• 3 Posts
  • 487 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • You’re not wrong that the system is fucked and needs to be changed. The open window thing is particularly stupid.

    Though, this is also how pretty much all insurance (auto, homeowners) works. You pay a Monthly Premium, that Premium is based on your risk to the insurer and your deductible. If something happens, you still have to pay the deductible before insurance will pay the rest.



  • Thanks for the info! In the early 20th c. “The Middle East” was defined as the land between India and the Ottoman Empire. The term has since changed to not include Iraq and Afghanistan. During the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the US government used the term “Greater Middle East” to encompass those two countries. That’s where my confusion lies. Learn something new every day.




  • I don’t have a quick answer to your question but as someone who was born in America with a family that celebrates our Scotch-Irish heritage, I have a view/opinion on this topic that might be of some use to you.

    The way I see it, people have two types of heritage, ethnic heritage and cultural heritage.

    In my long winded explanation, Norwegian is your ethnic heritage, ethnic heritage has to do with your family and where they come from. The best way I can describe it is, a blend of where your family originated from plus the traditions that they still hold on to. Ethnic heritage is more rigid and unchanging.

    Cultural heritage is more flexible, it’s influenced by where you grew up and where you currently live. It’s influenced by your friends and the types of media or leisure activities that you all enjoy.

    Caveat: This is just an opinion that I’ve been toying around with, it’s not a fully fleshed out idea that I have any empirical evidence to back any of this up. I am open to constructive criticism that will help hone this mess of ideas into something more poignant.





  • Whenever GOP “Christians” want to use the bible to justify up their hateful ideology, they always use the books in the Old Testament, like Leviticus to hate gays. Very rarely (if ever) do they use the actual teachings and words of Jesus Christ as they are found in the four Gospels. Pay attention whenever you hear Mike Johnson or some other numbskull talk about the bible, what books are they referencing, if it ain’t the New Testament, it ain’t Christian.

    To me, a Christian is someone who follows Jesus’s actual teachings, which this guy in Texas obviously does.



  • American culture is also an amalgamation of the different ethnic groups and cultures that have settled here with 17th/18th century British culture being the frame work. Halloween is uniquely American although its roots are in Irish and Scottish traditions that are themselves derived from Celtic Paganism.

    Another example is music, everyone wants to argue which culture invented different styles but generally different musical genres borrow and build upon other previous styles.

    It could be argued that Rome didn’t have a culture either because their’s was an amalgamated culture of the groups they conquered with 5th/6th Century BCE Greek culture as the frame work.