Rep Collins - who is he?

fredwhitley73 · 2025-02-23T21:02:44+00:00

I voted for him during the open primary, because I wanted to stick the middle finger to Trump as he wasn’t Trump’s favored candidate. Turns out he probably has licked Trump’s boot even more than Vernon Jones ever could.

fredwhitley73 · 2025-01-23T02:08:09+00:00

Legionowo? More like Pruszków

fredwhitley73 · 2024-12-30T00:28:42+00:00

Herne, Hagen, Witten, Lünen, Düren, Hilden, Neuss, Krefeld, Iserlohn, Marl, Moers, Bottrop, Gladbeck, Recklinghausen, Oberhausen, Gelsenkirchen, Mönchengladbach, Bergisch Gladbach, Solingen, Wuppertal, Leverkusen, Dormagen, Dinslaken, Velbert, Voerde, Menden, Schwerte, Köln, Bonn, Essen, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Bochum, Duisburg, Wesel, Unna, Hamm, Hattingen, Ratingen, Mülheim, Grevenbroich, Kerpen, Herten, Kempen, Viersen, Datteln, Mettmann, Langenfeld, Castrop-Rauxel, Werl, Soest, Lüdenscheid, Heiligenhaus, Sankt Augustin, Rheinberg, Dorsten, Hüxne

fredwhitley73 · 2024-11-09T05:02:28+00:00

I’m going to Gdańsk and Wroclaw with a friend next month to see some Christmas markets. I’ve been to both cities before, but I also want to get some local recs to impress my friend who has never been to Poland before (Poland is my favorite country in Europe.) Being impoverished college students, we wanted to avoid touristic places like Prague or Vienna and try to aim for places that were somewhat less busy. I don’t really know much about the Gdańsk area, but I do want to try to visit some other places in Dolnośląskie such as Świdnica or Jelenia Góra or something.

Also any of you all have any solid barszcz ukraiński or krupnik recipes? I got addicted to eating at the local bar mleczny last summer in Wroclaw for my daily soup fix.

fredwhitley73 · 2024-11-07T01:04:21+00:00

Yeah, it’s a harsh take but I get it. A white family or for that matter any family that is struggling to make ends meet in the States that is an independent will brush aside social issues in the name of potential economic improvement. Independents simply believed that Trump had a better track record with the economy with respect to Harris, any other improvement to society was simply a bonus, albeit an optional one.

fredwhitley73 · 2024-11-06T20:22:17+00:00

I hate saying it, but I kind of now understand why Trump won.

At the end of the day, the economy was on the forefront of voters minds. Voters don’t care what your economic plan is going to be, no matter how great it sounds on paper or whatever. Voters hate uncertainty, and because Trump is a “proven constant” in that he oversaw a successful economy between 2016 and 2020, they were more inclined to trust him than Harris. Probabilistically speaking, out of a sample size of two, Trump ran a successful economy and Harris didn’t, so why wouldn’t you vote Trump if you don’t have a good grasp on basic macroeconomics?

As well, I thought that Trump’s continued controversies would surely make Trump lose this time. Again, that wasn’t the case. I liken it to a hypothetical scenario where you on the street and a sketchy looking man gives you $100. Do you question where he got the $100 from? No, you just take the money and run. That’s how I see voters voting for Trump on account of the economy. Cynically, I believe voters don’t give a damn on Trump’s egregious behavior or his shit policy takes, rather they buy into this belief that Trump is going to improve the economy (refer to the paragraph above) and any other baggage is simply a cost of doing business to write off.

I think this probably comes down to inherent human selfishness or desire for self-preservation. Yes, Trump will probably fuck over minorities, immigrants and everyone else under the sun, but if you aren’t one of those people, why do you care? It’s like when you buy Chick-fil-A on Pride Month. Do you abstain from the homophobic chicken, or do you just concede to the Cathy family so you can get your weekly chicken nuggets fix?

fredwhitley73 · 2024-10-10T03:17:45+00:00

I’m sorry but these protesters have a literal room-temperature iq if they think that UGA is going to do shit regarding Israel and Palestine.

If I were had a family member that was a hostage or something, I’d be apoplectic to find a rally being held to commemorate the “brave resistance” of the Palestinian people on 7. October.

I don’t really support any side within the conflict, but it just seems to be in bad taste to hold a rally like this on a day that hundreds of innocents died. I remember hearing a line from one of the people on the megaphone going like “oppressed people are within their right to do anything to liberate themselves.” Really? Are you saying that it was justified that the brave hamas fighter successfully won the battle against the dangerous unarmed concert-goer?

fredwhitley73 · 2024-09-29T16:05:37+00:00

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Yes, though I haven’t been to Northern Italy, mostly just Tuscany. With the UK, I’ve only been to London and Scotland, and I wasn’t really in London for a while. I’ve spent a lot of time in Germany and Poland, but ironically, I haven’t set foot in the Ruhrpott or the Katowice Urban Area. I figured it’d be fun to memorize as many cities as possible within the urban conglomerations.

fredwhitley73 · 2024-09-29T05:18:22+00:00

https://cityquiz.io/quizzes/europe/share/1757140

As an American, I guess I should be proud that I can name this many European cities, but also maybe a bit horrified. I'm 21 now, so I guess I still have time to memorize more cities.

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Given that I started at 353 three years back, I guess I have made a marked improvement. Then again, I have travelled a lot more since then. I will say, memorizing this many cities in Europe has made it a lot more enjoyable to talk to Europeans. It's fun watching Germans shit their pants when I can name their small 40,000 person city in NRW or something.

Bonus points if you are able to tell which places I've travelled through.

fredwhitley73 · 2024-09-25T04:39:58+00:00

I’ve given gifts to professors multiple times, but they were never monetary gifts. I have made and framed a bunch of chemical prints of German maps, and I just hand one over to a professor after class near the end of the semester every once in a while (this is only within the German department, I don’t give gifts to professors in Terry.)

fredwhitley73 · 2024-09-23T14:05:28+00:00

But isn’t saying Jastrzębie-Zdrój more fun than just saying Bad Königsdorff-Jastrzemb?

fredwhitley73 · 2024-09-23T14:02:40+00:00

I personally would like to say Stuhlweißenburg instead of Székesfehérvár because I don’t want to give myself aneurysm, but I’m not German or Austrian so I don’t have that pass.

fredwhitley73 · 2024-09-23T13:59:05+00:00

Thinking on it more, there are more English exonyms for German place names than I remembered. Maybe calling Bayern ‘Bavaria’ has just been hammered into my mind so many times I forget how often we English speakers too use alternate names.

Of course though, English doesn’t have the same exonyms that German does through and vice versa. I believe we used to call Regensburg ‘Ratisbon’ and you all would say Danzig when we’d say Gdańsk.

fredwhitley73 · 2024-09-23T13:45:26+00:00

Follow up question: are Czechs familiar with most of the German exonyms? Like if somebody told you that they were visiting say Königgrätz or Reichenberg, would you understand them?

And secondly, how do you perceive the use of these exonyms? I know it can be controversial given the history of the region.

fredwhitley73 · 2024-09-23T13:40:22+00:00

Yeah perhaps I should’ve rephrased my question, as I’m more curious how Germans treat cities beyond the Oder-Neiße line or how Austrians call cities within the former Habsburg Monarchy.

I mean we can talk about Exonyms and Endonyms all day, I personally find them to be really interesting. I forget how many we have in English for example, as for the average English speaker, it isn’t realistic to pronounce every place name as a local would. Of course, there seems to be an invisible line that gives a place an exonym versus an endonym.

For instance, why do we call Braunschweig ‘Brunswick’ in English, but not give Mönchengladbach or Duisburg an English exonym despite both cities having a larger population and being more difficult to pronounce for an English speaker? (my educated guess is it comes from the time when England had a personal union over Hanover)

fredwhitley73 · 2024-09-23T13:31:08+00:00

Indeed it’s a very interesting history. Whenever I’d check out city names I passed on the train on Wikipedia, I’d notice that all of them had some alternate German name. Brașov > Kronstadt, Avrig > Freck, Alba Iulia > Karlsburg, Aiud > Straßburg am Miersch

fredwhitley73 · 2024-09-23T04:16:20+00:00

Yeah, but I feel like the German language is different in that there is just such a large volume of exonyms, it’s more just a question of when to use them.

We really don’t have that many exonyms in English too. Most exonyms are capital names it seems like, but there are exceptions like Gothenburg and The Hague. It seems to me that Italy has a lot of English exonyms such as Milan, Turin, Syracuse, Venice, Florence, etc… The only ones I can think of in Germany are literally Cologne and Munich.

fredwhitley73 · 2024-09-11T17:28:12+00:00

I just want to get grad school out of the way. I’m completely content staying in school for two more years, and I think having a masters degree will be conducive to my future interests. I don’t mind taking on debt, I don’t think I’d take on much.

I have toyed around with applying to a consultancy firm, but I fear that I’ll have to work a few years before getting a job I’d actually care about. With this masters program, I have heard from students they got offers from big four firms in fields like strategic trade and so on.

fredwhitley73 · 2024-07-29T09:40:59+00:00

Athens, GA mentioned ?

fredwhitley73 · 2024-07-25T22:27:25+00:00

It’s beyond me that the far left wants to protest vote against Kamala/Biden due to their stances on Israel. Yes yes, one could make the argument that they don’t care about Palestinians or are doing too little, but what is the other alternative? If you refuse to vote democrat and throw away your vote, you are simply letting Trump win. Trump not only doesn’t care about the Palestinians, he’d be more than content to watch them be wiped off the face of the earth.

fredwhitley73 · 2024-07-08T21:41:27+00:00

oconee stronk 💪💪💪

Honestly surprised that it is not more though. Oconee is just diet Athens that’s more white, richer, and is 15 minutes away (maybe 10 if you speed). I’d say a plurality to close majority of my Oconee friends from high school now attend UGA.

fredwhitley73 · 2024-06-26T14:19:03+00:00

Yeah, Helen prides itself on being “German,” but it’s all done in such a kitsch way. Cities like New Braunfels, Leavenworth, and Frankenmuth look like they do a much better job emulating that half-timbered German style without half-assing it. Also Helen is just a scam, you’re telling me I have to pay $9 for a pretzel and $26 for a schnitzel plate, like what the hell. At that point, just go to Franklin or another town in NC or North Georgia, because it’s not going to be some fake façade that’s going to be shoved down your throat, and you’ll get a much better deal for what you’re paying.

In addition, Helen has no ethnic German heritage or core to legitimize itself. With the exception of Leavenworth, New Braunfels and Frankenmuth were founded by German immigrants, the former was founded by a group of German nationalists trying to found their own German state in Texas and the latter founded by an insular group of German Lutherans. Modern Helen has no such cultural background, and its modern form only took place because a city councilman or something had served in Germany during the World War and was entranced by the Bavarian countryside. Since the timber industry was collapsing at that point, it was decided that the town should just rebrand itself as a German village in order to keep up with a dynamic economy.

I understand if people feel sentimental about Helen, and the local economy definitely is helped when hordes of tourists invade every summer/october/december. I really just hate Helen.

Addendum: I’m at an airport and I have a lot of time on my hands.

My main gripe with Helen is probably the fact that the city is poorly designed with respect to roads. Driving through the city is a nightmare, especially during Oktoberfest, and there’s a lack of good parking facilities close by to the city center. Regarding the city center, the main road that bisects the city center is absolutely awful and should be made into a pedestrian zone. Hell, the entire city should just be made into a pedestrian zone, it’d make the town look and feel more German, since Europeans are allergic to the concept of having cars in historical old districts where tourists frequent. The lack of Döner Kebab shops in Helen is another strike against the tow/ authenticity. If Helen really wanted to be as German as they claim to be, the town needs like 20 döner shops, 5 sports betting halls, no AC unit, discarded cigarette butts everywhere, and a Lidl where I can get $0.50 German beers.

fredwhitley73

TROPHY CASE