It’s not all of us ☹️

I got very randomly bumped up to first class on a transatlantic flight for business. I do not travel much for business, especially internationally. So, I definitely should not have had priority over more regular accounts. I have to assume I just got lucky, and that flight happened to have no frequent flyers.

It was an eye opening experience. I got to hang out in a secret lounge. When my flight was ready to board, multiple staff escorted us to the gate. When we landed, we took a private van to a secret side entrance, which had its own first class only passport check. We were brought to another secret first class lounge through hidden back hallways to wait for our connections. The lounge looked down over the terminal, and the exit was a nondescript door you’d assume was a maintenance entrance.

Being around that level of service and the other people in first class, it’s clear the wealthy live in another world. I looked up how much that ticket normally goes for after, and full price is for many people a yearly salary. It was nice, but it seems like a crazy way to divide resources.

The solutions here don’t seem to really be solutions in my opinion, especially the third one. It’s like if the problem a patent solves was “being able to individually package sandwiches on a conveyor belt” and the solution was “have a machine that recognizes where one sandwich ends and another begins so it can stop and start packaging appropriately.” Like, no kidding, but how?

A Canadian I used to know told me their family would have some cheaper items in the back seat that they’d declare and hide the more expensive stuff. Apparently it did work.

Reading that article is a serious indictment of economic literacy in the United States. People don’t understand what role the president plays in the economy, what causes inflation, or how and why interest rates change. They draw really superficial causal links and don’t think about it after that; it’s fact to them.

It’s reasons like this education may be the single most critical issue, since we can’t make progress on the climate or anything else if the population is incapable of critical thinking. I hate to say it like this because it feels patronizing, but Jesus fucking Christ.

It takes a lot of the magic out of it. I’m sure a bit of this is rose-colored glasses, but it was a really neat experience as a kid. The entire neighborhood was out in the streets, people got to know their neighbors, and you felt like you were part of something. These days​, it feels spooky due to how empty it is besides cars.

Yeah, in my area trunk or treat is the main reason for no trick or treaters these days. It’s a very urban area, so getting a lot of candy on foot would be easy, but walking around a parking lot is way quicker. It seems to be what most parents prefer also, so I think it’s here to stay.

Then it’s not a binary system. It’s a system with two extremely dominant members. Those are different things. You can be more binary in specific contexts e.g., gametes and egg vs sperm.

I’d be very cautious about the healthy description in reference to intersex people. I don’t believe you are trying to say anything nefarious, but there’s a reason it shows up in eugenics arguments.

I didn’t say sex was a spectrum, though perhaps someone else you were speaking with did. I wouldn’t use spectrum for sex, since there are multiple differentiating factors with differing measures.

I’m not quite certain the point you are making here. Is the implication that because humans typically have two hands, those that do not are not a group that can be described? Or that they can be, but only should be as the product of developmental errors?

We don’t generally, where we know exceptions exist, refuse to acknowledge their existence. Saying sex is a binary is saying there are only males and only females. That’s literally what binary means. Like binary notation either uses 0 or 1. If it was possible for sometimes to have a 2, it wouldn’t be binary anymore. That’s a different thing.

This is especially true for something like sex that is based on a grouping of traits, genes, expressions, etc. which are not universally 0 or 1. Sure, we generally agree on a category when some are different, but there’s some points where it’s not so stark. Hence, the binary fails because there can be overlap and grey.

Nobody is saying we have to stop using male and female to describe sex in most cases, especially in a medical setting. But if you had a child born intersex, and the doctor turned to you and said, “Nah, my gut says male. Nothing will be different,” you’d probably ask for a second opinion.

Hard agree. It’s like a sweeter burger sauce but in the worst way possible. At least you get stickers.

I don’t know. He got dropped by his agency and Joe Rogan (!!!) in the past for using a racial slur. When people show you who they are, believe them.

Cloacal kissing is the actual reproductive act between mates, and it basically works the way it sounds.

I’m not seeing where I mentioned him being a Nazi.

I understand being charitable and not assuming bad in people. However, it’s not exactly a mystery where Trump stands in this area. I’m a little doubtful this comedian is barely making rent, so this wasn’t a gig he had to take. Since he did, he has to accept being part of that context. It was very easy to avoid.

If this ends up costing Trump the election, and Hinchcliff comes out saying that was his master plan, I’ll gladly eat my words.

If this guy genuinely went to this rally and was trying to make fun of this sort of racism by telling that joke (i.e., the joke is how stupid it is to believe that), then you would have a point. But I don’t see any reason to believe that because he agreed to speak at a Trump rally. Context goes both ways.

While it’s worse at a political rally, I don’t think this is much better at a comedy club. Mostly because it’s not really a joke; it’s just offensive. Perhaps if there was some point he was trying to make beyond being racist, but it doesn’t seem like it. It’s only “funny” if you’re already bigoted against Puerto Ricans.

I’m not sure about New England. New Hampshire and Maine such a party would probably work in, but I am doubtful of any of the rest. MA and VT are two of the most left-leaning states in the country.

I think, at least in the GoT example, sexual situations can be used to communicate a lot about the attitudes and culture around sex and nudity in the universe of the show or movie. It’s much more interesting than somebody saying, “Hey, person who already knows this: it’s considered normal for men to use brothels, isn’t it?”

It’s much less interesting and necessary for something set in the “current” world, since the audience doesn’t need as much education in the social mores. However, it can make the work have better instructive longevity if it’s an accurate depiction of the time, since people fifty years in the future can watch and understand what was different.

But I do agree that overall there has been a lot of gratuitous nudity and sex, just the same with violence, etc.

There’s a ton of practical knowledge and skills a student could learn from a properly structured experience in construction. The focus needs to be on education first with productivity being a bonus, however, which I’m skeptical was the case here due to the outcome.

It absolutely happens before the conviction. Arrest records and mugshots are generally public information, and the press will publish them immediately in many cases.

There is also no obligation to retract/amend if the person is found innocent, and there is nothing the person can do if they use careful language (arrested for, accused of, allegedly). Most publications will refuse to take the article down later if the innocent person requests it, too, meaning that follows them forever. There are companies that make money offering the service to bury such articles to make it easier to get a job.

The US routinely demonstrates why most its peers do not do it this way.

It’s really not dumb. If copyright law worked that way, no photographer who included human subjects would be able to make a living. Artists deserve to be able to sustain themselves from their labor.