England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom.

According to Wikipedia, anyway. I’m not sure what you think England is.

Part of a political system is that it changes, but the House of Lords for example has roots back to the 11th century. Sure, things change through the centuries, but it’s wrong to say they are not the same. The US has gained states and amended the constitution as well.

England is England. They have laws going back until before any of that. There’s continuity all the way. Joining a union does not mean your country stops existing.

France invented constitutionalism and you were the first to adapt it after them. That’s important political history, but don’t overestimate yourselves.

England has been the same kingdom since the early 10th century.

…or disppeared. Lots and lots have disappeared.

The US has been around for less than 250 years. That’s less than four times as long as the Soviet union, which didn’t even last a lifetime.

And America’s issues are uniquely American. It has similarities to feudalism in France, but it is not at all the same.

The capitalists are in charge, but they are also utterly fucked.

The last thing you want to do with a spartacus-type enemy is to make them a martyr. They already fucked up by parading him around with those guards while he looks like the second coming of Christ. Nailing him to the cross is not going to solve any of their problems.

That’s a bit convoluted, but glad you found a workaround!

Do you find Instagram is still working well for you for this purpose?

I signed up due to popular pressure at some point, and in the beginning the chronological feed was very nice. I would use it maybe once a week or less, and like the stuff my friends had posted since last time.

Then over time, my friends’ content started drowning in I don’t even know what. Sometimes I would see a post or two, but I would never see everything they had posted since last time. It just didn’t work as a platform to use for consuming a finite amount of content.

I ended up abandoning ship. But it sucks a bit, as my friends might still be on there posting things I would have been happy to see.

I think commercial social media is literally ruining the world. I decided to be active on here to give alternative platforms legs to walk on. Every single post and comment here makes a significant contribution to stick it to the man - it’s a slightly more viable alternative with every user. Well, maybe except the assholes.

On Mastodon, I post for professional self promotion/reach. Taxpayers pay me to write stuff, so I owe it to them to try to communicate it back in open channels.

In a way, it makes sense to me.

If the big bang was not unique - and why would it be - it makes sense that it would rather be infinite. It exists outside of time and reason, if it is not singular it doesn’t make sense to think that it only happened a finite number of times.

If it happened an infinite number of times, everything that could happen will happen in one of the instances. That’s just math.

So I guess I think it’s a reasonable idea.

However, I don’t know if it makes sense to me to think in terms of these worlds actually existing. After all, they are by definition not a part of our world, which I think would be a reasonable definition of existing.

I heard Stephen Hawkins was playing around with the possibility of connecting to other words. If that is possible, it would make them real by my definition of reality. I don’t personally believe such a thing would be possible. But I know far less about the topic than Stephen Hawkins.

I have little patience for memes, and even less so political memes. The right wing stuff is all woman hating fascists, and the left wing stuff are people who would send me to a camp or chase me out of the country for having a slight disagreement with them on my specific take on socialism.

There’s often no room for discussion or disagreement, because “its a joke”. So at that point it’s just political brainwashing, no matter which side it is on.

Of course, sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes it’s good. There’s a role for humour to play in highlighting injustice and systemic absurdity. I’m not completely against it. I just have little patience for for it.

Which is why I mostly use this platform to look at pictures of owls.

When it comes to digital communication, I think I might be a dinosaur. I have never used Discord or TikTok. My group chat experience as a teenager was on IRC.

Culturally I am also out of touch - I come from a time when young people were reliably progressive, and where there did not seem to be a huge political gender divide. I feel weirdly removed from those born ten years after me, who are now around 20.

Sure, I’m in a few group chats on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and I know these situations in the abstract. But if OP is a teenager they probably come from a completely different world than I do.

I’m just not with it any more, you know. I wear an onion in my belt.

That said, I of course agree completely that I am the embodiment of youth in most aspects of life!

Holy shit, the sociology of group chats is complex as fuck judging from these comments. I hate them too much to ever have stopped and wondered why I hate them.

My suggestion would echo Bukowski: Don’t try. It’s perfectly fine to only respond in the group chat when something needs to be coordinated. Everything else one on one communication is better for. And if you do feel like interacting, don’t force it. Silence is never wrong. On the contrary.

I don’t even do group chats for party invitations. I just text everyone individually. It’s a little more work but it’s so much nicer, as far as I’m concerned.

Then again, I was born in the 90s. I’m a grumpy old man and without a doubt out of thouch.

Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan!

…which hasn’t been aired for years, so you’d have to download it. At which point it could might as well have been a podcast. But it is a radio show!

When I listen to the radio live (as I am doing as I write), I listen to music only, occasionally channels that have brief news every hour if I want to feel connected to the world.

Well, one stands out as particularly weird in its own way.

I was spending the night with this woman. For the first time. I was happy to be there, so my dream got pretty energized. Usually my dreams are rather mundane, like about cheese or something.

Anyway, this time I was an adventurer/explorer - full on Indiana Jones kinda thing. I entered this huge ancient complex of overgrown ruins - like a round opening in a mountain with small-ish carved out openings, like in Petra.

First I was alone. But then some wolves came, and I bravely fought them off. Then a gigantic bird attacked me, and I fought that one as well. I was on fire.

After all this I was getting tired, so I climbed towards one of the carved spaces in the mountain to take a nap. Just then another gigantic bird flew against me full speed, posing an immediate danger. As it approached, I reached out and grabbed the beak with all my might, ready to heroically throw it aside.

And the beak was… Soft? Like some Big Bird kinda thing?

Snap back to the real world, and I had just woken up my bedfellow by violently grabbing her butt cheek. Apparently it was quite painful. It was an awkward situation to have to explain.

Norway only discovered oil worth extracting December 23 1969. So you would not have grown up in a particularly rich country, but you would see the country gain incredible wealth as you grew older.

If you were born in the early 60s and bought a house in the early 80s, you’d be pretty fucked when the global economy crashed. But I guess that goes for everywhere. The 70s would probably be a better bet in that sense.

You’d probably not live in a city, but in some village in the middle of nowhere. So the wealth of the country would mostly be noticable through the social security web built around you, and the fact that your random village suddenly got a tunnel to it. If you’re a farmer you’d receive subsidies so it would be somewhat possible to keep going, even as your peers in continental Europe would run out of business one by one.

You’d probably secretly wish you would also go out of business so you could retire to something less taxing.

You would spend your childhood amazed by America, and jealous of the youth revolution going on there. You’d watch American movies and grow up idolizing American and British war heroes. You would think your stupid valley was the most boring place on earth.

In your old age, you would thank your lucky star you’re not in America. Maybe you’d get a house in Spain for the cold winters. Your family would think less of you for it, but they wouldn’t be vocal about it.

I guess at least there are those specific moments in history when, if you were to be born in a specific country, being a woman at least significantly increases your life expectancy.

If I knew what shit was about to go down and I had to be born in, say, Soviet Russia in 1925, I would probably have opted to be a woman. Not because it seems so darn great, but because chances of at least making it to age 30 would significantly improve.

Then again, not a point in history I would particularly favour.

I feel like most self-proclaimed anarchists have very little interest in the political philosophy aspect of it. Which is a shame, because it’s really far better than its reputation.

Ah, yikes - that’s what I thought. Never imagined a French software company could lower themselves to M/D/Y haha.

Misskey is an unprecedented forking party. Sharkey is one of the many forks. Maintained by the Blåhaj folks, if I’m not mistaken.

Iceshrimp is another one to watch. Specifically Iceshrimp-NET, a full rewrite to fix the performance issues that probably play some role in why these forks often meet such sad ends.