
for fucks sake if I hear this from an older relative or sth I am gonna lose it

These are the people who complain when you don’t use /s on the internet.
I feel obligated because this was posted the last time I saw this:

I recently learned that the word clock originally ment bell or bell chime. It’s related to the German word Glocke. So 7 o’clock = 7 bongs…
Hello there, fellow Rob Words enjoyer.
Makes sense then why “clock” still has the additional meaning of “to hit.” Like “I clocked him on the head.”
Or clock rate in computers/electronics describing the frequency
Bangs/second.
Time to clock op’s mum
And the o’ in o’clock means “of the clock”
Yes, 7 tolls of the clock
big Ben is the bell. we can call the tower Big Mo without renaming big ben.
Big Ben is inside of Massive Mohammed?
Inshallah.
I wish this only cracked me up like it used to
And wasn’t followed by the dread these days that the country is half made up of morons like this
I think the internet was a mistake. Before the internet every town had a few hand full of complete idiots and everybody just laughed at them. Now idiots that share the same delusions meet online and discuss stuff like “flat earth physics”
It was more than a few or a handful. The internet just gives them a bigger megaphone
You sweet summer child… You really think it’s only half?
Beyond how dreadfully overused it’s become, I think people should acknowledge how explicitly patronizing the phrase “you sweet summer child” is. If you’re not actively trying to demean someone, it’s strange to essentially tell someone “it’s cute how naive you are.” If you were trying to demean the other person, then that’s a different issue but I’m assuming you aren’t that type of person.
I decided to leave a comment instead of passively downvoting.
I am reading those kinds of comments as playfully mocking, especially when the followup is so obviously exaggerated. Wouldnt mind someone using it on me. Im not a native English speaker though so maybe Im just ignorant of the real implicated meaning.
Yeah it’s just an unserious meme. It’s a game of thrones quote for goodness sake.
But the context of the Game of Throne quote is diminishing.
It might seem like I’m trying to make you out as a bad person; I apologize because that’s not my intention. That comment was just the latest one I saw using it and it stood out even more because I didn’t get the sense that you were trying to be rude.
It was overused on Reddit two plus years ago.
Thanks for bringing a reddit response to lemmy.
They always show a picture of the clock tower when talking about the bell.
I thought “big Ben” referred to the clock? Lol
Nope, Big Ben is one of the bells (the big one funnily enough) in the Elizabeth Tower
Afraid not. The bell is named Big Ben, not the clock.
It’s not even named “Big Ben” anymore I thought
It never was. It’s the name of the bell that’s inside. The building is the Elisabeth tower.
Ben is now Elizabeth? 🏳️⚧️🇬🇧🏳️⚧️
So that’s why a lot of British are transphobic pieces of shits, and not because trans people were among those who wanted to tax the likes of JK Rowling…
Its full name is actually Massive Mohammed Huge Hussien
Hugh Mongous.
“And soon Santa won’t exist anymore”
Hate to break it to you but he never did
Come to the Netherlands, we have layers on this since Santa Claus is Coca Cola’s take on our Sinterklaas, who is usually acompanied by “six to eight black men” (more commonly known as “zwarte Piet”, black Pete). he was was taken to the US by Dutch immigrants, after which it evolved in the current Santa Claus. And it gets worse, because while it has alway been a bit of a battle between team Sinterklaas and team Santa Claus, the last twenty years or so there is a different battle going on between team “Dutch tradition” and team “kick out zwarte Piet”. Both of these last two teams are obnoxious, and would choose confrontation over dialogue every day of the week. This has resulted in a conflict with no end, where it would have been easy to phase out the blackface character with no fuss in a short time.
the last twenty years or so there is a different battle going on between team “Dutch tradition” and team “kick out zwarte Piet”. Both of these last two teams are obnoxious, and would choose confrontation over dialogue every day of the week. This has resulted in a conflict with no end,
Social conflicts like this are never about solutions but about performance, for the sake of getting attention. Ending the conflict would end the attention.
where it would have been easy to phase out the blackface character with no fuss in a short time.
Hmm, by removing Piet and thus hiding the
traditionalracist representation of black people, or by whitewashing him?
Would this be considered whitewashing though? From my understanding whitewashing is a practice that “hides” diversity, while in this case the goal would be to get rid of the racist background. Also, the goal would be to change the tradition itself, not simply leaving Zwarte Piet as a black man represented by white people, right?
Hmm, by removing Piet and thus hiding the traditional racist representation of black people, or by whitewashing him?
“because he has to climb through Chimneys to deliver gifts for Sinterklaas”. “Has to”?! Is Piet a slave to Sinterklaas? /s /ragebait
Ending the conflict would end the attention.
I recently learned that Mikey Mouse’s classic look was derived from racist Vaudeville blackface dress:

Disney successfully evolved/hid/whitewashed Mickey away from his racist image roots, and few today would say Mickey is a reference to the racist past.
My first December living in the Netherlands was kind of shocking, coming into the office one day and seeing a handful of my colleagues dressed up in full blackface… turns out the office was doing their normal Sinterklaas celebration and that was my introduction to Zwarte Piet.
I live in Germany and we have Weihnachtsmann which is at this point just the German word for Santa Claus with all the Coke optics. We used to have Knecht Ruprecht as a companion who never had racial coding but he is but a faint memory. In the past there was Christkind in the Catholic south who funnily enough was invented by Luther but is ousted by now I think.
I just could not imagine, as an adult, caring about that shit. I think North America’s war on Christmas shit is dumber though.
The stupid thing is, there were already talks about moving away from the blackface. Of course the people at the television stations (who could make this happen) took their time, which caused the people of "kick out zwarte Piet’ to make a stir. So far nothing wrong, but they did this at the televized arrival of Sinterklaas, so now they had crying children on tv. This caused the “all brown people back to Morocco” crowd to scream outrage, and suddenly we are at the current stage with two very vocal groups screaming at each other.
My kids were still in the believing age when this started, and I never had a problem explaining the issues and the changes to them (Piet used to come through the chimney, when this wasn’t possible anymore he painted his face black to look the same, but now he realized this looks like blackface). The right wing voters had problems explaining, because they didn’t want to, and now they see it as a defeat by the “others”. Throw in some politicians who can only fare well if there’s disorder, and suddenly it takes over twenty years to phase out something that should have been gone a long time ago.
These culture war things are so stupid. Should be simple. Do we consider ourselves a racist country? If the answer is no, then if we are carrying out a super racist tradition we should take the super easy steps it takes to make it not racist. And it should be easy and not fucking matter, but instead we have politicians and protesters putting all this time and effort into fighting some imagined cultural battle that at the end of the day is wholly inconsequential to the quality of life of every day citizens. It’s infuriating.
Personally I think that every mistake is a teaching opportunity. In this context, rather than try to sweep the racism under the rug of history as quickly and quietly as possible, I think changes should be made but in a way that invites people (especially children) to ask questions about the background of the traditions and why those representations of persons of color are problematic and should be changed. Without this it just looks like an attempt to cover up and deny the existence of the past forms of discrimination, which especially does a disservice to people experiencing present forms of discrimination.
And also, maybe, dealing with these things should not be fast or easy.
Nothing about this is imaginary, because in some ways these problems haven’t changed much. There is value in spending time on it in the present.
All of that said, I am a white guy from North America, not a POC from the Netherlands, so my input is just an opinion.
A British person opposed to change? Wow, you don’t say! 🙄
Giant Gomorrah
it’s overrated anyway, it’s just a big clock on top of a building.









