Sam Tahami

@SummaVeritas @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga Because there's not liking the new flag, and then there's performative outrage like yours that has to tie in a ridiculous fanfiction as an unneeded justification. If you paid attention to the convo, I wasn't the one flipping out over the color blue. Follow the advice you gave...

@SamTahami @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga Sir, you've spent all day gaslighting to defend a flag that you don't even like. Why is that? You even had to chime in on a nice post of Americans showing their love for their states to argue about the new MN flag. Put down your hate and desire to argue and try being kinder...

I always thought America was one country 🇺🇸 But Americans on X keep saying "Well in MY state it's totally different" Texas. California. New York. Florida. It sounds like 50 small countries in a trench coat. Is that a fair way to think about it? Please quote-tweet with your state flag! 🙋

@SummaVeritas @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga Might should get your eyes checked. You went from being somewhat cordial to flipping out on the color blue then the shade of blue that you think proves it's 'Somalian' despite still being different and the previous flags changing it. The only pathetic thing is your outrage grift.

@SamTahami @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga Oh no, he's backtracking after proving himself wrong and me right. Dude, at this point, apologize to everybody here and just delete your account. This is so pathetic.

@SummaVeritas @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga Your crying and hand-wringing drama grift continues now with multiposting... Focusing on the shade of blue is the most inane and desperate straw grasping I've seen. Firstly it's not the same as Somalia's. Second, if that's your low bar, was the change from 57 to 83 'Somalian'?

@SamTahami @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga It's neither of these, so where the fuck is it?!

@SummaVeritas @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga You're acting stupid since you clearly wanted to hand-wring over nothing. You said "The blue color is not a color you would ever see in MN" when brand communication and the flags since 57 all use blue. The only thing 'destroyed' is any illusion that you aren't an outrage grifter.

@SamTahami @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga Are you stupid, or do you think I'm stupid, or both? That's for "brand communication", and, most importantly, it literally doesn't have the color blue that makes up the majority of the new flag on there. Destroying your own argument is insane.

@SummaVeritas @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga It clearly does because you weirdly cry about the color blue out of nowhere when talking about the Minnesota flags when pictures of them have been shared in this thread. The truth isn't as exciting so you will cling to the cringe outrage farming on here. mn.gov/portal/brand/s…

@SamTahami @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga "No you are" doesn't work on me, no matter how much you jazz it up to make it sound like that's not exactly what you're doing. You failed repeatedly to provide "easy to find facts". Why? The truth causes outrage, but people like you will still defend the failed DFL to the end.

@AvengerGloomy @northernpresbyy @midwestern_ope I'm sure you say the same thing about the flags of Texas and Chile! 🤣 Also a coincidence that the North Star state uses a star on the flag!

@SamTahami @northernpresbyy @midwestern_ope As I said, definitely just a coincidence🤣

I’m still upset the Minnesota state flag doesn’t have a Loon on it

@SummaVeritas @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga You're ironically again writing something that applies so much to yourself. Don't know why you suddenly decided to fight on every single point and call any easy to find facts you don't like as 'gaslighting'. I can dislike the flag without clinging onto outrage farming narratives.

@SamTahami @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga Let's cut the bullshit because everything you just wrote is gaslighting.... You aren't able or willing to back up your gaslighting ans lies with facts, so this is pointless. You're gonna continue to defend a horrible flag because if was made by the people who you rabidly support.

@AvengerGloomy @northernpresbyy @midwestern_ope Closer than the different star shape that was moved to a different spot in a dark blue shape on a different shade of blue. You can dislike the new flag without desperately hanging onto "it's Somalian" outrage narrative.

@SamTahami @northernpresbyy @midwestern_ope Not even close to the correlating star featured on the new flag and the somali flag.

@Majora__Z @DelusionPosting It seems to me like the comparisons between Teotihuacan and Rome keep piling up!

To be fair, I don't think we have evidence for exactly how it was ritually flooded, it could have been just something that happened whenever it rained, but considering the use of drainage systems at other structures at Teotihuacan, the fact the Ciudadela plaza COULD flood was probably intentional

I want to use this one day hehehe

@SummaVeritas @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga 1. Is there a good reason for you to fight on this when Google can point this out right away? 2. It was one of the reasons. Again more gaslighting from you to fight on weird points. 3. It was altered to be less divisive. 4. Tiny details are hard to see period hence the change.

@SamTahami @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga 1. Why are you blatantly lying? Like what's your purpose here with being so dishonest? 2. But that wasn't the stated reason here was it? More gaslighting 3. Nobody cares, it wasn't a divisive change 4. No it's not enough because nobody looks at that flag and first notices a star

@AvengerGloomy @northernpresbyy @midwestern_ope You might wanna try harder to look closer. The little stars make the star shape in the center which by your criteria is enough to be 'Somalian'.

@SamTahami @northernpresbyy @midwestern_ope Incorrect, the old flag doesnt feature a star which is the primary correlating feature. Try harder.

@SummaVeritas @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga 1. On past flags since the 50s and on branding... 2. A lack of enthusiasm for seal on blue flags is a good reason. Both parties were behind the 1989 petition. 3. Yes, and wasn't voted on publicly. 4. Not mine, it makes it obvious but it's there. By your criteria that's enough.

@SamTahami @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga 1. WHERE HAS THAT COLOR BERN USED? 2. Yes, the flag is purposely divisive, even the reason for changing it is. 3. 43 years ago. 4. You had to draw in a star to make anyone see it... think about that. How disingenuous. 4b. NOBODY thinks the previous flag looks more Somali. NOBODY.

@SummaVeritas @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga 1. Obvious ragebait. 2. Political relates to governments which flags connect with. People tend to use 'political' to mean divisive. 3. 1983 wasn't that long ago. 4. Different blue, star, and dark blue shape aren't 'Somalian'. If that's your low bar, the 1983 flag looks closer.

@SamTahami @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga 1. That color blue has never been used and you can't find it anywhere in MN. 2. Sure, call it partisan, despite political being colloquial used the same way and you know that. 3. You couldn't vote as easily in the past and the state wasn't run by radical Leftists.

@SummaVeritas @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga 1. What is this weird tirade against blue? It has been used in Minnesota iconography for a long time. 2. Flags are political, you mean partisan. 3. None of the previous Minnesota flags were voted on by the public. 4. The previous flags also had blue & stars, it isn't 'Somalian'.

@SamTahami @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga North Star State. But you put the star and the nonsensical blue together (no green?) and it sure looks like the flag of the people who have done the most to ruin our state...

@Majora__Z @DelusionPosting I'm so glad I looked through more of these! I had no clue that a Teotihuacan temple complex was ritually flooded!

I agree that person is probably being dumb but I keep up with scholarly research on Mesoamerica, and while "more advanced" is iffy, there ARE things the Aztec were at least comparable to Europe at, that the Spanish praised & respected the Aztec for 1. The biggest example would be sanitation and botanical and medical sciences. To be clear, the idea that Medieval Europeans were super dirty is a myth, but Mesoamerican civilizations also had very impressive hygiene standards, with the Aztec especially took it to an obsessive level: Civil servants cleaned streets and buildings and collected waste from public toilets on a daily basis; there was a huge industry for soaps, shampoos, toothpastes, perfumes etc. People were expected to bath, wash their hands/face/teeth and sweep, and to shaving/plucking hair multiple times a day etc. Some interpretations of Aztec theology have dirt, disorder, etc as a sort of corrupting cosmic entropy, and urban planning and architecture was planned to ward off miasma. The Spanish regularly remark with astonishment at how clean everything was kept, some thought smallpox was from them bathing too much, etc. A lot of that urban planning and the pharmaceutical stuff I mentioned intersected with botany and horticulture: Green spaces were worked into cities and nobles or especially kings often had lavish botanical gardens (Pic 1, kinda), which weren't just sites of relaxation but were used experimentally to test and study different plants (multiple royal gardens had different sections emulating different climates/ecosystems and growing conditions). They even had a proto-taxonomic system for categorizing plants and flowers, and these gardens were used to stock medical herbs. Lastly, on that note, they had very developed medical practices. We have hundreds of recorded treatments for different conditions, including some wild stuff like eye surgeries and the first recorded instance in the world of intramedullary rods. Cortes, Motolinia, and most notably Francisco Hernandez de Toledo (Philip II's personal royal court physician and naturalist) all asserted that Aztec medicine was superior to Spain's, with Hernadez specifically seeking out Aztec medical and botanical documents and travelled to Mexico. See here: docs.google.com/document/d/16i… for more info ---------- 2. Kinda ties into my last point, but hydraulics and waterworks engineering. Again, I hesitate to claim that the Aztec or other Mesoamericans were "better" then Europe here, but there are certainly Mesoamerican examples which were impressive even by European standards. Even Mesoamerica's very first city, the Olmec site of San Lorenzo, had multiple canal/aqueduct systems, and even relatively small sites sometimes have these, clay pipes, etc. By the time Mesoamerican civilization really gets into gear, you have stuff like Tikal which had massive reservoirs with filter systems that connected to each other via networks of overflow canals and dams with switching mechanisms and drains on public buildings and plazas to prevent flooding. Or say at Teotihuacan which had multiple rivers re-routed through the city's grid layout, household reservoir's which linked to that and some which had running water and toilets, and a large arena/plaza which could be filled with water like the Roman Colosseum for rituals (Pic 2). Palenque had many of all those things, and even pressurized fountains! The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, of course, was famously built in the middle of a lake, with the city expanded over time with a grid of artificial islands to both give extra space for urban development and to act as hydroponic farms. Canals ran across the city like Venice (Pic 1) with various aqueducts (the most notable of which had twin channels or pipes with a switch mechanism), drainage systems, public toilets, huge levees/walls to split the lake into a fresh and brackish side, and other water management systems. Or say Texcotzinco, a mountaintop royal estate for kings of Texcoco, the second most powerful city, was fed by a 5+ mile long aqueduct which at some points rose 150+ feet off the ground, had a series of pools and channels to regulate the water's flow rate, which ran through a series of fountains, bathes, and shrines before watering the terraced gardens at the mountain's base. There's some other impressive engineering feats, such as not uncommon uses of corbel arches and even a few true arched structures, the bridge at Yaxchilan MIGHT have been the world's first true suspension bridge with vertical suspenders and a level deck span, and WAS for sure the longest bridge in the world for a few centuries, etc, but the waterworks is where they really shined. See here x.com/Majora__Z/stat… and here x.com/Majora__Z/stat… for more info, and here x.com/Majora__Z/stat… for more on Teotihuacan's urban planning and architecture. ---------- 3. Again, while I hesitate to insist they were "better" or "more advanced", many Spanish friars and Conquistadors regularly compared Mesoamerican art, cities, intellectual achievements and civil law/order to their own, or to the Greeks/Romans (all being "civilized pagans"), and some did even think they were better in some ways. My favorite example is feather mosaics (pic 3): The Aztec, Purepecha (who had the third largest empire in the Americas after the Inca and Aztec) and other groups would make "paintings" with a iridescent, color changing sheen with tens of thousands of feathers. This was used for both illustrated tapestries, but also on clothing, garments, the outer surfaces of shields, helmets and warsuits, as well as large 3 dimensional banners and models of animals and objects. During the colonial period the Spanish were amazed by these and commissioned many pieces with Catholic iconography, of which a few hundred still exist today. To follow up on the Greek/Roman comparison I mentioned the Spanish made: Tlaxcala, one of the main states which allied with Cortes, was a republic whose most powerful political institution was a senate (pic 4) open to both commoners and nobles. Senators had to subject themselves to public beatings and insults to prove their commitment to public service before then undergoing years of legal and ethics training prior to taking office. Cortes also praised Tlaxcala's courts, laws, police systems, markets, wares, etc, but to be honest so many Spanish sources praised that about so many Mesoamerican cities or aspects of their society. Some choice quotes in addition to what the images say: Bernal Diaz: "...there are three Indians now living in the city of Mexico...who are such magnificent painters and carvers that, had they lived in the age of the famous Apelles...or of Michelangelo or Berrugeute in our own day, they would be counted in the same rank" Duran: "Lose the bad and false opinion that these Aztec people were barbarian and uncivilized... in matters of government and good order...majesty and authority, courage and fortitude, I have found no one to surpass them" Cortes: "We believe... by the aid of the interpreters who should plainly declare to them the truths of the Holy Faith...many... would very quickly depart from the their evil ways and would come to true knowledge, for they live more equally and reasonably than any other....which we have hitherto come across" Albrecht Durer (a famous 16thC. German artist, not a Spaniard): "I saw the things which have been brought to the King...from the new land...a [sun and moon of gold and silver]... two rooms... of all manner of wonderous [weapons and armor of the people there]... clothing, beds, and all kinds of wonderful objects...more beautiful...than things spoken of in fairy tales... I have seen nothing that rejoiced my heart so much as these things...the subtle genius of men in foreign lands" Sahagun: "They have talent for it [grammar, logic, rhetoric, astrology, and theology] and learn it and know it, and they teach it, and that there is no art for which they do not have the talent to learn and use it." Certainly not all Spaniards had this much praise for them, but many had the outlook that it was really just the sacrifices and cannibalism that was the issue, and that otherwise the Mesoamericans were ideal converts who already had high culture and sophisticated societies. In fact, even Sacrifices and Cannibalism were something some friars saw as being merely misguided attempts at valid theological practices, comparing it to Christ's sacrifice, communion, etc, and some specific deities to specific Catholic saints, or holidays between their two religions, etc: x.com/Majora__Z/stat… The Spanish also had a fair amount of respect for their armor, weapons, and skill in battle. A lot of people have this idea that they were unarmored bands of wariors, but they had organized armies with armor, ranks, formations, a variety of different specific weapon types, that made use of complex tactics: x.com/Majora__Z/stat… Lastly, this is kinda tangential, but I'd just also like to point out that during the Conquest, a lot of the time rather then just it being Cortes or other conquistadors divide-and-conquering local states, it was also actually local kings and officials manipulating the Conquistadors into doing what they wanted/and or those local lords calling the shots. There's so much cool stuff with rivalries, coups, and alliances that get overlooked because many sources solely focus on the Spanish perspective, or oversimplify it to Cortes getting allies due to Aztec oppression (when, if anything, it was Aztec rule being hands off which enabled opportunistic side switching and backstabbing): x.com/Majora__Z/stat…

@piersmorgan @ufc @danawhite @realDonaldTrump And what battles do you pick against Trump?

I thought the @ufc event at the White House was great. Very different and very entertaining. Congrats @danawhite @realDonaldTrump 👏 And to my liberal friends shrieking in faux outrage about it, I say this: pick your battles with Trump, this ain’t a hill to hysterically die on.

@SummaVeritas @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga Would say the same of the previous flags being chosen without a public vote? Wanting a democratic vote for a new design is good, but let's not pretend that previous went through that process. The North Star state can use a star shape and blue, Somalians don't own it.

@SamTahami @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga Yes I agree, Minnesotans aren't overly enthusiastic about our flag. But that also doesn't mean that we want a flag that reminds people of the worst immigrant group in the state and doesn't look at all like it should belong to MN. Choosing that flag for us with no say is gross.

@AvengerGloomy @northernpresbyy @midwestern_ope If that's your criteria, then the previous flag looked far closer. Do you also believe the Texas flag is Chilean? Do better than committing yourself to outrage farming on false narratives.

@SamTahami @northernpresbyy @midwestern_ope definitely just a coincidence

@SummaVeritas @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga It points to a huge lack of enthusiasm that you wouldn't see for the American flag or the Texas flag. I'm not a fan of the final design either and the actual F1953 design was better so I'd prefer a democratic vote. However, it's not like the previous flag was voted on either.

@SamTahami @SteveMcWrites @japan_nobunaga The ones who didn't notice it being upside down wanted it changed? I don't get it. 2,600 designs submitted and we got zero say in the final atrocious design. Do you think that was democratic or good?