I don’t think universally. Similar to Rowling, his stuff is beloved and can certainly still be enjoyed but contains some totally wack bits. Even as a kid I picked up on how mean-spirited his writing was. But I think that’s also what makes it interesting to some people, it’s got this macabe Grimm’s quality to it.

I really don’t think you should use a neglected regional US train system as a measure of the potential of trains.

(I edited this comment for brevity)

Not everyone’s experience mirrors mine? 🤷

My 2c tho, the Harry Potter novels legitimately suck. This has been my opinion of them since I was in 8th grade when the first one came out. At the time I described Sorcerer’s / Philosopher’s Stone as a failed attempt at ripping off Roald Dahl (British author who wrote mean-spirited children’s books that stereotyped characters with funny-sounding names based on their physical descriptions). I was frequently urged to and attempted to give the books a second chance, never got more than 20 pages back into any of them before I put them down in exasperation because to me they always felt very petty and derivative. I was not very surprised when JK started to peel off her mask to the public.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so crass. Maybe you shouldn’t have been so obtuse and avoidant. Mistakes were made, had I known your proximity to the people involved ahead of time I probably would have cut you more slack. More communication and explanation up front is always better.

A user wrote that someone who brandishes in public deserves to be shot.

You asked if that applies to people who open carry at McDonalds.

I replied to note that brandishing and open carry are different things.

You replied “Watch the video.” As there are several videos floating around relating to this event, and as the video in OP’s article does not seem at all relevant or the one that you reference, and you don’t offer any reason why some video should be watched, I found this comment to be dismissive, vague, and unhelpful.

So I replied with reference to the similarly vague and unhelpful meme of “read theory” in hopes of cuing you in to the lack of imformation without wasting too much energy on your behalf.

Joke went completely over your head. You began making a character argument on behalf Gamboa as you know the guy. Completely unrelated to where the thread began.

And then when I try to reel you back in to the topic of brandishing vs open carry, you tell me I’m shit at interpreting context.

Come on, buddy. Really? Really??? I’m not someone you should be angry at or fighting with. You seemed to have been confusing brandishing for open carry and I just wanted to make sure you were aware that those are completely different things.

What does this have to do with your fantasy of shooting people in a McDonalds?

“Read theory”

Adding another obligatory “brandishing and open carry are legally distinct acts” to the thread.

I think you touched on why. Ethnic identity is somewhat arbitrary, and tied up with national / cultural identity. In the US, despite our xenophobic phases most of us culturally identify as a nation of immigrants. So in terms of ethnicity, we’re more concerned with where our lineage existed before arriving in the United States, rather than how long it’s existed in the United States. There’s a bit of a hierarchy of “who’s family has existed in the US the longest”, but all of those claims are still anchored by which nations their ancestors came from.

There’s also the fact that American genetics haven’t been sedentary long enough - And probably never will be - For us to mix evenly enough to develop a unified physical appearance. Ethnicity is of course not just skin deep, but ethnic identity and identification often uses it as shorthand, and there is as far as I know no stereotypical American ethnic appearance.

It’s propaganda.

Well then call me the outlier, cause I’m a childless man who has been happily working remote since before covid. I’d rather be jobless than go back to office work. I have a small group of non-work friends that I enjoy spending time with, and back when I did office work the majority of my friends were not work friends.

Americans keep their ethnic identity distinct from their national identity. If an American national tells you they’re Irish, they’re invariably referring to the former.

Goldeneye Facility bathroom

Are we confusing governments for the civilians who live under their rule?

So much energy expended on discussions of violence. Do not worry about if you should or should not do violence. Violence is merely a question of who has the power to allow or forbid it. And if you protest long enough to make political progress, violence will find you, doesn’t matter one bit how you personally feel about it.

BTW, Democratic politicians in Missouri were assassinated this morning

By “someone dressed up like a cop” as the media put it. Which I guess is newspeak for just “a cop”.

Nah, when someone says they’re against gun rights I prefer to at least give them the benefit of the doubt regarding ideological consistency and assume they’re against all protests that involve violence and are happy when protestors can’t defend themselves or deter against individual acts of state violence. I don’t like to just assume that a stranger is a hypocrite or critically underdeveloped merely because I disagree with them. Believe a person when they tell you who they are.

Abbot vs Waltons fight fight fight!

Fellow lemmings… What do you actually consider to be “democracy”? What does it look like, how does it work?

To me, the word seems meaningless in the context of nation state society. There seems to be a dissonant gulf between it’s notion and it’s practice. Or is there no dissonance at all - Is it still the direct consensus of a small collection of propertied men at the top of a hierarchical slave-holding society, just as it was in ancient Athens where they coined the term, and that is still the exact ideal we worship?