Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on April 12, 2022, 11:11:37 AM
Sure, all the details are more complicated than just "white guy saves the brown folks," but the overarching pattern is clear.

To take your example of the religions being syncretic, okay: the Zensunni are simultaneously representative of the Jews, Muslim tradition, and Zen Buddhists.  They don't really talk about it much, except to say that they were wanderers who fled from repeated pogroms and their religion came from Sunni Islam and Zen Buddhism.  But, I mean, come on... the brown-skinned desert nomads who are going to go on a religious jihad (it's even literally labeled a "jihad")?  It's very clearly a pastiche of Muslim stereotype.

ok, yes, fremen were excited up to the level they waged the total war (jihad) in a name of their prophet, paul muad'dib. they were from the desert. they weren't brown-skinned, as herbert was not talking about the colour of skin at all (afaik and from what i found in commentaries). honestly, i did not see there a particular muslim stereotype, rather a religious fanaticism stereotype (jihading, crusading, pogroming...). all the arabic (and not necessarily muslim) connotations to fremen are stereotypical, as it is the closest to any desert civilisation ordinary westerners can imagine. but even using arabic, herbert used concepts from different religions, like in the case of shai-hulúd, grandfather of the desert, with hidden meaning "thing of immortality", high proly from some far eastern religion.

anyway, it is interesting to see/read different interpretations of such a complex story, which interpretations escaped my attention ;)

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on April 12, 2022, 09:11:21 AM

Quote from: Ián S.G. Txaglh on April 12, 2022, 02:56:16 AM
as for the dune "white aristocrat saves dark-skinned population", i've never read it there. for me, it is a story about the future of mankind, the formation of golden path, i paid not much attention to paul's aristocratic origin and colonial connotations of his relations to fremen. the story has its setup, it is not black and white, the auctorial inspirations in the real world are clear, and human society is based on stereotypes whether we like it or not. i have difficulties reading SF literary, cos these are modern myths, of course with cultural stereotypes, innovated by the auctorial imagination, but still metaphors and stories. if we treat thoroughly literature through a modern social paradigm (not get confused, i am very much happy to see the progress in the removal of social discrimination of any kind currently going on), we will trash the majority of it, cos it always may/will contain stereotypes not acceptable today. as the saying goes, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

No one's saying it should be thrown out, but there's a big middle ground between "never read this" and "there's nothing problematic here."  And man, there's a lot that's problematic.

I think it's really hard to dispute the white savior problem with Dune, even read in context.  Pale-skinned, aristocratic foreign Paul, who grew up in a rocky and cool climate, arrives at in underdeveloped desert area with one established "civilized" city and a vast desert region populated almost entirely by a dark-skinned indigenous people who are known for their physical prowess, survival skills, and deeply-felt strange customs.  He proceeds to take advantage of religious superstitions, deliberately planted by early colonizers, to assume power, and he brings the fantastic knowledge and skills of his culture to bear to organize the indigenous people into a "screaming jihad" for his own ends.  From first to last, it's the classic white savior story.  It's actually rather worse than some other famously problematic stories, like John Carter of Mars or Avatar, since it's so on-the-nose -- the Fremen are literally said to be the contemporary descendants of Muslims, while Paul's holy book is the Orange Catholic Bible.

None of that is to say that we shouldn't read the book.  Hell, I love the Barsoom stories (not Avatar, though -- can't believe they're making five more).  Definitely an amazing story and an amazing read.  It's just something readers should know about and think about, rather than unconsciously absorbing the implicit message buried within the story.

thnx, this is quite interesting! you are offering interpretations i was not able to make (most probably due to cultural differences). i always thought about caladan/arrakis dichotomy primarily in an ecological sense - caladan is totally different environment/niche for life than arrakis, and paul has to adopt and understand the difference. now, i can see allusions to brits/arabs or americans/indians, but it definitely wasn't my first thought. also, the bene gesserit/missionaria protectiva were not colonisers, but unscrupulous manipulators with a plan, who spread panoplia propheticus to have an easier ground when needed anything accomplished on those worlds. paul used it to the same extent as he originally followed the kwisatz haderach path, the main interest of bene gesserit (although in a way the bene gesserit did not want it ;). it seems to me to be smth different from classical white saviour. he was willingly a revolutionary (mostly like those classical anarcho-terrorists, who planned to destroy the world to build it de novo), unwillingly he was a model for a messianic failure, the first step to the golden path.

weren't fremens zensunni, rather than muslim? and orange catholic bible is also a tricky name, as it was a very general blend of human religious thoughts from many curious religions, like mahayana christianity, zensunni catholicism, and buddislam :)

i am always trying to be very critical of myself not to overinterpret stories cos it is a trap one may fall easily into. so that might be the reason i see the dune story (the first book minimally) in a different way. all these connotations you are talking about simply never came to my mind earlier. for me dune is a philosophical (well, less of that in a story would be beneficial) polit-fiction, rooted in a growing sense of ecology; imho herbert was thinking about what is the way mankind should take to survive in an uttermost niche - the universe. and how it could happen.

Quote from: Dr. Txec Róibeard dal Nordselvă, Esq., O.SPM, SMM on April 11, 2022, 08:21:47 PM
Also, as I am actually a published SciFi writer in my own accord, I too believe I should join this group!

what? where? or it never happened :)

i published 7 SF stories, ranging from 1994, the last in 2011. all in czech, except for one in german ;) 5 in three different magazines (ikarie, urania, imlandris), three of them in two anthologies (1+2). and won one local price :) for tolkien fanfiction stories.

wrote about 70 more, my reader club was enthusiastic but rather few in numbers. hard to say if cos i am not good enough or just too weird :) i quit writing around 2015, run out of juice.

i like all three adaptations of dune. lynch's for aesthetics and weirdness, sy-fy channel one for the "children of dune" part especially, but also for the dark anti-messianic part in "dune messiah". the very new one has lavishing production design, it is the most "word-for-word" story with some innovative scenes (atreides mounds), but also some modern visual clichés, which i am not much fond of.

on personal note, one benefit of being an older man from central europe post-commie country, e.g., i really never understood the ranting against dark skin dwarfs or elves in witcher adaptation, i was rather pissed by the stupid script ;) and as for the dune "white aristocrat saves dark-skinned population", i've never read it there. for me, it is a story about the future of mankind, the formation of golden path, i paid not much attention to paul's aristocratic origin and colonial connotations of his relations to fremen. the story has its setup, it is not black and white, the auctorial inspirations in the real world are clear, and human society is based on stereotypes whether we like it or not. i have difficulties reading SF literary, cos these are modern myths, of course with cultural stereotypes, innovated by the auctorial imagination, but still metaphors and stories. if we treat thoroughly literature through a modern social paradigm (not get confused, i am very much happy to see the progress in the removal of social discrimination of any kind currently going on), we will trash the majority of it, cos it always may/will contain stereotypes not acceptable today. as the saying goes, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

currently, i am watching imho under-rated star trek - enterprise. i like the hoshi character quite a lot and all the xenolinguistic stuff. as far as the modern STs, like discovery and picard, i very fine with both.

and for whisky, i am not much of a drinker, i have just two trophy bottles - glenfiddich 12 yrs, glenmorangie 18 yrs. and one bottle of grant's, which i possibly should not mention at all :)

Quote from: Antonio Montagnha, Ed. D. on April 07, 2022, 01:22:10 PM
I am curious, would it be a better narrative if you viewed it as a metaphor for a single person's struggle to find meaning?

honestly, hardly. no matter how hard i try, i don't see that metaphor in the story. plus, it is written so badly, i have, unfortunately, difficulties finding anything interesting in it. maybe, the very first part, during the maoist period, at least this part would be somehow interesting if not just a mild (party approved) reflection of the period.

there is maybe one part close to the metaphor you've mentioned, the "game", but unfortunately, i find it shallow and pointless, and with an increased number of appearances also quite boring. so man trivialities with no added value.

i am really sorry, i was quite disappointed by the development of the story, and the closer i was to the final of the first book, the more disappointed i was, e.g. how could a member of the civilisation cry for not having literature and art; how could he know what it means, what is its value? that was what brought me back to the period of SF when it was (mis)used to write bad stories full of pseudo-philosophical non-sense hidden behind seriously looking mumbo-jumbo. there was an excellent book published in 1981 called "saiäns-fiktschen" by german author franz fühman, who made fun of it in a very sophisticated way.

if to name a SF book(s), depicting the struggle to find meaning, i would go for "ubik" by PKD, "fiasco" by lem or if smth more modern than "witcher" by sapkowski (oh, gods, that has to be a special room in hell for screenwriters who fucked-up good books into bad TV series). or smth by ted chiang, e.g. "story of your life" or "division by zero" :)

Quote from: Antonio Montagnha, Ed. D. on April 07, 2022, 09:00:51 AM

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on April 07, 2022, 08:54:06 AM

Quote from: Antonio Montagnha, Ed. D. on April 07, 2022, 07:44:01 AM
Also, is the Talossan Science Fiction & Whisky Society still a thing?

Not really, as far as I know.  You should declare it is again, though, and appoint yourself as presedint.

LOL. Once I am a citizen, I'll certainly consider it.

i tried to re-animate TSF&WS ages ago (afaik was originally founded by ián anglatzara back in days), in early 2007, but i was pretty alone then, so i resigned a few months later with no feedback and company. if interested i can send you the archive of my 'n gñhevnic da liréir, i have published for TSF&WS.

i have read the "three-body problem" and i will somehow paddle against the stream. i did not like it at all. it was full of gaps in logic, e.g. how a well-trained engineer never encountered the three-body problem? it contained pointless parts, like "the game", which hardly served any role in the story-telling. and the extraterrestrians were depicted so naively, i felt like being back in 70ies. i never had the strength to read the second book. my wife, who is a philologist focused on fantastic literature, she made it through the second but refused then to go through the third ;) if to pick a good author of chinese origin, ted chiang is my choice.

i would gladly participate, just a small warning, i am available starting at 1800 CEST (UTC+2) until 2200 CEST (maybe an hour later is ok too), april 20 is in the mid of the working days and i am teaching the whole wednesday since 0900 to 1500, then i have to get the wheels of capitalism spinning ;)

zoom or ms teams, all is fine with me.

i have difficulties comprehending, how the kind of rhetorics of the TNC representatives used in this thread is going to attract anyone to create a governmental alliance with them. just curious...

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on February 27, 2022, 03:01:49 PM
It was good to see the Czech President, who is known to be pro-Russian, stand against this aggression. Even the authoritarian scumbag who runs Hungary, Orbán, knows that this is going too far (was he alive when Russia did the same thing to his country in '56?)

viktor orbán is too young (*1963) to witness 1956 revolution. and he is a pure opportunist, he was originally a liberal democrat who turned into an authoritarian ruler because of his dirty business empire. he goes whereto the wind (ie., EU money) blows.

yeah, and imagine my/our shock hearing that miloš zeman turned 180°... but it has a certain rational explanation, as he is a very vengeful person, remembering even imaginary sins against him for ages. so, putin made him look like a moron, and miloš now hates him beyond the grave.

even chairman xi sees west as a more productive friend than tzar putin is, although he might have thought that if invasion in ukraine is met with less vigour, he might try his luck in taiwan. friends in russia told me that china (chinese embassy) is mongering against USA in russian digital space, but practically they do the same as the west embargoing russian economy.

Quote from: Breneir Tzaracomprada on February 26, 2022, 07:14:58 PM
Ian, it appears there is a developing agreement on kicking several major Russian banks out of SWIFT.

yeah, not only, they are planning to block the russian central bank, meaning their stocked financial reserves to finance their adventures will be worth nothing.

hopefully, russian & belorussian people, including armed forces, will get the strength to oppose putin's and lukašenka's regimes and will refuse to follow them anymore.

слава україні! героям слава!
російський корабель, іди нахуй!

пусть этот кремлевский хуй сдохнет!
¡që acest catzeu kremlesc deceßarha! (sic!)

if you lived here, it is at least for the third time in 100 years we see a similar situation, same rhetorics and same appeasement of tyrants. hitler, chamberlain, daladier and mussolini in 1938, warsaw pact in 1968 and now ukraine 2022. all based on lies about brotherly help, fake genocide accusations, lies about "this is our last demand for eternal peace", delusional megalomania and terror even on own civil population.

i demand that RT takes the stand here, we cannot just watch.

just a coincidence ;)

it would be more fun if not, but reality often strips all fun of suchs.

or, the entity meddling with the intelligent design of languages messed up the proto-indo-european *kʷel- to turn into old greek τέλος and then collide with the proto-finnic *taloi and its nowadays inessive talossa to let current talossan amateur and professional linguists, politicians and esteemed citizens speculate about the damn billionaire stealing our good name, gods damn his name once more! maybe a nationwide discussion will spring a new life into this sleepy dump ;D

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on August 22, 2021, 04:36:28 PM
Topic for discussion: "The drop-off in Talossan activity is partly due to Organic/legislative requirements that require boring and annoying red-tape navigation before anything can be done, and this applies equally to Government as well as private activity."

Honestly, I'm beginning to think that solutions to problems tend to turn into worse problems, and I raise the State Opening of the Cosa as an example. This was suggested by my party as "something fun to do"; a little ceremony which would give the King a cultural duty. And now it's just degenerating into a chore that requires messy and unpleasant organisation, and crucially the King doesn't seem to want to do it, but we have to do it because it's the law.

my answer is NO.

the primary problem, imho, is the ReaLife^TM outside of talossa, for me definitely. secondary one, no new blood.

i know that in this micronation, they had problems regarding extramural activities of citizens and very low intramural activity. people had almost no time to do the time-consuming (and seen-from-outside) nonsensical stuff they were able to do before they had jobs, spouses, kids, households. so they had simplified every aspect of running the micronation, they left just the bare-bones, they went hibernating, they just re-animate the corpse of the micronation from the dead whenever they have time to meet. and time-to-time whenever they have little time spared to translate a page, carve an artefact, write a piece of history page.

any simplification of talossan matters will end up the same. talossa either survives by this kind of hibernation or by radical changes to its appearance (not laws and suchs) to attract new people or it dies. i may be famous for such prophecies since republic, but tell me, how wrong am i?

people from the old guard are busy somewhere else, new people get hardly involved. young people of today are attracted to more vivid places and the internet is today full of shit much more interesting than talossa, honestly. social networks are consuming enormous amounts of free time to such kind of young people who would be able to contribute to talossan matters in the times before social networks (and other such sticky stuff popped up). boy, i am an average boomer who just to go through his YT stuff every week spends three to four hours, and i am subscribed only to selected bass playing, educational, linguistic, scientific or critical thinking channels, no pinky crap. not talking about jobs and family. this summer i had two weeks of holidays, the rest of my leave (as a teacher i have 6 weeks) i spent wurcking, cos during holidays it is the only time i am not distracted by dozens of small everyday administrative routine tasks.

we have to admit that the form of the nationette, as we have it, outlived itself in 2021. we would survive with the daily or at least weakly feed on social networks, but as a kinky old fashion disco group, we are dinosaurs only waiting for our chicxulub asteroid. original talossa was a regional-based, face-2-face thing, full of testosterone and ambitions of people with quite some free time; appropriate form to its time. what are we now? band of mid-aged guys who have often more important things to do, with a platform attractive to youngsters as teletyping to someone who in 1995 discovered the internet. do the math for yourselves.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on August 22, 2021, 04:33:34 PM
I am told by the NPW leader, Senator ESB, that he assumed his Cosa delegation would know which way to vote, considering that that was how they voted last Cosa and they'd made a public commitment, and he didn't want to be an annoying micromanager. Well.

The lesson I have learned is that you just can't trust parties to keep to commitments in Talossan politics unless there are significant penalties for non-compliance - and our electoral system means a party can stay in the Cosa forever, even if everyone else hates them for treacherous weasels, with only their own votes.

so, bad communication it is. almost all problems can be solved when people talk. if you are unhappy with NPW voting, wouldn't it be better to speak to its representative than complain in public? i am not much of a real politician, but what i know so far, taking internal dirty laundry making into public never wins political points ;)

Quote from: Txosuè Éiric Rôibeardescù on August 22, 2021, 08:19:27 AM

Quote from: Ián S.G. Txaglh on August 22, 2021, 06:42:02 AM

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on August 21, 2021, 06:10:52 PM
... and the NPW delegation to the Cosă just abstained on this bill that the Party promised to vote for.

could you be more specific on "this bill"? am i missing some colloquial english thing, like "this bill" = "some unnamed bill"?

and i am not sitting in cosâ now ;) i always tried to get along the line, even we were frequently reminded by eiric what was part of the agreements. is it a conspiracy or just bad communication?

55rz1, The "talossa shall chose its king act"

cofusado o_O you mean 56RZ1? cos 55RZ1 was "the tidy up your STUFF act", and originally it was 55RZ21.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on August 21, 2021, 06:10:52 PM
... and the NPW delegation to the Cosă just abstained on this bill that the Party promised to vote for.

could you be more specific on "this bill"? am i missing some colloquial english thing, like "this bill" = "some unnamed bill"?

and i am not sitting in cosâ now ;) i always tried to get along the line, even we were frequently reminded by eiric what was part of the agreements. is it a conspiracy or just bad communication?

Quote from: GV on August 16, 2021, 03:52:54 PM

Quote from: Ián S.G. Txaglh on August 14, 2021, 07:47:36 AM
seems, i missed a serious fun here. and i still do not understand, what is the problem about. is king-for-life of any importance to the stability and life of talossa? honestly, no. is king-for-life of any importance to fundaments of talossa? again, no. king-for-life is just one possibility of many, and talossans have democratically chosen some other issue. or, did not they, did i get smth wrong?

i can imagine people living in a representative democracy to be attracted to this king-thing, allusively a symbol of stability and duration, but it is just a façade, which may hold no content but rotten one. any permanent political position without the possibility to enforce to account for actions is dangerous.

we have now in czechia the pseudo-king serving as a president, who thinks that he is special and so so important, that he ignores not only the call of reason but also laws of the country (and our constitution was written by naïve guys who never assumed this may happen one day. does it ring a bell to you, fellow talossans?). luckily, we'll get rid of him in two years in the new elections, cos he is no real king. and that's a good thing.

renewable kingship is for me enough peculiarly talossan too, plus, it satisfies my sense for fair play.

See about joining the Free Democrats, then.  :-)

meirci, meirci, graschcias, i'll stay with NPW :)

i know the story as it began, i missed the recent peak of "activity" in this matter. i was here lately like two months ago, iirc, and read all the stuff on this topic. i voted as a deputy for the respective bill. anyway, thnx for the summary, it makes it intelligible for anyone, who does not follow it word by word for the last half a year.

"storm in a teaspoon" metaphor is a common occidental cultural heritage, and it fits the situation. king became too comfortable in his position. royalists are afraid of losing their game. but is it worth having a situation in which the king may go partisan? although i am republican, i do not insist on talossa turning republic, i care about the functionality of the royal institution, an elective monarchy, even with the limited serving terms, allows to keep things going on. good king may still be a king-for-life, i do not insist on a "presidential" limited number of terms. hereditary and unlimited kingship is of no benefit for talossa. and the comment with the accelerated pace of time in talossa is also valid, one year talossa maybe a decade in real life. my two groats.

seems, i missed a serious fun here. and i still do not understand, what is the problem about. is king-for-life of any importance to the stability and life of talossa? honestly, no. is king-for-life of any importance to fundaments of talossa? again, no. king-for-life is just one possibility of many, and talossans have democratically chosen some other issue. or, did not they, did i get smth wrong?

i can imagine people living in a representative democracy to be attracted to this king-thing, allusively a symbol of stability and duration, but it is just a façade, which may hold no content but rotten one. any permanent political position without the possibility to enforce to account for actions is dangerous.

we have now in czechia the pseudo-king serving as a president, who thinks that he is special and so so important, that he ignores not only the call of reason but also laws of the country (and our constitution was written by naïve guys who never assumed this may happen one day. does it ring a bell to you, fellow talossans?). luckily, we'll get rid of him in two years in the new elections, cos he is no real king. and that's a good thing.

renewable kingship is for me enough peculiarly talossan too, plus, it satisfies my sense for fair play.

Quote from: Ián S.G. Txaglh on June 16, 2021, 08:20:53 AM
all i have has only slightly above 2 M zip-compressed.

and it is uploaded now :)

Quote from: GV on June 16, 2021, 07:40:02 AM
Put everything you have to libraryoftalossa.com  If you need access, send me a PM, and I'll drop you an invite.

Thank you so much!

so could you pls let me (jan.havlis.r@gmail.com) to upload files there? i can read there, but not upload. anyway, all i have has only slightly above 2 M zip-compressed.