this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
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One of the comments reads : Actually, we will probably never figure out, was it man or woman. but I thought this comment of the professor was an interesting eye opener. https://mastodonapp.uk/@MarkHoltom/112070436760917344

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[–] [email protected] 148 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I mean the lunar cycle is roughly 29 days with the argument that it’s 28 if you don’t count the new moon.

I realize this is a neat thought idea but it I think best demonstrates how easy it is to jump to conclusions.

[–] Mr_Blott 58 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I conclude the moon has a vaj

[–] [email protected] 48 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Well duh, Sokka was trying to get all up in it

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I just finished TLA. I'd never seen it, and now I have, and it's gone, and my life feels empty. Why would you bring this up? Why would you hurt me so?

Korra is good, but it doesn't hit the same, and 70 years is not enough to fully industrialize a society.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

70 years is not enough to fully industrialize a society

Russia, China

Also, I imagine industry in general becomes significantly easier when you have people that can summon construction projects out of the ground or weld with their bare hands.

Also, society isn't industrialised. One city state within society is industrialised.

Also, the fire nation was already undergoing industrialisation at the time of ATLA.

[–] VindictiveJudge 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Seriously, the Fire Nation had mass produced internal combustion engines in ATLA. They put them in their mass produced tanks. Not to mention the fleet of ships with smokestacks indicating they probably had either diesel or steam powered ships. The Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes are both still in the process of industrializing, but the Fire Nation was already pretty much there, and the United Republic is primarily a Fire Nation breakaway state.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

More than likely steam. Don’t need fuel to burn when when you can just make fire with magic. And we know people get employed for their bending ability since Mako got a job lightning-bending at the power plant.

[–] Tingle 1 points 8 months ago

It's not magic, it's fire bending.

[–] AWistfulNihilist 25 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Look up the Meiji Restoration in Japan. They went from a feudal, near-medieval society to an industrial society between 1870 and 1920, by the time they were done they are participating in both world wars.

You actually don't have to suspend your disbelief so hard here, it's the most believable part of the story of people who can bend elements with tai chi

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Even if you take a Western lens to it and say ATLA takes place around 1850 that still puts Korra in the 1920s (and the air nation falling around 1750) and the only thing that really would be innacurate for comparing their timeline to ours is the lack of trains connecting the cities, at least in the earth kingdom where theres a lot of land to be crossed.

I suppose if you assume that Ba Sing Sa is self-sufficient with it's large farms in the outermost ring then it makes sense from a tactical perspective to have fewer points of entry to the city. You'd also have to assume there's either significant brain-drain from the villages into the city or that the villages keep to themselves so much that they have no need for better transportation between them

I'm not finding any good sources right now but some of the earliest trains were actually a singular railcar on wooden rails pushed by 1-2 people in much the same manner that the trains in Ba Sing Sa do, just sans Earth bending of course

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I over thought this a lot and the only conclusion I could come to is the earth nation should be covered in railway lines. Extremely shortly after some of the first viable self-propelled steam locomotives were invented the first railwaya were built, and within 50 years entire countries were covered in railway lines connecting the smallest towns both that existed before the railroads and many built by the railroads.

The existence of bending would only accelerate this development since right of way would be rapidly built through earth bending, and locomotives could simply have a closed system of water to be bent to produce propulsion. An earth bender could also spin a stone flywheel attached to gears to produce propulsion too. Or combine these with steam propulsion to overcome the limitations of early steam engines and the poorer iron and steel alloys of the time

[–] VindictiveJudge 1 points 8 months ago

TLOK does depict a railway network having been set up through the Earth Kingdom after the war. The Earth Kingdom as a whole is still very far behind in industrialization, though.

[–] daltotron 1 points 8 months ago

I think that most of the criticisms directed at the industrialization and mecha stuff is mostly just a byproduct of the worldbuilding in korra broadly not being very good. Not even necessarily bad a lot of the time, but just not as good as avatar.

Bending styles became more homogenized and choreography is worse, everything became a kind of 1920's hong kong steampunk, and lots of the city shots, there's basically nobody walking around. You have things like tasers and huge mechas, but huge mechas and tasers without explanations for how they're getting such dense energy storage, or circumventing some real world problems with those technologies in a 1920's context. With various forms of bending, you can kind of get around the energy density problem a little bit, since it's just straight up magic that seems like it violates conservation of energy, but with korra's stuff, that doesn't apply a lot of the time.

Lots of little things like that kinda give the impression that the world is made of paper mache, or that a lot of things are just kind of done because they're a cool idea, rather than because they're both a cool idea and make a little bit of sense. I'm not really opposed to the idea of a car in the setting, but it strikes me as quite a bit easier to power a car if you have a mobile human power plant that can produce large amounts of energy. I think it's also kind of a shame to disconnect the tech from this for a different reason, as well, and that's because it means that the bending is kind of, less broadly useful and applicable. It takes up less space in the setting, it has less utility, it's not as cool, and the show doesn't really end up giving many good replacements for it as time goes on.

That's really nitpicking, though. I think the broader point is just that there wasn't much done in the series to really show the continuity between ATLA and korra (do not mistake this for fanservice), and they really feel like different shows. Feels kind of like about a quarter of the reason why people didn't like the last jedi, but that's kind of a whole other deal. Anyways, that being the case, korra's more of a stand alone kind of deal, and I think it kind of falls flat on it's own, because it just isn't very good and I don't like it as much as the OG.

You also get a lot of people that will blame all the problems on the show that it kept getting renewed season after season without any real knowledge of the future viability of the show, but I think I would still just blame the writing, in that respect. You can make a good, contiguous series of media based only on good improv, only on good setup and payoff, external to the idea that the show has multiple locked-in seasons. I don't think it matters too much, if you're good enough. Main example there is probably just venture bros, though.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

In English common law, a "lunar month" traditionally meant exactly 28 days or four weeks, thus a contract for 12 months ran for exactly 48 weeks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_month

So, depending on the legal framework, a 28 day marker could be very useful. If they were actually tracking the moon, you'd think it would be 29 units even though a lunar month can vary between about 29.1 and 29.9 days. Then again, 28 notches on a stick means 29 sections, so...?

It's interesting that a woman's menstrual cycles is approx 28.1 days on average, with a standard deviation of 3.95 days. That means 28 days is a lot closer to the average menstrual cycle than the average lunar month. But, the standard deviation is a lot greater.

[–] ChexMax -4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Other than tides, why do you need to know when the next full moon is? And can't you just look at the moon and see how close it is waning to the full moon?

Not saying the calendar is definitely a woman's, but wanting to know when you're going to start leaking blood onto everything near you seems like a good reason to track a period.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

I mean you can look at the moon to get a general sense, but if you want to be more precise then I’d use the new moon as the start and count the days until the next new moon.

As far as why, I mean the seasons generally follow the lunar cycle so it would be a way to count the seasons and time and plan and do literally anything you’d need to do that you’d track time for.

I bet you’d even want to track your menstrual cycle, I just wouldn’t limit it to that.

I think the real “issue” with the OP statement and what my response is meant to say is that it doesn’t have to be either or.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So, since Islam uses the lunar calendar, you're telling me that the reason why they use it is to track menstruations?

Good to know they are attentive to their women's needs

[–] ChexMax 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm saying you don't need to make marks on a bone to track the lunar cycle.. you just look up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

The same way Arab countries don't need a calendar, they just look up