Week 35
Historians like to talk about the "inter-war period" right, the time beween WWI and WWII? The period does deserve its own moniker, it's true, because some very interesting things happened during the time.
And here is the kicker: nothing that came into being during that period survives today. A lot of -ism and -ity were were discussed, they are not around anymore. Think of the ideologies that were born then...
Well, the foundation of TR is 1923, in the interwar period! It somehow survived all the craziness.. But TR's course afterwards was pointedly bizarre, that could've helped.
It stayed away from the WWII so it never got its kicked throughly, never had to question anything, the way Germans did.
After Kemal, his number two became the new dictator, who did away with some of the excesses of the new identity (perhaps a good thing), but then the country shifted to democracy, the opposing party comes to power with the number two still looming large, the new gov needs a symbol to counter him, Kemal is brought back from the dead.
The Anglo partnership plays a role, the "alien Turk" is useful to them (stay away from the Middle East) and a partner who looks towards its "racial cousins" in Central Asia (please create chaos in Russia/China's backyard for us) would be a boon for all, as the people who were ever scared of the Russian threat, the newly minted "Turks" were eager to comply.
All along the way the truth got buried, multiple times, one could argue, not without good reason.
The losers were the poor Anatolian intellectuals whose brain turned to cabbage trying to reconcile this all.
And there were differences between what the state claimed, and what acted on. Fairy tales aside, the state accepted only Moslems as Turks, which actually closer to the truth, because the word Turk was something the Balkans used to signify Moslems. So if you were a Moslim in Bulgaria the state would accept your migration and make you a citizen, but the Gagauz who live in southern Moldova who could perhaps claim some Turkishness in a Central Asian sense were not accepted because they were Christian.
So many conflicting ideas are in play here, and in the spaghetti brain of a "Turk" today all these concepts swirl around, some concious, some subconcious, and trigger bizarre responses depending on different stimuli.
The nation needs to go beyond all that, needs to ABOLISH the existing narrative. The only definition that matters is cultural, culture spreads via osmosis, and it is regional. Central Asians who arrived into Anatolia were assimilated, culturally (along with everyone else), people now in Anatolia now have, and have always had a unique culture which everyone shares no matter the religion (the culture does of course contain many aspects of Abrahamic religions, that cannot be denied, but you also get that as part of your cultural osmosis transmission, not by mumbling mantras). We only need to label this culture properly, without elevating micro ethnicities to official nation state level.
Kemal did talk about race a lot. Outsiders have a hard time to comprehend these bizarre theories, time to clarify... Kemal talks about race, then he turnes around and says "happy is the one who says I am a Turk", meaning that if you were a citizen, and said you were a Turk, you were one. Then what happened to race? Isn't that something you are born with, something that cannot be changed? A contradiction.
Ah but they solved that problem by claiming everyone was a Turk anyway, they just didn't know it. You see tigger intelligentsia at the time claimed theirs is the super race that provided the foundation for all others, in that sense even Kurds were Turks, they weren't aware of it . Obviously other ethnicities in Anatolia found these claims stupid, and never accepted them.
On the new attempt to redefine of state identity, Akcam seems optimistic.. too optimistic maybe? I believe he is looking forward to the demotion of the crooked Turk identity than anything else. I do understand and support this at some level, but I propose getting the definitions right from get-go, rather than move one step towards a supposedly better solution.
Akcam was one of the few courageous researchers back in the day who could openly say the so-called (!) Armenian Genocide did indeed happen.
Researcher Taner Akcam: "In [the founder Kemal's] mind when they founded the republic in 1923, the Turkish society and the Turkish state, the core was essentially that of the Turkish race. I underline the word race here, I didn't make this word up; Kemal stated in his speeches in 1931 and later, and even in his last written words before his death, there is the expression, 'If I was able to explain the superiority of the Turkish race, I will be a happy man.' The project he established in '23, even though it defined 'Turkishness' with ethnic and cultural origins, it defined a republic on racist principles.
If you pay attention, both in the 1924 constitution and the current one, the entire definition of 'Turkishness' was divided into two.. They said that 'Turkishness as a citizen' and 'Turkishness coming from Turkish descent' were different, and everyone living in Turkey was defined as a Turk, and the existence of others was not accepted."
No I'm not saying US is an empire. It's at best a franchise a la McDonalds. Its IR culture is like the culture of its rapacious business elite, and most of the time dictated by them. It spreads mindlessly, chaotically if it benefits them, which is often. It seeks only the next "market", moves without any other concern.
A nice image.. people walking around, going about their daily lives among the ruins of an empire.
"The rewards of ruin.. Societal downfalls loom large in history and popular culture but, for the 99 per cent, collapse often had its upsides"
MSN: "Hyundai and Toyota Go Head-to-Head in California: The Hydrogen Arms Race.. Hyundai Motor Company and Toyota have kicked off a direct competition in California to dominate the emerging hydrogen commercial truck market. Centered around California's bustling ports, some of the largest logistics hubs in the world, both automakers are deploying fleets of heavy-duty hydrogen trucks while ramping up refueling infrastructure. This signals an intensifying battle to capture the U.S. market for hydrogen-powered port logistics."
Chollet: "The proprietary frontier models of today are ephemeral artifacts. Essentially very expensive sandcastles. Destined to be washed away by the rising tide of open source replication (first) and algorithmic disruption (later)."
"@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
.. Let me be really clear about how horrifically dangerous #Google's plans are to restrict #Android sideloading to "verified developers" (that is, entities for which Google has full verified identity and associated information that they could hand over to authorities on demand).
This means that even though you own your Android device, you cannot install apps obtained from ANY source (except perhaps apps you build yourself that will only be permitted to run on your own device) unless Google knows pretty much everything about who created that app."
"@antijingoist@masto.hackers.town
I am banned from the Google Play Store, and soon I won't be able to distribute Android applications since Android is becoming locked down.
Lovely."
With a good story, good directing you can make anyone look good.. but you can't reach blockbuster level without star power. You at least need actors with star potential.
FF had good enough story, spectacle, but it probably needed more star power..
u.boxofficemojo("The Fantastic Four: First Steps")
Out[1]:
{'Domestic Opening': '$117,644,828',
'Domestic': '$257,251,951',
'International': '$232,800,000',
'Worldwide Total': '$490,051,951'}
I'll take Gimme Gimme by Beenie Man anytime
One Way Ticket, too much repetition.. It must have melted people's brains during the disco years.
DSM is known in the mapping community as pro Ukraine and they are frequently blamed for "coping" all the time, as in when their side has its ass handed to it, which is often, DSM refuses to update the map showing Russian gains, because they are "coping", whining about the loss and refusing to accept it. Similar expressions include "they are on copium", or are lost in "copecabana".
Over 3 years into the war, NYT finally discovered a mapper, and not even a great one. Congrats.
NYT: "Has Russia Advanced? Ukrainians Use This Online Map to Check Every Morning...The online DeepState map, based on geolocated combat footage and tips from Ukrainian Army sources, draws 900,000 views each day and acts as a counterbalance to the military’s omissions."
Informed Comment: "This week will go down in history as a time when the governing body of the Democratic Party had a chance to oppose the U.S. government’s arming of Israel. But with the first Democratic National Committee meeting in seven months getting underway on Monday, the DNC’s leadership is determined to derail a resolution calling for 'an arms embargo and suspension of military aid to Israel'"
It seems you can stay on the rocks with Israel only for so long. They are MIC's bitch, as their preferred bitch they wield a lot of power.
F24: "Australia accuses Iran of directing anti-semitic attacks, expels ambassador"
BBC: "[08/18] Israel's prime minister has accused his Australian counterpart of having "betrayed Israel" and "abandoned" Australia's Jewish community, after days of growing strain between the two countries... Australia barred a far-right member of Netanyahu's ruling coalition from entering the country on Monday"
Paper: "BH research has not been easy, as it required, among others, explicit analytic solutions of the GRT equations and their complete analytic extensions from local to global ones; see the careful survey by Heusler.. For a few years after their discovery, all of us worldwide were ready to believe that BHs might turn out to be standard building blocks of the Universe. But it was equally clear to us, individually as well as in international discussion groups, for several years, that their detection in the sky would be far from easy. Because even their radiation cannot escape from them; they cannot emit signals, or blow winds, or (even) eject jets; they can only swallow, not spit, and only absorb, not emit. Their detections would have to be rather indirect, by carefully watching their surroundings at the right moments, at low signal strengths, because of escaping from near the bottom of a deep potential well. As concerns jets from BHs, supportive claims have been made in recent years, without proof and without reference to a proof, based only on imagination and speculation. Established jet engines are among the most sophisticated machines of the inorganic Universe; they involve strong, heavy rotating magnets and stable de Laval nozzles. For years, our best candidate for BH detection has been Cyg X-1, an X-ray binary blowing jets intermittently containing a bright primary star and an unseen, heavy companion: quite likely, the unseen companion is a neutron star surrounded by a massive accretion disk. None of the rich classes of stellar-mass BH candidates has ultimately turned out to contain a BH; our search had been in vain"
Really? Are we sure it was a black hole? Could it not be a neutron star?
"A Distant Star Explodes While Swallowing Its Black Hole Companion"
You can find anything on the Internet
He botched the first drum fill but it's okay.. it's funny
😂 😂 😂
That's pretty good #Cover #TooYoung
Is RU-UA conflict going to the way of Cyprus? Cyprus posed a threat to Anatolia whose ethnic bretren were also being massacred in the island, plus the region was too close to the mainland (as UA is to Russia and Taiwan is to China), so Anatolia invaded in 1974, took the northern part. The seizure of land was never accepted. The Republic declared in the area was never recognized by anyone except a few close, friendly nations. There were sanctions on TR which were later lifted. TR and the rest of the world now enjoy a business-as-usual relationship, the Cyprus conflict is essentially frozen, remains unsolved. The same fate could await newly RU invaded regions in Ukraine.
The difference is your grandpa was fighting on the same side as your cousin Russians, that's why you won. Now you are against them, that's why you are losing.
NYT: "Away from the cameras, [Zelensky] told Mr. Trump that his grandfather had fought in World War II to free the cities of the Donbas from the Nazis. He could not just give it up."
#Ukraine - 08/13 - 08/24