I’m now envisioning a car wrecking its way into a house, and then trying to make cat sounds with its engine and stuff (the meows would be kinda hard, but whining would be easy enough) at the door of the restroom, and then the tires just squeal as it zooms away as the person opens the restroom door. I’m envisioning the sheer, overwhelming perplexity on their face.
I’m completely cracking up over this image. It’s amazing.
The TumblrBot’s response to the “do you want to be human” question made me crack up.
It’s fantastic. A bit insulting, playful, charming - man, that’s amazing. I’m going to be randomly giggling about that answer. Coming from an AI… haha!
The problem is, that’s exactly what the … is for. It is a little weird to our heads, granted, but it does allow the conversion. 0.33 is not the same thing as 0.333… The first is close to one third. The second one is one third. It’s how we express things as a decimal that don’t cleanly map to base ten. It may look funky, but it works.
???
Not sure what you’re aiming for. It proves that the setup works, I suppose.
x = 0.555…
10x = 5.555…
10x = 5 + 0.555…
10x = 5+x
9x = 5
x = 5/9
5/9 = 0.555…
So it shows that this approach will indeed provide a result for x that matches what x is supposed to be.
Hopefully it helped?
You think that the statement “what LGBTQ+ says about x” is a comment that is possible to make sense?
“LGBTQ+” is not an organization. It’s not a religion or a creed. It doesn’t “say” anything - and, in fact, isn’t even an “it” in the context you’re using!
It’s a term for a group of people that have nothing to do with each other, other than some shared traits. In your comment, replace “LGBTQ+” with another word for a group of unrelated humans. “Blondes,” maybe, or “women,” “men,” “dark skinned folk,” “humans,” etc. You can’t put something like “Americans” or “Christians” in that sentence, because those are too specific.
Can you see the problem now?
Is it fair to post a video of some random dude saying something stupid, and then say, “I have proof that men believe X”?
No, because “men” don’t share a creed.
LGBTQ folk also don’t share a creed. We’re just people.
And I absolutely believe you’d hear some folks joking around about “coming for their children.” A friend of mine jokes about the gay agenda all the time. Her gay agenda is “going to the grocery store to get milk.” But someone could get a clip of her saying that she’s got a gay agenda, easily.
And thing is, even if that video happened to be about some folks who weren’t joking - it doesn’t mean anything! Just because someone found some random assholes at pride doesn’t mean that everyone who’s LGBTQ+ has an agenda.
I’m probably wasting my time, I know, but I figured I’d put it out there just in case you are honestly misunderstanding the situation. Here’s hoping.
It’s annoying when monogamous people act like we’re all lying about experiencing compersion.
Man, do I feel this. Why is it so hard to believe that people can feel differently about things?
No, I’m not jealous and afraid my wife is going to leave me if she has sex with someone else. She isn’t when I do that, either.
We’ll eagerly discuss all the juicy details. She loves hearing about my adventures. She’s more shy, so I hear more about who she’d like to be with rather than actual adventures. We both giggle and discuss people we’d totally bang and there really actually isn’t an undercurrent of anxiety about it.
If I found someone that I started to fall in love with, isn’t that an awesome thing? Love is wonderful! And the sort of person that I could love would be someone that my wife would, at the very least, like. How does this not sound like a wonderful situation to people?
Monogamy doesn’t make sense to me, though I respect people’s right to feel the way they do. If they feel jealousy, that’s allowed. If they think it’s better to have jealousy, then I’m confused, but whatever.
It’s just weird that feeling differently gets such negative reactions and accusations of lying.
The way I think of it, there is no subtraction, and there is no division. Or square roots.
There is the singular layer of operations (the adding/subtracting layer which I think of as counting, multiplying/dividing layer which I think of as grouping, etc).
Everything within that layer is fundamentally the same thing. But we just have multiple ways of saying it.
Partly because teaching kids negative numbers is harder than subtraction, and thinking of fractions is hard enough without thinking of it as a representative process of relationships via multiplication.
Again, just how my brain does things. I’m not a mathematician or anything, but I’m pretty decent at regular math.
Oh, no denying that at all. It is a problem, especially in aggregate.
When looking at the big picture, those rotten apples really do spoil the bunch and it can be depressing.
But also people can take that big picture awareness of problems and hate on people a little universally. Saying things like humanity is awful and a plague on the earth and maybe shouldn’t exist. There’s absolutely reason to see things that way.
But we are also a species that dolphins can approach for help when they’re injured. Or that will fight tooth and nail to help a wild creature. Or who will sacrifice their own well-being, not just for friends and family, but for strangers. Who will take other creatures, like dogs, into our homes and hearts and love them with all we have.
We can suck as a species, absolutely. We need to fix it. But it’s important to remember the joys of humanity, and not just the failures. Both are extreme, for we are a rather extreme species!
It really is a matter of perspective.
You’re saying that 10% of the population being awful means that a “huge number” are deeply broken.
So then 90% are being good! Mind, it doesn’t take too many assholes to wreck things for everyone, but it is nice that the majority of folks really are trying to do their best. A sizeable majority, even!
I dunno, I’ve seen some really low bars :P
None of this is saying don’t hit on women.
It’s saying that some men are complete assholes when they’re rejected, and so it’s not a simple and straightforward thing to reject men.
Don’t invalidate the experiences of women who have had reason to have trouble. Don’t say stupid shit like “just say no, why do women gotta do things like ghost people,” etc.
And if you do hit on women, don’t give them a hard time for rejecting you! They’re allowed to say no, for any reason, and they aren’t required to justify themselves to you.
But absolutely continue to pursue women - respectfully.
Thank you very much!
Yeah, I’ve run into that plenty myself. Hell, I’m a woman and I have a wife, and I was once accused of being homophobic… as I was trying to explain why I was happy about living thousands of kilometers from my family.
It really bugs me when people accuse people like my grandparents of being “hateful.” If my grandparents see that, they’ll just see more “proof” that left wingers have no idea what they’re talking about.
I can’t do anything to fix the issues on the conservative side of the fence - I really wish I could - but I can hopefully help on my side of the fence, with fostering better understanding and communication.
My break from conservative thinking was… uh… perhaps best described as a violent psychological event. I went from thinking we were the good guys, to maybe getting some things wrong, to suddenly realizing I’d been unknowingly on the side of evil my whole life. Meeting someone who was gay and hearing his story, about the abuse he took from people who acted exactly as I’d been taught to… Stars above, that ripped out my heart.
And if I hadn’t already had my beliefs cracking and under pressure, I’d have blown off his story as pure manipulation.
It’s a whole thing, for me. I can only hope for reconciliation of some kind. My family members aren’t really evil people - they mean well, even if they only consider people who are straight, white, and Christian to be fully people.
But calling them things they aren’t won’t ever get them to listen.
Not that I know what would get them to listen, beyond convincing their pastor of things…
I get where you’re coming from and why, I really do, but I think saying stuff like that is really unhelpful.
I’m about as left wing as they come, but I grew up in rural Florida. All the bullshit you see about the place? That’s my family. None of them specifically have shown up on the news, but still, it’s them - their beliefs, attitudes, etc.
The issue isn’t deception or manipulation from regular conservatives. When my grandparents / cousins spit out that sort of bullshit, that’s not what’s going on.
The issue, rather, is a complex one that is, among other things, a thing of trust.
They believe, honestly and truly, in Fox News. They believe in their preachers. They believe that homosexuality is a demon that possesses people, and by interacting with “the gays,” you “open the door” to demonic influence in your life.
That last bit is an example of something I was outright taught.
When my grandparents talk about how it’d be good for America to round up all the gays and put them in concentration camps, what they’re feeling is protectiveness. They want to protect people from Satan’s influence, and if someone has accepted the enemy to the point of being proudly gay, then why should people be sympathetic to them? Get rid of them all, obviously.
Yes, it’s insane and hurtful and stupid and so frustrating that I haven’t spoken to my extended family in a few years.
But they’re not trying to trick people. They don’t need to think about what they believed before, they don’t need to second guess what’s right, they know what’s right. What’s right is believing in the authority figures they’ve been trained to believe in. What is right is to listen, to obey, to fight as they are directed to fight, for the good of all.
It’s horrifying from the outside, but from the inside, it’s a safe little bubble where you don’t have to wonder and worry about what is the right thing to do. It’s easy - the only hard part is acting on it. Do what’s right, and everything else will fall into place. It’s simple and feels good.
To challenge that way of thinking, to suggest that they have to figure it out themselves - that’s a huge ask. Going against what they’ve been taught their whole lives, and for what? To have to deal with moral uncertainty and unsolvable moral dilemmas? That’s hardly a reason to change.
Mushroom, mushroom
That is an excellent point. Yeah, PSI would totally read as pounds times square inches which would be something else entirely. Adding in the extra P would fix it, too. PPSI. Suppose it’s another thing that people just have to get used to, haha.
Because in^2 is generally said “square inches.”
So it’s “pounds per square inch.”
Sometimes “per” will get its own letter, like in PPM - parts per million - and sometimes it’s left off, as in PSI.
In that case, yeah, you’ve got an admin problem. I’m sorry - that really sucks. The entire system desperately needs an overhaul. The education system in Canada is a dumpster fire, and the US is even worse. Dealing with behavioral issues is one of many major problems…
You might have had bad teachers and bad admin, true - but more likely, the school can’t do anything.
I’m a teacher, and I cannot tell you how incredibly frustrated I am at how tied my hands are. The admin can’t do much, either.
My options: talk sternly to the student. Talk sternly to the parent/guardians. And… that’s it.
Send them to the office? Sure. The principal also has those two options, for the most part. Suspending students is something we only do in very rare circumstances, but they really, really try to avoid it, because so often, kids are acting out because of stuff at home, so suspending them only makes the behaviour worse.
We can’t do detentions after school or on weekends - we can’t force parents to bring their kids in then. Lunch hour detentions, we can’t afford dedicated staff to run them, especially since we’d also need them to chase the students down, because it’s not like they’ll go just because they were told to. We can’t fail students any more.
Our district has also even gotten rid of prizes for achievements - no more honor roll, no awards, nothing. Apparently this makes the low performers feel bad, and we couldn’t have that.
And talking to the parents? Most parents are honestly great, but also, I never talk to them, because the kids with the great parents, I never need to call home. The asshole kids? Their parents are almost always a nightmare. And it’s a waste of time to talk to them.
One kid last year, went after another kid’s field trip paperwork with a pair of scissors. Ripped into her like no one’s business. Sent an email home describing the situation. I was pretty sure, based on her history, she wasn’t really going to destroy his stuff, she was trying to get a rise out of him, so I said something like, “while I believe she was only intending to annoy him, not actually destroy property, it is critical for her to understand that this is absolutely unacceptable behaviour” or something like that.
So rather than telling her kid off, mom goes to the principal to try to get me in trouble for calling her kid annoying.
In application? Doesn’t matter what the teachers or even admin want to do. The district, province/state, and country have taken away practically every carrot and stick, when it comes to students with extreme behavior.
It’s a huge mess.
I think it’s absolutely intentional. It feels like it’s written by and targetted towards people who are viscerally repulsed by pedophilia.
It’s creating a situation that feels like absolute horror, and using that revulsion to help sell the horror. This centuries old mind, trapped in a child’s body, unable to properly experience things like sexually and romance, continually on the outside of everything, treated like a child despite her age and abilities…
If I remember correctly, she ends up being this extremely bitter murdering monstrosity, out of rage and spite over her existence. Despite her angelic, innocent face, she’s the most evil of the lot. Partly because she doesn’t even have the option of interacting with humans properly, and even most vampires treat her poorly.
And all because a character had a moment of moral panic, of pity for a poor child. A desire to do the right thing.
It’s awful. And it’s supposed to be.