I support getting rid of Columbus day altogether and making Election Day a Federal Holiday that is a required observation.The only exceptions would be gas stations and emergency services.

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Burrito of Peace wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 12:35:
I support getting rid of Columbus day altogether and making Election Day a Federal Holiday that is a required observation.The only exceptions would be gas stations and emergency services.

This really is the holiday "adjustment" this country should have made decades ago. I never really understood the importance of a national holiday for voting, and how it encourages everyone to vote, until I lived in a country that did exactly that. Denmark's (only other country I have personal living experience in for any real amount of time) voter turnout, according to the google of things, has never been below 80% while we hover at around 60% when we have a great turnout. Embarrassing.

I am the opposite extreme - I think that employers should cancel all vacation, personal holidays, and sick days on Election Day. They should mandate 4-8 hours overtime too. Only people who are REALLY serious about voting would do it then. Each state would receive a couple of hundred votes max. It would eliminate any possibility of election fraud accusations and counts wouldn't take long...

Burrito of Peace wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 12:35:
I support getting rid of Columbus day altogether and making Election Day a Federal Holiday that is a required observation.The only exceptions would be gas stations and emergency services.

You know all the retail outlets would turn that holiday into a sales opportunity and force all of their workers to man the stores.

jdreyer wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 14:53:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 12:35:
I support getting rid of Columbus day altogether and making Election Day a Federal Holiday that is a required observation.The only exceptions would be gas stations and emergency services.

You know all the retail outlets would turn that holiday into a sales opportunity and force all of their workers to man the stores.

A mandated federal election day holiday would mean that they could not do that without facing goverment fines for labor violations. Which is why those of us who want it know it wont happen...but that is how it goes in this country.

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This comment was deleted on Oct 14, 2024, 16:46. Reason: Intolerance (rule 2)

Cutter wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 15:00:
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This comment was edited on Oct 14, 2024, 16:47.

Sepharo wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 15:41:

Cutter wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 15:00:
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I mean, he goes on to say all those people aren't foreigners, but then loosely advocates to celebrate Lief Erikson, who he admits came here thousands of years later, instead of Columbus, who wasn't far behind Erikson

Didn't they celebrate "Leif Erikson Day" on SpongeBob SquarePants?

jdreyer wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 14:53:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 12:35:
I support getting rid of Columbus day altogether and making Election Day a Federal Holiday that is a required observation.The only exceptions would be gas stations and emergency services.

You know all the retail outlets would turn that holiday into a sales opportunity and force all of their workers to man the stores.

I do but Jivaro is correct. Not only in why raw dogging capitalists couldn't do it but why it likely wouldn't happen at all. Dog forbid that somebody not make money when people are out comporting their legal rights.

Obviously I was being snarky. Behave yourselves on election day, respect one another, and I hope that your team wins.

So I read Cutter's post before it got sent to the oubliette of the ether. Although he worded it very poorly (because, you know, Cutter), he's not entirely wrong.

Let me start out by saying that I am not addressing the political or cultural aspects, merely the scientific one.

From an anthropological point of view, the "indigenous" people of today aren't. Not by a long shot. At best they would be considered third wave immigrants but it is more likely they're fourth or even fifth wave immigrants. Put down your pitchforks and torches. There's facts to back this up.

First and foremost, back in 2017, a discovery was made in San Diego that showed human activity that dates back 24,000 years ago. That puts it well before the evidence we have of current "natives" settling in North America. Now, it could be argued that the settlers then were hominids and part of the Homo branch but not Homo Sapiens so they may not have been directly related to us. OK, that's fair.

But then we get to a very well known group of direct Paleolithic ancestors discovered in Monte Verde in Chile which has been dated back to ~14,500 years ago. In fact, there's enough evidence that it spawned four different sites. Two at Monte Verde and two at Chinchihuapi. You can read more about them here if you are so inclined. Of note is that these people were in South America and they didn't get there by boat, train, plane, or alien spaceship so it is highly likely they migrated via the Bering land bridge. Which means they migrated through North and Central America first. That's going to take a couple of thousand years on the shortest timeline because people tend to settle down where there's good water, plentiful game, and a tolerable climate. It's usually population pressure that causes people to migrate from settled places, pushing the boundaries of their culture every further outward.

Next we get to the Western Stemmed people who were definitely in North America, particularly the western parts, ~13,000 years ago. This is, relatively speaking in anthropological and archaeological terms, new data. You can find out more about them here.

Contemporaneously to the Western Stemmed people, we get to one of the most well known groups in North America. The Clovis People. They are definitively known to have also existed in North America ~13,000 years ago and their territory ranges from the Plains to the southeast of the current United States.

So that right there is four waves of human immigration in to North, Central, and South Americas many thousands of years before the allegedly "native" people of today claim being "first". Data and evidence proves they weren't. Not by many thousands of years.

The Paleolithic era of humanity is something that really interests me so I've read a ton about it. It's why Far Cry Primal is my favorite in the series. It's also why I am not popular with people who want to push for the rights of "indigenous" people because the data I can bring to the table shows that they are not, and never have been, indigenous. Were they in the Americas and settled before Europeans and Vikings showed up? Absolutely. But they're just migrants, like the Europeans after them. Were they conquered and dominated by the technologically superior Europeans? Absolutely. But, and here's where people need to put their emotions away, that's true of all of human history. We've always killed, displaced, and conquered one another for land, resources, or simply because we can. We're a predatory species and the thing we love doing more than anything else is predation. We still do it to this day. We just turned it in to sports, commerce, and politics.

If you can find some living specimen of Homo heidelbergensis or a similar species still living in Africa, you could rightfully call them indigenous.

But outside of that? We're all migrants. We migrate constantly. We move from place to place in search of better resources (jobs), land (bigger homes), or because we want to subsume ourselves in a different culture (relocating to a country other than that of your birth). There's no shame or difficulty in that concept and it's high time we accepted that we're all in the same pot instead of stupidly and pointlessly dividing ourselves due to something as ridiculous as a phenotype.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 12:35:
I support getting rid of Columbus day altogether and making Election Day a Federal Holiday that is a required observation.The only exceptions would be gas stations and emergency services.

I think forcing everyone to vote on one single day is stupid. Every election, you see on the news of large cities of people having to wait in line for hours to vote no matter the weather. Spreading the voting period out over say 5 days would ease up on that congestion if not eliminate it. Fortunately I live in a small town, so I have never had to wait in line to vote.

BoP, do you think you would find yourself posting that indigenous peoples of the Americas aren't indigenous? And that it's something the liberals made up?

MeanJim wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 18:49:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 12:35:
I support getting rid of Columbus day altogether and making Election Day a Federal Holiday that is a required observation.The only exceptions would be gas stations and emergency services.

I think forcing everyone to vote on one single day is stupid. Every election, you see on the news of large cities of people having to wait in line for hours to vote no matter the weather. Spreading the voting period out over say 5 days would ease up on that congestion if not eliminate it. Fortunately I live in a small town, so I have never had to wait in line to vote.

You know you fix that?

More polling locations and you pay people like jury duty (but better) to staff them. Randomly selected lottery style like jury duty is.

More polling locations = shorter lines = better turnout.

Sepharo wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 18:52:
BoP, do you think you would find yourself posting that indigenous peoples of the Americas aren't indigenous? And that it's something the liberals made up?

No, I would not say that it was something liberals made up. Because that's just...fucking stupid ill-informed and a modern fabrication of political tribalism.

Like I said in my original post about this topic, I'm not addressing the political or cultural aspects. Just the scientific aspect and how, from that viewpoint, no modern "indigenous" people exist based upon humanity as a collective.

Edited to add "modern" as a delimiting clarification.

This comment was edited on Oct 14, 2024, 19:42.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 18:56:

Sepharo wrote on Oct 14, 2024, 18:52:
BoP, do you think you would find yourself posting that indigenous peoples of the Americas aren't indigenous? And that it's something the liberals made up?

No, I would not say that it was something liberals made up. Because that's just...fucking stupid ill-informed and a modern fabrication of political tribalism.

Like I said in my original post about this topic, I'm not addressing the political or cultural aspects. Just the scientific aspect and how, from that viewpoint, no "indigenous" people exist based upon humanity as a collective.

So perhaps, "indigenous peoples of the Americas" refers to "the continent's pre-Columbian inhabitants prior to European settlement in the 15th century."
What do you think?

P.S. here are two excellent channels I subscribe to that cover the stuff BoP wrote up. Lot's of new information in this field lately.
https://www.youtube.com/@StefanMilo
https://www.youtube.com/@AncientAmericas

This comment was edited on Oct 14, 2024, 19:09.

On the topic of "Indigenous" day, while it has never been officially confirmed that I know of, the day is appropriately named when considering that it is the first time in the modern age following the most recent occurrence of colonialism under which modern America and other continents were settled (most historians agree that this started some time in the 15th century). I am not an expert in human history but I don't think that there have been any mass human migrations since then. So as far as modern society is concerned, these people were indigenous. That's how I understand it anyway, and I believe why this is appropriate.

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This comment was deleted on Oct 15, 2024, 00:04. Reason: Shitposting.