More like… take the orange, with the peel still on it, into the shower. Dig your fingers straight through the peel deep into the center of the orange, and then rip it open. Smash your whole face into the middle of the orange, shoving the sweet insides into your mouth and not caring that much of it is smearing on your face. Then shower normally… no sticky residue because you’re already in the shower and it washes right off.

A 1-800 number is immune to long distance charges, free to call by anyone in the US— the owner of the 800 number pays any fees associated with the call. Traditionally, 800 numbers are owned by companies in order to sell stuff. (The 1- portion of a 1-800 number means that it’s a long distance call… which was a thing when I was growing up in the 80s/90s, but basically isn’t a thing anymore in the age of cellphones)

The opposite of an 800 number is a 900 number. The person calling a 900 number has to pay, usually by minute, and most of that money goes to the owner of the 900 number. Famously used for phone sex lines.

Hey guys, is it okay if I don’t hate Jewish people, I just hate people who do Jewish things or otherwise associate themselves with Jewish culture or identity? I mean, if they just stop being Jewish then I won’t hate them anymore!

No. No that’s not okay either.

Don’t you mean Wyoming?

My two year old son is just learning a few words right now. I’m looking forward to the day I can have an honest conversation with him, explain things using words, and get to know what’s going on in his tiny little adorable head.

It’s a failure of properly understanding intersectionality. Intersectionality says that the combination of societal status does not equal the sum of each individual status, but may in fact be its own unique thing. A black woman has unique challenges and experiences even compared with “women” in general, or “black people” in general, even though black women are black, and are women. This is a weird idea and hard for most people to wrap their heads around, so it’s not surprising that this comes up.

Jews (of which I am one) have a particularly troublesome social status intersection that creates a unique combination that leads to some troubling conclusions for modern left leaning Americans.

Consider the following two premises: oppressors, that is, the strong, should be fought against to prevent the weak from harm. And white people have historically been the oppressors.

Hopefully, these two statements are non-controversial and make sense.

Then come Jews, who, apart from their Jewishness, are basically considered white in the modern day. So jews are oppressors and must be fought against to protect the weak, right?

Ah… but there’s a nasty historical coincidence— the oppression against the jews has always been that they are secretly powerful and oppressing others. The elder protocols of Zion and other nonsense permeates the culture. Hundreds of years of jews being the evil bankers (because we were forbidden from having any other job). Constantly given garbage and unfavorable positions, and any success we reap from that is then used as ammo against us.

So the intersection of whiteness and Jewishness creates a self-reinforcing messy cycle of increasing hatred that is really hard to untangle.

I feel like I heard about this being in development from a quack book back in the later 90s (sound waves being used to destroy tumors, that is)… amazing to hear that it’s real, and works!

Hey, I’m pretty darn leftist (democratic socialist, not tankie) and pretty opposed to the current state of affairs regarding CEOs, so I feel this is targeted at me… and yet totally misrepresents the position.

CEOs are not useless. CEOs absolutely set the “tone at the top” and create the entire culture for a company. At the same time, CEOs do not work 400 times harder than the average worker, yet that is what they are paid. CEOs are also capable of doing great abuse to those beneath them, and have next to zero accountability for it. CEOs are kings in their little fiefdoms, and I say down with all monarchy. Note that “down with kings” does not mean “down with leaders”, nor does it say or even imply that kings aren’t leaders, or that leadership is useless to have.

That’s literally what it is. It’s people who want humanity to die out, but without suicide, war, or murder, but instead merely by not reproducing. I’ve seen their communities and it pretty much comes back to misanthropy— hating humanity.

I continue working in Japan and have it covered by national insurance.

I was shocked to discover the hatred the old live action Mario movie gets. I enjoyed it when it came out when I was a kid. I rewatched it as an adult to see if my memory was faulty… still enjoyed it. It’s a little campy, but it’s a fun romp! I unironically enjoy it, as a good movie and not as a “so-bad-it’s-good” movie. And yet it gets so much hate…

The fucker thinks Ukraine isn’t “other peoples” so to himself, he’s not being hypocritical. Doesn’t matter because he’s going to die and burn in hell anyway, having destroyed the empire he wanted to create.

Likewise, the crime wave of the 70s in the US has been directly linked to leaded gasoline putting lead in the air, and leaded paint. You can map the crime wave literally block-by-block to correspond with areas that have not done lead mitigation efforts or those that have.

Also makes you think about the pathologically evil governmental policies the older generation have enacted, and how those people have also been influenced by lead in the air.

I’m of the understanding that lead poisoning effects the ability to engage in theory of mind (thinking about what someone else is thinking— also, empathy) and future planning, consideration of consequences, first before influencing other mental faculties. Which is why it can be linked to crime so easily.

The word paradox has too many meanings, alas. I like jan Misali’s explanation of the word: there are five definitions of paradox. https://youtu.be/ppX7Qjbe6BM?si=Lnkao0t0qFLi9tjj

I want to add that the convenience factor they give to non-disabled people really helps the life-necessity factor for disabled people. Economy of scale helps a lot. Someone who needs straws to live can go to any grocery or convenience store and buy dozens or hundreds of the things for dirt cheap because the disabled people aren’t the only ones buying them, and that’s a good thing.

Want to say that my personal experience nearly matches yours. I was allowed in the birthing room and held my wife’s hand as she gave birth. I was allowed to hold my son for approximately 30 seconds. Then I was kicked out of the hospital and not allowed to return for over a week. I was also expected to be back at work pretty much immediately.

Finding changing rooms I can use is definitely a trial. I typically assume I won’t be able to find one, and if my wife isn’t with me I plan to use the backseat of my car or similar arrangement.

The hoikuen workers (approximately translates to daycare, if you don’t know) don’t talk to me when I pick up my son, which is nearly every day. On the rare opportunity that my wife’s schedule allows her to get him, they won’t stop talking about every detail.

Yeah, gender roles are pretty fixed, and challenging said roles is hard.

The sun high up in the sky produces light that has to go through a thin layer of air to reach you, and is really powerful. It’s so much light that it can burn your retinas. The sun near the horizon produces light that goes through hundreds of miles of atmosphere, scattering a lot of the light, and the remaining light is safe to view.

Other mammals are sentient, but not sapient so far as we know, with the possible exception of some species of dolphins and whales, but this has yet to be proven. (It is pretty much proven that apes, monkeys, etc are not sapient)

What’s they key distinguisher of sapience? There are different measures, but “theory of mind” is the one that seems most relevant. The ability to think about what someone else is thinking. This seems to correlate also with the ability to ask questions and tell stories, and we currently know of no other being besides humans that can do either— again, research into dolphins and whales continues, and there might be potential there, but we’re pretty darn certain nothing on land has it.

The people being classified already existed. You just see them now. The fact that this elicits racism and sexism says a lot more about you than it does them.

Step one: ask what the person’s use case is, then match it. It’s a standard interview trap to present this “sell this pen” thing as a test where the “potential customer” needs to prop up their window or poke a hole in a balloon or something stupid like that, just so they can turn down the people who hype up the writing capabilities. Always ask what they need first.