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Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), Time Defending Truth against the Attacks of Envy and Discord (1641)



Seeing Eris's pose here, I couldn't help it:

(welp, half of these are now "content not viewable in my region" because Keir Starmer broke the internet)

...how did I miss this one?


The Goddess of Discord in the Garden of the Hesperides by JMW Turner, 1806. Yes, that Turner. Eris is the lady in red and white, haggling with a nymph for a suitably controversial apple. Also note the useless guard dragon on the clifftop in the background, which was supposed to keep Her out but has fallen asleep on the job.

Ooh, another one! From the 15th-century French manuscript Épître d'Othéa:


This one reminds me of Quentin Blake's illustrations of Roald Dahl's stories.

I stumbled upon a couple more Erises yesterday via La Fontaine's Fables, which is a 17th-century collection of cloying French morality poems. One of the poems, number XX, features Eris (Discord), in what seems to be an "Are the straights OK?" type anecdote where Eris, cast out of Olympus, finds permanent refuge in the temple of Hymen, god of marriage, because hahahaha the old ball and chain am I right??

Anyway, this has been published in at least two illustrated editions: once in French in 1868, illustrated by JJ Grandville (1803-1847) (I'm not sure how those dates add up)...


Eris guides a happy couple through some consensual activity

...and once in an 1886 English translation by Walter Thornbury, illustrated by Gustave Doré (1832-1883) (what is it with these guys and dead illustrators?)


Meh.

In 1879, Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) was commissioned to create painted illustrations of the Fables, and his Eris (La Discorde, 1880) is one of the more flattering pre-Malaclyptic images.

Hey, thanks! I'm a very sporadic logger-onner and although I think I did post all the images I listed, a bunch of them seem to have disappeared, maybe because imgur's Prude-O-Matic software didn't like all the nudity (fucking Greek perverts). Also I nuked my twitter account (fucking Elon) so anything hotlinked from there has gone. I think I still have the images, so I'll see if I can upload them elsewhere and edit the original post. If I haven't done that by, say, 2026, feel free to prod me.

UPDATE: I believe that's fixed! Most of the cutout "zoom-ins" on Eris herself are gone, because I didn't have them to hand. Maybe I'll get around to re-adding them, maybe not.

It just gets better and better.

A grand total of 11 Labour MPs voted not to fuck the Union over this.

Three members of the Scottish National Party, whose flagship policy (which I support) is to fuck the union—and one from Alba, an anti-"woke" pro-union-fucking party that splintered from the SNP along with its creepy former leader (both of their two MPs were elected as SNP candidates and later defected)—abstained. Turns out when it came to choosing between defending a direct attack on Scottish autonomy and fucking over trans people, they reached straight for the union jack bunting.

There is a lot of chatter from folks convinced this means Scotland will walk away easily.

As a chattering Scottish independence supporting person, sadly, I don't think that silver lining is there (and wouldn't justify legitimising transphobia if it was.) All of the trans people I know in Scotland, and most of the cis queer people, are already vocally pro-independence; maybe if there were any trans unionists, they'll switch sides, but I doubt there are enough to make a dent. The next independence campaign will be able to point to this as a good example of Westminster undermining our autonomy when we do something they don't like, but people who care about that are already on side. And the next anti-independence campaign will have a nice supply of moral panic to dish out with the "better together" crap.

And that's if we get another shot at independence at all, which both the Tories and Starmer's Labour have made clear they've no intention of "letting" us have, despite the Scottish parliament having a pro-independence majority (SNP and the Scottish Greens) and several recent polls showing majority public support for independence. And Brexit has made a prospective independent Scotland even more prospectively fucked from the get-go (which the same politicians who claimed and still claim Brexit is the best thing since World War II will use as an anti-indy talking point.)

I'm sorry this is happening, and I'm sorry trans right are being used as collateral. Hope you're as safe as possible.

How would the rest of us be able to see her, or is he imagining us too? Has he gone total brain-in-a-vat?

(EDIT: this was about Musk pretending Grimes wasn't real, I seem to have fucked up replying/quoting, or imagined I have)

further ETA: Would this make her divorcing him his psyche rebelling against itself, like the bit in Red Dwarf where they play the Better Than Life total immersion game and Rimmer ends up getting them all buried in sand and eaten by ants because he can't imagine a world in which anyone likes him

I didn't think of those 25 as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board

At least 9 of them must have been on his own side, then

If you want to reach new people, video is one of the easiest ways to do it, people love the meaty vlog style vids, or even shorter ones for generation ADD.

I have ADHD (and I wish it was a "generation". I might have got diagnosed before age 40) and I bloody hate the tendency for everything to be videos now, especially when I'm looking for a how-to for some quick thing—household fixes, how to do something or other in Photoshop, whatever. Text is skippable, skimmable, reread-particular-bits-without-fiddling-about-able, forget-and-refer-back-to-while-you're-doing-the-thing-able. I don't want to sit still through a 6-minute video and then forget it all immediately, when I could have found and read the relevant bit in 2.

This probably doesn't apply to less immediate and specific stuff like a potential BIP vid though. I liked scribbly's video script in the other thread, and I can see how that being a video could add things that aren't there in the text alone.

Apparently the previous record is 133 ballots over two months, in 1855. Let's see if they can smash that.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64178794

They eventually changed the candidate and agreed to elect a speaker by plurality, but that seems to have been a one-time thing.

(multiple edits: I found that weird, because presumably (i) they'd have needed a majority to agree to accept the plurality ruling, and (ii) the majority wouldn't have agreed to accept the plurality ruling without knowing "their" guy would win a plurality; so how could it work unless there was already a candidate with majority support? The reason seems to be that the cause of the no-majority problem that year was a huge number of third-party congressfolk, following the splintering of the Whig party.)

Please, no more winning

It then took a month to get my energy levels back to approaching normal. I am fairly certain it was Covid, despite the test coming back negative.

There are definitely false negatives. I know several people who've recently had a horribly bad cold that totally wasn't covid because an LFT was negative.

My partner and I both got it back in March or April 2020, shortly after it officially came to the UK. There weren't any vaccines or self tests. Masks were in short supply, and it wasn't yet clear if it was a good idea to buy them or to leave them so there'd be enough left for the nurses. I got sent to a hospital and made to wait in a chalk square outside, then someone in head-to-toe PPE asked me some questions and watched my breathing, without any physical contact. It's weird to remember it being taken that seriously. They said I'd probably had it and we should both isolate for a week. I don't remember much from that week except being absolutely fucking knackered. I'm also pretty sure it made me less mentally sharp for months. No fun.

We're both up to three or four jabs now, I've lost count.

[ARTICLES OF CANONIZATION]

I found out this guy a while ago and he seems like a candidate for Discordian sainthood. A Scots-born officer in the British, Portuguese and Venezuelan armies who later made up a country and made a living selling nonexistent land to would-be colonisers.

The formal Articles of Canonization is attached (this is a PDF with the same text as the rest of this post, but some slightly fancy formatting and a picture of MacGregor.)

-----

ARTICLES OF CANONIZATION

I. Pontifical Bullshit

By the Power invested in Us as Supreme Pope of Eris, We hereby nominate Gregor MacGregor (1786–1845), variously styled as Baronet, General, Colonel, Knight of the Order of Christ, and Cazique of Poyais; military officer, explorer, adventurer, turncoat and confidence trickster (hereafter "the Candidate", "Gregor", or "this guy") for Canonization to the rank of Discordian Saint (Second Class), Order of Quixote.

Other Supreme Popes of Eris are free to ratify, amend, redefine or ignore these Articles by the power invested in them.

II. Life of the Candidate

A great-nephew of Scots rebel leader Rob Roy, born in Stirlingshire to a disfavoured clan and unimaginative parents, the Candidate joined the British Army at age 16, conceivably with the intent of sowing chaos within the imperialist ranks in vengeance for his own family's mistreatment at British hands.

He fought, sweet-talked and/or bribed his way to the rank of Captain; thereafter, he repeatedly abandoned his posts and turned coats, allying over the course of his career with several European powers fighting over the right to pretend bits of South America belonged to them, and causing chaos which set back the colonisation of the continent by an unknown number of years. He tried exploring, but didn't find anything. He eventually found himself ingratiated with Simon Bolivar and became a general in the revolutionary army of Venezuela.

In 1820, "King" George Frederic Augustus I of Miskita, a politically powerless puppet of the British Empire, "granted" the Candidate an area of uncultivatable land on the Mosquito Coast. Gregor dubbed this area "the Poyais" and himself its "cazique", a word which he claimed translated as "prince". Gregor MacGregor sailed back to Britain.

The Cazique of Poyais appeared in London in 1821, handing out neat pamphlets which documented the Poyais as a wondrous land of exploitable forest, rolling pastures, rivers containing literal gold balls, and animals that practically threw themselves in front of your hunting rifle. Under his prudent caziquing, the Poyais now had a flourishing capital city, a functioning government, and its own currency, of which he carried several rolls of banknotes and was happy to trade for pounds or dollars at a very generous exchange rate. The Cazique attended high society dinners and balls, and made a living for many years selling nonexistent land and government bonds in Poyais to gullible would-be colonisers.

("Real" explorers did the same thing, of course; Gregor just skipped over the step of actually stealing a bunch of land beforehand.)

Two ships set sail for Poyais carrying eager colonists. About a quarter of them made it back to London. Some were after Gregor's blood. Others defended him to the end, insisting that the reason they found an uncultivatable swamp where the Republic of Poyais should have been was the result of sabotage by jealous agents of the Spanish or Portuguese.

The authorities eventually caught up with the Candidate and tried him for fraud. He prepared an elaborate and completely false 5000-word defence, and was acquitted of all charges.

The Candidate later returned to Venezuela. He died in 1845 and was buried in Caracas Cathedral, with full military honours in recognition of his service during the War of Independence, which may or may not have been accurately recorded.

III. Virtuosity

I'm not at all sure he had any. On the other hand, he probably fucked up for the bad guys more often than he did for the good guys.

IV. Miracles

As per the Ancient and Immalleable Rules Governing Canonization of Saints Which I Just Made Up, ascension to Sainthood requires evidence of at least five (5) miracles performed by the Candidate before, during or after their death. A miracle is defined as an act inexplicable by natural or scientific laws, or at least damned hard to pull off.

Miracles attributed to Candidate Gregor MacGregor include:

    I. The (briefly) successful capture of Amelia Island in 1817 by a single ship, commanded by the Candidate and carrying a few dozen men; the Spanish garrison there, which easily outgunned the invader, was so incredulous that anyone would be foolish enough to attempt to capture the island with a single ship that they assumed it must be leading a much larger force, and surrendered with no shots fired;

    II. The spontaneous creation in 1821 of an entire country, the Republic of Poyais, complete with a democratic system of government, civil service, and functioning infrastructure, in 1821;

    III. The transubstantiation of the aforesaid country, by which it assumed the spiritual nature of a well-governed republic rich in minerals and opportunity, while maintaining the outward substance of an uninhabitable malarial swamp, making it impossible to distinguish from the latter by mundane means;

    IV. The instantaneous transportation of large amounts of money into his own bank account from those of various rich British marks;

    V. The continued support of many of the aforesaid marks for the Candidate, even after they had paid him the aforesaid large amounts of money, sailed to "Poyais", found an uninhabitable swamp, and barely made it back to Europe racked by typhoid and jaguar bites.

V. Verdict

After an extensive five-minute period of pineal consultation on the merits or otherwise of the above Articles:

Congratulations! Saint Gregor MacGregor, Cazique of Poyais, is formally admitted to the Second-Most Holy Order of Second-Class Saints and the Order of Quixote, as Patron Saint of explorers, imaginary countries and confidence tricksters.

Can anyone do a quick Explain Like I'm Five And/Or Stupid for the non-Americans? I see McCarthy keeps losing the vote, but apparently that doesn't mean somebody else wins, or even that he's out of the running? Are they planning to just keep on holding votes until people change their minds out of boredom?

Is this because he said the 2020 election result was legitimate?

I should have added: I like your script, it made me think about Discordianism in ways I wasn't already, and I would definitely watch it.