Yeah, there’s a lot of misogyny buried in Buddhism. It’s very much a product of its times and modern westerners who venerate Buddhism as any kind of model piss me off as a result. It’s pretty clear these faux-Buddhists have never read anything past maybe the Heart Sutra.

I’ve selected my next one. We’re going to the Americas for this one. You’ll have no idea who she is until I’m finished with the story. Then you’ll wonder WHY you had no idea because she’s AWESOME!

I will eventually get around to Cleopatra and hoo boy howdy are there myths to bust there. Like:

1. She wasn’t particularly beautiful (physically).
2. She wasn’t a femme fatale as her typical portrayal shows her.

And so on. She’s a good example of a strong woman (just not as strong as Hapshetsup was) whose history was rewritten.

Ooh. If we’re going with extinct, I’d love a pet trilobyte myself.

Oh no! There goes Tokyo! Go go Godzilla!

That was not a very nice crash, IIRC.

That bear sure has a lot to answer for! 🙃

Weirdly, the thing that scared me most that day was the enormous cicada that was in the car my dad was driving like a maniac in to get us to Nicosia in the first place. The gunfire and shells barely registered until weeks later. All I knew was my dad looked stressed, my mom looked close to tears, and there were a lot of people constantly staring in the direction of the “fireworks”.

Would being in a Canadian Armed Forces 707 as it’s taking off from Nicosia while the airport is being shelled by the Turks count as disastrous? Or very lucky?

The “ones not many people have heard of” thing is very deliberate. Everybody knows Cleopatra (even if only by that horrifically ahistorical film). Many have heard of Nefertiti (even if only because of that famous bust that shows her gorgeous face).

Yet probably the most influential woman in Egyptian history, Hapshetsup, is a name most people haven’t even heard, not to mention know anything of. She’s way more interesting (to me at any rate) than Cleopatra or Nefertiti (though both may show up in later entries because both of them have some intriguing bits to their stories) and more of an inspiration as well. Nefertiti, though influential, got all of her influence from her husband. Cleopatra is more defined by the men in her life than by her own agency. But Hapshetsup? She ruled. Both literally and figuratively.

There is a whole lot more to a healthy democracy than “I voted”.

China doesn’t need to retaliate. Chinese cinema goers are overwhelmingly choosing domestic product over import in recent years. For 2024, for example, 80% of the Chinese box office went to Chinese productions.

The problem is he brought a deck of poker cards to a chess game.

The movies normalized The American Way™ as the default way of doing things. The billionaires then financed the people pitching The American Way™. Without the first, the second wouldn’t work.

The Chinese market is huge, yes, but increasingly turning away from Hollywood productions to homegrown ones. In 2025 for example 哪吒2 (Nézhā 2) broke scored over $2 billion at the box office, with a record-smashing $1.96 billion of that coming domestically. By way of comparison Captain America 4 only managed $14.4 million so far, a dramatic drop from 2016’s Captain America 3 returns of $180 million in 2016.

For reference, even CA3’s $180 million is an order of magnitude smaller than Nezha 2. CA4’s is two orders of magnitude smaller.

Now this is still true: China’s theatre-going audience, estimated at over half a billion people, is larger than the entire population of the USA. It’s still a hugely important market. But, for example, in 2024 the Chinese box office was estimated at ~6 billion dollars total: and 80% of that went to domestic films. The best-performing foreign film of 2024 (Dune 2) only made $48 million, ranking it about 8th. 7th was 维和防暴队 (Wéihé Fángbàoduì/Formed Police Unit) and it made over $120 million.

I’m pretty sure that the Chinese market for Hollywood films is vanishing.

I’m in a Chinese-only corner. I barely qualify (being only half-Chinese was a mark against, but living in China made up for that). And it’s nice not to constantly have to answer basic questions or deal with sinophobes.

You knew there was another “Kick-Ass Women” thread coming, right?

Just some general questions:

• Are these history dumps welcomed?
• Are there any women from history you’d like seen covered?

I hate you so much right now. CHOKE ON THE UPVOTE, JERKFACE!

Oh, the world’s worst-run and most corrupt convention is doing something bad?

In other news, water is wet.

And your friends. And passing strangers. Cars. Trucks. Tanks. Ships. Buildings. Small mountains. Large mountains. …