Tollund_Man4
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User ID: 501
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
I was in Belfast in January, and when driving through heavily Catholic districts of the city (e.g. the Falls road), I saw Palestinian flags hanging from every pub, which were conspicuous by their absence in the Protestant districts
In the more loyalist areas (I think more moderate Protestants are kind of embarrassed by all the flag-waving) you’ll also see Israeli flags being flown in response to this.
Went to an Irish-language primary school, a Gaelscoil (though I've got terrible Irish these days). We went to church a lot and started every day off with a prayer. The local priest used to come in and give talks and he was very entertaining, he went off to Rome and the next priest wasn't as entertaining but was also a nice fellow. There was a big focus on music which I unfortunately didn't take advantage of so I just did the mandatory tin-whistle playing and singing (the whole class was a church choir). Sports were soccer, handball and (not competitively) rounders though almost everyone was involved in GAA outside of school, I never got the hang of a hurl so I stuck to handball. Nearly all the teachers were female, there were three very strict ones I didn't like and the rest were very friendly. For the final two years we got a male teacher and he was well liked by everyone, our rowdy stage hit around age 12 and we eventually betrayed him on the last day of school by pretending one kid was hurt and showering the teacher in water when he ran over to help.
My main trouble was not having the in-group status most of the other kids shared, I'm Irish but everyone's else's family knew and lived beside everyone else's family for decades and my parents not being locals meant I had to hang out with the Welsh kid, the Scottish kid and the slow kid from Kerry. Eventually I was told I was now part of the cool group, I made one years long friendship out of that and the others I lost contact with as they went to the Irish language secondary school.
My parents made a lot of effort to get me into different secondary schools but left the choice up to me, the school I picked had the worst reputation out of the three but the friend I mentioned was going there and it wasn't on the other side of town so I was happy to go. The new principle was quickly cleaning the place up but there was still a rowdiness among the students that we feared as first years, learned to enjoy in second year and did our best to instill into the younger students in the following years. First years would be thrown into bins, shirt pockets would be torn off and kept as trophies and we had a version of rugby that had no teams and consisted of everyone chasing and throwing rocks at whoever had the ball. Some classes had their disruptive students but as time went on the school did a decent job of separating people into honours and ordinary level classes. I remember voluntarily spending 2 weeks in the ordinary level maths class because I was pessimistic about my upcoming exam results and it's hard to see how anyone could do any learning there, luckily I actually did well on the exam and I quickly got put back into the honours class.
Still reading Kissinger's Diplomacy. A few surprising things I found out (coming from a background of not knowing much about WW2):
- America was already attacking German submarines in the Atlantic before Pearl Harbour
- Roosevelt intitially overestimated Britain's post-war potential and planned to pull American troops out of Europe while letting British garrisons pick up the slack.
- Stalin was proposing post-war plans while German troops were outside of Moscow.
- Churchill consistently tried to convince Roosevelt on the need to take land before the Soviets got to it, and he was consistently ignored. One plan was for D-Day to include the Balkans.
Aside from that I'm doing more 'reading' than ever by listening to audiobooks at work, I'm on my 30th this year. It's mostly light reading, classic sci-fi, horror and now Sherlock Holmes novels.
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
This is just a pathological level of oversocialization, to have even had these thoughts occur in your mind
I phrased it in the abstract but this was a real situation which led to an argument with an angry old woman!
The whole point of a queue is to serve in order of arrival, and you arrived first. . . You WANT the system to reward good judgement and punish bad judgement!!!
I agree my judgment was better and put me in the right. though technically I arrived at the correct stop first whereas everyone else was waiting in the rain before I showed up.
Jesus Christ. I wish I knew you, so I could take advantage of you.
What do you want me to say to this, what's your deadlift 1rm?
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
There's a few minutes between the bus pulling up and the doors opening, enough time to argue with an old woman is less abstract terms than I have phrased it above.
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
Yep, it's a central bus station so all the stops are beside each other but they go to different towns and cities.
The other stop is 10 feet away (I’m bad with feet, more like 5 metres) but clearly a distinct stop. Think of a bunch of separate queues and a few empty stops in between, like an intercity bus station.
You’re waiting at a bus station and there’s a big queue beside you at the next stop. Your bus pulls up and the big queue realises they’ve been waiting at the wrong stop the whole time and shuffle over.
In this situation are you in the right to take your place at the head of the new queue and reap the rewards for your good judgment or should you respect the misdirected queue and move to the back?
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
Maybe I’m just squeamish but I didn’t find my visit to a slaughterhouse to be very pleasant (though the actual farmers I was with thought it was nasty business too).
The suffering of the worker in doing an extremely bloody and dirty job is something I don’t think we’d lose much in getting rid of, there’s no self-reliance or virtue of the hunt in a series of bolt gun shots.
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
Here's how I see it, your description was true for other countries and the related policies have since become a dogma to export via UN resolutions and American soft power or enforce via EU law. There is no real immigrant voting bloc in Ireland, the biggest left-wing party Sinn Fein has flipped their stances on the hate speech bill and the EU migration pact because the last year has caused division within their base (working class vs woke middle class), there was no 5 figure increase in 3rd world immigration until like 2 years ago. The immediate consequences of this situation (though not so immediate when there's an election coming up) work against the left defined strictly, though of course the woke wings of the centrist parties are pretty happy about it.
The conditions for this situation to arise thoughtlessly on the other hand have been present for a long time. Ireland paved the way for the present immigration situation at a time when we faced little consequences for it, the Irish government got to pass laws that made them look good in the eyes of the EU, UN etc while the actual immigration numbers (excluding EU migrants) were minimal. Immigration was simply not that important an issue until recently and there was no cost to winning over the striving middle class who have always been ashamed to be stuck in a backwards Catholic country. Now that Ireland is actually facing consequences for their eagerness to ape the big important countries the cracks are starting to show.
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
I don’t think it makes sense to liken them, modern immigration doesn’t involve the state confiscating your land to give to immigrants.
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
Objectively I’ve gotten the best reading sessions done on desks, but lacking a desk at the moment I just read in bed.
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
Right, there is no 'respectable conservative' establishment to funnel the energy of Irish right wingers through, the two wings of these protests are the more moderate 'We don't want them here (in this particular village)' accompanied by some complaints about how a big increase in population will strain GPs, policing, harm tourism etc, and 'We don't want them here, deport them'. The most respectable opposition you'll get are instances like this fairly satisfying grilling of the Minister for Justice.
I wonder if the Irish politicians will clock on and embrace the Tory policy of talking the talk on migration and then just not doing anything about it (or indeed increasing it further).
Fine Gael are supposed to be the closest thing we have to the Tories, but as long as they continue to call people bigots this is just what leftists say not what right wingers think.
Ireland
Riot police have been called out to the small town of Newtownmountkennedy (population 2,800) in response to another protest outside a site which is soon to become an asylum centre. It got violent and the riot police charged the protesters after they set fire to a building on the outer portion of the site. It seems like most of the protesters/rioters have been pushed into an adjacent field, but police are still moving through the town and running into more angry locals.
Ballina had a ]far larger peaceful protest](https://x.com/Mick_O_Keeffe/status/1781727303283692017) a few days ago, it would be harder to shut this one down given how big the town is (c. 10,000) and how isolated it is.
The Lebor Gabála tells of Ireland being settled (or "taken") six times by six groups of people: the people of Cessair, the people of Partholón, the people of Nemed, the Fir Bolg, the Tuatha Dé Danann, and the Milesians. The first four groups are wiped out or forced to abandon the island; the fifth group represents Ireland's pagan gods, while the final group represents the Irish people (the Gaels).
So basically yes, or at least the previous indigenous people stopped existing as a distinct race in prehistoric times.
Ireland
The National Party leadership dispute, an argument which started over some missing gold bars, has been solved with the launching of Clann Éireann - an explicitly ethnonationalist party lead by the NP's former leader Justin Barret. "Anything other than ethnonationalism is not good enough . . . we can measure who is Irish and who is not by blood".
In somewhat related news Ireland has had its first ethnonationalist murder (first that has nothing to do with the United Kingdom at least). I'll wait for the court case to judge myself but the headline is 'Killed for not speaking English'.
And the Minister of Integration Roderic O'Gorman (also the Minister for 4 other things but this is the relevant one) had masked men putting up 'Close the Borders' signs and protesting outside of his house.
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
The craziest examples aren't from my own life but I learned some lessons observing friends. As far as my experience goes in school I gave people way too much charity to people when they were disrespectful, this is good attitude with good people who don't actually mean any harm but bad for the type that is testing how much they can get away with to climb the social ladder. I've had times when other people stepped in and reminded a guy "do you know he [me] could just beat you up?" and I'd defuse it and ignore the insult. It didn't cause me great trouble but I was pretty surpised at how tit-for-tat escalation quickly sets clear lines with people who would otherwise be long term problems.
I hear the real crazy stuff from a friend who has the organizational talent for making music gigs happen and getting musicians to show up on time (though the bar isn't high in the first place as he complains). There's a lot of competition for not much money and the whole scene involves some very weird people, so there's a big incentive to make accusations that would make a pub owner think twice about letting this guy be involved with anything (and given the weird people on drugs their priors are that bad things happen).
The two I can remember offhand is him being accused of shouting "nigger" in a crowded bar by some other group trying to poach a black singer he was working with and a rumour that he was homophobic because he pushed a guy trying to kiss his neck to the ground. He still gets work from both of those places, the "nigger" was actually shouted by the people accusing him and the homophobia thing was settled with the argument "what if it was me going up to a girl and grabbing her like that?". It's a good thing that his personality is suited to confrontation because you let these rumours go unanswered and you're out of work.
Raw hostility really is the best way to set boundaries with certain types of people.
Some problems can be brute forced with time even if you don't know what you're doing, more often than not you can figure things out as you go along.
I don’t know, from the Australians I’ve seen this is just more evidence in favour of the Chad physiognomy theory of hospitality.
Tollund_Man4
7mo ago
I specify IQ in relation to graciousness and patience because low IQ people really have little concept of delayed gratification and so will want to address any perceived slight immediately instead of stopping to let the incident stew a bit and decide whether confrontation, much less escalation, is necessary.
Not that I know much about IQ but it’s hard to believe that character is circumscribed to this degree by intelligence. ‘Patience is a virtue that can be cultivated’ seems to hold true below the 110IQ cutoff point, even if there are retarded people who can genuinely never grasp it the best predictor of whether someone is patient (above or below that threshold) is simply whether they value patience (whether through religion, personality, experience, and so as not to disagree too much with you - reasoning).
Tollund_Man4
7mo ago
Going by surnames they're Irish-Americans.
Tollund_Man4
7mo ago
No one seems happy with the one they have.
I think “mine but 30 years ago” would actually account for a decent number.
Tollund_Man4
7mo ago
There are probably thoughts human minds cannot think, though obviously I can't think of any.
The squared-circle is the most common example, but then I am sort of thinking about it already and if I turn mad I might worship it.
Why would constraining thought be an unacceptable restriction on free will but not constraining action?
A Christian might correct me here, but I think the answer is that what you can or cannot do in this temporal world is simply unimportant compared to what you do in your soul. And so we have free will in the things that matter.
One is constraining what you can think and the other what you can do no? I can't really think of any other desire or valuation (whatever mental category worship falls into) that can't conceivably be negated, though maybe somebody could suggest one. It would be odd to have one where there really is no choice.
I wonder if it’s a case of anti-Israel sentiment in Ireland is just not considered any different to disapproval of the actions of other countries? The American government was hated as much in Ireland for the Iraq war as the Israeli government is in Gaza (anger over American troops passing through Shannon airport was an issue for years), same for Russia in Ukraine, but nobody treats this as some moral failing.
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