everybody born in the american continent is technically “american” too
The implied context of your question is in English.. In the English-speaking world, there is no American continent. People from North America are North Americans; people from South America are South Americans. People from the United States of America are American. There is no ambiguity. There is also no good term to collectively describe everyone from the Americas but there’s also rarely any need to discuss that.
I consider terms such as “USonian” and whatnot to be highly offensive. Nobody should tell a people what they are allowed to call themselves in their own language just because the same word means something else in another language. It would be like telling French people they’re not allowed to call their arm a bras because it refers to an article of clothing in English. Other languages where America means something else already have their own terms for people from the US. English, however, has no real ambiguity except that caused by those trying to shame Americans for calling themselves Americans.
People from North America are North Americans; people from South America are South Americans. People from the United States of America are American. There is no ambiguity.
Thank you for eloquently responding to the pedantry underlying OP’s question.
This is about language, not geology. Doesn’t really matter how it came to be that way, North and South America are effectively treated as separate continents and very rarely referred to as a whole, and you saying “but actually” doesn’t change that.
You’re right that words can be coined and their usage changed, but you seem to be misinformed about how that happens. You just deciding we’re gonna do it this way now is not gonna cut it, sorry
Telling people what they're allowed to be offended by is usually a bad choice.
Let em call me whatever they want in whatever language they have.
That's not what this is about though, which is precisely the point. In other languages, "America" means something else, and they all have other terms to refer to people from the US. The whole discussion is about what Americans should be called in English.
In the English-speaking world, there is no American continent.
I didn’t know that, thanks.
Nobody should tell a people what they are allowed to call themselves in their own language
Look man, I’m not american and I didn’t ask the question to create some debate about the ethics or whatsoever. I just wanted to know if there was a specific word for that.
Plenty of cultures use the term “English” or some variation thereof to refer to the United Kingdom despite England only being 1/4th of the member states of the UK. I find the whole “Mexicans and Canadians are technically Americans” to reek of manifest destiny.
Just to be clear, I didn't think that you were being offensive. It came across entirely as a good faith question from a foreigner, but it ties into (ironically arrogant) advocacy from some foreigners who call Americans arrogant for using the term American.
No, it’s the entire English-speaking world, which actually makes sense since the practice originated with the British Empire long before American independence.
That and an increase in size for religions that believe in reincarnation, as well as people probably treating animals kinder or maybe even believing they’ve found a dead family member in a pet
More of a natural phenomena, but if they were right about that and others were wrong about heaven/afterlife then some people would trust those religions and distrust the others
Well in theory all of the religious elements are not religious elements. We just haven’t demonstrated them to our satisfaction. (which I suppose is the line between bullshit and not-bullshit right there)
Like, if we forgot how to make particle accelerators And the only talk of quarks and leptons was in religious mythology.
This might depend on what else we know about it. Or don’t know. We know that reincarnation is real, but do we understand the “rules”?
Most reincarnation beliefs include some sort of points system for how you come back. For example, Good people come back better, and bad people become slugs. If it can be confirmed that suicide gets you demoted, there might not be people doing it.
Or, after enough people start rerolling, an official government agency “confirms” it just so they don’t lose their working class.
I went to college before it was app everything and our student id’s were smartcards. Dining plan associated with the smartcard. Just stick it in the reader when you show up and you’re good. You could put cash on your card then use it for the vending machines or laundry or any little incidental on campus. If you needed cashed added to your account, your parents could go online and do it, or you could. That was the only online component. The entire system just worked without any fuss or privacy concerns or anything.
Our university made it so anything you can buy with the card was like 20-50% more expensive tho. I usually never bought anything on campus because of it :/
Yeah it worked this was in the late 90s except your ID was a swipe card and it really only worked on food. You also had to go to the business office with a check to deposit more funds. Online was still dial up for most people.
Almost without any privacy concerns. When I went to college around the turn of the millennium, I worked at the main food court on campus. We had a card system just like you’re describing. When we swiped the student’s card to pay for their meal, their student ID would come up on my screen. Their student ID was their SSN. Back then the first three digits of a person’s SSN was based on the state they lived in when they got their number assigned. For most people that was when they were a baby or at least very young, and for most people that’s the state they did most of their growing up in. I used to have most of the codes memorized, so when I’d swipe someone’s card and see that they had an SSN from someplace that wasn’t the state where the university was, I’d mention it. “Oh, hey, you’re from Ohio? My aunt lives in Ohio.”
Yikes! That was a privacy nightmare. We were fortunate that the university assigned a personal ID on enrollment. I think the only place that had access to the social was the front office. Of course some of the students worked at the front office. I hope they were required to sign an NDA.
Well, it's true that the Babylon Bee is 95% complete crap. It was sort of amusing for a while, then I caught on to how they were pushing their completely idiotic politics and it wasn't very funny at that point.
Did something somewhat similar. Got drunk after final exams. We decided we were special agents and were rolling over car hoods/bonnets (like they do in chases). There was a van (think A-Team), and since it doesn’t have much of a hood, I rolled off the roof instead.
Pretty sure I cracked or broke a rib (there was literally a loud pop). Couldn’t sit up, cough, sneeze, or breathe deeply for about 2 weeks without intense pain. I never went to doctor though because I thought, “well, it’s a rib, what are they gonna do? Put a cast around my whole body?”
Now I have discomfort every day, and pain between 2-3/10 after any sports. Tough when your youth idiocy catches up with you! Felt so invincible back then.
Oh yes. The “like” buttons on websites are also used for tracking people, so any website that is Facebook-enabled will know who you are. Additionally, browser fingerprinting makes it difficult to stay anonymous, even without an account.
More or less, it’s the worst-case scenario. Governments of many countries have sued and fined the crap out of them for obtaining data in a way that is illegal. But they make so much money with that data that they almost ignore the concern.
User agent has quite a few things included, such as browser and operating system, so if you use a different browser, you’ll have a different user agent. The trouble with user agent is that some techniques used to try and make it more anonymous ironically make it easier to track. There’s not really a good option. Although it’s definitely worth getting a user agent switching plugin to disguise yourself as Google bot so you can bypass paywalls
Related to fingerprinting, it’s theorized that if a person doesn’t have a Facebook account but their friend group does, Facebook will create a “shadow account” which isn’t public but still attempts to collect data for this person based on the posts, pictures, and location data from friends on Facebook that spend time with this person. Zuckerberg admitted to Congress that Facebook does collect information on non-users.
Even for users, Facebook attempts to establish a lot of metrics, even if the user doesn’t provide them, like estimated income and political affiliation, for advertisers to use.
I saw some of this first hand. Several years ago I tried some advertising for some affiliate marketing. Facebook’s ad platform let me limit advertising to people with gaming consoles between certain ages, and I noticed I could target it for people who likely leaned more liberal or conservative if I wanted, or only for an estimated household income level. It’s surprisingly detailed.
I presume that will at some point also include data scraped from the fediverse.
One thing that really does help, is salting your data. The online equivalent of wearing a fake moustache, is the occasional comment that may or not be entirely incorrect. I live in France. As a black woman, I support Trump. I'm expecting a baby. I want to buy a new house. That kind of thing.
Of course it does lead to minor inconveniences. For example, my google calender mentions my father's birthday being on the 13th of August. In reality we have the same birthday. My birthday is on the 18th of September. Once again, I'm salting the data. That way if I ever mention something factual, it'll be hard to tell which bits of data are or aren't real.
I'm exagerating for effect, but you get the gist. Occasionally change details or names a small bit to make your profile fuzzy and easier to confuse with someone else's.
They will not get involved with you if you don’t approach them. Don’t do business with them. These guys are not messing around.
However, I have had numerous experiences with people in the group you mentioned. I lived in a neighborhood where they had a clubhouse and it was much quieter and had less crime during their time there.
I worked in a kitchen at a restaurant they frequented for private parties close to that clubhouse. They smoked so much hash. This was decades ago. They tipped very well, were polite to the staff, and never caused a scene (we had a separate entrance in the back they used).
I have been aquatinted with people who were in different states of involvement with them. They had different outcomes. Some fine (tangential to crime not really involved) and others who fared worse. The fared worse guys were like useful pretty criminals who they took advantage of because they wanted to be associated with that group and wouldn’t take the hint to get lost. I’m not discussing specifics.
Finally, if you’re life their neighbour and they ask you to come over for a beer just say you’re busy. If a guy shows up from out of town and you run into him in the driveway don’t ask why he’s there. They won’t involve you in their business but might notice if you seem curious.
Sir/madam, you just touched on one of the most important rules for living a happy life. I like to call it “See something? No you didn’t.”
I grew up and primarily have lived in the south, and my dad and I would go out in the woods when I was a kid. From my very first trip he told me “Son, while we’re out in them woods. If you see someone else out there, just turn around and go back the other way. Don’t say nothin, don’t wave, just go the other way.”
To this day I live by that. My partner “it sounds like the neighbors are building something out of wood at 2am.” Me “not my problem”. Partner “I think I heard gunshots.” Me “wake me up when you hear screaming.”
Sounds fancy, where are you where that’s normal? We usually eat dinner after coming back from work, and maybe coffee and snacks in the evening around 8.30.
It’s funny how much this varies from family to family. We never eat dinner before 9PM. Usually two meals per day, lunch at maybe 1PM and dinner between 9 and 10PM. We’re just doing desk-work though, so no extra calorie needs. If I’m doing physical stuff I’ll usually add a light breakfast.
In the dry SW US the answer is drink water when it’s 100F or worse 115F+. Having a half liter of water from the hotel for the half day mountain hike, or pounding a half gallon of ice water and throwing up five minutes later. Your body doesn’t tell you when you should drink, it tells you when you are already behind on drinking.
This is no joke. Even experienced hikers won’t bring enough water for their trek and will end up either being emergency heli-evac’d out or just plain die.
I just carry a half gallon thermal jug with me all the time. Hiking or not. If my mouth feels the slightest bit dry, I need to drink more water. I tend to piss clear, or very pale yellow cause of this, but the upshot is that I was fine wandering around Anzo Borrego national park, and two of my friends (who thought that my idea of covering myself head to toe in jeans, a trench coat, and a trilby was a bad idea,) damn near got heatstroke. I basically threw my water at them when I noticed they weren’t sweating anymore.
This is a real killer. People have no idea and tend to overestimate the risk from wildlife and underestimate the risk from weather conditions and exposure. Far more people are killed by hypothermia caused by extreme heat or cold than anything else in North American wilderness areas.
I’ve been part of my local SAR community here in Oregon for decades now and while we don’t have to worry so much about the heat, what gets people here is the cold.
If you are somehow lost or stuck in the high Cascades at night without adequate clothing or a heat source, you are in big trouble, especially if it rains or snows, both of which can and will happen even in the middle of summer.
River crossings are also a big danger since the current is always much stronger than it looks and the water is near freezing and if you fall in and don’t have dry clothes and it starts to rain and blow, you are fucked.
I mean, yeah, if you aren't into the core elements of a game you probably won't be interested in the game. It's like say, "I'm not impressed with the new Mario game. I don't want to do platforming, and I don't care about powerups or collecting things."
A surprising percentage of gamers seem to think that any new AAA title game is catered to them and rather than understand it was made for other people, they complain about how bad it is.
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