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Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

matduggan.com

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Re: Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

#241

Post by Arainach »

kyledrake wrote: post #237
Arainach wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in the area for more than 20 years, have annually visited family living there for my entire life even after I left, and consider myself quite qualified to comment on the area, the people who live there, and their culture, thanks. I've traveled a lot through the area. I was throughout Ohio earlier this year, spent two weeks in Illinois last year, etc.

If I'm allowed to be anecdotal too I've also spent a decent amount of time in the area, including a visit to Bloomington, Indiana to visit their Informatics school, which was full of very interesting, open people that were absolutely wonderful and invited us into their world for a weekend. The last night there I had dinner at one of the professors' houses in a very nice neighborhood that was absolutely lovely, and in…

University towns are exceptions that the rural and suburban parts of these states largely hate. They are the tiny pleasant exception to the whole that is not representative.

Ann Arbor is a nice town. Bloomington sounds like a nice town. The vast majority of Indiana and Michigan are sparsely populated and full of people who distrust anyone not like them and are not interested in broadening their experiences.

"Got tired and decided this is good enough" is literally true - small town midwest America is full of the kind of people who don't want to travel or experience new things because they're content in their house with their hobby and their 6 friends and trying to do something like understand how to ride a bus is terrifying.

This is not a stereotype. I know tons of these people. I got out of the midwest to get away from them.

Re: Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

#242

Post by gruez »

krapp wrote: post #189
gruez wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>fun-fact: CIA is currently mucking around in Greenland trying to get rid of people against annexation That's a very misleading phrasing for what's essentially an influence operation. Your wording of "get rid of people ..." implies there's some assassinations/violence going on, but there's nothing to suggest that's happening. If Republicans/Democrats or even Russia was running an influence operation in the US, nobody…

Every "influence operation" of this type by the CIA inevitably involves assassinations and violence. That's what the CIA does.

Source that all/most CIA "influence campaigns" involved "assassinations and violence"? Moreover even if we take at face value that CIA always eventually resorts to assassinations/violence, it's dishonest to claim it's "currently" going on with no evidence of it. It's probably safe to say that most military campaigns involve civilian deaths, but it'd be irresponsible to claim right off the bat that the US military is "currently killing civilians" in the absence of a specific incident.

Re: Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

#243

Post by WalterBright »

spacechild1 wrote: post #191
WalterBright wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who controls what territory in the world is hardly stable. At some point, if one is not a military power, one will have to take sides. If, for example, valuable resources are discovered in Greenland.

What are you talking about? Greenland is already a NATO member (via Denmark), so it has already taken a side. The obvious scandal, of course, is that Greenland is being openly threatened by the US - a fellow NATO member!

> Greenland is being openly threatened by the US

Not really. It's just bluster.

Re: Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

#244

Post by WalterBright »

majormajor wrote: post #209
WalterBright wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overlooked the mention of sunscreen.

No? We all wore that too... but unless we're all just weirdos and sunscreen == bug repellant for the whole rest of the world in a way it never has for us (and is not advertised as), it just seemed irrelevant. The sunscreen kept us from being bright red and in pain for the last 6 days of the trip. The mosquitos gave zero fucks about it. I would bet that the lucky person whose "body oil and sweat seems to do the job" i…

He never said it was a mosquito repellent. Just that he wouldn't burn the second day of sweating while hiking, and only needed the sunscreen for the first.

Re: Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

#245

Post by [deleted] »

Arainach wrote: post #143
kyledrake wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really easy to write off a giant part of the country that millions of people live in as tired (and the implication underneath is usually "backward"), it's also dehumanizing them and makes assumptions about their quality of life when it might actually be a lot better than the people making these assumptions. Spend some time not just driving through them, and one may be surprised to find plenty of diverse and inte…

I lived in the area for more than 20 years, have annually visited family living there for my entire life even after I left, and consider myself quite qualified to comment on the area, the people who live there, and their culture, thanks. I've traveled a lot through the area. I was throughout Ohio earlier this year, spent two weeks in Illinois last year, etc.

[deleted]

Re: Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

#246

Post by pcrh »

gpm wrote: post #171
pcrh wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US ownership would be pointless. The US already has relatively free access to its ally Greenland for military purposes. See for example the US base in Pituffik (formerly Thule). Proposing to annex your allies is a bit rude, to say the least... If a country other than Denmark was to claim Greenland, either Iceland or Canada would make more sense.

As a Canadian I really can't imagine why we would be a better country for Greenland to be part of then Denmark. Unlike Denmark (and the other nordic countries) we don't have any historical connection to it... nor is it part of our landmass, or really anything else other than vaguely near by. We're also really not interested in annexing random things.

I meant that geopolitically Canada or Iceland would make more sense, assuming Denmark was out of the picture.

And also glad to hear that random annexations by Canada are currently off the menu. Though who knows if Canada might become "interested" in some bits of Oregon or Maine in the future ;-) These might might not be "really" American....

When American Idiocracy (AI) fatally weakens their southern neighbor would be the time for Canada to conquer their rightful claims. The Burning of Washington will rise again.

(just kidding, to be sure)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aroostook_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_boundary_dispute

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington

Re: Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

#247

Post by kyleee »

bookofjoe wrote: post #221
kens wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gary, Indiana is still memorable to me 50 years later from when we'd drive through it, handkerchiefs pressed to our faces to block out the terrible smell from some sort of toxic industry. Is Gary still like that or has it been cleaned up?

Reminds me of driving through Eureka, California in the early 80s and the overpoweringly horrible smell from the paper mills in the area.

Where did all the effluent go; directly into the bay?

Re: Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

#248

Post by potato3732842 »

Arainach wrote: post #241
kyledrake wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm allowed to be anecdotal too I've also spent a decent amount of time in the area, including a visit to Bloomington, Indiana to visit their Informatics school, which was full of very interesting, open people that were absolutely wonderful and invited us into their world for a weekend. The last night there I had dinner at one of the professors' houses in a very nice neighborhood that was absolutely lovely, and in…

University towns are exceptions that the rural and suburban parts of these states largely hate. They are the tiny pleasant exception to the whole that is not representative. Ann Arbor is a nice town. Bloomington sounds like a nice town. The vast majority of Indiana and Michigan are sparsely populated and full of people who distrust anyone not like them and are not interested in broadening their experiences. "Got tire…

University towns are a dump of businesses of questionable morals extracting as much as they can from a transient population. They're basically military base towns. And both of those are basically tourism or retirement towns which are almost as bad (source: grew up in one). The difference its that tourism towns and retirement towns get their population voluntarily, without a bunch of brainwashing.

I'll side with the "Indiana ain't bad" crowd on this.

Re: Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

#249

Post by kyleee »

kasey_junk wrote: post #199
tptacek wrote: post #5

It's funny to me that in portraying Indiana as a "blank state" he's highlighting one of the most beautiful parts of the state (the route through the Dunes along the Michigan lakefront; if you've seen "Road To Perdition", you know what that area looks like). It's not important to the article, a complete tangent, but I can't not call that out.

It’s also problematic because that part of Indiana was geo engineered into a blank slate. It used to be a wetlands that rivaled the Everglades but was drained and filled in a massive (and controversial) public works effort.

Got any links describing this?

Re: Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

#250

Post by dmurray »

jb1991 wrote: post #154
kyledrake wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't "get tired", they found rich soil and ample water to do farming and milling, which is what they were intending to find. It's called the bread basket of America for a reason.

In some places, some people absolutely could not endure the long travels to the West Coast, for example the Oregon Trail was extremely difficult and many people quit somewhere in the middle and settled into those Midwestern states. Yes they did in fact get tired, in some situations.

What was so special about Oregon, anyway, that it was worth a deadly trek across the country to go there?

Wasn't it just that it wasn't yet settled, so you could settle there and claim some land? That implies that Indiana or anywhere else on the way would have been at least as desirable, but someone else got there first.

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