Formerly /u/Zagorath on the alien site.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Zagorath@aussie.zonetoPrivacy@lemmy.mlProton Ditches Mastodon
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    8 days ago

    He also used the word “triggered” in the Reddit comments in the way right wingers are wont to do, and then tried to play the “I’m not American, I don’t understand how that word looks to you” card. Never mind that plenty of non-Americans know perfectly well how that looks.

    No, it’s far more likely he picked up that word and knew exactly how it was used because he’s been hanging out in far right spaces.










  • The reason for this is simple: the word in English is “American”. Because in English speaking countries, it is almost universally the case that we talk about the 7 continents. And in the rare case we talk about 6 continents, it’s from merging Europe and Asia (which, frankly, is blatantly a far superior model of the continents), not merging North America and South America.

    So “America” unambiguously refers to the country, and there’s no need for estadounidense, any more than there’s a need for “commonwealthian” for someone from the Commonwealth of Australia.





  • Motornormativity. Not all of it, it’s a huge problem, but there are so many really small bits that could easily be addressed. Like get rid of slip lanes, and make corners into side streets sharp right angles. When you’ve got a bike path (yes, putting in the bike path at all is one of those big difficult problems, but when you’re getting that done anyway), making sure it has clear priority when it crosses side streets through the use of wombat crossings and road markings.

    I dunno how to get it noticed. Half the problem is getting people to acknowledge it even is a problem when it’s directly pointed out to them. Half the people are so deep in carbrain they refuse to acknowledge there’s even a problem with everything being centred around cars. And most of the rest buy into the neoliberal “pErsOnAL reSpONsiBiliTy” nonsense and blame crashes (or “accidents”, as they invariably call them) entirely on the bad driving (or worse—victim blaming it on the cyclist or pedestrian), rather than being willing to acknowledge that bad driving is inevitable and designing so that (a) bad drivers have other viable alternatives to driving if they want, and (b) the infrastructure could be designed to be forgiving of bad driving and reduce the likelihood and severity of crashes.






  • I dunno how true it is, but I’ve heard it gets even more specific once you’re in the north. I shared a map in another comment detailing the different meanings of it.

    As for the etymology, apparently it goes back to Dutch settlers of New Netherlands, and may be connected to the name Janneke. It seems to have gone from being used by English settlers to Dutch settlers to being used in precisely the reverse at some point, and has at times meant either someone of English descent, of early Protestant descent, or other things.

    It was used more generally by outsiders to refer to Americans as far back as the Revolutionary War (the song Yankee Doodle Dandy was originally making fun of Americans—macaroni being a sophisticated style of dress), so its history being used in that way actually predates the Civil War associations that I think many Americans would give it today.

    So yeah, it really does have a fascinating linguistic history.

    Also, weird…this is the second time in as many days I’ve had cause to look up Yankee Doodle Dandy.