[HN Gopher] The Frog That Couldn't Jump
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The Frog That Couldn't Jump
Author : lermontov
Score : 38 points
Date : 2023-11-24 20:30 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedial.world)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedial.world)
| thriftwy wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hX2aZU2jhNE for the song referenced
| in the article.
| thriftwy wrote:
| The obviously fun takeaway would be that if we put North Korea as
| a 9 on the Dear Leader scale, and USSR under Stalin at 8, then
| the USA will rate 4 its President cult, and that would be much
| higher than the rest of Western world.
|
| Is that a good thing? A bad one? Who knows.
| msla wrote:
| > then the USA will rate 4 its President cult
|
| What? 4 or so would be the UK with their "Royal Family" (OMG!
| FERGIE!) worship.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| UK is a weird outlier, because the royals aren't really
| leaders. Their role is almost clerical, rather.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Had thought recently their role is to squat on space that a
| would be fearless leader would try to exploit.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The UK deal with the royals is really quite different. There
| may be an over-fascination but there isn't a huge amount of
| deference, and if the royals want to make things happen that
| are not popular, they have to use very twisty back door
| routes. The (public) relationship that even fervent royal
| supporters have towards the royals is nothing like the
| (public ) relationship with Stalin et al.
|
| Also, it's pretty easy in the UK to say that the royal family
| is stupid and they suck and they leech money from working
| people and nothing will happen.
| jdietrich wrote:
| That's the essential genius of constitutional monarchy - by
| investing the royal family with immense status but no actual
| power, we reduce the status of those who wield real power to
| mere public servants. The Prime Minister must ask the
| monarch's permission to form a government, in the knowledge
| that the monarch has no actual power to refuse. Those who
| hold public office swear an oath of loyalty to the monarch,
| in the knowledge that the monarch's power is wholly and
| irrevocably delegated to parliament and the judiciary.
|
| The monarch is in essence an empty vessel, symbolising
| whatever version of Britishness we happen to believe in.
| Regardless of the government of the day or the divisions that
| may arise in society, the crown endures. The man or woman
| responsible for running the country does so as a temporary
| custodian.
|
| Britain is dysfunctional in all sorts of ways, but the parts
| that function best are extremely Lindy. The monarchy, like
| our unelected upper house, is completely idiotic in theory
| but incredibly successful in practice.
| marcinzm wrote:
| But is what you describe a good thing? People seek status.
| By removing status from being Prime Minister you make being
| Prime Minister merely another step on the path to status.
| I'm not sure it's a good thing for someone to see being
| Prime Minister as a means of leverage to something else
| they want.
| patel011393 wrote:
| He couldn't get it up :)
| robocat wrote:
| Interesting reading about what confers status in NK. Instead of
| money, organisational proximity to the king seems to matter. And
| from article: Literary success means becoming a
| "professional revolutionary" with lots of perks: a three-month
| "creativity leave" every year, permission to travel freely around
| the country, and special housing privileges.
|
| Clearly chasing status is what _matters_ , except in my world I'm
| used to the middle class game of chasing status by chasing money.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
|
| "We build civilizations on status. But we barely understand it.
| The sociologist Cecilia Ridgeway explains how status shapes our
| world and our lives."
|
| Transcript: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/opinion/ezra-
| klein-podcas...
|
| There's a nice moment in this where Klein talks about realizing
| that his own attempts to eschew status were just another form
| of status seeking.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| "A frog with no legs is deaf."
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