wonderingwanderer, wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz

I get the spirit is in the right place, but wouldn’t this just incentivize self-checkout and accelerate the obsolescence of human cashiers?

The way I understand it, which is vaguely, Massie already lost the primary or something so he can’t run in the regular election. But he could run in a special election, which would divide the republican base and help a democrat to win.

It is convoluted though, and beyond my limited comprehension of political complexities. Republicans tend to be very underhanded like this though, so republican-controlled states have convoluted laws which enable them to do these kinds of shenanigans.

I was thinking the place at the end of Space Odyssey, but that works too

What is wrong with Perplexity’s butthole? *shudders

Then what did you mean why you said “unfortunately”? I guess that part through me off.

And look, I’ve done a bit of traveling so I’m definitely grateful for places that welcome foreigners who don’t speak the language. I’m not saying those should go away.

But I’ve also spent enough time in some places to gain a little proficiency, and at that point it would be nice to have a few places to go where I’m expected to use the language. Otherwise people see me struggling and then they default to English. It makes it harder to get the level of immersion necessary to go from intermediate to advanced.

Plus, when I’m really immersed in a culture I like to avoid the touristy spots. I try to go to the places where the local language is used more. If I rely on every local’s English proficiency to get by, I’ll never learn.

And it feels nice to be able to differentiate myself from the average tourist, like “no I’ve actually been living here for months and have gained some basic proficiency in the language.” There’s a difference between going somewhere for a week to hit all the tripadvisor spots, versus going somewhere to immerse in the local culture and try to build a life there. Most places view tourists as a nuisance, and I don’t see why that’s a problem because the level of respect for the local culture tends to be lower among tourists anyway.

It’s hard not to be cynical in this world.

And you think everyone before western colonization was enlightened and multicultural? Sure their political regions were more complex, but in-groups and out-groups have existed in every region since at least the dawn of civilization, and those in-groups were typically defined by a range of factors including but not limited to culture, language, ancestry (and by extension, ethnicity), and religion.

You must have been sleeping through World History class if you think everything was kumbaya all around the world until the Europeans showed up…

You yourself are saying it’s unfortunate that people mostly speak English in the nordic countries, and yet you argue that it would be xenophobic and wrong to try to incentivize society to use the local languages more?

I think that’s an overly reductive analogy. Of course the backend web server knows what it processed on its own hardware, but it doesn’t need to know the IP that the request originated from (if using a VPN) and it certainly doesn’t need to fingerprint the browser with hidden scripts.

Likewise, the browser probably doesn’t even need to make that information available to those scripts. There are extensions to block some of it, but apparently not all. And blocking some things can break some websites.

But there’s no reason the chef in the back should be running a forensic analysis on the fingerprints on the ticket, the footprints on the dining room floor, or the crumbs swept up at the end of the day. And if you suspect that they will do this, then it should take be overly complicated to wear gloves, and maybe some boot covers, and possibly a full hazmat suit if you’re really worried about dropping crumbs and dander.

Not that all that should be necessary, because it shouldn’t be standard practice for web servers to collect all this data to begin with…

Yeah, that makes sense. I like that idea

Slackware users in shambles!

Xenophobia: the fear or intolerance of foreigners

No, tourism and colonialism aren’t the same thing, but in this context it doesn’t matter.

Besides, which one are we talking about in Japan? We could call it tourism, but don’t you know they’ve literally been occupied by the US military since WWII?

And if you want a strictly tourism example, then how about Barcelona? How is this any different from a giant mural that says “Tourists go home”? And least in Japan they don’t spray gaijin with water guns…

You’re right, in Barcelona they write “Tourists go home” in plain English in order to accommodate foreigners who aren’t fluent in Catalan!

America is a country founded upon immigration, so it’s not a comparable example. In broad terms, Japan is historically a fairly homogenous nation ethnically, culturally, and linguistically (and yes, I know those are very broad terms, I’m talking relative to North American countries like the US and Canada).

If the 1600s-1700s had gone differently, and North America remained predominantly populated by Native peoples speaking Native languages, then yeah I’d say it’s totally within their rights to expect visitors to either learn the local language and attempt to integrate, or be left out of certain parts of society such as restaurants that want to cater exclusively to people who speak Algonquin or whatever.

Show up in Algiers and try saying “Sorry, I don’t speak Arabic. Do you have a French menu?”

Was it xenophobia for Algeria to reject French-speakers?

“This is [Barcelona] and we speak [Catalan] here!”

Is this suddenly a different situation?

Yeah let’s start calling it racism when Barcelona locals spray tourists with water guns and see how quickly these same people scream “THAT’S DIFFERENT!”

If an American moves to Europe and doesn’t attempt to learn the local language, then by a few months to a year in with zero effort people will say they’re in the wrong for not making an effort to integrate and expecting everyone to speak English for them.

Clearly “Americans expecting foreigners to speak English” is different from “Other countries expecting Americans to speak the local language” from a moral point of view. So why is Japan then lumped in with America as the “Local people must accept and accommodate foreigners who can’t communicate in the local language” bucket, when anywhere else it’s “If you’re traveling there and you didn’t even try learning the language, then you’re ignorant and entitled.”?

Except the Panjab and Tamil region examples aren’t the same, because Panjabi and Tamili are both considered ethnic/cultural minorities who are historically marginalized by the ruling class in India.

That’s fundamentally different from the PRC-ROC conflict which is between two political groups that are both Mandarin-speaking Han Chinese.

So again, that would be closer to the marginalization of Cantonese-speaking ethnic minority groups in the southern regions of China. Or the settler-colonialism taking place in the Uyghur Xinjiang region or annexed Tibet.

Honestly I don’t even know what you’re arguing against because you seem to keep contradicting yourself in order to refute arguments that I never made…

Resoundingly