I mentioned it, but didn’t try to recommend it to my forty something sisters who mostly use Facebook, because I figured it was a lost cause (and we’re small enough that I’d be very identifiable from my comments), but try were both very interested in it. Unfortunately, I lost them trying to explain it.
I dislike grapefruit and durian. Otherwise, I’ve never met a plant I don’t like.
I realized that my comment kind of sounds like I’m calling Americans dumb or uneducated generally, but I was thinking specifically about civics, history, and economics classes and I never mentioned that. Those courses are either missing from the curriculum or heavily biased to the point that I think it’s natural for people to have a poor understanding of fascism.
My parents both had masters degrees, and I grew up in a house where “communist” was a slur and “anarchist” was a synonym for chaotic. They weren’t stupid or uneducated, but they had been significantly propagandized. My dad fully thinks that leftists are fascist. Hell, I learned through high school that the US had never lost a war. My history classes never got past 1945, with the exceptions of the moon landing and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I’m an American immigrant in Germany, and I’ve come to realize that most Americans are very naive about government. The US has been very successful in the short time it’s been around as a country, and I don’t think most Americans really realize that it won’t always be like that. At the same time, the education system has been gradually but thoroughly gutted.
I hope we can wake up, but I worry we might need to see for ourselves before we can actually learn. I just hope the rest of the world doesn’t indulge us so long that we take everyone else with us.
I felt like an actual adult for the first time when I realized that this is true for everyone. It may not be SpongeBob socks, but people don’t fully lose their childhood. They can’t always express it because we don’t accept it societally (though I think we’re getting better), but everyone still has something. I think that’s why people will say that they never really feel like adults, because they see it in themselves, but they can’t recognize it in their peers (or more likely, their mental images of people their age/with their responsibility level that they developed in childhood).
My sister has been a teacher for over two decades and has two children, and I can still make her giggle at a dumb joke or squee over something cute, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a completely capable adult. She, of course, thinks she’s still a kid inside, and I chose her as my example instead of myself, because I think of myself that way too.
At my age, my parents had been together for fifteen years, had a child and owned two houses (boomers, man), whereas I’m newly married to a fellow student and we live in a shithole 35sqm apartment. Of course, I’m an immigrant who spent years mastering the language here and is getting a masters degree in the instruction of that language, and I’m actually pretty accomplished and emotionally mature, but that’s harder to measure as a milestone of adulthood.
Most of the time, I recognize people fondly, too!
No fingers to count on = better at subitizing
This was a joke comment, but getting that link sent me down a rabbit hole and now I feel like I did the first time I took shrooms (like I’m so ignorant and helpless that my continued existence is an indication that the universe has some goodwill for me, because I couldn’t have survived on my own). Plants can maybe do division??? Absolutely wild. I know, technically any human who can run to catch a ball can do calculus, but it feels different when plants do it.
There are some things that crows can do that we can’t that require brainpower. They’re not included in our definition of intelligence, but that’s only because we base that off of what we are capable of.
When we talk about athleticism, we rarely talk about neck rotation, but if we wanted an unbiased comparison with an owl, we’d probably have to start.
Similarly, we’d likely need to start assessing the ability to differentiate, recognize, and remember individuals of different species based on seeing their faces once, if we wanted to be at all fair to crows. They can do that to us pretty consistently, and we are capable of very little in that area. I’ve spent many hours looking at my beloved cat, but if another black, green eyed cat of the same size and with the same level of snout snuck in through my window, I’d need to count toes or rely on sound/behavior cues to tell them apart (though I feel weirdly guilty admitting that).
I think we’re probably smarter than crows are (and definitely, if we use the current definition of “smart”), but I also think they’re probably better suited to the core skill that drives our intelligence, pattern recognition. I suspect that they’d also be better than llms are now, if we could figure out a proper interface for them, but I don’t think they’d enjoy that very much.
That sounds amazing rn [8]
I was living in a shithole apartment with a noisy fridge that the landlord wouldn’t fix and complaining to my therapist about it. He suggested I fix it, which was a completely alien idea to me at the time. It was a lot less complicated than I expected, I learned a lot about how it worked, and my self-confidence and perceived control over my circumstances skyrocketed.
I just want to know how many times people did this accidentally before Möbius gave it a name
I think they’re clarifying that the removal of the DEI program erased you, not the DEI program itself. It’s a small nit to pick, but then you confirmed it, so I think they just got confused. Words are hard sometimes
Well shit, I never thought I’d value the German bureaucracy. I’m an immigrant who teaches German classes in Germany and they waived my language requirement. I was honestly surprised, I figured I would just pay the stupid money and have the most relaxed oral exam in my life, but they were somehow organized enough to recognize my master’s degree in German.
I married a German though, and getting the marriage license took about five months, and it was only valid for six weeks.
In lay me down by the dirty heads, the line:
But they were seen by the good eye of the mean billy green
Should have been:
But they were seen by the keen eye of the mean billy green
Sure, but trends seem to hit harder here, probably because we’re smaller. There have been weeks where it seemed like 60% of the non text posts in my feed were about jeans or beans or vegan cat food. Those probably weren’t more than 0.1% of posts, but they sure felt overwhelming at the time.
It doesn’t bother me on a peach 🤷
Black market variance? Do you mean it got expensive or am I lost?
Wait, someone knew the admin the whole time? I thought they went missing, but I also didn’t pay super close attention. I hope all is well with them.