Who has a better claim to being an "european native"?

Two weeks ago, as part of the Training Week I had at my new job (FRISS), I had a training session on "Diversity and Inclusion" because ever since I started working with other people it's a subject that fascinates me. And even though I have hands-on experience on it, due to the multiple environments I have been put on, in particular after leaving Portugal, I want o learn more about it to overcome my shortcomings, as I still have some and as always we should aim to always be better and grow, in particular when it comes to this subject, that we can simplify into being a better human being and understand our fellow humans.

Summer Twittetracts - Boomers do worry about non-existant problems!

At lunch my father gave me a great example of what affects society nowadays, in particular white males over 55 years-old, meaning the Boomers (even if technically they are early GenX, a lot of portuguese people this age behave in fact like boomers): they are scared of problems that don't exist but they think are very important ones.

According to him, it's a big fucking deal that employers, or people responsible for employees, don't keep a close and detailed track of the employees whereabouts, in particular their absences and why, you may ask?

Cogitation in the Time of War #31 - About the discussion on the global public arena

Macron and Scholz at a press conference before a meeting in Berlin, back in January 2022. Image taken from this My India First article.

Today is day #97 of Putin's (Still Failed) Invasion of Ukraine; 551 hours and roughly 39 minutes have passed since my previous cogitation and since I haven't cogitated here about the war lately, I was planning to only write when we reached the 100 days milestone, where I would talk about the situation on that day, the previous assessments and again attempt to forecast what will happen next. But during all this time I continue to follow closely, even though the frequency of the news and the frequency of remarks by the people I follow and that I give credibility have also reduced - this is an evidence of a phenomenon I mentioned before, that time normalises a situation, so the war in Ukraine is not such a hot topic as it used to be.

Still as I was writing, I follow closely and today I ended up writing a much longer thread than I had anticipated about a sort of discussion or debate that is being going one in the Twitterverse but also generally in the public arena, or using the direct translation of the portuguese expression, the public square, so now I copy that here for proper documentation.

America's unique "problem" that the rest of the World doesn't have

Image taken from this RTE article.

I woke up to the news today of yet another school shooting that happened in the US, this time in the city of Uvade in Texas, where a teenager (18 years-old, not old enough to drink a beer but old enough to buy a gun and to kill; also old enough to die in the military if required) killed 19 children and 2 adults and injured another 16 in the Robb Elementary School (ages from 5 to 11 years old, so the same school type that my own kids attend). I had to pause writing my essay on another human tragedy happening on the other side of the globe and write some words about these tragedies that, no matter what people say, it's a unique "problem" to the US: mass shootings done by a "normal" citizen but more specifically school shootings, many times with young men as the shooters, using legally obtained guns.

Cogitation in the Time of War #28 - About the refugees situation

When I shared in the Cogitation #26 my desire to help more on the humanitarian side, with the most visible aspect being the refugees who arrive here, fleeing from the war, my friend Marisa sent me a warning message where she stated that we need to use caution and common sense. She personally knows of (at least) one case where the family hosting refugee(s) ran into problems and she finds the help countries are providing now to be disproportionate when compared with other refugees from previous years who still face different obstacles and no one seems to care about them anymore. I cannot comment on the specific situation she knows about, as I have no knowledge of the facts (I only know that it happened, not what happened) but to me it's not surprising that situations like this happened and will continue to happen here and there, situations where refugees will abuse the goodwill of those who are helping them; we are talking about people so they are not all angels, some might be demons. And it's also very obvious that with the current crisis there is a much greater willingness on the part of other Europeans to help Ukrainians, when compared to others, but not only this is due to the proximity factor (physical, ethnic, cultural and religious at least) but also this refugee situation is different from the other refugee crisis that Europe has faced before.

So, I made a question on Twitter...

As I wrote somewhere the other day, I had sort of given up on Twitter some years ago as it had been described as a toxic environment. I didn't follow many people also so I didn't see any good in going there, but I re-discovered it after Putin's Invasion and quickly realised that Twitter is indeed the place to get the quickest updates on events such as this, if you know where to look. You also don't have that toxicity of posts, shares and comments that are all over the place; again if you know what to follow. But I digress...

It's been a while since I follow Justin King, in theory a journalist that used to be a military contractor (and if I'm not mistaken married a military woman), but that now just describes himself as Guy on YouTube. I've shared many of his videos, in articles here but also in my Facebook page. You might know him as Beau of the Fifth Column and he's of course on Twitter as well.
It was in Twitter that I noticed several references from north-americans to Waffle House, being used almost as analogy or metaphor to some situations or reactions. I noticed that Waffle House was a chain of restaurants (as in a place to get food) but couldn't understand why all the side remarks and comical mentions to it, so I asked a question on Beau's twitter and the floodgates opened...

Cogitation in the Time of War #22 - In war people do bad things

Will Smith decided to hijack the "controversy of the moment" diaspora but now it's time to talk about real crimes that cause real damage.

I'm quoting myself from my Tweet from yesterday (itself a retweet of another retweet) but you can go and have a look because the original one shows a video of what appears to be Ukrainian troops shooting the legs of Russian prisoners: 

This needs to be investigated. If there are more reports and POW testimony that Ukrainian forces are shooting prisoners after capture this is a war crime and needs the proper punishment.

Cogitation in the Time of War #17 - The Azov Regiment & Co.

After all this time, since the first days of the invasion and the first reactions from the "opposition (the so-called contrarians) and after I promised in the Cogitation #12 to write in more detail, Let's finally talk, and dissert, about the Azov Regiment and other extremists in the region.