nikhil.io

Child of divorce, professional who dealt with divorcing couples for many years, Adult who went through a divorce, remarried and volunteer counseling/mentoring for couples today.

Here are the most common mistakes I’ve seen (my own as well as collectively) in the failed and struggling marriages I’ve seen:

• One or both spouses have unresolved childhood baggage issues that will rear its head in their adult relationships. Examples of these include (but not limited to) physical or emotional abuse/neglect in the home; sexual abuse; one or both parents had substance abuse/addiction issues; one or both partners came from a divorced or single parent household. Among the many reasons why this is such a significant factor is if you grow up in a dysfunctional environment, you have no idea how dysfunctional and unhealthy it really is. To you, its normal, it is all you’ve ever known. So if Mom and Dad resolved conflict by getting drunk, yelling at each other and then not speaking for days, guess what you have a chance of modeling as an adult in your own relationships?

• Understanding what “marriage as a priority” really means. When you get married, your marriage has to be the main priority in your life. Not your career, not your spouse (i.e. don’t put them on a pedestal), not your kids, not your hobbies or your personal fitness. The fact is, when you get married, you no longer get to call all of the shots. Gotten used to staying up all night playing XBOX with your boys on weekends? Not going to work in a marriage for an extended period of time. You’re going to have to accept the fact that if you want to have a healthy marriage, compromise is your new word of the day. In some cases you may have to give things up entirely, or learn to say “no for now.” While this often tends to be more of a struggle for men, women can also struggle with this issue. I’m not saying that getting married means giving up you completely, or kiss all of your favorite activities goodbye. What I am saying is, if you want your marriage to be healthy, you now have someone else in your life who gets an equal (not dominant–equal) say in how you spend your free time.

• Poor communication skills. A shockingly high number of adults lack basic healthy communication skills and conflict resolution skills. Its heart breaking to have conversations with struggling couples who won’t speak to each other with a kind word for any reason. Both spouses should feel that their marriage is the one safe place in the world for each other. Unfortunately, in many instances, it is the last place a spouse can go for emotional safety. If you don’t feel your partner is your first friend, your best friend, your most trusted friend, then something is broken in your communications with each other.

• Vastly different backgrounds. Don’t get me wrong. Anyone can be successfully married to someone else if both people are committed to it and willing to work on it. But most of the time, that’s just not the case. Societal/familial pressures are real, and it is important to assess them if you find yourself in a relationship that is impacted by them. Are you dating a trust fund baby/very wealthy child and you are the Jack Dawson? Tread carefully. It makes a great movie, but statistically, Rose winds up marrying Cal far more often than running off with Jack, because she doesn’t want to deal with the family pressure or get cut off financially. Sorry, that’s reality, not the movies.

• Similar to different backgrounds, different motivations in life. Do you know what your partner wants out of life? Do they aspire to be an artist who welds clown sculptures out of mufflers? That’s great, but will it support the two of you, and if it won’t, will you be okay supporting them while they’re making Pennywise the Dual Exhaust Killer? Do they want to be a stay at home parent? Are you okay being the sole breadwinner? What if it is the reverse?

• One. Union. Combined. Together. This notion is one that I see a lot of guys–especially high wage earners who are the sole income for the family–stumble over. Whether you are religious or not, the fact is when you get married you are no longer two individuals. You’re one. The law sees you that way, the tax code (at least in the US) sees you that way, and society sees you that way. There is no such thing as “mine and yours” in a marriage. There is only “ours.” The faster you get that concept nailed down, the better off you’ll be. I’ve seen many marriages collapse just over this issue alone.

• Marriage is not an event, its a journey. So many couples stop trying to pursue each other after the wedding day. Guys and girls do this. Stereotypically/historically, men tend to focus on their careers/making money; women tend to focus on raising the children and/or managing the household. (I realize not in every situation) Both spouses stop taking time to compliment each other, appreciate each other, go out on dates, weekend getaways, or generally just spending time chasing after each other. They take each other for granted and begin to drift apart. “We just fell out of love” is one of the most common phrases I hear in couples struggling, and the sad thing is, its one of the easiest traps to avoid.

• Friends and family around the marriage. This is especially hard for people who come from dysfunctional families. When you get married, your new spouse automatically gets moved to the front of the line. In front of your parents, siblings, lifelong besties, etc. They’re great to have in your life, but all of them have to take a distant back seat to your new spouse. If you’re a guy who has had a doting mother all your life and she’s told you what to do, who to marry, where to go to college, etc, you have a tough job ahead of you. The Monster-In-Law stereotype exists for a reason. If your new wife turns pale when your Mom’s number pops up on your cellphone, you need to talk to your wife and find out what boundaries she’d like to have installed. If you are Daddy’s little girl and nobody has ever been good enough in your Dad’s eyes, its time for you to tell Dad that you’re so grateful for his love and support, but Jim is more than good enough in your eyes, so you need him to be in his eyes, too. And sadly, if you have friends or family members who are toxic to you or your marriage, you may be forced to make a very difficult decision in your life. Anyone who sits around bitching about how much they hate their life, their spouse, their kids or how you’re going to eventually feel the same way about yours–put distance between you as fast as you possibly can. We tend to adopt the attitudes of the company we keep. So if you spend all your time with negative people…guess where you’re going to be mentally?

• Date to establish trust. Time is actually your friend, not your enemy. Do not ignore ANY red flag you see in a relationship. Examine it for what it is, then determine if it is something you can work through with the other person, or is it something they refuse to acknowledge or deal with? If you’re dating someone who is selfish and they refuse to see it, they will not magically become unselfish because you were kind enough to marry them. Red Flags ignored in dating will become the rocks upon which your marriage boat smashes in the coming storms. If there are multiple red flags and they won’t talk to you about any of them, walk away. It doesn’t matter if you’ve already moved in, share the bank account, the dog, and a car. Get out now. If they’re not willing to work on things that impact the security of a relationship today, you can count on them not working on them after you get married.

Marriage is not easy. It requires a lot of work sometimes, even when you are both on the same page, have great communication, great sex (which will happen very easily if the rest of the relationship is healthy by the way) and great chemistry. People get sick, they get laid off, their family members die, children get sick, get hurt in accidents, friends have affairs, get divorced…life is challenging and it impacts our relationships, sometimes in ways we’re not expecting or prepared for. If you’re not willing to value your marriage above everything else in your life, its going to be really hard for it to survive the day in and day out challenges of living.

I’ll try and cover a few of your specific points, starting with the fact Apocalypto did not intend to portray the Aztecs, but the Maya. The film does (poorly) mash in some aspects of Aztec sacrifice, if only to further its goal of being colonialist apologia and torture porn. Fortunately, the sheer awfulness of the movie makes it a good jumping off point to talk about actual practices of sacrifice.

To start with, there were slaves in the Aztec world and a portion of them did come from slave raids. The whole notion of actual warriors going out to get slaves for sacrifices, however, is a bit ridiculous. While slaves would sometimes be used for sacrifices in particular circumstances, the majority of sacrifices stemmed from war captives. Taking a captive was considered a rite of passage for a young warrior and a requirement for military and social advancement. Note, however, that simply snatching up some schmuck from a podunk village was not a standard practice; the expectation was taking a captive in battle. Also, later in the Imperial phase of the Aztecs, certain opponents became so little regarded that even taking several of them in battle earned little more than a shrug, as this passage from Sahagun illustrates:

And if six, or seven, or ten Huaxtecs, or barbarians, were taken, he gained thereby no renown.

Conversely, taking captive from more formidable opponents, such as those from Atlixco and Huexotzinco (which were coincidentally in the hard-fought borderland with Tlaxcala), earned great acclaim. So the notion of Aztec warriors raiding villages too small to apparently even have maize fields does not make sense.

Once captives were taken there are some scant mentions of using cages. From the same book of Sahagun:

And there in battle was when captives were taken. When it had come to pass that they went against and conquered the city, then the captives were counted, there, in wooden cages: how many had been taken by Tenochtitlan, how many by Tlatilulco…

So using cages was a real thing, but there’s no indication they were anything but temporary measures. For instance, they were also used during the sale of slaves, or when holding prisoners during trials. Captives were not simply rounded up and kept indefinitely like cattle in pens. Instead, captives were treated, well, like slaves, to be housed by their captors until the time of their sacrifice.

Were those sarifices a public spectacle? Well, yes and no. Many of the sacrifices were public events, and some specifically so in a way that demonstrated the power of the Aztec state. Rulers and dignitaries of foreign, even enemy, nations would be invited to witness these displays as a form a intimidation.Apocalypto portrays these sorts of events as a wild bacchanal of primitives gyrating in a wild, unhinged frenzy. In fact, if we turn to sources like Duran or Sahagun, we see that even the most public and bloody ceremonies were highly regimented rituals of specific songs, dances, offerings, and adornments, each with its own meaning. There was an aspect of spectacle, but ultimately these were religious rites.

We can see the combination of somber and spectacle in accounts of the “gladiatorial” sacrifice which took place during Tlacaxipehualiztli. After weeks of preliminary rituals, captors would bring their captives to a particular calmecac, Yopico, in the Sacred Precinct. There the captor would lead his captive up to a raised platform upon which lay a large heavy stone. Tied to the stone and armed with a macuahuitl whose blades were feathers, the captive would face up to four elite warriors (and a fifth left-handed one if he managed to “defeat” the four), but would ultimately be sacrificed on that stone once he faltered.

So there’s certainly some spectacle there and the whole notion of “gladiatorial” combat evokes the Colosseum, but there’s some substantial differences. For one, there’s some dispute as to the “public-ness” of this event. Sahagun mentions no one but the priests and the warriors, which does not preclude the presence of others. Duran, meanwhile, says the “entire city was present,” although the location of the particular calmecac where the combat took place was a smaller building off in one corner of the Sacred Precinct, which present problems for mass viewing.

More importantly though, the intentions were different. Even this particular sacrifice, which was among the largest (dozens are mentioned as sacrificed over the course of a day) and the combat making it among the most dramatic, the core aim was not to provide tititallation, but serve both as a sort of graduation ceremony for warriors who had taken a captive and also a way of providing “sustenance” to the gods. On that latter part, just as important as the actual combat was the captor taking the blood of his sacrifice, collected by the priests in a bowl, and going from idol to idol having them take a “drink” from the bowl. Considering the symbolic impetus of Aztec warfare was to engage in battle in order to “feed” the gods, this act not only completed that divine onus, but the entire gladiatorial spectacle re-created the process of warfare/capture/sacrifice. This was not just bread and circuses, in other words.

Speaking of bread, Tlacaxipehualiztli accounts have direct references to the consumption of human flesh, with the captive being divided up for the home and neighborhood of his captor. Famously, the captor would decline to feast on his own captive, saying:

“Shall I perchance eat my very self?” For when he took the captive, he had said: “He is as my beloved son.” And the captive had said: “He is my beloved father.”

This passage from Sahagun does end, however, by noting that the captor might partake of someone else’s captive.

As we’ve already seen with the feeding of the gods, the notion of captives as divine sustenance was an important symbolic concept, so we can’t simply see the act of consuming a captive in nutritional (or even culinary!) terms. This was the mistake Harner made in his 1977 article, “The Ecological Basis of Aztec Sacrifice,” which Marvin Harris would proclaim as having “solv[ed] the riddle of Aztec Sacrifice” in his book published the same year, Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures. Actually, Harner made a number of mistakes, but the strict cultural materialist approach they used is notable for excluding any cultural explanations of societal behaviors in favor of ecological causes. So already we have to understand that Harner and Harris were using a flawed approach to Aztec sacrifice.

The other thing we have to understand is that Harner was not a Mesoamericanist and did not have a thorough understanding of the society he was proclaiming to explain. If he did have a deeper understanding he might not have made so many glaring errors in his hypothesis. To briefly sum up his position, Harner believed Aztec society was uniquely protein deficient, seeing as how it lacked the large domesticated animals of Afro-Eurasia, which was made up of empires “based on economies with domesticated herbivores providing meat or milk.” In response to this, the Aztecs turned to preying on their neighbors to meet this dietary need. Harris expands on this view and tries to blunt criticism of how many sacrifices would have been needed to feed the vast population of the Aztecs, by positing that even if only the elites were engaging in cannibalism, that would be enough to sustain this “cannibal empire.”

Unfortunately for Harner and Harris, the foundation of their argument was flawed, because they were ultimately viewing the Aztecs through an ethnocentric lens. They focus, almost exclusively, on dogs and turkeys as sources of protein, with lesser mentions of waterfowl, fish, and wild game like deer and rabbits. Both disparage the use of tecuitlatl, the spirulina algae that was collected form the lake and pressed into cake, which is like disparaging McDonalds – it may be a food of subsistence for some, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t eaten by peasant and presidents alike. Indeed, their approach basically glosses over the innumerable foodstuffs eaten in Mesoamerica that are strange to the Western palate. Even as Harner quotes Cook and Borah saying “just about everything edible was eaten,” he refocuses on dogs, turkeys, and men.

Ortiz de Montellano, in his 1978 article, “Aztec Cannibalism: An Ecological Necessity?” to Harner to task by listing all of the various other protein sources in the Aztec diet which are attested to in the literature, which included iguanas, snakes, frogs, and salamanders, as well as various insects and insect larva. He further notes that Harner ignores the traditional Aztec staples like amaranth and chia, the former of which is a grain high in protein and the latter a seed with good protein and fat content. The fat content is key, as Harner and Harris see this as an important key to understanding Aztec cannibalism: it wasn’t just protein deficiency, but also fat deficiency. This ignores not only chia, but also crops like avocados. Ortiz de Montellano further notes that Harner does not address the fact that the core Aztec cities were the recipient of tribute bringing innumerable bushels of maize, amaranth, and chia to the populace, before noting that humans are actually a very inefficient source of protein and that the number of sacrifices required simply do not add up.

Increasing the number of sacrifices per annum is thus vital to Harner and Harris. Unfortunately, they rely on some dodgy numbers regarding Aztec sacrifice. Harner starts by taking an estimate from Cook of 15K sacrifices per year throughout the Aztec empire, on the basis of a population of 2M. He then revises this number upward, citing personal communication with Cook. The end result is Harner posits 250K sacrifices a year in a population of 25M. The problem is that we have no reason to think that an increase in population would lead to a proportional increase in sacrifices, yet this is essential to Harner’s idea of sacrifice as ecologically driven. Under his cultural materialist model where sacrifice is intrinsically tied to the dietary needs of the population, they must be proportional, but he is essentially pulling numbers from nowhere.

The problem is that our actual reports of captives taken do not support those numbers, though they are scanty and far between. Adding up the numbers of sacrifices mention by Sahagun in his book on ceremonies likewise does not add up to the numbers Harner needs, but we can likewise not rule out additional sacrifices going unmentioned. The truth is we do not have good numbers for how many people were sacrificed. We do not, however, have any reason to believe that the numbers of sacrifices in Tenochtitlan, which was the center of an unprecedented religious focus on sacrifice, would be replicated throughout other regions of Mesoamerica, even those areas subject to the Aztecs. As Brumfiel points out in her chapter “Figurines and the Aztec State: Testing the Effectiveness of Ideological Domination,” outside of the central Aztec cities, we see a markedly different archaeological profile of religious figures, which she suggests points towards a highly militaristic and sacrifice-driven state cult of war gods, which gave way to a more traditional model of agricultural deities and less sacrifice-focused practices in the countryside.

The end result is that we have no reason to accept Harner’s proposition that 1% of the total population of Mesoamerica was sacrificed every year, particularly since the late Postclassic is marked by a substantial increase in population as the same time he and Harris are proposing a life of cannibalistic subsistence. The Aztecs certainly focused on and increased the rate and importance of human sacrifice beyond what had been previously seen in Mesoamerica. None of the actual ecological or dietary data suggest their society needed to rely on cannibalism, and the focus on that aspect of their society tends to overlook other ways in which the Aztecs were a highly organized and functional pre-modern agricultural society, whose population boomed and whose marketplaces were stocked with non-people foodstuffs.

Aztec sacrifice was a complicated and, to the modern Western view, bizarre practice, but it was not the sole aspect of Aztec society. It was, however, neither as alien to practices found in Afro-Eurasia, nor a perfect analogy to them. It wasn’t sadists fattening up captives in cages; the practice had a logic to it. Aztec sacrificed evolved from a general pattern of sacrifice in Mesoamerica going back millennia, and the religious and social aspects of Aztec sacrifice were adapted to the realities of their time.

And here’s our man, Shankar Kurhade, modeling my 2021 strategy given how confident I am in my state’s government fucking up vaccine distribution.

Gone is the gimmicky TouchBar, gone are the four USB-C ports that forced power users to carry a suitcase full of dongles. In their place we get a cornucopia of developer-friendly ports: two USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2 ports, a redesigned power connector, and a long-awaited HDMI port.

Photographers will rejoice at the surprising and welcome addition of an SDXC card reader, a sign that Apple might be thinking seriously about photography.

The new MagSafe connector is a bit of Apple design genius. The charging cord stays seated securely, but pops right off if you yank on it. No more worries about destroying your $2k laptop just by accidentally kicking a cord.

😭

A fascinating peek into the (big, lucrative) world of competitive gaming and how an humble champion’s unorthodox, world-class skills developed in a vacuum in a country not known for its gaming scene.

From a Reddit thread on the subject.

With as diverse of a sound as trip hop can have, I wanted to know what everyone here thought would be the one song they would pick if someone asked them “What’s trip hop?”

User submissions:

• “Glory Box” by Portishead
• “Teardrop” by Massive Attack
• “Roads” by Portishead
• “Angel” by Massive Attack
• “Destiny” by Zero 7
• “Christiansands” by Tricky
• “Safe From Harm” - Massive Attack
• “Sweet Shadows” - Daughter Darling
• “Midnight in a Perfect World” - DJ Shadow
• “Kemuri” - DJ Krush
• “Only You” - Portishead
• “Inhaler” - Hooverphonic
• “2 Wicky” - Hooverphonic
• “Hell Is Round the Corner” - Tricky
• “Blindfold” - Morcheeba
• “So Few Words” - Archive
• “What Does Your Soul Look Like” - DJ Shadow
• “Blind My Mind” - Flunk
• “Karmacoma” - Massive Attack
• “Autorock” - Mogwai
• “Amerimacka” - Thievery Corporation
• “Eurochild” - Massive Attack
• “Underwater Love” - Smoke City

Pictures taken 100 years apart. The image at the bottom is 18 years old.

I’m sure we can solve this with privatization, deregulation, lowering taxes on the rich, and letting an unfettered Free Market “figure it out” ♥️

This is what it takes to read a bloody article with a PiHole to block ads. I don’t even want to get started on the AMP nonsense. First, a focus-stealing popup asking if you’d like to subscribe to some bullshit.

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followed by another popup asking you’d subscribe to more bullshit.

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after which you can finally see what you came for… which helpfully occupies the bottom 20% of the viewport 💯

See also: Every Website in 2020. Nothing will change.

by @raminnazer

Artist unknown

They use a pantograph to etch things out, after which they ‘tampograph’ the logo (at 1:45.)

When you’re following a bunch of feeds, it’s easy to forget that the web is the greatest library in the history of the world—and that a good library doesn’t just have a rack of newspapers, it has a vast collection of books and archives: the stacks.

These are stories that get reposted a lot. Many of them truly are classics.

As a former sysadmin (but no expert on security): This should be read and re-read. After which one should take a few days and read it again before saying anything on the subject.

Here he is on Instagram.

First came by this remarkable generation of the DOOM guy’s face:

And here are Alexander, Caesar, Zuck, and Jesus.

More of his work on Instagram.

That’s from 2010. Here’s the 2020 revision.

I cannot imagine the decades of engineering that went into realizing this. “Spot” the Robot Dog doing her ballet was 💯 Bravo, Boston Dynamics for taking us that much closer to (what, for now, looks like a fun) Singularity.

Bit pricey but appears to generate lovely layouts. Via Ash Furrow’s photography site.

Serigraph for sale at the Davidson Galleries (it’s $550.)

Here’s some further examination by Ricky Gervais and crew. Features Sir Ian McKellen and Daniel Radcliffe.

Here’s some more of his art and his Facebook page. Not sure if these are licensed, but you can buy some prints off Indian Amazon.

“Our hip product designers all agree: Adding significant noise via tiny profile pictures allows our users to tell, at a glance, who is online and who isn’t.”

“And no, you cannot opt out. Because fuck you. What’re your options? MatterMost? 🖕😂🖕”

Learn C and build a basic Lisp #VALUE 😍

“Am I truly controlling anything?” (cached)

Awesome.

Of course. Well, the transaction was in person and in cash (of course.)

It was just a little bag of weed sold through an Arpanet account in Stanford’s artificial intelligence lab in 1972. It’s not clear who was in on the sale aside from the students, but despite the underhanded nature of the deal, anyone with knowledge of the sale who wasn’t a square must have been excited about the implications of this early use of the Internet.

As the article clarifies:

The first online sale that we’d recognize as such today, complete with credit card information and the United States Postal Service, wasn’t until 1994. On August 11 that year, Dan Kohn sold a copy of the Sting album Ten Summoner’s Tales to a man in Philadelphia for $12.48 plus shipping, paid via encrypted credit card. Kohn later bragged, “Even if the N.S.A. was listening in, they couldn’t get his credit card number.”

(cached)

Watched with CK. The plot doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. But very, very entertaining. Anyone who claims to understand what’s going on after the first 32 viewings is a damned liar. A perfect one-line review:

Excellent soundtrack by Ludwig Göransson (first came by his work when watching The Mandalorian and just knew he was something special.)

Also the Sator Square for a standard dose of Nolan apophenia¹. See also: The pitch meeting.

Using a Bloopy Thing to print on all sorts of materials is called “Pad Printing” or tampography. Here’s a Big Bloopy Thing printing a very beautiful pattern onto a bowl (and here’s two of them going at the same time.)

You can use the same technique on all sorts of things: plastic bins, pens, keychains, golf balls, pills. The silicone/bloop conforms to the shape of the object to print on rather easily.

Quality Logo Products has a quick explanation:

Entertaining. Thought the alternate ending would’ve been more likely (the highly-trained armchair psychoanalyst that I am 😆)

😭

Clever girl 🐘 ♥️

I wish they would blare portions of Tom Cruise’s COVID meltdown at all grocery stores in my lovely state. Someone on /r/desmoines posted an anti-masker patriot at our Costco who could use this message.

I’m on the phone with every f–king studio at night, insurance companies, producers, and they’re looking at us and using us to make their movies. We are creating thousands of jobs you motherf–kers.

I don’t ever want to see it again, ever! And if you don’t do it you’re fired, if I see you do it again you’re f–king gone. And if anyone in this crew does it – that’s it, and you too and you too. And you, don’t you ever f–king do it again.

That’s it! No apologies. You can tell it to the people that are losing their f-ing homes because our industry is shut down. It’s not going to put food on their table or pay for their college education.

That’s what I sleep with every night. The future of this f–king industry! So I’m sorry I am beyond your apologies. I have told you and now I want it and if you don’t do it you’re out. We are not shutting this f–king movie down! Is it understood?

If I see it again you’re f–king gone — and you are — so you’re going to cost him his job, if I see it on the set you’re gone and you’re gone.

That’s it. Am I clear?

Do you understand what I want? Do you understand the responsibility that you have? Because I will deal with your reason. And if you can’t be reasonable and I can’t deal with your logic, you’re fired. That’s it. That is it.

I trust you guys to be here. That’s it. That’s it guys. Have a little think about it. . . [inaudible].

That’s what I think of Universal and Paramount. Warner Brothers. Movies are going because of us. If we shut down it’s going to cost people f–king jobs, their home, their family. That’s what’s happening.

All the way down the line. And I care about you guys, but if you’re not going to help me you’re gone. OK? Do you see that stick? How many meters is that?

When people are standing around a f–king computer and hanging out around here, what are you doing? And if they don’t comply then send their names to Matt Spooner. That’s it.

I must have watched this 14,221 times. A parody of this (real) miniseries. There’s a Part III too.

Via PLG.

Had to cache it because this is just lovely stuff. Pretty sure I had a mini-blackout when I read the Trainspotting part 💯

♥️🐙♥️

Watched because Denzel and Revenge. Not sure why I bothered finishing it. Absolutely awful. The cinematographer appears to have borrowed the ghastly verdigris-like palette from this terribly photoshopped poster, and keeps twitching the camera with the giddiness of a raver who’s taken two of them Mitsubishi pills that were in vogue at the time.

Dakota Fanning is the only other reason to endure this. She was only ten in 2004 but acted like she’d been at it for at least three decades.

Bilal Göregen (YouTube, Instagram) is the Turkish street musician in my favorite video of 2020.

He sounds like a very positive, gracious, and sweet human being on this KnowYourMeme interview¹ which features this delightful nugget (emphasis mine):

Q: How has the response been from your previous fans and followers that were around before the meme? Also, have you received any interesting or wholesome messages from fans since your meme went viral that you can share with us?

A: When I read the comments section after my video went viral, I see that my Turkish followers still do not understand the meme, and they ask questions like, “Is the channel stolen? Why are there so many foreigners here? Where are the Turks?”

Assorted Bilal things: Here’s a ten-hour version of his viral hit. And here’s him making a lot of Indian people very happy. And lest I forget, this is the original Finnish folk song he’s covering:

Watched with LD. Reminded me of “Hereditary” (it’s a slow burn) but with The Evil being this chimera of financial insolvency, really bad trust issues, childhood trauma, and severe affluenza. Jude Law was perfect, but Carrie Coon was so fucking good as the beleagured yet passively complicit partner and mostly grieving person. The scene shot from the stable facing the manor was genius. Sean Durkin (writer and director) stuck the landing perfectly. Lovely stuff.