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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: April 17th, 2024

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  • My country is being invaded illegally right now with zero consequences, I know what you are saying. But there should be zero way to profit from war, from an ethical standpoint these industries would ideally be nationalized and kept far far away from profiteers.

    I know exactly what “peace” with the apartheid Nazis taking a fresh bite out of my homeland means, I’m not oblivious to that flavor of “pacifism” that gets promoted by the slimiest characters. You’re pushing back against a point I never made. I empathize with a lot of the sentiment supporting Ukraine specifically because I feel like that country’s relationship with Russia is in some ways analogous to our relationship with Hafez and Bashar’s Syria.

    Arguably we need the weapons more. The countries controlling the world’s economic and social levers are more than willing to punish Russia, great, but then bend over backwards, and even spit in the face of their commitments to the ICJ, because we’re just in the way of a modern colonial project. I’ll take the guns in a heartbeat. I just believe it’s an unethical thing to privatize, monetize, and eventually promote to keep the numbers going up.




  • The fact that he’s not advocating for the wholesale execution of trans people out in the street makes some people think he’s some kind of “crazy” pro LGBT “corruptor” of good Christian families.

    At least here where I am, a stone’s throw away from Palestine, these are not topics that are dealt with with a lot of open mindedness. I hate “hate the sin not the sinner” just as much as anyone else on Lemmy, but I’ve seen the effect his rhetoric (specifically on gay people) has had and it’s certainly better than Benedictus 16 before him.

    I don’t agree with everything he says (I attended a Catholic school, which is never a faith-enhancing experience) but I’m damn certain that he’s slowly dragging most of the Catholic faithful kicking and screaming into the 21st century when he just as easily could have been ten times worse on social issues. As far as a pope goes, this is pretty much the best case scenario as far as this stuff is concerned. The industrial-scale child abuse still needs a lot of work though. Let’s not kid ourselves.

    Now if only he knew what a compiler is.


  • I’ve been to both touristy and more “normal” parts of Turkey, and I was pretty shocked how few people understood English (or French, since you mention it). I actually mostly got by with a broken mix of English and Arabic loanwords I know they have in Turkey (or Turkish loanwords we have in Lebanese Arabic).

    Drive down any road in Lebanon and you’ll see most signs, especially newer signs, are in English. When I was a kid it was mostly French and Arabic, now it’s mostly English and Arabic with some French sprinkled in. I’ve also been seeing a lot of municipal road and highway signs use “Beirut” instead of “Beyrouth”.

    I think we still lean more heavily on French loanwords in our day to day Arabic, at least when not discussing something tech-related.

    Also cinemas have consistently used the original English audio now, while we had a good 20% of these movies dubbed in French when I was a kid. A lot of companies’ business operations now are almost exclusively done in English (I’m talking about the documents - the conversations are naturally in Arabic).

    I guess none of this is strictly true, there are areas and sectors (especially law) where French is still much more dominant. But people who are French-educated all eventually learn some English, the reverse (the category I’m in) is very rare. I still understand French, even rapid-fire French French, but speaking it or writing it has become so rare for me that it’s really atrophied over the past few years. My English is fine, because I’ve actually had to use it daily.

    This is all just additional info, my point is just that Lebanon should probably be higher than Turkey on the list. Turkey has a massive domestic media machine, business is done in Turkish there, I’m pretty sure their schools teach everything in Turkish instead of having some subjects only done in foreign languages like we do. So just based on what I know in these two countries, the placements seem off, and it makes me question what else is going on with the data.