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Cake day: November 22nd, 2023

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  • And local colloquialisms as well. I can tell you the secret to a Boston accent is to replace the r after a vowel with an h, and that’ll help you pahk the cah at Hahvahd yahd, but won’t do a damn thing when somebody tells you the food at a restaurant is wicked pissah, but warns you that it’s rainin’ feckin’ hahd out deyah so yeh better off takin’ the T to Southie.


  • But the fear isn’t so rational. It’s like a fear that the cocktail in your example will replace the original vodka whether they want the cocktail or not, or that the vodka will be so diluted by seltzer that it will functionally cease to exist.

    It’s like a fear of gentrification of the country as a whole.

    It’s also important to remember that the US is a huge exception in this regard as well. Most other countries are like 90%+ native population, and immigrant populations tend to be sort of isolated from the wider national culture due to things like language barriers, and they often set up little “bastions” of their native culture locally wherever they live. We even see plenty of that in the US as well. While there are many distinctly US cultures across the country that are derived from a variety of backgrounds, there are tons of “enclaves” of European culture that make it blatantly clear where immigrants from certain countries settled. In Boston, the culture of Chinatown is distinctly unique and separate from the wider culture of the city, which largely has ties back to Ireland (and is very proud of it). And both of those are distinctly different from where the Italian immigrants settled, who effectively have their own districts of cultures descended from Italy regardless of where they immigrated to.


  • Because of the American Puritannical values, which dictate what the credit companies and advertisers are willing to do business with and the cultural zeitgeist along with it.

    The Puritans were some of the earliest British colonists in the US, and were either thrown out of England for attempting a coup to replace the king with a puppet to force their more extremist form of Christianity on the country, or left by their own choice because they felt that the Church of England was too liberal. They were basically a bunch of prudes who believed that the human body and sex were shameful and disgusting.

    This has led to the dichotomy where advertisers want nothing to do with sex/nudity, except when it comes to implied sex in advertisements. Because sex is bad, but it also sells, which is good.



  • Once again, I am tapping the sign for people to go watch the two hour video by Shaun on the subject.

    The moral of Harry Potter is that the status quo is correct and should never be questioned, and nobody should ever try to change anything.

    Harry doesn’t defeat Voldemort or change any of the issues inherent in the bumbling bureaucracy of the wizard world. Voldemort kills himself on a magic technicality, Harry becomes a magic cop and helps to ensure that magic is never used to help the undesirables of society (Muggles), and Hermione is ridiculed for being a girl with blue hair and pronouns who tried to end the chattel slavery system before she “grew up” and became a much more sensible person who realized that the slaves actually want to be oppressed, and it’s for their own good.

    You can see Rowling’s morality change practically in real-time as the books go on, from criticizing the system to defending it as she began to benefit from it as her wealth grew. And underneath it all, you can see her discriminatory opinions of people. That was always there. When she wants you to hate a woman, she makes them fat or gives them masculine features. If I have to read the phrase “mannish hands” one more time, I might vomit.





  • We don’t even need to build new cities. We just need to let our cities increase density like all cities did for hundreds of years before the 50s. More multifamily buildings, midrise apartments, and mixed use buildings would go a long way towards helping everybody.

    Besides, much of that land is either already owned by somebody or empty for a reason. It would be a logistical nightmare for sure. You could send them to all the dying towns in the US, but I don’t think that would help either - apart from the locals being rightfully angry about large groups of new people coming in and eroding their local culture, those towns are dying for a reason that runs much deeper than just people moving away.





  • Welcome to the hypocritical world of Puritan culture.

    Some of the earliest British settlers in the US were so extremist that the Church of England kicked them out after they tried to assassinate the king and replace him with a puppet of their own to force their beliefs on the rest of the country.

    It was partly these crazies that started the whole sex and bodies=bad and shameful thing in the US that advertisers still believe in today. And swearing is yet another of those weird things. But sex sells, so it’s okay to imply it as long as it’s selling a product and no other time.



  • I don’t know about Wal-Mart, but every other site you listed is famous for being filled with Chinese companies that make cheap knockoff garbage. Yes, even Amazon. It’s like the perfect blend of enshitification and consumerism.

    I don’t know about the tech companies, but with clothing companies you’ll see the exact same companies with names like asdfghjkl on both Amazon and Temu, selling the exact same product with the exact same pictures as 3 other similarly named companies. And what you buy will only last slightly longer than the 6 months the company is around for before it disappears and the owners open back up under a new name.

    For tech, you gotta do research and see what the experts are saying and find out the reputation of the brands that you’re looking at. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy as just going on the website and checking the reviews.

    As for your original question, I think the answer will be FOSS projects. No company is going to willingly drop the potential ad revenue of AR ads. “This dream brought to you by Underwear brand briefs!”