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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

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The Old Hack

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Posts posted by The Old Hack

  1. Posted

    3 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

    And as for terminology, there are languages with no grammatical gender at all, and languages where the grammatical genders have absolutely no relationship to sex.

    Languages can be funny that way. Danish is one of the latter, in a sense. Apart from certain dialects close to Germany that have three genders, Danish in general only has two -- combined gender (male and female gender conflated into one) and agender (the literal translation would be 'nogender' but it sounds a little odd to my ears.)

    But even English has gender in it, if vestigial and only used in very special cases. One would be ships, which by seamen are referred to as 'she' rather than 'it.' This same naval tradition exists in Denmark as well and is one of the few places where this kind of usage survives.

  2. Posted

    5 hours ago, Scotty said:

    but it could be worse if Ellen and Nanase told Susan and then Mrs Pompoms denies it, even if Diane was there, it'd basically be their word against Mrs Pompoms and Susan might be more likely to believe her mother more.

    I do not think so. 1) It is Nanase, whom Susan knows personally. 2) Vampires are involved. In this, Susan all too well knows how deadly serious the trouble is -- and knows how unlikely it would be for Nanase of all people to invoke them in some sort of deception or scam.

  3. Posted

    3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    I really hope it will, but I wouldn't go as far as to expect it. The issue of race is older and didn't seem to be settling down yet.

    Codswallop. Gender identity is a much, much older issue than the race issue. There are cultures on this planet that make specific allowances for people to move from the gender assigned at their birth to the other. We have present day hunter/gatherer tribes in which gender is basically treated as whether you hunt or you gather. We have thousands of years old legends of males becoming females or the other way around. Tiresias of Greek mythology is just one example.

    Race, on the other hand, is a far more modern construct and only started to become an issue once improving travel technology made large scale interaction between continental land masses possible. Race lines as we know them have only existed for a mere handful of centuries and came into being as a justification for the systematic enslavement of Black people. In previous centuries or millennia, what slavery did exist was usually based on cultural or tribal lines. Even the hapless Slavs, a people so victimised by the slave trade that their very tribal name became the root word of 'slavery', were not considered a 'race' but a tribe.

    Also, at its very root, the concept of 'race' is scientifically speaking utter nonsense. The concept of gender is not. Which would be more likely to be an old, old part of humanity's identity: an observable physical and social fact or a ridiculous contrivance solely brought into existence to justify the exploitation of people with high melanin content in their skin?

  5. Posted

    38 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

    Besides, I still pass a large Family Video every time I visit my doctor's office.  Unless there is a highly localized time warp,

    That would depend on precisely which doctor you are visiting. Would it happen to be the Doctor?

  6. Posted

    1 hour ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

    The "bathroom ordinance" failed due to lack of support by the rest of the Rockwall, TX city council. Only the Mayor voted for it, and he's apparently the only one who had a problem.

    Oh dear, how sad, never mind. Another outdated, intolerant and bigoted buffoon bites the dust.

  7. Posted

    4 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

    I've also seen that in a lot of these issues, the majority of the people most loudly offended by some terminology that they say is disrespectful of some group are NOT PART of that group. And if you think using the offending terminology brings down their wrath, just try being part of the group yet not be offended at the terminology...

    I regret to inform these people that I consider it far more important to respect the wishes of those actually affected by the terminology than those of any spectators, however idealistic.

  8. Posted

    5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    Wolf 359 is less than 8 light-years from Earth and it still doesn't have "well-known name" (of course, after the massacre, it is known pretty well). Granted, it's red dwarf, so not exactly visible with naked eye and unlikely to have habitable planets,

    It used to have one, but Krypton exploded. :demonicduck:

  10. Posted

    2 minutes ago, BurntAsh said:

    Consider it from the other perspective for the moment (and also consider which parts of the group you are interacting with as well, no group is a monolith). If you are having problems just getting folks to recognize your identity and how you see yourself, and that's a constant day-in/day-out issue, your nerves are going to be somewhat raw. You don't have to fish for reasons when people keep giving to them as if they are some sort of housewarming gift.

    This is true and also very important. One thing I find helpful to remember: if someone comes at me angry about something I said, however innocent my intent, they may well have cause. In that case my first priority must be to find out what it was I did wrong so I won't repeat it. And one cannot always expect people to behave reasonably when one has hurt them. In the best cases I've been able to work out what I did wrong and at the same time conveyed my apologies. That often goes a long way towards better communication afterwards.

    Another point to remember: it is not often helpful to tell someone not to be angry. If they are actually communicating in good faith, they will be angry for cause and in that case the solution is to discover what caused the anger and hopefully alleviate it. If they are not communicating in good faith -- this is unfortunately also possible -- no appeal to their better nature will work in any event. And most importantly of all, there are those who simply use anger as an excuse to dismiss the angry person's argument. This is a much-loved tactic of those who wish to silence victims of (for example) misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and racism. It is called tone policing and works like this: if you are angry, your argument is invalid, if you are not angry, you have no reason to complain.

    The above is the ideal and unfortunately I cannot always live up to it. For one thing, I have a temper of my own and I cannot always control it. But for exactly that reason I try to remember that the anger of the other person may very well be valid and should be respected.

    Ser Pentrose reacted to this

  13. Posted

    3 hours ago, Tobyc said:

    Media Watch, tonight looking at several Australian media outlets which picked up a National Enquirer story about Prince dying of AIDS, among other things.

    The poor sod will end up having died from more causes than the number of times JFK was shot. :(

     

    Quote

    On a slight tangent, I was reading a newspaper review of the
    century a few nights ago which included a headline reading: "Kennedy
    Slain By CIA, Mafia, Castro, LBJ, Teamsters, Freemasons. President
    Shot 129 Times from 43 Different Angles."

     

  14. Posted

    4 hours ago, ijuin said:

    The real trouble comes when people within the group itself can't agree on the terminology with which to refer to themselves, and each sub-faction rejects the others' choices of terms. The infighting can be epic, and all outsiders had better agree with ALL sides of the argument (including agreeing with each side's rejection of the others), or else be branded an enemy. It's "my way or the highway" with multiple mutually exclusive "one true ways", meaning that there is NO possible position or lack-of-a-position that will not make you somebody's enemy. Hooray for double binds. 

    I have elected to simplify. I choose to refer to each individual as they prefer and to otherwise avoid employing offensive terms as I am best able. That is the best I can do; if this stance makes me enemies, I regret that but I do not know a better place to work from.

    hkmaly, Scrapyard_Dragon, BurntAsh and 2 others reacted to this

  21. Posted

    A question just occurred to me:

    The first time Elliot was ever turned into a girl, I am fairly sure Elliot's gender identity was that of a boy turned into a girl, i. e. still considering himself male.

    Over time, this seems to have gradually changed. I wonder if today's comic's moment of acceptance also marks that Elliot now fully considers herself a girl while transformed into her superhero identity or other variations of female selves?

  23. Posted

    1 hour ago, Sjmcc13 said:

    The pacifist route removes allot of the fun options in the game, as there a bunch of quest lines/exploration you just can not do since you need to kill the flora and fauna on top of the raiders/legion/whatever to get through them. 

    That said the Legion is a result of a problem that Sandbox Games have, if you want to make it so you can do anything or as much as possible in game, you have to be able to chose factions, which often means you have to be able to side wit the villain, which leads to horrible options. 

    Incidentally, the MMO The Old Republic from Bioware does it differently. While the Empire on the surface consists of bad guys and the Republic of good guys, the choices in the missions consist of Light Side/Dark Side choices for yourself. Just as there are some surprisingly decent people in the Empire, there are also some truly rotten apples in the Republic. Ultimately, the choice of Good or Evil rests with the player, not the faction.

    Ser Pentrose reacted to this