Fal's recent activity

  1. Comment on Woman who dated US Senate candidate Graham Platner says he sexually assaulted her in ~society

    Fal
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    Graham Platner suspends Maine Senate campaign after sexual assault allegation

    Graham Platner suspends Maine Senate campaign after sexual assault allegation

    Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner announced Wednesday he is suspending his campaign after a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her when they were dating five years ago, ending a Senate run punctuated by personal controversies.

    Platner announced his decision in an 11-minute social media video. He vehemently denied the sexual assault allegations, calling them "false" and "not real," but said the pressure from state-level and national Democrats had made it impossible for his campaign to continue. He blamed the "political establishment" for the situation.

    "This is incredibly difficult, because I know that some will think it's an admission of guilt, and it most certainly is not," he said. "We're not doing it because of the allegations, we're doing it because of the structures that are being taken away from us by those in power."

    6 votes

  2. Comment on Marine Le Pen to run for French presidency despite embezzlement conviction in ~society

    Fal
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    Marine Le Pen finished a whirlwind day of legal drama by launching her fourth bid for the French presidency and a high-stakes appeal of her latest embezzlement conviction.

    The longtime face of the French far right arrived at court on Tuesday banned from running for public office after being found guilty of misusing European Parliament funds last year, and the expectation was that the decision would not go her way. But while the three-judge panel who heard Le Pen’s appeal upheld her conviction, it revised the lower court’s election ban in a manner that would allow her to run in the 2027 presidential race — the first round of which takes place April 18.

    However, the appeals court also sentenced Le Pen to three years in prison, two of them suspended and one to be served under house arrest. As recently as last week, the far-right leader had said she would not run for president if wearing an ankle monitor and would cede the role to her party’s president, Jordan Bardella.

    Instead of accepting the court’s ruling and hoping she could get her sentence knocked down to six months for good behavior, the 57-year-old took a major gamble: She announced on prime-time television that she would once again appeal, this time to France’s highest court.

    1 vote

  5. Comment on Vatican declares Society of St. Pius X in schism, excommunicates bishops in ~humanities

    Fal
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    I'll defer entirely to @DefinitelyNotAFae's explanation as I'm not nor have ever been Catholic, but I'm pretty sure missals are translated into the common language. I think it is kind of like the...

    I'll defer entirely to @DefinitelyNotAFae's explanation as I'm not nor have ever been Catholic, but I'm pretty sure missals are translated into the common language. I think it is kind of like the libretto booklets sold at operas to translate the script into the local language (although I think screens with subtitles are more common in opera nowadays).

    2 votes

  6. Comment on Vatican declares Society of St. Pius X in schism, excommunicates bishops in ~humanities

    Fal
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    I mention this in my other comment, but as I understand it new Catholics have to undergo instruction in understanding the rites, which is taught in common language. Also I'm pretty sure that...

    I mention this in my other comment, but as I understand it new Catholics have to undergo instruction in understanding the rites, which is taught in common language. Also I'm pretty sure that Catholic priests have to have a M. Div degree, and somewhere in the ~8 years of schooling they're required to learn Latin, so I think we can safely assume that the priests speaking do actually understand Latin.

    9 votes

  7. Comment on Vatican declares Society of St. Pius X in schism, excommunicates bishops in ~humanities

    Fal
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    Dead languages are still understood and intelligible, they just don’t have native speakers. People understand Latin

    Dead languages are still understood and intelligible, they just don’t have native speakers. People understand Latin

    27 votes

  8. Comment on Vatican declares Society of St. Pius X in schism, excommunicates bishops in ~humanities

    Fal
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I mean that's just an argument you can make about religiosity as a whole, which isn't a particularly productive line of discussion. My point isn't to make a claim whether this practice is good or...
    • Exemplary

    Equally silly in all cases. Common doesn’t mean good.

    I mean that's just an argument you can make about religiosity as a whole, which isn't a particularly productive line of discussion. My point isn't to make a claim whether this practice is good or bad, but the fact that the same phenomenon shows up independently across so many unrelated traditions suggests that a reductive explanation like "liturgical languages only exist to trick people and maintain control" doesn't tell nearly the whole story. Its not like the Buddhist monks are winning huge levels of societal control when someone alone in their house chants a sutra in a dead language.

    As @stu2b50 points out, these are rituals, not university lectures. Even if a longtime Catholic churchgoer can't hold conversation in Latin, they know what words and phrases mean, so clearly some kind of meaning is being transferred. Besides, learning Catholic doctrine isn't necessarily going to happen during mass anyways, that's what catechesis is for. Joining the Catholic Church as an adult through the OCIA involves months of common-language instruction in scripture and doctrine specifically so people understand what they're doing before/while they participate in Latin rites. This isn't even Catholic-exclusive, Islamic madrasas are taught in the common language, as are explanations of Buddhist sutras, and so on.

    If the speaker isn’t using a language the listener understands, there’s no meaning being transferred. The reason for Latin mass as far as I can tell is to insulate people from what their religion is actually about and maintain vibe based group identity. You can’t have doctrinal schism if nobody knows what the doctrine is.

    I fully get where you're coming from, there's definitely historical cases of organized religion obfuscating theological meaning from the masses (there's a reason the Church resisted vernacular Bibles for so long). But like... this just isn't historically true? Not only has there been a number of schisms from the Latin mass, we're literally commenting on a post about a Latin-Mass-exclusive group being excommunicated over a doctrinal dispute. SSPX has celebrated "unintelligible noises" for 50+ years and somehow still managed to develop such a specific, deeply-held doctrinal position that Rome just declared them in schism over it. If Latin liturgy successfully prevented people from knowing what the doctrine was, this article wouldn't exist.

    41 votes

  9. Comment on Vatican declares Society of St. Pius X in schism, excommunicates bishops in ~humanities

    Fal
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I mean the use of a liturgical language that practitioners aren't fully or even partially fluent in is a pretty common practice. Islamic prayer is done in Arabic, even in regions where Arabic...
    • Exemplary

    I mean the use of a liturgical language that practitioners aren't fully or even partially fluent in is a pretty common practice. Islamic prayer is done in Arabic, even in regions where Arabic isn't spoken (Indonesia, Bosnia, Nigeria, etc.). Buddhist sutras are in Pali, which like Latin only exists as a liturgical language. We can go on: Jewish prayers in Aramaic, Sikhs in Gurmukhi, Hindu in Sanskrit, etc.

    The reason for this varies across all these religions but it often has to do with trying to adhere as closely as possible to the original theological meanings, and by using a liturgical or "dead" language the holy meanings won't change over the centuries due to linguistic drift. For global religions like Catholicism and Islam, this also has the benefit of allowing believers in very different parts of the world to pray together identically, without the inherent shifts in meaning that come with translation.

    Not to say that there aren't earthly reasons like reinforcing the authority of the priestly class or reinforcing communal identities against stuff like the Protestant reformation, but the theological reasoning for maintaining these liturgical languages is pretty interesting. Since I'm agnostic I won't pretend to fully understand it, but its common enough across many religions and so I wouldn't dismiss the practice as absurd out of hand.

    57 votes

  10. Comment on Vatican declares Society of St. Pius X in schism, excommunicates bishops in ~humanities

    Fal
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    The Vatican responded aggressively Thursday to a traditionalist group that consecrated bishops without the pope’s consent, declaring the Society of St. Pius X had formally broken with the Catholic Church. It excommunicated its bishops and priests, and warned its faithful that they too face the harshest sanctions in the church.

    By declaring a schism and extending excommunications to potentially thousands of Catholics, the Vatican’s doctrine office went above and beyond the minimum sanctions foreseen by the church’s canon law to respond to the consecrations Wednesday of four new bishops.

    The society, known by its acronym SSPX, celebrates the ancient Latin Mass and opposes the modernizing reforms of the Catholic Church, which it considers to be rife with heresies and errors. While a fringe movement on the Catholic right, the SSPX has been a thorn in the Vatican’s side for five decades because it claims to be even more Catholic than the Holy See.

    24 votes

  12. Comment on Cargobike recommendations and advice in ~hobbies

    Fal
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    cargo bike? uhhhhh no car go beep beep you feeling alright there man?

    cargo bike?

    uhhhhh no car go beep beep

    you feeling alright there man?

  13. Comment on Tildes Game Giveaway: June 2026 in ~games

    Fal
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    Could I get the Ghostrunner 2 copy? I loved the first one. Thanks!

    Could I get the Ghostrunner 2 copy? I loved the first one. Thanks!

  14. Comment on Graduated again, not sitting in a field this time, AMA in ~talk

    Fal
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    I'm half Chinese so I already had tones and grammar down from talking with family, but I took 2 years of Mandarin courses in college since my vocab was pretty limited.

    I'm half Chinese so I already had tones and grammar down from talking with family, but I took 2 years of Mandarin courses in college since my vocab was pretty limited.

  15. Comment on Graduated again, not sitting in a field this time, AMA in ~talk

    Fal
    Link Parent
    I'm going to be applying for PhD programs this fall, focusing on either international relations, comparative politics, or likely some combination of the two. Most of my existing research has been...

    I'm going to be applying for PhD programs this fall, focusing on either international relations, comparative politics, or likely some combination of the two. Most of my existing research has been on US-China competition, especially in Southeast Asia, and the effects of public diplomacy, and I'd like to continue that research.

    Until then though, I'm trying to find some research work I can do while applying and waiting to see if I get in anywhere (I'm a bit doubtful, but fingers crossed). If any of you are professors or work at a thinktank and looking for research assistants/analysts hit me up :p

    2 votes

  16. Comment on Graduated again, not sitting in a field this time, AMA in ~talk

    Fal
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    Thank you! I’m a native English speaker, and I’m conversational in Mandarin. I also took French in high school but would be hard pressed to recall any of it

    Thank you! I’m a native English speaker, and I’m conversational in Mandarin. I also took French in high school but would be hard pressed to recall any of it

    2 votes

  18. Comment on Graduated again, not sitting in a field this time, AMA in ~talk

    Fal
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    Cheating a bit since this was an undergrad class, but my introductory macroeconomics class was one of the worst organized and taught classes I’ve taken, despite not being particularly difficult....

    Cheating a bit since this was an undergrad class, but my introductory macroeconomics class was one of the worst organized and taught classes I’ve taken, despite not being particularly difficult. As far as graduate classes, I’d have to say international law for similar organizational reasons, even though it was cool in concept and the teacher was really passionate

    1 vote

  19. Comment on Graduated again, not sitting in a field this time, AMA in ~talk

    Fal
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    Thank you! Thankfully all standing and/or sitting was done inside this year

    Thank you! Thankfully all standing and/or sitting was done inside this year

    4 votes

  20. Comment on Graduated again, not sitting in a field this time, AMA in ~talk

    Fal
    Link Parent
    Hi chocobean, nice to see you here! I went to school in San Diego, which has a huge variety of bird species. I had a really cool experience where a red shouldered hawk landed on the fence on the...

    Hi chocobean, nice to see you here!

    I went to school in San Diego, which has a huge variety of bird species. I had a really cool experience where a red shouldered hawk landed on the fence on the other side of the backyard from me and stared at me for a while. I unfortunately wasn’t able to get a pic, but it was duly logged in my Merlin Bird ID bird tracker

    5 votes