Thoughts for Thursday, 16 July 2015

Emergency_Ward · 2時間前

I have finally pinpointed the absolute worst part of being a foster parent. Not getting attached to the kid and then having them leave, not soothing them after superdestructive birthparent visits, not the first few weeks where the kid has no idea what's happening and is in confused rage-mode. No, it's actually knowing that CPS policy is that you are not in any way important. The foster parent is told literally nothing at any time, because we are nothing. It's not like we do this for the glory, but in training we are told repeatedly that we are part of a team working to make the best choices for the kid. Apparently we are the interns of this team, fetching coffee and making copies. And providing 24-7 care for your vulnerable kids, you douchebags.

DsagjiiggsScjjigsjsb · 2時間前

http://i.imgur.com/xgCXSo0.png

EDIT: I also began editing Wikipedia, I don't even know where to start because so many articles are shit

MarcelleGriffin · 2時間前

So, Sunday I attended Sunday School which is becoming more of a lighter affair as it seems to dwindle more and more when people grow up and move. Really I'm not usually there since I go to school states away but for the summer I try and attend. Anyway, this particular Sunday I was feeling chatty and since SS has really turned into discussion of topics rather than studying the Bible the teacher decided to just make small talk really. So, me and him and his assistant being the only ones there we talked about race which went fairly well though seeing as we all were giving the black experience it seemed all redundant and then we chatted about corporal punishment which they were all for apparently every African American I know seems to be able to recite how they got beat with anything their parents could get a hold of and for some strange reason they could never find anything wrong with that. Like one of the teachers said he used to get beat with an extension cord and when he 'did grown man stuff" they'd move to fists. And the entire time I was preying he was exaggerating but I swear more and more people have that story at my church and it gets pretty fucking depressing that after they tell them they go and that's why kids were more behaved. In my head I'm thinking no they were scared shitless and that shouldn't be okay.

Anyway, the topic landed on the Supreme Court decision. And let me just say I usually fall in the camp of religious people should believe whatever so long as they don't actively prevent others from doing what they want. But I just can't do it with homosexuality. I just can't. I'm not gay or bi for that matter. But idk maybe as like a minority who lives in an area riddled with systemic bias that I just feel like I can understand wanting equal treatment. Man, and I get it the Bible says it's a sin, but holy fuck do I massively disagree. And my problem tends to be that I want them to disagree and I know that's bad but still. I didn't get confrontational but I did make a point to disagree everytime. One of the teachers said they were weary of allowing same sex couples to adopt cause that environment may cause a kid to grow up "confused" which baffles me cause I grew up with just a man and was only surrounded by women and I'm confident in my sexuality. Man I was peeved. Then I kept saying even if you don't like gay marriage people should be allowed to sin and it's up to them of they want to change but the only response I got was that it was wrong over and over. As if we make laws against any other perceived wrong. I know not all Christians are like this I know first hand really cause my closest friends don't care but church has been unbearable since the decision. The pastor, the youth pastor, the deacons, Sunday school teachers all have been fucking moralizing since. And I know for a fact there's several gay people at our church and that just makes me feel worse. One girl has stopped coming when the court made their decision cause I feel like she knew it'd get this bad. I mean she usually is early and never has she been absent but she's definitely been gone for 3 Sundays with no mention of her being sick or Ill.

My thing has always been free speech and free beliefs but sometimes I wonder if that's not always great. Like, I'm not saying ban speech, but man sometimes people should at least be considerate enough to think maybe my words hurt. But nope, homosexuality is a sin and sins will lead you to hell. At this point I only attend church cause my mom wants me to not cause I actually believe any of it. Which is absurd for a 21 year old but then again telling my mom I'm an atheist isn't really an option so I just put up with this for a few months not like it'd kill me. It's just that when I hear shit like that I have to fight the generalizations that they're all like that cause I know that's wrong and makes me no better but when you have to hear that during Sunday school, church service, and from Christians after it becomes a nuisance.

pittfan46 · 2時間前

Still waiting on the great purge of reddit...

In other news, I hate this job. Someone please help me.

Hevil · 2時間前

With the recent occurances on Reddit, does anybody think we'll finally be able to put /r/holocaust in decent hands?

belgarion90 · 2時間前

This shall be a momentous day in Reddit's history. May the banhammer swing free and true.

leton98609 · 2時間前

Still in China and it's starting to get horribly hot here, just like how I remember it. I've spent about half my life in China and half in the United States and I'm starting to see why I preferred the latter by far. Maybe China's a nice place to visit for tourists because of the novelty and the exotic allure, but as a Chinese person who's lived there for four years that's non-existent. All I really see is the terrible pollution, the horrible over-crowded streets, the vicious mosquitoes, and the abominable censorship and heavy-handed government control. Perhaps I should cheer up a little about being in China, but the history fan in me gets more sad when I realize all of the historical heritage of China in the cities is basically gone, demolished underneath ugly high-rise apartment buildings.

The blatant censorship has gotten worse since last time, but I've come to expect that now. With my home internet, the only sites I can visit on a regular basis are a) the EUIV forums b) Amazon and c) the New Yorker. I'm reliant on a VPN or modifying DNS settings to access Reddit. What has surprised me, however, is the government's arrest of a few foreign tourists in Inner Mongolia. I'm not sure how much of this newfound will to authoritarianism can be pinned on Xi Jinping but I'm guessing it's a good portion.

Chinese television programming has also grown a deal more nationalistic. Basically all the programs they have on now are about BRAVE COMMUNIST RESISTANCE FIGHTERS against the EVIL NATIONALISTS/JAPANESE (usually the Japanese). They all seem to have roughly the same plot and the same low production values. My dad made a crack about them reusing the one Japanese actor in China to play the lead Japanese villain in all of the shows.

I really hope I don't get arrested now...

Onto more cheerful stuff! Uh, well, maybe not so cheerful. Gotten further into Court of the Red Tsar. Yikes, I thought Stalin was bad enough in the earlier chapters, but his depravity reaches new heights as the book goes on. Whatever redeeming human qualities he had seemed to slip further and further away from him with age. I'm close to finishing but I can say I thoroughly enjoyed it. Also, about a quarter of the book seems to be endnotes and citations, always a good sign for a history book.

My favorite guilty pleasure show is back! The Strain is as cheesy as ever but shows potential of becoming a better show this season. Also, I can't dislike a show that has an old Jewish guy with a silver cane-sword killing (or trying to kill) Nazi vampires. Having Del Toro involved also gives the show a bit of coolness in the visual design department. I'd start watching the second season of True Detective, but I've resolved to turn back on my old pirating ways and get it legally somehow when I can.

More cheerful stuff, I guess? I've been spending quality time with my parents for once. My dad works in China while I've been living the past three years in Washington, and it's definitely taken its toll on our family. I'd say that makes it worth coming back to China alone. I've also gotten back in touch with one of my oldest friends, who I also sadly fell out of touch with as a result of my moving around.

viralmysteries · 2時間前

So I've been thinking a lot about what exactly free speech means; not simply legally but morally. I looked through a few supreme court cases to try to find some wording/guiding principle I'd be happy with. I especially liked one from West Virginia Board of Ed vs Barnette, where the SCOTUS rules that political expression is free speech, and free speech can only be infringed if it's deemed necessary for the maintainance of an orderly society. The court rules that the decision to not have political expression (in this case, not pledging to the flag) does not hurt society so it cannot be infringed. However, we need people to tell the whole truth in court and we need a fair trial of peers, so consent can be coerced in such areas.

There's also the whole "can't false yell fire in a crowded theater" one that everyone knows. All this talk about banning and controlling content just got me thinking about what free speech can mean as an ideal and what it's supposed to accomplish; I'm not going to lie, if the goal is meaningful and fulfilling dialogue that is reasoned and considers multiple sides, I see that more in heavily moderated subs than I do in weakly moderated subs.

anthropology_nerd · 2時間前

With school winding down I guess it is time to get back out there. I set up an OK Cupid account, and now I'm just working up the courage to talk to people. If the trends of my previous attempts at finding love hold true I will have some wonderfully awkward stories to share here in the near future!

WorldOneWon · 2時間前

Seeing Ant Man tonight! Honestly, not super excited. But Paul Rudd is the man so who knows what will happen?

jaguarlyra · 2時間前

It's the last day of Ramadan!!! Sadly I didn't hear my alarm this morning.

Feragorn · 2時間前

It's probably going to break 100° here. This is a serious issue.

I forgot that Knights of Sidonia season 2 dropped on Netflix two weeks ago, and now I'm watching it through. The first few episodes are pretty good, but I'm concerned the pacing doesn't hold up for the middle episodes. Still, it has giant mecha and space aliens so I'm happy.

Also, praise yishan. Bless the Maker and his butter. Bless the coming and going of Him. May His banhammer cleanse the subreddits. May He keep Reddit for His people.

LuckyRevenant · 1時間前

Dropped off a job application last week and it seems promising. Going to call them to follow up on it later today, most likely. Wish me luck!

I also started keeping a notebook just for things I read/watch/play/etc. The idea is that it might help me be a better writer to take notes on how things work or don't work in the stories I read/watch/etc. However, since I'm unemployed, all I do is consume media, meaning I'm kind of constantly taking notes, and it's getting to be a hassle. At this point, I'm starting to get lazy and taking a lot of notes that are like, "come back to this thing to take more extensive notes some other time".

Mictlantecuhtli · 1時間前

"Avocado means testicle lololololol" reared its head again. I reported them for having a shit source and for spreading false claims after I added to a post that was correcting them. Reddit just loves their avocado/testicle "fact".

cptn_carrot · 2時間前

So, Reddit got pretty upset about a Nazi going to jail.

tobbinator · 2時間前

News on whether or not I get nominated for exchange is supposed to come out this week or next week. I've never been so tense before and by the end of next week I'll either be the happiest or most dejected person ever.

Eid mubarak to any muslims we have on the sub! (end of Ramadan is today right?)

TaylorS1986 · 2時間前

We had some major flash flooding here in Fargo, yesterday do to a severe thunderstorm that parked itself over town for a hour. I was walking though water that came halfway to my knees crossing to street from the bus stop to my apartnment building and my clothes were completely soaked because it was raining so hard.

lolplatypus · 1時間前

It's been fun watching reddit implode over the last couple weeks, but a side effect is that I'm now subbed to way less subreddits than I was, simply because all this brought the scumbags to the top. Not a huge loss there, I guess.

In other news, it turns out I'll be ready to enter the Biology program at UCF next fall. I'm way further along than I thought I was, which is nice for someone just plinking at classes here and there. Look out STEMlords, here I come!

And in other other news, I'm totally unprepared for my vacation to Alaska, which isn't great because I leave really early tomorrow morning. I have a lot to do when I get home from work today, but at this point I'm pretty sure the hype will have me moving at light speed.

_sekhmet_ · 54分前

my car finally died yesterday. The brakes burned out and the transitor died all in the same day. RIP Carmen. You were 20 years old, Made terrifying noises, and always smelled like mildew, but you will ways be beautiful and young to me.

BritainOpPlsNerf · 41分前

I've been watching with detached interest the downward spiral my class has been going on. They've only recently pulled themselves out of it, and luckily the actual marks were (gasp) alot better than everyone was letting on. Its been a wild ride though.

We hit all the nails - general screaming frustration over marks, professor blaming, heavy and collective after-class drinking and - my personal favorite - casual antisemitism when the ~~horde~~ class discovered one of our Professors is Jewish.

Yes, clearly you're all failing this course because the Professor is a "Jewish American Princess" who has never known true struggle in her life. She only spent over half her life to this point becoming a Lawyer - what would she know of challenge?

Don't get me wrong, the class is made up of nothing but good people, and they're a hoot to go out with - but holy shit folks some introspection would probably help your marks a little bit. The average age of the class is about 28-29 as well, but they're acting like a bunch of freshmen.

Tiako · 35分前

So I saw the first four episodes of HBO's Pacific and I thought I would give my thoughts on it. I'll start by saying that the opening credits sequence is god awful. If you lined up every possible cliché in current war movies you would get something like it: mournful trumpet, chalk drawings turning into marines looking very sad, the American flag, etc. It's really bad, which is a bit if a petty complaint but if I need to watch it at the beginning of every episode I will mention it.

The battle scenes are also really weak. So far every one can be summed up by a basic sequence in which the Americans look tense, twig snap, flair goes off revealing JAPANESE COMING OVER THE LINE and then a montage juxtaposing Japanese soldiers charging forward getting mowed down and close-ups on an American soldier firing a machine gun. Extend for three minutes, have someone yell cease fire, cue mournful music. This worked well in the first firefight, as it showed the terrible human toll of the “turkey shoot” one soldier had gleefully predicted, but three battle scenes later and it seems that might have been accidental. Simply put the Japanese are, at this point, basically not being presented as a threat in the slightest but as a group of back lit clay pigeons.

In a sense I think there is a problem here with the representation of the Pacific war in general. To put it one way, the entire Normandy campaign, from the landings at D-Day to the liberation of Paris, lasted a bit over two months. Guadalcanal alone was about six. It often feels like they are trying to fit the Pacific war into a narrative mold fit for the European war and it just doesn't really work.

And then there was the fourth episode and it was almost like the filmmakers were showing their hand because after a brief bit where yet another hoard of faceless mindless Japanese get mowed down it knuckled down to the rapidly cracking psychologies of the soldiers and essentially addressed all my concerns—even my feeling that it was whitewashing the well documented take-no-prisoners aspect of the war. So I guess my faith was restored.

My one last concern is that every movie or show about WWII in Europe has a scene where the Americans stumble on a group of French or Dutch civilians, give them chocolate and get an understanding of the true cost and reason for war. As of yet I have seen no acknowledgment in the show that the islands they fight on are all inhabited, and I can't quite shake the sense that this is because French milkmaids go down easier than half naked savage tribesmen to a viewing public. Here's hoping I'm wrong.

8BallTiger · 17分前

I got a part-time gig transcribing 19th century letters from a Freedmen's Bureau teacher. It's fun at times but it can be tedious and the professor I'm assisting can also be scatterbrained and just all over the place.

I was talking to my advisor yesterday about my thesis and he said "Well have you thought about doing an American studies program for your PhD." That was weird.

I also think I might add CUNY to my list of PhD programs I'm going to apply to but maybe I'm just infatuated with the idea of living in New York and I should just visit to get that out of my system.

40kfreak · 1時間前

Just because people who only cite Dan Carlin's podcast are bad historians (and obnoxious) doesn't mean the podcast is bad history!

badhistory

July Moratorium: Irish slaves, Conservapedia, and everything /u/Quouar posts

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