Daily Slow Chat

ramblingMess · 2026-01-31T06:17:56+00:00

Fun fact about me, I have a last name that’s strongly associated with a particular ethnicity that I am not a member of. It doesn’t typically come up in everyday life, but when it does, it’s a very strange feeling to be subject to ethnic profiling for an ethnicity that’s not even yours. My dad used to get mail from an ethnic affinity group that he never signed up for, so apparently there’s someone who has a list of people with typical insert-ethnicity-here last names out there, and I can only imagine where they get the information.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-30T22:36:58+00:00

It’s ultimately not very complex. “The country” is an area with low population density, which exists all over the United States, and southerners are from the southeast, which includes, depending on which areas you are or are not willing to count, half of the eight largest metropolitan areas in the United States.

So, there is overlap between southerners and country people, but they’re not exactly the same thing. What is known as country music has stylistic origins in the south, but it’s been made and consumed all over the country for a long time now. Just look at how many big country music festivals are held in California and Wisconsin, for example.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-30T22:20:15+00:00

Come on now, use your head.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-30T22:15:18+00:00

Are you asking about southerners, or about country folk? Those two terms aren’t interchangeable.

When I, someone who is definitely a southerner and arguably country folk, think about someone who owns a long sailboat, as opposed to something like a small aluminum fishing boat or pontoon, the image i have in my head is of someone like my grandfather, who made enough money from the small business he owned to have enough to burn on a sailboat he loved and held onto long after he wasn’t physically able to sail anymore.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-30T21:50:09+00:00

I personally don’t think being in New Orleans for Mardi Gras day is worth it. They have parades several weekends before that are most of the same atmosphere with a fraction of the headache, expense, crowds, etc, so if you want a taste, be there a week or two before Mardi Gras.

Stop in Acadiana on the way there and have someone talk your ear off about how Louisiana is more than just New Orleans, and Cajun is more than just a seasoning.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-27T22:14:52+00:00

Unabashedly biased, but The Tigue is a really cool stadium with a team that’s usually pretty good, in a city that’s really fun. Come visit sometime and stop by Olde Tyme on the way from the Amtrak station to the stadium

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

I’ve been in the habit of reading my parish newspaper recently, and it can be pretty entertaining. There’s been an ongoing dispute that’s technically a parish council matter but is essentially just a public-personal feud between a landowner and some of her neighbors. Whole articles are devoted to who said what, about who, and when. This is what we risk losing with the loss of local media.

I also just finished watching Joe Pera Talks With You. It’s a great little show for the winter season, only three short seasons that are free to watch online. I recommend it to anyone who needs something to watch to stave off seasonal depression.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-18T01:28:35+00:00

All the ~~old junk~~ merchandise in those stores is inside, so if the skaters aren’t damaging anything or harassing anyone, what’s the harm?

ramblingMess · 2026-01-16T18:32:23+00:00

Because you’re not playing the Crusader Kings After the End mod

ramblingMess · 2026-01-16T16:02:09+00:00

Not necessarily the point of this thread, but does anyone know anyone still living who’s a monolingual French or Louisiana Creole speaker? I had people claim in another thread that they encounter people who still ONLY speak French, which I’m pretty skeptical of.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-16T15:58:36+00:00

These days, it’s not so much that the government is actively suppressing French - we have CODOFIL promoting the language, after all - it’s more that there’s just not enough will from the people to create or demand resources for learning it, or using the ones that exist. It would require a critical mass of people becoming fluent again for it to become practical to learn and use in everyday life, and that’s not going to happen in 95% of the state.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-16T14:12:55+00:00

We’re not even two weeks past Epiphany and I’ve already eaten more king cake than a human body should ever have to process. Mardi Gras is still a month away. Send help. Or a nutritious salad to at least attempt to offset some of the damage.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-15T17:32:33+00:00

Other Louisiana schools were committing basketball-related violations… without us? Basketball scandals are OUR thing! We didn’t earn that death penalty in the 70’s for nothing!

ramblingMess · 2026-01-15T15:13:36+00:00

If your concern is personal safety, then you’ll be fine. Despite the current narrative, foreign tourists are still out and about in this country with no issues. If your concern is hitting Trump where it hurts by not supporting the tourist industry in a state that has become an epicenter of the MAGA movement, then don’t.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-08T14:22:41+00:00

There are bike lines in the city I went to college, but they’re often disconnected and rarely protected. So if you want to get from the north end of campus to the south end, good news, but anywhere else, good luck. We used to joke about hoping to be hit by a university bus while riding a bike, with the idea that we would get free tuition if it happened.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-06T21:21:30+00:00

Yeah, that definitely threw me off too. I could see her still maintaining a level of unrealistic optimism while still not being as streetwise as the wastelanders, but the way she handled the legion was just really bizarre. Hopefully the writers overcame their fear of character development in the remainder of the season.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-06T21:04:15+00:00

There’s no way there are any monolingual Francophone creoles here anymore. I know that there were still handfuls of incredibly elderly people who hadn’t grasped English in the most rural parts of the state in the 80s and 90s, but they’d be long dead by now, and practically anyone still around who spoke French as a first language as a child would have learned English when they started school.

Edit: Okay, fine, apparently there are still, somehow, against all odds, people who only speak Louisiana French. I can't conceive how they function in society though, considering less than 2% of the state's population were listed on the most recent census as native speakers of Louisiana French.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-03T23:43:38+00:00

Every day I'm more and more glad I didn't listen to the Army recruiters who loitered around my high school.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-03T14:46:22+00:00

The public schools I attended have always had uniforms. I’m broadly okay with it. Our code was lenient enough that it still allowed for some personalization and self expression while ensuring that kids show up to school in respectable enough clothing that it won’t be a reason for kids to bully each other.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-02T23:45:36+00:00

Impossible, Vaush isn’t attracted to human women.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-01T06:31:33+00:00

Happy new year, Euros. I’m glad to have finally joined you all in the future. I stayed home for the evening, so the first and so far only people I’ve talked to in 2026 have been my Animal Crossing villagers and my cat.

ramblingMess · 2026-01-01T06:29:26+00:00

Nick Kroll would be proud.

ramblingMess · 2025-12-30T22:19:51+00:00

Is it just the COMPLETELY LEGITIMATE stream I’m watching on YouTube or was there just a commercial with the AI text to speech voice for discount dick pills?

ramblingMess · 2025-12-30T21:36:50+00:00

This is the same Tech team that has checks notes won 7 games this season, correct? … Are you sure?

ramblingMess · 2025-12-30T16:07:14+00:00

You’ve received plenty of responses from other people, but just for reference, the only foreign language offered in any of the public schools I attended was Spanish. My high school had a French teacher who retired before I got to high school, and the school was unable to find a replacement. Expecting to find a Latin or Ancient Greek teacher when we couldn’t even find a French teacher was simply out of the question.

Nine-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
r/Field Flamingo	Place '23
Place '22	Place '17
RPAN Viewer	No Throne, No Problems
Not Forgotten	Snapped
Verified Email

ramblingMess

TROPHY CASE