I made the acquaintance of ProfessorFunk at a perhaps generously entitled faculty lounge - apparently popularly referred to as Club Moist - in between guest lectures at an academy whose name and location I can no longer recall.

Apparently Young Justice - on the other side of the comic books aisle - had a similar problem. Too successful + Wrong Sort of Success=Worse than Dissappointing.

There was a group of Texas Germans who tried to march out of Texas and help out, it did not end well.

One way I've heard it described, and I think Malcolm X gets credit here as well, is that in the South they only care if you get big they don't care if you get close, and in the North they care less if you get big, they care a LOT if you get close.

Like Bacon flavored Mad Dog, it's too insane not to exist.

Malcolm X was certainly felt racism in the North was worse than in the South (though pulling that out of context certainly elides some nuance) and MLK feelings on Chicago's level of racism were… impressive.

That is purely ludicrously wrong-some.

Now, now, that was very specifically painting himself in racial overtones for the purposes of raising money.

I don't know, that strikes me as more a result of the 'balanced scales' fallacy than anything else.

Sure, for the actual conflict you can be down for the Greeks, but when weighing between cultures/empires? The Hellenes don't come out so far ahead.

I'm really uncertain you can accept the marketing for the practice as reflective of the practice.

Athenian democracy is… an interesting precedent? But otherwise not that great. Very imperialistic - like the Persians - but arguably worse for their subject peoples and demonstrably more arbitrary and arguably more stable. In particular if what you're looking for through democracy is broad enfranchisement you're…

It used to be fairly common. There was a lot of money to be made pre-sexual revolution and Madams who did well enough got at least some society rank. Respectable don't mean famous, though.

For 1. I do think it is hard to oversell how wrong the alpha-beta, submission dominance thing is for wolves and how compromising that is to the whole discourse dynamic. In terms of groups of baboons or wolves gaining advantage from being more aggressive as a group? I gotta say that's pretty situational. There are…

Didn't you read the syllabus?
"Well, I couldn't…"
So you didn't read the syllabus?

That the person writing the article knows how to spell archery terms? And the importance of their place in our tropes?

See the thing is… having read a lot of pre-modern uncivilized world lit? They're still pretty down on alpha dog BS. It's not even a thing among wolves, just a thing post-industrial academics imposed on wolves.

Oof, I remember going on a canoeing trip that was on water that was even just a little high and it was incredibly clearly wheels off - all boats stuck rolling on the long axes and getting wedged between two trees and needing 6 people to dislodge to universal minor personal injury.

Say… is this course on Virgil's Georgics gonna be entirely in Latin?

That's fascinating the discussion turned so quickly to the subject of medium. I saw that happen so often at a College where a lot of grad-school friends were teaching that had Maus as a required freshmen text.