illiteracy is a genuine problem
— BeijingPalmer (@beijingpalmer.bsky.social) February 14, 2025 at 2:01 PM
I mean this is the guy who named his surveillance and intelligence company after the lying orb that drives its owner mad
— Brendan O’Kane (@bokane.org) February 14, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Maybe Thiel just wants the rest of us to be as miserable as he seems to be?
Type of Guy (actual, observed): “I don’t really like books, or sports, or films, or paintings, or music, or dance, or sports, or food, or wine, or pets, or people. I want to live forever.”
— Eric Rauchway (@rauchway.bsky.social) February 15, 2025 at 12:30 PM
On The Road – Albatrossity – Winter birds 3
Baud
Hope you’re feeling better, AL.
Baud
Can an orc become an elf?
YY_Sima Qian
On a light note, someone drew parallels between Elon Musk’s women & famous/infamous imperial concubines in Chinese history (or rather, Chinese period dramas on PRC/ROC TV):
JoyceH
I think I figured out RFKjr’s motivation for his policies. The falconry is the clue – he wants to be a medieval aristocrat. And a medieval aristocracy needs a medieval peasantry. A huge underclass without rights, poor, insecure, illiterate and diseased. We’re getting there. Project 2025 is working on poor, Dobbs among others handles the insecure, Fox and Qanon make great strides toward illiterate, and RFK himself is in charge of diseased. He’s making great strides already – the Texas measles outbreak has spread to Oklahoma, and there a cluster of tuberculosis is Kansas.
YY_Sima Qian
More seriously, there is something unseemly about the way Sen. Mark Warner yapping it up w/ Mike Gallagher (former Repub. chair of the House Select Committee on the CCP, now an executive at Palantir) at the MSC, sharing that the real story behind the sudden bi-partisan Congressional consensus to divest or ban TikTok was because Israel was losing the messaging battle badly on the platform, & all of the serious people in DC was attributing the skepticism toward Israel among the younger generations to “CCP” algorithms; at the same time JD Vance & Hegseth were demolishing US standing & credibility:
If I am a resident of Virginia, I would still vote for Mark Warner over any Repub. in a general election (because the reactionaries are just that bad), but it would take a very poor alternative for me to vote for him in the primary.
ColoradoGuy
@JoyceH: Yes, they really are medievalists. All of them. Like Russians, who are basically their soulmates, they want to repeal not just the 20th Century, but the entire Enlightenment. As if it never happened.
And think about their jihad against “woke” and DEI. Those are Enlightenment values, and boy, do they hate that.
That’s why the richest man in the world has founded no libraries, no University endowments, and no campaigns for public health. Instead, he is destroying them as fast as he can.
Baud
Via Reddit
lowtechcyclist
Which raises the question, why?? So he can find out whether it’s possible to be bored to death??
Princess
I just want to say: I have taught an actual university- level class on Tolkien and Thiel knows nothing. Elves and humans are existentially different for Tolkien and the fact that humans die is key. It’s tied up with his Catholicism, which is never discussed overtly but permeates the worlds he devises. There is only one world for Tolkien and it is the same as our world and is governed by the same Christian rules, so only humans can be saved for Tolkien and they can be saved because they die.
Princess
@Baud: orcs were elves. I don’t think they can go back though.
sentient ai from the future
These fucking shitbags:
https://toot.cafe/@baldur/114018663255850066
“we’re salty we can’t say the n-word without being called racist assholes, but maybe if we write computer programs to do it for us…..”
MagdaInBlack
Shall we toss Curtis Yarvin into this sordid mix of freaks. Something else to chew on, maybe mentioned before.
https://bylinetimes.com/2025/02/07/silicon-valley-whistleblowers-warn-elon-musk-hijacking-republicans-to-control-entire-us-government/
waspuppet
@lowtechcyclist: It’s BECAUSE they have no real talent or appreciation for anything real. They can’t think of anything else to do. Living forever would be the ultimate Number Go Up.
Anonymous At Work
@Princess: Weren’t elves literal bits of divinity wrapped in mortal shells who didn’t so much age as become forced to return to Heaven?
Baud
p.a.
Got wordle on the first play today! And yes, I realize this is totally luck and not an indication of linguistic talent. THIS I managed to do, but Powerball… nuthin’.
I wonder what the odds are. 5 letter English words, how many are common-usage (successful or not, I’ve never seen a word I’m not familiar with in the game), 26 letters, many combinations not possible in English…
Waaayyyy beyond my 45 year-ago just-got-through-calculus-1 capability.
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: Of course, mustn’t ruffle the elno feathers.
YY_Sima Qian
@Princess: The Elves envied Men for that reason, right? Or at least Elves looked on Men w/ wonder because Men are not ultimately bound to this particular creation, & Illuvatar’s purpose for Men is a mystery to Elves.
BTW, another “defense-tech” unicorn Thiel invested in is called Anduril.
Baud
He did that.
p.a.
Google:
Since there are 2,315 possible target words in Wordle, the probability that you will guess the target in exactly one try is 1/2315 = 0.000432. In fact, it doesn’t matter which of the 2,315 words in the dictionary you choose to use as your initial guess since the probability of success is always 1/2315.
Not exactly powerball odds 😂😉 I would have thought a bigger word pool.
“The Free Dictionary lists more than 158,000 words with five letters. The the Official Scrabble Dictionary (which allows some pretty obscure five-letter words), puts the number at about 9,000.”
YY_Sima Qian
@Baud: Haha! The creatives really should go nuts mocking Trump & MAGA in this environment.
Baud
@p.a.:
1/2314. I doubt they have the courage to do penis.
VeniceRiley
Raise the Red Lantern was a fantastic movie; but no sane non-desperate woman would volunteer to live in it.
different-church-lady
@MagdaInBlack: Musk watched Trump do it to Republicans and said, “Hey, that looks like a piece of cake!”
tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat)
TPM says that Elmo and his merry minions are planning to put their grubby fingers on our tax returns and all the data with it. Have we gone over the cliff yet because it sure feels that way?
Suzanne
@MagdaInBlack: Curtis Yarvin is the ringleader of this circus of dangerous freaks, possibly the most dangerous. Yarvin, Thiel, Vance…. they would have us living in a “postliberal Catholic neomonarchy”.
And if you’re wondering why someone would want to live forever…. remember that will-to-power is the most potent force over these people. They want to rule over us.
Baud
@tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat):
The NSA metadata scandal was another fake scandal against a Democrat. Not a peep out of those people now.
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: Yes, he’s been on my freak radar for awhile.
Suzanne
@p.a.: So my go-to Wordle first word was the word once. Man, what a feeling.
As it happens, my go-to first word is only one letter away from today’s word. So I got it in 2. Almost as good.
Dave
@tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat): We pretty much have we just are at the point where the coyote has realized he’s falling but we still have a bit of time before we hit ground.
And then the boulder lands on us all.
Suzanne
@MagdaInBlack: I maintain that Vance is even scarier than FFOTUS, because these lunatics are pulling his strings.
Apparently Vance — likely due to the events of his early life — has BIG DADDY ISSUES. He’s super-thirsty for the approval of male authority figures.
TBone
@Baud: you are now vying for space on my still blank protest sign!
I am chuffed that my tiny, rural college town is participating today!
https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/if-we-dont-take-matters-into-our
Democracy doesn’t defend itself!
TBone
Mood music for retaking and reclaiming our territory
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QMK80XsOg3k
Rugosa
Thiel’s remark reminds me of the scene in A Fish Called Wanda when Otto claims that apes do read philosophy and Jamie Lee Curtis says “They read it, but they don’t understand it.”
lowtechcyclist
@p.a.:
Google’s wrong on this one, because (so far) the unstated policy has been to not repeat any solutions. So since 1,340 words have already been Wordle solutions, the chance that your favorite starting word will be the solution tomorrow is either slightly better than 0.1% if it hasn’t been used yet, or zero if it has.
My starting word is SLANT, which hasn’t been used yet, but I keep hoping. My followup word when SLANT doesn’t return any greens or yellows is CHORE, which gave me the world’s easiest 2 just a couple weeks ago.
TBone
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
TBone
@Rugosa: points for making me laugh this early
prostratedragon
@lowtechcyclist:
Oh, we just don’t see as many dimensions of the world as he does. His Bozeman’s simplex causes him to prefer radical simplicity.
VeniceRiley
I don’t WORDLE anymore because I refuse to click any NYTimes link.
TBone
@Baud: limp dicks
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: sordid mix is not my favorite chaw, but I’m game today! Listened to my new anthem several times yesterday along with my entire neighborhood.
TBone
@prostratedragon: bwahahaha!
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: I am in agreement on Vance being more dangerous. They just have trump out front while they do their disassembly. trump doesn’t care about any of this.
Vance is a bottomless pit of daddy-need.
The Thin Black Duke
It’s bizarre to realize that despite his obscene amount of wealth, it’s likely everyone here is probably happier than Peter Thiel.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: that boy just ain’t right and his eyeliner is done wrong too.
TBone
@The Thin Black Duke: HA!
MagdaInBlack
@Dave: This is where my head has been for several days and it is not a pleasant address.
The Thin Black Duke
@TBone: Vance is King Joffrey. May he meet a similar fate.
tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat)
@Baud: This hyper-partisanship is destroying us. How do you deprogram half the country when they think it’s the other half that has been brainwashed?
@Dave: Yes, well, I’m hoping there are a few road runners amongst us. Beep beep!
The Thin Black Duke
@tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat): As usual, the biggest factor in persuading the detached voters in the United States to do The Right Thing politically is to appeal not to their compassion but their selfishness. President Elon’s bullshit-in-a-china-shop rampage in the government is guaranteed to impact them personally.
TBone
Gonna need to find and dig my old soapbox out of storage cuz hubby can’t wear me on his shoulders anymore.
It’s actually a 1929 orange crate with a picture of a fierce grizzly pawing an orange. The BEAR! label picture is actually dated.
TBone
@The Thin Black Duke: amen!
AM in NC
I am thinking about my double-sided sign for this afternoon. Could use some jackal input. I’m thinking:
Just a Mom Fighting Republican Fascism
USA vs GOP: Which side are YOU on?
I debated focusing on King Musk, but in my state it’s the GOP that is the issue, long before King Musk came along.
Any other pithier/more devastating message suggestions would be appreciated.
VeniceRiley
@The Thin Black Duke: “Tell Ceresei …” but, it’s too big an ask for Dame Diana Rigg at her age.
Suzanne
@MagdaInBlack: Another aspect of their insanity that doesn’t get a great deal of media attention: their idea of the “American nation” is only about descendants of the longtime-white people who settled in one place and stayed there.
All that blah-blah-blah about the cemetery plot in eastern Kentucky where seven generations of his family are buried…. it’s trying to elevate the status of Scots-Irish people. (Who are, as we know, largely living in the fentanyl/meth belt.)
They’re trying to narrow whiteness. Kick out the potato-famine Irish, the Italians, the Eastern Europeans. Kick out those who didn’t do the “rootedness” thing…. Who climbed the social ladder by chasing work across the country, or by going to college and living in cities.
TBone
@AM in NC: I stole idea from Freeway Blogger yesterday:
G.O.P. in big letters, but the “O” is replaced by the russki Hammer & Sickle symbol.
On the back:
LIARS, THIEVES & TRAITORS
Also suggest
Ohio Mom
@p.a.: That happened to me once. My starting word is least.
It was before the NYT bought Wordle so it is not included on my stats page. Not the biggest or worst thing that ever happened to me.
tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat)
@The Thin Black Duke: I think we have gone so far that the only way to wake people up is if stuff breaks. The Republicans aren’t willing to put the breaks on, so off the cliff we go, which sucks for so many who deserve more from the promise of America.
TBone
I dunno if people will get it, my favorite protest slogan so far, maybe too cryptic for dolts
Ohio Mom
@Baud: This sounds like the beginning of a game for a long car ride, bainstorning five letter words deemed not appropriate for Wordle answers. I’m thinking vulva is right up there with penis.
trnc
Wordle comment removed for general stupidity on my part.
Professor Bigfoot
@VeniceRiley: First thing that came to mind. “Tell them it was us.”
TBone
@TBone:
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: that might go on my sign today!
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: “Whiteness is infinitely malleable and can be revoked at any time.”
Tony Jay
@Anonymous At Work:
That’s not quite right. The Istari wizards like Gandalf and Saruman were basically angels confined and limited to aged but ageless human forms, sent to advise and inspire without risking the world-shattering cataclysms that tended to occur when the Ainur went head to head in Arda.
The Elves aren’t divine, they’re just attracted to it. At their most basic they’re Tolkien’s interpretation of what Man was pre-Fall; ageless, spiritually attuned to the vibes of Creation, physically flawless and just better in every way than post-Fall Man. There’s also a layer of Utopian Catholicism about them. They are immortal souls who can, if they only harken to the guidance of the Divine, spend eternity in Paradise gazing on the reflected face of ‘God’. Plus, they’re monogamous, don’t believe in divorce, don’t have affairs, only seem to have children when they want them, and they know that Heaven loves them, because Heaven actually told them so.
Thiel doesn’t just misunderstand everything about Tolkien’s cosmology, he genuinely seems to think that Numenor was on to something with the obsession with not dying, but just went about it the wrong way. Why worship Morgoth or invade Valinor when you can just experiment on captured Elves to steal their immortality? Hell, I’d bet good money he’s got a secret RnD project on the go digging around in human DNA looking for some kind of mystery gene that he just knows is left over from our Antediluvian past when everyone lived to 10,000 and had holiday homes in Pellucidar.
In short, he’s a fucking nutter. But because he’s a billionaire, he’s a fucking nutter whose whacked-out bullshittery has every chance of becoming Government policy all around the world.
Right. Back to lurking.
TBone
Marching music, I can’t seem to get enough of these lyrics
“I’ma staple my top lip to a megaphone…”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k-bpuCbU6MY
trnc
@p.a.:
Nice! That happened to me a few months ago. I have 1 main word that I try and a couple of alternatives, and I got it with one of the alts. It was cool, but strangely a little less satisfying than getting it on the second word.
AM in NC
@TBone: Oooooooooh – I am going to put the Hammer and Sickle inside the O in GOP in every iteration I do from now on – Thank you!!!
TBone
@AM in NC: 💙🤘
TBone
TBone
So many ideas, so little time to choose. I have to start pencil sketch soon to be sure my sharpie graphics look good.
Must choose!
TBone
I think its gonna be
WHERE DO I START ?!?
on the pink side, and
LIARS, THIEVES & TRAITORS
on the orange side. Still trying to choose though!
TELL THEM IT WAS US is in the running!
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: thank you for this rabble rouser! 🎶
https://youtu.be/mWLtrq92nxk?si=CGrIt32Fsb5g3RnL
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: This is nothing new. Senator Warner has already said as much about TikTok ban. Kay brought that up weeks ago when we were discussing the ban several weeks ago. I’d heard it too but hadn’t identified Warner as the source. Kay, who pays close attention to these matters, had.
Klippenstein might know this and is pitching it as breaking news for effect. I’ve seen him do that before.
TBone
Noah’s tube feeding at 10:30 makes today’s schedule a tight squeeze, good thing I’m used to time crunches from law office lawyers who procrastinated. I’d always think of yelling this but never did:
“YOUR PROCRASTINATION DOES NOT CONSTITUTE MY EMERGENCY.”
Geminid
@Geminid: Actually, there were a lot of sources for the motivation behind the TikTok ban. I ran into this story plenty while following other Gaza War-related news.
Elizabelle
@Tony Jay: Hello you. Don’t lurk too much. Many people here miss you.
OK, even me. Although not for the 3,000 word entries. Short and clever/funny is my favorite.
EarthWindFire
@VeniceRiley: Here’s another place to Wordle if you want to: https://wordplay.com/new
tobie
@Suzanne: “Rootless cosmopolitans” have long been a target for fascists. They’re the opposite of the family wedded to the land in Blut-und-Boden ideology. Vance’s attacks on “childless cat ladies” always struck me as a variation on the decadent cosmopolitan theme.
TBone
Another sign for today
TBone
This broken sickle in the Hammer and Sickle symbol ties it in with the farmers’ woes
(Crap. Broken link doesn’t work. But it’s a cool graphic I’ma copy.)
Also adding a “Q” today
CliosFanBoy
@Elizabelle:
I rather enjoy the long-form rants, but tastes vary. The shorter, sharper ones are fun, too!
CliosFanBoy
@Tony Jay:
So, when Elves die in battle, where do their souls go?? Straight to ‘Heaven”, guaranteed?
Wyliecoat
@VeniceRiley: here is an alternative. https://solitaired.com/wordhurdle-5-letter
Tony Jay
@CliosFanBoy:
Sort of. They go off to the Halls of Mandos, the abode of the Valar (Archangel) who acts more or less like Anubis, judging the souls of dead Elves and deciding if and when they get resurrection. Apparently ‘life’ there is pretty much like normal Elven life – lots of walking around and thoughtful contemplation of their navels with the odd sing-song, only they’re fully spirits and not re-embodied. Their friends and relatives can even visit them for a chat if they so wish.
If they do choose/become judged worthy of Resurrection, they get a new body identical to their old one and are either reborn as their own descendent or just appear fully formed back with the living. I’m a bit fuzzy on the mechanics of that, and I’m not sure if Tolkien himself ever decided whether Elven resurrection was solely confined to coming back to life in Valinor (The Undying Lands) or whether Elves could be reborn back in Middle-Earth. The Valar certainly didn’t – want – the Elves to hang around the mortal lands, but there’s the example of Glorfindel (died fighting a Balrog in the First Age, reborn in the Second Age to become one of Elrond’s Rivendell crew) and Elrond himself was pretty disconsolate that his wife Celebrian never returned from her own willed death.
TL:DR – It sort of depends, and I’m not sure even Tolkien came up with a cast iron answer.
Tony Jay
@Elizabelle:
I’ll be back. Just taking a hiatus from These Things That Are Happening to do some writing.
And sorry in advance if some of that writing turns out to be a 10,000 word mega-rant about Britain’s joke of a political sphere. It’s a’brewing.
CliosFanBoy
@Tony Jay:
Thanks. I wondered what happened to all the elves that died at Helm’s Deep.
Elizabelle
@Tony Jay: I know. I cannot bear to follow the news, and may have to take a break myself.
Tony Jay
@CliosFanBoy:
Those guys? They were fine. They all got to come back as extras in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.
Alright, to be strictly canonical, the only Elf to fight at the Battle of Helm’s Deep in Tolkien’s book was Legolas, the arrival of a legion of High Elf warriors was a rewrite for the films and strictly Jacksonian fanboi fapping, which I’ll forgive because it did look all kinds of awesome and allowed him to show what his First Age Elves would have looked like.
That said, in the book Legolas himself did end up taking ship for Valinor later on so he could spend eternity in Heaven, talking with him his heterosexual life-partner Gimli the Dwarf, which was a much bigger rewriting of Tolkien’s own rules than anyone else has attempted since. Word of God indeed.
TONYG
@lowtechcyclist: reminded of the old David Bowie song about the man who lives forever and wishes he could die
@lowtechcyclist:
@lowtechcyclist:
CliosFanBoy
@Tony Jay:
Thank you. And that raises another question. Are there any dwarves left other than Gimli?
CliosFanBoy
Immorality sucks. https://www.sheldoncomics.com/comic/immortality/
Miss Bianca
@Baud: I thought Orcs were originally “fallen” Elves, like devils are supposed to be fallen angels. But I could be misremembering.
Miss Bianca
@Tony Jay: You’re back! I have missed you.
WTFGhost
I’m *not* a Tolkien fan – remember: fan comes from “fanatic” – not “fanatic” doesn’t mean you don’t think he’s a *fine* writer, who created joy for millions – billions?
But even I know, the One Ring extended your life, but didn’t provide anything new. So, as Bilbo aged, he felt “thin and stretched” – his “natural lifespan” past the finding of the ring was being pulled to cover the remainder of his life.
I do not quite *get* why that matters (nor grok, but, wow, has Heinlein aged badly, other than for historical “it really was this bad” writings). Like, wasn’t Sauron immortal? Or, like, did he regenerate, and the ring would keep him alive, and *he* could draw life from others? I have the kind of brain that was fertile for this kind of stuff, but never the energy.
I also don’t get why elves were immortal, specifically, but, I knew one thing for sure: we were *not* elves. Somehow, though, Elvish stuff was especially good, because, dude, these are *elves*. Smeagol couldn’t eat lembas, but Frodo thought it would be good for him, if he could; an Elvish rope burned him, IIRC, because he was so corrupted by the ring. If you *needed* help, and, for some reason, knew the elves wouldn’t kill you on sight, you called for their help in some approved manner, so, they were born superhuman, *precisely*.
What kind of soul dead monstrosity would think you could just “be elves”? Oh, wait. I better not speculate on answers, to avoid any defamation of … of
AHEM. Good day.
Subcommandante Yakbreath
I believe that orcs were intentionally bad copies of elves made by Sauron (or maybe Morgoth; don’t remember which).
WTFGhost
@Miss Bianca: There may be some deliberate obfuscation of legends so that AD&D didn’t run afoul of Tolkein.
(I may, in fact, have typed “halfling” unconsciously.)
There may not be. I do know the creepy “building of the orcs” that I remembered from the books happened in the movie, so, ah, whew, but “fallen” to “constructed” is *weird*.
Glidwrith
@The Thin Black Duke: To maintain my sanity, that’s exactly what I try to keep in mind.
Three kitties to love and scritch: the flumpf, the shy girl and the loving asshole.
Healthy, happy grown kids that love to spend time around us.
Gorgeous clouds, hummingbirds or orchids.
Home baked bread, chocolate tapioca or peanut butter cookies.
What a wonderful life!
Tony Jay
@CliosFanBoy:
At the time covered by the books? Lots, scattered all over Middle-Earth, with a new dwarven state founded by Gimli himself in the caves of Aglarond giving them a needed kick up the breeches population wise.
By today, though (the Tolkien version of ‘today’, where the events of his stories actually occurred in a distant, mythic past) Dwarves are supposed to have dwindled to basically nothing. The Elves faded into pixies and fairies, so possibly he intended for his Dwarves to fade into something like kobolds or gnomes*, in which case Gimli, should he actually still be in Valinor, would indeed be the only living Dwarf in all of Ea.
*Yes, purists, I know.
Tony Jay
@Miss Bianca:
Hi! Just popping in for a bit. Still enjoying the hiatus.
Tolkien went back and forth on Orcs. He was – mostly – settled on his ‘Morgoth captured early Elves and did something so unimaginably horrible to them that it broke their souls and spawned the first Orcs’ theory, but sometimes he wavered back towards ‘Morgoth made them himself in mockery of the Elves’ theory, kind of like how Aulë made the Dwarves.
His major hang-up was religious. If Orcs were created by Morgoth then they’d have been as soulless as the Dwarves were before Eru breathed the Flame Imperishable into them, so they couldn’t be redeemed, and he really didn’t like the idea of any race being irredeemable. That left the ‘twisted Elves’ theory, but it had so many issues (just think about the kind of obscenities Morgoth would have had to inflict upon those captured Elves to create a fast-breeding race of cannibal goblins – shudder) that he was never entirely comfortable with or settled on it.
Paul in KY
Tolkien’s elves are not humans and the only way don’t die of old age or disease (they can drown, get smashed to death, head chopped off, etc.) is because Eru makes it so.
Theil is sooooo stupid.
Paul in KY
@Baud: Orcs were elves (once). They do not age or die of disease (IMO). They cannot, however, return to their Elvish state.
Paul in KY
@Anonymous At Work: That’s alot closer than what that idiot thinks.
Paul in KY
@YY_Sima Qian: Do not think your average elf ‘envied’ men. They admired some of us for what we accomplished in our brief flickers of life (compared to theirs).
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: Excellent summation, Tony!
Paul in KY
@CliosFanBoy: They go to Mandos, a place where they have to spend some amount of time reflecting on all their mistakes and any evil thing they may have done. When the Ainur Mandos (same name as the place) thinks they have repented and understand & repent their transgressions, they then have a new physical body and are released into Valinor/Eldemar.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: I think they are just given a new version of their body. IMO, Celebrian never wanted to return.
Paul in KY
@CliosFanBoy: They all went to Mandos. If they had been an elf who took off from Valinor with Feanor and the rest way back then, they had a pretty long stint in Mandos. If they had been born in Middle Earth and just lived the life they did, then their Mandos stay was probably short. Rest of eternity in Valinor/Eldemar.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: Gimli (of course) did die in Valinor at some point. No eternal life for the Children of Aule.
Paul in KY
@CliosFanBoy: Gimli died in Valinor. The land is not immortal. Only the Elves are.
Paul in KY
@WTFGhost: Sauron is/was a completely non-human non-Elf spirit that could wear a body like you wear clothes. The 2nd season of Bezos’ show does do a good job (IMO) showing some of that. Until he caused Numenor to flounder, he could take any form. After that he was cursed to only be able to assume a revolting shape. Once the Ring was finally destroyed, he was unable to take any form.
Paul in KY
@Subcommandante Yakbreath: Morgoth couldn’t ‘make’ shit. He took Elves and experimented and corrupted them to change them into orcs.
Tony Jay
@Paul in KY:
Ah, now, see, while you’re obviously right about residence in Valinor not being a short-cut to immortality (sorry Ar-Pharazôn, you enormous, mendacious dick) the fate of Gimli really is in question. Unless Tolkien himself decided the issue (he may have, but I’ve never heard that he did) Gimli’s sojourn in Valinor would have violated a key takeaway from Tolkien’s mythos.
Basically, only immortals get to go there, not just because things – don’t – die naturally there, but for their own good, because something about the timeless nature of the place causes the stretching and thinness Bilbo spoke of, and he was only suffering from proximity to the ‘horcrux’ of one fallen Maia. If you’re going to stay in the Undying lands, you have to be Undying, or it gets nasty.
Again, see Ar-Pharazôn, the Fate of. Plus Tuor & Idril, Be A Man or Live In Aman?
Of course, it’s quite possible that Gimli, and the other members of the Fellowship avoided the Ban by only very rarely setting foot on Valinor for parties at Galadriel’s place or to hang with Olorin in his allotment, and actually stayed on Tol Eressea until they passed on. Or Eru might have bestirred himself once again to reward the greatest ever alliance of all the Free Peoples by doing something about it.
We just don’t know.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Tony Jay:
Dammit, a really inside-baseball Tolkien comment thread that I missed.
“We just don’t know” sums it up although I like your idea about Eru bestirring himself to intervene, not unlike he did in sending Gandalf back after his fight with the Balrog.
Funny how Merry and Pippin didn’t “insist” on going west ala Gimli.
Most older commentary on this was that the “invite” was to the Ringbearers only and that they were expected to die but that their time in Valinor would ease the pain endured being a Ringbearer.
Tony Jay
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Yeah, but IMHO when Legolas took Gimli with him to the Undying Lands that theory went up in smoke. For a Dwarf to go West, the first in Four Ages of the World, there had to be some special dispensation offered. Otherwise he’d be dooming his friend to a horrible, drawn-out nightmare existence, similar in effect to the fate of the Nazgûl. That’s what exposure to the radiance of a divine spirit does to mortals in Tolkien’s mythos – it holds their soul in fixed place while their mortal body fades away.
Plus, Dwarves like the company of Dwarves. Sure, Galadriel was there for him to stare at like a very lucky puppy, and he could have sat wide-eyed at the feet of Aulë for a while, but the loneliness would have become crushing for Gimli if he hadn’t been welcomed into the full ‘Bliss of Aman’.
SMDH – I am such a terrible geek.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: To me, the non-immortal members of the Fellowship were allowed to go there for well-deserved healing. This period of healing would not (IMO) change their basic fates (i.e. death). The stretching you mentioned was only the product of one rebel Maia’s monkeying about. IMO, not a feature of immortality as granted by Illuvatar.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: I would think Aule’s beer would be quite enjoyable for an extended period of time :-)
Enjoy reading your thoughts on this. Don’t agree with the ‘stretching’ that a wearer of one of Sauron’s rings endured being similar to what would happen if a mortal was freely given entry to Valinor.
WTFGhost
@Paul in KY: yes, I’m looking forward to a lot of Tolkien, someday.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I know Israel being the real impetus for bipartisan Congressional action to ban TikTok is not news. I’ve posted about this since shortly after the bill passed, when Sen. Romney admitted as much openly to the press, & other members of Congress of both parties anonymously.
What is unseemly & new is just how blatantly both Warner & Gallagher are now w/ their disingenuous case to the public for banning TikTok, & how chummy Warner continues to be in public w/ a reactionary such as Gallagher, at the same forum where Vance & Hegseth was setting torch to US credibility & standing for its allies & partners.
Does this bother no one else?!
Tony Jay
@Paul in KY:
It’s been fun. I’d rather talk Tolkien than Trump.
Pretty sure I’ve read that Tolkien wrote about the issue with mortals in the Undying Lands having problems, and I’m sure the sensation of being stretched and thinned was mentioned, but damned if I can remember where. It makes sense, given the absolute, instant banning of – any – mortal stepping foot on the soil of Valinor that followed the War of Wrath. It wasn’t supposed to be a punishment, the Edain hadn’t done anything wrong, and they received their own form of physical and spiritual leg-up as soon as they stepped foot on Numenor, they just couldn’t go there because – its heavily implied – something about their mortal state would not take well to the nature of Valinor.
The comparison to the effect of the Ring(s) on Bilbo, Gollum and the Nazgûl is my own idea, but it does seem to follow along with Tolkien’s conception of an essential wrongness where mortality runs up against the naked exertion of Ainur-sourced ‘magic’. It’s all apples and peaches for a while (see, hanging with Galadriel in Lórien) but live in the spiritworld where Tolkienesque ‘magic’ works for too long and mortals burn out quicker than immortals.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: I respect the Hell out of your Middle Earth knowledge and am reassessing some of my theories, based on your ideas!
BTW, Liverpool will have to really gag to lose the Premier. I do not think they will and also think they’ll take Champions League!