It’s pretty normal (especially if the country is geographically large). Consulates provide services for citizens abroad, so if there is only one consulate for a country in Canada, for instance, then someone who was in Newfoundland would have to go all the way to, say, Vancouver, if that was the only location of the Turkish consulate.

Some consulates are even just very tiny, or housed in other buildings/businesses.

Different armed forces deployments. Operation Defeat (April 2017 - July 2020) was a continuation of the Air Force’s Inherent Resolve campaigns in Iraq and Syria: https://www.afpc.af.mil/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/873149/inherent-resolve-campaign-medal/

The phases were Abeyance, Intensification, Defeat, and now, currently, Normalize.

Being banned for “PLEASE TOUCH GRASS AND ORGANIZE” is pretty fucked up too. That truly applies to literally every person posting on a forum, but sure, ban someone for being a jerk but admins like you can tell people to fuck off, you can say you’re playing whac a mole with assholes (but it wasn’t you who banned Z), and call a burning zionist flag a Holocaust emoji, and that’s not hostility?

Come on, half the people on this site get hostile the moment they are in argument, but who gets banned is pretty inconsistent. People are way too obsessed with seeing a mod action whenever they don’t like something they’ve read. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve responded to call out some shitty comment only for a mod to remove it even though I never report it. Unless it’s outright threatening or bigoted, there’s no need to erase everything you don’t want to see. People can block it, or we can hash it out. What is the point of talking to people if they’re only ever allowed to agree with you or one of you has to go?

Thank you for taking the time to answer! This looks like a really interesting option for an online synchronous classroom, but I’m not sure it’s a good Google Classroom replacement for asynchronous course delivery. I will definitely look into it more though!

I think you may be under-estimating the digital literacy issues I’m dealing (they are coupled with low literacy, so documentation isn’t always that helpful) but thank you so much for the recommendation, I will definitely check Moodle out.

Hey! I never replied to you because I closed this tab and got swamped writing grant proposals, but I want to thank you so much for taking the time to answer. I will definitely check Moodle out.

You called it a “Holocaust emoji” literally an hour before saying it’s fine to have it and it’s just “awkward” representation. That seems like a pretty quick (and major) shift in sentiment, especially considering you gave site bans out for long-time contributors disagreeing with a position you changed your mind on within an hour.

Could you, I don’t know, unban Z and just ignore posts that upset you or disagree with you unless they actually require mod action (like they have slurs or threats in them)? Is it really necessary to ban people for taking a different position than you (even if abrasively)? [and ignoring that you are now saying you are taking the position that the emoji is fine]. Is there no room to extend any form of grace in arguments that ultimately don’t actually harm you?

Anyone who wants Z_poster to stay banned doesn’t use the news mega lol. You can disagree with Z (I often do), but Z always has actually interesting and insightful things to say from a different perspective. Even if you never agree with Z, you’re always challenged to think your own viewpoint through.

Edit: I think there are some people who demand everyone agree with a “hexbear line” or else get banned, and are opposed to letting people that see things differently stay and contribute/hash it out. It’s often quite juvenile.

“drag queen herpes”

what the fuck are you talking about. This isn’t a cute way to say glitter, it’s just shitty to drag queens and also people with herpes (2/3rds of everyone under 50 globally)

I’m on a seafood diet – I see food, and I can’t afford to eat it [modernizing dad jokes for a new decade]

Don’t worry, the Heidegger Society will be banned any day now

As soon as Joe Biden Ronald Reagan Christophorus Columbus ran for a second term voyage the die was cast.

If you read Fidel Castro: My Life, during his conversations with Ignacio Ramonet, while Fidel expresses a lot of positive sentiment towards the USSR, he does talk a bit about the USSR treating them as secondary partners (especially during the Cuban missile crisis). The Cuban government was hardly included in any of the negotiations with America.

“The Soviets managed to obtain absolutely trustworthy information about that plan, and they notified Cuba of the existence of the danger, although they weren’t totally explicit. . . The details of the plan were learned some twenty years later, when the documents related to the subject were declassified and published by the US government.”

“In my view, there was a clear desire to obtain an improvement in the balance of power between the USSR and the United States. I confess I was none too happy about the presence of those weapons in Cuba, given our interest in avoiding the image of Cuba as a Soviet base. . .”

“We didn’t like the course the public debate was taking. I sent Che, who was minister of industry and a member of the National Directorate of the ORI, to explain my view of the situation to Krushchev. . . But I couldn’t manage to persuade him.”

“He made the mistake of rejecting the real debate, which should have been over the sovereignty of Cuba, its right to defend itself, to protect itself.”

“We learned from news reports that the Soviets were making the proposal to withdraw the missiles. And it had never been discussed with us in any way!”

“Krushschev should have told the Americans, ‘The Cubans must be included in the discussions.’ At that moment they lost their nerve, and they weren’t firm in their determination. Out of principle, they should have consulted with us. Had they done that, the conditions would most certainly have been better. There would have been no Guantanamo Naval Base; there’d have been no more high-altitude spy-plane reconnaisance. . . All of that offended us a great deal; we took it as an affront. And we protested. And even after the agreement, we kept firing on the low-level flights. So they had to suspend them. Our relations with the Soviets deteriorated. For years, all this had an influence on Cuban-Soviet relations.”

This image is still ridiculous, but it can definitely be argued that from a Cuban perspective, the USSR treated them as vassals/junior partners, rather than as a sovereign socialist state that wasn’t there to be directed at the Soviets’ will.

CyborgMarx is part of the campaign and so is absolutely obsessed with this guy, because CyborgMarx can’t stop campaigning even on a website of mostly people who don’t live in New York, and who hate all Democrats (and Americans in general lol). CyborgMarx is very unserious though, because according to them, it would somehow be a win even if Mamdani was literally a CIA agent (CyborgMarx’s actual words for some fucking reason).

Talking to Americans sucks.

they’re pretty great live, too!

Ersties is lesbian pornography

Oh this is sick, I’ve never heard of this. Thanks for the link!

Outs her as what? I am assuming you mean queer of some kind, but it’s low-key bigoted to assume (or make jokes) about how everyone who hates queer people is closeted. It’s like saying that queer people are responsible for our own oppression since the people who hate us are secretly just us.

Kyrgyz rap is really awesome and is a newly burgeoning scene; shares a lot with Xinjiang rap, which often incorporates Kyrgyz and Kazakh instruments/music tradition.

Thanks for sharing this, been listening to some other Sudan Archives songs and it’s fantastic <3