I think people are overrating the odds the ayatollah is a purely rational utility maximizer and underrating the odds the guy is rather upset about his father, wife, and daughter being incinerated and wants his pound of flesh.
Most westerners don’t know this, but in Iranian culture killing someone’s family is considered a grave insult.
This guy has a PhD in Philosophy, incidentally.
Could America please be known for something else?
I'd honestly forgotten about that and yes, that's definitely unacceptable.
And that's ultimately a major difference between Spacey and Lester: Spacey is a predator and Lester, in the end, isn't. He's sleazy, but has some ethical boundaries.
Lester is meant to be sympathetic, but we're also meant to see him as a bit pathetic, skeevy and self-pitying. His lust for his daughter's friend is built on a fantasy that evaporates when he actually has a chance to consummate it.
I think it still holds up well and also that a lot of criticism in recent years reflects two flawed views of the film's protagonist:
1. Spacey and Lester Burnham possess the same fundamental character traits.
2. We're meant to see Lester as a straightforwardly sympathetic character.
Inconsistencies within the Gospels are weak evidence for the claim that there was no Historical Jesus. They are however reasonably strong evidence against the accuracy of the Biblical Jesus.
Precisely. I have a decent number of grievances with the current government, but it's principal alternative to the Left being run by someone who frankly is a bit of a chancer with some dodgy policies, is also worrying.
Quite striking how popular Thatcherism was with younger voters during the '80s. Reminiscent of how young Americans during the '60s were more hawkish about the Vietnam War than their parents and grandparents:
Global antiquity! 🌎 “Ancient inscriptions written in Indian languages [= Old Tamil] have been discovered on Egyptian tombs in the Valley of the Kings.” The graffiti discussed here is so cool and indicate Indian travellers to Roman Egypt in the 1st-3rd centuries CE www.livescience.com/archaeology/...
In case you missed it: Why the latest attempt to deter asylum seekers won’t work | Wyon Stansfeld
Anyway, I think picturing it as about the whole of society and human activity being governed by law rightly includes instinctive lay understandings of it, such as that it's about our responsibilities to each other, not just claims or rights against collective political institutions.
I've never been happy with explanations of the rule of law that heavily emphasise that it's sort of "against the state". Much better is Lord Reed's explanation in the Unison case, that it's "the idea that society is governed by law" (para 68 www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKS...).
The rule of law, as a phrase, is opaque, says Sir Geoffrey Vos MR. He explained: “non-lawyers and even many lawyers think it is about the enforcement of law against citizens rather than enforcing, or rather upholding, the rights of citizens against the state.”
rozenberg.substack.com/p/justice-fo...
nigel farage tweet: The Bank of England is replacing Winston Churchill with a picture of a beaver on our bank notes. This is the definition of woke.
i, for one, am delighted that we finally have a definition of “woke”
“She’s the exception, I am the rule.”
Such articulate cutting through of the nonsense around puberty blockers and eg Keira Bell’s detransitioning from Stephanie Lynnette on GMB this morning. It is also a refreshing relief to see a trans person actually being allowed to speak for once!
"Thou hast nor youth nor age
But as it were an after dinner sleep
Dreaming of both".
This does not contain evidence that what you claimed was true.
Lol, Declassified UK. What next, The Canary?
Now you see this is actually a reasonable criticism, but it's different from the claim you made which was that the RAF were consciously helping Israeli operations.
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bsky.app/profile/dhin...
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The article you've posted does not match your claim that the planes are carpet bombing residential areas of Tehran.
we remain firmly on track for 'republican president leaves the country an omnishambles, next democratic president is punished for not cleaning it up fast enough'
despite extraordinarily stiff competition from the Roberts Court, Citizens United keeps its place as one of the most damaging Supreme Court decisions of all time
No, the hypocrisy is that if a Labour MP had done what Polanski did, then the people getting irate at the Guardian would have been spamming it all over this website.
