Firstly, I assumed we were talking about the Republic of the Congo because I’ve never seen someone refer to the DRC as “the Congo.” So my bad for that. If people from either Congo consider “the Congo” problematic, then fair enough, I understand what you’re saying and I can try to change. I had always thought it was different from Ukraine in that “the” was intentionally left in the official name, similarly to the Gambia - which is also named after a river.

My bad, I’ve never seen someone call the DRC “the Congo” and I missed the broader context there.

The official name of the country is “Republic of the Congo.” It is fine to shorten that to “The Congo.”

I think to the Andorians, all human skin looks more or less pink because our blood is red. To us, all Andorian skin looks blue, but they probably see distinctions between the shades of blue that are significant to them. So it’s just a matter of perspective. That’s how I interpret it, anyway.

No it can’t, not unless you get incredibly lucky.

https://youtu.be/BVLJ4NUQz6I

No, almost certainly not. Vampires are not actually real, as much as he behaves like one, and I doubt he has the capacity to make a self-aware joke like this. The image is also stamped with “r/totallyrealtweets” in the bottom right.

In case you’re serious

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon

Technically yes, but we commonly refer to members of the House as congressmen/women and members of the Senate as senators. Being a senator gives you more power because there are only 100 of them compared to 435 House members, so it is a meaningful distinction to make.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_lady https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_lady

Many do, though the title is perhaps not used as often in most as it is in USA

What? The term “second lady” most certainly existed long before this.

Fair enough, I agree with you. Orwell lacked imagination and was waaay too focused on Stalinism to see what horror was already shaping in the West.

That’s not what I said, nor is it something I ever would say. We have, in fact, seen “real communism,” and we see it still today. The largest-scale example in history is the Ukrainian Free Territory, which functioned through a decentralized system of direct democracy at the community level. It lasted about four years during the Russian Civil War and was ultimately destroyed by Soviet invasion. For centuries, examples of communities functioning through mutual aid and other left anarchist principles have existed and continue to exist. I have personally visited several such communities and cooperatives, briefly living with one of them. Just because there is no “communist country” (which is an oxymoronic phrase) does not mean “real communism” has never existed.

Orwell was a leftist who wrote from a leftist perspective. 1984 is about Stalinism specifically and totalitarianism generally. It is not about communism, unless your definition of “communism” only includes the Soviet variety.

It’s a line taken from Marjorie Taylor Greene, yes