frostbiker @ frostbiker @lemmy.ca

Posts

0

Comments

207

Joined

2 yr. ago

Thank you for your very civil response.

You on the other hand were saying moments ago that the loss of a language is not cultural loss, and blabbering about language ghettos - fuck off with that racist bullshit anyway. If you don’t care about your culture being erased, not my problem.

Earlier you said that it's okay for millions of immigrants to lose their language, but now you equate that to "your culture being erased". This means that in your mind culture erasure is fine as long as it only affects immigrants. But now you criticise me for being okay with losing my language? So which side of things are you on?

As I said earlier, I'm on the side that understands that language and culture are distinct, which is obviously true given that a person can learn multiple languages and retain the same knowledge, beliefs, customs, traditions, etc.

Have a great day, sir/madam.

Building more, and building social housing in particular, is absolutely necessary. At the same time, building takes a long time to meet demand, while reducing demand can be instantaneous.

I'm not asking anybody to forget anything. I'm saying that speaking a common language is highly beneficial to communication, and thus should be promoted.

I'm also saying that it is hypocritical for people who expect immigrants to integrate, yet at the same time refuse to integrate themselves. Like it or not, English is the lingua franca since at least WW2, and even more so since the advent of the Internet.

You and I would not even be having this conversation if it wasn't for our ability to speak fluent English.

Reducing demand. For housing

It's as simple as not introducing a million immigrants per year when we are in the middle.of a housing crisis. A temporary reduction makes a lot of sense and can be done with the stroke of a pen.

Yes, because they didn’t go anywhere

Neither did First Nations people, and I don't see the majority of Quebecois speaking any of those languages either. And thank goodness we don't have each municipality speaking their indigenous tongues -- it would be impossible to talk to each other!

So let's all be practical and discuss our differences and our commonalities in a common language, rather than constructing language ghettos around us out of fear.

This whole pandemonium is awful from start to finish. I feel for the civilians who have been caught amidst the senseless violence. I hope peace will somehow persevere at some point, as difficult as it might be to get there.

If your native language is not English, it shouldn’t be hard to empathize with francophones living in Montreal aren’t happy that their children speak more English than French in a French speaking city because this means that a few generations later French is just going to disappear

My children speak my native language, but my grandchildren won't. That's how it works. Somehow millions of immigrants are expected to understand and accept this, but Francophones somehow feel special?

Quececois aren’t resisting the sharing their culture, they just want to keep it alive. You asking them to share their culture in the language you understand is just glossing over the fact that the language is a part of the culture

It really isn't. My culture, my traditions, my way of thinking doesn't automatically change when I switch to English or any other language. A language is nothing but a tool to communicate ideas, and a multiplicity of languages only serves as a barrier that stops people from understanding each other. I'm all for a universal language to facilitate the free interchange of ideas.

That’s a shit take

That rudeness is uncalled for. You can do better.

As an immigrant, something I like about Canada is how regardless of where we came from we all make an effort to speak to each other in the common language so that we can learn and understand each other. And then there is Quebec sulking because we don't speak their language, instead of following everybody else.

I didn't lose my culture just because I use English as a vehicular language. I gained all sorts of stuff from other people, which I wouldn't have if I or they refused to speak the common language. So, please, Quebecois, do share your beautiful culture with us -- in the language we all understand.

Take it one day at a time, bud. One day at a time. This too shall pass.

Surely that depends on the dosage. I don't know how drunk/stoned people are when they decide they are sober enough to drive. It is possible that alcohol makes that self-assessment particularly poor, but I haven't seen any data yet. I'd love to learn more.

I'm a disabled queer immigrant white dude that would cringe hard at the very notion of excluding somebody from a community just because they are able-bodied, straight, indigenous, non-white or female. Imagine a university that excluded non-whites -- why should we tolerate universities that exclude men? It's sexism plain and simple. It goes against every other progress we've made in civil rights in the last century.

I’m willing to bet a big chunk of those deaths were cyclists either blasting though the light, riding against the flow of traffic, or both.

If you look at some real-world collision statistics, like I did because I wanted to know how I was most likely to get killed, you will find that you would have lost that bet. Your municipality probably publishes a report on those stats every few years. Look it up and learn something new.

Didn’t realize it was so controversial!

If by controversial you mean dangerous, then yes, it is. It is one of the main ways in which pedestrians are killed in North America. In most developed countries it is illegal.

Cars making right turns on red are a major source for both pedestrian and cyclist deaths. The driver making a right turn is focused on the incoming traffic on their left and are thus less likely to notice a cyclist or pedestrian on their right.

All the time I run into inconsiderate drivers who enter an intersection without stopping and/or creep towards pedestrians when the light is red, ignoring the danger they force upon unprotected people.

We can reduce these deaths by disallowing right turns on red, following most of the developed world.

“Kinew has some kind of minor scandal? Well then I hate him because he has poor character, not because of the colour of his skin. You see, I am not a racist.”

I have happily worked with and voted for people of various skin colors over the years. My wife and children are non-white. I am queer.

While I don't know how serious his homophobic and misogynistic behaviors have been, prima facie it is not something I would have overlooked if he was a white dude, and for that same reason it is not something I would overlook if I was a voter in Manitoba either. Treating him differently because of his heritage would have been racist in my eyes.

So I have mixed feelings about him becoming premier. On the one hand I'm happy that racist prejudices didn't prevent him from winning, but at the same time I do have lingering doubts about whether the opposite sort of racism is enabling yet another homophobic misogynist to reach public office. We already have enough of those.

And that is why I am quoting MLK: because I can celebrate that a POC is holding office, while at the same time I don't want people to be voted for or against based on their skin color, sexual orientation, etc. Just based on their character.

If that means that I am secretly racist, then perhaps it means somebody voting for him is secretly homophobic or misogynistic. I think it is a rather nuanced subject.

Edit: Honest question: would have a problem with somebody for voicing doubts about a white politician who "had trouble with the law as a young man and had included racist lyrics in his raps"? Why or why not?

Blaming the victim is very easy to do when you don't fear that the next victim could be you.

Its just that I fail to see how mentioning that the new Premiere’s First Nations heritage is problematic

Did I say it was problematic, or is that something you assumed?

I am both surprised and disappointed that quoting MLK can be misconstrued as racism, but I guess that's the Internet these days.

The most recent vote I cast was to Olivia Chow, FWIW. Make of that what you want.

The wording is problematic, isn’t it.

It's nearly word-for-word taken from MLK's iconic anti-racism speech. Do you have a problem against his words or the spirit of what he was saying? Please elaborate.

I don't get how a quote against racism can be controversial in this day and age 🤷

MLK's whole "I have a dream" speech seems very apropos, doesn't it?

The problem is there’s a lot of people that want to push that lifestyle on every single human being

I suspect you misunderstand what these people want. Let's use myself as an example, I am as opposed to suburbs as they come. Does it mean I am opposed to you living in a suburb? No. I am opposed to:

• Zoning laws forcing large residential developments to contain only single-family homes, rather than allowing mixed-use medium density communities. You wouldn't want your preferred type of development to be banned, either.
• Our streets where we live being designed with the primary goal of maximizing the number of cars passing through them, like they are today. You wouldn't want heavy car traffic in front of your home, either.
• My children wasting 100 minutes of time every day commuting to school because our city planners did a terrible job, when their school should be within a safe 15 minute bicycle ride. You wouldn't want your kids to be wasting their life in traffic, either.

We largely want the same things. The main difference I see is that I'm looking for ways to improve my lifestyle in a way that doesn't automatically decrease the quality of life of other people, such as driving my car in front of their homes at all times of the day or making their neighborhoods unwalkable.

Car-dependent city planning is causing all these problems.