I'd like to say that as an American to your north, I think you're right to not come? Things are weird here presently, so I suspect you probably made the right call for a wide variety of reasons.
But also, I tire of the nationalist rhetoric wherever I see it. I'm tired of this idea that countries are anything more than a shared historical hallucination, and that we're all somehow different from one another. Or as my father often put it, "we all bleed red and we all shit brown." I never chose to be born here, and because I am sick (through no fault of my own) so called tolerant countries wouldn't have me. So I am stuck here.
Regardless, I get why you didn't come, I can't say I blame you, but I also am sick of these damn countries ruining things. Perhaps we should abandon the idea entirely and replace it with the spirit of brotherhood and respect for one's fellow human.
Have you spent any serious time with other cultures? Yes, we all have the same colored blood and excrement, and we have a lot of similarities. Yet at the same time, we are very different. England's traditional dignity culture (the virtuous man can overlook slights) is very different than Africa's honor culture (honor is zero-sum, and you must fight to maintain it), for instance. Japanese values and American values are frequently opposite (Japan values group membership, America values individuality; Japan honors someone by setting them apart, America honors someone by engaging with them.)
In an ideal world we could celebrate each other's differences. But trying to get rid of conflict by getting rid of national borders is naive. Why are the borders where they are? Generally because those are ethno-cultural boundaries. Nations that encompass multiple ethno-cultural groups tend to be somewhat unstable: for instance, Yugoslavia broke up violently, and Iraq has conflict between the Kurds and the rest.
This is not a support of nationalism (although I encourage patriotism, which is different), but "countries are [nothing] more than a shared historical hallucination" is just incorrect.
> Nations that encompass multiple ethno-cultural groups tend to be somewhat unstable
The US has been remarkably stable for a nation that encompasses multiple ethno-cultural groups. It may not continue to be so, but historically it has been a counterexample.
> England's traditional dignity culture (the virtuous man can overlook slights)
i’m english and i have no idea what you’re on about there mate.
are you talking about having basic tolerance for other people? that’s a pretty universal skill not exclusive to england.
> but "countries are [nothing] more than a shared historical hallucination" is just incorrect.
countries are mostly lines drawn on a map.
cultures, which i think is what you’re trying to get at in your post generally, differ everywhere to varying degrees.
dundee (where i currently am) has a different culture to glasgow, which has a different culture to edinburgh, which has a different culture to york, which has a different culture to liverpool, which has a different culture to manchester, which has a different culture to leeds leeds leeds, which has a different culture to oxford, which has a different culture to reading, which has …
the lines are imaginary.
(although yes i live on a massive island so there is a non-imaginary physical boundary where you have to get on a boat or a plane or a train to travel to here).
> are you talking about having basic tolerance for other people? that’s a pretty universal skill not exclusive to england.
You'd be surprised how it's not the case in most of the world. Heck, India has a caste system that Indians have now exported to areas where they're in numbers like California. Arabs have a tribal system that makes them suspicious of anyone not from the in-group. Russian Muscovites treat all of their fellow non-Muscovite countrymen like shit.
You're making rather sweeping generalizations. "Arabs" have, for most of the last 1400 years, been part of 3 MASSIVE states, which spanned from the farthest Atlantic coast of Africa to parts of what is now Pakistan. Not alliances. Actual single states.
Thats the very opposite of parochialism, xenophobia, suspicion or inward societal thinking (however one wants to describe it)
Amidst the destruction of all that SHARED history, and the arbitrary Sykes-Picot jigsaw imposed on "the Arab world", falling back to more local structures is an obvious, and in the grand scheme of things, temporary, defensive mechanism.
The very fact that despite 100 years of Western imposed Sykes-Picot madness, West Asia is still an intricate mosaic of multiple groups - that shows that traditionally the Arabs are WELL CAPABLE of working with those not in their, as you put it, "in group".
The Indian caste system, aka apartheid on steroids, is a horrid example which makes your point. You should have stopped there
"Thats the very opposite of parochialism, xenophobia, suspicion or inward societal thinking (however one wants to describe it)"
Though I am not an expert in Arabic history, Arab culture spreat through colonialism, had an extensive slave system, denied basic rights to religious minorities and the Islam religion feels superior to non - Islamic religion and atheism.
Many Arabs dont want to admit these problems which IMHO is the reason for their long term decline.
Oh come on. Now you're just parroting ignorant tropes. Actual students of history will inform you that, especially per the standards of the day (as any state should be judged), Arab Muslim states were probably THE MOST tolerant of their time.
As evidenced by how many different Christian denominations (more than in Europe) still existed throughout West Asia, under direct Arab Muslim rule, for over a MILLENIA.
Denied basic rights? Basic rights to minority Christian, Jewish & Zoroastrian groups was ENSHRINED in the very makeup of these states. Leaders of these communities had official roles & responsibilities reserved for them.
You simply don't know what you're talking about. You're taking a modern day story about "Arabs" & "Muslims", which is predominantly the result of 100 years of subjugation & being broken up by the West (& having Western vassals & elites imposed as ruling classes), added to the need to create unsavory impressions of them amongst Western populations in order to justify that.
And you're taking this mess & overlaying it over the previous 1300 years, without a single regard for the truth. Seriously, go get a genuine history book, or talk to a history professor who knows about the Arab & Muslim world, and then curl up in embarrassment...
"
Oh come on. Now you're just parroting ignorant tropes. Actual students of history will inform you that, especially per the standards of the day (as any state should be judged), Arab Muslim states were probably THE MOST tolerant of their time.
"
Ehm sorry as tolerant as e.g in India? Even in Europe Netherlands and Poland - Lithuania were very tolerant to religious freedom. But the Dhimmi system might be historically tolerant - Today is a oppressive system and orthogonal to religious freedom, as practiced by many Muslim and Islamist states.
"Denied basic rights? Basic rights to minority Christian, Jewish & Zoroastrian groups "
Maybe you just talked to Iranian Christians, Iranian Jewish or Atheist from Arabic countries. They might give a different clue.
" 100 years of subjugation & being broken up by the West (& having Western vassals & elites imposed as ruling classes),"
That's an excuse. No Western power force the Mullah regime to be so Islamist or the Islamic state to genocide Kurdish people. It stilled happened.
"you're taking this mess & overlaying it over the previous 1300 years, without a single regard for the truth. Seriously, go get a genuine history book, or talk to a history professor who knows about the Arab & Muslim world, and then curl up in embarrassment..."
Living in Berlin the city is fueled with people escaping from Islamic States. I take their word genuine.
But thank for the insight. In my opinion you can see a declining area how to react to critism. Many Americans deny their homes problem. So you do about the problems in Islam. But you what? There is a growing secular and anti islam movement in the Arabic world. Looks some people are smarter than you.
In any debate or discussion, if someone discusses historical behaviour stretching back a thousand odd years then that isn't refuted by only talking about contemporary anecdata.
OK, the usual half-baked Islamophobic propaganda, with all the usual dog whistles of that fake bandwagon. So drearily predictable. Keep on shouting at the wall.
I'd bet money I have more experience in this than you. Culture shock is very real (I've lived it), but culture's ain't countries and hell, I get culture shock when I go to the south here in America. It's just some old timey 1940s "we gotta keep these different cultures separated" nonsense. It's nationalism and racism (though it purports to be otherwise).
Things don't have to be this way, we choose them to and I'm getting awful tired of people keeping making the same choices over and over again because they think an imaginary line is somehow sacrosanct.
> I get culture shock when I go to the south here in America.
Or even from urban to rural areas.
> It's just some old timey 1940s "we gotta keep these different cultures separated" nonsense.
That's a huge mistake right there. Those who want to keep their culture should be free to do so, as long as they don't try to force theirs on others - that's a common and traditional American value which is now being attacked by both extremist segregationists and extremist pot-melters.
> It's nationalism and racism (though it purports to be otherwise).
You should learn what these words mean and stop purporting they mean something else.
> It's all made up. Even culture.
Bro, not only culture, the entire human civilization is made up. The issue is to make it good, not bad, but you seem to be all confused about it.
No, it's racism, because 9/10 times when someone says, "well these cultural differences are so vast" they really mean "I don't like people from that culture" which becomes "I don't like people from that country or who look like that."
Almost always. It's always the same thing. Fear of the outsiders and disdain for change. I'm not going to debate you on it, I'm just tired of hearing it.
And yet with all that experience you’ve still managed to come up with a conclusion which describes the exact opposite way humanity evolved and currently lives.
Naive. Countries are collections of different values. I don't, for example, want to enslave non-believers, nor do I want to own my wife, or have a government take everything I own. I don't want to live in a "theocracy" because those people are crazy.
I select where I live based on those values. Thinking, because we all "bleed red" that we're all the same is a recipe for loss.
Probably. As an American, I have to agree with you -- it's been the case for many years (WAY before Trump) that within 50 miles of our border, your rights go to wherever last year's snow went.
It's too bad so few people can say "My country, if right to be supported, if wrong to be corrected."
I think its funny that the top comment on the blog from ConcernedCitizen is a half troll, half serious, in exactly the same way Trump approaches everything.
Do you think they are trying to do a Trump voice as a joke? I can't even tell anymore.
I'm highly unconvinced of the proposition that most homeless are severely mentally ill; the data I've seen doesn't support it. That's some of it, and also addiction. But a lot of them just can't make the rent.
As an anecdote, two people in my family have been or are homeless (don't know their current situation) entirely because they are incapable of continually making basic, smart financial decisions. At the level of "I decided to just not show up to work today" or "I spent my entire week's pay on a new toy". They both received enormous financial and social support from various people in the family, but always eventually just end up spending all their money somehow, or they get fired, or even just quit their job(!). Both eventually ran away from the responsibilities they built up into a different state.
I don't know if we should call this inability to make basic, smart financial decisions a mental illness or not, but it's something. And these 2 people aren't/weren't even what I would consider visibly homeless. At least as long as you didn't see them living in their car behind a convenience store.
Starting with the framing that housing is just too expensive makes the problem simple. You build more housing, or you subsidize housing for these people, or somehow just inject money into services for them so they can get back on their feet. But if that's not the core issue for some or many of these people, how do you actually help these people? How does a society help people who are incapable of handling their own finances? That's where the hard questions begin.
I doubt we will get to the end cause of all the issues in a conversation here, but my understanding is that getting people whatever kind of help they need is vastly easier if they have a roof over their head and a permanent address.
I agree. But one of these 2 people had subsidized housing through the state. It was incredibly cheap rent for the area. Cheaper than any housing can be just from building more. But they still lost the place after a few months because they did not pay rent and instead bought toys and quit their job. They were receiving money from the family, work opportunities from the family, the family walked them through all of their legal and bureaucratic needs, and the family took care of their children. But it was not enough.
For this subset of people, I don't see how you can help them without managing their finances for them. Even if you completely manage their finances, how do you help them if they just quit every job they get?
I never really thought about it much before them, but I think pretty often about the problem. How do you help someone who can't be helped? Even if you gave them free housing and a weekly allowance, they would still find a way to not have money for food before the next week.
A lot of the young ones are either escaping sexual abuse, thrown out by their family for their sexuality or rejection of religion, or aged out of foster care.
There is indeed a spectrum of homelessness from temporarily distressed to broken beyond repair. There's different actions for the different factions.
I live in the Portland OR metro and believe that the issue has spawned the Homeless Industrial Complex that thrives on extracting money to "help" but are incentivized to keep the problem going for their livelihood.
I'm not unsympathetic to their plight (I had been effectively homeless a couple times in my life). It bothers me to no end how this problem is mismanaged.
There is a difference between "most homeless" (your comment) and "most visibly homeless" (comment you're replying to).
IIRC, most people who obtain "homeless" status only keep it for a short time, and don't live on the streets during that time.
You'll get very different statistics if you count transitions into (or out of) homelessness over some window, vs systematic point-in-time counts of current homeless status, vs point-in-time counts of people camping on the street, vs trying to measure QALYs.
One of the challenges here as an ex-paramedic in the PNW who has certainly seen their fair share of homeless is that several of the more prominent studies use HUD's definition of "severe mental illness" that is far more conservative than you or I would expect...
"Requiring hospitalization more than once a month, on multiple occasions in a year".
And that number, per HUD, is 22%.
If you want to look at "untreated mental illness" in the homeless, now you're above 50%.
> If you want to look at "untreated mental illness" in the homeless, now you're above 50%.
But "untreated mental illness" isn't the same as "mental illness that requires institutionalization" which is what the OP is saying.
Additionally, a lot of mental illnesses can be reasonably managed with proper medication, and in my mind very, very few actually require institutionalization. But we as a country can't even get behind the idea of universal healthcare for non-homeless let alone homeless people. Somehow institutionalizing them seems more feasible or reasonable than just covering their medical care?.. I don't get it.
That's true, and it blows my mind that that's the first or even high on the list of "ways we can help with this".
I do think there's a Venn diagram around severely mentally ill and untreated mentally ill that might require more intensive care. There's also the complexity that drug use and abuse is a method to cope with the emotional pain of homelessness (as one of my instructors said, "if my existence was reduced to fishing rained-on food out of trash, brushing cigarette ash off of it, sleeping and shitting in alleyways, often without something to effectively wipe with, you better believe I'd be on a fast path to taking some drugs to numb that"), or for "self-medication" of said untreated mental illness.
I'd like to see a few links to support your assertions in the first paragraph because, with respect, I have not seen evidence which supports them.
On the other hand, multiple jurisdictions have run trials of UBI (universal basic income) and unless I misread the reportage, the results have been good.
Well, healthcare is an increasing piece of government spending all over the world, and the population is aging, so politics and policy aside, that number is going to go up.
Even if all wire format encoding is utf8, you wouldn't be able to decode these new high codepoints into systems that are semantically utf16. Which is Java and JS at least, hardly "obsolete" targets to worry about.
And even Swift is designed so the strings can be utf8 or utf16 for cheap objc interop reasons.
Discarding compatibility with 2 of the top ~5 most widely used languages kind of reflects how disconnected the author of this is from the technical realities if any fixed utf8 was feasible outside of the most toy use cases.
This is really helpful - thanks. I write a CRDT library for text editing. I should probably restrict the characters that I transport to the "Unicode Assignables" subset. I can't think of any sensible reason to let people insert characters like U+0000 into a collaborative text document.
You're right, but I didn't realize that till later. Except for the original "Parable of the Sower" was from Jesus not Olivia. But I also thought of Olivia's first.
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