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[KingofstarrySkies]

9/11 where I am is also known as Canada day, where instead of hanging over the attack itself, we remember and thank Canada for taking in all those inbound planes and taking care of the passengers.

Love you Canada.

Canada has 2 days. :3

[penguinofhonor]

But when will I ever get another opportunity to look like an Cool Aloof Liberal on the internet? I'll have to wait until the next Superbowl.

[Flying Dice]

The U.S. is like a person from a super-rich isolated high-class family with a secret abuse fetish: they basically never get hit, so on the rare occasion when they do they overreact massively and then spend the next thirty years secretly masturbating to the memory of it.

I take it you don't like remembrance

I like remembrance. I pay a moment or ten of silent respect and regret for dead civilians, first responders, and soldiers.

I utterly detest politically-driven top-down mandated rally-around-the-flag patriotic drivel. I loathe the scum that use things like this to further their own careers and agendas, and the bigoted assholes who use it to excuse their hatred. In my city, today, during the city government's ceremony for 9/11, an employee brought out on a flatbed truck a steel beam he owned which had been recovered from Ground Zero (add literal tasteless fetishism to that checklist), and then people, grown-ass adults, clustered around to take selfies with it.

You can stop putting words in my mouth, thanks.

[Urist Targaryen]

Three thousand people were killed fourteen years ago, in the worst terrorist attack on American soil. Almost ten thousand were injured. More then a thousand first responders have WTC-related cancer.

Four thousand Americans lost their lives away from home because we thought three thousand was a big number.

Around a hundred and fifty thousand Iraqi civilians similarly paid for this perception. The worst terrorist attack on American soil is dwarfed fifty fold by the worst American attack on Iraqi soil.

It's all just soil, and people's lives. We're all upset with this day not because we think that the 9/11 attacks were okay, but because we think that what followed afterwards was atrocious, and the way this day is remembered only fuels rhetoric that suggests that the loss of those subsequent hundred and fifty thousand was in any way at all acceptable.

[Reelya]

I liked the army sergeant's directness but I don't know how much of the "we kicked their butts" is really true. Then again I wasn't there so I should shut up their. I agree that we should try to forget and move on but I know that people like this army sergeant exist and need to be helped. I guess in a way sharing in the pain a bit is how I thought I could help but logically that's flawed.

It's quite possible to actual "kick butts"... but your entire butt-kicking is misguided. Read about Camp Bucca, where the US Army concentrated all the radicals together. 9 of the top ISIS commanders met in that camp: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/11/04/how-an-american-prison-helped-ignite-the-islamic-state/

Also, Bush's administration did a purge of the Iraq government at all levels from local to federal of any ex-party members. But Iraq was a one-party state and virtually anyone with a professional job or education joined the party because it helps your career. Imagine what that would be like if you tried it in America. Say you overturn the government, and you say anyone who'd ever been a registered Democrat or Republican can't have any role in your new government, from the lowliest of local officials all the way up to the President. And that ban is for life. You lose a lot of talent, you end up scraping the bottom of the barrel to find people to run things, and you create a huge amount of unnecessary enemies of the educated class of the country. The same middle-class you really need to have on the side of reconstruction. This was a big mistake and very different to how the USA normally does things. THe USA did not purge Japan or even Germany in a similar fashion. In Germany, a schoolteacher would very likely be a card-carrying member of the NAZI party. Not because they love Hitler, but because it's what you need to do to hold down a job (and not get conscripted for the infantry).

So, Bush kicked out not just the top leaders but the entire chain of command down to the street-sweepers more or less. And it's not like they put anyone decent in charge. This guy was hand-picked by the Bush administration to run the department of defense:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazim_al-Shaalan
He had no miltary knowledge, no government experience, but he was an informer for the CIA, so the appointment was all about who he knew, not what he knew. He filled the defense department with his cronies, and they ended up stealing $9 billion out of the $12 billion Iraq defense budget. Which might partly explain the lack of gear and training of the Iraq forces.

[Bauglir]

Everybody arguing about the date format should probably take a look at today's XKCD.

xkcd does not always produce consistent messages.

[Loud Whispers]

The U.S. is like a person from a super-rich isolated high-class family with a secret abuse fetish: they basically never get hit, so on the rare occasion when they do they overreact massively and then spend the next thirty years secretly masturbating to the memory of it.

I take it you don't like remembrance

I like remembrance. I pay a moment or ten of silent respect and regret for dead civilians, first responders, and soldiers.

I utterly detest politically-driven top-down mandated rally-around-the-flag patriotic drivel. I loathe the scum that use things like this to further their own careers and agendas, and the bigoted assholes who use it to excuse their hatred. In my city, today, during the city government's ceremony for 9/11, an employee brought out on a flatbed truck a steel beam he owned which had been recovered from Ground Zero (add literal tasteless fetishism to that checklist), and then people, grown-ass adults, clustered around to take selfies with it.
You can stop putting words in my mouth, thanks.

I've put no words in anyone's mouths; two posts there give different impressions

[Tawa]

Everybody arguing about the date format should probably take a look at today's XKCD.

xkcd does not always produce consistent messages.

To be fair, these were two different contexts. One was dating, the other was language itself.

That said, I feel like the comic has recently been embracing the "pretentious asshole comic for pretentious assholes" reputation it's garnered in recent times.

I'm not reading your reply. Knowing B12, it'll make me want to stab you through the internet.

I know you're not reading this, but it's important to keep in mind whether you want to stab us because you think we're wrong and you disagree or if you want to stab us because you think we're right and you disagree.

[SalmonGod]

Let us know what the results are.

Also, did you explain to him why you feel the way you do? Did you explain what you meant by your response? If he's asked to justify your opinion against people of the "Murica' Fuck yeah!" persuasion, that might not be easy for a 5th grader to do.

I should have coached him on the background of my statement and potential trouble.  But I was exhausted and annoyed at the school for presenting me with this question and bringing this B.S. into my kid's education, so I approached the situation flippantly as a result.

Apparently his teacher collected the answers, read them, and did absolutely nothing with them.  I'm guessing it's because he found the answers inappropriate for class?  If so, not sure what he was expecting.

[SirQuiamus]

Everybody arguing about the date format should probably take a look at today's XKCD.

Huh, I got a massive déjà vu from that comic... is Randall starting to recycle his material?

...No, I was probably thinking of a Penny Arcade from 2001 or whatever.

[Tawa]

Everybody arguing about the date format should probably take a look at today's XKCD.

xkcd does not always produce consistent messages.

To be fair, these were two different contexts. One was dating, the other was language itself.

That said, I feel like the comic has recently been embracing the "pretentious asshole comic for pretentious assholes" reputation it's garnered in recent times.

After reading through a bunch of the more recent ones... yeah, I can see that pretty clearly.

It's a shame, really. I got hours of entertainment out of hitting the Random button and seeing what showed up. A lot of the old ones are still pretty good; the classics remain classic.

...I'll just excuse myself and avoid the derailing.

[EnigmaticHat]

...it looks like the same predictably unpredictable, graph laden comic with two recurring characters that I've been reading for years?

Edit: oh hell I didn't realize which thread I was in, now this is in my unread posts list

[Egan_BW]

I also haven't noticed it change too much over the time I've been reading it, which has been... some length of time.
Oh and fuck your dreary 9/11 topic! this XKCD thread now! :P

[Tawa]

...it looks like the same predictably unpredictable, graph laden comic with two recurring characters that I've been reading for years?

Edit: oh hell I didn't realize which thread I was in, now this is in my unread posts list

The difference I've noticed is that recently he's been putting in way more boringly long comics that make a vague point that nobody cares about instead of a joke. The fact that the jokes were typically hit-and-miss in the first place (but hit right on the mark when they did) compounds the issue.

[EnigmaticHat]

...it looks like the same predictably unpredictable, graph laden comic with two recurring characters that I've been reading for years?

Edit: oh hell I didn't realize which thread I was in, now this is in my unread posts list

The difference I've noticed is that recently he's been putting in way more boringly long comics that make a vague point that nobody cares about instead of a joke. The fact that the jokes were typically hit-and-miss in the first place (but hit right on the mark when they did) compounds the issue.

How far back are you going?  I spammed the back button for a bit and got two big ones but they didn't have that much text they just had a large image, and one comic that fits the description you gave.  Said comic was the most recent one, none of the others were like that.