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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Never understood why the whole “mpox” word is really that offensive. It was NEVER calling Africans monkeys, the disease name started with non-human primates such as Chimpanzees and Gorillas, most other primates are surprisingly empathic and intelligent beings, and finally? While I am definitely not going to call anyone else a monkey, I am a human being; humans of all skin colors, even white, and all origins, as in the entire Homo genus (even our extinct relatives), are great apes. All great apes are old world monkeys, and all old world monkeys AND all new world monkeys (as in, the species that evolved in the Americas, not the human Mesoamerican cultures who are of course human but came to the Americas from elsewhere some time after humans evolved in Africa) are - in scientific classification of taxonomy - monkeys.

    I won’t deny it would be insulting to refer to someone with dark skin a monkey. I just feel denying our one universal shared trait when mentioning a disease that most primates can get is anything but respectful to ourselves as a species and to many species who we should not be thinking of as brutish or stupid, such as Gorillas or Bonobos. Monkeypox/“mpox” does not make you less human, to imply calling it monkeypox is insulting purely due to political correctness is like saying we shouldn’t take vaccines because the word “vaccine” comes from cowpox and that “cow” is offensive to female bovines because human women don’t like the term. Calling a woman a cow is insulting AND inaccurate, and calling someone a monkey a loaded word, but calling a human a victim of monkeypox is not the same as saying getting monkeypox makes you less human. The former is someone to care about, the latter is insulting AND inaccurate. Being a victim of monkeypox, if anything, should prove a person’s humanity.

    Besides, while it’s a disease and has painful and awful symptoms, it can be treated. To say “monkeypox” is an insulting word is missing the point; it’s “pox”, a skin lesion caused by a more internal infection. Cowpox does the same to cows. As for the really scary one, smallpox? “Monkeys”, US, huamity, have nearly eradicated it. Nothing capable of perceiving a way to kill a viral disease is anything short of a species worthy of note, and no matter what, you cannot tell me that there haven’t been African or African-descendant persons who contributed to eliminating smallpox. They saved people with a medical procedure that neither Europeans nor Native Americans knew of: https://www.history.com/news/smallpox-vaccine-onesimus-slave-cotton-mather

    I understand this is a topic with lethal and cruel historical baggage. Moving past something is not easy. Further, racism is still around. The issue is, giving a word that describes us all a taboo-ish reputation is a dangerous and, yes, racist precedent to set. What if it was COVID-19 people said was racist against Chinese people and we had to call it “VID-19”? Fact is, the CO goes with the V and has nothing to do with China in and of itself, it’s short for “Coronavirus” or “Crown-like-spiked Virus”, and yet YouTube banned that too. Hell, the Human Rhinovirus (common cold) is technically a non-issue coronavirus. So I just hope by this point people realize the only real dividing factor here is the one they choose to support by making ordinary words into taboo. You could probably find some “racist undertone” to just the word “taboo” if that’s all you look for, but as someone trying to stop himself from keeping making an assumption that everyone hates him, I think maybe the reason I needed to realize that is because we’re all far too guilty of it and my anger convinced me to stop taking the high road.

    tl;dr: As a member of the human species, I take “offense” to the implication that I am NOT a monkey, because that implies I’m not taxonomically human.






  • As someone not familiar with all this, I think what’s telling is that she says “sorry” yet plays the victim outright immediately afterwards. If you say “I’m sorry for what I did and I just hope he’s sorry for what he did” then that says to me “I realize I screwed up, stop forgetting he screwed up too” then fine. But “I’m sorry” and then segueing into “he hurt me” without an acknowledgement of what you did? Clearly trying to deflect as much blame as possible. The worst part is she’s probably doing it that way because the family lawyer advised her on what slander is. Fucking rich bitch flaunting her whiteness, and I say this as someone who looks as white as they come.

    That said, a big help is that it doesn’t seem like the black dude was spending his time since the incident with business as usual from what the event suggests. That’s nothing on it’s own, but it lends further credibility that the Karen has no ground to stand on.


  • Look, if I have to hear one more “you’re stupid because I disagree with your proposal” then I’m fucking done with the Fediverse. I was IMPLYING “tell your landlord that he’s an asshole and when he admits it, burn all his properties down” because CANADA LITERALLY HAS A HOUSING CRISIS.

    Is “destroy houses to hurt landlords and then get arrested” reasonable? No. But until people start demanding free homes on penalty of death, we will never again have enough housing because NOT HAVING ENOUGH HOUSING IS TOO PROFITABLE.

    So either start burning down your landlord’s houses, or fuck off, because people are literally homeless because of worthless pieces of shit like you.

    I am now blocking you. Go die.


  • Here in Canada, I sure hope so. I, however, subscribe to the idea that - at present - they are unreliable in a Canadian winter. That means you either drive, or you start asking for better transit. Considering how rural we are I doubt my province will be able to build bus routes that can serve most car owners better than a car. It’s not an all-year thing, but yes, this part of Canada gets brutal winters with ridiculous snowfall.

    I do approve of the high speed rail project between Edmonton/Red Deer/Calgary and the company with the orange rentable electric scooters. I just know it’s not as simple as “drive an electric car” or “don’t drive unless you have to” here, which admittedly is not the case for the US, China or India who are all subtropical/temperate and dense and produce tons of CO² emissions but also are the biggest drivers of advancing renewables energy. Sadly Canada does not have the advantage of density or technological focus to reduce our own sizable emissions.

    If anyone you know has died/dies of climate crisis events like floods, you have my condolences and apology, not stereotypically but genuinely. This really was partly our fault, the numbers say we produced as much as the US in carbon emissions with a tenth of the population, and among changes like Bill C-11 and corruption in the immigration process that are failing to protect people in danger, I cannot claim I have a likeable, benevolent home country. We try, but… Yeah. Life isn’t made of tropes and problems have arisen here. Hopefully we can at least rejuvenate our energy grid with all this, I’m cautiously optimistic.