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.

You have unlocked the stylistic tool of the hyperbole.

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?

I’m going to say yes and no to that one. At the time they establish forevermore what is left-wing and what is right-wing, we’re past the estates general being called and I think also past the tennis court oath. For me, that’s already revolutionary times, they just haven’t cut Louie’s head off yet.

Before that, I don’t think there was much exchange between the second and the third estate. I am sure there were nobles who were willing to change things around. But it also wasn’t a case where the second and the third estate, and maybe even the king, could agree on something and that would’ve been the end of that. France was riddled by internal fiefdoms with their own dumb trumpian tariffs. Any relief for the third would have had to involve rationalizing the economy and there were powerful lobbies (like the farmer general) who wouldn’t like that. Plus, people were hungry and hungry people don’t think straight. And Louie would’ve preferred to stick his head in the sand anyway and other than maybe Necker none of his ministers satisfied the requirements of “forward looking.”

What you’re asking is a counter factual. There is no way to answer this question either way. The thing with revolutions is that people suspect it is coming at some point but are still surprised when it happens. The recent fall of Assad in Syria - we’d all forgotten about that mess. East Germany celebrated its 40th anniversary with socialist pomp and circumstance and crumbled a month or so later. The French Revolution was not just about abandoning feudalist structures. It ran in parallel with famine due to terrible weather, a looming bankruptcy of the crown, inefficient leadership from the king, a new way of leadership expected by his subjects, (invented) scandals that were spread by what would become mass media, and the changes in thinking in the age of enlightenment with people engaged in virtuous one-up-manship. That’s after France had lent a helping hand to the American Revolution, not so much out of commitment to the cause but to point the finger at the neighbors across the Channel. You needed all of this in the blender to get to a point where enough people were radicalized enough to start chopping heads off. So even if they had found a negotiated solution to address the class problem, the revolution might still have happened, maybe a bit different, maybe not at all. Nobody knows.

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.

I don’t think you need AI for that but it certainly helps. It’s good ol’ flooding the zone. The strategy is old. To me, it’s a lesson of the Soviet Union. If you continuously barrage people with a manicured version of the truth, one that includes Orwellian changes, you get them to unplug. It’s getting to be too much work to stay on top of important stuff. So people become pliable subjects for their leadership. One could argue that Putin is running Russia on this basis. Running for a party he’s not a member of. Cozying up to the left, then to the right, to the church, and back to the start. He’s everything and nothing to all sides. It’s a strategy that 47 wished he could run the US with.

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.