The highlight for me is coming up with some weird pseudoscience justification for why it’s okay to hit your kids.

    • @[email protected]
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      116 months ago

      Ow yeah I’m joking here. But it was really weird that they tried to name the asteroid Ultima Thule (and it is also odd that this controversy isn’t on the wikipage).

    • Charlie Stross
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      6 months ago

      @gerikson The name predates the white nationalist band by *several centuries*. Per wiki: “In classical and medieval literature, ultima Thule (Latin “farthest Thule”) acquired a metaphorical meaning of any distant place located beyond the “borders of the known world”.”

      I suspect they renamed the KBO Arrokoth precisely to avoid the unfortunate recent connotations of the name.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule

      • @[email protected]
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        106 months ago

        Oh I am aware of the term’s history[1], but just like the humble swastika some stuff can become tainted (although I believe that Ultima Thule the band is only locally infamous here in Sweden). I do know that if someone presented themselves as Ultima Thule I’d do a spit-take, but so would I if I was presented by someone named Titan Invictus.

        Arrokoth is a fucking metal name tho.

        [1] pretty sure the first I heard of it was in one of Evan S Connell’s great collection of essays.