthat, in that NYT piece, admits: "The book’s mere existence seems designed to agitate conservatives; I wouldn’t have read it without the spur of hostile reviews from right-of-center British scribblers." So yes, you have a point. He read some right-wingers' hostile stuff and then decided to use their claims as a handle for a broader display of his standard MAGA and catholic-reactionary ideas. But not more.
You read it correctly.
I share your feeling. I just have the impression that it has mutated from a positive description of one being considerate toward one's fellow men and women (the "liberal" interpretation) to a pure political buzzword used by the right to denigrate anything (or much more important, anyone) that is not to their liking.
My awareness of social issues is long standing. Not something I've awakened to as a result of headlines. Labels are easy and lazy. They tend to be all inclusive when in fact many of us are not all in on everything.
I used to think that we are now smack in the middle of a tough culture war. Turns out I couldn't be more mistaken. A few loud opinions on the Internet and some televised spectacle do not represent the majority voice. I have discovered that most people frankly don't care all that much. When questioned, they'll drop a few comments, possibly rephrasing what they think is the popular opinion, but deepdown inside, they're not exactly losing any sleep over whatever is the battle of the day on clickbait websites, or whatever keeps their teenage daughter's favorite "influencer" ranting for hours on end. Life goes on.
Just look at Disney Star Wars, or Disney's classics, or, indeed, Daniel Craig's recent Bonds. "Kathleen Kennedy is woking it all up!" "Babs and Craig have feminized Bond!" "Before long, only disabled, transsexual, colored people will be playing the lead roles in our favorite films!" And so on and so on. Really?
Put a man in front of his computer, and you'll get a big bowl of anger and frustration from his avatar. (I am no exception.) Buy that man a pint, talk to him in person, and he's probably a perfectly reasonable bloke who's still having fun with Bond and who doesn't spend his waking hours worrying about OHiMSS destroying the Bond legacy -- and something about Donald Trump (for some reason). Oh, and "they should fire Babs!" (for some reason.)
Yeah, I know, I'm ranting too now. But that's because the term "woke" originated as a well-intended metaphor in a much-needed societal debate, but has since been weaponized by extreme fractions on either side of a very different debate. It has become a buzz word for angry Internet tribalism; it has lost its true meaning completely.
So nowadays, whenever people start building a case under the umbrella of "[...] is too woke!", they have already lost in my mind. The main reason? The people who point fingers at someone or something and yell "woke!" usually do a lousy job of actually defining the term. Start by telling me what constitutes "wokism" in your opinion; and then, maybe, we can talk. Otherwise, you end up looking like a five-year old who sees a grown-up woman and tells his dad that she's "mean", for no reason.
Tbh I wish you were right, but there are culture wars raging, and indeed the term HAS degraded from a positive understanding of different backgrounds to an 'inclusive' definition that, if you don't fully agree, will exclude you as party on exactly the basis(es) that they claim should not play a role.
In universities it is now allowed, even in 'science', to blame 'white men' for whatever is considered 'wrong'. I'll give you an example, as i understand these might seem riddles. A few years back, I was still studying Archival and information sciences at the University of Amsterdam. The uni invited a professor from the USA who's lecture explicitly stated that white men had created archival and information sciences' theories and that they were thus wrong. When I protested against this on the basis of discrimination, my complaints were discarded. I'll have you know that many theories in A&I sciences come from women, but that aparently, does not make a difference (I could elaborate on the whole discussion, but that doesn't help here). Next example, a lecturer of multiculturalism (or something in that direction) at the same Uni was fired after complaints about an article that he wrote. It stated that there are, indeed, two biological sexes, that function as opposite ends of a spectrum that makes all those other sexes possible. This was deemed racist/sexist, as the complaints elaborated that there were people whom felt they had a certain 'sex' that has nothing to do with beeing male or female.
Those people claimed that this lecturer wasn't 'woke' and thus had to be fired, which eventually happened.
So, is it a culture war? I am afraid it is. And it's a very, very dangerous one, where a very small minority of extremists are influencing the lives of many.
Other, more general examples:
- the amount of young people who wanted to change their sex has grown exponentially. One might claim this as a victory for a more understanding society. However, questions remain about if this isn't due to social pressure, where everybody is expected to be 'different', where beeing a 'standard' male or female means you don't belong to the new age? As long as there's no solid, unbiased research we won't know, but a sign might be that after lockdown for covid, the amount of people stopping their prosedures and reverting them grew solidly.
An interesting case in this matter is linked here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9298887/
All in all, extremism and social media have come hand in hand on all sides, and I don't think it's helping society at large. I hope the likes of Musk and Zuckerberg will see the errors of their ways and help stop this by adjusting their systems. Not by blocking certain opinions, but making sure algoritms don't push people down a one-way street.
And don't even get me started on the ones with chains, eh.
I feel much the same about tattoos to be honest and they're very popular among the younger population nowadays. I suppose piercings and tattoos go together in that regard.
I'm in with you - though at least earrings and studs have been around for thousands of years. But I don't like that stuff anywhere besides the earlobes (not mine!). Nose rings (and worse) are a complete turnoff for me.
As for tattoos, I grew up at at time when there were only two groups of people who were having them: sailors and (ex-)convicts. And I wouldn't remotely consider getting one myself, although there are a lot more people now having tattoos, not just young ones, and I have had to adjust my childhood prejudices about tattooed people quite often.
Still I see tattoos as I see graffiti: A few may be esthetically pleasing if you look at them isolated. Maybe even art. But I have never encountered one that I would have preferred over its absence.
But everyone must decide themselves what they do to their bodies and what they find attractive. I just don't have to share those feelings.