Shut Up, Shut Up, Shut Up!

So my black throne is now repaired, and I thought I'd talk about the stupidity of my fellow man. I enjoy an inexhaustible topic, don't you?

• I get the feeling the same people are responsible, but in any event, all you fansubbers who do Zero's Familiar and Scarlet Bullet Aria, two things. One, "urusai" means "shut up" (the post title is a reference to Kugimiya Rie's signature line). I don't care how iconic it is, if you're subtitling this shit, you write the word in English.
  
  Second, and more importantly, "kizoku" means "noble family". It does not mean "royal family"—that's "ôzoku". If you don't know the difference between royalty and nobles, you are not sufficiently fluent in your own language to be subtitling works in another.


• Speaking of, anyone who thinks Britain's royals have anything to do with the concept of monarchy, is simply announcing "I cannot read history, and am probably regularly outwitted by blue-green algae, diatoms, and other protozoa." Britain has not been a monarchy since the Hanoverian succession at the absolute latest—a case can be made for Runnymede as the date when they ceased to have a king.
  
  What the many blunders and crimes in the history of England's government discredit is not monarchy, but the republic. Which, again, is just the Latin word for aristocracy. America only has a valid government to the extent we have repudiated the abortion that is the Westminster system—our greatest point of similarity to that thing, our legislature, has been a standing joke of corruption and incompetence for at least a century.


• Back to the topic of linguistics, while it's a near certainty that the modern portrayal of shinigami probably dates to the Meiji era, the concept itself is older. First off, China and Korea have the same sort of god, basically a corrupt official who harangues worshipers for offerings, lest he abuse the souls he's escorting. Something like the guys who brought you before the courts in Neo-Confucian states.
  
  Second off, the term "shinigami" is absolutely not Meiji era, since it occurs twice in "Lovers' Suicide at Amijima" by Chikamatsu Monzaemon. 1721 is a smaller number than 1868: doesn't that mean it's earlier? We're not counting down to some future event on this dating system, right? I forget.


• Remember how I said Tycho was an idiot solely when he takes the word of the media on Ann Coulter, when he knows they lie about gamers? Okay, I found another one. He habitually, probably in his pure aesthetic enjoyment of synonyms as such, uses "Soviet" for "Russian". Dude, you can get your ass kicked for that. Do you think "Nazi" is synonymous with "German"?
  
  It's still not as bad as Alton Brown not knowing Kiev is not in Russia, or thinking "Viva La Revolucion" is an appropriate toast when drinking a Cuban-style daiquiri. ("Che-te, Che!" would go over a lot better, with all the Cubans who wouldn't be shot for watching his show).


• Not exactly a reality check, but I almost wanna run for some political office just so I can respond to the recent upswing of obscene heckling as only a gamer can. E.g., "Hey, I think your mom said that to me last night. She was yelling it even louder, though."
  
  It's quaint how normal people think they know how to trash talk, isn't it?


• Ever hear of the philosophical concept of "The One and the Many"? Yeah, what it actually means is, "how do you reconcile the concept of a single common nature, for things that have multiple, non-identical instances?" Basically the correct answer is, denying either the single common nature or the non-identical instances, is fallacious. The fact that, unlike Plato or the atomists, he doesn't do that, is a major selling point of Aristotle.
  
  As in all things, errors of thought have consequences in actions, and these errors' consequences materialize in social life. Those who deny common natures ("The One") tend toward forms of individualism that border on solipsism, while those who deny the individual instances ("The Many") tend toward extremes of collectivism. For all her claim to be an Aristotelian, Rand's anthropology is actually atomistic.


• And once again this thing gets sidetracked onto pointing out the risible pratfalls in her "thought". What's really funny is how self-righteous she always was. See, if "man is a being of self-made nature", as she pontificated, then no two humans actually have the same nature; and lacking a nature in common, no common morals are incumbent upon them. The existentialists understood that—including Sartre and Heidegger. When you're a less cogent moral thinker than a Stalinist and a damn Nazi, it's really time to take your ball home.
  
  Also, remember how I (jokingly) said she was actually a Soviet agent? It occurred to me, ever see the Chesterton line, "You can tell a man is a Buddhist by his way of telling you he's not a Buddhist"? Well the version of liberal capitalism she praised, was strictly the Soviet version, not even an approximation of the real thing.
  
  Hmm.


• You know that thing in Niven, and implied by some things in Halo, and in a bunch of other SF? The idea that HumansAreSuperior? Usually because of their "monkey curiosity" and some alleged "versatility" from being omnivores? Yeah, well, my SF story posits a different interpretation.
  
  Namely, only apex predators become sapient. Humans are only sapient at all because of a few Pleistocene coincidences that shifted us from foragers to hunters. But, while the felinoids and dromaeosaurids are building on tens of millions of years of evolution as predators, humans are building on 3 million, tops, and probably a lot less (before that, we were shambling mush-mouthed foragers). Again: only apex predators become sapient...and we're a half-assed bunch of apex predators.