After WWI—and especially after WWII—there was a lot of pressure for German Americans to assimilate to prove their loyalty. That meant rather swiftly abandoning their native language and culture, which is interesting when you consider that German was once spoken as widely around the country as Spanish is now.

The Dutch verb “rijden” is most readily translated into English as “to drive or to ride,” but I think it can also be used more ambiguously to mean that it was steered or moved (perhaps by being manually pushed?), not necessarily literally “driven.”

Yeah, I’d love to tell this guy that he’s not exactly being “original” here either. You can pretty much reduce every and any aspect of human life and behavior to complete meaninglessness—it’s why nihilism, existentialism and absurdism are fixtures of modern philosophy.

I wish there was a politician who had the balls to say that they don’t plan to try and keep those jobs in America because pursuing that objective would be dumb policy.

The editing Oscar should have gone to “The Other Side of the Wind,” hands down. The story behind editing it is crazy enough, let alone managing to edit something that feels very much like a film Orson Welles could have completed in his lifetime.

Yeah, when he died, it was as if the last 20 years were immediately forgotten.  Everyone wanted to remember “80s Michael Jackson,” and it’s weird how it took this documentary to snap everyone back into reality.

It’s only a bit of a shock, because an American who has only traveled to Canada or Europe wouldn’t have experienced anything like this before and probably doesn’t even know that the ESTA already exists for travelers into the U.S.

First things first, “Now Apocalypse” reminds me an awful lot of Gregg Araki’s Kenzo short back in 2015, “Here Now.”

People begrudge blue collar workers having good wages and benefits, while thinking absolutely nothing of the obscene pay and benefits packages corporate executives grant themselves with basically no oversight. Meanwhile, none of these folks realize that, as unions and blue-collar workers have seen their wealth and job…

For real—and I’m someone with a master’s degree. Not all of us hate the working class.

No, I didn’t notice any maliciousness on your part. It’s just that most discussions on this subject tend to imply it, so I just put that out there.

That lasted another 1140 years after the Edict of Milan in 313AD?

All true, although I’m not sure the “paganism” was malicious as much as these myths were all part of the common cultural canon of the Ancient Near East

The reality is that suffering was a major part of the human condition until just recently with the advent of modern medicine, civil rights and democracy; and, of course, this isn’t universally applied even today—there is still a lot of suffering around the world.

Early Christianity, at least, was a revolt against the status quo, especially when you consider the diversity of theology, as evidenced by the sheer number of sects.

These kinds of tales are always for the benefit of us regular folks rather than “gods.” The reality is that suffering was a major part of the human condition until just recently with the advent of modern medicine, civil rights and democracy; and, of course, this isn’t universally applied even today—there is still a…

“Moderates” are fine with the “quiet part” as long as it stays quiet. It’s an issue of style over substance, which is ultimately the problem.

I’m not sure they were ever in hiding, and I doubt they even care that we know. They are insulated by “centrist” politicians who will just call any leftist critics of the status quo “extremists,” and it’ll stick.

The Western neoliberal elite is perfectly fine with fascists like Jair Bolsonaro, considering he delivered the keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos this January.

Bad food is like drugs