Blood sport: Expert rates 6 war scenes

Prof. Watson, U of London; I. Rony, Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Apocalypse Now Redux (Wiki)

When not watching a violent game of American football, with someone tearing a ligament or getting some bone to protrude from his skin, it's fun to nosh on fried acrylamides (the most toxic way of cooking potato), sipping high-estrogen (hops) and gluten (the plant lectin in the most popular grains) rotgut in nice cone-shaped, individually-wrapped guzzlers or snappy BPA-coated, aluminum-leeching cans, it's fun to fill my mind and heart with a more violent blood sport, WAR. They have the Time-Life books and videos on "great battles" with patriotic soundtracks the Nazis would have been proud to include in their propaganda reels. They have whole courses on how to conduct killing sprees and industrial-scale murder at WestPoint. There are only so many times one wants to rewatch Top Gun and those hot volleyball scenes or Apocalypse Now: Redux. That was a close one, but we got those g**ks good in the end...

SUTRA: Base entertainments lead to the unskillful karma of "Low Talk"

Ven. Sujato (trans.), Numerical Discourses (AN 10.69), 7. Pairs 7. Yamakavagga "Topics of Discussion" (1st) Paṭhamakathāvatthu Sutta; edited by Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly

At one time the Buddha was staying near the City of Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, in the multi-millionaire’s monastery.

Now at that time, after the meal, returning from almsround, several wandering ascetics sat together in the assembly hall. There they engaged in all kinds of low talk, such as —

• talk about rulers, bandits, and ministers; talk about armies, threats, and wars; talk about food, drink, clothes, and furniture; talk about garlands and fragrances; talk about family, vehicles, villages, towns, cities, and countries; talk about women and heroes; street talk and well [office cooler] talk; talk about the departed [dead]; motley talk; tales of [the origin of] land and sea; and talk about being reborn in this or that state of existence.

Then in the late afternoon, the Buddha came out of meditative seclusion and went to the assembly hall, where he sat on a seat prepared for him. There he addressed the monastics:

“Meditators, what were you talking about seated here just now? What conversation was left unfinished?” [He is able to read their minds/hearts, so he already knows but asks to initiate a conversation and give a teaching.]

They told him.

“Meditators, it is inappropriate for you who have gone forth in confidence from the lay life to the left-home life to engage in these kinds of low talk.

“There are, meditators, these ten topics of discussion. What ten?

• Talk about fewness of wishes, contentment, seclusion, aloofness, arousing energy, ethics [virtue], absorption, wisdom, freedom, and the knowledge-and-vision (knowing-and-seeing) of freedom. — These are the ten topics of discussion.
  

“Meditators, if you bring up these [skillful] topics of conversation again and again, your glory could surpass even that of the sun and moon, so mighty and powerful, let alone the wandering ascetics of other doctrines.” Source: AN 10.69: Paṭhamakathāvatthu Sutta—Bhikkhu Sujato (suttacentral.net)

World War I expert rates six WWI battles in movies | How real is it? | Insider

(Insider) April 4, 2023: WWI historian Alexander Watson rates six First World War battle scenes from movies and TV shows for their realism.

Ghouls (djinn): What's on TV?

He discusses the accuracy of [the killing methods like] trench warfare in All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), featuring creepy Daniel Brühl, and Wonder Woman (2017), starring sexy Gal Gadot.

Watson also comments on aerial combat [for a little "death from above" Allied style] and gas masks in The Red Baron (2008) and The Lost City of Z (2016), starring Charlie Hunnam.

Watson analyzes the [industrial killing devices] guns, artillery, tanks, grenades, and other weapons used in Sajjan Singh Rangroot (2018) and Gallipoli: End of the Road (2013).

ABOUT: Alexander Watson is an expert on World War I and a professor of history at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has written three books on it: Enduring The Great War, which explores how British and German soldiers coped on the Western Front; Ring of Steel, about the war from the German and Austria-Hungarian perspective; and The Fortress, about the siege of Przemyśl on the Eastern Front. #howrealisit #WWI #Insider

Find Prof. Watson's books here: Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918 (penguin.co.uk), The Fortress: The Siege of Przemysl and the Making of Europe's Bloodlands (basicbooks.com), Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914-1918 (cambridge.org/us...).

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ABOUT: Insider is great journalism about what passionate people actually want to know [killing, war, murder, and blood as sport, y'know, patriotic stuff]. That’s everything from news to food, celebrity to science, politics to sports, and all the rest. It’s smart. It’s fearless. It’s fun. Insider pushes the boundaries of digital storytelling. Its mission is to inform and inspire. Visit homepage for the top stories of the day: insider.com. [But sex and love, we won't touch those topics...unless there's a rape angle or something about Eva Braun.]