While current affairs make for an easy argument in support of withdrawing from worrying/engaging with government due to how limited of an impact the individual can have with basic/average effort (voting, let’s say) living in any era of history: is it a mistake to intentionally avoid the stress of politics and government? By not reading/watching any news or media and instead focusing on the day to day fulfillment (working a job you enjoy, hanging with friends, covering basics like food/water/shelter) and investing in your hobbies, interests, and travel, while refusing to care about either local or national political issues, it can be said that you are doing a disservice to those around you by not being a vigilant citizen. At the same time, I can easily see focusing on self-fulfillment resulting in a healthier and overall better life, but is there an argument to be made that you cannot be fulfilled without active participation in the society around you. It is easy to say “no matter where you are you are living in a society”, that is not the short minded answer I am looking for as obviously you will see the news on the TV at your local cafe or wherever. I mean actively giving a thought as to how you can take steps to improve your town/country vs. enjoying every day for what it is and focusing on whatever comes to mind and what you can impact with a reasonable amount of effort, stoic style.
I absolutely adore the Cities of Sigmar which are defined by hope, commerce, equality, and the complex, often brutal sociopolitical that arise from many diverse species of hundreds of cultures struggling to work together.
Councillors of the Grand Conclaves compete for power amongst themselves and with the leaders of the Noble Houses, Guilds, and Religious Orders they are meant to represent, and sometimes with the Knights and Lords of the Stormcast who stand as wards of the Cities. These rampant political games can devastate even the greatest Cities, like Anvilgard, leaving them open for conquest from enemies.
Yet on the opposite end of the spectrum the Freeguilds, Ironweld Arsenal, and Dispossessed Labour-clans have forged a bond as strong as gromril, that echoes across nearly every City as these three factions work together to build, defend, and improve their struggling nations.
Often the Humans, Duardin, Aelves, and other peoples of the Cities live apart, in districts they have segregated by choice. Yet in other Cities they live together. In others still, a combination of the two methods can be seen, meaning every city can be drastically unique as districts are built to contend with the needs and desires of their occupants.
There are even great cities built to cater to the wants and needs of but a singular faction, some of which aren't even factions belonging to the Cities of Sigmar! Greywater Fastness is an industrial powerhouse of smog, metal, and stone where the Ironweld and Dispossessed reign on high; yet just a continent or two away there is The Phoenicium which has become the capital of the Phoenix Temple and a bastion of Aelven culture; Living City is as much a Sylvaneth city as it is one of Sigmar's bastions; Settler's Gain is led by the guiding hand of Lumineth Invigilators; and Lethis is dominated by the Raven Priests of Morrda.
So what is the sociopolitical landscape of your favorite faction like? How do the subfactions, cults, guild, warbands, military orders, and companies within them interact with each other? What are some highlights that you'd like to talk about?
A recent discussion made me wonder about this – do any of you know of instances when significant sociopolitical change has not been preceded by protests (of the street protest kind or very similar)? I'm mostly interested in more modern examples, but I expect some historical ones would also spark interesting discussion.
The context is obviously whether protests are necessary for social progress. I understand even a perfect correlation in this case wouldn't actually prove necessity, but it would be quite suggestive, so counterexamples are very valuable.
I don't think this is directly culture-wary since all(?) sides of the culture was use protests and gatherings, but if it is let me know and I'll look for some other place to ask this question.
I’m writing an essay for a college class about political conflicts around the world, I chose to talk about conflict in Colombia during the 80s - 90s, I don’t want to focus so much in Pablo Escobar but it’s hard not to. The policies and the social climate around that time was so defined by the environment that was affected by drug cartels, that separating them has been tough. In no way I want to keep giving the spotlight to Escobar like some tv shows have done, but I’ve being looking into some books that give first hand knowledge of some experiences that people had with him, to get make a more comprehensive and cohesive view. A classmate talked about some of these books, but I think some input from anyone outside of my circle can help a long way. These are some of the ones I’ve thinking about reading so far. Just a little warning, my Spanish is good, not crazy good, but I think I can manage:
Relato de mi destino by Fernando Panesso
Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar by Virginia Vallejo
Mi vida y mi carcel con Pablo Escobar (Spanish Edition) by Victoria Eugenia Henao
Pablo and Me: My life with Escobar by Victoria Eugenia Henao
Pablo Escobar: My Father by Juan Pablo Escobar
I have started reading some of these and I have the Spanish version of a couple already. I’m trying to also improve my Spanish, if I can. But anyway, any help is much appreciated. I wanted to post the links from amazon, but I realized that I couldn’t.
Tdlr: Books for an essay that talk about Pablo Escobar
After about 40 pages into Josephus’ The Jewish War, I am very confused about the sociopolitical situation in the region of Israel at the time. It seems that, at least in Galilee, they were under no unified government nor loyalty to the Jewish king or Roman governor, and every village or town has some sort of strong man wishing to rule the settlements independently. What was happening exactly why were there so many “rebel” leaders?
Josephus also was building walls for settlements that wanted them as a mean to retain their loyalty, and he just says he sent labors to build the walls. What kind of “walls” was he building? Surely, a city or even village wall would take huge amount of material and labor. How much control did Josephus have over the economics of Galilee and how was it possible that he had so many labors and money to build city walls one after the other all over the place?
Curious….
While the adoption of social media has been growing steadily globally for over a decade, the scientific study of social media is still in its youth. There's been a lot of press about the role that social media has played on such grandiose occasions as the the Arab Spring and the Ukraine's EuroMaiden revolution, but often times its impact is much more subtle, even if just as powerful. Social media has the power to polarize us politically, engage us and disaffect us, to inform us and disinform us. America's former President Donald Trump credits social media with his political success, and the 2020 U.S. Presidential election saw the rise and fall of one of history's most notorious bunk political conspiracies, organized almost entirely through social media.
We're a panel of researchers who look at the various ways that people organize themselves on social networks and the ways these networks shape our beliefs and behaviors. We study the evidence-based science of social media with a focus on understanding and quantifying the impacts of our exposure (or lack of exposure!) to ideas on social media, and we're here to answer your questions about it! We will begin answering questions circa 2pm Eastern.
We are:
Amy Bruckman (u/asbruckman): I am a Professor and Senior Associate Chair in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. I study social computing, with interests in content moderation, collaboration, and social movements. I got my PhD from the MIT Media Lab in 1997, and am an ACM Fellow and a member of the ACM SIGCHI Academy.
Damon Centola (u/DamonCentola): I'm Damon Centola, a professor of Sociology, Engineering, and Communication and Director of the Network Dynamics Group at UPenn. I study how social change spreads using computational models based on work done in Physics. I was raised in a community of artists, activists and entrepreneurs who were all working to spread awareness about social issues like water conservation, gender equity, atomic
... keep reading on reddit ➡I read the first half of this book a few years ago when I would go to a bookstore near my work on breaks. I have not been able to recall the title and only recall certain, specific moments in the story that are too specific for google.
Essentially a small, but organized group of bioterrorists are able to launch an attack on at least the US, if not the world and it follows several of the terrorists (antiheroes) a couple of people within the government that are fighting back as best as they can, and a average joe (he worked at a garbage dump and noticed all the plastic melting).
The scenarios I can recall are that they released bacteria that eats all plastics into organic goo, and spreads, I think there was something about drones, and there’s something coming which I never got to.
I remember a scene specifically that the government was attempting to move through Washington in cars by spraying the tires with bleach or something to keep them from melting.
I’ve found a bunch of books that have been interesting from my searches, but never this one. Thanks in advance!
I only ask because I know of 2 females personally. One is a friend, one is a relative.
The friend and her boyfriend live off of different programs, but one in particular is disturbing. She pretends that he abuses her and reaches out to a domestic abuse organization, that pays her money, and helped her get an apartment. He lives there with her, they manipulated all of it. I confronted her about it and she said “everyone does it” and “I don’t have the ability to work” BTW I met her at a job, and she is quite capable and intelligent. It sort of put a road block in our relationship as having been in a DV relationship, and knowing the need for so many in the community. I have struggled with not knowing how to report her or if I should.
The other girl I do not know so well, but she had a baby with both of my male cousins, both are ex convicts (weird I know). She seems to be a welfare queen (she’s white) who uses all of her assistance on drugs and manipulates the entire system and was apparently taught how to by her parents. I figured this out because my cousin is raising one of the kids, and told me she doesn’t get any assistance, while she’s living under her roof, and thus cannot help with the bills. I used to work for the system in NJ, and I know for a fact that’s next to impossible as she: is a single mother of 2 who grew up in poverty, has no education, no criminal record, 2 convict baby daddies, called the police on both baby daddies, and her own father for domestic violence/assault, and has a mood disorder. She checks off every box. She has to be getting something. I then grilled my cousin (the father) because I’ve grown quite close to the child and want him to have better odds and he admitted they use the 3k she gets for drugs, and that they will never get caught because she always passes her drug tests. This woman is abusing her child, she stays in bed all day, and puts him in a crib (he’s 2) and ignores him. Her daughter is 4 and can barely speak. The father is a deadbeat with a serious criminal record and brain damage from drug abuse. I’ve bonded with the children, and desperately want to help but don’t know how. The grandmother (my cousin) has already got 50% sole custody, but the parents live in her basement, and abuse drugs all day. Family services thinks the situation is good? As they’ve been called a few times by others in my family.
As you can expect this stuff is disturbing to me, particularly because I did work for the system at one poin
... keep reading on reddit ➡I'm about to finish the documentary, Apocalypse: WWII, for the third time. Highly recommended.
And I would like to go a little deeper. Is there a book that deals with historical facts, as well as socio-political causes, both in Germany and internationally?
I ask because I can't think of any other events (apart from perhaps the Magna Carta) that seemed to have as significant an influence on Parliament and the relationships between them, the monarchy and the church.
Say we somehow reach an ideal Socialist society where the means of production are now fully owned and controlled by the workers themselves. Let's assume there's still quite a few Capitalist reactionaries who want to go back to the state of things we had before socialism was realised. Would you allow the said Capitalist thinkers/theorists a right to express their thoughts without being censored?
People make a massive deal out of "Black History Month". However I didn't even know Native American Heritage/History Month existed until I was an adult. Black History Month is all over television and in schools, you know it exist because of that.
There are people that say "every month is White History Month", nope it is not. Most of the time this is a response to a criticism that making observation of black history exclusive to a month is bigoted. Because it's common for people to try to make a point by saying "if there was a White History Month it would be called racist".
The thing is, there's something painfully obvious that most people make excuses for when it comes to things like black history month and black lives matter. They pretend it all doesn't have a prominence in media. So prominent that anything highlighting the troubles of other ethnic groups and celebrating the history or Heritage of other groups, gets pushed out of the way. Native American Lives Matter has been a thing but it goes sorely under the radar.
February: Black History Month.
March: Irish-American Heritage Month. Greek-American Heritage Month.
April: Arab-American Heritage Month. Tartan (Scottish-American) Heritage Month.
May: South Asian Heritage Month. Haitian Heritage Month. Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Jewish American Heritage Month.
June: Caribbean American Heritage Month.
July: French-American Heritage Month.
September: National Hispanic Heritage Month. German-American Heritage Month.
October: Filipino American History Month. Italian-American Heritage Month.
November: Native American Heritage Month.
Everything listed here is either, is sparsely celebrated or only periodically celebrated because of sociopolitical motivations. Like the more recent "Stop Asian Hate", while I personally think it was a good idea because I've seen even anti-japanese sentiments even among left-wingers over the years. Sadly, the observation of anything like Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month might actually just be very temporary. Nothing really sticks unless there is prevalence, and it's not a black or white issue, it's companies that posture with whatever may make money. It costs money for them to observe stuff like this.
Stop saying that every month is White History Month... It makes you look like a racist asshole, towards everybody.
Start encouraging learning about historical figures and events that include different ethnic groups even if
... keep reading on reddit ➡I'm trying to learn about bronze and iron age cultures, especially in the context of Indo-European studies, and comparative linguistics and mythology. Proto-Celtic and Proto-Germanic languages are both in the Indo-European language family, and I've heard that the border between Gaul and Germania as determined by the Romans was sort of arbitrary, or that no such hard border existed between the two cultures.
Essentially I'm wondering to what extent these two cultural horizons are distinct from one another, what those distinctions might look like in terms of social and religious life, and whether the cultures grew more distinct from one another as you move away from the border region of Gaul and Germania.
That's all pretty broad so feel free to just answer whatever part you want, but here are more specific questions: Was the difference between Celts and Germans mainly cultural, linguistic, or both? Were Germanic shamans/priests comparable to druids? How did religious practice and ritual compare between the two cultures? Did Celts and Germans have similar familial, tribal, and/or leadership structures? Did Celts and Germans approach war and conflict differently? Were economic relationships within these two cultures similarly organized?
I’m writing an essay for a college class about political conflicts around the world, I chose to talk about conflict in Colombia during the 80s - 90s, I don’t want to focus so much in Pablo Escobar but it’s hard not to. The policies and the social climate around that time was so defined by the environment that was affected by drug cartels, that separating them has been tough. In no way I want to keep giving the spotlight to Escobar like some tv shows have done, but I’ve being looking into some books that give first hand knowledge of some experiences that people had with him, to get make a more comprehensive and cohesive view. A classmate talked about some of these books, but I think some input from anyone outside of my circle can help a long way. These are some of the ones I’ve thinking about reading so far. Just a little warning, my Spanish is good, not crazy good, but I think I can manage:
Relato de mi destino by Fernando Panesso
Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar by Virginia Vallejo
Mi vida y mi carcel con Pablo Escobar (Spanish Edition) by Victoria Eugenia Henao
Pablo and Me: My life with Escobar by Victoria Eugenia Henao
Pablo Escobar: My Father by Juan Pablo Escobar
I have started reading some of these and I have the Spanish version of a couple already. I’m trying to also improve my Spanish, if I can. But anyway, any help is much appreciated. I wanted to post the links from amazon, but I realized that I couldn’t.
Tdlr: Books for an essay that talk about Pablo Escobar
I’m writing an essay for a college class about political conflicts around the world, I chose to talk about conflict in Colombia during the 80s - 90s, I don’t want to focus so much in Pablo Escobar but it’s hard not to. The policies and the social climate around that time was so defined by the environment that was affected by drug cartels, that separating them has been tough. In no way I want to keep giving the spotlight to Escobar like some tv shows have done, but I’ve being looking into some books that give first hand knowledge of some experiences that people had with him, to get make a more comprehensive and cohesive view. A classmate talked about some of these books, but I think some input from anyone outside of my circle can help a long way. These are some of the ones I’ve thinking about reading so far. Just a little warning, my Spanish is good, not crazy good, but I think I can manage:
Relato de mi destino by Fernando Panesso
Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar by Virginia Vallejo
Mi vida y mi carcel con Pablo Escobar (Spanish Edition) by Victoria Eugenia Henao
Pablo and Me: My life with Escobar by Victoria Eugenia Henao
Pablo Escobar: My Father by Juan Pablo Escobar
I have started reading some of these and I have the Spanish version of a couple already. I’m trying to also improve my Spanish, if I can. But anyway, any help is much appreciated. I wanted to post the links from amazon, but I realized that I couldn’t.
Tdlr: Books for an essay that talk about Pablo Escobar
