Idle Thumbs 210: Pro Fish Smart Fish

[Gormongous]

Gormongous, I'm curious as to your perspective of the more recent push for re-interpretive history - specifically "corrective" works like Zinn's People's History of the United States and things like Mae Ngai's Impossible Subjects. I read a lot of that kind of work for my Ethnic Studies minor, to the point where I actually feel like I was exposed to more re-interpretive historical study than actual "mainstream" stuff, but I don't know to what degree that would have been true if not for my particular interests. I don't think anyone in this day and age, for example, is approaching the Columbus story from the traditional perspective.

 

As a professional studying medieval history, I have to work harder than most to find particularly revisionist or re-interpretive scholarship. The closest thing that we've got is Susan Reynolds' and Elizabeth A.R. Brown's efforts to get "feudalism" thrown out as useless terminology that only describes a nonexistent ideal to which nothing ever fully conformed, but even that lost steam when it became clear that giving up on feudalism gave us a lot less about which to talk. In general, the arteries of medieval history are quite hard, since we don't have a lack of sources like ancient history (which encourages a deep and robust approach towards source analysis) or an overabundance of them like modern history (which allows for a variety of interpretive methods). Post-modernism is hard to distinguish from old-fashioned hyper-skepticism here, which is not nearly as seductive. I just follow the most current trends, which mostly focus on the accurate recreation of historical figures' mental states and belief systems, and wish for more. Sorry if that's not a satisfying answer.

[Merus]

I remember a story from when I went to university the first time. At the college I was living, we had a friend who was from America, and I came down to the dining hall to see her being comforted by a bunch of our mutual friends. From the conversation in progress, it became clear that she'd gone out to spend some time with real Australians, and had come to the conclusion that Australians deeply loathed Americans. It was incredibly awkward to try and convince her that 1) we didn't hate her, she was safe here and she hadn't agreed to spend a year surrounded by people who hated her because of where she was born while 2) agreeing with all the things she'd been told about why Americans were terrible. So I've been here before.

 

Like, the tone of both responses was supposed to be a little flippant - people were talking about how they missed various topics of discussion that had actually happened, so I chimed in with something that clearly never happened, and then when someone had a serious dismissive response to that I tried to be more obviously absurd (or at least I think the idea that using the metric system is the hallmark of civilisation is pretty absurd), but I appreciate that it might be a running theme. Partly it's force of habit - for most of my internetting, I'm usually either the only Australian member, or the Australian member who posts the most frequently, and so I tend to lean into it and be The Australian Guy - and partly because, from my perspective, making fun of America and American exceptionalism feels like punching up.

 

I don't know if I have a resolution to this.

[syntheticgerbil]

I thought it was funny, but I can't get too mad because Australia is where I have been importing a lot of PC games, movies, and cartoons the past few years since the U.S. market only releases the most obvious shit on disc nowadays. The exchange rate of the dollar is also in my favor.

 

Also statistically, most Australians die from spiders bites (or are completely devoured) before 40 anyway, so who'd want to live there?

[natellite]

As a professional studying medieval history, I have to work harder than most to find particularly revisionist or re-interpretive scholarship. The closest thing that we've got is Susan Reynolds' and Elizabeth A.R. Brown's efforts to get "feudalism" thrown out as useless terminology that only describes a nonexistent ideal to which nothing ever fully conformed, but even that lost steam when it became clear that giving up on feudalism gave us a lot less about which to talk. In general, the arteries of medieval history are quite hard, since we don't have a lack of sources like ancient history (which encourages a deep and robust approach towards source analysis) or an overabundance of them like modern history (which allows for a variety of interpretive methods). Post-modernism is hard to distinguish from old-fashioned hyper-skepticism here, which is not nearly as seductive. I just follow the most current trends, which mostly focus on the accurate recreation of historical figures' mental states and belief systems, and wish for more. Sorry if that's not a satisfying answer.

 

It's absolutely a satisfying answer. Thank you!

[dium]

The humor may have been lost on some people because nobody was expressing any belief in American exceptionalism, but rather complaining about relative American shittiness. So it came off less like making fun of American exceptionalism and more like a "yeah, it really IS bad over there!" sort of rubbing your nose in it. Less jab and counter-jab, but self depreciation and an assist in further self depreciation. Nothing false was said, though.

[SecretAsianMan]

The collection is complete

 

[Badfinger]

I am enamored with the battery for scale.

 

[jeremywc]

I remember a story from when I went to university the first time. At the college I was living, we had a friend who was from America, and I came down to the dining hall to see her being comforted by a bunch of our mutual friends. From the conversation in progress, it became clear that she'd gone out to spend some time with real Australians, and had come to the conclusion that Australians deeply loathed Americans. It was incredibly awkward to try and convince her that 1) we didn't hate her, she was safe here and she hadn't agreed to spend a year surrounded by people who hated her because of where she was born while 2) agreeing with all the things she'd been told about why Americans were terrible. So I've been here before.

 

Like, the tone of both responses was supposed to be a little flippant - people were talking about how they missed various topics of discussion that had actually happened, so I chimed in with something that clearly never happened, and then when someone had a serious dismissive response to that I tried to be more obviously absurd (or at least I think the idea that using the metric system is the hallmark of civilisation is pretty absurd), but I appreciate that it might be a running theme. Partly it's force of habit - for most of my internetting, I'm usually either the only Australian member, or the Australian member who posts the most frequently, and so I tend to lean into it and be The Australian Guy - and partly because, from my perspective, making fun of America and American exceptionalism feels like punching up.

 

I don't know if I have a resolution to this.

 

That's fair enough, I understand your perspective. Just take what I said into consideration. Dium's "rubbing your nose in it" analogy feels like a close approximation of how I feel about it, I think.

[Twig]

As an American, nothing he said was untrue, so, it's hard to be angry. Well I am angry at America for, you know, continuing to be the same America.

 

also the only correct date format is yyyy-mm-dd

[jennegatron]

As an American, nothing he said was untrue, so, it's hard to be angry. Well I am angry at America for, you know, continuing to be the same America.

 

also the only correct date format is yyyy-mm-dd

 

TRAITOR. ( <3 )

(I do believe that this is the best way to do it for computers, but like the mm/dd/yyyy because as a human I'm a creature of habit. Thus my affection for Fahrenheit & pounds.)

[tberton]

As a Canadian, I am cursed with mixing the two systems. Sometimes we use feet, sometimes it's metres.* Sometimes its pounds, sometimes its kilograms. Kilometres get used a lot more than miles though and Celsius is always used over Farenheit because Farenheit is stupid.

 

*Americans should not be allowed to have their own spelling for "metre" if they don't even use the goddamn unit.

[jeremywc]

As an American, nothing he said was untrue, so, it's hard to be angry. Well I am angry at America for, you know, continuing to be the same America.

 

also the only correct date format is yyyy-mm-dd

 

ISO 8601 4 life.

[syntheticgerbil]

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[Twig]

As a Canadian, I am cursed with mixing the two systems. Sometimes we use feet, sometimes it's metres.* Sometimes its pounds, sometimes its kilograms. Kilometres get used a lot more than miles though and Celsius is always used over Farenheit because Farenheit is stupid.

*Americans should not be allowed to have their own spelling for "metre" if they don't even use the goddamn unit.

Well scientists use it! Also the word isn't only used for the unit of measurement. Blame the English language being shitty for that one, not America!

Also I have to admit I'm biased re date format since I am a programmer but also it just makes more sense to me in general. Either date first year last our year first date last. Mixing up the order makes no goddamn sense!

[Korax]

UP WITH CALLING IT SOCCER.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_football#Etymology_and_names

The term soccer originated in England, first appearing in the 1880s as an Oxford "-er" abbreviation of the word "association".

[jennegatron]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_football#Etymology_and_names

 

(I did know this story about the word "soccer" being something the britsh invented but they get all high and mighty about how we call it the wrong thing by calling it soccer. Imperial measurements and soccer are all your fault Brits!)

[Chris]

Cool thread everyone

[jennegatron]

Cool thread everyone

Thanks Chris! We're doing good work here, and it feels good to be recognized.

[syntheticgerbil]

Agreed, the best.

[Ben X]

Cool thread everyone

 

Why else would it be 5-star rated?

[Blambo]

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You are a good person

[syntheticgerbil]

Why else would it be 5-star rated?

I didn't know we could vote on threads! What a useless function. I have also given this thread five stars.

[Ben X]

Ha ha, whenever people are reminded in one of these threads that they can be rated, someone gives a low rating to drag it down from five stars.

[syntheticgerbil]

That is very rude. It seems when can only rate threads in this subforum. Is it to sort of rate the episode of the podcast? If so it doesn't display the star rating on the index. It's also missing from Twin Peaks Rewatch.

[Twig]

I gave it three stars because I'm undecided on the quality of this thread.