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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Why can’t a country (or city, or anythung) choose what others call them?

    We call it Timor Leste instead of East Timor. We call it Cote d’Ivoire instead of Ivory Coast. We call it Kyiv instead of Kiev. We call it Russia instead of USSR. All of these are names chosen within the last 50 years or so.

    A lot of the “traditional” names are just historical holdovers from a very long time ago. If we encountered them for the first time today, we probably would use their chosen name. If tomorrow they said they wanted to be referred to as Deutschland or Nippon, we’d probably accept that and start calling them by those names.





  • aside from ensuring the fundamentals are in place of affordable accessible homes, is there really any realistic way of nullifying that advantage and is it even right to do so?

    I don’t think that’s an aside, I think that’s the key to solving a lot of problems with our current society. Give everyone a roof and enough nutritious food, and most people can figure out how to live their lives from there. The problem is that the lack of housing and food options forces people into low paying jobs with no upward mobility, and continues the cycle of poverty.




  • The “big five” banks in the states actually represent less than half the American population, whereas the major banks in Canada cover about 85% of us. (Note these numbers are from before the pandemic - I’m no longer involved in the banking industry.)

    The US system is still incredibly fragmented, though a lot of consolidation is happening (yay oligopolies). Canada, on the other hand, has had stricter regulations for longer, which meant that even the 15% of Canadians with small banks and credit unions were included in the changes to the industry as they happened.