The Off Topic Topic

[Syt]

You don't normally get monumental statues of maracas players; I approve.

[The Larch]

You don't normally get monumental statues of maracas players; I approve.

I think that's meant to be part of the monument to the national heroes of Zimbabwe.

[Sheilbh]

What about the massive North Korean statues that are popping up around Africa?

I'm a fan - say what you want but they are figurative statues in a style.

Less keen on the massive Mao statue some village in Henan put up (and then had to take down) - I think it's the details the shoes and hands are just poor:

Crazy theory: Historic statues tend to show rather life-like depictions of handsome great men.
Yet we know historically people tended to have shitty diets.

But. Do they?

Like statues of 18th century men are almost always portly, rotund figures. This was one of the slaver statues that was taken down and I don't feel it's great looking - got a bt of a tum sort of bulging his coat and a receding hairline etc:


And I don't know if the 19th century statues are that handsome either - I know that in Trollope the prodigiousness of a man's facial hair is normally a sign of whether or not he's handsome but I don't know how widespread that was as an attitude

They slimmed down George IV so he could actually ride a horse without crippling it but I don't know that those statues make them particularly handsome.

[The Brain]

It might look better once the Brain has painted it 

Yes.

[Syt]

Were previous age cohorts of males just lying more?

[Sheilbh]

Mainly devastated to discover I'm not young

[HVC]

You don't normally get monumental statues of maracas players; I approve.

i first saw a guy throwing a baguette.

[Tonitrus]

You don't normally get monumental statues of maracas players; I approve.

i first saw a guy throwing a baguette.

He isn't even wearing a beret. 

[Josquius]

Were previous age cohorts of males just lying more?

Yet more evidence Japan isn't weird, they're just ahead of the trend.

[Grey Fox]

People used to get married younger in the 80s & earlier.

[Sheilbh]

Bravo Quora dad-to-be:

[Valmy]

If you are going to culturally appropriate at least name him after Sun Yat-sen.

[Sheilbh]

As someone said - "don't speak to me or my son, Sun-Yat Sen Davies, again."

Also from the guy who posted it on Twitter I feel like there is an extremely small overlap between devote Chiang fans and people who care about cultural appropriation.

[Syt]

I don't normally buy into the whole "decline" thing - but I do wonder what happened to our ability to do figurative statues. The Braveheart statue in its new home, a stadium in the fourth division of Scottish football

Relevant video: https://twitter.com/EleanorMorton/status/1435193050255478791?s=20

[mongers]

I thought coach travel was supposed to be cheap, because I was looking at a return ticket between Cardiff and Aberystwyth,West Wales costing 45-50 pounds; but for another 20 quid I can get a rail ticket that give 4 days of unlimited train journeys across all of Wales and the English marches, plus 8 days free travel on nearly all buses in Wales.