Odysseus: “Its time for us to embark on our Odyssey.”
Crew: “Our what now?”
Odysseus: “A long an arduous trip named after its only survivor.”
Crew: “Oh, ok… wait a minute…”
Doctor: “You have an oedypian complex.”
Oedypus: “I have a what?”
Doctor: “You heard me, motherfucker.”
“This comment really shows you have a ZeroGravitas complex,” They said in reply, their JackbyDev complex showing plain as day.
The Achilles thing made me chuckle. And then it made me weep a bit because general education seems to be dead. I learnt about the Trojan war and attached mythology at school, doesn’t that happen anymore or is it an attention issue?
Maybe it’s just anything Greek. I remember reading a comment chain right here on Lemmy like 6 months ago, something about a thing/machine/software named Prometheus. One commenter wondered why they’d name themselves after an Alien movie.
Ouch. Prometheus himself would probably have turned around and returned the fire where it came from if he knew about that.
“I still get punished for helping those idiots thousands of years ago? Boy, that was so not worth it.”
Right!? The Alien from ‘Kablam!’ who taught Bob deserves better than that.
Deep cut lol
Yeah, after suffering so much.
Thanks for reminding me about Kablam!
That’s not how forethought works!!
I don’t think I ever covered any Greek myths in school in the UK. Like many others I did have an interest in them so I did read the Iliad and Odyssey in my school years (though I don’t remember which translations). We did cover a few Norse myths; the bit of the Prose Edda with the giant Skrymir was one that stuck with me for some reason
At the end of the day there is simply far too much history to give everyone an overview of all of the big things. There are interesting aspects of the relationship between myth, history, historiography, and archaeology that I expect Troy could be a great subject for, but I don’t think there’s anything so unique about it that it has to be a topic
Here in the U.S., we cover the Greek stuff A LOT. Like it is hammered into your head. The reason for this is, of course, the U.S. sees itself as the heir to Athenian Democracy and Roman Republicanism, so we have to really emphasize that in our conditionin… Uhhh education.
No, the reason is that the storytelling methods which we still use to this day originated in Greek drama and comedy. It’s foundational for a complete understanding of literature, theater, poetry, and indeed most all art forms. Any education without at least a significant time spent on the classics is utterly worthless.
Thank you for the sane take.
Studying Greek classics being used as an “America bad” is the biggest stretch, jfc. Not everything is a conspiracy. Take it down a notch.
That’s not an “America Bad” thing, it’s just fact? That’s the explicit reason for the entire framing of western history in American classrooms. We start with Egypt, then the hand the torch over to the Greeks, then they hand the torch to the Romans, then the Dark Ages (spoooooky), then the Renaissance, the British Empire, and then the USA. It’s one of our foundations for American Exceptionalism
Sudying Greek history and mythology merely for the sake of propaganda and as a through line to exceptionalism is not a fact, no.
I see where you’re misunderstanding here. It’s not the studying, it’s the specific western-centric framing that I’m talking about. Unless you spent a lot of time talking about the Ottomans? Or Aboriginal Dreamtime?
I don’t think your history experiences sound very typical. I didn’t have anything about the Egyptians outside of pyramids in elementary school, very little Greek mythology, and then nothing about the Romans (beyond a bit about how they had good tech like aqueducts), dark ages (maybe a little about the plague and feudalism), or Renaissance. Did you go to a school with extra history requirements or something?
Noooo, I went to, like, 6 different elementary schools to two different states, all in pretty low income areas. This was pretty consistent. But this went well beyond elementary school. When you took world history in high school, what did that look like? This was pretty consistent. And it wasn’t just history, this was all blended into English classes and stuff too
I read a lot of Greek mythology on my own and through elective classes but I think the only core course material I had on it was pretty brief. Shakespeare was pretty much every year starting in middle school but not much Greek.
Ya, like most things in the us, it’s not ubiquitous. But my experience was similar to yours. We covered it, but it wasn’t beaten into us like it was on some “we’re the heir to the Athenian dynasty” tip.
Skrymir
Oh great, those nords are now copying Skyrim and changing letters around to try and hide it!
It’s fine, you’re allowed to learn things outside of school. Something many people apparently have completely forgotten.
Here in german speaking central europe i learnt (i wont stop using it just to piss @[email protected] off lol) about the wars among the greek citystates, with references to Homer, and later on when learning Latin (which i sucked at, but that’s not so important right now) we read excerpts and learnt (hahaha roflcopter) about the mythology a lot more. There also were references to the Greek mythology in our literature classes.
Thanks for letting me live rent free in your head!
Dude i’m just chuckling when i see you pop up. We could make a running gag out of it if you are up to it - i keep using “learnt” and you keep shitting on me for using something you are not used to lol
I would even offer that everytime i use it, i send you a PM so you can comment on my incorrect usage ;-)
Alas, poor atomicbocks, they learnt that people spelt some words differently in other parts of the world. Whilst they knew what was meant, 'twixt comment and reply all their indignation swept them up. They dreamt of a world in which they telt all speakers of the tongue how they ought to have exprest it
And all but two of these examples can still be heard regularly where I am!
Aw come on, stop ribbing him ;-) I looked up what he comments normally, and he seems like a stand up guy, and i have no hard feelings at all, as long as i made my point that education does not protect against assimilating different pidgins and integrating them into your common vocabulary.
Ahahaha, fair point, I respect that civility
What’s interesting is I use both “dreamt” and “dreamed”, depending on the circumstance. I’m not completely sure when I use one over the other.
Greeks, Romans, Vikings, Victorians and WWI are all part of the UK national primary curriculum and have been for at least 30 years.
Yes, but there’s a lot to cover about them without touching any of the myths
I don’t remember learning about the Greek myths in Canada’s (Ontario) public school either. I heard about them for the first time when I studied it in a university history class. We did ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt as a young kid but I don’t believe the myths were mentioned.
Interestingly, my education regarding norse mythology was sorely lacking after school. We touched a few subjects, but without personal initiative i wouldn’t know shit about it outside of Odin, Loki, Thor and the Midgard Snake.
I took a whole Greek Lit class in high school… but that was like 20+ years ago.
fuck I’m getting old
at least you are not growing old alone, i going with ya all the way ;-)
We did too but that was a few decades ago.
…general education seems to be dead.
…learnt…
Is this intentional irony?
Edit for the down voters:
Learnt and learned are both used as the past participle and past tense of the verb to learn. Learned is the generally accepted way of spelling it in the United States and Canada, while the rest of the English-speaking world seems to prefer learnt for now. Why for now? The American English tendency toward making irregular verbs into regular ones has started influencing British English, which is why the -edvariant is being used increasingly around the world. Soon, learned might be the most common form everywhere.
We were taught that it was only okay to use T in some words that end in D, for instance build -> built.
“Learnt” is how the British spell the past tense of “learn.” It’s perfectly valid.
no, that was unintentional. But if you really like my mistakes as a non-native speaker you can print them out, stick them to the bedroom wall and masturbate to them to fuel your superiority; i aim to please.
Edit: I looked it up, it’s correct. You can still use it as a masturbatory template if you wish so.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/learnt -> past tense and past participle of learn in american english.
Learned is more commonly used than learnt.
From your own link…
But I guess reading would get in the way of being a pervert.
“Less common” is not the same as “wrong”, and it’s doubly not the same as “wrong” when it actually just means “normal in other dialects of the language”
Ain’t is in the dictionary, it’s still considered incorrect.
It’s considered informal, and in some dialects (mine included) unusual. The Grammarly link you edited into your first comment doesn’t even support a classification of “learnt” as informal, it literally just describes it as a dialect difference. You’re doing the same thing as telling a Brit that they’re spelling the word incorrectly if they write “colour”
I think you are confusing informal and irregular in this case.
Pretty sure that ain’t right.
“More commonly used” doesn’t mean that the other is incorrect, as your comment implies. Also, it’s only more common in the US, and we can’t tell where the person is from by his initial comment.
I’m from the EU and originally learnt (haha) UK English, but since i’m a net citizen, some americanisms have found their way into my vocabulary - understandable when taking US exceptionalism into account.
As a former ESL professor, I both learnt and taught: learnt, dreamt, was, became, began, taught, blew, meant, brought, thought, caught, drew, felt, fought, lit, grew etc. as part of the (very long) list of irregular English verbs in the past and participle forms.
I’m assuming your insistence is born (not borned) out of embarrassment over your initial mistake. It’s ok to not know something, admitting a mistake is a far better look.
What part of me posting the correct answer is insisting? I really don’t understand why everyone needs this to be a gotcha so please fuck off.
Sure bruv
Pretty sure you mean bröther, bruv.
Prescriptivist assholes being wrong is like the sweetest nectar
So your edit is just “I’m wrong but going to pretend I’m not”, neat
That’s not what I said.
Sure thing, keep telling yourself
When you show your buddy The Matrix for the first time and they complain that it overuses bullet time effects.
To be fair, I thought that the first time I saw it back in 1999.
(I’ve never been a fan)
Ahhh a Dark City fan.
“sleep”
I remember there was a post asking what Superman’s kryptonite was. I hope it was a joke.
Low effort satire just makes people worry lmao
I’m pretty sure that was a joke.
But they never discovered a papyrus ending in /s.
It wasn’t a joke. It was Don Dickle, resident low effort spammer
When I was a kid, we went to see a play with my class.
Someone complained that is was a cheap copy of Lord of the Rings.
It was The Hobbit.
Time loops aside, they’re not entirely wrong. LOTR is an upgraded version of The Hobbit that hit a lot harder.
I think The Hobbit was written for children while LOTR was written for adults.
This. Also, my 12 y/o is getting into fantasy stuff and has us watching The Hobbit movies (Iʻd only ever seen the first one, when it was back in theaters). All the cringey stuff in that movie totally fits with the “younger” tone of the book. The problem is stretching a kids book into a twelve-hour trilogy of films imho. (Okay, that and the completely unnecessary romantic subplot that includes a version of Legolas that might as well be a completely different character than what we see in LOTR)
The LOTR movies were good, but The Hobbit trilogy was an obvious attempt to just milk more money out of Tolkien fans.
I’m still pissed that you could see what was going on in The Hobbit films, 2/3 of it should have been pure darkness. They butchered the source material worse than Kubrick!
I genuinely believe that some people are just completely unaware of anything made before their birth.
Like they actively choose not to be aware, to the point of calling out a re-telling of a literally ancient tale for tropes it literally invented.
“The universe started when I was about six years old.”
“…and will end when I die!”
A fellow HI-tter!
It’s harder when you have words that people are native language to but you’re using it like you just invented a word, even if it is the original origin and it’s used slightly differently.
This reminds me of a road trip I took years ago with my best friend. Dude is an awesome guitarist but a little musically uncultured. He likes what he likes and other stuff might as well not exist. Well I have a much wider palate for music than he does and most of the time when we are hanging out, he discovers new music.
We were driving down route 66 and crossing into Texas on our road trip and the song “Free Fallin’” comes on. Immediately he pipes up and says “ah, man this is the worst cover of this song I’ve ever heard. The quality makes it sound like it was recorded in the 70’s or 80’s and you really just can’t replace John’s voice.” I pulled over the car and began interrogating for clarity.
“John who?”
“Mayor? The original is so much better than this.”
“You think John Mayor wrote Free Fallin’?”
“What do you mean?”
“I really really need you to think about why this song sounds ‘older’ than John Mayor’s Free Fallin’.”
“Oh…”
I haven’t let him live it down. Every road trip we have been on since, I make sure the original is on the playlist somewhere. It was out of character for him to be so confidently incorrect.
Sounds like your friend handled being wrong with a lot more grace than you handled being right
You and your friends don’t make fun of each other? It’s all in good fun.
In the pre-internet-as-weʻve-come-to-know-it days, there were actual YEARS of on/off debate between my best friend and I over who first sang “I Shot the Sheriff.” He was convinced that Bob Marley was covering Clapton. I told him repeatedly that this was nonsense. I happened to be in a record store, looking at vinyl (this was in the days of CDs; I owned no turntable but I like flipping through the bins) and I came across the Clapton album that had his cover of “I Shot the Sheriff” on it. Sure enough, in plain English, underneath the song title were the words “written by R. Marley.” So I bought the record for the sole purpose of laying it in front of him to prove to him that Clapton was covering Marley.
“Whatever bro, Iʻve seen the Cream album where it says Clapton wrote it.”
stitch_scratching_face_and_eyes.gif
And the Trojan horse was literally shaped like a horse, a bit too on the nose, no?
Honestly I thought it was gonna be shaped like a Trojan
Wait till they hear about the genius trick with the Trojan horse
“Why would they take it in! It’s literally named after their city being sneak attacked!”
But why is it named after a type of computer virus? they didn’t even have computers back then!
This makes me think about Trojan condoms. That’s quite the name, because the Trojan horse was used to sneak men into Troy. So where and what sneaking is the Trojan condoms doing?
Common misunderstanding. The Trojan horse is named after the city it attacked, and the condoms are named after the Trojans - that’s not the Greeks, but the guys who held the wall and got slaughtered. That’s your dick if the wall falls, the other side is the Greeks.
I like this much better than what I suspect is the actual truth: “It makes you think of scantily clad muscular men in shiny outfits, and giant horse dicks.”
You really should listen to the Yes Minister explanation of this.
Hold on…
https://youtu.be/TDsSMi4zclo?t=113
I thought it was funny :)
Interesting idea, but naming your personal protective product after the most famous failing team on a mythical story is some pretty bad marketing.
Maybe they mean you should use it if you have a schlong the size of a horse?
Anyone who hasn’t had to go fishing for a “lost” condom on occasion either lives in the mother’s basement or seldom has sex that needs the use of condoms. Or perhaps both.
My wife still swears our 3rd daughter was the result of a lost trojan condom.
I’m just excited for all the “historically accurate” cyclops, witches, demi gods, and magic objects that the conservatives are going to have in their AI remakes!
/s (just in case)
I’m just upset that they left out the wordplay on Odysseus telling the cyclops that his name was nobody
Agreed. I think it was a shame to leave that section out as it illustrates Odysseus’ cleverness and hubris, the attributes that both help and hinder his journey. It also demonstrates the complicated nature of heroism investigated in the epic.
Odysseus shows great intelligence in introducing himself as Nobody and again in saving the surviving men. He also can’t resist shouting back his name and taking credit once he’s out of immediate danger. Had he not shouted his name back, Polyphemus would have been unable to call down a curse upon him, and by extension, all his men.
“Oh please. He’s saying his name is Nobody? Like the Bob Odenkirk movie? Come on !”
Presumably the cyclops will just be a guy who lost an eye.
spoiler
(That is, before
OdysseusNobody got to him.)
betting we’re gonna get this kinda feedback on the Neuromancer tv adaption
Wonder what percentage of people will claim it’s a CP2077 ripoff lol
I was in a game store and I overheard a couple of guys learning how to play Netrunner (a cyberpunk hacking game) and one of them laughs and says “So, this is what happens when you can’t get the Shadowrun license!”
I coulda swore there was a legit Shadowrun rule set back in the day…
Oh I hope so. Can’t wait to hear someone complain about the dub or the way they jack in to a cyber deck being a copy of the matrix.
… there’s gonna be an adaptation of Neuromancer?! 😮💨
yeah the first real trailer dropped the other day
basically “why’s pythagora using the pythagorean theorem??”
That Socrates guy doing the Socratic method?? C’mon. Ancient Greek philosophy should learn to name their characters better.
;3
this phenomenon has a tvtropes page
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny
There are certain works that you can safely assume most people have enjoyed. These shows were considered fantastic when they were released. Now, however, these have a Hype Backlash curse on them. Whenever we watch them, we’ll cry, “That is so old” or “That is so overdone”.
The sad irony? It wasn’t old or overdone when they did it. In fact, it wasn’t done at all: this work was the first one to do that. But the result was so brilliant and popular, it became woven into the fabric of the genre. Its innovations were endlessly repeated, until the audience began to expect that every work of that type would include them. And so a work which was once genuinely novel has become the new status quo. It’s basically the inverse of a Grandfather Clause taken to a trope level: some works can get away with a dated element because of age and tradition, but these works are dismissed as dated because they’ve drowned in the sea of their own imitators. The work has retroactively become a Cliché Storm.
ok, Seinfeld is still unfunny though
My most controversial take
