Post a controversial opinion

Good point, Mordy. Also worth pointing out that in their greatest eras of expansion, European powers and America had microbial allies that often did more damage than their militaries.

Irish pubs

Not to be too controversial, but the US in itself is a country occupied and taken from hostile populations...

re the US and Native Americans this isn't 100% accurate but for a large part (in addition to the disease) the "occupation" so to speak occurred at an individual non explicitly State driven level (though the State obv did participate cf things like Trail of Tears) but individuated settlement is a different kind to occupation - and if it could even be called occupation which implies the native population gets to stick around under the thumb of the occupier and isn't ethnically cleansed/straight up murdered.

That said here's controversial opinion: I don't think the US is at risk of authoritarian fascism. I don't think it's in the character of the American public to have a centralized powerful state generated nationalism - too many individuals of all political persuasions, too much foundational myth of anti-authoritarianism, Americans are (mythopoetically) homesteaders w guns. They prefer self directed collective action/violence to State-run violence. Which isn't to say the US isn't at risk of State crimes or even mass crimes throughout the general pop just that a) there is a sort of antibody to the kind of classic fascism found in 20th century Europe and b) that the worst case scenario for the US doesn't look like Nazi Germany but really its own thing a kind of anarchistic breakdown of society violence; the threat coming from the people themselves ad hoc cohering into a massive movement rather than a formalized programmatic totalitarian State. (Nb caveats required cf FDR's internment camps, Polish citizens taking the initiative in massacring their neighbors but speaking in terms of broad trends I think this distinction is accurate.)

Concerts are only fun if yr drinking

tbf 19th century wars were all also fuckups as were wwi and wwii

― the late great, Monday, February 6, 2017 11:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

spanish american war - if we ignore the moro uprising

which we should imo (different belligerents)

further addendum - the mustering of troops and logistical planning for the invasion of cuba and the landing were totally amateur-hour but they routed the spanish anyhow

The Spaniards were already practically defeated by 3 years of the José Martí's guerilla campaign for independence, hunger as they starved in urban barracks, and yellow fever. Cubans always felt the Rough Riders essentially thwarted their own independence movement.

there was also the naval battle in the pacific which the u.s. bossed

also marti died 3 years before the spanish american war

He's sort of the dominant figure (and certainly, thinker) of the third Cuban insurrection of the 19th century, though he died (rather pointlessly) in an early battle.

in Miami you can't escape Jose Marti. His legacy's everywhere, especially in a Cliff Notes sense

i hate having to eat regularly

Not to be too controversial, but the US in itself is a country occupied and taken from hostile populations...

Yeah, but piece by piece and not all by the same players.

That might be the trick to it.

the trick is that it's easy to "occupy" a country if you get rid of the inhabitants. the whole problem w/ occupations is the insurgency.

metallica otm.

i hate having to eat regularly

― flappy bird, Tuesday, February 7, 2017 6:39 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh man, do I feel your pain...

I think it's annoying more than anything, because sometimes I just can't be bothered eating or can't find anything I want to eat but I need the energy. Not a huge deal though.

What's worse is that brushing your teeth never stops being a pain in the ass.

Shaving is the worst though.

Which is why I only shave once or twice a month.

Yeah I've gone bearded and trimming once again week is a pleasure compared

i always use a beard trimmer and have constant short stubble because i hate wet shaving so much.

but then you always stumble out of the house (or perhaps stubble out of the house!!!) looking like don johnson or george michael. or steve bannon.

I'm stumble out like first two stumble in like last

Love good food as much as the next person... But the daily yearning/basic need for food, needed to just keep going, always catches up with me. It's so vexing. And I hate that we aren't able to temporarily postphone that need. Even just for a little while. Give me day, at least, before the trembling starts good god.

Shaving same thing but way less annoying. I've p much given up, resorted to trimming too.

"Postphone"

Shaving is a pain but get some good oil and a safety razor and a medium good-priced boar brush and you're off to the races, free of the Gillette/Bic hegemony. Bob's your uncle!

quite a few chunky people, me included, need to lose weight entirely because of a lifetime of consciously unhealthy food choices. Body positivity aside, there's a certain kind of middle age fatness that comes from overindulgence and complacency.

Shaving idk a scruffy stubble or beard is not frowned upon these days. Might be called a hipster behind my back but life's too short etc. /care

Food: we need it. And I hate that we need it, so many times per day. There's an element of self destruction and/or neglect in this, I reckon, but it's doing my head in.

Xp

People who adopt double-barrelled surnames are twats

Food is one of the great joys in life and our culture is fucking weird to only present it through lenses like "fuel" "health" "junk" "guilty pleasure" "exotic", etc.

I like food fine, but I agree with those who wish we were freer from its tyranny. Or those who wish we needed it less, or wish we needed it less often (however you choose to put it). I'd like it to be more of a choice.

Some days I want to linger over a well-conceived and well-executed meal with a lover or with some friends. On other days, I end up eating a frozen burrito standing over the sink, just to get my stomach to shut up for a while so I can get back to the thing I was doing (reading, playing the guitar, masturbating, working, or whatever).

Relatedly: I will happily cook for others, but I rarely cook for myself. It needs to be a labor of love.

If my wife says she wants a sandwich, I will make two carefully layered sandwiches, with thoughtful presentation and lovingly grilled bread. If I'm alone and I want a sandwich, I might not even bother with bread. Fuck it, just roll some ham around a pickle spear and squirt some mustard in the top.

If my children want a weekend breakfast, there will be waffles with fruit compote and fresh-squeezed juice. If I'm alone and want breakfast, I might just shove fistfuls of dry cereal into my mouth while reading the newspaper.

Go Team Food is fuel and most of time an inconvenience!

Ye mad puffin continues an excellent and important ilx poster

Uh that is not offered in response to thread question obv

otm tho

i hate having to eat regularly

Isn't this the exact reason that soylent was invented?

ya ye mad puffin is definitely on to something

there are times when i feel i just dont like food but things like soylent taste far worse

its like a post taste world and im needing to rationalize how i choose what to eat

i cant just be like ooh what do i crave today

first world problems for sure

i do drink more muscle milk/protein whatsits then i ever have before. i've wondered if i could get way with just drinking those all day. someone do a supersize me and just drink naked juice all day and tell me how you feel.

Has the internet made eating a thing of the past? Stay tuned!

I'll bet it has had an effect though. People get twitchy being online so much. Eating can feel weird unless its something you can eat in 20 seconds.

I do cook dinner (almost) every night though. Dinner for four. Other than that I don't care what happens.

I love cooking, I just hate the way my OCD kicks in around continuously cleaning up around crumbs and smears and liquid while I prepare it. If there's no kitchen towel in the room I start to panic. I hate the FWP concept but you might be on to something there.

i rarely if ever use it

but there does seem to be a bit of guilt in just not being content with having access to most foods

i think i just get some sort of existential dread/depressed feeling that i've eaten too much. for too many years. enough already. so much ice cream. and the idea of 30 or 40 more years of it...oof. doesn't seem right somehow. people used to live on cigarettes and coffee.

i should just go vegan. water and veganism. need to cleanse. or something.

For me it's just the repetition. I've had the same for six years and I can predict where I'll be at every point from 530-9 by the nearest five minutes, from leaving work to commuting to shopping to preparation to eating to digestion. A life well-lived can be a bit boring sometimes.

same *job*

Meanwhile I work for a refugee charity and watch footage of people who literally walk 48 fucking hours for two buckets of water. It's dumb.