I’m just going to say it, I never implied that cannibalism is commonplace in modern Africa and my point - if hard to convey - is that even something like eating human flesh can be part of a respectable tradition, even if the actual meat should be substituted symbolically with beef or pork for health reasons.

I’m truly sorry it came across as disrespectful, I was not intending to demonize anyone so much as point out that Africa is an entire continent and many cultures live there. Being strange is not wrong, even if that includes eating the deceased at the funeral. Killing others is, but I fully acknowledge that that is not the same thing and that it is something every culture has done regardless of where in the world you look or what color their skin is.

How, though? If it’s inherently unsafe, what’s the alternative?

Maybe it’s different in the EU then. Here, when cafes had internet, they offered a WiFi password for customers.

You’re right, except in British Columbia where all the most expensive highways were built. Not better, but affordable because Vancouver, Victoria and Kelowna dgaf about the rest of the province and outnumber everywhere else. If we didn’t have all these tourist-focused roads, they’d have still torn up the rails and left us to drown.

You’re telling me Internet Cafes can’t exist? Yes, they’re not available, but they should be. And supporting industry of small business IT Security providers still do business with motels and hotels.

Maybe increase the standards of service requirements, but if not? Yeah, we need to find a way to make free WiFi that doesn’t demand you trust the operator will monitor for malicious users, instead of limiting safe internet access to our own homes at best.

Yes, and tunnels too. The issue’s not just the temperature but the altitude, at least on the west coast, and lack of adhesion rail or deep bore passenger train tunnels on Canadian mountain routes. On the flat lands eastwards it’s mostly that passenger engines are built differently than freight locomotives that makes the difference.

The problem can be fixed, but is it worth it? Maybe. Sadly, no politicians here seem too interested in building rail services in BC, unless it’s to feed the KelVicVanSeaTac metro-economic machine.

I will say I was trying to make something resembling small talk, so I admit I’m wrong if you know otherwise. Just as far as I’ve seen, that’s what seems to be the truth.

Thanks. I hope you’re alright.

Admittedly, I can understand playing the devil’s advocate. Yeah, when they say “Eat the Rich”, it’s not supposed to be literal. And yeah, I’ve made mistakes as I’ve said, and haven’t always owned mistakes.

Basically, yes. Search engines are no longer as useful, and AI is only making that impossible to ignore. Doesn’t mean I said most of what I said except sarcastically. My point is, “TheSaddestMan” is how I tell the world I’m sick of their cynicism. Dystopian fiction and anti-escapism didn’t save the world from becoming a cyberpunk story.

To anyone who saw the post I am replying to, tread with caution. There’s a reason that peer pressure is dangerous and it has nothing to do with the supposed “War on Drugs”. The real villain of those old PSAs should have been fascism, not a random dealer, if there was any true benevolence behind it. If you must frame it in Conservative worldview, read “Fahrenheit 451” and remember Bibles burn just as easily as biology textbooks.

“When they came for the drug addicts, I said nothing. Until they said Jesus was a hippie and took my whole church.” Fascism is never good, for anyone. Even the perpetrators. Or do you honestly think no other Nazis wanted to bump off Hitler for personal gain? Fascism is, at it’s core, a cancer. It kills societies as much as people, no one is truly safe.

We didn’t quite forget yet, but if we are too distracted in 2105 to remember 2025’s echoed warnings from WWII and the Holocaust (1945), humanity will not survive to see 2185.

tl;dr: Warning: May contain nuts or cults.

Humans, pigs and naked mole rats are the only mammals which never have fur. The mole rats are incidentally NOT found in African diets (afaik), but wild boars and (disturbingly) humans (mind you, there is a nuance) have.

The nuance is the source. Many cultures around the world consumed their dead but are not killers. They had no choice sometimes, every scrap of food had to be conserved.

Also, it was rare but a few cultures ate those they killed in battle, which is far less understandable, but not the same thing as “savages who eat other people” which is not just insulting but factually wrong. If you want to criticize the many, many peoples of Africa over that kind of awfulness, point to 20th and 21st Century genocides between tribes during the attempts to create modern nations, not to cultures that were - yes - often oppressed by European overlords and vilified to oppress them. We don’t know enough to say that it was voluntary, famines and droughts and poor hunting seasons happened over history across the world.

The other nuance is, if you ever end up like the Donner Party, DO NOT EAT THEIR BRAIN. That’s how you get Kuru. Nasty stuff, it’s a genetic illness that can be acquired by eating other people’s brains (hence why nobody eats brains except the zombies in memes). Trust me, you’d prefer to starve to death even considering it’s already like Soylent Green in that hypothetical.

As someone currently with higher-than-average body fat who isn’t worth billions, I lol’d.

Rich people watching food network tv ruins affordable food options. It’s… evil.

Don’t worry, suicide is an easy way out! </sarcasm>

Reading this comment thread makes me feel grateful my mom and I (well, both my parents, actually) actually care and were the one part of my life that hasn’t caused me mental trauma.

If you have “passable” parents, anyone, treasure them.

No, you’re thinking of the plot of Escape from L.A.. This is like Escape from L.A. except nobody was able to the discover the fact that Trump committed voter fraud until he activated his evil E.M.P. beam while gloating that he cheated to the doomed world.

Yes, but then there’s Measles. I cry internally for those kids who died (along with so many others such as in Palestine, but now I’m just being too sad).

You have to understand it to be able to be successful at stopping it every time. Ticks are easy to understand, and even after well over 50 years of sabotaging the education system, no culture completely forgets the discovery of the viruses/bacteria we can’t see without microscopes in just a few generations. When you tell someone “we found god’s definition of us inside our own bodies, and it really is unique per person”, religious zealots tend to care (even if it’s because they want to prevent someone else knowing things).

Unfortunately, somehow “It’s just Measles” became a thing, as if the Human Rhinovirus (Common Cold “Nose Virus” that lives in your sinuses 24/7/365) they’re mistaking it for can’t kill someone with a weakened immune system.

Yes. Tl;dr: avoid (more) tick bites

I find it disturbing people have forgotten about parasites because we got rid of most of them. Ticks are not “just like mosquitos”, ticks have seriously dangerous pathogens, and even mosquitos transfer Malaria. Malaria. Which is - if I’m remembering correctly - killing more people in Africa per year than all other causes of death globally combined. That’s including coal mining deaths (deadliest job), human war and murder (second-deadliest “animal” for humans is ourselves) and attacks by wild/domesticated animals, and heart attacks and strokes (most common death for the elderly).

I’m going to have to admit I don’t know the death toll of Malaria for sure, but it IS or WAS the reason mosquitos are/were the deadliest predator for humans. Either way, I’d rather die than have my life turn into an episode of Monsters Inside Me.

stop staring at my tits and see me as a person

I’m glad I’ve never been accused of this (okay, once but I wasn’t even serious, more like “Wait, how do people react if you DO stare at them ‘too long’ instead of avoiding looking at them at all? Oh, they feel bad is what, that’s not nice of me.” ). Not that I actually do it, but that I’m really self-conscious about accidentally making people sexually uncomfortable.

I think the problem is sexually aggressive men often like sexually aggressive women. So the most lecherous don’t understand because either they think “handsome and beautiful/sexy belong together” and therefore would WANT to have their (i.e.) crotch stared at by a woman they don’t know (provided she looks “attractive”) or they don’t mind “ugly” but don’t think of themselves as “not ugly” and otherwise think the same (liking being watched by a woman). That’s a small enough part of the population that it has, in it’s own way, become a minority (“Incels” deserve to be ridiculed, they just aren’t common).

None of it is justified behavior, obviously. People don’t like being stared at, how hard is it for a supposed “manly extrovert sex god” to realize that, when nerdy 16-year old introverted me understood a girl deserved an apology for my random “social experiment”? Respect must be mutual, and if anyone didn’t say “yes” to actual physical contact, it’s sexual assault. Unfortunately, even in nature (see: Ducks) there is nothing physically preventing rape, and so the struggle was inevitable the moment humans existed because - to some degree - genders and gender identities exist.

All I’m saying is, the culture wars are nothing but unwarranted posturing. From both/all sides. Be what and who you want. Oh, and fuck over that wealthy 1%, nobody can own 99% of the money and have obtained it by purely honest means.

We’re living in cyberpunk’s awkward unwanted step-child. It has to be said. I play Cyberpunk 2077 because it feels more like reality than reality does at this point. The Matrix Has Us.