Fal's recent activity

  1. Comment on Hong Kong police raid independent bookstores and arrest five people in ~society

    Fal
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    Hong Kong’s national security police on Wednesday raided two bookstores, seized boxes of books and arrested five people on suspicion of sedition.

    The police accused two men and three women of displaying items “with seditious intention” and selling publications with “seditious content” that included “inciting hatred” against the Hong Kong government, its judiciary and the police, according to a government statement.

    It was the third time in recent months that the police have arrested proprietors of independent bookstores, as part of a broader crackdown in the city that has increasingly focused on literature. The authorities are using a 2024 national security law to squash any dissent. The offense of “seditious intention” is punishable by up to seven years in prison.

    7 votes

  3. Comment on Japan relaxes royal succession rules - but ban on female emperors remains in ~society

    Fal
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    The Japanese parliament has approved a bill to relax imperial succession rules, amid concerns over the dwindling size of the imperial family.

    The bill, passed by the upper house on Friday, allows the imperial family to adopt distant male relatives over the age of 15 and lets women keep their royal status after marrying outside the family.

    But it does not change the law barring women from ascending the throne despite wide public support for a female emperor, meaning Princess Aiko, the only child of the current emperor, is still not eligible to succeed the throne.

    5 votes

  5. Comment on MapTap: Daily challenges to test your geographical knowledge in ~games

    Fal
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    www.maptap.gg July 15 100🎯 99🎯 100🎯 95🏅 100🎯 Final score: 984 Fun game! That last city I feel was definitely way easier than the fourth one though

    www.maptap.gg July 15
    100🎯 99🎯 100🎯 95🏅 100🎯
    Final score: 984

    Fun game! That last city I feel was definitely way easier than the fourth one though

    2 votes

  6. Comment on What did banning Airbnbs in NYC accomplish? in ~finance

    Fal
    Link Parent
    I don't doubt that prices have gone up generally but I wouldn't be surprised that much of that $280 price tag is attributable to the upcoming World Cup final hosted near NYC

    I don't doubt that prices have gone up generally but I wouldn't be surprised that much of that $280 price tag is attributable to the upcoming World Cup final hosted near NYC

    4 votes

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

    Fal
    Link
    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."

    7 votes

  9. 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

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

    Fal
    Link Parent
    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

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

    Fal
    Link Parent
    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

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

    Fal
    Link Parent
    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

  15. 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

  16. 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

  17. 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

  19. 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?

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

    Fal
    Link Parent
    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!