• 2 Posts
  • 217 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 14th, 2023
  • Rolando@lemmy.worldtoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Do my pets think I'm yelling at them when I start singing out loud?
    3·
    19 days ago

    My BFF had this skill: whenever they sang an Elvis tune (like “Blue Moon”) their cats would start humping. They weren’t singing it weird, maybe a little more warbly than normal. Anyway, we were in this zoo once, and I said, “I wonder if that lion would react to your Elvis songs the same way your cats do!” I was just kidding, but my BFF started singing the same way and that lion suddenly became VERY alert and stared right at us. I started wondering if a properly motivated lion could leap that gap that was keeping us separated, and what I would do if it reached us. Anyway, my point is: it depends on how you sing it.

  • Rolando@lemmy.worldtoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Why is voting before the deadline in US elections referred to as 'early voting'?
    4·
    26 days ago

    If you look at the meaning of the word “early” there are several senses.

    • One sense is “At a time in advance of the usual or expected event.” e.g. if someone suffered an “early death.” Another sense of the word is “Arriving a time before expected; sooner than on time.” e.g. “you arrived early today!” You’re right that in these two senses of the word, “early voting” sounds weird.
    • But there’s another sense of the word early: “Near the start or beginning.” e.g. “Shakespeare’s early works”. There’s also “Near the start of the day.” as in “It’s too early for this sort of thing. I’m not awake yet.” Another sense is “Having begun to occur; in its early stages.” e.g. “an early cancer”. In these senses of the word, “early voting” sounds a lot better.
    • For more info see: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/early
  • Rolando@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•‘They don’t think he’s talking about them’: Trump support rises with Latinos
    8·
    30 days ago

    Kind of a clickbait headline but there are some interesting parts in the text… It’s worth keeping these in mind when doing election outreach in the US.

    "… I feel like we, as Latinos, are traditionally conservative.”

    “traditionally conservative” is a tautology, and this statement is a bit exaggerated, but Latinos do often have strong values associated with family, religion, work, and other things that conservatives try to “own”.

    Paschall said that if there is racism, it comes from white liberals who tell her that, as a Latina, she should not support Trump. She describes that view as “so deep-rooted that they don’t even realise they’re being racist”.

    I disagree with Paschall’s assertion. However, while white liberals call Republicans “weird”, those same white liberals often come across as weird to people who don’t share their ideas. DISCLAIMER: I think Republicans are weird and agree with white liberals more often than not. I’m just describing some of the attitudes I see here in my battleground state, so we can communicate better during voter outreach. END DISCLAIMER

    There are other factors at play. The proportion of Mexicans crossing the border to work without visas has dropped sharply in recent years with much larger numbers of people now coming from Central and South America as refugees. They sometimes face hostility from more established Latino communities, about 60% of which are of Mexican ancestry.

    There’s a tendency to think of Latinos as some monolithic people, but this paragraph describes one way that isn’t true. Even if you only consider those with the right to vote, there’s a tremendous difference between say a third-generation Cuban-American, a recent Central American naturalized citizen in Nevada, a second-generation Puerto Rican in Georgia, and a Tejano whose family has lived here for hundreds of years. Each of them have a wide variety of priorities and opinions, it’s not all about immigration. And if they vote for Trump it’s not just that they’re brainwashed or ignorant, a lot of times they’re holding their nose in the same way a lot of people on the left are holding their nose to vote for Kamala. (Not me! I think she’s all right! In fact I just recently signed up to help her campaign, I hope it’s not too late…)