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Insane to me that the UK government is slowly trying to legislate trans people out of existence and I have not seen a single person talk about it

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#when people pull the 'there's no difference because neither is left wing' #it can always get WORSE

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this is so compelling and heartbreaking and important and i wanted to share it. this is the reality of getting an abortion even with roe v wade in place and it's about to get worse.

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A little advice from someone studying extremist groups: if you’re in a social media environment where the daily ubiquitous message is that you have no hope of any kind of future and you can’t possibly achieve anything without a violent overthrow of society, you’re being radicalized, and not in the good way.

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Please don’t pay for his music.

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There is a common discourse mocking how plain and boring British food is, to which the usual response is to point out that curry is the adopted national dish, with specific UK variants, and that's dismissed as having been imported by colonialism and not 'actually British' in a way that is fairly offensive to the large South Asian community behind it.

It's important to remember that before nationalists get into their blood and soil and hamburgers rhetoric about how their country has a proud culinary tradition passed down from their distant ancestors etcetera etcetera that food has always been about sharing and borrowing and mixing things up.

Indian cuisine takes a lot from the New World, as noted above. I eat a lot of Italian food where tomatoes are a key player, ditto Mexican food with rice, and so on. Many of the greatest world cuisines are surprisingly recently perfected, due to the sudden availability of a whole hemisphere of better ingredients, and not as 'actually' pure and authentic as you seem to need them to be.

I think so much about the food people ate pre-Columbian exchange. Huge parts of cuisine extremely important on both sides of the pond just didn't exist.

You've probably heard a little about what was brought over from the New World, corn, potatoes, cocoa, cassava, peanuts, chili peppers, avocadoes, cranberries, pumpkins, and the like. Imagine cooking without chili! Without potatoes! Modern Indian cuisine contains enormous amounts of potatoes and we just didn't have those for the vast majority of history. The best of the nightshades all on one contiguous hunk of land. Hell, tomatoes! Almost forgot about those.

But we don't often look at what the Old World had. Wheat! Barley! Rice! A profusion of incredible grains, really, the finest poaceae has to offer. Carrots! Tons of rosaceous plants like apples and cherries and pears and peaches and apricots! Grapes! Soy and Bamboo! Okra and watermelon! All these things were simply never found in the Americas. The grains one is the wildest for me, the variety of grains available across Eurasia and Africa was truly astounding.

You know what binds together the food of all cultures across the world? Onions. Onions are fucking everywhere. There's probably onions growing near you right now. Allium Gang Unite.

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i think if yanks can't even recognise that the only reason they find farenheit intuitive is because they were raised with it, there's basically no chance of being able to get them to analyse all the other, more important implicit biases they've been raised with

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This is one of those classic nationalist pile-ons where everyone is hooting and hollering because somebody said 'America great' and the sense of national supremacy feels so warm and good that nobody thinks to pause and check whether it's actually true.

We can start with some history. There have not been wild bears in Great Britain for literally thousands of years - it's probably been 1,500 years, but may have been twice that long, before Britain was even colonised by the peoples you now deride as the 'English'.

Wolves stuck around for longer, but were hunted to extinction about 500 years ago. In both cases, this not a specific 'English' thing, and the same was happening across neighbouring European countries, because that was the prevailing attitude at the time. Wolves represented a major threat to them and their livestock and they didn't have modern methods of prevention or defence.

It was more successful in Great Britain and Ireland compared to some nations on the continent, due to the obvious geographical differences: a lack of massive land borders for wolves and bears to migrate back over, and the absence of the large, sparsely populated mountain ranges where they tend to cling on in the places they remain.

But none of this is about modern English society being freaks, given that this was centuries ago and their Belgian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Swiss etc. peers were doing or attempting the same thing. For context, European migration to the Americas reached its peak about 300 years after that. So if you're a white American, these were your ancestors just as much as they were a modern European's. It's an absurd reach to try to make some cultural point about modern US vs modern UK out of it.

On that note, the idea that British society are 'freaks who shoot everything that moves' and that all of this destruction is so that 'dandies can eat leaded pheasant' is obvious American projection. Hunting for sport and meat is two to three times more popular in the US than the UK, and the UK is in line with the rest of Europe. If you're imagining a privileged man taking his rifles to a hunting lodge to enjoy killing something and mounting it on his wall, he's far more likely to be an American. You're the ones who like shooting things.

But again, the eradication of wolves happened long before people had a shotgun to hand, and a lot of it was done with traps without any 'sport' involved at all. This was a medieval form of pest control, because the people of the time didn't have that shotgun for safety and therefore wanted to stop wolves turning up at their door in the first place. Trying to link this to some stereotype of a modern landed viscount shooting pheasant is completely dishonest. It's also odd that the Emu War gets mentioned, when this was effectively a modern and less successful attempt at doing the same thing.

On the subject of nonsensical non-sequiturs, throwing a book out of a window because it noted that there is a history of gardening in England is unhinged behaviour and has absolutely nothing to do with any of the point in hand. People culling wolves centuries earlier has no relevance to whether there are good example of English gardens. Gardening is almost by definition an artificial use of land, so that's entirely consistent with land which has been claimed from nature. Thank you for admitting you had a pre-existing violent bias against the English that you are bringing to this unrelated discussion, but you're just telling on yourself for no reason.

Then we have the disjointed screaming about how there is a GRAND FUCKING TOTAL OF ZERO 'staple crops' which are 'originally' or 'primarily' cultivated by the English, which is an utterly hollow and worthless statement. The UK is the world's 78th largest country by land area. England - and it's so typical that this thread uses them interchangeably, just to underline the vacuum of their understanding - would be 95th. What exactly did you expect?

We're talking about an island in the north-west corner of a continent, on a latitude with Canada, Denmark and Russia, several times more densely populated than the US, and only colonised by people who had already settled elsewhere. Why would it have been first to develop oats? Why would it be the primary rye producing hub in the world? Where has this requirement been pulled from, and why is it being presented as some sort of shocking revelation? Does this person understand what words mean? Do they even know the difference between a garden and a farm?

Of course, we could stick up for this corner of the world and talk about the Agricultural Revolution actually being fairly important and that perhaps the subsequent loss of farming as a focus was also a victim of Britain's success in industrialising quickly and discovering other industries. But to go back to an earlier point, what has this got to do with wolves? Wolves were not eating the barley. They weren't removed to make space for more corn fields. They were a threat to livestock, which I believe make up the majority of British agricultural output, but which are not mentioned once in this rant fixating on staple crops. Where is the relevance?

Finally, it's utterly shameless that a white American would dare to claim the moral high ground over the wealth of farmland in the US. How exactly do you think all of that free land was acquired? Are you really going to criticise other people because their ancestors (also your ancestors) hunted wolves to expand their farms, when your more recent ancestors killed off actual people on the same basis? You know that the indigenous hunters you killed off were human beings, and yet you dare to clutch pearls over bears a thousand years before?

And why do you think these European colonists rushed to take up farming in the new world? On top of the free real estate, can you think of any reason that establishing a plantation in the US was more popular and lucrative than it had been in Europe, when you had to work the land yourself or pay your staff? It's so galling that you can have such a narrow-minded, biased view when it comes to confecting criticism of other countries, whilst completely refusing to engage with the historical context and just accepting that the US is covered in farmland owned by white settlors because of some genetic superiority over their cousins back home.

Actually your society is the freaks for shooting everything that moves and burning half your "nature reserves" every year so that upperclass dandies can eat leaded pheasant. North Americans are the well adjusted ones here, your country has become a desolate suburban lawn in island form

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Seizure of indigenous land, 1776-1887

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It has been hard for me to talk about how what is going on with Israel and Palestine is affecting me personally, but I grew up in Gaza and most of my family still lives there. My father did not survive the bombings last week and I have not been able to contact my younger sister in days. I am try to being understanding that most people do not have personal connections to what is happening and therefore are justifying their silence, but is heartbreaking to see this misinformation being spread. What’s happening there is a genocide, not a war. It is not antisemitic to support Palestine, it’s not even antiemetic to criticise Israel. There is no grey area or neutrality regarding this, and it is so easy to find resources that will educate you on the subject. It is my people and my home being destroyed so I will never be silent about this, but I please urge everyone to get informed and start speaking up and finding ways they can help.

decolonizepalestine has tons of information on Palestine’s history/propaganda that has been spread throughout the years

UK citizens can email their MP asking for a ceasefire

US citizens can call/email their local government officials asking for a ceasefire

Jewish Voice for Peace also has many resources for ways for US citizens to get involved, including protests

Donate to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund

Donate to Medical Aid for Palestine

Donate to help get food and hygiene kits to Gaza

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When asked by journalists if I justify Hamas’s killing of civilians once they breached the wall, my reaction is twofold. First, no, I don’t justify killing civilians and noncombatants. But then I wonder why, if I am asked to account for the violence perpetrated by Hamas, Israelis are not routinely asked to account for how their military responded to the Great March of Return.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza marched along the perimeter of the wall, demonstrating peacefully for our freedom and our right to return to our native villages. And yet, despite the fact that this was the largest unarmed mass popular movement that we had seen in Palestine in my generation, Israel’s snipers killed over 200 of us, including 46 children, gravely wounding many thousands more. One Israeli soldier bragged to the media about how many people he had shot in the knee.

Israel sent us a very clear message when it responded to our peaceful protest with such bloodshed: It doesn’t matter if you attempt to achieve your demands nonviolently. We will kill you and deny you your rights regardless. Despair among Gaza’s youth, already rampant, deepened. What’s more, Israel paid no international price for commiting this violence against innocent civilians. We learned yet again just how little value the world placed on our lives.

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People in Gaza have been dying a slow death for years. Gaza itself is now dying. Or more accurately, it is being killed.

Israel is determined to “eliminate everything” in Gaza, as Defense Minister Yoav Galant has said. The bombing is killing innocent civilians, including entire families. In recent days, Gallant has ordered the siege to be tightened even further, saying, “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” His words chilled me to the bone. As scholars of history know, genocide begins with this kind of extreme, dehumanizing language. But again, you have to start at the beginning of the book. Israel has been treating us like “human animals” and denying our humanity and our existence since 1948.

The situation gets darker and bleaker by the hour. I may not be able to send any more updates; with a massive ground invasion imminent, our connection to the outside world may be completely severed.

We need all people of conscience around the world to understand the relentless oppression that created this horrific reality. It is the only way to achieve true safety and peace for all. And then, raise your voices in solidarity with us. Help us tear down the wall, end our imprisonment, and fulfill our dreams of liberation.

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This segment on Wales does the classic American thing of treating one of the home nations as a historical cinnamon bun colonised by the English whilst leaning on all the patronising and derogatory stereotypes they actually hate the most.

There's a recognised phenomenon where 'plastic' Americans want to claim to be 'Irish' due to having one great-grandfather from there (and the rest from England), leaning hard into St Patrick's Day and the chance to engage in a form of nationalist tribalism which is relatively guilt-free given the widely sympathetic history, relishing the fun of being able to say 'fuck the English' whilst also dressing up as a leprechaun.

Scotland and Wales have a slightly different variant where they are not such clear cut victims, but you still see the same clamouring for Welsh 'independence' from English colonialism by Americans who have no idea of the history or if Welsh people even want that, whilst making all sorts of condescending comments about bagpipes and sheep and whales.

Treating them as this twee little tinpot country ironically allows you to be both overly historically and politically generous (e.g. talking about Empire as 'the English' and the Welsh and Scottish as just another of their colonial victims, not equal participants and beneficiaries) whilst also really demeaning, wearing them as a costume and playing them for laughs, which is the sort of actual English chauvinist behaviour which winds them up.

'Wales is a country where they speak Welsh [there are two official languages, of which English is much more widely spoken] and are governed by the Welsh parliament [for devolved matters, but still elect MPs to the UK parliament like the rest of the UK]." Because it's more interesting for Wales to be this funny little isolated place that can't speak English and has its own laws, rather than a key part of the UK.

Green rattles of a history of Welsh-English conflict and says Wales was ultimately subjugated by 'another English Henry', by which he means that effectively England was conquered by a Welsh Henry and his Welsh army. This isn't hard to look up! But Americans will just see 'Henry VII, King of England' and think ah yes, those English must have conquered the Welsh. So patronising!

#uk

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lol. lmao, even.

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also acting like judaism and islam are inherently more spiritual than xtianity, like theyre inherently more progressive than xtianity, like theyre the "good" ~moral~ religions to xtianity's "inherent evil" or that they arent forced on ppl is like, hilariously historically revisionist at best, straight up erasure and dehumanization at worst.

and im not an antitheist and im not saying judaism and islam are """bad"""" religions or that theyre inherently oppressive and again, it all comes down to the tools people use to enforce stuff like misogyny and homophobia, which religion has historically been a major one. (im a religious jew myself)

but like. if your solution to opposing antisemitism and islamophobia is to treat these complex, living religions, with many many (billions with a b in islams case) different followers and interpretations as simply "cutesy uwu spiritual and nonthreatning", youre not actually opposing antisemitism and islamophobia. like there are more options than the binary "blind hatered" and "blind romanticization historical revisionism" lmfao. youre just making it harder for jews, muslims, ex-jews and ex-muslims to talk about their experiences lol.

and like. the only way i can describe that phenomanon is 'europilled americel'