Or the bald eagle *is* a symbol of the US, but they aren’t *in* the US. They’re in the confederacy, or something like it.

The sign outside of Argus uses the phrase United States, so I don’t think that’s it.

Jewish baby named Edgardo Mortara is seemingly about to die in Bologna, 1851

Catholic nanny secretly baptises him to save his soul, which she’s not exactly the kind of authority who can do that, but w/e, it’s interpreted by the church as valid later

Kid survives

1857 her secret gets out, a baptising makes a kid a Catholic according to the Church and a Catholic can’t be raised in a non-Catholic household in the Papal States, so the church authorises the police to kidnap Edgardo from his family

Raised personally by Pope Pius IX, Jewish family not allowed to take him back due to Church doctrine, this action destroys the family with grief and despair

This case gets international infamy with the Pope not understanding why everyone’s shiting on him for doing this, including allies

Emperor Napoleon III shifts from opposing Italian unification to supporting it as a direct consequence

Bologna falls the next year, 1859

Kingdom of Italy forms 1861

By 1870 Rome is lost to the Italians and the Papal States are no more

(Edgardo Mortara goes on to become Father Mortara)

(He dies in Belgium in 1940 three months before the Nazis occupied the nation, which if he’d have lived he would’ve been persecuted as a Jew)

Wikipedia confirms

Fun fact: the Catholic Church did not stop doing this after Edgaro Mortara. During WW2, many Jewish children were put in convents or catholic-run orphanages for their own safety. Sounds nice right? Except after the war ended, when parents or surviving relative went back to claim their children, the church went, “uhhh, actually they’re catholic now, no take backs!”

The most infamous of these cases was the Finaly affair. Two Jewish children in France, Robert and Gerald Finaly, were placed in a Catholic nursery in 1944 in anticipation of their parents being deported to Auschwitz, where they were both murdered. Their aunt, Marguerite Fischel, survived the war and went to find the boys so she could take them to live with her. However, the nun who had custody of the boys, Antoinette Brun, adamantly refused to give them up, reportedly saying that “The Jews are not grateful”

What followed was a years long custody battle where despite being repeatedly ordered by courts all over Europe to return the boys, Brun took them to many different countries and hid them, with the support and help of other nuns and priests. It was suspected at the time, and later confirmed by documents released in 2020, that Pope Pius XII had supported the effort to keep the boys away from their surviving family and have them be raised Catholic.

Thankfully, after negotiations between a sympathetic cardinal in France and the chief Rabbi of Paris, the boys were finally recovered and reunited with their aunt.

I wish I could say that the phenomenon of the Catholic Church kidnapping children and keeping them away from their families for the purposes of forcefully raising them Catholic is unique to Jews, but it’s not. From the mid nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century, the Church ran hundreds of residential schools in the US and Canada where indigenous children were kidnapped from their homes and forced into these cruel and inhumane “schools”. The children were forbidden from speaking their own languages or practicing their own cultures and religions, their hair was cut, and they were subject to emotional, verbal, spiritual, physical, and sexual abuse. Many of the children died due to malnutrition or medical neglect, their bodies buried like dogs beside the schools. The Catholic Church was not the only Church to participate in this, but they’ve been the most reluctant to fully acknowledge and apologize for it. It was only in 2022 that Pope Francis apologized on behalf of the Catholic Church for their part, but some people found the apology inadequate.

Idk what my point is here, just that there’s such a clean link between evangelizing, cultural/religious imperialism, and how damaging and horrifying a religion can be when it is thoroughly convinced of its own superiority. And that unless an institution is forced to change, it probably won’t change on its own.

There is a very well-known story about American Rabbi Eliezer Silver from the United States and Dayan Grunfeld, who was an English chaplain, were sent to help with the liberation of death camps. In the process of this, they were told that some Jewish children were at an orphanage in Alsace-Lorraine.

However, upon arriving at the orphanage, the nuns insisted repeatedly that there were only Christian children at the orphanage. The rabbi -- well, according to the story, he had his doubts about that -- and decided to test that information. They were given hospitality for the night because it was too late for them to safely travel, and as the children were preparing for bed, the rabbi went in, "to observe." At the point when the children were about to get into bed, however, he began to sing the Shema, the central prayer of Judaism and one which is recited or sung 'upon getting up and laying down.' For many observant families, especially in the 1940s, this would have been something children were taught to do very young, as much a part of the nighttime routine as washing their face and putting on their pyjamas.

As the story goes, the rabbi took several Jewish children away with him, since the nuns could no longer reasonably deny that a young child who knew the Shema and joined in on it reflexively was, indeed, Jewish.

Anyway, yeah, that shit didn't stop.

American Rabbi from the United States? How tired are you, Spider?

https://www.jezebel.com/we-paid-some-etsy-witches-to-curse-charlie-kirk

the comments in question are actually completely reasonable — his response to “what kind of environment lets shootings like this happen?” was basically “an environment that charlie kirk helped to create”

MSNBC firing this guy does, in fact, scare me materially more than Charlie Kirk’s third hole being installed

To be clear, I have been through post-exposure prophylaxis for rabies. In 2005 or early 2006, I forget which exactly, @urbanprole and I woke up with a bat in our bedroom bc our apartment maintenance hadn't closed up the HVAC system after replacing filters. I shooed the bat out with a broom and it was acting normally for a bat but we didn't take any chances. (Thankfully, MK was at her dad's that weekend.)

I felt absolutely wretched the next day - the worst I've ever felt, excluding surgery and childbirth - after each series of shots. I had to get 2 sets on different days. I got 8 shots the first day, and Emet got like 13 or 15 bc she's very tall, and it's done by mass. The only thing I can think to compare it to is the depths of COVID, but without the coughing. Your immune system is Working Hard to update itself so it can recognize and fight any possible exposure.

I basically laid in bed and ached and sweated and groaned, but after it was over, I was fine.

Fewer than 20 people have ever survived rabies, and none are known to have survived without immediate post-exposure prophylaxis. Do not fuck around with this. Do not approach strange stray or wild mammals, especially without protective clothing.

Several comments on this post talking about 'why can’t the US eradicate rabies entirely’ and my friends, it can be really hard to understand how fucking big the United States is, and how weird it is to have basically 50 small countries in a trenchcoat. Like, we’re fighting each other right now in courts over medicine, for one thing, and for another…

Like, one of the people commenting on this post and wondering this is from Portugal. Portugal is 35,603 square miles, and the United States is 3.97 million square miles. Portugal is 0.0093% the size of the United States, which… yeah. Like. The single state that I grew up in (Pennsylvania) is 46K square miles.

So, like, for one thing, this country is trying not to explode while a small group of people try to make it explode. And for another?

The US? Is. Fucking. Huge.

The risk is that the medication isn't dissolving as expected, so the dosing is inaccurate.

I do take lisdexamfetamine dimesylate, but since I'm not in the US i'm assuming this doesn't apply to me?

Not having a go at anyone in this thread, just a general rant, but I really wish US people would realise that in cases like this (and especially things with advice about rights and laws) stating that this is specifically a US thing is really helpful*

We do not have that information, so we are unable to provide it. It's that simple.

We cannot provide information that we do not have. We provide the information that we have. It's not about "not realizing" anything at all. It's about providing only what information we have and not attempting to extend that or extrapolate from that, because doing that where medication is concerned is... bad?

I guess I just presumed that people would know that a nationwide FDA recall only affected the nation where the FDA has jurisdiction, namely, the United States, and that pointing that out would be treating non-Americans like you’re too stupid to know that’s what the words “nationwide recall” mean. But, you know, I guess going forward I can point out that “nationwide recalls issued by the Food and Drug Administration of the United States only apply to the nation of the United States, and if you live in a different nation, they don’t apply to you.”

If you’re worried, please check with the applicable authority in your location.