Icecubes of Fury

How often do you hear a joke about elements?
 
periodically.

Culture is deeper than food and music. Have we taken any sort of political, economic, legal, or social systems/theories from natives or blacks? And if we have, can it even match what we've taken from Europe? We are a republic, loosely modeled after the Roman Republic and couched in Enlightenment principles. We are a (mostly) capitalist economy. We use a law code derived from English law, modified by us throughout the years. Our philosophy is decidedly Western (shout-out to pragmatism!)
 
If tomorrow I woke up and all the hot dog stands closed down and were replaced by kebabs and falafel, and all the rock bands suddenly changed into bands that play the didgeridoo I wouldn't particularly care. But if I woke up and instead of common law we had Sharia, I'd be very concerned. If I woke up and dog meat was a popular food item, I'd be concerned (I view dogs as friends, not food, just as Hindus don't view cows as food). If traditional western norms of beauty changed and suddenly lip plates were all the rage, I'd be disgusted. Is having Shariah, dog meat, and lip plates inherently bad? I can't particularly judge, but I would never want it to replace what I know and love. This is the culture that matters, not what you eat or how you dress or what's on your country's flag. Just about all, if not all, of our deep and important culture is what I'd call "Western". This is one of the reasons it's easier to integrate Europeans than other groups. Eating a hot dog and loving rock doesn't automatically make you an American, just as liking anime and sushi doesn't make you Japanese. I won't deny that some (but not all) of our surface culture has been touched by diversity, but it doesn't really matter. As our white European majority sinks from a majority to a plurality, it's entirely possible that our deep culture becomes affected.
 
"You seem to be way focused on actual breeding for some reason"
 
The reason, quite simply, is that's what matters. That's what ethnic diversity is. It's what decreases trust. It's what engenders hatred and it's what starts wars. You may think it illogical, that we're all together, united, in The Brotherhood of Man, but me simply saying "Okay, race doesn't matter", or even genuinely believing it, doesn't make it not matter. It's not going to make Turks and Kurds love each other. It's not going to ease tensions in the Gaza strip. It's not going to solve anything, and blinding yourself to it will only create more suffering. This is because this is how we evolved. If we are not vigilant, I fear the modern humanist West, as a whole, will be destroyed, because we are quite literally inferior, evolutionary speaking. But that's neither here nor there.
 
"Color isn't diversity, different thoughts are. And people from different places tend to have slightly different thoughts."
 
At best, then, ethnic diversity is a weak proxy for intellectual diversity. Why even have the middleman of ethnic diversity, with all the cons that brings? Were we seriously lacking in intellectual diversity prior to 1965? Was it worth gutting our societal trust? I don't think so, not by a long shot. The exchange of ideas does not require you to have 35%+ of your population a different ethnicity from you. As you say, Japan got a lot of shit from the Dutch, and all the Dutch had was a tiny island, and they weren't even allowed off it. They never made up even .1% of Japan's population, yet they influenced it immensely. This is exactly why trade is so good and essential. You get to experience the appealing parts of different cultures, without actually having to live among them. You can have your cake (or tempura) and eat it too.
 
As for the state being powerful, yes, that's my point, diverse nations NEED a strong government to keep order. Homogeneous ones generally don't. I don't wish to live under an empire.

Splatoon is so fucking fun, especially with the new update
Get it for your WWII vet grandpa and tell him to play it after midnight, he'll love to murder japs just like the good ol days of '42

Facade you have a fucking addiction

If it has built in auto correct, how did you misspell gall?

Right on Simon! It's always nice when life hands you a good gift
Seems like nowadays TVs are becoming disposable magic boxes - If it doesn't work, throw it away and buy a new one. I can't even find any TV repairmen anymore, people would rather just buy a new TV than open up the one they already have and try to fix it.

Juggalonies is now a thing.
http://theblaze.com.co/icp-announces-alliance-with-brony-community-large-brony-presence-expected-at-2015-gathering-of-the-juggalos/

favourite moog? definitly this

America will win because the Japanese pilot is just gonna whine about his dead mom and masturbate to comatose girls

[F]

To be fair having a flag to illustrate your sexuality is fucking retarded.

It's sad to say but it's definitely on it's way out. The latest update doesn't feel like TF2 at all, I remember watching Meet The Spy and being fascinated with the game and the spirit it seemed to have, but that's gone now for the most part, if a version of TF2 was released that kept only the class update stuff and was otherwise vanilla, I'd play it in a heartbeat.
Zombie Fortress is still the bomb though, it's the main reason I play nowadays, but even then the userbase is dwindling, it's a shame that a lot of the problems with modern TF2 are essentially unfixable without alienating the current community.

Bern sums it up very well.
Honestly, TF2 was dead to me when it became free to play, the entire atmosphere of the community just changed. Free to play games just attract a completely different audience, and naturally there was just a massive influx of new players that didn't know what the fuck they were doing. It was clear that TF2 needed that injection of new people but back then I often thought it might've been better to just stay paid and slowly die out.
And that's just how TF2 has always been since then: when you join a 24 player server, a maximum of 8 people actually know how to play and the other 16 are cannon fodder. But even then, TF2 is still really fun to me, and calling a game with such a large playing community dead is probably kind of silly. The pre-F2P spark is gone but that turned TF2 from a 9.5/10 game into an 8/10 game and it is still miles better than the half a handful of other arena shooters that are still out there. And sadly it doesn't look like that will change anytime soon, as Overwatch looks to be more like a first person MOBA than an arena shooter, and dirty bomb is way closer to the millitary shooter genre than the arena shooter genre.
This is also why I am so genuinely bitter about Tribes Ascend: it came at exactly the right time to grab all the leaving TF2 players and had absolutely everything going for it to (without hyperbole) become my favourite game of all time, and it got utterly destroyed by Hirez wanting to squeeze as much money as possible out of it and dropping it as soon as the well ran dry. Compared to that shit the TF2 dev team have been fucking saints for keeping it running for so long and still being a blast to play after eight years. I mean are there any 8 year old games that haven't drastically decreased in quality?
TL;DR TF2 lost its original spark years ago but it's still the best online shooter out there. And considering it's almost 8 years old it could be so much worse right now.

America will win because the Japanese pilot is just gonna whine about his dead mom and masturbate to comatose girls

America will win because the Japanese pilot is just gonna whine about his dead mom and masturbate to comatose girls