5-year-old british kid passes LSD exam
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Shitty little comments like is why the internet is shit.
Do I really need to prove that Scotland is a country? Do I really need to prove that someone born in England is normally referred to as English?
Also saying that I have "pathetic argument" and trying to stamp your authority on a subject after I've obviously lost patience with the subject is just as pathetic.
All this because I made some silly pedantic statement at the beginning of this thread because I find it odd sounding when someone calls me British when I don't identify myself as that.
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This is why arguments on the Internet go on forever. "He who stops talking first loses"
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Oh I see you are a troll.
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Do I really need to prove that Scotland is a country?
It's not really a "top level" country, though, is it? Otherwise, why would they have had a vote about independence?
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However it is still a nation with its own government and it own national identity.
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Sort of. It's kind of a weird in between thing. I mean, if you aren't a sovereign entity, you're not really a country in the way the word is normally used, so you shouldn't be surprised when non-Brits look at you funny when you assert otherwise.
Texans like to tell us they're their own country, and we let them go on with their delusion.
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Wait, you're on TDWTF and singled out a specific person as a troll? Your gud at teh interwebz.
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I don't claim to be. I generally don't bother with forums anymore. I was going to edit it and replace the word troll with bellend but the connection on my phone crapped out.
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Texans like to tell us they're their own country, and we let them go on with their delusion.
Clearly you don't understand how it actually works. We were our own country and assert that since we voluntarily merged into the US rather than join the way the rest of the country did, we have the right to leave in a way other states don't.
But our own country? Probably not. How else would we keep the place nice by sending undesirables to places like Chicago?
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I don't understand why it is a difficult thing to grok or creates these sorts of discussions.
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I don't understand why it [...] creates these sorts of discussions.
You Must Be New HereTM.
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Clearly you don't understand how it actually works. We were our own country and assert that since we voluntarily merged into the US rather than join the way the rest of the country did, we have the right to leave in a way other states don't.
Most Texans assert their shit more vehemently than that. And good luck exercising it.
But our own country? Probably not. How else would we keep the place nice by sending undesirables to places like Chicago?
Maybe you could ask Mexico how they manage it.
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I don't understand why it is a difficult thing to grok or creates these sorts of discussions.
Me, neither. But you're apparently the one playing dumb about it.
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Most Texans assert their shit more vehemently than that.
I'm not actually from here, so that's probably why.
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I don't claim to be.
No, see,
@Magus said:Your gud at teh interwebz.
...is just a way of generally mocking your ability to understand the world around you. Which you have now doubled. Do it some more, please.
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I don't claim to be. I generally don't bother with forums anymore. I was going to edit it and replace the word troll with bellend but the connection on my phone crapped out.
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Fine, whatever.
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I know exactly what is going on I just don't care for it.
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Fine, whatever.
Said the rebellious teen, slamming the door of his room as his parents shook their heads in shame.
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Mexico qualifies as "nice" now?
No, but they don't seem to have difficulty in getting their citizens here even though they're a different country.
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That's because you didn't go through with building that wall.
(Said wall would certainly make San Diego/Tijuana interesting.)
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If you identify as English, fine. But England is part of Britain, and as England is not a sovereign state and English person's legal nationality is British, so if you are English you are British, even if you prefer not to mention it.
I don't think anyone's arguing that it's wrong to refer to an English person as such: the problem is the 'not British' part. That's simply incorrect, whether you like it or not.
"They're English" - fine. "They're English and I think you should refer to them as that because most English people identify as English more than British" - fine, though no-one is obliged to agree with you. "They're English not British" - factually incorrect.
As for whether Scotland is a country, it both is and isn't depending on context.
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I don't think anyone's arguing that it's wrong to refer to an English person as such: the problem is the 'not British' part. That's simply incorrect, whether you like it or not.
Exactly that.
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I wasn't sure of the situation in the US but here it's certainly a little harder to rescind nationality.
After a bunch of Supreme Court cases such as Trop v. Dulles, it's practically impossible to lose US citizenship unless you want to, you ■■■■■■■ed up your naturalization (fraud), or you're a Nazi.@redwizard said:I can attest to that: the whole Windows Backup section [where the right answers are the Wrong Answers] is a case in point.
Agreed.
-- TwelveBaud, MCSA: Windows Server 2003@RaceProUK said:<img src="lorrytroll.gif"/>
@lucas said:<img src="whatever.wmf"/>
Girls, girls, no need to fight! You're both pretty!
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If you identify as English, fine. But England is part of Britain, and as England is not a sovereign state and English person's legal nationality is British, so if you are English you are British, even if you prefer not to mention it.
Just to continue stirring this meaningless pot:Britain is NOT a sovereign state either! The United Kingdom is... so you can be English, British, and... United Kingdom-ish?... all at the same time
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Was using 'Britain' as shorthand for UK of GB&NI because lazy and because 'British' is in fact the nationality of someone from the UK.
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Really? So Northern Irish people are of British nationality despite being in the UK but not Britain? I'm FROM Ireland and thought I knew all this stuff haha. Yeah I really can't blame Americans for not knowing this stuff :)
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Correct. And as a result us Brits*, even when we know all this, tend to fall into the habit of using Britain and UK interchangeably. Though in this context I really should have been more careful.
Actually, Britain doesn't really mean anything. [i]Great[/i] Britain is England, Wales, and Scotland. There's also the UK which as I say is often referred to as 'Britain'. And there's the British Isles, which includes you even though you're not British (I presume you mean ROI). And even I have no idea exactly which of those things all the little bits that have separate identities and are effectively independent (Channel Islands, Isle of Man, etc) fall into.
*On the subject of identification as British or otherwise, I'd call myself English to a fellow Brit, but generally British to someone from elsewhere. Much as to an American I'd include myself in the category of Europeans, even though in a purely Rightpondian context I'd consider that to only apply to Continentals.
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Clearly you don't understand how it actually works. We were our own country and assert that since we voluntarily merged into the US rather than join the way the rest of the country did, we have the right to leave in a way other states don't.
Not really. I realize you are not a native Texan, but it is not really something that Texas can do. The whole "we were once our own independent country" is non-point. The Confederate States of America were briefly their own country also, and that did not go well for them either and that little allegiance is not coming back anytime soon.
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@Intercourse said:
I realize you are not a native Texan, but it is not really something that Texas can do.
I didn't say I necessarily believed it myself--I suspect it's more of a fairy tale or wishful thinking.
An independent nation merging into another one probably has more standing to undo that than a state, but obviously it hasn't really been tested.
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@Intercourse said:
The Confederate States of America were briefly their own country also
Yes, but they weren't before the individual states joined the Union, is what I meant. It's not really an apples-to-apples comparison.
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Yes, but they weren't before the individual states joined the Union, is what I meant. It's not really an apples-to-apples comparison.
I get it, but the Civil War negates any of that "we were an independent nation" BS. I am not arguing with you, I realize you see it as wishful thinking also. But the Civil War absolutely confirmed they are not seceding and that they will remain a part of the US. When they were brought back in to the USA by force (and mostly attrition), that was the nail in the independence coffin.
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Bonus round confusion!
I remember in school being told that you guys island was "Great" Britain to distinguish it from "Little/Lesser" Britain, aka Brittany in France.
When learning country names in Irish, Wales translates to "Bhreatain Bheag" which literally means "Small/Little Britain". No clue what Brittany would be in Irish, probably yet another god forsaken variation on the same thing with slightly different meaning!
This would all be so much easier if Germany won WW2. We could all just be Reichskommissariat West...
Edit: And of COURSE the TV show "Little Britain" was popular at that time, so inevitably some asshole would talk about the TV he liked in Irish, and say"Bhreatain Bheag" and some other asshole (the teacher) would act mock surprised and say he didn't realise there was a TV programme called "Wales"... I hated school
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I didn't actually know any of that - never even twigged that Brittany was a diminutive (I did know it was to do with Britain). I always just assumed Great Britain was Imperial arrogance. *Strikes up rousing chorus of [i]Britannia Rules the Waves[/i]*
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Actually, Britain doesn't really mean anything. Great Britain is England, Wales, and Scotland. There's also the UK which as I say is often referred to as 'Britain'. And there's the British Isles, which includes you even though you're not British (I presume you mean ROI). And even I have no idea exactly which of those things all the little bits that have separate identities and are effectively independent (Channel Islands, Isle of Man, etc) fall into.
It gets more complicated than that. I have a UK passport. It identifies my nationality as British Citizen. There are other possible nationality categories on UK passports, mostly substantially more restrictive, but that's the one I'm in. Thus, describing myself as British would be entirely reasonable. There is no UKish, and never was. The UK is the abbreviated name of a nation-state, but was never the abbreviated name of a nationality.
The horrendous byzantine complexity of all this really doesn't matter to anyone who isn't British though. We just have a complicated mess because of history…
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The horrendous byzantine complexity of all this really doesn't matter to anyone who isn't British though.
Maybe if you thought of it as a localization issue... To everyone outside of the UK, citizens of the UK are British (or whatever that translates into in non-English locales).
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To add even more weird shit to the pile that is this discussion:
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To everyone outside of the UK, citizens of the UK are British (or whatever that translates into in non-English locales).
Sounds like it--and there's a direct analogy for the US. I tell people who are from Boston that I'm from, Salem (or could be Brookline, Weymouth, whatever, as appropriate.) If you're not from Boston, I say I'm from Boston because you probably don't know where Weymouth or whatever is.
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I hate people who do that. Say where you're from, then just say what it's near. It works just as well, and you're not being an idiot.
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So you're from Seattle. San Francisco, if you're speaking to anyone that only cares about major cities.
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Seattle is a major city also not full of douchebags also fuck you also I am drunk
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Not as drunk as I am.
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If you're not from Boston, I say I'm from Boston because you probably don't know where Weymouth or whatever is.
I don't know where Boston is either. Or even whether it's a state or a city
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I'd say a better US analogy is that you probably think of yourself as a Massachusetts-ian. Whereas I think of you as American (and I had to google what state Boston is in).
That's pretty nearly a direct analogy: the US is one country made up of lots of separate 'political entities' as Wikipedia puts it that aren't sovereign states and have some degree of central government but certainly have their own identities. The UK is one country made up of four separate former countries that aren't sovereign states and have some degree of central government, but certainly have their own identities.
So if I consider you guys to all be 'American', I can't reasonably insist you shouldn't think of me as 'British'.
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So if I consider you guys to all be 'American', I can't reasonably insist you shouldn't think of me as 'British'.
What about Limey? Or POHM?