Leibniz Clockwork

My dream game right now is the Illearth War in Exalted. Thomas Covenant would have to be removed, but the Lords could be Solars, the lillianrill and rhadhamaerl would be Dragon-Blooded, Ravers are Infernals, etc. The Ramen would be enlightened mortals or possibly Wood-Aspect Dragon-Blooded. The Giants are… I dunno.

The Bloodguard should be enlightened mortals. Or maybe Sidereals, but that fits Sidereals more than the Bloodguard. Sidereals are all about martial arts and service to the powers, hence Bloodguard, but the Bloodguard are all about not using powers and weapons. To them there is a sharp distinction. The one fits the other better than vice versa.

Drool would have been an Abyssal. The Cavewrights and Ur-Viles would be those weird minions of the Deathlords.

The Elohim are the Fair Folk.

It would work.

So there’s a lot of complaining about Titanic, because Jack could have fit on the door, and so forth. The metaphor in the movie works; the literal events don’t. Titanic was about letting go of loss, etc. The problem was Jack could have fit on the door! Victor Frankel talks about suffering in his Man’s Search For Meaning, possibly the greatest book I’ve ever read in terms of literary meaning, and he notes that in a situation of suffering, one’s primary responsibility is to end the suffering. Only if that isn’t possible should one find meaning in suffering, grow, yadda yadda. Again, Frankel puts this better than I can, so read his book.

Anyway, within the realm of narrative fiction, if some situation happens to support a metaphor but the situation could just be resolved, the characters should just resolve the situation. Otherwise the situation is absurd. Hence the problems with Titanic (he could have just climbed on the door). I tie this to Frankel because if the movie makers don’t resolve the literal events, the direct problems that cause the plot, and instead skip to finding meaning, growth, blah blah, when the characters could just climb onto the door, the movie makes no sense.

My favorite movie which does this is Signs. It’s about faith. There are aliens in it, but it’s about the metaphor.

The problem is the aliens don’t make sense. Someone could repel them with a squirt gun. The literal events don’t make sense. The metaphor is great, and it talks about faith, the meaning of it, and I got a lot out of it. M. Night Shyamalan does a surprisingly good turn as a bit character, and I’ve always liked that role. Of course, his part only tangentially addresses the aliens. He’s really there to say something about faith. But they don’t need faith, they need squirt guns! Buy a Super Soaker, save the world!

Of course Titanic made a billion dollars, so no one cares.

But we can argue about it here. My blog, anyway.

What really happened with Titanic is that the target audience related to Rose and wanted to be taken care of. They wanted to be special. So Jack dies to save Rose, which makes Rose special, which makes the identifying audience special, so the movie made a billion dollars. The problem is the success. If Jack had just climbed onto the door, Rose wouldn’t have been the more special one of the two. As it is, of the special people, she was the more special. So, again, a billion dollars. Know your audience, I guess.

Power went to my head. It corrupted me. I turned evil, and used the elevators for ill-earned gains. But in the end, I was stopped by the Stairmaster.

I want magic elevator powers.

Deep and mysterious will be my elevator. It will be an elevator of doom. Up and down will be playthings before my might, and no one will contest my reign of the buttons and live.

Fear me, and despair.

Legislation to make June 19th, ‘Juneteenth Day’ a federal holiday passed the house 415/14, which is as close to unanimous as the House gets. Biden should sign it by Friday.

I get why the objectors objected. I’m not overly fond of the ‘Independence Day’ title, and complaining about additional federal holidays is an institution in itself. I also support the notion that giving holidays without debate or discussion is an issue.

That noted, I still fully support this bill and I hope it gives some healing to people. That’s how we celebrate things in the US. We make holidays. We can argue over what it’s called and govie payroll later. We will. It’s not like that argument is in question. But the abolition of the peculiar institution is a worthy thing to be remembered. The US is better because of abolition, and I’m glad to remember a time good beat evil.

The Senate just passed a bill by unanimous consent to make Juneteenth Day a national holiday.

Oh, dang. Good job, Senate.

If you’re in a tit-for-tat conflict with someone and you rise above, be the bigger/more mature person, etc., they won.

Think about it. Someone’s nasty to you, you’re nasty to them, they’re nasty to you, you decide to be the adult and stop. They got the last word in. What’s more, as people think about feuds, the train of thought is often, “I’m going to be so bad to them, they CAN’T respond.” Thus not responding is appears the same as admitting defeat or being defeated.

What’s worse, this attack paradigm of being so nasty the other person/side/entity can’t retaliate does work. No one wants to be defeated, so the loser will often try to shift things so they weren’t really beaten, saying ‘I’m just being the bigger person’ or ‘This is what I wanted all along!’

So if you’re going to be mature, you need to be willing to emotionally lose the argument. This is, in technical terms, really hard.

They way to get around this is acknowledge that most conflicts have two elements, of which both have inherent value: the people therein, and the thing itself. So if you’re arguing about how to make a burrito or how to fund a bridge, the people who make the burrito or build the bridge matter, but the burrito or bridge matter too. It’s too easy to focus only on the people, and that’s not correct. Because you’re people, when you enter into conflict, (i.e. be a human-being around other humans) you’ll say, ‘I’m just as important as them!’ (true) ‘Therefore I’ll never surrender so they don’t get the win.’ (perhaps true, but foolish) That would be a wash, right?

Unless you want the bridge built or burrito wrapped, in which case surrendering and letting the other side win might get you something more than the conflict. The bridge gets built, the burrito wrapped.

But that’s really hard.

The crux of this matter is pride, of course, and one wonders why we have so much of it. The poison is a cure.

Pride holds on beyond all reason, and sometimes you can just not-die in the face of adversity for far longer than you imagine possible by pride alone. I did this stuck on a mountain once, and I’ve done it with marches, rides, and some work. But the sheer obstinate power of pride in the face of adversity is its own downfall, wherein you can fight on for pride alone when the efficient strategy is lose the battle to win the war. That’s especially the case when the combatant sides aren’t as fixed as one might imagine.

There was an article on the Diplomat about mistakes during the Cold War, and the article argued one of the biggest errors was dividing the world into immutable blocks of countries. A was a western country and was so forever. B was an enemy and could never be trusted. I’ll try to dig up the link. I recall thinking the article over simplified things, but I did think there’s a nugget of truth to it.

My categorical arrays aren’t being read as cat. arrays. I weep for the world I’ve never known.

I tend to get migraines after I work out. They come on about an hour later with loss of vision and dizziness. Caffeine heads them off, but they don’t seem to be related to hydration or food levels.

WebMD has concluded: