Lewis2
15hr ago
I used to have a neighbor (not a Boomer, a Gen Xer) who mowed his yard a minimum of three times per week, and sometimes even daily. I’d occasionally come home and find that he’d mowed my yard for me, having apparently decided that I was letting it get a bit too long. (I think he also knew that I didn’t care for yard work, so I always appreciated his donated time and expense.)
Lewis2
16hr ago
Yes, I am actively involved in one ethnic heritage organization and occasionally help out with a couple of others. Each one is having trouble gaining new, younger members (if they’re even trying), so I’m not hugely optimistic about their futures. I sometimes wonder if I’m wasting my time by getting involved at all.
Lewis2
2d ago
I appreciate this comment, but I do have one historical nit:
We didn't see this behavior from the Jews themselves when they were occupied by Rome
As I mentioned during a previous discussion, this isn’t true. After the fall of Jerusalem, the Jews’ treatment of the Greeks and Romans was rather similar to modern-day Palestinians’ treatment of Israelis, except far more deadly.
Quoting my previous comment:
If the ancient Roman historians who wrote about the war are to be believed, the Jews went far beyond just rebelling, they outright slaughtered the Greeks and Romans wherever they could.
The Jews… waged war on the inhabitants throughout Libya in the most savage fashion, and to such an extent was the country wasted that, its cultivators having been slain, it’s land would have remained utterly depopulated, had not Emperor Hadrian gathered settlers from other places and sent them thither, for the inhabitants had been wiped out.
Dio Cassius also records that they gruesomely murdered 220,000 Greeks and Romans in the area, while Synesius writes in one of his letters that the Jews were “fully convinced of the piety of sending to Hades as many Greeks as possible.”
This is something akin to the Haitian genocide, not a mere rebellion.
Lewis2
3d ago
As @NewCharlesInCharge pointed out, the law appears to have originally been passed to attack the KKK, an organization whose existence is probably in itself “a sign of a sick, low-trust society.”
Lewis2
4d ago
And since no one with power is even willing to hand out 5 year jail sentences, how is it remotely possible that a bill allowing drivers to hit pedestrians would ever be passed? The reason the protestors get away with it is that the powers that be are generally sympathetic to, if not outright supportive of, the protestors and their cause. The minute an anti-immigrant group tried the same tactic, the police and courts would magically stiffen their resolve and start handing out the lengthiest sentences permitted by law. It’s all “who, whom.”
Lewis2
7d ago
If you currently have housemates (presumably already vetted), why not just continue to rent to them? Increase their rent as necessary to cover your expenses, and then rest easy knowing you’re renting to responsible people.
Lewis2
10d ago
a substantial number or people on the right who believe that Biden is a Mao or Stalin
Does anyone on the right actually believe that? I only ever hear complaints that Biden is old, senile, and obviously being puppeted around by various other figures in his administration. In other words, he is personally weak and pathetic, something even their worst detractors can’t say about Stalin and Mao.
Lewis2
11d ago
I just wish modern day news sources would reintroduce the old TLDR-style series of cascading headlines.
Lewis2
14d ago
Doesn’t that likely have something to do with the Labour Party under Corbin being pretty openly antisemitic? The numbers might have been different otherwise.
Lewis2
15d ago
Oh, you’re absolutely right. I remember raising the minimum wage for the part-timers to $8/hour ten or twelve years ago. The last I heard, the new starting wage at the same daycare was something like $15–$17/hour, and this isn’t even in an urban area, let alone a major one. I don’t know of any white collar jobs that saw a 100% increase in salary over the same time period.
Lewis2
15d ago
In modern mass culture, the middle-age dads of tweens and teens are also portrayed as out of touch laughingstocks. At least the moms are portrayed as competent. As for older women, yes, there’s the stereotype of the overbearing mother (or mother-in-law), but there’s also the great respect shown to grandmothers. Just think about the messaging during Covid. Everyone was told to mask and get vaccinated in order to save grandma, but no one even thought to be concerned about grandpa.
Either way, I’m pretty sure dasfoo was talking about the traditional views under the bad old patriarchy, not modern views.
Lewis2
15d ago
I was formerly the board chair of a local non-profit daycare. Even with free facilities, only a couple of full-time staff, a bunch of part-time high school and college students making barely above minimum wage (this was pre-Covid), and zero excess funds most years, we still were barely cheaper than many of the other local daycares. At least where I live, childcare is a highly competitive field. Any conspiracy to artificially inflate costs would need to include every daycare run by a non-profit, university, church, stay-at-home mom, large employer, etc., including every new entrant into the business, of which there are many. A sinister cabal is just not possible.
Lewis2
16d ago
I’ve had bear meat on several occasions, and while it is good, I don’t think it’s that much better than venison, squirrel, or beef. It’s also not exotic enough. Mammoth, whale, and giant tortoise meat all seem like winners though.
Lewis2
17d ago
I think they’d be equally ravenous to seize the reins of power regardless. They’re just authoritarians. It’s like asking if the early Nazis would have been more zealous if they were up against a strict communist government instead of the relatively liberal Weimar one. I think their zeal would have been undiminished either way. Same goes for the fervent anti-meat crowd.
Lewis2
22d ago
Bed, chair, recliner, couch, floor, wandering around the house, sitting in the car, on the John, at a table or desk, on top of the kitchen countertop. . . . I’m not at all consistent.
Lewis2
1mo ago
In some sense that’s true, but as long as property taxes are based on a certain percentage of a property’s assessed value, when that value goes up, the taxes do too. Obviously the government could lower the rate, but inertia makes that unlikely.
Lewis2
1mo ago
I’ve also seen plenty of old people complain that the concomitant rise in property taxes is increasingly burdensome, especially for those on a fixed income. Sure, their kids may see more money when they die (realistically, the nursing home will probably eat most of the proceeds), but that does nothing to help them here and now.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Couples get fat together. There is never one obese one and one skinny one.
I’m surprised at this assertion, as I personally know several mismatched pairings, and I’ve witnessed quite a few more. I know a few fat man/skinny woman couples, but, perhaps unfortunately for you, I see far more fit man/fat woman couples.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Here is the article immediately before it was merged, and here is the article as it appeared in March of 2021, before an activist editor significantly changed it, summarizing his changes as follows: “Per talk page request, adding content to reduce bias in the article toward Hajnal'a theory, as well as to mention the racialist history of this research.”
This editor’s Wikipedia user page gives some insight into his views and editing motivations: “I am primarily interested in the documented history and photography of American small towns and railroads. Most of my activity on Wikipedia would consist of edits of that nature; if it weren't for the fact that I seem to find myself entrenched in lengthy disputes over culture-related articles; typically with trolls. I adamantly oppose the rise of racism, HBD, bio'truth', nationalism and jingoism, and I consider these to be the most compelling threats of our time to human dignity and safety.”
Lewis2
1mo ago
To Americans, WWI is definitely seen as a second-rate prequel to the war that actually matters, but I get the impression that for Brits, the Great War still looms large, with WWII seen as a devastating but still far less psychologically damaging sequel. If I’m right about that, it probably explains why there aren’t (m)any British WWII movies.
Lewis2
1mo ago
A couple of points. First, although I suppose it wasn’t clear, I was responding to RandomRanger’s last sentence, which I do think is wrong. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a group that is more stable than the Amish, even though they have opted to go without modernity to some extent (the extent varies by Gemeinde).
Secondly, going back to coffee_enjoyer’s comment, I didn’t take him to be saying that we would need to adopt the Amish life wholesale, but instead that we could carefully pick and choose which parts we wanted to adopt (“incorporating such things into modern life”), just as the Amish carefully decide which parts of modernity they want to adopt. Some kind of synthesis between the two cultures would probably be a net gain over the current state of the modern West. If nothing else, I think the average modern person would benefit massively from the strong sense of community that the Amish have.
Lewis2
1mo ago
While the Amish do have a higher genetic predisposition to certain birth defects, this is more than compensated for by their -50% resistance to cancer stat and their +10% longevity racial passive.
Worth noting that this only applies to a specific, small subgroup of Amish, and even the group of Amish in the next county north don’t benefit from the same good genes. That aside, I agree that genetic issues are a red herring, since they have nothing to do with the Amish lifestyle itself.
Eh, I know a number of Lutheran clergy who speak multiple languages fluently and additionally have a reading and sometimes writing knowledge of several more. It’s not at all uncommon to come across pastors who speak fluent English, German, and one or more of Spanish, Italian, one of the Scandinavian languages, Afrikaans, Russian, Japanese, etc. These same guys can generally also read Koine Greek without much difficulty, maybe ancient Hebrew (if they retained it after graduating from the seminary), and frequently also Latin.
The ministry is one of the few professions that still heavily emphasizes the learning of foreign languages, so it’s not altogether surprising that it attracts people with a propensity in that direction.
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