Unfortunately not. Japan has been very far-right (bordering on jingoistic) for a long time now. The country’s external facade is all cute anime characters and zany fashion… But that was an intentional rebrand (heavily subsidized by the country’s propaganda department) in the wake of WW2 to distance itself from the atrocities they had committed. But internally, the country has remained extremely hardline conservative and xenophobic. And it has only shifted farther right with recent elections.
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I’ve seen child eating speculation, largely because child fucking is the current threshold. Like Trump is fighting for his life to only be called a child fucker. So what is so bad that he’s trying to keep buried? Eating kids was mentioned a few times in the files already, so people have started speculating that Trump was involved in that.
Yeah, my complaints about Apple all stem from the fact that my industry has a standard program that only runs on Macs… And every Mac I’ve used has inevitably ended up taking 4x as long to do basically anything else when compared to Windows or Linux. The only reason I ever use a Mac is because my job requires it, and even then it is only begrudgingly; if there was a way to run the program on anything else, I would have done so a long time ago.
And yeah, I agree 100% about the “different first, better second” design choices. Lots of the most frustrating things about Macs are due to intentional design choices that Apple makes. Not because it is better for the user, but simply because it is different.
I mean, it took starvation for them to start burning shit the first time. But at least they learned from that, and haven’t let it get as bad since then.
This is simply Americans’ first time experiencing the wrong side of the “let them eat cake” thing, so of course it’ll take a long time for America to start lighting things on fire.
America may be constantly battling racism and xenophobia internally, but we recognize it for what it is: a shit behavior that should should be excised. European and Eastern cultures like Japan are so casually racist and xenophobic that they don't even recognize it in themselves.
The best way I’ve heard it described is that Americans consider racism something you do, while the rest of the world tends to view it as something you are.
To an American, if someone is a racist, it’s because they do racist things. So Americans are actually fairly good at recognizing and excising casual racism, because they recognize it as a behavior they can change. But this also means Americans are fairly quick to judge individual actions as racist, because they see it as something that should be improved upon in the future. To an American, a racist is racist because they have recognized their own racist behaviors and don’t see them as a problem.
Meanwhile, Europeans and Asians tend to think of racism as something you are. And that’s a big difference, because it makes them much less adept at identifying the more casual forms of racism. Because even if they’re casually racist, they’ll simply tell themselves “well I’m not a racist, therefore my actions weren’t racist.” Since that binary “is/is not a racist” flag hasn’t flipped in their brain, they’re able to tell themselves that their individual actions aren’t racist.
It’s like Europeans need to be at least 51% racist in order to be considered racist, so anything below that amount is excusable. Individual people will obviously have different thresholds for when that Boolean bit gets flipped from “not racist” to “racist”, but it still needs to hit that personal threshold before they’ll start calling out racism. And europeans will tend to judge their own actions much more leniently, like a zealot telling themselves that God is on their side so their bad deeds aren’t really bad.
But that causes interesting culture shocks whenever Americans interact with Europeans or Asians. Europeans are quick to jump on the “all Americans are racist” bandwagon, and the American will tend to nod along and agree because they recognize that everyone has the potential to be racist. Then the American will see the Europeans do/say some vile racist shit, and start to call it out. But then the European gets defensive and adamantly states that they’re not a racist… Because the European takes the “hey that was pretty fucked up and racist, don’tcha think” as a personal “you are a racist” attack, instead of a “that individual action was racist, and you should examine why you did it” behavioral check.
And the American will be confused on why the European immediately jumped all the way to “why are you calling me a racist? I’m not racist” argument. Because in their experience, the only people who immediately jump to that are the full blown reich-wing racists who don’t see their own racist actions as a problem, but want to continue existing in a civilized society. Labeling someone as a racist is a big deal for an American, because it means the person has refused to examine their own racist behaviors, or has done so and sees no problem with the racism. To an American, labeling someone a racist is basically the nuclear “I’ve exhausted all other possibilities, and can only conclude that they’re doing it on purpose” option.
So Americans will often walk away from the interactions thinking “holy fuck those Europeans were really goddamned racist” simply because the Europeans refused to acknowledge that their own individual actions had the potential to be racist. Meanwhile, the Europeans will think that Americans are really fucking racist because Americans are quick to call it out amongst themselves.
The original hamburger was more like a meatloaf. It was a hamburg steak, meant to be eaten with a fork and knife just like a modern meatloaf. The modern hamburger is 100% an American invention, because America was the place that first turned it into a sandwich.
I have nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?
It’s also about fusing different cuisines together, to make something new. America is the big melting pot, and that means you end up getting flavor palettes that otherwise wouldn’t have been brought together.
Traditional Mexican food isn’t anywhere near as spicy or as cheesy as Tex-mex, for instance. That’s because Texans took the traditional Mexican cuisine, combined it with American peppers and English+North American aged orange cheeses, and created Tex-mex. Tex-mex also tends to rely on flour instead of corn, because Mexico had red/yellow/white maize (and later, modern yellow corn) while American settlers had wheat.
And then California Mexican food is an entirely different third type of food.
Hell, my favorite local pizza joint sells a chicken tikka masala pizza that is fucking wonderful. We have a really big North Indian population in my area, so lots of the local restaurants have veggie options (India is largely vegetarian) and/or Indian spice blends incorporated into some of their menu items.
Peasant food, because peasants knew how to feed a family with cheap hearty ingredients, which keep you full. Whenever you imagine a cozy “I’m ready for a nap after eating” meal, it is almost always peasant food that you’re imagining.
“I’d rather go to solitary” is said by people who have never had to endure it. Anyone who has actually been in solitary will agree that it was literal torture. For the first day, you’re just bored. By the third day, you’re hallucinating, seeing things crawling around in your peripheral vision and hearing whispers through the walls. By the end of the week, you’re having full blown conversations with ghosts, and can’t tell if you’re awake or asleep. You’re lucky if you haven’t seriously injured yourself by the end of it, because at least pain is stimulating. Then when the guard slides your food through the door slot after a week, they hear you screaming at ghosts and see the blood smeared across the wall, and casually add another week of solitary because you’re being uncooperative.
The human brain desperately craves stimulation. It craves stimulation so badly that when it can’t find any, it makes its own.
Here’s a reminder that the 13th amendment didn’t abolish slavery. It simply added the “they must be a criminal before you can enslave them” qualifier…
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction
Emphasis mine. Why do you think the model for the modern police force started as slave catchers, and then pivoted hard towards “law enforcement” after the civil war? The US already had law enforcers. They were called sheriffs (county), troopers (state), and marshals (federal). The individual cities and towns didn’t have their own independent police forces until after the civil war… Instead, the county sheriff would deputize people to enforce laws in the individual cities on the sheriff’s behalf. And those brand new city-level police forces were manned by, you guessed it, former slave catchers. And they never really stopped catching slaves. They just changed what they called it.
The US thrives on slavery, even today, with private prisons as the modern slave owners.
Grand juries are just a puppet of the prosecutor. The rules regarding evidence are much less strict for a grand jury, and the prosecutor has full control over what evidence the grand jury is allowed to see.
The district attorney is typically an elected position, so the job has to consider politics when deciding whether or not to press charges. And some cases are politically inconvenient. The public wants to see a corrupt cop charged… But the police union has privately told the DA that if they bring charges against the cop, the police will stop cooperating as witnesses or collecting any crime scene evidence until the charges are dropped. Making the DA’s job impossible in other cases.
Essentially, if it would be politically inconvenient for a prosecutor to press charges, they can simply refuse to bring any evidence before the grand jury. And then when the grand jury refuses to indict (because they had no evidence) then the DA can hop in front of a news camera and go “oh sorry people, I wanted to press charges on this cop, but the big mean grand jury refused. But remember I tried! I’m tough on crime and am constantly fighting to keep our streets safe. Vote for me!” The grand jury is a very convenient scapegoat. They’re a faceless blob that can’t defend themselves in the news headlines.
Or inversely, if the prosecutor wants to press charges, they could literally just scribble “lmao yeah I did it, signed {defendant}” on a fast food napkin and present it to the grand jury as “evidence”. There also isn’t any defense lawyer at the grand jury proceedings, because nobody has been charged with a crime yet. So there’s nobody to go “hey the DA literally just wrote that confession themselves. That evidence wouldn’t stand up in court.” The old joke among lawyers is that the grand jury would indict a ham sandwich for murder if the DA wanted them to.
Make no mistake. If the DA wanted to prosecute this, the grand jury would have voted to indict.
That’s just drywall. Interior wall cladding isn’t really structural in American building. But being able to punch through brick or concrete would be wildly concerning, even for Americans.
I do believe that HIV will happen soon, but curing cancer is a lot like curing the common cold. Even if you cure one strain, there are still hundreds more with the same end result. Cancer is just the umbrella term for a particular type of cellular behavior, but there are a lot of different types, causes, etc and treatments will vary for each.
To be clear, this isn’t some nihilistic doomer “why even bother trying” type of post. Modern medicine has already made great strides in curing several different kinds of specific cancers. But a cure for one cancer will not really equate to “curing cancer”, because there will still be countless others.
Yup, the “democrats are forcibly transitioning your kids” conspiracy theories that conservatives parrot has 100% been coming from the fact that the billionaires wanted to do exactly that. They wanted to forcibly transition children to keep as sex slaves.
There are multiple documents in the files confirming this… They even go on to justify it by saying that they’d be doing the children a service, because it would allow them to make more money as prostitutes or porn stars after they’re too old for Epstein’s clients.
There’s a weird branch of conservatism that is really into forced feminization as a kink. That’s why trans women are vilified, but femboys are somehow okay with many conservatives. To the conservatives who are into forced feminization, the femboy is just playing into that kink, and they can tell themselves that it’s forced. They don’t see it as gay, (which would be wrong, as conservatives hate the evil gays), because it’s forcing someone to be feminine instead. But trans women take it too far for those conservatives, because it removes the “I’m forcing them to do this by being more masculine” power dynamic that they enjoy with forced feminization. With trans women, it’s very clearly something that they’re doing to themselves, not something that is being forced upon them.
But with the billionaires, that latter part isn’t a problem. They literally could force kids to be trans. So it just plays even harder into the forced feminization kink that so many conservatives have… It’s the natural end stage of the kink for them. Trans girls don’t break their illusion of power, because the power is not an illusion when you’re that rich.
IIRC, the reason lots of old paintings gave cats weird faces was because the artist was trying to indicate that the cats are mischievous. Basically, dogs got painted accurately because they follow directions. But cats got painted like jesters on purpose, because they just do whatever the hell they want to do; fuck your rules, fuck your family’s nice dishes I’m knocking this shit off the shelf, feed me and tell me I’m pretty while I bite you for scratching my back wrong.
The weird faces are symbolic, and the audience at the time would have recognized the symbolism. Cats were also heavily associated with witchcraft and paganism, so it could also be used to symbolize that link. Like if a cat is painted looking demonic and/or standing on two feet, it could be possessed by a spirit.
It’s because they suddenly switched from going downhill to going uphill, and didn’t correct their driving to account for that. Going downhill, they were likely accelerating to get past the traffic. So the boat was actually being pulled downhill. Then when the slope began to change, they stopped accelerating because they were past the traffic.
This means the boat’s inertia was suddenly pushing the car, rather than being pulled by it. If they had continued accelerating up the hill, (and thus, kept pulling the boat) they would have been fine. But since they were starting to slow down, (and the boat was pushing them from behind) they essentially got PIT maneuvered as soon as the back end wasn’t perfectly straight.
Either way, the correct solution would have been to accelerate. But inexperienced trailer drivers often panic and brake as soon as a wobble starts, which only makes it worse. Imagine the trailer being held by a rope instead of a ball hitch. You’d want to keep tension on that rope constantly, so it doesn’t go slack. Because if you put slack in that rope, the trailer will try to veer off in one direction or the other, and you’ll be along for the ride. That’s essentially what happened here. They went from pulling the trailer to being pushed by the trailer.
It still functions as a thermostat. You simply can’t access the smart features like presence sensing (to automatically turn your system off when you’re not home) or cloud control, (so you can’t adjust the temperature from your phone anymore). But it’ll still continue to function as a dumb thermostat. You set the temperature at the unit, and it holds said temperature until you change it.
Showerthoughts @lemmy.world c/YouShouldKnow should’ve been called c/LemmyTellUSomething
196 @lemmy.blahaj.zone Life Advice Rule
Steam’s business model of “do nothing and watch every single competitor repeatedly shoot their own feet” seems to work really well.