FriendOfDeSoto

I know. What you have hit upon here is my obviously unsuccessful attempt at making these people look more ridiculous than the OG death cult.

I think this USSR quote is a good answer:

We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.

(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

In any authoritarian system where indoctrination starts young you’ll probably have a fifth of the population that’s high on the coolaid or never questioned anything due to ideology or intelligence (or both). The rest know they’re lying, etc. And keep their mouths shut because they don’t want to go to Siberia or El Salvador.

No. At least not yet. I don’t think they will be because that would entail having any of 47’s children succeed him. And I feel like they know they are a shade duller than Hegseth.

Hands up if you didn’t already know that. Or intuited it. To me this seems to be something only US-Americans who argue purely ideologically for a “small government” need reminding of. They’re paradoxically often the first in line calling for government intervention when their drinking water is full of poop or something.

I think you need to be more specific with the query. If I’m the only passenger plus crew, yes. If the plane is full of people going to a place to help out, no. If this flight could be done by train without multiplying door-to-door travel time more than 2.5 times, yes. If my blood type or bone marrow was so rare I could save a life, I think I’d be okay again even if I was a lone passenger. There is plenty of gray here to consider.

Did you skip high school? You’re equating normal with socially desirable. I don’t. There are plenty of people who behave normally while not being nice. E.g. bullies, mean girls. Some of them never grow out of it.

I beg to differ. If I were a c-word, this behavior would be par for the course.

This is not the behavior of a friend.

I don’t mind your suggestion. I think universal mail-ins are a good idea. At the same time, I have an inkling that you didn’t read my comment all the way to the end.

I have sympathy for non-voters in the US. Not so much out of principle but because of how it is done. Voting takes place on a Tuesday. That’s because in ye olden days you had to allow people to attend church on Sunday before making the trip on horseback to participate in the election. That’s a cute tradition but clashes with the way the economy works today. People are very dependent on their low-wage jobs that they can be fired from easily. If you’re working two of those jobs to make ends meet, you may not have the “luxury” to skip work to go and vote on a normal weekday. That luxury often includes having to fill in a booklet of stuff that’s on the ballot. You’re not just voting on a president, a senator, or a congressperson. You may be asked your option on a plebiscite, a judge, a sheriff, a school board, etc. It is overinflated in my view and explains long slow moving lines at ballot stations that you don’t often see elsewhere. And that’s after a possibly Kafkaesque registration process to be eligible in the first place or to get mail-ins in some states. It is almost designed to keep people away. Maybe you’re taking these structural problems as something “politicians cling to.”

Make election day a public holiday that forces businesses who are open anyway to allow all their employees to go and vote.

I’m being put in a difficult situation here because I’m gonna have to go ahead and defend the American “snowflakes.” When it comes to interpreting the phrase “free elections” I think all democracies or close enough to that (which therefore includes the US) chose to say free means you’re also free not to participate. Except for the Aussies. And while I’m not an American snowflake, I’m still a snowflake because I agree with that interpretation. It wouldn’t just ruffle feathers in the US if mandatory election participation was prescribed. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. Horse = voter, drink = vote. And I don’t think the Aussie governments of the last two decades have proven to be superior because they’re backed by a larger voter base. Remember the guy who ate raw onions?

Technically, they don’t have to be. They could elect a venerable whippersnapper cardinal - Dan Brown wrote a book about that. And that tells you how likely that is if he wrote the story. But it is possible.

It would be rare because it takes seniority to get into the position. And politics to be well liked enough to be put forward and then elected. By mostly old people. Some of whom would like the job themselves.

This is already location-dependent. I think Iceland has the most restrictive legislation with a prescribed list to choose from. Other countries have a layer of “is this really a name?” checking as part of the registration process after birth and parents can be sent back to square one.

I think there is a balance to be had where you can’t get away with xc1>df or whatever but you could name your kid after a GoT character that tragically turned evil in the last season. My suggestion would be to include a second given name that is more established than Khalisi or Dumbledore, e.g. Kelly and David. If Khalisi Kelly’s last name is Knox obvs I wouldn’t insist on the alliteration. My point is then your child has a plan B when they get mocked for being called Hobbit in school. They can just go by Henry or whatever other boring name made the cut. That way you don’t need to get into a complicated legal situation where a minor would have to override the wish of their parents.

After reaching adulthood legally, virtually anybody can try to change their name. Although the process may involve having to prove harm to get it approved in some places. I think there is a correlation between a laissez-faire attitude to naming and ease of getting a name change. In countries that are stricter to begin with, the hurdles are much higher and can be much costlier.

Proton has a good calendar service but if you want to change color labels you need to be on the more expensive tier - and they don’t really tell you that ahead of time. Which p’ed me off so much I moved my calendar to a Nextcloud server instead, which works great. It also got me off Keep, Drive, and I’m working on Gmail.

The problem with him is that he won’t shut up. You’d recognize that stream of consc… of something anywhere. Hypothetically, if consent was given you’d have to surgically remove his tongue as well.

First of all, all languages do this to an extent. Singling out America or English seems pointless to me.

Geographical names are a nonsensical construct of traditions, conventions, and misunderstandings. Why shouldn’t a language come up with names that suit their tongue? Why shouldn’t they go with whatever becomes consensus in their language? Being correct is overall less important than being understood. And that’s being understood by your peers, not the people on the other end of the world.

With place names it’s often old conflicts and historical differences that prevent adoption of modern place names. English is one of the few languages that made the change from Peking to Beijing, others didn’t want to be told “by the commies” what to call the city. People who were fighting Napoleon 200+ years ago still call Nice in France by its Italian name Nizza, the name of the city in circulation prior to the French takeover. Out of principle. Europe, where the spoken common language variety is greater than in North America, is more used to this and people just know Brussels can also be Brussel, Brüssel, or Bruxelles. It’s like the imperial system of measurements: it makes no effing sense but it works.

If you argue respect you’re going to hit a massive wall with some languages. Mandarin Chinese is fresh in my mind that has very colorful names for all the places of the world that often have little or nothing in common with what the locals call it. Meiguo for America? Is that disrespectful? No, when you learn that this sort of means beautiful country. And it would take ages to get English speakers onto the same page calling China Zhongguo. And I’m quite sure the locals of Zhongguo would not understand the average American Joe saying it. So what would be gained by making that switch?

Turkey wanted to change its English name because they don’t like the association with the eponymous bird. If the bird was commonly referred to as something else, and English wasn’t the lingua franca of the world, this would not have come up. Other languages have stuck with their version of Türkiye. And for the English speaking world I see an uphill battle for this to catch on. People only switched to Kyiv out of spite for Russian bombs. People are still going to say Turkey and not mean the bird. Same is true for recent gulf name changes.

English is half filled with loanwords. Dejavu maybe just stands out to you. Parliament, pork, and necessary maybe not so much. I think all can be traced back via Norman French or later. All languages borrow words. Many of them change meaning and/or spelling after being borrowed. This is normal.

All of the things you complained about seem perfectly alright to me. You’re looking for a fight with a windmill.

They can charge for the room. Why not make that mandatory? Makes business sense.

It’s also part of the tradition in North America. It may not be the military but learning to live with people, maybe people you really don’t like, is a life experience. And many people look back fondly at that, which they would not have chosen voluntarily.

U be baader-meinhoffing this shit?

People are dyslexic or not native speakers on here as well. English spelling is insane anyway. People fumble-eff around with giant sausage fingers on small screens. We collectively ruin our sight by constantly looking at screens from a foot away. Mistakes happen. I think I heard the first complaints about bad spelling on the collection of tubes in the late 90s. And we’re still here.

If Apple were the only player on the block, at least in Europe they would be under a lot more pressure. But they’re not. There are other OSs (although only one really matters), there are other phone makers.

Antitrust is more reactive. There is a market, a dominant player, said player plays unfairly, the authorities react. That reaction takes years to go through all the levels of courts available. By the time we get a final ruling, the market has long moved on. The corporations know that too. As long as the lawyers are cheaper than the money they stand to lose they will carry on.

And in Apple’s defense: the mobile operating system market is not that old. And it’s not clearly defined. And as long as there is wiggle room they can do whatever they want. Part of the problem is that the legislation dealing with antitrust on either side of the Atlantic is like copyright law: no longer fit for purpose.

I think that very much depends on how they’re implemented. If there is some sort of electoral-college-equivalent in the process: very much more racist, isolationist, and misogynist. If it’s absolute numbers and no distorting process is applied: more racist and isolationist but abortion will be legalized by a narrow margin.