🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞

Retard is used to describe the slowing

That word, the verb, is pronounced “ree-TARD”. The “R” word is “REE-tard”.

In the same way that “negro” (NEH-gro) in some languages means black and is perfectly fine, and the same way that Niger (american “NIE-jur” or original “nee-ZHER” is also fine.

I already made my argument and explicitely said I would not debate, but I will simply reiterate: I don’t care about words that USED to be offensive or words that MIGHT ONE DAY be offensive, the “R” word is offensive NOW.

Doubling-down like that is your right, but you are stupidly divorced from reality. I don’t tolerate ablelist bigotry. Goodbye.

As long as you do realize you’re replying to a silly joke…

I think its grey enough to let slide.

I censor when I quote from Blazing Saddles, but I’m not attempting to say you’re making an incorrect decision - we all decide what we’re okay with, and… dammit, I can’t write this to sufficiently indicate I’m not judging (while disagreeing mildly), but I’m not. lol.

fascism

That’s my theory. The bigots have come back out of their closet and are taking pride and joy in being bigots. “I can say what I like and you little snowflakes can deal with it!” (until we say something they find offensive)

I suppose it’s the least of our worries considering all the other harm that’s been done and is being done, but it^[1] certainly contributes.

Executive function is the bane of my existence. I’m doing the worst possible work right now - contract work that exists at any time I want to work on it. There’s no deadline, I just pick up a piece of the work and do it. Should take 30-60 minutes per piece. And the pay is decent.

But getting myself to log in and sit down and work on that is absolute torture.

But with my health and circumstances, it’s not a bad opportunity. heh.

I feel ya completely.

By defintion they are NOT idiots!

;-)

(sorry, couldn’t resist)

(also, not sorry) :)

No apology required - at least not to me. But thank you <3

WTF does that have to do with intelligence? That’s just memorization.

“IQ” is best summarized in the fewest possible words as basically “a measure of how quickly people learn”. Thus it is an important aspect - one of many aspects - of IQ (which, by the way, has very limited scope in what it is attempting to measure).

People think IQ = smart, or IQ = intelligence^[1], but really it’s really not. I went on a rant about this in a separate comment, using my own life as an example (I have a high IQ, which has helped me in ways, but is largely useless for my success and happiness in life)/

If you require scores to be integers, this is true. If you allow for decimals, probably nobody is exactly average. :)

I humbly request that you see one of my other comments in this thread and reconsider the use of the “R” word. I won’t repeat it here so I don’t “spam up” the thread.

Please, can we move away from the “R” word.

I went on a semi-rant about IQ in another top level post, but now it’s time to go on a rant about the R word.

I’ve worked with adults with developmental and cognitive disabilities. I was a supported living coach for a while, and also volunteered some at an adult day training school where my wife taught.

The school in particular taught daily living skills, but also art. The students were encouraged to paint, sing, write. They had a theatre program - which is where I mostly volunteered, running sound for some shows and helping backstage at others.

Before I started working with them, I was a bit intimidated and scared by them. I personally have a high IQ^[1], so the concept of people living with a low IQ kinda scared me a little. What do they live for? How do they live? How do they survive with, like, limited thoughts or whatever? I had no clue.

Then I got to meet the community at the day school and I quickly realized… they’re human, like you and me. Of course they are. But I didn’t know. I learned that they have needs and wants, like all humans; friendships and gossip and enjoying some days and not enjoying other days. You know, seriously, like the rest of us.

One of the classes my wife taught was theatre, and she taught her class Shakespeare (among other things). When I say that her students understood Shakespeare, I mean they could explain what happened in the plays they covered. What I began to realize was that the main problem these folks faced was that they learned more slowly. Not that they couldn’t learn.

Also, as an aside: While it was mostly amazing getting to hang out and work with these folks that tended to be much happier than other groups of people I’ve dealt with, that is also a negative stereotype, expressed specifically in the stereotype that many people with Down’s syndrome are always happy. Well, like many steretypes, there is some truth there, but everybody has shitty days, and not only that, but everyone has their own personality. Just because you see happy people with Down’s in media… it ain’t all like that. But overall, there is some truth there.

But the main point of my post, after hopefully helping to humanize them to you and anyone reading, is to end with this: They know the “R” word. They hear it. They hear it used against and about them. And even when it’s not, they know the word and that they are its origin. When that word is used, you’re not just calling something “stupid”, you are referencing a whole group of people that absolutely do not deserve it.

As a final note, to anyone who wants to argue about how language changes and how words get retired and if we retire this word another will come along: First of all, I don’t believe you in this case. In the past 10-15 years, the word has fallen off in use, and the words that replaced it weren’t offensive in the same way. But I’ve had to start speaking out about it again because it’s starting to come back in the past 2-3 years or so, and I’d rather see it permanently quashed. Also, even if another word did come along that was offensive, THAT DOESN’T EXCUSE USING THIS WORD RIGHT NOW WHICH IS OFFENSIVE RIGHT NOW.

I’m not telling anyone what to do. You and everyone have the right to use the language you wish to. I and others have the right to judge people for the language they use, though. So I hope you and others that use the word will consider removing it from your vocabulary.

I did. Took me a while, but it was worth it.

I’m no saint. I lose my temper and rant against those I feel are supporting fascism, for example, far more than I should. So I’m not trying to say I’m better than anyone. I’m just humbly requesting that people who use that word reconsider doing so, as it makes the world a slightly better place. <3

I’m glad they gave it to Sandi to keep it going. She was the perfect person to take over.

I wanted to post this so I’ll reply to you to do it. hehe: Triple digits includes “100” which is strictly average, so it can absolutely just mean average. :) Which doesn’t go against your point, like I said, I just wanted to throw that into the mix and you were the convenient target :)

IQ is, for the most part, a stupid measure. Or at least, it measures one specific thing, which is basically how quickly you can learn. That is to say, in theory, if you put someone with a 120 IQ and someone with an 80 IQ into a class, the first one should theoretically outperform the second if they put equal effort in.

I will say this frankly: I have a very high IQ - I was tested first when I was 6 and have been tested a couple of times since. I do have a learning disability - ADHD - and mine is severe, at that. So while I do generally pick up on things faster than some others on average, I certainly don’t pick up on everything quickly. There are subjects I absolutely do not get. And furthermore, thanks to circumstances and the stupid ADHD, here I am at 50, neve having had steady jobs (I did work 5 years one place), in shitty health (six heart attacks, below-knee amputation, congestive heart failure, on dialysis because my kidneys failed), with my wife and I surviving because while we both had ADHD and struggled, she’s been more consistent about keeping work, and definitely contributes more to the household budget.

So a high IQ basically means extremely little. You don’t have to have IQ to find success in life, or even to be highly degreed and an intellectual. It just means that you probably have to work a bit more at it. That one specific aspect of life. And there are many many aspects of life.

Straight roads have little to do with driver speed. It’s how you design the roads. Wide lanes with buildings set back from the road? Higher speeds. That’s why some initiatives put curbs that jut out into the road (not into the lanes of travel) with trees and plants and such, and remove road striping. Combine pedestrians and road traffic on a road that looks more like a parking lot and you get drivers driving slowly. Sounds counter-intuitive, but it works.

Better than Atlanta that names every road Peachtree :)

I disagree. This has been a thing for 20+ years. Facebook started out the same way. So did reddit. That’s one reason the founders of reddit created mulitple accounts to post from at first - to make the network look larger than it was.

I’ve joined several networks over the years that didn’t pan out. The one I remember from a few years ago was Imzy. Good platform, just didn’t take off.

That’s… the wrong way to look at it.

Systems are often resiliant in the light of individual variation. Discarding voting entirely because of the actions of a few is like seeing the outliers in people clicking where they think a country is on a map. Sure, you’ll see a lot of dumb guesses that are radically incorrect, but the majority of clicks tend to be on the country.

In the same way, the voting tends to generally work, for a given understanding that voting was always theoretically (from reddit days) supposed to be upvoting good contributions and downvoting spam./trolls/etc, but voting is also or even more about what people agree with. So as long as you realize that’s what’s actually happening, voting is generally accurate enough.

Of course it’s infuriating when people agree with things that are wrong, but that is a wholly different issue.

The problem is building the network. Nobody uses it because nobody uses it and nobody will use it until everybody uses it.

That has always been and will always be the primary problem. You can solve all of the other problems and it won’t matter.

The alternative is Facebook with lies that go unchecked completely. This is actually an area where AI is not bad.

edit: sigh. Refusing to acknowledge where things can be useful. NO, ALL BAD. BAD BAD BAD! AI BAD! ALWAYS BAD! NO USE! NO GOOD! ONLY BAD! BAD BAD BAD! Such fucking blindness.