This is so wholesome, especially in contrast. I love it!

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!

A Link To The Past had the most magical feel of any master sword, I think.

Ocarina of Time was great, but it felt… almost like a religious artifact, if that makes sense. Whereas LTTP was just this sword in this exquisitely beautiful little grove, deep within a magical forest… it had a feeling of a legend being born that no other game has ever quite touched since. At least, for me!

Ospreys are so fucking cool! Those pictures are amazing. The intense focus, the smooth curve of the wings…

Birds of prey in general are just so beautiful. And badass. I love them!!!

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?

This is so cute and weirdly wholesome

We once did something really amazing along these lines. Only once, it was a crap ton of work.

We were fighting this giant demon wall thing. We made it out of Graham crackers and chocolate decorations, which we attached with melted chocolate as glue, basically. It was super creepy - I made demon eyes, oozing blood stuff, it’s was great.

As we damaged the wall, we would rip parts of and eat it. It was like a solid 2-3 freaking pounds of chocolate and other assorted things. It was glorious to devour the enemy like that!

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.

Totally makes sense. I mean, it’s surely more than that, but that’s definitely a frustration.

I’m a woman who’s into video games, science stuff, tech things, tabletop roleplaying games (like DnD), etc, among other things. It’s not as bad as it used to be, but I definitely wasn’t properly welcome.

I was rarely told that I wasn’t welcome as a woman, but if, for example, I mention that I’ve been playing DnD for 10 years, it doesn’t exactly feel welcoming to have them try to take my dice to explain them to me.

Men practically never have to put up with that kind of bullshit, as I understand.

100% this.

I consider myself a woman, but I’m pretty apathetic about gender all told. I think I’d adjust to being male pretty well? It’d be weird and uncomfortable for a while and I’m sure I’d find things I’d miss about being a woman.

But between the male privilege and biological advantages (no periods, easier strength, etc), it sounds like a deal to me.

Yes, omg! And the world building idiocy drove me absolutely insane.

Like, this one part where the were-something (might have been a werewolf?) was like, “only the first born of any pair of weres will also be a were” or something, and the immediate reaction… was to wonder why the were population wasn’t taking over the whole country or whatever. And the were took that seriously, saying the only reason their population wasn’t huge was a large number of stillbirths and such.

They try to backtrack that a few books later, and deal with the actual consequences of the fact that they literally can’t increase their population without polyamory - clearly someone informed the author of how stupid that was - but still, that initial response was some of the most obviously not-thought-out world building I’ve seen.

… okay, maybe that’s not true, but some of the worst I’ve ever seen in a book I continued to read, anyway.

I used to love physical books, but I just can’t do them anymore. It’s eBooks all the way - on my phone, namely.

I love to read so much and the ability to have my book on me at all times is irresistible. Going to the bathroom? Waiting at the doctor’s office? A few minutes break at work? Snuggling in bed at night and I don’t want to turn on a light and disturb my partner?

I’ve tried a few times to read physical books in the last few years, and having gotten addicted to the pleasure of reading whenever the hell I want, I just can’t anymore.

Audiobooks are great for long car drives, but I rarely do those, so they’re a very occasional treat for me.

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.

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.