Banalities Puns

Likewise the 'title gore' phenomenon. A human corpse washed up on the forthcoming Olympic volleyball beach in Rio yesterday and the story's top comment was literally an angry minor rewording of the title, followed by countless "Thank you! How hard is it to....".

Just the definition of comments that don't contribute anything getting more upvotes than anything that does.

You remember that scene where Arya brutally murders Meryn Trant in Braavos after finding out he's a sadistic pedo who gets off by beating children? ("Too old?")

I think many who hated season 8 still thought this was badass, but this is one of the moments I realized something was seriously going wrong with the show along with "20 good men". I usually hate to complain about the show again and again but this particular change pisses me off partially because it's kinda related to the problem of media and society and despite "too old" becoming a meme relatively few people talked about how the scene sucked.

>He did not hate her, Sansa realized; neither did he love her. He felt nothing for her at all. She was only a ... a thing to him.

A Game of Thrones

>"Ser Meryn." Jaime smiled at the sour knight with the rust-red hair and the pouches under his eyes. "I have heard it said that Joffrey made use of you to chastise Sansa Stark." He turned the White Book around one-handed. "Here, show me where it is in our vows that we swear to beat women and children."

>"I did as His Grace commanded me. We are sworn to obey."

A Storm of Swords

While I would say he's evil, he's the kind of "evil" person you see everywhere, most famously common in Nazi Germany. Hannah Arendt wrote about this in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem. Someone who's "doing his job" and feels almost zero guilt or responsibility for it, mostly just pride in the sense of duty.

> The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”

There's a debate about how much Eichmann was ideologically motivated. But anyways, the show cheapens this theme by literally making Trant a cartoonish sadistic pervert, a caricature of evil in that scene. So that audience can cheer on an act of brutal revenge, missing the point of Arya's character as well.

Maybe they could have tied this in and made a scene like this. Arya confronts Meryn in Braavos about killing her mentor and abusing her sister. Meryn desperately tries to excuse himself saying he was only following orders (like how Magneto confronts Nazis in X-Men: First Class), seemingly seeing nothing wrong with

Some excerpts from the article cited below:

“The banality of evil” is a concept Chinese intellectuals often evoke in moments like Xi’an. It was coined by the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who wrote that Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, was an ordinary man who was motivated by “an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement.”

Chinese intellectuals are struck by how many officials and civilians — often driven by professional ambition or obedience — are willing to be the enablers of authoritarian policies.

When the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan two years ago, it exposed the weaknesses in China’s authoritarian system. Now, with patients dying of non-Covid diseases, residents going hungry and officials pointing fingers, the lockdown in Xi’an has shown how the country’s political apparatus has ossified, bringing a ruthlessness to its single-minded pursuit of a zero-Covid policy.

New York Times, Jan. 12, 2022, The Army of Millions Who Enforce China’s Zero-Covid Policy, at All Costs https://nyti.ms/3fe6SXB

Many comparisons have been drawn between Kurosawa Akira’s samurai masterpiece Ran (乱, translated literally: “chaos”) and Shakespeare’s King Lear. The film is almost a beat-by-beat adaptation of the play, transplanted in setting from medieval Britain to the Sengoku Jidai. This is more than simply an aesthetic choice, as it reweights the moral discourse on matters such as duty and familiality. Nihilistic interpretations of King Lear came into vogue in the 20th century, and commentators have pointed to King Lear as the inspiration behind absurdist playwrights like Samuel Beckett. Indeed, Lear is a man with unmet psychological needs, who subsequently spirals into madness when his life’s course escapes his control. Unlike other tragic heroes who struggle valiantly against their fates, Lear stumbles to his doom in a half daze, unable to cope with his life’s changing circumstances. Rescue seemingly comes and he regains his senses momentarily, but is soon thrown into imprisonment, where Cordelia, perhaps the most moral character in the play, is killed. Though he also outlives his treacherous daughters Goneril and Regan, Lear dies nonetheless, having lost his will to live. Yet the narrative of Ran is not quite as unmoored from reason and agency. Ichimonji Hidetora, unlike Lear, is more than a vain fool: the three castles which he divides among his sons were obtained through his conquests, and he has proven a consummate warlord of the Sengoku Jidai. He has, at least in his past, been able to rule effectively, to see through deceptions (as all warfare is deception), and is a formidable, if not necessarily noble character; though later repeatedly betrayed, he does inspire loyalty from some of his followers. Yet in a senile lapse of judgment, his life’s work is put to ruin. Though Kurosawa’s ending is similarly difficult to grapple with as Shakespeare’s (shortly after reuniting with his father, Saburo is abruptly killed by an assassin sent by his brother), Ran is not so much absurdist theater as a cautionary tale about seeking privilege without responsibility, the danger of mistaking substanceless claims of virtue for true morality, and the cost of unrestrained sentimentality in a chaotic world.

Both stories begin at the same scene. Both lords wish to give up the mantle of responsibility: each wishes to split their feudal possessions between their children, in the hopes that each will come to the others’ aid in times of need. Yet while Lear solicits his da

https://aeon.co/ideas/what-did-hannah-arendt-really-mean-by-the-banality-of-evil

Reading this article it seems that in recent decades more and more dissenting voices of her view have come forward and that her initial analysis was flawed.

It also strikes me as peculiar how she mentions that Eichmann did not think of his actions as evil, as he could not view his actions from the viewpoint of his victims, and that this is proof that he was "normal". However, doesn't this lack of being able to emphasize with others show that he was a Sociopath, so very much not normal?

For reference, I am a UK citizen, working on a six month contract on a remote island. I have access to the internet, but no ability to make/receive phone calls, or send/receive text messages. There is also no functioning postal service in the region.

The antagonists of the tale are employees of one of the big credit card providers in the UK, hereafter referred to as CC, and E1, E2, E3 and E4.

I receive a statement from CC telling me there is an outstanding balance due on my account. I haven't used my card since December 2020, so I'm immediately suspicious (I have had my details stolen previously, and used fraudulently, through a reputable third party website).

Upon checking, it was a renewal payment for a subscription I had previously cancelled before I left the UK. I contacted the business responsible, sending them their cancellation email as confirmation, and they refunded the payment. As it was paid in a different currency, the exchange rate difference left an outstanding balance of £0.01 on my account.

"No problem," I foolishly thought, "I can pay that off and clear the balance. Not so fast. I log in to CCs website, and attempt to pay the balance, but it falls below my minimum payment, so I am not able to complete the transaction. I also attempt to pay the minimum payment, but the website will not allow me to put my account into credit.

"I'll just find some contact details and message them to get it sorted." Again, not so fast. The website live chat is out of action while it's being upgraded. I download CCs app, but it needs to send a text message to confirm and register my details. The Apple Live Chat? My phone is an Android. Call these numbers? No mobile phone access. Send us a letter? No postal service.

All secure channel options exhausted. I send a message using the 'New Customer' link, outlining my issue paying, and asking for assistance (no account details or sensitive information submitted).

E1 responds: "This is not a secure channel to discuss account queries. Please use our secure services (outlined above)."

I return a message indicating that I am not discussing my account, just the website functionality for resolving my payment issue. I include an explanation of why I can't access the secure channels.

E1 responds again, almost a copy paste of his previous message.

My next message, after questioning whether either of my messages were read and understood, reiterates my issue and the lack of options for contacting them securely. I ev

Although more and more people are becoming aware of the ongoing apocalypse, it appears that not many works of fiction are dealing with this reality in a head-on way. The Cold War and the threat of nuclear extinction inspired post-apocalyptic visions of the future from Mad Max to Akira, and while those visions are still highly relevant, it's rarer to see works dealing with the collapse itself rather than skipping to its aftermath. This is particularly striking in our contemporary context: in contrast to the potential of a catastrophic but quick nuclear war, our present predicament is a slow, drawn out and gradual collapse with no clearly defined breaking point.

This is why I've been fascinated by a manga called Dead Dead Demon's Dedededestruction, by popular manga author Inio Asano. Asano is best known for manga like Solanin and Goodnight Punpun, which are quite mature and dark works mainly focused on personal stories, but this currently ongoing series has him addressing life under the collapse, which he's quite explicit about in a 2014 interview:

"The overall theme for the 2000s felt like stagnation, but it’s obvious that at this point we’ve entered the end of the world. The world isn’t going to end soon; it’s already starting to end now. The question is how to live in an age where the whole world is spiraling down, down, down."

At the start of the series, we see a huge alien spacecraft appear over Tokyo, where it stays hovering ominously for years. While there is some destruction caused by the invaders, for the most part this bizarre event is something that's relegated to the background of people's lives; something that's talked about in the news, but not the cataclysmic event turning society on its head that we often see alien invasions depicted as in fiction. Rather than an Independence Day-style heroic story about fighting off the aliens, we follow a group of high schoolers through their mostly unchanged daily lives and normal teenage problems, with the alien invasion subplot occasionally appearing to remind us of the strange and scary reality lurking in the background.

This seems to me a refreshing and honest reflection of life in our current age, where we're vaguely aware of everything being fucked, but most of us prefer to ignore it

I would read through this website a few times a year between 2002 and 2006. It could have existed before that, and it's possible it didn't exist until 2004 and my timeline is off.

It was called The @-Werk Network or some spelling of that. I remember the @ symbol, and I remember that "Work" was spelled "werk" somewhere in the title.

The website was a compilation of email exchanges between a group of friends who all had new, mundane jobs.

There were 14-19 pages of messages, each page being a collection of messages (in plain text), some of them being just a sentence, some of them being a paragraph or so. They would be mundane things, like talking about how they spent four hours counting post it notes or odd names (one example was someone who answered phones, and got a call from someone looking to be directed to Mr. Buttland, and the message wrote something like "I don't want to go to Butt Land!" Except it wasn't that, since google brings up nothing).

It was a very simple, funny site, and as someone working a banal job myself, it resonated with me enough to make me laugh out loud regularly.

I think about it every few years, do some google searches, and give up. I feel like if it exists anywhere on the internet, it would be worth re-reading. Thank you in advance.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/ddnov.040030289

URL: https://read.dukeupress.edu/novel/article-abstract/40/3/289/2176/Cruelty-Is-Bad-Banality-and-Proximity-in-Never-Let?redirectedFrom=fulltext

For example. This is the fourth time in five years that a player over six foot has scored outside the eighteen yard area with his left foot. Quite unbelievable.

The banality of evil. A concept even we are somewhat torn about. Hitler was a vegetarian painter, a torturer can be the nicest father ever, a dictator's favourite meal can even be mashed potatoes with sausages. A man that you see smiling on the street and eating a simple sandwich just signed an order to massacre some workers on strike, the guy you see listening to classical music is an abuser.

How would aliens reach to that?

It’s one again that time of year where I do my annual pilgrimage to Eskew. I came across this quote in episode 5 which I found so beautiful and captures so much the spirit of the show and what makes it so relatable despite its surreal unique world. Life can often feel (especially those who are mentally ill) like a continuous sequence of nightmares. Would are partner leave us? are we going to be fired at work? What happens if that cops pulls me over? and its not allowed to acknowledge all those nightmares and we have to pretend to be “fine and normal” and stick to the banality of societal expectations.

And the fact that they captured this feeling is just chef kiss. God I love this show so much

Which movie has the best depiction of how banal, boring, and tedious work can be? The movie can be animated or live-action, but what movie has the best portrayal of how soul-crushing work can be?

Examples:

• Ikiru (1952): The beginning with the group of women being given the runaround is both hilarious and sad because of how true it is

• Brazil (1985): Terry Gilliam’s 1985 movie takes a satirical look at bureaucracy and corporatism in a dystopia reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984

• Office Space (1999): What more can I say, it’s a cult classic. It’s also a movie that has gotten better with time if you work in an office environment

• The Incredibles (2004) - The beginning of course where Mr. Incredible has to work in a tiny cubicle and is reprimanded for actually helping a customer and circumventing the bureaucratic process