However it’s also worth noting Jagex did do this for a reason. The in-game economy of RuneScape has been hyper-inflated for a while now, making the process of creating a new character and progressing through to the endgame a daunting progress due to gargantuan prices. For example, a Bond (exchangeable for a month of premium membership) sells for 11.2m coins on Old School RuneScape. On regular RuneScape, a bond sells for 141.3m coins.
Idk, sounds at least a little broken to me.
This is arguably the least practical advice in here, but also the funniest. Bonus points if you can do it to the same stranger multiple days in a row.
Probably.
Agreed! Admittedly, my handle on the contemporary world of art is tenuous at best, but this very much felt like that 1900 ± 15 years sort of style.
I don’t disagree with you in any particular part, and almost wrote a paragraph clarifying that the swastika and fasces are not 1:1 equivalences specifically because the Nazis divorced the swastika from its original meaning for their own purposes, while the Fascists selected the fasces as their core symbol because of its already established symbolism.
However, you can understand that the circular logic of calling something “fascist” which predates the codification of “Fascism” is doing my head in. If you want to counter that that’s a semantic argument which doesn’t invalidate your point, I tend to agree, with the significant caveat that this entire discussion is semantic in nature, so it’s more relevant than usual.
Long story short, I don’t equate every example of a state using violence to achieve its purpose as fascism, though it’s certainly a necessary ingredient, so I won’t yuck your yums if you do. To me, a war memorial is an appropriate venue for the fasces to appear, given its martial and reflective nature (as in, reflecting on the past), whereas including a fasces as the centerpiece of the nation’s diplomatic emblem is significantly more concerning as a forward looking statement of intent (so to speak).
I feel like there’s a term for this sort of backwards misattribution of a symbol’s later meaning onto examples which predate their modern connotation, but I can’t think of what it would be. The war memorial you’re referring to was dedicated in 1920. Considering fascism as a political ideology had just started coalescing around Mussolini in Italy circa 1919-1920, it strains credulity to link the two. In a similar fashion, you wouldn’t suggest the presence of swastikas outside a Hindu temple indicates support for Nazism by default.
Fasces have represented the strength of the state dating back to the pre-Roman Etruscan kings. Therefore, seeing it on the national architecture of a Western nation which fancies itself as a descendent of Greek and Roman civilizations shouldn’t be that surprising, nor taken as a tacit endorsement of capital-F “Fascist” ideology. Case in point, do you know what’s prominently featured on the cover of every French passport? It ain’t a baguette, I’ll say that much. Heck, in 1953, France elected to keep the fasces as part of their diplomatic emblem, despite their very recent experiences in WW2 under Fascist rule. If we can give France a pass for continuing to use the symbol after post-war, surely that can extend to a 1920 Revolutionary War memorial in America. Unless every example of nationalism is equivalent to Fascism (and I readily grant that nationalism is a core tenet of that ideology, but allowances should be made for nuance), sometimes a fasces is just a fasces.
All of which is not to say that America is fascism free. Obviously not. Just that the above comment made me roll my eyes when there are so many better examples to cite, like the roving gangs of brownshirts disappearing people into nebulously legal holding centers.
Hey! I’ve been to that bar! Cool shot, he’s definitely grooving!
There may not be a vegetarian authority, but God help you if you cross into vegan territory. Those guys are real sticklers.
Sandman asking if he can come in or not, you keep stopping short.