alexinka ✡︎🇺🇦✡︎

- The body horror of Circe transforming the men into pigs was beautifully disgusting

- I loved how the existence of the gods was never fully confirmed or denied. Were the storms Poseidon’s wrath or just bad weather? Was Athena appearing to Odysseus with the face of the woman he let die or was he hallucinating out of guilt? Magic clearly existed, because we had a cyclops and a witch and shades of the Underworld, but there’s magic and then there’s divinity. Is everything they say about the gods true or are they just an excuse?

- The removal of the Nobody scene was necessary actually. In the poem, Odysseus gives Polyphemus his real name in a moment of hubris and this causes all the problems later on because now Poseidon knows the name of the man that disrespected him. In the film, the problems are caused by the Greeks breaking Xenia by invading Troy. Keeping the Nobody scene would have detracted from the root cause of all the problems.

- I could write an entire essay about how cleverly Nolan uses events from the Odyssey to make a point about today’s society:

The Trojan War was about trade routes and Helen was just an excuse — just as wars today are waged for oil and resources, and governments give excuses to their citizens to make it seem better.

“The people from the sea” are feared as an invasion of bogeymen threatening innocents, but they’re actually just desperate men trying to find safety.

The Greeks pillage an island and ask “why didn’t you just give us what we wanted? We’re the good guys!” while the village burns behind them, not realising that to the villagers, Greeks and Trojans are all the same.

- Whoever let Anne Hathaway freeze her forehead should be fed to Polyphemus

• Dress.

Date: 1955

Designer/Maker: Galitzine

Place of origin: Italy

I think the current situation in Area C (where Israel has full civil and security control) has to change. It is morally wrong that Arabs who are not Israeli citizens in Area C have no part in a government which decides so much about their lives.

Area C, though, has only 5% of Arabs in the West Bank.

About 55% of West Bank Arabs are in Area A (with PA civil and security control) and another ~40% are in Area B (with PA civil control and Israeli security control).

The PA was offered ~94% of the West Bank and ~6% of Israel proper in exchange for peace. The PA walked away from that sort of offer twice.

I think Israel's security forces (controlled by Itamar Ben-Gvir) are failing to treat Jewish violent terrorists in the West Bank the way all terrorists should be treated. Ben-Gvir helps legitimize Palestinian violence in the eyes of the international community, and I'd be grateful if some Israelis would teach me the appropriate Hebrew vocabulary for cursing him.

I think Israel doesn't really have a path available to leave the West Bank. Think about it. Imagine Israel decides to pull out of the West Bank unilaterally, like they did in Gaza in 2005. What would happen? There'd be an immediate security vacuum, which would generate an armed contest for control. The PA wouldn't win all those contests, so there'd be at least a burst of violence between West Bank Arab factions. Then the land would be used, as Gaza was as a staging ground from which to launch attacks on Israel.

Even if the PA decided for the first time that they'd be willing to offer security guarantees, they would be utterly incapable of delivering on them - because they're corrupt, incompetent, and incapable.

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A way out would start with leaders who want peace, have a stake in peace, and who want a state more than they want to destroy Israel.

Such leadership would gain enormous amounts of international support (political and material) to build up the infrastructure to faciliate actual governance of the West Bank, making it possible for them to offer meaningful security gaurantees.

More than two-thirds of UN members are not liberal democracies. Many are authoritarian states, single-party systems, or governments with deep corruption. Those governments vote to protect their own power and to shield allies from scrutiny.

Here's an example. There are two "observer states," which means they get to be part of everything except voting.

Those two observer states are the Vatican and Palestine.

BUT WAIT:

Countries that are administered by other countries can't have seats at all (unless they're Palestine, I guess). So China gets to abuse the shit out of Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the voices of both those countries are silenced. Do you have any idea how many countries are administered by other countries? Quite a few. Bermuda, Puerto Rico, the Faroe Islands, Guam, Gibraltar...and those are only the names you probably know.

Dress

c. 1836

England