The historian Zeev Sternhell has traced the ideological roots of fascism back to the 1880s and in particular to the fin de siècle theme of that time

(Wikipedia )

So if you could timetravel back a bit more and see if rebooting fixes this whole thing…

One of the few areas where representation is fair is assholery. There are real assholes from all genders, ethnicity and religious backgrounds.

You can be non-white, non-binary, non-wasp and still be an asshole. And other assholes will accept you, if it helps shield their evil agenda from the most obvious accusations.

And guess what political side has learned to leverage that fact? I’ll give you a few hints. Neonazi AfD in Germany has a lesbian leader with a Sri Lankan partner, the italian far right party (staunch defender of family values) has a leader who’s a never married single mom (and now she’s Italy’s prime minister), then you already mentioned Trump and Vance.

Don’t get me wrong, Usha Vance, Melania Trump, Giorgia Meloni, Alice Weidel aren’t being exploited. They are all formidable persons who got to the top by out-assholing everyone else on their side and by actively banking on their “non traditional” status to emerge in ultra-conservative environments.

So they don’t need to rationalize anything. It’s all already quite rational and by design.

Was Steven Seagal ever relevant? I mean besides the “so trashy that it’s occasionally fun”, guilty-pleasure type of relevance he briefly enjoyed in the 1980s?

measles…

Hahaha, I like how you think and I’d like to know more about you. For instance what is your mother’s maiden name?

It is! Hence the realization that I got older. Sorry, re-reading my comment above I wasn’t clear

For me it clicked when pretty girls started tallking and being nice to me

I like this. Just a couple of additions, for the purpose of trying to improve on this lore.

First, Native Americans do have ghosts too (see https://allthatsinteresting.com/native-american-ghost-stories for instance).

If “ghosts” are just the embers of a particularly strong emotion that burned in a particular place, I suggest that “seeing” the ghost depends on being able to tune-in to that emotion and on having the cultural tools to interpret it and personify it.

So I might experience some faint, weird feeling going through a field where a battle between Native American tribes once happened but, as a white person imbued with a specific culture, I would not be able to recognize that particular mix of feelings and “see” that ghost. But a Native American might.

And if a big department store is built on top of that field, it would make it harder to both tune in to that particular faint feeling (among the confusion of so many other feelings) and to personify it as an old Navajo warrior, which would not make sense to us in that place

“illegal” is overrated, anyway. Trump did a ton of illegal stuff and yet, here we are.

Agree, it definitely rocks!

You’re in a situation you don’t deserve, but you are trying not to make it worse for your mom. I think you rock! I wish you all the best

I don’t want to get too deep into your business but just to understand better what you’re trying to communicate… Please tell me if I get this right: there’s current (not past) drama in your family and you think that not acknowledging father’s day at all would feed into that drama (maybe your dad’s reaction would be “see, you’re all against me” and he’d play the victim or something like that) . On the other hand you also don’t want to pretend everything is right with your father. So you want something to communicate “I don’t want to be against you, but I certainly am not on your side either; I just want to be left alone and talk to you the strictly necessary amount of times”. Is that it?

If that’s the case, yes, the standard-est, humorless “happy father’s day” card you can find, with nothing but your signature in it should convey that message pretty well. If you can’t find anything, just a white one with a handwritten “happy father’s day, [your name]” would do.

The medical field is ripe for some intrusive ads to boost revenues! Possibilities are endless:

Ad-supported hearing aids (“this conversation will resume after a quick message from our sponsors!”)

Pacemakers - want to watch an ad for 100 more free heartbeats?

Surgery - this will leave a visible scar, but how about we make the cut look like the Amazon logo ?

Implants - click the nipple and watch an ad to re-inflate the left breast for 10 more days

Nah, micro is the superior option! 😜

There were some often-quoted tests in which even professional sommeliers could not tell the difference between super-expensive wines and much cheaper ones. See this article on The Guardian for instance

To be fair it was the NSFW tag that gave me the idea. I went “why would this have an NSFW tag? … Ooooh!”

Genitals. Both male and female. (Generally) awesome when in use but a maintenance nightmare otherwise. Reasons for being the worse (some depending on gender) include: initiating takeoff visibly and without reason, leakages, being very fragile, requiring more packaging than any other body part and others

This does seem to be the correct reason, at least statistically speaking!

serious answer: it depends on your definition of “worse”. There’s some study linking smelling farts (and specifically the component that makes them rank) to health benefits: https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/jul/14/silent-not-deadly-how-farts-cure-diseases

there’s an old joke about this:

man goes to doctor saying “I keep farting, doc; my farts aren’t smelly and luckily they are also silent but I am worried because I fart all day long. Even now, as I was talking to you, I kept farting the whole time”.

“I see”, says the doctor. “I will prescribe you this pill, to be taken twice a day for a week”.

“And will that help with the farting?”

“No, but it should help you with your sense of smell. Then come to see me after one week and we’ll try to fix your hearing”