Dope. Although there might be few enough volunteers it’s beside the point.

Ah shit, I just ninja edited that it. Too late! Oh well.

It is conservative in-group solidarity, and a crazy cult of personality he managed to stumble into, but that’s not a common, easy-to-manufacture situation.

For most of history and still in most places, paying off officials was/is a normal, everyday part of life. Now, living in Canada, I’ve never paid a bribe, or even been given the opportunity. Democracy seems like the obvious answer as to why; it’s not because Canadians are just better.

With a large enough body, it’s true bribery gets harder, but you also have some of the same problems as direct democracy. At some point you’ve basically just made a smaller voting public.

There’s very few things about representative democracy that work exactly as intended, but it does makes (illegal) corruption hard to maintain. A politician having a reputation for corruption and self-dealing is one of the few things that voters uniformly don’t like, and will actually act on at the polls. (Obviously there’s a major counterexample right now, but the trend is undeniable)

I don’t know, does social intelligence count? It’s basically the crowd you’d expect from a top-tier sales job, with some nepotism mixed in.

Often, it just wasn’t well publicised, which is why police - and people friendly with the police - got away with so much more shit than they could now. If there weren’t a ton of unfriendly witnesses, with no video they could just lie. If there was, the papers had the option of covering it, but the average journalist was friendly with the police. They might just make a gentleman’s agreement that whatever incident was either a regrettable mistake, not worth upsetting the public about, or even that it was illegal but good. Things had to get pretty crazy bad before it got reported.

If you were a black person, you and people you know just very directly felt it. The police could harass or beat you whenever they wanted, which was often enough. And that was on top of the more open racist policies that existed.

Do consider, as well, that informal violence was more normised. Now, if you punch somebody you probably get charged with assault. Then, brawls happened fairly often, and as long as it stayed fisticuffs, it tended to be considered a personal matter. Which meant getting roughed up by the police probably wouldn’t be considered brutality at all until deadly weapons come out, or it’s an extended beating while you’re restrained.

With police brutality specifically, a highly professional, highly centralised, very white and very pro-authority press might not have covered it better.

Margharita is sold here too, but basil is absolutely mandatory, and usually it’s done in a more Italian, thinly topped style. Typically it has sliced tomato in addition to the sauce, as well.

It’s weird that Africanews is covering this. And it seems unlikely uncertainty about which currency to trust is anything new there.

Similar to quattro formaggi, but with only one cheese. Like, the same standard blend whatever international chain puts on every other pizza, and the same sauce and crust, but nothing else.

The concept is American, but American-style pizza is everywhere now. Italy of course doesn’t do it like Americans, and I guess only serving the better version of “cheese” would be in character for France, as well.

IIRC angels as genderless comes from the scholastics and St. Thomas Aquinas. They tried to reason out (guess, basically) a bunch of things about angels, and came up with them being detached, bodyless consciousnesses that exist at or around a point.

Hebrew, Greek and Latin all have grammatical gender, which must complicate any readings from the bible on the matter. Angels are described as either indistinguishable from humans or completely monstrous - in the case of the ophanim, more abstract or machine-like than animal, even. The fluffy winged person idea came after, and almost certainly was borrowed from Germanic and/or Persian paganism.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the weird teacher wasn’t totally alone in that cracked interpretation, but only because medieval monks can be weird, as well.

Hmm, her. What tradition are you coming from, exactly? I’ve heard the devil described as female before, but it’s usually “he” in my background.

The holy spirit is a funny exception, since it doesn’t have an actual name, but this still feels right, even there.

The sun and moon are other examples. Historically there’s no reason to have a name for them, since they’re the only one. Sol gets called Sol in some contexts now, and there’s Luna, but that hasn’t really caught on - it’s usually “Earth’s moon”.

You can definitely talk about Popes plural, if you don’t just mean the current one.

Huh, where are you? I’d expect it to be one of the offerings most places.

Oh man, banning indexing has the same vibe as Piefed banning all the most active users. Apparently, you can run part of the internet, and still not know how internet communities work.

IIRC, only once. It felt like seeing someone you know on TV.

Well, everyone starts somewhere, I guess.

You’re on .world right now, and most users are something other than Marxist. As far as the they’re concerned, being against Marxist analysis wouldn’t make it less correct.

Although, come to think of it, that most people aren’t Marxists is another area where there’s some apparent bashfulness. So you’re in the minority; sometimes the minority is right!

Yes, but such a line existing isn’t on it’s own a bad thing. Lots of lines exist with something nice on both sides.

Just that it’s not derogatory, at least in that way, and in that context.

Well, who can speak for the Hoxhaists, but if it’s coming from someone outside your community, it’s hardly an accusation of revisionism. Nobody cares if you’re contradicting Stalin, unless Stalin was definitely right.

In China, where there’s money and lives on the line over any disagreements, that would probably be true.

If you’re an American holed up on Lemmy, it’s pretty easy to just say “I like this guy and not the other one”, and they do. Or at least, the vast majority of them, and internally.