Honestly, he dodged a bullet. Imagine a taxonomist who wants to date another taxonomist. It’s virtually guaranteed that their relationship would be non-stop fighting.

truth

When I went to grade school, I think it really depended on the local school district. I was lucky enough to grow up in a nice area with well-funded schools, and I have relatively few complaints about the education I received. However, in doing school activities, I had the opportunity to see schools in poorer districts, and there was a distinct difference.

At the time, I didn’t think too much about the difference, except that I didn’t feel as safe in some schools.

But looking back… Now I know why parents always shop around for better school districts, because there are some places where it would have been far more difficult to get a decent education.

That’s my knowledge from many decades ago. Maybe it’s gotten worse since then.

The “brainwashed” thing is somewhat true, at least from the perspective of an outsider, not due to a racial thing, but there is a cultural aspect in addition to the tendency for all sides to be brainwashed by their own propaganda.

But the Japanese propaganda told their soldiers to fight to the death, because if the Americans captured you, it would be worse than death. So, from the outside, they did appear to be brainwashed in that regard. Of course, Americans had similar propaganda making Japanese seem as evil as possible, often in the most racist way, so you’d have to say that Americans were brainwashed, too.

Also, culturally, I think American culture emphasizes each person more, while Japanese emphasizes community more, which means things like kamikaze are easier to sell. And that sort of thing also appears like brainwashing to the outside.

The train tracks are extra support to keep Florida from floating away.

I don’t recall specifically being taught that, but I do recall believing that was a fact at the time, so it is very likely that I was taught that in class.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a couple of slaves like that, but even so, it’s a misleading statement. I actually think that using the truth to lie is a worse sin than just outright lying, because it’s easier to mislead more people like that.

The one that immediately springs to mind doesn’t exactly fit the criteria, because it wasn’t even true at the time that I was taught it in public school in Texas. But my history teacher taught me that no real historian called it the “American Civil War,” and that it was correctly called “The War of Northern Aggression.” And, of course, although the Confederacy did want to keep slavery legal, their actual central reason for seceding was “states rights.”

Like I said, both of those are simply lies. Only propagandists call it “The War of Northern Aggression”, and it was always explicitly about slavery.

The sad thing is that I believed and repeated these lies for years after that. Note that, like most people, I didn’t have access to the internet to easily check things myself. Since at the time I had zero interest in reading about history, it was difficult to correct my knowledge.

It has demonstrated, to me at least, the importance of keeping propaganda away from children. The more you lie to children, the harder it will be for them to become functioning adults.

Ah, of course. When, as you said, the doctor addressed “the family” and told “them” that stuff, of course, I assumed that you, being “a friend” wouldn’t have been there, or at least would have said “us” instead of “them.”

But of course, you were actually there and heard the words directly with the family. Cool.

She was a hardcore alcoholic, and this is an alcoholic saying that. Doctor addressed the family and told them alcohol wasn’t the factor, the liver failure was 100% down to Tylenol.

That doesn’t sound realistic, that a hardcore alcoholic’s liver failure was 0% from alcohol abuse. I suspect that the information changed at some point in the process of relating it to you.

It was probably just that the Tylenol overdose was the immediate cause, and somebody took that to mean that alcoholism was not a factor.

Eugene, I think I’m having a stroke.

A backstroke.