Displaced Scotsman ...miss it every day.
United Kingdom
Joined April 2016
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Saor Alba66 ๐ retweeted
A reminder, following the @billykayscot stramash, of the late, lamented Derek Bateman's opinion on the matter, which which I happen to broadly agree.
ALT It is only here in Scotland that we pirouette on the head of a pin over patriotism and nationalism. Who else have you ever met who boasted: โI love my country but donโt want it to govern itself. I much prefer it to be in a minority in another parliament where it can always be outvoted and where parties we donโt support will dictate our budget and policies. I donโt think my country should have independence because it really wouldnโt be able to do the job properly.โ Most foreign listeners would reply: Then itโs not your country at all. You canโt care enough about it to call it your nation. You may call yourself Scottish but you are in fact British. Britain is your country. - Derek Bateman, former BBC journalist
Saor Alba66 ๐ retweeted
Your dog carries your stress in its body for months. A 2019 study in Scientific Reports measured cortisol in the hair of 58 dogs and their owners over a full year and found that the two rose and fell together. When you are stressed, your dog is stressed. When you calm down, so does it.
The synchrony was not driven by walks, weather, or the dog's own life events. It was driven by the owner. Dogs whose owners scored higher on personality measures of anxiety showed higher cortisol year-round. The dog's body was tracking the owner's emotional state over months, not moments.
The bond between a human and a dog is not a one-way relationship where the human provides and the dog receives. The dog is absorbing the household's emotional weather and carrying it in its endocrine system. Your bad month is its bad month.
This is what 15,000 years of co-evolution looks like. The dog did not just learn to read your face. It learned to sync its chemistry to yours, and the hair on its back is keeping a record of how you have been feeling since the last time it was groomed.
The next time someone says "it's just a dog," the cortisol data says otherwise. The dog is a mirror with a heartbeat, and the reflection goes deeper than behaviour. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3117โฆ
Saor Alba66 ๐ retweeted
Many thanks to Brian Krassenstein!
โThe weirdest thing about leaving America is realizing how much of America is just a sales pitch.
You spend your whole life hearing โgreatest country on Earth,โ then you go overseas and see clean trains, safer streets, affordable medicine, cities where people can walk without playing Frogger with an SUV, and workers who take vacations without acting like they committed treason.
And then you come home.
You come home to potholes, medical debt, school shooting drills, $17 airport sandwiches, people living in tents under highways, politicians wearing flag pins (or worse, gun pins) while doing absolutely nothing for the people standing in food bank lines, and billionaires being treated like theyโre the fragile ones.
And somehow weโre all supposed to stand there, hand over heart, and pretend this is normal.
I donโt hate America. I hate what America has been taught to tolerate.
I hate that we call basic things โradical.โ Healthcare? Radical. Paid leave? Radical. Clean air? Radical. Kids not getting shot in math class? Somehow political.
Meanwhile, the loudest โpatriotsโ are usually the same people telling struggling Americans to shut up, stop complaining, and be grateful.
Grateful for what? A flag doesnโt pay rent. A bald eagle doesnโt cover insulin. Fireworks donโt fix bridges. And chanting โUSAโ doesnโt make a broken system less broken.
America has incredible people. Thatโs the tragedy. The people are better than the system theyโve been forced to defend.
So no, Iโm not going to call America the greatest country on Earth just because it has the best marketing department.
Real patriotism isnโt pretending the country is perfect.
Real patriotism is being angry that it isnโtโ
- Brian Krassenstein
Saor Alba66 ๐ retweeted
What a star, standing up for herself against the racist scumbag.
Watch how a young Scottish woman named Courtney handles an older passenger going from saying โgo back to your own country,โ to claiming she's proud to be racist, to completely backtracking with compliments once she realises she has no audience left.
A masterclass in holding people accountable for their behavior.
Saor Alba66 ๐ retweeted
Here's why SCOTLAND ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ณ๓ ฃ๓ ด๓ ฟ does not need imported racist tropes from 'The Brits' influencing our home-based unionist dullards
Watch how a young Scottish woman named Courtney handles an older passenger going from saying โgo back to your own country,โ to claiming she's proud to be racist, to completely backtracking with compliments once she realises she has no audience left.
A masterclass in holding people accountable for their behavior.
Saor Alba66 ๐ retweeted
โWeโll go on my phone together Babeโ is my new top phrase ๐คฃ๐คฃ๐คฃ๐
Saor Alba66 ๐ retweeted
The English are the nicest people on the entire planet.
Did you know that they spent 1000 years aggressively trying to gain control of the land that is Scotland, just so that they could benevolenty subsidise us and govern us?
As uniquely among all the world's people, we are not competent or smart enough to look after ourselves, despite being a Sovereign nation for 800 years in 1707, with perhaps the most educated populace in Europe and trade partnerships all over the North Sea and Baltic emenating from our thriving ports.
They stepped in and saved us from our own stupidity, even kindly allowing many of our useless populace with no real ties to the land that they lived on to travel to the opposite side of the world for a better life.
They gently encouraged many of the ones that stayed to stop speaking their ancient native language, as they didn't know that it was useless and primitive, then freely educated them in a more civilised tongue.
Then charitably, they gifted them new places to live on the coast and even proper jobs down a mine.
They were even gracious enough to level all the burial mounds and stones with primitive markings on them that we were foolish enough to place in the path of the ploughs and ruined the nice level fields with.
We are so ungrateful, we don't even appreciate all that they've done for us.
Imagine arguing that it's somehow wrong for Scots to govern Scotland. For mostly these reasons:
1) England actually subsidises Scotland, after spending centuries trying to conquer it, and controlling its economic and trade policies. (Are you incapable of spotting lies?)
2) Colonialism. Because the sins of some of our ancestors mean we don't deserve an accountable democracy today.
3) The SNP Government. Because apparently uneducated people can't distinguish a corrupted political party from a permanent constitutional state.
These are just lies, misdirection and ignorance from the british, and arrogant foreigners with a globalist interference complex.
Their anti-Scottish racism is palpable.
Saor Alba66 ๐ retweeted
Councillor Matt Blair (FB post):
โApparently Iโm a โtraitorโ now. This came as something of a surprise.
Fun fact: some people join the Armed Forces because they believe in protecting their country and its values.
I used to get paid to skirmish with the Taliban in Afghanistan. These days I apparently betray my country by challenging far-right conspiracy rhetoric on Facebook (for considerably less pay, I might add)
Courage. Discipline. Respect for Others. Integrity. Loyalty. Selfless Commitment. #CDRILS.
Those values didnโt stop mattering when I took the uniform off.
And thatโs the thing about the flag. The flag itself isnโt the important bit. Itโs what it represents. You can wrap yourself in one, stick one on every lamppost and shout about patriotism until youโre blue in the face. The harder bit is actually living by the values you claim it represents.
In the British Army, we expect high standards from our leadership. If the people at the top were filling their pockets, sipping champagne and slurping oysters while everyone else was out doing the hard graft, I can assure you the lads and lasses wouldnโt respond by blaming the bloke next to them.
Thatโs the bit I donโt understand about this version of patriotism. When things get hard, the anger always seems to travel downwards.
Being angry about the state of the country is perfectly legitimate, understandable frankly. But strength isnโt finding someone with less power than you to blame for it.
Look up. Expect better from the people with power. That feels considerably more patriotic to me.โ ๐ฌ๐ง
Saor Alba66 ๐ retweeted
In 2014 Nigel Farage went on LBC to complain about hearing foreign languages on trains.
James O'Brien: But your wife and kids speak German.
That was the first and last time they ever spoke.
Saor Alba66 ๐ retweeted
Tonight, a group of 15-year-olds went to Tenpin Bowling in Dewsbury. While they were there, they saw a homeless man outside in the cold and rain.
They did not ignore him. They approached him, gave him food and took the time to listen. After learning that he had been homeless for four days following a bereavement and relationship breakdown, they found my contact details and called us for help.
At 11.33pm, our team is now with him and helping him into safe accommodation.
Most importantly, thank you to these teenagers. At just 15 years old, they showed compassion, love and understanding when many others may have simply walked past.
This is what community looks like. #Community
Saor Alba66 ๐ retweeted
I am not religious at all, but I like the reply here very much all the same
Saor Alba66 ๐ retweeted
Steve Martin spent an entire movie trying to get away from John Candy.
In real life, he became the kind of friend who stayed.
They met just before filming Planes,Trains and Automobiles. By the end of the 85-day shoot, they were genuine friends.
During Candy's original train-station monologue, Martin wept as he watched him perform. Most of that powerful scene was later cut from the movie.
It was their only movie together as a team, but decades later, Martin still speaks about Candy with real affection.
When Candy died in 1994, Martin stayed with his widow and children for a time, helping them through those first terrible days.
He did not just tell people what Candy meant to him. He showed it by being the kind of friend who stayed.
ALT Martin and Candy