I don’t have a good answer to your question, but to me “white” as an ethnicity makes about as much sense as “Christian” does as a religious description - they both cover such a wide range of backgrounds and beliefs to be essentially useless. Do a Catholic, a baptist and a modern evangelical actually believe the same things beyond how they frame those beliefs?

To my mind, same goes for ethnicity - “white” can mean anything from the baltics to western Europe to north America, and to my mind, is kinda racist. It lumps people from as diverse places as Ireland and Russia together purely based on appearances. I get “black” as a self-selected descriptor of people who do have a big cultural touch-point in common - our ancestors were enslaved, brought here against our will, and we still feel the impacts of that even if our ancestors themselves were from a wide background.

I guess “white” is an easy antonym to “black”, but then that still comes back to a racist tint - “we are white because we aren’t Them” - and lumps in people who have nothing to do with the lasting impact of slavery in the US into this “oppressor vs oppressed” false dichotomy.

Better than the half dozen Cartman wannabes at my school

The MAD doctrine aims to make the intentional use of nukes in war unworkable, but in doing so makes their accidental use due to mishap, misunderstanding or miscommunication much more likely, and the more people that are party to the MAD doctrine the more likely accidents are.

You don’t need to look very hard to find examples of cases where billions of people would have been killed if not for people choosing to ignore doctrine even when the information they had at hand said that they should use their weapons

Pretty sure that counts as a hate crime against the English

In the first world, we have employee protections that mean that a) pulling stuff like this in the first place is illegal and that b) bragging about it on social media means that when you get dragged in front of an employment relations tribunal, your lawyer caves their forehead in with their palm and tells you that you owe back pay and penalties

I can also see this spectacularly backfiring thought if a court decides that by doing that you broke the “good faith” requirements of the ERA, and so owe back pay.

Being on the hill must have been rough. Have a friend who moved to the city a few years ago and was super excited to find a bit of bare land up on the hill with a great view into the estuary to build a house on - explained why it was bare, didn’t seem to deter him.

It’s interesting how the geography affected things - another friend had a batch in Akaroa on the other side of the peninsula that barely felt the quakes - theory being the peninsula is a dead volcano, so it’s mostly really spongy basalt that effectively acted as a dampener and absorbed most of the energy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_earthquake_(disambiguation)

One in 2010 that did a bunch of damage but only killed 2 people, but then triggered a significant aftershock in February 2011 that was much more destructive - partly because it was shallower and closer to the city, but also because lots of buildings had been damaged but not fully repaired.

Can’t speak to others’ motivations, but my wife had to “keep the peace” with her grandparents by seeing them on Christmas, even though they were awful people who took pleasure in bullying and belittling her mum. If we didn’t show up on Christmas for an hour or two and put up with some snide comments and a few “I’m only joking don’t be so serious”, then her mum would have to put up with months of full on abuse.

We didn’t need substances to cope with it, but I can totally see how people might feel like a drink or a toke with some family they do enjoy socialising with could make it easier to be with family they don’t enjoy spending time with, but feel obligated to to avoid hurt feelings.

For whatever reason my mother in law didn’t just cut contact and leave them to die alone in their crappy little house surrounded by their hate and resentment and friends who also couldn’t stand them. Thankfully they are dead now, so we don’t have to put up with them.

I was in Christchurch for the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes that killed 185 people and critically damaged essentially every building within the city centre.

The whole thing was pretty surreal. My family were pretty lucky, our house was lightly damaged (old timber frame, moved ~2cm off its piles but was livable while that was fixed) and we had a few things break (including a 60L fishtank that nearly landed on me as I tried to get to a doorway), I know a few people who were without electricity and clean water for a week, or whose houses were damaged beyond repair then had to spend years fighting insurance companies to get what they were due.

I still live in the city, and it’s pretty much unrecognisable as to how it was before. Basically every major building in the central city had to either be torn down or significantly renovated to repair it. Basically every brick building built before the 1950s was damaged beyond repair. Huge chunks of residential land in the east of the city was so badly damaged that there is no way it could be safely built on again - the government brought all the houses, tore them down and fenced the area off.

Plenty of places would happily pay a couple of million not to find out

You are going to be even more mad to learn that they were basically impossible to get for a while cos someone stole a bunch of them

Idk, if you are at the point where law enforcement is going to a cell provider with a location request warrant you are pretty much already fucked. They know who you are, they know your phone number, they probably know where you live and work

Idk, I wouldn’t carry one across the border any more than I’d take one with me to a drug deal

Not being an American the whole idea of not including tax in the stated price just seems so alien. You expect me to work out what 12.5% of my bill is on the fly as I’m shopping? Fuck you, that’s your job. You are the one actually paying the tax to the government, you work it out

He can’t be prosecuted as president, but he isn’t being prosecuted. He was prosecuted and convicted before he was re-elected

Yeah, my daughter is just about 2 and I can’t imagine being as disconnected as I’ve seen some parents be

Just drape a towel over your head - works if you are eating an Ortolan

Lol same. “Bro you should play Elden Ring”. I have maybe an hour a week where I could reasonably play games, it would take me a decade

Right up until we have an Arch Duke situation