#then again I don't know about the population of ''someone with a conservative parent that they constantly feel uncomfortable around''

[blimbo-buddy]

you know, I thought that more people would relate to SunBeam's entire thing with her mom, more than whatever the fuck is going on with NightHeart's entire thing with his mom

[patricia-von-arundel]

Dear Scott Adams,

First of all, you, sir, are an absolute dickhead, and another unneeded example of why straight, white, rich, conservative men who mistake success and/or self-described "expertise" in one area as indication that their inherent great wisdom and insight is just what the rest of the world needs (see also: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, etc etc etc etc etc) are really fucking irritating and should honestly all be locked up together and filmed in a Battle Royale-style slap-fight to the death. (I'd watch it.)

That said, you seem to have gotten your racist, sexist, not-half-as-funny-as-other-white-conservative-men-think-you-are self shitcanned, finally (something anyone who is not one of your cohort of fellow straight, white, rich, conservative men has been waiting for for 20+ years). And you did so by oh-so-wisely calling Black people a "hate group" and saying white people should move away from them, because for some completely strange, obscure reason, Black people are a bit put out by white people being absolute buffoons about their own history, their families' potential involvement in upholding not-so-distant past atrocities, and their regular whining about reparations, affirmative action, cops murdering POC, rap music, Black women's hair, Colin Kaepernick, Barack Obama being a secret Kenyan Muslim KGB-plant Alpha Centaurian lizard-person, and having to say they're sorry for all the young Black men they, their parents, their grandparents, their great-grandparents, great-great - you get the idea - killed and continued to kill for daring to exist and be Black and male.

Huh. Why in the world would these things bother anyone??? Weird.

ANYWAY -

Mr. Adams, you list your location on Twitter as Pleasanton, CA. As of the 2020 census, Pleasanton had just under 80,000 people (and was, coincidentally,the wealthiest city of its size in the US) . It is about 67% white, and less than 2% Black or African-American.

That means, Mr. Adams, you are one of roughly 47,000 white people in Pleasanton. Compare that to less than 2,000 Black or African-American people. Even if we also looked at mixed-race inhabitants (without even considering that it is possible to be mixed race without being Black), we add in another 5% of the population, or roughly 3,300 more people. Okay - so about 5,300 people who are either Black or mixed-race. Compared to, again, 47,000 white people.

Now - I am white, too. As far as we've been able to determine, we probably had one Black man or woman in my family, likely sometime in the late 1700s or early 1800s, but as far as I'm aware, nobody has actually been able to pinpoint who or where, just assume based on some family lore and ancient photographs from the mid-1800s. This would have been through Harmon Chavis, my great-great-great-grandfather (I think?), who died in 1869. And clearly the single possibly-Black person in the family did nothing to improve the family as a whole, because both Chavis and his son-in-law (Anderson West) were from slave-owning families. (People in my family don't seem to learn - one of the first to arrive from England in the 1600s, a William West, got his stupid colonizing ass slaughtered by Native Americans. Good riddance, you asshole.)

(And to give a shred of credit to the women in the family, there's a picture where someone quite deliberately cut out ol' Anderson. I'm not crying over it...

And yes, I know, this is probably enough information to figure out exactly who I am, but I also have the "fuck around and find out" gene, and it's very strong.

And hey, the general racist and colonizing idiocy has improved somewhat. When my aunt found out Chavis was likely half or a quarter African, she was fine with that! The real shocker was that we had a Zinn in the family, and thus might have Jewish ancestry! The pure horror! 🙄

His name was Hieronymous Zinn, which is the most awesome name ever, and if given a choice, I'd take him over my aunt.)

ANYWAY -

My point, Mr. Adams, is this: my family is 99.9999999% WHITE AS FUCKING SNOW (or as white as a Welsh-Swedish-French family is likely to be!), but where I live, the population in the metro area is roughly 600,000 people. Of that, about 53% is white, roughly 318,000 people, and 45% is Black/African-American, or roughly 270,000 people.

Mr. Adams, I have lived here (in either this metro area, or elsewhere in the state) for all but approximately five years of my life. (Though god knows I'm hoping to get out soon, because heat and I do not get along...) I am not some great expert on racial history, politics, psychology, or reconcilation. I've taken some courses on sociology and cross-cultural psychology, and have worked on studies looking at racial demographics and health outcomes, but that doesn't make me particularly knowledgeable.

But see, Mr. Adams, this is where I differ from straight, white, rich, conservative men: I know and recognize the limits of my knowledge.

However, if we consider just base knowledge based on something as simplistic as where each of us currently lives - I'm much more familiar with living alongside the Black community than you are, Mr. Adams. I have had far, far more negative experiences from your type (especially the straight, white, male parts) than from anyone who is Black. I have had no problems going to school with, teaching, working with, or living alongside the Black community. I've been harassed, stalked, physically attacked, and sexually assaulted by... straight, white men.

Do you believe I should say, then, Mr. Adams, that it is best that I live apart from straight, white men? Would that seem a fair statement to make, based solely on my own experiences, rather than considering broader historical, cultural, societal, and economic factors?

I suspect you'd say "no." I suspect you'd argue that such a viewpoint would be short-sighted, ignorant, and unfair.

And yet, apparently, your experience as a wealthy, straight, white, conservative man living in a very well-off California community with a population that is less than 2% Black/African-American makes you an expert on all Black people, so much that you can call them a "hate group" (for what, contaminating drinking fountains because now you have to share???) and recommending white people should live apart?

I don't know, Mr. Adams. In my own experience, which has involved significantly more daily interaction with Black people through the 34 years I have lived in this state, I think my conclusion is based on a more solid foundation, family history, understanding of cultural factors and psychology, and, of course, my personal experiences. And it is thus:

Eat shit, you fucking bag of broken dildos.

(Also, your comic sucks, and has always sucked. May you face Charles Schulz at the pearly gates, and be found wanting.)

[kebriones]

What are some myths you want to debunk about the Maniots? I am interested in it, mainly because the general image that most non-Maniots Greeks (like me) have about the Maniots are:

War-like people

Vendettas, VENDETTAS everywhere

Completely old-fashioned (to put it lightly) on their ideologies and the way they treat women

i am not sure there are many myths to debunk hahahshdfjhs most things are true, just in a more nuanced way, and no my dad doesn't shoot people who so much as look at his daughters, even though the joke is made at least once every family gathering. But of course, most stereotypes do not apply to people born in and after the 80s as populations are mignling a lot more and the cultural exchange means the extremes have gotten evened out.

Details about the points you mentioned under the cut:

-Well, war-like was a thing 200 years ago. The need for that no longer exists, and having met both older cretans and maniots, I would say the maniots are a lot more chill than cretans, when it comes to their love for guns and other weapons. But even until my parent's generation, the "you can go out naked but not without a knife" mindset sometimes pops up.

Something interesting to note is that when many people left mani in search for work and came to athens, after initially settling down at pireus and working the hardest jobs around the port, the clan mindset kicked in and they formed notorious mafia-like groups. -The vendettas were very real and very prominent, but that practice ended before the 20th century, mostly thanks to the state starting to get involved to stop people slaughtering each other. However, my family which comes from some of the most backwater, godforsaken, isolated little villages, has at least one convicted murderer (who I have met after he came out of prison, everyone was chill with him), my grandad who planned a double homicide (for a matter of family honor, he told my grandma and she went and told the police, but then he was let go with a warning lol) and an uncle who came very close to killing someone as well. So yeah murders for honor were, up until recently, a thing.

(moving on to the next section I must say I did my very best to explain things but sometimes I struggle a lot to understand all the convoluted social and political stuff because so much of it is human stupidity piled onto itself for generations but I also had to make an attempt to sort of explain, hopefully it makes some sort of sense)

-Yes, again, with older generations, the traditional patriarchy-based views about women were usually the norm. But having met people from all over greece, I can't say that maniots now are more or less sexist than others. Treating women with respect, even though the men were considered the family's leaders, was a matter of honor, when it came to their traditional morals. It's all a very strange mixture of "if my sister marries someone I don't approve of I will kill her and her spouse" and "if my son harasses or hurts a girl I will cut off his hands myself". Conversely, almost all the older maniot women i've met are very fierce, outspoken and free-spirited.

(Also, when talking about completely isolated maniot communities like the village my paternal grandfather grew up in, things were worse than you can imagine. My dad describes them as living in a semi-wild state, and there is no nice polite way to put things such as incest being a regular thing amongst all family members, very few knowing how to read and write, or only washing yourself once every few months. Some villages in mani only got electricity, water and roads in the 80s.)

When it comes to extreme conservative political views, unfortunately the numbers showing this isn't an unfair stereotype are there, even though I am obligated to say i know enough maniots who are progressive enough, and my grandad was a sworn communist.

There's a very convoluted way so many maniots ended up supporting fascists and i'm not a historian so I struggle to explain it in a way that makes sense. but basically, mani has been for centuries very difficult to intergrate into anything new, because of how crazy closed off they have always been. They were, for example, the last people in greece to become christians by a significant time margin. It took them until at least the late 900s to let go of the old religion. All throughout the centuries that followed, mani was just a poor isolated place nobody cared to mess with. It was too much trouble for a place that had nothing to offer. So this sense of us vs outsiders, the attachment to their identity, combined with the extreme poverty they faced and the attempts from the government's side since very early on to intergrate them and stop them from causing touble etc somehow led to this situation now. Becoming overly conservative and obsessed with tradition and stuff was how they felt like they safeguarded their cultural identity, even if in reality through that they lost touch with their free spirited, piracy loving ancestors. It is quite sad.

When it comes to stereotypes which I think are true even for people at my age, it's the "don't speak much". Like my parents have beaten this into me my whole life. You must always remember to speak as little as possible, not for lack of having things to say, but because that's just considered sensible and proper behavior. Also the idea that you must protect the family and put it before anything else is still well and strong, in the case of my family to a frankly catastrophic degree.