vvilld @ vvilld @lemmy.dbzer0.com

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4 mo. ago

Rather than "god damn" I usually say "gods damn". I'm not religious at all, but I'd rather someone mistake me for a polytheistic pagan than a Christian.

My mouth doesn't have the receptors to detect capsacin, the chemical that makes spicy food burn/hot. I can eat the spiciest food imaginable and it will not burn my mouth at all.

That said, those receptors exist in other parts of my body. Very often while I'm sitting on the toilet I'll realize my dinner the previous night was particularly spicy.

Also, after more than 1/3 of a century of eating spicy food indiscriminately, my stomach lining has taken quite the beating.

That's a different situation considering the Irish language was created before there even was a united Ireland. We can trace the history of how English came to America, and it came from the English people. We can't trace the history of how the Irish language spread across Ireland because it predates history.

The coffee certainly makes me need to poop!

Yes, it's 100% immature, which is exactly why you should do it.

Eating a banana while drinking coffee. Perfectly complimentary flavors.

I was mostly just making a snarky comment about how everyone is going to get tooth decay from lake of fluoridation.

Like I said, while semantically imprecise, yes, we did get the English language from the English.

That's just semantics. Sure, I guess the more proper way to say it is that when the Americans founded the US they continued the practice of race-based chattel slavery which the British had instituted in the colonies prior to the formation of the US. Is that really substantively different than saying the Americans adopted slavery from the British?

My bad. Thanks.

Fun fact: Monopoly was originally called "The Landlord's Game" when it was created and was meant to teach people about the fundamental absurdity and contradictions inherent in the capitalist system of land ownership. It was later co-opted by a family member of the creator who sold it to Parker Brothers. They renamed it Monopoly and turned it into the commercial success it is today.

Sort of to both, but not really.

Slavery has existed for at least as long as states and kingdoms have, yes. But the specific form slavery took in the Americas (not just the US and North America) was unique. That being race-based chattel slavery. That form had not existed anywhere else in the world previously or since. The closest you could claim were the Helots in ancient Sparta, but even that was closer to serfdom than chattel slavery.

So, no, the British did not "invent slavery", but they (along with the Spanish and French) did pioneer a new form of slavery that was uniquely brutal and inhumane.

And while you're correct that America as a nation did not adopt slavery from the British after the formation of the US since the colonials had already been practicing race-based chattel slavery before the US existed. But where did those colonials get that slavery? From the British who were their overlords and ancestors, who formed the colonies, and who created the economic system that relied on race-based chattel slavery.

So while you might be technically right, it's only due to semantics. The Brits absolutely did create virtually everything about the American system of slavery, which we then continued to perpetrate for another ~century after independence.

Again, you got that kind of money? I live outside DC, so not close to an international border. In fact, most Americans don't live somewhere they can travel across the border easily. And with the way the government is denying entry to people with the wrong level of melatonin, I don't think it's particularly safe advice to tell people to start crossing the border regularly.

And most people in the US do not fly for vacations. It's very expensive to fly, and most of us have cars we can take. I'm planning a family vacation later this year to visit my grandparents ~700 miles away. We priced it out and discovered it's actually cheaper for us to rent an RV and drive than to fly. Flying, especially internationally for a shopping trip, is an extreme luxury for most of us.

Sure. And the US government has the CIA and military to enact that regime change. Plus they have all the cops and military to defend against a popular uprising overthrowing the government.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but we're still in the early stages of a popular uprising. That's what these protests are about. This one on Saturday got, reportedly, ~5 million people on the streets at the same time. That's ~1.5% of the country's population. According to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, it takes ~3.5% of the population mass mobilizing at the same time to effect political change. That's ~12 million people. That's why this wasn't a 1 and done protest. The next one is already scheduled for April 19. And there will be another after that. And another after that.

Let's not just aim for 3.5%. Go higher. What can 5% of the country, 17 million people, do if we're all out in the streets together? Rather than just complain that one single protest didn't immediately result in widespread political change, why don't you get out there and join us on the 19th? Bring your friends. Bring your family. Help make a change rather than just complaining that others aren't doing it for you.

Because that's realistic advice. You have money for be to buy a plane ticket every time I need groceries? Who's going to fund everyone moving to another country? You got that kind of money? Because I don't.

There is no mechanism within American politics to run a new election. If that's the demand, we first would need to amend the Constitution, which isn't going to happen, or violently overthrow the government. Just demanding, "run a new election" is as empty a demand as anything else you could imagine.

Sounds like a good time to be in business as a dentist!

I'm just a simple construction worker who's not wise to the world of international geopolitics, but isn't a military strike on a foreign country's sovereign territory usually considered an act of war?

Mental asylums as they existed in the US before the 80s were often little more than glorified prisons. They did all kinds of horrific things to people which today we would consider torture.

That said, most people (not all, but most) who were in mental asylums were there because they had very real issues they needed real treatment for. Most people were not getting the treatment they needed, but that doesn't mean they didn't need something.

The mental asylums absolutely needed a lot of reform. Most probably did need to be shut down, or, at the very least, the entire staff needed to change and they needed a completely new philosophy of care. What this country absolutely did NOT need is to just throw all those people out onto the streets to fend for themselves. It seems to have been a lateral change for the people who needed help and a negative change for the rest of the country.

I'm not sure I would use the term "mental asylum" as that has a lot of cultural connotations I don't think we need or want to bother with. However, I do think the federal government should provide massive amounts of block grant funding to states to open new facilities which can provide inpatient services to people who suffer with mental health problems. These should be founded on a care-first framework, not the torture prisons of yore.

Since it's clear we're talking about the US here, the 1st Amendment clearly states (emphasis added):

Congress shall make no law respecting ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It says nothing about citizens, tourists, foreign nationals, etc. In fact, the amendment only limits what Congress can do (and the Supremacy clause extends this to the states). It doesn't say "Citizens have the right to free speech." It says "Congress shall pass no laws abridging the freedom of speech."

It's pretty clear that anyone and everyone has the right to free speech and assembly. The right wingers you're talking about are trying to rewrite the first amendment to justify their fascism.