Yeah, I don’t think it’s ever exactly been a widespread movement among the general world population, but there have been a few interesting examples of groups that have adopted it, and at times it’s been big enough to draw the notice of some fairly influential people, both positive and negative, and you can kind of imagine that maybe if things had gone just a little differently at a couple different points that it might have been able to gain some traction.
They make canned hard boiled quail eggs. I like to get them for cocktail garnishes for Bloody Marys and such.
I think your first sentence got a little butchered by autocorrect, I assume it’s supposed to say “so many people”
But I agree that America (and honestly many other primarily English speaking countries) would be a big holdout if anything but English was to be adopted as the auxiliary language. Many other countries would probably be somewhat more open to it, but it has been tried before and never seems to gain traction (esperanto almost had a moment in the early 20th century where an esperanto-speaking county was almost established and where it almost became a working language for the League of Nations- the latter never came to pass basically because the French threw a hissy fit over it.)
I agree to a point, different languages and experiences can help to shape your mind in different ways which is overall a strength
However, if you’re not able to effectively communicate those thoughts to the people who need to hear them, it’s not doing anyone any good
I like the idea of an international auxiliary language, not to replace anyone’s primary language, but basically to be everyone’s second language.
Day-to-day I want everyone to keep using their native tongues, and where possible I’d like them to learn each other’s languages too. But there are some 7000+ languages in use around the world, no one can learn them all, and having a common language to fall back on could be incredibly useful for facilitating communications between different people
There have been a few attempts to come up with one over the years, either by selecting an existing language, or coming up with a constructed language, probably the most famous example of the latter is Esperanto, though that didn’t exactly take off the way its creator might’ve hoped.
Full disclosure - I’m teaching myself Esperanto. I am under no delusion that it’s ever going to fill that role as an international auxiliary language, and I’m not sure I’d want it to be, there’s plenty of valid criticism of it, and I think there could be better options
Yes, it’s not all black and white, but the MAGA agenda is a big bucket of black paint with a couple tiny drops of white mixed in. You can split hairs about how that technically makes it a very dark shade of charcoal grey, but for all practical purposes it’s fucking black.
I have a few friends who used to go to game jams, events where you get a bunch of people together, split them up into groups, and give them a set amount of time (usually a day or a weekend) to make a video game.
Most of the people who went to these were programmers of course, and there were a couple in my friend group who were techy people as well, but mostly they were writers, artists, and musicians.
And the groups they ended up in usually handed up doing pretty well. Having the whole team there and involved from the get-go helped them make a pretty polished game, where a lot of the groups that didn’t have that ended up with music, writing, or visuals that felt kind of tacked-on as an afterthought.
I believe they’re owned by Diageo, which is a UK company, and I don’t think that Diageo has an American subsidiary like Suntory does, but otherwise pretty much everything I said applies.
This really is a situation where you have to do a little research and make your own value judgement on these things. I’m honestly not too sure where I land on it, I want to support Canada in this but I also want to give as little money to the US government as possible, and they’re somewhat at odds so I need to make the call which is more important for me with every item I might buy that has to cross the border.
Black market just makes it even harder to figure out where your money’s going.
Are the people smuggling liquor across the border only smuggling liquor, or are they involved in other crimes that you’re supporting from buying from them?
When is the liquor being diverted from legitimate channels into the black market? Has it already crossed the border and the tariffs been paid? Kind of defeats the purpose then, doesn’t it? Is it happening before it crosses the border and possibly fucking over the Canadians you’re trying to support?
Unless you’re traveling to Canada and buying it legitimately to smuggle back you’re probably not accomplishing what you hope to.
Or I suppose you could start moonshining.
If you got 2 doses of the MMR vaccine as a child, you’re probably fine. The vaccine is like 97% effective at preventing measles, and if you’re part of that 3% your symptoms will probably be milder that if you weren’t vaccinated. It’s a damn good vaccine. Even if you got only 1 dose that’s still considered to be 90-something percent effective.
Talk to your doctor, people with certain autoimmune conditions, the elderly, people born when they were only giving 1 dose of the vaccine or who received older vaccine formulas may need a booster. The rest of us who are vaccinated are almost certain to be fine.
The real risk is to children who haven’t been vaccinated yet because they’re too young, people who can’t receive the vaccine for health reasons like allergies or other unvaccinated adults, and people with compromised immune systems.
I can’t really find good numbers of what percent of the US overall is vaccinated, but if the current rates of children being vaccinated are anything to go by, it’s most of them. Even with all of the anti vax talk, it seems like somewhere north of 80% of children in the US are still getting their recommended vaccines from what I can find. This is mostly going to hit that 10-20-ish percent who aren’t vaccinated.
And the real tragedy that a good amount of the anti vax parents were actually vaccinated themselves as children and so get to enjoy that 97% immunity. They won’t be in much danger of catching measles but their children will be.
Otherwise, all of the usual advice applies, wash your hands, disinfect shared surfaces and equipment, cover your mouth when you cough, maybe wear a mask in public, do what you can to encourage your friends and family to get vaccinated if they aren’t.
Meant to reply a couple days ago but forgot
Yeah, unfortunately he’s a trump supporting, union busting asshole.
I’ve heard, but have been unable to verify, that his daughters who are set to take the company over someday, may have their heads on straight. I hope so. There are absolutely far better beers in and around Philly (I’m happy to give a long list of recommendations,) and Yuengling isn’t anything too special as a beer. But it’s special for being America’s oldest brewery, and it’s certainly carved out a special place for itself in this area. Like I said, I’ve drank a lot of Yuengling in my life, odds are I have a few cans in my beer fridge right now because there’s a good chance that it’s what my friends grab out of habit whenever they bring beer over for a party, I’ve been to more than a few bars with “Yuengs and Wings” specials (which rhymes for those who aren’t familiar with it) and it does it’s job adequately of being a beer that tastes like beer for when you just want to have a beer, so I do hope that when Dick retires or dies his daughters make up for some of his bullshit. I’d like to have my old standby cheap beer option back in the rotation someday.
I think this recommendation is a good segue into how important it is to think about where your money is going.
First of all, it seems obvious to buy Canadian whisky to support Canada. However we’re slapping big tariffs on them. That means that when you buy them that’s giving that tariff money to the US government, which I think we want to avoid.
Further, we’re in a very global economy. Damn-near every brand you’ve ever heard of is owned by the subsidiary of a subsidiary or some other company.
Canadian club is now owned by Suntory Global Spirits (Formerly Beam-Suntory, as in Jim Beam, they actually consider it to be a part of the Jim Beam brand portfolio) an American company, that is itself a subsidiary of Suntory, a Japanese company.
So an American company is getting a good slice of the profits from Canadian club.
And of course Suntory owns a lot of American brands (like Jim Beam since I already mentioned them) and they might well decide to take some of that Canadian Club money they take in and use it to prop up one of their Kentucky Bourbon brands which ends up funneling money towards whatever crazy right wing nut jobs there stand to profit from that.
So yes, Canadian Club is in fact made in Canada, presumably by Canadian employees, and contributing to the Canadian economy, paying Canadian taxes, etc. but a lot of it is also going to other places, and not necessarily places you want it to go, so it would be wise to weigh that into your decision-making here.
And I’m not trying to badmouth Suntory in particular, in the scheme of terrible megacorps I don’t think they’re the worst by a longshot (not that they’re necessarily at all good either) that’s just where I found a jumping off point. I enjoy a lot of their brands, and at least the handful of them that I make some effort to follow still seem to at least be paying lip service to some half decent ideas about things like DEI and sustainability, where some other companies have totally bent the knee to Krasnov.
EDIT: Out of curiosity I just spent a little time researching a few different Canadian whisky brands to see if any of the names I recognize are actually wholly Canadian-owned. It doesn’t look like it, it’s all huge multinational corporations based in other countries when you dig into them. The only thing I could personally come up with is Glen Breton, which is a Canadian single malt, not a Rye, so it fits the bill as a whisky made in Canada, but it’s a totally different style than what most people think of as a “Canadian Whisky.” I’m certain there are some smaller craft distillers that are fully owned by Canadians, but I couldn’t come up with any big brands that fit the bill. Do what you will with that information. I’m not trying to suggest that anyone should or should not buy Canadian whisky, just that if they want to be mindful about which companies and countries are getting their money, it’s a complicated web.
I think there’s a few factors at play here
Yes, depression is a big one
There’s also a lack of places to go and things to do for young people. Some parents are weird about their kids going anywhere these days, and no one really wants to bring their boyfriend/girlfriend over to hang out with their parents.
And even if you don’t have obnoxious helicopter parents, where do you go? Malls are dying, restaurants and movies are expensive, and if you go hang out in a park some Karen will call the police on you.
Neighborhoods aren’t walkable, public transit is broken, and cars are unaffordable so even if you find somewhere to go on a date, how do you get there?
And at least in heterosexual dating, we’ve also had a bit of a cultural shift that might throw things off. A lot of things that used to be accepted we now rightly understand are problematic, I think a lot of men and boys are hesitant to make the first move now because we don’t want to be seen as creeps, but at the same time I think most girls still kind of expect the guys to make the first move, and while a lot of us are a bit more enlightened and could be cool with that (my wife of 5 years made the first move, she’d probably still be waiting if she left it to me) there’s still plenty of guys with toxic fragile masculinity out there who could react poorly to a girl making the first move and I don’t blame girls for not wanting to take on that risk (for the record, I also choose the bear)
So the dynamics have shifted a bit, and I don’t think we’ve really figured out how things are supposed to work yet, and honestly things probably need to shift a whole hell of a lot more before things can normalize there and people can just feel comfortable asking other people out on dates without worrying about it being weird.
And in a similar vein, it’s also I think become a lot more normal to just have platonic friends of the opposite gender. Personally some of my best friends are women who have no desire to date or fuck.
And people are also a lot more willing to have some sort of casual sex, friends with benefits, hookup culture, etc.
So there’s probably a lot of physical and emotional needs that are now being met outside of the context of a romantic relationship when in the past that was pretty much the only way to meet them.
Longer leg moisture wicking boxer briefs, I particularly like Duluth trading co’s armachillo bullpen boxer brief.
I’m admittedly biased being a US American, but the only time I ever see anyone refer to any part of the Americas except the US as “America” is when they’re trying to make this point. It never comes up in conversation otherwise.
I’m not saying that some people/places don’t use it that way, but those people have never made it to the same parts of the internet that I inhabit.
Personally, I’m happy to just chill where I am for a couple decades until I can retire. If I have to work, this honestly feels about as good as it gets for me. I don’t have any desire to climb the ladder or go hunting for a new job.
I like the hours/schedule, we do 12 hour shifts on a 2-2-3 rotation, which is pretty common in this field, so it’s a long shift but it’s a long shift sitting in an air conditioned bunker, and unless you come in for overtime you never have to work more than 3 days in a row without a 2 day break. Now those 3 days are weekends, which sucks, but the flip side is every other weekend you have a 3 day weekend. And if you plan your vacations and such right you only need to take 2 days to get a whole week off, so my PTO can go a long way. Here we start off with about 2 weeks of vacation time (“about” because it’s based on 8 hour days and we work 12, it more or less works out the same but you’re always kind of left with some fraction of a day carrying over) then after 5 years you get another week, and again at a couple other milestones years. I actually really struggle to use up all of my PTO personally because nearly everything I do fits into a 3 day weekend.
Benefits are solid, pension, decent medical plan, sometimes you can qualify for first responder discounts, etc.
Different places have different policies on this, but where I am what you do between calls is pretty much up to you, as long as you’re not bothering anyone or making a mess, you can bring in a laptop and play video games or watch movies, read, work on some crafts, whatever as long as you can put it down when the phone rings.
I work night shift, so things can get pretty dead and you get a lot of downtime between calls. Most people work 7-7, but I managed to snag myself a 3pm-3am shift, which I think is great- I get to sleep in until noon every day, but I don’t have to turn my schedule totally upside down if I need to do something in the morning.
We’re not union in my county, and while normally I’m all for unions, it’s worked out well for us so far, because one of the first concessions that tends to get made in contract negotiations is mandatory overtime in some form because like I said everywhere struggles with staffing issues, and so far they’ve done a decent job of keeping our pay competitive without it (probably because I think the dispatchers in most if not all of our surroundings counties are unionized, so they know we might jump ship to them if they don’t pay us competitively)
And for all of those practical reasons, it also feels good to know I’m helping people. I have absolutely saved lives in my time here, I’ve delivered babies, I’ve helped people through disasters and all manner of scary situations.
And it’s always interesting. When the phone rings I never know what’s going to be on the other end, which of course has its ups and downs, but it’s always interesting. Some of the people and the things they call about are absolutely infuriating of course, but no matter what it is I always get a great story. I never come home to my wife asking me “how was your day” and have to answer with some boring “same shit, different day” kind of answer, there’s always something interesting. Sometimes it’s something I’m proud of, sometimes it’s something I’m pissed off about, sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s sad, and sometimes it’s “can you believe somebody actually called about this?”
I’m a 911 dispatcher, basically every dispatch center in the country is always hiring. There’s a lot of turnover, obviously it’s not a job everyone is cut out for and people get burned out, but also people use it as a stepping stone or career builder to move onto other things, a couple of my coworkers want to be cops and this looks good on that application, one went to work for FEMA, a couple have gone to be the dispatchers at local stations, people get promoted or transfer to other county positions (my agency is part of our county department of public safety, in some areas it might be part of your sheriff’s department, local PD, etc) or just go chasing higher paychecks or dream jobs (pay varies a lot around the country, we make decent enough money where I am, but some places really pay peanuts)
I saw an ad on social media somewhere that they had a hiring event going on, so I went. I was working in a warehouse at the time, and a job where I could sit down in the air conditioning sounded really attractive.
Civil service type jobs were already on my radar, I looked into becoming a park ranger for a while, and I’m an eagle scout, so I had a solid grounding on first aid and such.
I showed up, filled out an application, took their aptitude test (we, and a lot of other agencies use something called criticall if you want to get an idea what that test was like. Some typing, reading comprehension, map reading, listening to some sample calls and answering questions about them, etc.)
I passed the test, so as part of the hiring event I got an interview on the spot. If I applied outside of that, I probably would have had to schedule separate times for the test and interview.
I did alright in the interview so they scheduled me for a job shadow to come in and sit in the room to listen to calls and radio dispatch for a couple hours.
Then a while later I got my conditional offer. I had to get a hearing, vision, and drug test, and schedule a psych eval with the county psychologist.
You all know what hearing and vision tests are like I hope, for the drug test they did a hair test. I shave my head, so I was expecting them to take some beard hair, but apparently their policy is to do underarms if that’s the case.
The psych eval wasn’t anything too in depth, sat down with him for a few minutes, chatted about my mental health (no real issues there) then I got handed a very long test booklet to go fill out, lots of multiple choice questions that seemed to basically be gauging if I can play well with others.
And I assume at some point in there they ran background checks and such. Some places get really in depth with that, interviews with the sheriff, polygraph tests, etc. but mine was all pretty out of sight and out of mind.
Then class started. About a week into it we had to go to the county detectives office to be fingerprinted. But otherwise after that it was just all training.
Requirements here are pretty minimal, clean background check, high school diploma/GED, ability to pass all the pre employment screening, etc. At my agency past drug use isn’t necessarily a disqualifier, as long as you can pass the drug test to get hired and don’t get caught lying about anything you have done. Some other places are of course more strict about that.
If anyone thinks they may want to pursue a dispatch job, your local agency may list the job under a couple different names, dispatcher, calltaker, telecommunicator, etc.
My mom’s side of the family is polish, back in the 80s they visited some relatives there so my mom could be the godmother to one of their daughters.
Shit was rough there then, the family they stayed with had an actual outhouse. No one could ever say that my family is rich, but American money went a long way there back then, basically anything they wanted could be had for what was practically pocket change but the local polish people could barely afford any of it. One of them managed to visit the US back then, and literally cried when he went into an American supermarket and saw the variety and amount of food that just anyone could buy without needing to save up their ration cards (and not a big or fancy one, I’m pretty sure the one they went to is now a normal sized CVS)
So some really rough times are still in living memory for a lot of poles.
And they’ve really come a long way since then, my mom’s goddaughter is now traveling the world doing something in the hospitality industry, last I heard I think she was in Thailand (the relative who visited back in the 80s was amazed to see black people.)
So I don’t think most poles are in any hurry to end up under Russians thumb again.
I work in 911 dispatch, and I don’t have hard stats to back it up, I’m not even really sure how it could be objectively measured, and I’m sure I have a whole lot of bias and such, but I’m pretty sure everyone I work with agrees that we just get weirder calls on full moons.
Not necessarily busier, or more severe, there’s just a certain something that’s hard to explain about a lot of our callers that seems to get a little strange on a full moon.
It’s not something we’re actively keeping track of, it’s not like we have a reminder set on our phones for the full moon, but when we have one of those nights where everything just seems to be a little off and we check the moon phase, it seems like it’s full or nearly full more often than not.
Although personally I think we see a bigger difference for a couple days after the clocks change for daylight savings time. My pet theory on that is it throws people’s medication schedules off by an hour and it takes them a few days to readjust. Plus throwing off sleep schedules, and dementia patients who sundown may be up and acting up at a time they would otherwise be asleep.
I have a really complicated relationship with coconut, because I really like the flavor, but hate the texture. The flavor wins out for me but not by much.
And come to think of it, I think a lot of the commercially made ones use some sort of coconut creme filling instead of cream cheese so it’s more shelf stable and doesn’t require refrigeration. I like the cream cheese ones slightly more.
That while I’m driving I’ll have to sneeze while driving across a bridge and during that split second while my eyes are closed and I’m distracted by the sneeze I’m going to drive off the edge.