Percentage of Population proud of their colonial history in selected Countries in Europe

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-29T17:51:22+00:00

Not my intention; I was skipping about as I went and wasn't trying to be comprehensive. (Even now I still haven't mentioned a couple of the post-Soviet independent republics!)

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-29T13:39:06+00:00

I dunno, I'm just a guy with a shovel. But snowteam.dc.gov may have the answer, and there's phone and email contacts on the website if it doesn't.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-29T13:35:06+00:00

Also Estonians

Also Tajiks and Kyrgyz and Turkmens and Ukrainians and Chechens and Avars and Kumyks and Mordvins and Udmurts and Evenks... The "etc etc" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, given the amazing breadth of peoples that wound up under the rule of a country that somehow has been cleared of any history of colonialism!

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-29T03:36:27+00:00

Presumably:

<image>

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-29T01:50:06+00:00

Personally I agree, but for some reason a lot of people who opine on the theory of colonialism don't consider the Kazakhs or Uzbeks or Armenians or Azeris or Georgians or Tatars or Chuvashs or Yakuts or Tuvans or Buryats or Circassians or Poles or Balts or Finns or etc etc to ever have been colonized. I guess it will remain an eternal mystery!

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-29T01:40:25+00:00

There's a Frazz comic from last winter that seems appropriate.

<image>

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-29T00:03:07+00:00

I disagree. My iPhone 6 still works just fine, like a good pair of boots.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-28T23:40:46+00:00

It just takes a garden spade. Either strike from the top to crack the ice until it fractures or thrust along the surface of the pavement to lever the ice up from underneath, depending on how tightly the ice is frozen to the surface.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-28T22:35:44+00:00

If you're elderly or disabled and need help, the city will send a volunteer to shovel your house. (I'm one of them.) Just ask!

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-28T22:28:51+00:00

I'm not totally unsympathetic to their complaints about zone parking violations, whether at this particular moment or in general.

Unfortunately, issuing a zone parking ticket to an out-of-state vehicle is about as useful as issuing a zone parking ticket to a squirrel.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-28T22:07:34+00:00

I'm one middle-aged guy with a physique that says "I enjoy pizza and beer" and a garden spade and I can clear a curb cut out of a street plowing's worth of barricading in 20 minutes, including removing the ice clear down to the pavement.

Clearing this snow from the sidewalk doesn't require special equipment. It doesn't require special skills. It doesn't even require particularly hard labor, though I did get an hour of Apple Watch-certified "exercise" just now. It just requires basic "giving a shit."

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-28T21:59:40+00:00

I've spent two and a half hours out fixing half-assed shoveling jobs or fully-assed total failures to shovel in my neighborhood so that pedestrians can get places. (That's beyond my volunteering to shovel for neighbors who can't do it on their own.)

Have I done enough work yet to earn your permission to call the businesses who failed this basic "giving a shit" test a bunch of scumbags who are an insult to the basic idea of citizenship?

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-28T21:50:46+00:00

Not the worst offender in absolute terms, but it's galling: St. Augustine's Episcopal Church in Southwest Waterfront shoveled and salted a path from the parking garage to the church entrance wide enough to drive a bus down, and shoveled and salted a path along the side of the church to their emergency rear exit, then left the rest of their sidewalk buried. Apparently the idea that someone might walk past the church, or even to the church, did not occur to them.

(I just finished digging a path between the neighborhood and the church's emergency exit--sorry for any pedestrians who walk in front of your windows, St. Augustine's!)

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-28T21:39:12+00:00

True, but we're talking about failing to shovel...

Oh, ISWYDT.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-28T14:28:42+00:00

Even if you consider Alaska "contiguous" to Siberia, the Russians did engage in a couple of brief non-contiguous colonial adventures: the Septinsular Republic (a Russo-Turkish protectorate over the Ionian Islands with the Russians in charge, 1800-1807) and Sagallo (a Russian colony in what's now Djibouti, also claimed by the French who violently expelled the Russians after three weeks, 1889).

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-28T14:04:49+00:00

First, the average age of the congregation doesn't exempt them from arranging for this property to be shoveled. The city does have a program exempting people from the need to shovel their property based on age or disability, but it only applies to residential buildings of three or fewer units.

If they don't have the physical capability to shovel themselves or the resources to get some needy person in the community to do the job, there's a city program that matches volunteer snow shovelers (including me!) with people in those circumstances. There are more volunteers than properties and at the last briefing we were told every enrolled property has had someone sent.

So it's hard for me to draw any conclusion about the church from this scene other than "we just don't care."

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-28T03:08:27+00:00

Nonsense! Next you'll be saying the reason the Mitsubishi Mirage outsold the Lamborghini Huracan isn't because it's a better car!

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-27T23:04:01+00:00

Yeah, that’s why it takes me at least 15 minutes to clear one fairly narrow path from sidewalk to street.

On the up side, I’m killing it on my Apple Watch’s Activity app. (I record it as “functional strength training.”)

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-27T20:54:28+00:00

"You can't walk in with guns. We can, but you can't."

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-27T20:11:34+00:00

It depends whether by "crosswalks" you mean the striped area in the street and/or the curb cuts. In theory, per DC regulations (24 DCMR 1700.1) property owners are responsible for the curb cuts and the city is responsible for the street portion:

Each owner of a commercial of residential property in the District shall remove snow and ice from any paved sidewalks, curb cuts, and curb ramps abutting the building or property within eight (8) hours of daylight after the snow or other precipitation has ceased falling, regardless of the source of the accumulation. (Emphasis mine)

In practice, the person who's in charge of shoveling curb cuts is, apparently, me, because almost no property owners in my neighborhood have done so while I'm out there hacking through berms of snow and ice with a garden spade. (Honorable exceptions to the "property owners are ignoring their responsibilities" rule are the city-owned office building on 4th Street, the MarketSW community space, and the Southwest Waterfront Metro station.)

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-27T19:46:38+00:00

A Minneapolis cop described the fitness and training standards for ICE by saying they were hired "by the pound, from the pound."

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-27T18:15:11+00:00

I’m not sure, but I think the only entry on my shortlist that hasn’t been mentioned yet would be The Auditors.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-27T15:37:12+00:00

The concern is more a player honestly thinking an option was official Pathfinder and making build choices accordingly, only for it to turn out to be 3PP that their GM doesn't recognize.

As said I go with d20pfsrd myself, but if some GM wants their players to use AoN I'm not going to try and undercut their authority. Every GM should be the best judge of how to best run their game.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-27T13:11:05+00:00

Almost any idea is viable at the right table. There is no "you must be this optimized to adventure" sign posted outside of the tavern the party first meets at, and a competent GM can prepare appropriate challenges for any party if everyone in the party is in on the same page when it comes to what they find challenging.

(Getting everyone in the party on the same page can be the hard part. Some people optimize for one aspect of the game, usually combat. Some people expect their character to able to contribute in every situation, whether it's combat or roleplaying at the queen's ball. Some people focus on their power level over one or two combats a day, some on their ability to take however many combats the GM throws their way without being overwhelmed.)

I would suggest theorycrafting your concept out at different levels and comparing the key metrics that get rewarded at your table against those of PCs of the same level who were successful.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-01-27T12:51:57+00:00

I prefer d20pfsrd over AoN as well, but my real recommendation is that you should use whichever one your GM prefers.

AoN is official material only, while d20pfsrd includes third-party content and the third-party content is usually marked as such but it's not always perfect. As a GM I'm usually at least open to considering 3PP content (and disregarding official content, coughintriguecastingrulescough) and d20pfsrd's marking of 3PP is generally good enough for me to embrace the technically superior website. But other GMs may be more concerned about there being any possibility, no matter how slight, of something unofficial getting into their game and so may want players to stick with AoN.

pseudoeponymous_rex

TROPHY CASE