If discourse and argument fail to quell the intolerant, a tolerant society must be willing to use censorship and even violence to defend itself. If we let them trample all over our values, tolerating them for the sake of being the “better person”, we’ll be the better corpse sooner rather than later and history will remember us “Look how nobly they did nothing!”

If our history is ever written, that is.

First Elsass-Lothringen, now Heckler & Koch… when are they going to stop taking our stuff?

(Yes, I know the actual history is more complex. I’m just memeing.)

If you do not act you are not absolved of morality because you had a choice. You made a choice and your morals were tested.

You hold the opinion that deliberate inaction is an action in itself, that the worth of lives can be quantified and from that conclude that a failure to reduce a loss in life is tantamount to condemning those lives to death. That conclusion is valid under those premises, but the point of the dilemma is that not everybody agrees with those premises.

…what kind of cup? Does a Crema + double Espresso count as one or as three?

Trivium found on Wikipedia:

The guy that commercialised it was a teetotaller and wanted it to be called Root Tea, but because his target market were miners in Pennsylvania, he opted to call it Root Beer instead.

From my understanding, that title would be more accurate too, as it is produced from molasses with extract rather than grain mash, but my source is “skimmed Wikipedia” on both topics, so you should probably default to skepticism.

Either way, it apparently doesn’t taste like beer, comes in both alcoholic and non-alcoholic* variants, usually doesn’t contain caffeine and has a ton of flavours and variants from all over the world. If you care, you probably can find some.

*The process does involve fermentation, so I assume it will contain some ethanol still, even if it’s below the threshold for the “non-alcoholic” label, in case that’s an issue for you.

Prevent them from taking over the world

I mean, only England seems to be highlighted. I don’t know mug, I don’t know if I’ve ever tried root beer, I don’t think I’d miss it.

Still, there are some nice things I like from England - Games Workshop, for instance, some Internet buddies, probably more things I’m not aware of…

I guess I could find people that enjoy root beer (or are in dire need of potable hydration of any sort) and see about donating it to them. I could sell some through local retailers and restaurants to cover the expenses.

…and hope that the actual P doesn’t bite the dust on his own?

Or maybe that’s the gamble at this point

For the elites: conserve their hierarchy and the structures that enable the gradual accumulation of power in the hands of the few.

For the rest: conserve their place in the hierarchy and the comfort of the familiar.

I appreciate that you took the time to supply the nuances I omitted. While there is value in a positive framing, it’s important to acknowledge potential struggles as well. We can’t effectively tackle issues if we’re not aware of them.

In any case, while I’m not qualified to help you with your difficulties, I hope you find - or have found - a way to work on overcoming them. Dealing with insecurities, from my own experience, can be a tough process, further amplified by setbacks and a lack of perceived progress. But if you persevere, even if you might not feel that you have improved much, you may find yourself looking back at a time when it was worse and, by contrast, see the progress you’ve made. May that hope, that your future self will look back and be proud of your hard work, give you the strength to keep going.

Hourly wages for school teachers? I’m worried I might know the response, but does prep work outside school hours, in breaks etc. count as hours worked?

I considered that option too, but opted to go with the more positive guess. I’m not qualified either way, I just wanted to say something nice.

Well, you sound like a team player. You place the common good (fun together) higher than individual ambitions (or maybe place your own worth very low, I can’t tell from one sentence, but the outcome is the same).

Saying deliberately sounds like it’s not just a thing that you find yourself doing again and again, but a conscious choice. That suggests there was a choice to make; that the option of playing a self-centered character was something you were actively aware of, but were sufficiently repulsed by it to make a point of being better than those people.

I think you’re a nice person, empathetic, while not so entirely innocent as to not even consider the possibility, still principled and caring enough to actively defy it.

I think you’re a net good for this world.

In theory, Judges hold individual people accountable, the representatives of the people hold the judges accountable, the people collectively hold their representatives accountable.

However, if a significant part of the representatives refuses to do their job, and the nature of the two-party FPTP system combined with highly effective identity politics makes it hard to hold them accountable for it, the system breaks down.

There’s different levels of “fluency”. Roughly summing up the CEFR^[1] model:

A1: Can ask and answer simple questions
A2: Can hold simple conversations
B1: Can talk about interests or events
B2: Can understand the main ideas of more complex or subject-specific texts
C1: Can use language flexibly without much searching for expressions
C2: Can easily speak and comprehend virtually everything in the target language

C1 is probably what I’d consider fluency, and looking at my own peers and language, some adults don’t even fit the criteria for C2 in their own native language.

CEFR doesn’t entirely map to native language development well, since it assumes fluency in the speaker’s native tongue and a certain ability to grasp more complex topics in the firsts place, where a child would still have to develop the mental faculties.

Still, attempting to describe native language development in CERF, at age 5, children are expected to “have mastered all basic grammatical markers at this age and should be speaking in grammatically correct sentences most of the time”^[2], which I would consider somewhere between A2 and B1.

If the mental development for fluency in your native language are present, I do think that comprehensive immersion in a target language for five years, supported by helpful natives, can bring you a long way to fluency. The Goethe-Institute estimates that learning German will take approximately 600-750 hours^[3] to reach C1, though it bases that estimate on its own dedicated language courses. Investing an average 3h of learning the language per week for five years would put you at 780. With additional support and practice outside of lessons, I think you could do with much less than that.

[1] Wikipedia: Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages, accessed 2024-09-02
[2] Speech and Language for Kids: 5-Year-Old Speech Checklist, https://www.speechandlanguagekids.com/what-speech-and-language-skills-should-my-5-year-old-have/, accessed 2024-09-02
[3] Goethe-Institut: Frequently Asked Questions, Section “Our Courses”, Question “How long does it take to learn German?”, https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/m/sta/lon/kur/faq.html#accordion_toggle_6206750_2, accessed 2024-09-02

As I’ve been told, they* tend to be more polite to you if you make an attempt at least, considering it a gesture of respect for the country you’re in. They may roll their eyes at how bad an attempt it is, but it’s still a credit.

There is a similar phenomenon in Germany, where we may switch to English, not necessarily because we’re annoyed at your bad German, but simply because we consider it more efficient or courteous to engage with people in English. Maybe the French have similar reasons.

I’ve caught myself in that reflex too: I learned English from the start of primary school, consume a lot of English media, speak English with international colleagues and consider myself fairly fluent. If you struggle with German, I’ll be quick to offer using a language we’re both good at because it makes things easier for you. That’s not a lack of appreciation, it’s an offer of convenience.

On the other hand, if you wish to practice your German, I’m more than happy to help. I get the impression that many generally are willing to humour you, provided we have the time for it. If you’re ordering at a restaurant or asking for directions, odds are we’ll switch to English to speed things up. But if I have the time, I’ll gladly listen to your German and offer corrections and explanations.

*Possibly just a specific subset of localities or businesses; I can’t give a first-hand account nor obviously make a blanket statement about a country of ~68 million people (1.66 times the population of california, for comparison).

Boss makes a thousand
I barely one
I keep my head low
I get my work done
But nothing improves
If we all play along
So I’m joining a union
Together, we’re strong

That’s what I was trying to allude to. Whoever is left is either not competent enough or unwilling to call him out (possibly because being employed is generally more important than being right).

I don’t think she’s particularly good looking, which may just be personal taste, but in any case doesn’t matter in the slightest. She’s not running for Miss America, she’s running for President.

Not that I hold any particular love for beauty contests either, but - like Harris’ looks - that’s irrelevant here.

I like how Julius’ lines fit the pentameter, but Brittanus’ “What?” shits right past it.