I'm back on my BS 🤪

I’m back on my bullshit.

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  • 53 Comments
Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: May 28th, 2024

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  • This makes sense given the popular knowledge at the time. The reason Columbus set sail wasn’t because he was a genius that knew the Earth was round when everyone else didn’t. We knew the Earth was round since antiquity. I can’t remember who1, but some ancient Greek had calculated the circumference of the Earth using the angle of a shadow, distance to a equinox solstice, and simple trigonometry. They guy was less than 5% off with his rudimentary calculation, which is impressive considering that he paid some dude to measure the distance between two towns by walking it. Anyways, the Western Europeans thought that Japan was farther east, somewhere around where the words “Terra florida” are on this map if I recall correctly from memory. When the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Marimba (party boat! jk, it was Santa Maria named after the “virgin”) landed on the most beautiful land that human eyes had ever seen, they knew they hadn’t landed on Zipangri/Cipangu/Japan. Instead, they thought they had landed on some island off of India, which is why they called the locals “Indios” (Indians). Anyways part 2, they thought that Japan was much further east than it was. I imagine that since they hadn’t found it for this map yet, they though it must be right out of sight of the western coast of North Vespucci (America).

    What I’m curious about is that 7448 inflating archipelago. Anyone have an idea on what that’s about?

    1: The dude was Eratosthenes. Thanks, @user134450@feddit.org!





  • I think I remember hearing that the Mexican cartels are even part of the production line of narcotics made from opium in OP’s post. The raw products are send to Mexico and other Latin American countries for processing, then smuggled into the US.

    I don’t understand why the US government doesn’t solve the problem. It seems to me that it would be quite simple. Legalize drug use, criminalize distribution, provide amazing free and non-judgmental drug abuse therapy that includes medically minimizing withdrawals and long-term sobriety so that benefits of completing rehab would overwhelmingly attract and keep people dependent on drugs engaged with treatment through to completion and sobriety. We’d also need to get rid of the idea that once someone is an “addict”, they are an addict for life. This would help people feel that coming to therapy for drug use doesn’t automatically mark them for life. It would be a bit expensive up front, but in the long run, we’d save so much money in the criminal justice system, customs, and healthcare. Not to mention, increased productivity from a healthier workforce and quality of life would increase drastically, not for the drug users, but their families and communities. There’s also the bonus of creating tons of jobs in drug rehab for a while, both treatment and research. And as is well-known, research in one field often has beneficial unexpected benefits for other fields, such as when Pavlov was studying salivation in dogs created an entire branch of psychology (behaviorism), which coincidentally, happens to have major applications in drug use treatment.

    This is such an easy win for politicians on both sides if they would sell it properly. Republicans would look great to their base for doing something about drug abuse that is hurting rural America, reducing immigration issues, lowering crime, and tickling their anti-Mexican racism. Democrats would look great to their base for enacting caring government programs, reducing criminalization, and being effective at something. It would also help relations with Mexico. It’s a win-win-win for everyone. I can’t figure the cons.


  • Latinoamerica divides up the Americas by ethnicity. North America is USA and Canada, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Trinidad & Tobago, Miami (lol), Saint Lucia, Dominca, US Virgin Islands, and other Anglosphere Antilles. The rest is Latinoamerica, including Puerto Rico (US) and Brazil (Portuguese ancestry).

    Fun fact: there is a considerable portion of Latinoamerica that refuses to call people from the USA “Americans”, and instead call them United Statians (Estado Unidenses) or North Americans (Norteamericanos). This is because they see everyone from the Americas as Americans, so calling people from the US Americans kind of implies that everyone else isn’t American. This trend is more common in Latin American countries that have had an antagonized relationship with the US, especially in the 1900s during the Kissinger years.

    Funner fact: In general, French Guiana and Haiti get grouped in with Latinoamerica, but not Quebec or Louisiana. I don’t know about Martinique and Guadeloupe, but my guess is that they would.

    Funnest fact: Lots of people in Cuba don’t even use United Statesians or North Americans as identifiers. Instead, they call Americans “Yuma” after an American movie called 3:10 to Yuma where the part of the plot was to reach Yuma, AZ.