I always loved his joke about 9/11. It went something like, “ I saw the towers fall and immediately went down to Ground Zero to look for my brother. I spent hours looking and searching for him, but I never found him then I remembered that he moved to Colorado three years ago.”
Everyone so damn defensive about history texts like they’re fucking gospel.
Norm was a funny guy. It was a joke.
The only thing I’m annoyed about is the use of the semi colon
Take away the “that” and the semicolon is okay, but you should go full colon.
Same advice as with your mom, actually.
I love a good mom roast. It’s almost a lost art these days, or at least it feels like that.
I do too (and I’m glad)! My mom died at the height of the yo momma joke trend and I came up with a comeback that I was so proud of, it made me actively hope for one. Here goes:
My mom’s dead, but I hear she was a great piece of ash.
Sorry to hear your mom passed away. Thankfully mine is still with me.
That comeback is darker than a black lab in a cave.
you should go full colon
Never go full colon!
Like a demi colon
Studied history at uni. On the topic of historical revisionism professor shruged and said: History is revised all the time. It’s called learning more.
Why did they put a semicolon in the middle of this sentence?
To bother you
Should have snuck an em dash in there if you really want to rile people up
I’m glad I finished school before the AI era—I put an em dash and a semicolon in the same sentence at least twice in a given paper; this would get flagged every flipping time nowadays.
Lol same… I used to have the alt code for em dash memorized (back when I used Windows)
Same. As an extremely verbose and descriptive writer, I take umbrage at the whole em dash debacle. Can’t a man even punctuate anymore!?
It makes you sound smarter and well; read.
I’ve been successfully trolled.
Engagement bait baybee
Wow. They did it.
I do find it an interesting choice. Normally, you’d put a comma there, but you could also use a colon. If you combine comma and colon, you do get a semicolon.
you could also use a colon
Now, with the caveat that prescriptive grammar is kind of stupid, you’d need to remove the word ‘that’ to make the colon a “correct” choice.
Yeah, true. To both, your correction and your caveat. 😅
I miss Norm so bad. The wisdom of the ages packed into a guy you could work on a lawn mower with.
I mean, while there’s certainly a bias towards the victor, there’s definitely some histories that have slipped through from people who were very much not the victors. Josephus comes to mind, even if he did so by surrendering to the victors; Thucydides and Athens lost the Peloponnesian War; for a more recent example, the American South’s narrative on the Civil War.
for a more recent example, the American South’s narrative on the Civil War.
Bold of you to think that they would agree that it’s over.
I realize he’s talking about “history is written by the victors” but I thought of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds
If this is the best of all possible worlds then God must be pretty fucking terrible at making worlds.
I go with Schopenhauer:
Arthur Schopenhauer argued, contrary to Leibniz, that our world must be the worst of all possible worlds, because if it were only a little worse, it could not continue to exist.
We appear to be working on proving Schopenhauer’s theory.
How great it would be to realize that our god is the equivalent of a grade school child making finger painting and crayon drawing versions of worlds in the timeout chair and this was just the one we got stuck with.
I’ve read webcomics with something close to that premise.
That was the point of the satiric novella Candide.
Actually assumed naively that was the subject of the conversation above. Oh well.
écrasez l’infame
Its object was to solve the problem of evil, that is, to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering in the world with the existence of a perfectly good, all-powerfuland all-knowing God, who would seem required to prevent it
I’m reminded of HAL from 2001 for some reason. Maybe because HAL was given two conflicting goals and went insane trying to reconcile them with each other, rather than simply discarding the goal that was obviously just some nonsense.
I couldn’t get past this…
Is that Leibniz?
Such a fancy boy
Edit: didn’t click the link before posting. Dunno if I should be impressed or concerned that I recognized this dude lol.
He might look like a dandy, and might have been way too weirdly Christian, but the man was a fucking genius. Still think his notation style for calculus was better than Newton’s
Wai? Dude looks like he plays drums in a Spinal Tap tribute band. What could be better than that?
Beings are possible together, in turn, when they do not enter into contradiction with each other. For instance, it is logically possible that a meteor might have fallen from the sky onto Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’s head soon after he was born, killing him. But it is not logically possible that what happens in a given world (e.g. that Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia) also does not happen in the same world (i.e. that Jimmy Wales did not found Wikipedia).
One Piece, of all things, phrased this concept better
"Pirates are evil? The Marines are righteous? These terms have always changed throughout the course of history! Kids who have never seen peace and kids who have never seen war have different values! Those who stand at the top determine what’s wrong and what’s right! This very place is neutral ground! Justice will prevail, you say? But of course it will! Whoever wins this war becomes justice!"
You would need to be extremely racist to think the good guys won the Opium War or the wars of European conquest in the Americas or Africa, and even centuries of propaganda spin don’t change that. And there are cases like the Siege of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade that was rightfully vilified even at the time.
You would have to lack a certain kind of thinking to take this quote that was posted in the memes community seriously
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Definition of a meme according to the Meriam Webster dictionary. “an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video)” looks like an amusing captioned picture to me.
If we’re truly being pedantic, this is a meme as it is an idea shared and spread in a culture.
Are you familiar with the concept of sarcasm? Or contextual reading?
Indeed.
Also just naive to think that there are “good guys” and “bad guys”. When you dig into the nuance of any conflict its almost always complicated.
Did you guys just completely miss the joke or something? I mean it’s not subtle or anything…
The joke refers to the addage that history is written by the victor, but that just isn’t true.
Exactly. That is part of the joke.
Norm understands that it’s not true, he pokes fun at it because most people do tend to take it as fact. He ridiculizes how silly that thought is.
Ill have to take your word for it. As written, it doesn’t seem that way to me at all.
I can understand that. Norm was a guy that went heavy into sarcasm and irony in his jokes.
Reading the text as is would make you understand it differently if you didn’t know him.You’re right, I don’t know him, but I still think you’re making up a deeper level of humor that wasn’t intended.
“Luckily the good guys have won every single time” is a very direct jab at historians always casting themselves as the good guys.
You’re all up in here like “wull ackshually this is a post modern commentary on feminism because he’s used the gendered phrase ‘guys’ and you just wouldn’t get it because reasons”.
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Isn’t this the guy that plays Yaphit?
Yes RIP a legend
Oh wow no idea he died. Maybe that’s why The Orville is ended.
Not sure but he had cancer for many years and never told the public. It was a shock to everyone.
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Good guy Pyrrhus.
The oppressed, butchered and exterminated victims of the European colonial systems would like a word with you…
At the risk of whoosing myself, can you explain the alt text lol
no whoosh, just the automatic alt text generated by my client.
Weird. My client doesn’t even show this post has any alt text 🤨
It’s the comment I was replying to that had the alt text. You can add alt test to the markdown image.
currently it’s set to “1000004030” which I assume is the image upload ID.
That’s the joke.
Are you under the impression this is a statement made genuinely? Who do you think Norm Macdonald was?
Yes, I know it’s a joke and sarcasm.
I also know you have the cognitive depth of an ai. Since you chose to be offended by my response.
Your initial response does not reflect that. Like, at all. And the unwarranted insults in your second further make you look like a buffoon.
“Offended” Lmfao
da winors wrait da histoorie buks. I am weri smort.
Thank you
beep
How many Americans in this thread have every read or seen anything about the Vietnam war written by a Vietnamese person ?
I’ve searched and could find no books, no movies, no tv shows written or produced by a Vietnamese person available in English.
Why is that ? I thought history was written by the victors.
Movies all with english subs or dubs
“When the tenth month comes” “the abandoned field” “the little girl of Hanoi”
Books available in many languages including English.
“The sorrow of war” “Last night I dreamed of peace” “Mourning headband for Hue” “nothing ever dies”
Just to name a few. Ive seen 1 and read 2. Nobody won that war and it never should have happened.
I’m not sure who told you the U.S. won the Vietnam War, but I have some bad news.
Idk maybe you need a new search engine I used DDG and found this list
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/186705.Books_on_Vietnam_War_from_Vietnamese_s_perspective
Also I’m sure many are aware of the Mai Lai Massacre and other events and the overall war itself is widely known as a “loss” for the US military.
And most everyone in the world knows about Agent Orange and the fallout from using it on those people that still today affects them.
I’ve never read an account of Vietnam from a Vietnamese person, so I’m adding one of these to my reading list. Thanks for sharing!
Maybe The Sympathizer (or the book it was based on)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sympathizer_(miniseries)
Edit:
beep
