That whole clip with Superman trying to be the bad cop reminded me of this bit in a comic (which comic, I can’t remember), in which the Joker came to Metropolis and, after being caught and stopped, was confidently telling Superman, “You can’t kill me, you’re Superman! You have a code!” And Superman responded, “Actually, that’s Batman who has a code against killing. I just usually don’t.”
I think that that is the most accurate summation of the difference between them. Batman follows a code to be good: Superman is just (usually) good. I would posit that Batman is the constant man, Superman is the virtuous man.
The thing about being virtuous is, if you’re truly a virtuous person, being good comes easily. You are happy to do the right thing, and you don’t need to force yourself to do what should be done. Your passions are ordered rightly, so you don’t need to stand against them. It comes down to, “Will what is good, and then do as you will.” And I believe that’s the appeal of Superman: he is a good man who does what is good because that’s who he is. Obviously not every writer of Superman agrees with that assessment, but I think that the story of the virtuous man is a story that, at our core, we want to hear. I’ll sometimes say that something is a “Superman Story,” and by that I mean that it’s a story about the virtuous man and the joys of virtue.
Most of us are not virtuous, however. For the vast majority of the human race, our goodness is mere constancy: being good does not come easily, our passions are not ordered rightly, we do not will what is good, and so we cannot do as we will. So we discipline ourselves. [Discipline comes from discipulus, meaning disciple, pupil, or student. Discipline, while important, is not a goal in and of itself, any more than learning is: the goal of learning is to know, and the goal of discipline is virtue. If you are virtuous then you don’t need discipline, because you’ve already been disciplin-ed. You know what it is you were trying to learn.] That is what Batman does. He overcomes his nature, turning his fear and trauma into a force for good, not allowing himself to kill, fighting against himself in a way that Superman doesn’t. His various compatriots and sidekicks often highlight this struggle, pointing out the ways in which the constant man is not the virtuous man. Again, not every writer writes in accord with this interpretation, but when I say that something is a “Batman Story,” I mean that it’s a story about the constant man and the struggle of constancy.
Being good is easy and joyful. Becoming good is hard and a valley filled with tears. We need to understand both of these facts, and that’s why we tell both Superman and Batman stories.
And on the other side of the spectrum there’s Donald Duck, the inconstant, and Daffy Duck, the vicious.
My favorite lifehack is I’m never too polite to take leftovers from any event. “Please take leftovers,” the hostess says, and everyone diffidently murmurs something about the size of their fridge, but I am already sweeping an entire basket of bagels into my tote bag. I gather there may be some unspoken rule of upperclass etiquette that stands in people’s way but listen. Break free of your chains
pro tip: tell people that ur “committed to reducing food waste“ and not only will they not judge u, but you will be seen as conforming to upperclass etiquette
#i could write an essay about how the perceived class of those accepting free food directly correlates with other’s reactions #discovering the term ‘food waste’ suddenly turns people from scroungers to planet savers #and it’s all the damn same thing #if you take free food because you need it you’re seen as a scrounger #if you take it to reduce food waste you’re a god damn hero
No I’m not dumpster diving this is urban foraging
as a host who consistently makes WAY too much food, i promise i never see anyone as ‘scroungers’ for taking me up on my offer of leftovers. i see it as appreciation for my cooking. i’m genuinely pleased and flattered. please never hesitate.
“But I don’t want to deny you of food :(“ I MADE ENOUGH FOR FIVE PEOPLE AND MY FRIDGE IS ALREADY FULL. TAKE. SOME. HOME.
I LITERALLY MADE IT FOR YOU, SO EAT IT, YOU ASSHOLES.
THIS IS LITERALLY MY RELIGION. TAKE THE FOOD HOME AND BE FED AND HAPPY.
This is American culture.
American culture is becoming your grandmother when you host a party
What y’all think ‘gifted child’ discourse is saying: I used to be special and now I’m not and that makes me sad.
What ‘gifted child’ discourse is ACTUALLY saying: The way many educational systems treat children who’ve been identified as ‘gifted’ is actively harmful in that it a. obliges kids to give up socialising with their same-age peers in favour of constantly courting the approval of adult ‘mentors’ who mostly don’t give a shit about them, b. demands that they tie their entire identity to a set of standards that’snot merely unsustainable, but intentionally so, because its unstated purpose is to weed out the “unworthy” rather than to provide useful goals for self-improvement, and c. denies them opportunities to learn useful life skills in favour of training them up in an excruciatingly narrow academic skill-set that’s basically useless outside of an institutional career path that the vast majority of them will never be allowed to pursue.
I am the farthest thing from a prude but how the fuck can someone see a company shaming people for deciding to watch less porn and beat off less and not be out right revolted?
Everytime you fill in CAPTCHA you’re helping to digitalize old books and documents. Using CAPTCHA abt 250 books are added to a digital database everyday
Its called RECAPTCHA! The creator of CAPTCHA (Luis von Ahn) realised a lot of time was being wasted with CAPTCHA (worldwide we spend about 500,000 hours doing CAPTCHA every day)
So he wanted to put it to good use
The reason why CAPTCHA uses wonky letters is because computers can’t read them, but we can!
But when trying to automatically digitalise old books and documents this becomes a hindrance because computers often cant read the faded old letters. So the digitalising is done by humans (very costly and time consuming)
Anyway Ahn found out about these a integraded into captcha creating RECAPTCHA.
Everyday about 150 (sorry i meant 150 not 250) old books get digitalized this way. They are currently using it to digitalize the whole archive of The New York Times (since 1851)
So we’re all kinda building a digital library of alexandria this way by using captcha, noice
reCAPTCHA Founded 2007. Overview reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service
that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows.
reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that
cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for
humans to decipher.
In case any of you thought this was BS
I always love seeing reCAPTCHA being used.
That’s what my dad told me too.
So when we fill out those wonky letters, we are basically helping the computer read weird handwriting.
Look at these curvy letters! Much curvier than most letters, wouldn’t you say? No robot could read these!
peter and wade are fighting side by side and when peter runs out of web fluid, he grabs a gun off wade’s belt and wade has this transcendent moment of i’m going to watch spiderman shoot my gun at a real live bad guy
but peter just fucking throws it at a bad guy’s face and knocks him out cold
The impact causes the gun to go off and shoot wade in the dick. Spider man spends the next several minutes frantically apologizing while cable laughs his ass off for the first time in years.
Pretty sure I’ve read this comic
@wishem please omg just a quick doodle or something even
I am sorry Cable looks like that
I laughed my ass of at “bad guy uwu” I love this entire comic so much
Obscure Fandoms 