@jesusmargar @VeryBadLlama

TBH ... I read the OP as a joke.

Also TBH, and I do *not* think that you intended it this way, I first read your reply as suggesting that we have child care to protect children ... from their parents. Which, as you might understand, I thought was a much worse take.

Perhaps, and I'm just suggesting an idea, there are many and varied reasons for having publicly funded childcare? We can consider the value from any one of: personal, developmental, economic and social-justice perspectives, and they can all be valid.

@danilic

For you, or them?

just, you know, clarifying.😀

@TheSkeptic

From that article: "Although AI will cause job losses, it will also create jobs elsewhere."

The article doesn't say how many on each side of that transaction. Nor what will happen to people who are not able to transition to the new jobs.

Nor does it discuss the impact on wages across an economy if AI can do many of the jobs within that economy at much lower cost.

I remain ... wary.

@peppersnap
Sometimes ... 1.

@PhoenixMe
At this point, I'd be glad to see some window dressing.

@NFG
Oh well, at least we know it's eating well. 👍

@FactFreeAustralia
sometimes I think that you just make this stuff up!
😀

@chris
Sorry to differ, but I do not believe that there is anything of the artist transferred into their work, in any physical or metaphysical way. I think it is an emotional reaction that the viewer/listener/etc has, inspired in part by the knowledge that 'a person did this'. And it declines if we later discover the artist was, in some other respect, despicable.

If it was some physical trace of the artist, then it wouldn't change when I found out about some dark part of their character afterwards.

Consider also a performance of music by a great composer long after they are dead. There is no physical connection for them to inhabit. But when it became commonly known that Wagner was perhaps (I am not convinced) sympathetic to the Nazi cause ... performances of his works dropped off. The same work, different value.

Recent thinking about an old 'thought experiment' ...

If we could create an absolutely identical copy, prefectly identical right down to the sub-atomic level, of a famous artwork, say the Mona Lisa, would it have the same value?

My initial answer to this was "no", but I struggled to answer 'why?'. Recently I formulated an answer to why: "Because Leonardo Da Vinci, in the example, never touched the copy".

Then I realised that this has some interesting implications. First, that the history is part of the value, and this is not just about antiquity. We feel some sort of connection across time back to the artist.

Secondly, it addresses why we struggle with the value of an artwork (in any genre) when we later discover that the artist has some very bad skeletons in their closet. (Not applicable to Leonardo, as far as I know). So when a popular arts-person (think Woody Allen, Rolf Harris, Mel Gibson, et al ) faces accusations, then suddenly their previously acclaimed work is usually also consigned to ignominy. It's because we somehow feel an intrinsic link between the value of the work and the person of the artist.

I may not be breaking any new ground here, but it was an "a ha!" moment for me.

#art #philosophy #psychology

@NFG
Is there some kind of thread tangled around the left (viewers right) foot?

Anyway, well done you!

@Geekwithfamily
The mist? Perhaps you mean the most mist? Or the most moist mist. You missed the most moist mist. I mean you must have missed the most moist mist.

mmm, I'll stop now. 😀

@ProfessorChook
I'm thinking a billionaire with a fiver would phone home and say "get me the @%$# out of here!". So yep, the OP has some serious licking going on there.

@BlindGordon
I certainly wont contest that Sam may have briefly worn the ring. I thought he just took it from Frodo and put it around his own neck, on the chain. (Which I would not class as 'wearing' it.) But it's been well over a decade since I saw the movies, and 3 decades since I read the books, so no clear memory of it.

I recall reading somewhere that Tolkien once said that Sam and Frodo's relationship was supposed to be like that between an Army officer and his batman, so yes, quite a bit of class based gap there. I have sometimes thought that it was bit suppressed-homo-erotic, but I've never really thought Tolkien intended that, it's just a modern day reading-between-the-lines.

I read the books over and over as a young teenager, (may have had a small crush on Arwen) and watched the DVDs several times when they came out. Unlike some purists I think Jackson did a great job bringing it to screen.

welp, thanks for the chat!

@RedFaster
I have no idea how you got from my post to your reply.

And I'm really not about to sit through a 17 minute Brand rant to find out.

Peace. Out.

@BlindGordon

Indeed, I quite agree and have rolled my eyes at this before.

Then sometimes I think ... why did Tolkien do this?

Did he just screw up and write a pissweak lead protaganist, to pass a wet afternoon when the pub was shut?

Or, just maybe, was there some point, some moral lesson about not having to be a big, violent, macho, beefslab in order to get things done? Could Frodo's seeming lack of power and ability be an allegory?

Did Tolkien possibly sit through a sermon on Luke 9:48 and decide to draw Frodo as child-like? (I have no idea of JRR's religious inclinations or attendance, I'm just making stuff up.)

Anyway, at the end of the day, if somebody doesn't like LOTR because in that reader's view one of the protagonists has a 'flaw', then thinking about this stuff wont, I'm pretty sure, change that opinion

Cheers.

(PS: Sam, from memory, briefly carried the ring, but never wore it. So the extent of his immunity to its influence, however admirable, is not really explored.)
#tolkien

@ArrestJK

I know, it was just a joke. In retrospect, I should have put a smiley on it. The comment ... a smiley on the comment!

Nice call on "other than the dick pictured". 😀

(Also ... bonus points for the obscure image of Nero ... from "Storia d'Italia. Vol.1" by Paolo Giudici. circa 1929.)

@JackTheCat
@BlindGordon

Alternatively, the Ring 'wants' to be returned to Sauron, and applies psychic (so to speak) pressure on Frodo to put it on, which will make it (and Frodo) visible to the nazgul so they can retrieve and return it to Sauron. Frodo is thus not acting on his own violition and no character flaw is in play.

IIRC Gandalf says, somewhere earlier, that the Ring "wants to be found". That might be a clue?

Or not.