It is amazing to witness a nation learning from another nation’s mistake. It’s such a smart, sensible thing to do. Voters in Canada were able to identify a pattern, imagine the consequences happening to themselves, and make a decision to not do the same failed thing as the U.S.

That’s gotta be a crucial distinction between Canada and the U.S.

Here in the U.S., people ignore and downplay patterns (especially if the patterns hurt their feelings.) When pressed to explain an identical set of patterns, we’re more likely to blame whoever is experiencing the patterns for causing them than to critically analyze the cause and effect surrounding them. [Examples I’ve heard through my life: “Poor people suffer because they’re drug addicts.” “Women don’t get paid as much as men do because women are worse workers than men.” “Black people live in violent neighborhoods because they’re inherently violent.”]

Too many of us are entrenched in the propaganda-sphere; we are too arrogant, vocal, and either unwilling or unable to engage in critical thought against our zeitgeist. I imagine that if the situation were flipped and Canada had been the first to fall to fascism, the U.S. would still follow. After all, if another country messed up, it’s because they did it wrong. But we’re too special, too important, Too Big to Fail™, so we could do the exact same thing and be confident that [consequence] could never happen to us.

Lotsa shocked Pikachu faces going around these days…

“Tapping me along” made me imagine someone tapping a golf ball. Nudging it, but not making a big swing, it could be indicative of a subtle influence.

Trump may not know a lot about a lot, but he spends enough time golfing to potentially use a metaphor from it. On the other hand, I’ve never golfed (except the mini kind), so I could be way off.

I just keep watching this. It’s fascinating to see how the “eye” of the herd forms, strengthens, and moves. The individual actions of dozens, if not hundreds, of reindeer coalesce into the same pattern as a hurricane… Fucking beautiful. Thank you for sharing this.

Yes, this professor reacted well. That’s not relevant to my point. There are tons of people who would not react well if ambushed by a room full of people who may or may not be making fun of their psychological issue.

These students are also having this behavior reinforced by this positive attention. Is it truly “reading way too much into it” to consider what unintended harm this can cause down the road?

Is it too much to consider how people who struggle with serious mental health issues, such as phobias, could react disastrously poorly to even a “cutesy” stunt like this?

Is it too much to think how lucky these students were to have a professor that DID react positively?

If looking at this situation through an ethical lens is “reading too much into” it, then I guess I read too much.

Let me get this straight. A bunch of college kids learned their professor’s phobia, and they thought they could … try exposure therapy on him, I’m guessing?

Without his consent?

Or the guidance of a licensed professional?

Or are they making fun of him, for some reason?

… and that is “wholesome”?

They are lucky their professor was a good sport about it. For some people, this could be dangerous, no matter how cute the costumes are. And now these students are going to walk away from this thinking it was a good idea.

How many might reference this moment in the future while downplaying somebody else’s fear?

How many will think that because this went over well with this professor, that they can pull a similar stunt with someone else who has a phobia?

I’m glad everything worked out well here, but I fail to see what’s supposed to be wholesome about this. Not everyone is capable of tolerating something related to their phobia, and doing this at his workplace without any prior warning is cruel. But mostly, I worry about the message this sends to the students.

There are enough “armchair psychologists” out there with no training, who think they know how to cure random strangers. People with mental health issues, including phobias, already have to deal with people who downplay their experiences all the time. This stunt carries the same energy as “Everyone makes up allergies just to feel special, so I’m adding peanuts anyway.” Like this guy’s phobia can’t be serious, so it’s okay to casually force him to face it.

And I know I might get downvoted for it, but I just can’t agree with that idea.

A smile? It looks like a wince or a grimace to me. As a teacher, he has to keep his composure around his students, and sometimes that means sucking up one’s discomfort and playing along.

Though maybe he looks happier in a better resolution and it’s just potato quality on my phone?

Might as well. It’s still safer than driving right up to people who will arrest you, and worse.

Somewhere between January 20, 2025 and today.

I guess we’re at a point where the safest thing to do in this situation would be to just abandon your car and walk away. It’s better to sacrifice your car and inconvenience traffic than to risk your life interacting with ICE.

I mean, I know other drivers would be pissed, but so be it. In the (hopefully) unlikely event anyone here finds themselves in this situation, don’t buy into the sunk cost fallacy - just cut your losses and keep yourself safe.

As a Millennial whose teen years were filled with adults pushing me to gO To cOLleGe constantly, I’m pretty pissed. I could make and fill a Bingo card of bullshit reasons people repeated ad nauseum, yet in retrospect there is one critical reason that nobody mentioned - that if you want to emigrate, other countries only want you if you’re “educated.” (Or “skilled.”)

I can’t imagine most adults I knew were even aware of the requirements for becoming a citizen in another country. I had dreams of moving to Canada at that age, so if somebody had known, it would’ve been a very convincing argument on me. For those that don’t know - the system is set up to prevent most people from going anywhere, but having a specialized degree makes you desirable internationally. It’s one of the few ways that ordinary (read: non-wealthy) people have that allows them to move to a new country.

You know what’s wild? This is the first time I’ve ever heard of men doing roller derby. I mean, I’m not surprised that men do it, I’m just surprised that I’ve gone my whole life up to this point and never heard of/encountered/or met men that do roller derby. Are all-male teams common in the sport?

Did you read archive link with the full text? It talks about how the culture of 4chan started and then spread out across other social media platforms. Other sites weren’t always as toxic as they are today, yet 4chan began rotting much earlier on. The problem is that the rot, which originated on 4chan, has become mainstream. That’s why we see this shit everywhere now.

Way to absolutely miss the point.

I don’t need to be or decide it and it’s not my opinion: the language community is the ultimate authority of their language. Their collective choices establish observable conventions. Linguistics is dedicated to that approach.

A not-insignificant amount of women think using the term “female” is derogatory. Women who feel that way are part of the “language community.” You’re talking like we’re some outsider group, whose use of English is less valid than yours.

Language has conventional, established meanings.

Language is alive - it evolves, it changes. As well, English famously doesn’t have an established body to define meanings. Rather, English words are based on common usage. Women commonly experience the usage of “female” in a derogatory sense. We didn’t designate it this way - all we’re doing is pointing out that it’s used in this way. Just because you don’t feel a derogatory sense from a given word doesn’t mean those that experience it that way are wrong.

If you had gone out to research the usage of “female,” including how people perceive it in different contexts, you’d see just how many anglophones disagree with you. But those people would probably, by and large, be those who’ve experienced that word in a derogatory way - in other words, they’d be women. So how about we stop acting like this is a semantics issue and get to the point you’re really saying, which is that women’s experiences and opinions are somehow worth less than yours.

If it were an ordinary sentence used in casual conversation, sure. But for a news headline, it makes sense to put the most important information at the beginning.

It’s been years since I’ve crossed the Canada/USA border, so things may be different today. But when I went, the Canada side was more concerned about smuggled weapons, while the USA side was more concerned about smuggled drugs. Still, it doesn’t take much to trigger a border patrol search.

Apparently if you go from New Brunswick in the morning, spend the day driving through Maine/New Hampshire/Vermont, and cross into Quebec the next day, that’s suspicious enough to get detained for several hours and to have your entire car searched at the border. To me it just made sense to do a straight line drive through those states, since staying inside Canada between those two points would have been a much longer, more convoluted route. Silly me, being logical about my route without considering how others break international law.

What makes you the ultimate authority on what terms a woman can consider “derogatory”? Where do you get the power to decide what words other people should use to describe their own feelings? What makes your opinion about it more valid than those of others?

Have you considered that the same word can make two different people feel two different ways? Unless you’ve got the power to know exactly what another person is feeling, there is nothing that makes your thoughts more valid than the thoughts of others in this matter. Doubling down that “derogatory” isn’t the right word to use gives the impression that you don’t believe “female” actually feels derogatory to a lot of women. Gotta wonder why that might be.

if that was the correct explanation then we would expect to see (1) people in countries where it’s worse having even fewer children, which we don’t see, and (2) people in countries where it’s better having more children, which we also don’t see.

That’s not how things work. In fact, that’s practically the opposite of how things work. Increased access to educational opportunities for women is strongly correlated with lowered fertility rates. It’s a well-known pattern. Or another way to frame it, is that poorly-educated women are more likely to have more children.

Part of the pattern is missing from this picture too - before this baby bust, was the baby boom, and before the baby boom, child mortality was a lot higher. A lot of medical advancements took place around the middle of the 20th century, which resulted in more children surviving to adulthood. Prior to this, people typically had many children because so many of them wouldn’t survive. It takes time for a society to adjust to higher life expectancies, resulting in a period where people continue to have many children just like their own parents did, despite no longer needing to.

However, those high rates don’t last. People adjust to the new health expectations, leading the next generation to have fewer children than the one before.

Add in other factors of a prosperous state, such as educational opportunities and access to comprehensive healthcare (which would include birth control), and it makes sense that “countries where it’s worse” would have more children, and “countries where it’s better” would have fewer. (Check the link above for more explanation. It goes into way more detail.)

I was with you for the first sentence, but you lost me at “witty dint.”