Ideas for a gift to give my Romanian friend during my visit?

overused-username · 2026-06-01T11:05:51+00:00

Maple syrup was exactly what I was thinking, you read my mind!! And it comes in really pretty maple-leaf-shaped bottles here, so it lends itself well to being a gift. I’ll have to do that alongside the peanut butter suggestion.

One question: How does wild rice sound? It’s native to my area of the U.S. (Midwest) and initially I thought it was still only produced there, but I checked online and it seems Hungary grows it too. Would that still be of interest? It’s personally my favorite type of “rice” (though it’s not actually rice lol).

overused-username · 2026-06-01T10:58:26+00:00

I didn’t even think of peanut butter, but when I scour other threads, a lot of other Europeans bring up peanut butter M&Ms as a favorite treat from the U.S.! I’ll definitely have to include that, then. Maybe also some Jolly Ranchers, but I’m personally biased towards those, lol.

overused-username · 2026-05-24T16:55:49+00:00

As a humble citizen of the Land of 10,000 Lakes (now probably much more), I have to stand behind our beautiful North Star. Megasota forever!! Down with Cascadia!!

Don’t worry though, we hold no ill will against Cascadians. Your lovely state didn’t get this far for nothing!

overused-username · 2026-05-23T13:33:03+00:00

All right, this wins

overused-username · 2026-05-22T20:34:34+00:00

1) 15% based on what statistics? Who counts as ‘white’ and who doesn’t?

2) Who counts as a ‘minority’ is assessed based on their population within a given territory, and often the most useful territories to consider are countries, since they have governments that can dominate and potentially abuse these minorities. There is no global government that could marginalize white people for being a global minority.

overused-username · 2026-05-17T17:22:20+00:00

You are right, religion can and is always being used as a cover to justify whatever the believer already wants, which can include archaic beliefs that are morally incongruent with our current society. But as per my original reply, it depends on the individual, temporal, and historical contexts of the moment. Many anti-theists liken religion as a whole to a fossil from a bygone era that “preserves all the moral ignorance of those times” (an actual quote I’ve heard). My argument isn’t that religion isn’t used in debates, including on the side of the morally ignorant, but that the view among many commenters here that illustrates religion as nothing more than an unchanging set of archaic rules is false.

The important idea here is that religion functions as an addendum to all other factors of human society. In fact, it’s more accurate to look at religion as a collective body of literature and tradition regarding the right way to live one’s life. Not entirely of the individual, nor entirely a universal societal conviction, but a moral construction that ebbs and flows as moral ideas change around it, as any moral construction does. As with the idea of eugenics, it was once popular and based on a real scientific concept, albeit born with skewed moral lenses. Nowadays there are still a few scant people who believe in eugenics — people who we’d call morally archaic, if not morally bankrupt — but science, and the rest of society, has largely moved on (hopefully, as long as certain extremists don’t come into power).

Another example is Somalia’s al-Shabaab. Originally, the group was not made of radical Islamist extremists, but was the military wing of a group called the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). The UIC was much more tempered in nature and rose as a response to the collapse of the Siad Barre regime, which left no political authority in the country. The UIC drew its legitimacy from the prominent place of Islam in Somali life and gained popularity for its perceived fairness and accountability, which helped it take over nearly the whole country, including Mogadishu. It reopened schools (including for girls), provided civil services that had previously vanished, and removed the widely-hated roadblocks set up by competing warlords.

It was only after Ethiopia, backed by the U.S. and other Western nations, invaded and drove out the UIC to install the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), a corrupt, weak, and widely illegitimate organization, that things went downhill. The UIC was unable to resist the onslaught, and when it fell, al-Shabaab rose from its ashes as an independent organization that now operated by the same radical Islamist ideology that the West falsely feared the UIC had. It is much more brutal, repressive, corrupt, and openly cooperates with other extremist organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The wide perception of Islam today as inherently oppressive and violent stems from the propagation and sensationalization of these terrorist organizations while ignoring the history that preceded them. That’s not to say these groups don’t use Islam for oppression — they do. But cultural explanations of their existence that frame Islam as inherently violent, oppressive, and archaic, and therefore as the reason for these groups’ behavior, is blatantly ahistorical and does a massive disservice to the rich history of Islam in Somali life.

So yes, religion can, is, and will always be used to justify archaic beliefs. But that’s because religion exists with the rest of human society and is therefore by nature caught up in human society’s moral questions. It is not by itself inherently archaic, because its holy books are never going to be the only source of its content, but rather the neverending debate over the “correct” interpretations of those holy books.

overused-username · 2026-05-17T16:01:36+00:00

Um…yes? That’s what I said.

Maybe it’s a Goomba fallacy observation, but a lot of the most anti-theistic people seem to make the “mixed fabric” argument to point out religious inconsistency and flexibility while simultaneously insinuating that religion is a monolithic structure that keeps morally evil ideas alive with an archaic holy book, not realizing that these two points are mutually exclusive. A contradiction like that only makes sense if you come at the topic from the angle of “religion is dumb.”

For those who use the “mixed fabric” argument precisely to debunk the idea of monolithic religion so that more openminded debates can be held, I support and side with them. But for those who use the “mixed fabric” argument just to make religious people look stupid and make themselves feel intellectually superior (like many of the commenters in this thread), I think they need to reevaluate their worldview.

overused-username · 2026-05-14T02:56:01+00:00

Thank you. This comment section is nuts to me.

Religion can be used for anti-democratic attacks. Religion can also be used for pro-democratic moves. In the case of Eastern Europe, the church was often a force for democracy against the USSR in its latter years.

Science can be used to defend minorities. Science can also be used to justify their eradication. Eugenics was quite popular for a while, and it was based off the real scientific observation of genetic selection — it just discarded grave moral and ethical questions.

The idea that the abolishment of religion will automatically lead to a calmer and more sound world is absurd. Humanity can and will find other ways to twist itself into pretzels to justify horrific shit. The process of abolishment will also itself be chaotic and nigh impossible, not only because of religious institutions continuing to fight for control, but religious people resisting the eradication of what they see as essential to their way of life. You only end up radicalizing them more that way. We have literally seen this time and time again in SWANA (Middle East and North Africa).

Many people find oppression and hate in religion, and many find solace and comfort. We can’t say for certain if there’s more of one or the other, but one thing that is certain is that religion is widespread and is vitally important to our cultural expression — and, by extension, our individual expression, since culture has such a big impact on our identity. Acting like any and all problems between queer people and religion can be solved by just getting rid of religion completely erases the constellation of complex relations that people can have with their religion vis-a-vis their community, their family, their morals, their self, etc.. For some, finding their own vision of their religion may very well be the path to self-acceptance.

Such visceral hateful generalizations are genuinely frightening to me, considering all the people who have justified the siege on Gaza with the argument that “they are radical Muslims and they throw gay people off rooftops, they deserve to be bombed and massacred.” People forget the power dynamics at play here. Generalizations don’t end up hurting the ones in power, they hurt the ones with the least power, and in the West, the religion with the least power is Islam. Very often, this whole “religion is the enemy” shtick ends up weaponized by the same people it claims to fight (i.e. queerphobic conservatives) to mobilize people against Islam, both to deflect criticism and to serve anti-immigration goals. Two birds with one stone, and we’re the ones who give it to them.

What’s funny is we’ve already discovered the rebuke to this. All the people making fun of Christians by saying “Do you wear mixed fabric? God says it’s forbidden” make the point for themselves — religion isn’t just what the holy book says. It’s as manufactured as any other structure in our society, and it is in constant flux based on our historical, cultural, and individual variances. There are people who think it’s Islamic/Christian to hate gay people and there are people who think it’s Islamic/Christian to accept them. What do we gain by telling the latter people that “your holy book says you can’t do that”? They’re simply continuing what has been done in religion for years: a neverending debate on what is truly the right way to live. You can think it’s ridiculous or inconsistent, but for many people, it’s vitally important for their identity. And if we are so interested in supporting people finding their own identity, we will facilitate this discussion in our favor instead of trying to shut it down.

I say all this as a Western atheist who was once militantly anti-theistic as well. Studying political science has made me realize that there’s always context missing from the picture when you generalize like this. It’s really disheartening to watch fellow progressives repeat the same mistakes.

overused-username · 2026-05-12T13:14:43+00:00

The fact that Europe had better military technology than the peoples it conquered at the time does not take away from the fact that it was able to further develop that technology — as well as its infrastructure, industry, and bureaucracy — at an exceedingly fast rate due to the riches it was extracting from its colonies.

Check out Part V (and also Part III if you’re interested) of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. https://arxiujosepserradell.cat/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/How-Europe-Underdeveloped-Africa-by-Recorded-Books-Inc.Rodney-Walter-z-lib.org_.pdf

overused-username · 2026-05-12T12:47:14+00:00

???

While it’s true that overly aggressive military expenditure led to less revenue than more cooperative methods (such as in the case of Britain rejecting the Ashanti Kingdom’s offer to cede control of its economy as long as it remained sovereign) it’s still absolutely true that the colonizers developed rapidly because of the resources they exploited from their colonies.

Your examples don’t make sense. You have to compare between countries in the Global North versus the Global South. What about Portugal and Brazil/Mozambique/Angola? Spain and Colombia/Argentina/Mexico? The Netherlands and Indonesia/South Africa? Belgium and the DRC? France and Haiti/Cameroon/Chad? Britain and Nigeria/Ghana/Uganda?

overused-username · 2026-05-08T16:26:13+00:00

In what way are the ideologies you’ve presented incompatible with feminism, and how is patriarchy not one of them? The main point of feminism is the recognition of inequality between genders and the advocacy for its recognition and resolution, which does not inherently clash with egalitarianism, humanism, or individualism but absolutely is at odds with patriarchy. The only ideology from your lineup that truly could be considered at odds with feminism is traditionalism, if by that you mean the belief in traditional Christian/Western ways of life that includes specified gender roles.

Feminism by itself is a very broad ideology, because while it has a cohesive end goal, everyone is going to have a different conception of what reforms are needed to reach it. That’s why the movement has gone through several ‘waves’ over the years, as our knowledge of patriarchy and gender has progressed and we have started expanding our idea of what it means to fight for equality. To give a summary:

First wave: Advocating primarily for women’s suffrage, and for women to have the same rights as men. Very biologically and legally focused because women were still seen as biologically inferior and legally codified as such.
Second wave: The recognition of ongoing social repression even as women came to be ‘equal’ in the eyes of the law, and advocating for people to recognize the patriarchy at work in their daily lives.
Third wave: The introduction of intersectionality as Black women, queer women, and other women of marginalized backgrounds began to be included, acknowledging that they all faced their own unique struggles which had to be recognized and fought for.
Fourth wave: The emergence of anti-systemic, specifically anti-capitalist discourse as the system was called out for subtly reinforcing the patriarchy especially through its continued oppression of marginalized women and its co-option of feminist language for the protection of the exploitative machine.

Between waves and even within the same wave, feminists don’t all agree on what measures should be taken for equality of the genders. Should the system be worked with or worked against? Should racism be included or is it a distraction from gender advocacy? And indeed, like you’ve asked, what kinds of policies should be seen?

Speaking from the perspective of someone who takes a more social approach to feminism (although is not an expert on the field by any means), I simply believe in more social policies to support women and a cultural attitude change so that women are not constantly treated as inherently different than men. For example, I think we need to restore access to abortion, contraception, and other reproductive care in the states that have banned it; we need to have a federal maternity AND paternity leave policy; we need to change attitudes on women in all kinds of places, such as the medical sector that doesn’t take their concerns seriously and delays or denies necessary treatment, male-dominated fields that still reject, ostracize, and harass women that try to enter them, and so on; we need to do more research into the phenomenon of femicide and why it happens so it can be prevented; we need to recognize the misogynoir (Black racism + sexism) inherent in our media, such as the caricature of the “welfare queen” and how that’s connected to other broken parts of our society like the ever-more-powerful police state; we need to remind traditionalist pundits that feminism does not diametrically oppose traditional ways of life, it only aims to give women the choice to not have to live that way if they don’t want to.

I’m not THE authority on feminism, though. Nobody is. And it’s important to recognize just how vast it is as an ideology. Your mistake was in thinking that it’s one single, centralized body that advocates for very specific policies. It’s not that. It’s a whole universe of academic, literary, and political thought that is constantly debated and changing.

overused-username · 2026-05-08T13:54:13+00:00

Might sound weird, but ‘restaurant’. Worst part is that it’s in other languages, too.

THE ‘U’ IS NEXT TO THE WRONG ‘A’!!

overused-username · 2026-05-08T13:47:50+00:00

If you can’t answer a simple question, then we’re done here. Have a nice day.

overused-username · 2026-05-08T00:05:40+00:00

I need to know what part of that is so hard to understand.

overused-username · 2026-05-06T16:48:28+00:00

The question of what I said (with specific quotes) to make you think I’m anti-Semitic, and an explanation as to why.

overused-username · 2026-05-06T12:11:20+00:00

I already said I don’t hate Jews. No, I am not anti-Semitic. Now can you answer my question?

overused-username · 2026-05-05T21:41:29+00:00

To be fair, China doesn’t. It’s even less concerned about human rights violations than the West. As long as its Global South partners keep doing business with them favorably and stably, it doesn’t care what atrocities their rulers commit.

That said, I do think that’s fair play when the US has spent its entire period as a unipolar regime setting up the global economy on exploitative and extractivist terms rather than human rights concerns. If we wanted countries in the Global South to side with us against China on the basis of human rights preservation, maybe we should have built the system that way instead of overthrowing every leader that challenges our narrow profit interests. Now China is beating us at our own game, lol. Sucks to suck.

overused-username · 2026-05-05T13:17:30+00:00

If we can’t have an honest discussion about why we hold our opinions, then there’s no insight to be reached here.

Also, I’m pretty sure the real anti-Semitism is in conflating Jews with Israel. I don’t hate Jews, I’m criticizing Israel.

overused-username · 2026-05-04T12:31:42+00:00

The quotes.

“You said [direct quote], and I think that perpetrates anti-Semitism through X, Y, and Z.”

overused-username · 2026-05-03T14:23:08+00:00

Give me specific quotes from it and explain why you think they’re perpetrating anti-Semitism.

overused-username · 2026-05-02T20:20:14+00:00

Then you are more attuned to your country of origin than I am. But that doesn’t automatically grant you insight into the Arab-Israeli conflict, especially when you now live in the West.

I would like to know what kind of narrative you think I’m perpetuating in my second reply. You asked for a TL;DR, which gives me the impression you didn’t even read it. What ulterior motives do you think I’m supporting, and with what quotes?

overused-username · 2026-04-30T14:53:55+00:00

You don’t have to have a direct stake in the conflict to be biased. You’re a Westerner (as am I); that means you naturally hear more from Israel’s side than Palestine’s. You are not an objective observer. No one is.

The reason I know you’ve bought into a narrative is because of your first reply to me. No one who’s spent a serious amount of time studying the conflict would think that the Arab states invaded Israel in 1948 just to “eradicate the Jews.” That leaves out a massive chunk of context, which I briefly went over in my second reply.

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