So sample from this list. Broad generalization, not always true, but civil wars are generally fought across three divides:

- Ethnic. My people hate your people and have always hated your people. This covers Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Yemen, Ethiopia, Angola, most of the "places you barely know about and would never visit" wars.

- Ideological. Your way of running the world and my way of running the world are utterly incompatible. This covers Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, places the US sent troops in the name of domino theory.

- Economical. Your use of capitalism and my use of capitalism are mutually exclusive. These wars are exceedingly rare. I can only think of one.

In my lifetime, the "proper" way to discuss the Civil War has shifted from "it was obviously about freeing the slaves" to "it was obviously about the economic repression forced upon the Southern States by mercantilist Northern industrialists" to "it was obviously about freeing the slaves who also weren't truly freed and anyone who says otherwise is a racist" in no small part because the only logical conclusion of the actual facts on the ground is "unfettered capitalism does grievous harm to humanity." Kinda like how we talk about the vast open unsettled spaces of the American frontier rather than the multiple civilizations we wiped out through targeted genocide in order to make them appear wide open.

I bring this up because you learned about the Missouri Compromise without learning why because history teachers aren't allowed to teach "our current system was bad, is bad and is likely to continue to be bad" their best bet is to lay the facts at your feet and hope you twig to enough of the clues that eventually you'll look shit up for yourself who am I kidding 99% of them don't know either. Look:

- The economic system of the northern (manufacturing) United States was "rich people own factories, poor people work until they're dead or useless at which point we cast them aside and they can either beg on the street or hope they've had enough children that they'll be tended to in their nasty, brutish and short old age."

- The economic system of the southern (agricultural) United States was "rich people own plantations, they also own the people who work on those plantations and if they're kind plantation owners the lives of the people they own will be marginally better than the lives of the people the northern industrialists hire."

- The social system of the northern (manufacturing) United States was "rich people own everything, if you're lucky you'll get a job so you'll have a roof over your head."

- The social system of the southern (agricultural) United States was "rich people own everything including, maybe, you, and if they don't, hardscrabble subsistence farming is pretty much what you got but you're too uneducated and primitive to know the difference, hey look it could be worse you could be black and in chains."

So the Missouri Compromise? Was fundamentally "do we let the economic and social system of the north expand or do we let the economic and social system of the south expand." The North can't make money if employees are free, the South can't make money if employees are skilled. The economic and social systems were far more divided than people have been led to believe; there had been a system whereby southern agricultural staples were turned into northern manufactured goods but globalism meant that non-Southern cotton etc. was cheaper. Expanding free ranching and farming to the West would further undercut the South so in order to protect the Southern economy, Western production needed to be both cheaper and shittier than that produced by literal slave labor. The Northern companies and economists firmly believed the only way for the United States to exist as a country was to increase skilled labor in the south; one of the principle reasons for fighting the Civil War is the British were more than happy to subsidize crappy slave-based agriculture in the South, starve out the North and basically reintegrate the disUnited States back into the Commonwealth.

So everybody learns "it was/was not about freeing the slaves" because "it was about whether your slaves feel 'free' or not" gets your textbook banned in Texas.

I BRING THIS ALL UP because the actual strains necessary to produce a "civil war" in the United States are gargantuan compared to "does a thin/thick margin of popular opinion support/condemn this or that contrived social issue." The amount of "interstate commerce" trappings in the Constitution, leaned on heavily by the Originalists on the Supreme Court, basically prevent Kansas from going to war with Missouri. Not only that, but troops are deliberately scattered about for exactly this reason, the Army hates the Navy for exactly this reason, federal taxes are spread about for exactly this reason.

Yes, we fought a civil war before, yes it was ostensibly about cultural issues, but it was a different country then under very different pressures with very different interdependencies in a very different economic milieu. If anything, the tensions in the United States are entirely about rural vs. metropolitan for the simple reason that the Electoral College is tilted towards rural areas.

I will also point out that the Trump Administration, and their supporters, literally attempted to overthrow the government of the United States through every means available to them... and failed... because the government is largely made up of bureaucrats who want to keep their job. That's it. That's their motivation. Rome persisted for centuries not because of any natural cultural superiority, but because bureaucrats will always preserve their bureaucracy and when you decentralize things enough, your org chart simply can't be decapitated.

The government of Ukraine has fallen twice in the past 20 years under pressures less than January 6, for example, once in 2004 and again in 2014. Yeah, the current situation sucks... but like, a plurality of Republicans want to legalize weed. 42% of Republicans don't want Roe overturned. So do I think shit gonna be ugly? Yes. Yesindoodledydo. Do I think Arizona's gonna start shooting across the border at California?

It's too expensive to even posture like that.

lil is wise, and gives sage council.

Personally I have struggled with self-hate for a long time. Then I was upset at myself for hating myself.

When I started being mindful, and when I started accepting, just a little bit, that I might actually be allowed to be loved, I started to forgive myself. It didn't happen quick, and I still have to work on being forgiving, but it is possible.

Now, when I make a mistake, forget an assignment for school, burn some food, spend too much money, etc. My first response isn't 'You idiot, how could you be so stupid!' or 'Greedy, weak willed bastard, how could you do that?' Well, it is sometimes, but less of the time than it used to. My first, and healthier response is instead 'You are just as human as anyone else. You are allowed to make mistakes. You wouldn't judge a loved one so harshly as you judge yourself, so why would you judge yourself that way?' and in recognizing that, also recognize that if there is a way to make right what was wrong, to do it, and happily.

The reason that I judged (And still judge) myself more harshly than I judged the mistakes of others, because I did not have the same love for myself that I did for others. I also hold myself to a higher standard than I hold others, but that's a separate issue.

beezneez mentions Hawthorne, it's a fun neighborhood. Belmont is close to Hawthorne, it's fine. Lloyd center isn't really a neighborhood, it's a commercial district but anything north of Broadway (just north of Lloyd center) close in is fine. Mississippi neighborhood is great in my opinion.

Mississippi is very close to PCC Cascade, which is the campus I'd choose to go to if I was to enroll in PCC. The other campuses are way out of town and have more young suburban kids who's parents are forcing them to go to community college. Cascade is diverse and the students are more motivated.

I only go downtown for a reason, I'd never choose to live there. I know people who like it but it's not hard to get from the close in east side to downtown.

I have a friend who does session work and knows some of the younger jazz guys and I'll ask him if he knows where they play. I am under the impression that Jimmy Mac's is the older jazz guys hangout but there is probably some kind of young innovative jazz scene going on somewhere in this town. I know I've waited on some of the younger jazz crowd at my bar and they were all super nice guys who I've head are excellent musicians.

There is a publicly funded jazz radio station in town KMHD 89.1 you might want to check it out. One of the DJ's come into the bar I work at from time to time and we've always hit it off. If I see him I'll get his number because I'm sure he is the kind of guy that wouldn't mind chatting with or going to a show with someone who just got into town. I don't see him all that often maybe once a month or so.

Don't change a thing. On this particular issue, you nailed it in one.

Here's what you get by publishing the follower relationships:

1) You can see the blocs that make Hubski function

2) You remind the user of their clout, or lack thereof

3) You establish a concrete, human relationship in a void of digital nothingness

4) You provide feedback beyond stupid hubwheels as far as ones performance

5) You inform the user of Reddit influxes

WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW HOW REDDIT BECAME 4CHAN? Okay, twist my arm.

So there was a time when kickme444 didn't work for Reddit, and thought I was awesome. Had dinner with his family and everything. For those of you who don't know, K and 5Days created Redditgifts from scratch in a weekend and were running it all on their own (albeit with server time provided by Reddit). This is important - Redditgifts was a layer of personalization independent from Reddit. If you look at a user's Redditgifts page, you will see far more than their recent posts, their trophy chest and their karma. You will see an "about me" page. There's space for a picture. There's all the human stuff one would expect from, say, Blogger, Myspace, Facebook, anywhere normal.

I was also working with honestbleeps at the time, poking around RES and stuff. Meanwhile, I'd been chatting with a few of the Admins about how to make the horrible raiding that was then becoming de rigeur less prevalent. And it all sort of clicked into place: If RES had a plugin that, WITH PERMISSION, pulled a user's Redditgifts profile whenever a Reddit user clicked on someone else's Reddit page, all of a sudden that username would become a lot more human. If they wanted. If both sides specifically asked for it.

Behold. Human Reddit.

Then, of course, Reddit bought out Redditgifts, Jedberg left for Netflix and the whole thing collapsed into oblivion. I read kickme444 the riot act about it and we don't talk anymore.

If I haven't mentioned it before, I've been remiss: the fact that you included an "about me" page FIRST OFF, with no prompting, is probably the one thing that impressed me the most about Hubski. And yeah - I haven't filled mine out. I still get change password requests on my Reddit account. I've still got stalkers. I've still got people trying to dox me. But I'm a special case - I'm a professional asshole with years of experience. The point being: had Reddit had something like your userpage when it began, it would be a very, very different place.

Hubski needs to be a different place than Reddit. It already is. I think it's a dire mistake to make the place less personal - if you feel guilty unfollowing someone, GOOD. That means you're anthropomorphizing them. Every person on the internet who thinks of other people as people is pushing the darkness back just a little bit more.

Doing socially antagonistic things should carry a socially antagonistic penalty. When I act like an asshole I should be aware that I'm losing followers.

Leave it alone.

So you got offended because from your perspective, your roommate suggested that the course of study your girlfriend has taken is easier than the one he took. Seems like a pretty valid assertion, if we're talking about academic rigor...some disciplines simply require more time and effort than others. That is a fact. So why'd you get offended? You fell into the trap that pretty much every student falls into. The trap that says, if you are not smart and you don't work your ass off, you aren't worth anything. Self worth is not determined by what you study, how much you study, your raw intelligence, and sure as hell isn't determined by a GPA. You're confusing completely separate aspects of life. Just because someone is studying something that isn't as challenging as engineering, doesn't mean that what they're studying isn't important. Furthermore on a societal level, it sure as fuck doesn't mean that we don't need those people (in elementary school teaching, social work, etc) to do what they do and do it well. Raw intelligence doesn't translate directly into your value to society. I'm adequately intelligent, but I'd be a piss poor elementary school teacher.

So back to the original respect thing. Did your roommate insult you or your girlfriend? No. He said the study wasn't as rigorous. He's correct. But that says nothing about your value as a human being. That was a connection you added after the fact. You need to learn to separate those two things, which is exceedingly hard for most (me included) students to accept.

There's a seriously problem with Apathy right now. Why should we care? It's none of our concern. In a society that puts everything in the corner of individual rights and freedoms we begin to lose our sense of community. And it's one thing to dream, but it's another thing entirely to work with people to express this dream to the people around you, and to find the common ground needed to make a huge dream a reality.

At the beginning of the 20th century we had hundreds of people trying to develop a way to fly. How nuts is that? We're earthbound by nature, and these folks like the Wright Brothers (who flew in 1903) Gustav Whitehead (who flew a couple years before 1903) discovered new and exciting ways to travel. Within sixty years we were on the moon. The. Moon. How do we not dream like this anymore? Do we think we've done it all?

We'll find our dream, hopefully soon. I pray we're simply in a transition period, looking for a new avenue to walk, and struggling to break the bonds pop culture have on our souls.