Because there were two world wars that mainly took place in Europe. America was never subjected to bombing or invasion, meaning their industrial capacity was never crippled. They came out on top each time and used their influence and strength to become the new superpower.

This is overly simplified of course.

Wheeep whoop wooop, Cart Narcs!

I agree with some of your points, but I you should try rewriting your age gap paragraph. It’s very hard to understand and in your 15/18 year old example I think you end up saying the opposite of what you intend.

Also pedophilia has a specific definition and is not interchangeable with underage. It’s specifically for prepubescent attractions.

There are a few, the sofabaton is probably the closest to the cheaper harmony remotes, but it’s configured via an app that requires login so not sure how long that will last.

There are other companies that are targeting the high end remotes too ($300+) but they all appear to be based on android and get very poor battery life.

I love Thunder. Have it set up with the small UI, feels like I never left Relay.

Canada is responsible for less than 1% of fentanyl entering the USA. Trump, however, wants his tarrifs and it’s difficult to impose them legally because we have signed trade agreements (that he signed). In order to skirt this, he declares a national emergency based on a fabricated border crises. This allows him to use presidential powers that are reserved for such crisis and circumvent the normal process.

I’m looking to donate my BTC wallet. Can anyone confirm if they still accept it? All I can find is a tweet from 2022 and nothing current on the site.

Good. Give them more.

No one’s ever going to do that again. Trump has guaranteed a new era of nuclear proliferation.

I just like knowing I could fly a Canadian flag again, or have it’s likeness displayed without being confused for a trucker convoy supporter, vaccine denier, or racist.

Dude, I feel this. We had these nice NEC AccuSync CRTs that could so 1280x1024 @ 85Hz or 1024x768 @ 100Hz. Guess what they were all set to? 800x600 @ 60Hz. Not only could you not see a damn thing, but the flicker from the slow refresh rate would give you a headache. Teacher said it was normal and the flicker was in my head.

We weren’t allowed to use USB flash drives because they we’re an up and coming technology that they figured would give them viruses, but we were encouraged to have our own floppy disks to save our work on. Not only does this not make any sense, but now your homework could just corrupt on a whim. Anyway, I had a special floppy disk that I loaded with utilities that could bypass the lockouts and allow me to change the resolution to something sensible.

They also had an HP Laserjet with an IR port and in my last year I was one of the first students to have my own laptop (very lucky). I would take notes in class on it and then print them in the computer lab. One day a teacher caught me and I was lectured because it was against policy to plug personal things into their network. I explained that there was no networking involved, it was a local device to device print job, but she wouldn’t have it. Viruses you know. The next day they had covered the IR port of the printer with whiteout to protect it.

So my options were buy and carry a USB floppy drive, write to floppy, log into a school computer, print from there or… put a tiny little scratch in the whiteout. Which do you think I did?

All in all it was fine. The good old days of early computers where everyone was just figuring things out. Tech was a lot more interesting then and I don’t fault the teachers for not knowing and trying to protect their systems. It was just annoying when you knew more but still had to follow their nonsensical rules.

Sure commercial eggs aren’t, but they’re supposed to be. Egg laying takes a toll on the hens and the conditions they’re kept in are deplorable.

Still, thank you for adding clarification. Education is never bad.

It’s been 6 years for me, but at my peak I used to eat 2 every morning for breakfast.

At one point I looked at all the eggs and chicken breast I was eating by being “healthy” and realized it was not in any way rational or sustainable. How could one person (myself) be responsible for the death of one chicken and two chicks PER DAY! I imagined what it would look like to stuff all those birds into my living room and how there’s no way I could farm something on that scale myself (or want to).

So I switched to a vegan diet and never went back. My personal morals tell me I shouldn’t eat animal products, but for the average person who doesn’t agree I can understand why consumption is through the roof. This separation we have of living creatures into commodities, all behind a legally protected black curtain.

When all that’s talked about is how much per dozen, your mind never really stops to think about the rest.

Ahh, but see you’re been following this over several months/years, or looked up what actually happened. You’re not the target for this dupe.

This tactic works incredibly well as you’ll find you are outside the norm. I still remember people ranting about how Obama was late responding to Hurricane Katrina.

Welcome to Politics 2.0 where the information is freely available but the facts don’t matter.

You think Trump won’t be friendly towards Russia? It’s almost a done deal that he will backstab Ukraine.

I hate to fall into conspiracy theories, but even if Russia doesn’t outright own Trump, they’re easily able to manipulate him by catering to his ego. Trump has mentioned many times that he likes Putin.

I feel bad writing such a short reply considering all the work you put into yours, but thank you for your understanding and the conversation. You’re very well spoken :)

Fair. It comes down to which definition of abnormal you jump to. Merriam Webster gives two possible definitons:

1. deviating from the normal or average
2. often : unusual in an unwelcome or problematic way

I always though of it as #1, but this whole thread has taught me that most others see it as #2, so it’s not the best word for me to use in this case.

Thank you for taking the time to write such a well thought out comment. I’ll try to reply to it but honestly the amount of downvotes I’m getting for trying to understand something is a bit discouraging so I don’t think I’ll be keeping the conversation going much longer.

“Deviations from the norm” would imply that there is a specific baseline “norm” to point at, when it’s much more of a vague idea of what is average, which changes over time and with increased understanding/study.

I’m making a pretty general statement so I don’t have numbers to back anything up, but I would be very surprised if we didn’t have basic statistics on how many people identify as gay, or are diagnosed with ADD, etc. So I think we do understand norms, but you’re right this always changes with increased research and study.

Grouping ADD, homosexuality and musical creativity together is also a bit of a stretch IMO.

I did this on purpose. I’m not saying any of these are similar at all, just that they’re attributes that might make us unique and as far as I’m aware (since I’m not religious) these are functions of brain chemestry. Somone who has a very creative mind can be encouraged through their upbringing and surroundings to use it for music, arts, etc but I do think think there is something physical in the brain there. I’m not a neuroscientist so I don’t know how much is attributed to genetics, hormones, etc.

(Illness) It’s commonly used to establish a baseline platform for justifying and normalising bigotry and hatred towards something.

I agree completely, which is why I say it’s not the right word. I am totally against people saying homosexuality is a mental illness because it implies it’s something that needs to be corrected. I do see it as something that deviates from the norm, but in a way as harmless and inconsequential as left-handedness.

The strict definition of the word abnormal isn’t particularly useful here , it’s only when it’s given context that it makes sense.My view is that the word “abnormal” when used in the context of homosexuality has been continually used as a weapon, a way to normalise and justify bigotry.If you establish up front what it is exactly you mean (for me this would need to include what you mean by “normal”), then you might get more positive responses.

This is the conclusion I came to in a seperate comment here. That I am coming at the word abnormal from the statisctical point of view, as in it deviates from a known norm. A lower percentage of it happening compared to other outcomes. Other people are using the word abnormal as a way of shunning “the other”, which is unfortunate.

I thought I had done a good enough job of establishing upfront what I meant when I said that I was pro LGBT and was coming at this from a point of trying to understand, but I the backlash clearly shows that was not enough. I find it frustrating having to tiptoe around topics like this and always try to explain myself because people are so quick to look for the bad, but I suppose that is the current world we live in. It’s a sad fact that there are a lot of people trying to opress anyone who is different, and I can’t exect strangers on the internet to know me or what I believe in.

“but that is the concensus is it not?” As far as i understand it, no, it is not.

I’ve done a lot of explaining myself, but I’m still not conviced my original assumption is incorrect. I still think that homosexuality has a biological/mental aspect because gay people say that they were born that way, it’s not a choice, it’s who they are. I didn’t choose to be straight so that makes perfect sense to me. I also know that the people who feel that way are in a minority, therefore something is happening mentally, biologically, I don’t know, to a small subset of people making them an abnormality.

What I HAVE learned is I need to be more cautious of using the word abnormal which goes full circle to my question on if this is an issue of language. Most people really don’t like words that black and white say they’re different, because while it may be true, it can be used by people who do not feel like deviations from the norm are acceptable, and they will attack them for being the “other”. This is just a very polarizing topic and can cause people who say they’re on the same side to get at each other assuming the worst, which is unfortunate.

Anyway, that’s enough rambling from me. Thanks for the reply.

I think we’re on the same page then, we just have different taste when it comes to using certain words. I can certainly appreciate your slippery slope point where anbnormalities can be twisted by society into being negative. That’s a very real thing and you have some good examples. I suppose I’m just disappointed that we as a society are choosing to step around words and not confront the elephant in the room that abnormal things happen all the time and they aren’t bad.

I wish we lived in a society where people aren’t always looking to paint people in a bad light, where we could speak factually and not take offense to everything. At the end of the day the more I try to explain myself in these comments it appears to be the definition of normal that I’m getting hung up on. When I think “normal” I’m thinking statistically average, this is a fairly probably outcome. Others are thinking of “normal” as in socially accepted, not a big deal.

I think homosexuality in humans is abnormal (statistically) and normal (socially). I’d never heard that most giraffe sex was gay though, so that’s interesting. Time to get lost in Wikipedia.

Yes, this is exactly my point. For example, I have ADHD which has some downsides, but a lot of upsides that make me who I am. I’m also partially red-green colorblind. Both of these are abnormalities, and I don’t take that as a personal affront.

Now, apart from being the butt of a couple jokes, being colorblind has not been a major hardship for me, so from an emotional level it’s not the same as growing up ostracized for being gay. Perhaps that’s why I don’t perceive my abnormality to be something I would take offence to.

That’s really what I’m trying to get down to. Are we trying to say being LGBT is “normal” as in, every child being born has a very high, or just as average a chance of being born LGBT as heterosexual? Because I don’t think any facts support that. Or are we saying an LGBT child would be an abnormality that we as a society simply don’t care about because we don’t attribute large importance to sexual orientation.

This is where I feel that saying homosexuality is a mental abnormality is not actually incorrect, but our connotations of the world abnormal are still such that people attribute negativity towards it.