Phi for All

1. Consider the source. Your other two posts claim "G-d delivers us", and that "Jordan Peterson is A genius". With the addition of the CNN claim, your credibility isn't even on the radar. You seem like a candidate for both believing AND spreading fake news.

I don't know what "hails a thread" means, but you seem to be drawing modern conclusions based on historical evidence, so I'd like to see how it supports your stance, please. "That really messed up physics" is similarly lacking in evidential support. "The hard problem with UFOs influencing consciousness" also seems like hand-waving assumptions unsupported by anything scientific. Are you certain whose "animal beliefs in science" are hampering our "progress to the stars"?

When you only get 5 posts on your first day here, some folks get a bit bloggy. And like a chef that wants you to taste a little of everything to see what you like, it can be too much for those who like to chew each bite thoughtfully, to see if they should savor or spit. It's hard to sip from the firehose!

I would expect the definition of "effective" to differ between students. Perhaps you can describe the effects you're looking for?

You have a fantastic method for staying positive here, but I don't think it serves you as well as you think it does. I am glad you see education as an investment, though. If we were talking about the money instead of the knowledge, would you say the same thing? Would it be easier to prosper in life if you didn't have all that money invested in stocks? I'm hoping you'll get more from discussing science here.

MicaelVera is also so angry we won't let him advertise his blog that he'd rather not have an account at all. We've seen his blog and approve this decision.

! Moderator Note We don't delete anything, but we also won't direct traffic to obviously incorrect science. I will ban you though. Sorry, but I hope you have horrible luck with that website of yours, and I hope you don't mess up too many of your fellow humans with your ignorant misinformation. Please study some science.

! Moderator Note Can you post the relevant information here, please? We have no way of knowing how other sites might treat our members, so the rules require anything the members need to know in order to discuss the topic be posted here. Thanks for understanding!

And if a fellow worker chooses to refer to you as she/her despite your preference for he/him, even after being repeatedly corrected, what would you say to them if they replied, "You can't tell me what I have to perceive you as, that just gets my back up"?

Surely this stance could cause us to misunderstand data we're trying to analyze accurately? If we ignore the aspects of sex and gender outside of reproduction, are we being rigorous and intellectually honest with ourselves? Haven't we overcome the "biological necessity" aspect of reproduction, and shouldn't we be anticipating the need to view this as more of a spectrum issue?

Don't forget the teacher! I had a horrible experience with calculus the first time I took it, mostly because the teacher's style didn't suit me at all. I dropped the class and took it the next semester with a different teacher and did fairly well. Sometimes it's just about the connection between teacher and student, and how one's enthusiasm (or lack thereof) can be channeled into effective learning.

I think the psychological gender identity isn't recognized as anywhere near as important, but mostly by cis gendered folks who feel they're "normal" and "natural" in this regard and don't have to worry. It would be easy to see this as a mental aberration viewed this way, so I studiously avoid it. I imagine how I would feel if suddenly everyone started referring to me as she/her, against my express wishes, just because that's the way THEY see me. I think I would definitely try to see how far "beyond (my) control" the situation was by insisting on being referred to the way I prefer.

BlightedFox has been banned for continuing to soapbox and abuse after we said he couldn't push his books & videos here.

! Moderator Note I'm going to hold you to this, Mr Pretentious!

! Moderator Note You could read but not post. You could leave for a while and see if you feel differently in a year or two. Or we could ban you, and then you can't open up any other accounts. But we don't delete accounts because it would leave funny holes in our conversations where your posts used to be. I'll leave it up to you. I couldn't find such insults. People asking you what you mean, or for more clarification, are not insulting you. They just want to be clear. People are disagreeing with you. Why would you expect them to admit something they don't trust as correct? Trying to help with your understanding of the science is not rude, not even close.

Matt. 1:18-20 tells us Jesus didn't have a birth father from the tribe of Judah also descended from King Solomon and King David, which were the prerequisites for the Jewish Messiah, as recorded elsewhere in the Bible. I've always been curious about the reaction to someone claiming to be Jesus come back for the second time. Plenty have made the claim over the centuries, so wouldn't it require some sort of evidence, like walking on water or turning the water into wine and then walking on it? And if this latest Jesus could show miraculous powers on command, in a testable, reproduceable, and predictable way, then does anyone need faith anymore?

I'm not sure how we can make you understand that this is something beyond our abilities to help you with. We can help you understand scientific concepts and theories, but yours is a medical condition that needs to be addressed by a professional, and when we suggest this you ignore us and keep making suicidal posts. Nobody learns anything, nobody gets any help, and everyone is frustrated (unless you enjoy complaining about a bad status quo while simultaneously doing nothing about it). Please stop doing this, and please seek professional help. Right now, it's like you're trying to paint the floor of a room but you keep trapping yourself in the corner. Perhaps you should start with the corner, and work your way towards an exit to this problem, something that has a better chance of making you happy than what you're currently doing. Again, I suggest someone who deals with this type of problem professionally on a regular basis. You aren't alone in this.

The things you say that get you downvotes have NOTHING to do with your style, really, and NOTHING to do with the topics you bring up. It's the substance that I find lacking in your posts. You get downvotes mostly because you take a lot of stances that are over-generalized and fairly shallow, and don't take anything nuanced and subtle into consideration (your thread about Americans being hypocrites over race). You also get downvotes because you threaten to kill yourself a LOT, and we can't do anything about that, so it's frustrating that you keep looping us into a problem we have no control over. Everyone would love to see you happier, but you post a LOT of despair and don't take anyone's advice to seek professional help. Nobody here is a medical professional, we're just science discussion enthusiasts, so perhaps you could either listen to the small bits of advice we're qualified to give, or just stop being so dramatic and talk some science.

The rules have been hammered out over the years with membership input, but the owners always wanted a place for discussion and debate where critical thinking, mainstream methodologies, and reasoned arguments were heard. I don't think that's changed. When someone posts with a fairly shallow opinion on any subject, I've always relied on the membership to provide a deeper and more insightful perspective that may help the OP understand and form a broader, deeper stance. Politics can give us much more than opinion; discussing it HERE can give us several reasoned, well-informed, concisely presented opinions.

It annoys me how YOU believe we all think the same. Like you're disparaging us as a group. Perhaps the subjective and ambiguous perspective of "morally better" has been misapplied here? Perhaps you paint with too wide a brush when it comes to your flavor of tribalism? Perhaps all people who engage in nationalism see their own country as better than others?

I need to breathe through my nose more. 🤓

Not even the testimony of a survivor, apparently. If you can make sure yours are the only "feels" that are heard, the WI judge will set you free. Just remember that if you have a plastic bag, or a skateboard, or even a handgun, you shouldn't feel threatened by someone with an AR-15, because if you do, he can claim you were going to use it to take his AR-15 and harm or possibly kill him. To be on the safe side, others who shouldn't feel threatened include people with phones, people with water bottles, and people with hands.

Absolutely, and I'm much more likely to spot discrepancies, exaggerations, and fallacious logic reading text than I am with video. Frankly, I enjoy good movies and television partly because I can let the story unfold without questioning it too much, so I end up being surprised when the author/director/actor wants me to be. But when I want to be informed, there's nothing like reading for me. It occurs to me that there may be some correlation between those who deny reality and a preference for video over the written word. Many seem to have been duped by flashy presentations rather than actively in denial of reality. Have you ever watched one of the more flagrant wingnut US politicians, like Rep Lauren Boebert from my state, talk about their conspiracies, and then had to rewind because you couldn't believe you didn't mis-read what her mouth just said? I think that's actually a business model in the US now: make a video of yourself saying something so crazy that people will keep watching it and sharing it in disbelief without realizing how much fame and fortune they're making for you.

And even if they don't make them anymore, it should be possible to unscrew the attachment piece on the luggage as well, and then replace the whole caster (as long as the holes match). You could replace all four fairly cheaply, for that matter. The OP doesn't say how old the wheels are, but it sounds like a frozen bearing.

I thought I did acknowledge your damn essay with my reply about lecturing and blogging and soapboxing. I remember saying something about discussion, and how it's preferable to being lectured to. I will admit I dislike video as a means to learn about something from someone's words. I love video for entertainment, and for learning how to DO things by having someone show me how. But when it comes to raw information that I need to assess for validity and accuracy, the written word is far more trustworthy. I'm not being distracted by presentation, and I can instantly re-read anything I don't immediately understand. With video, we're predisposed to suspend a certain amount of disbelief, which I think is detrimental when you're trying to stay informed. I don't listen to lectures, I don't watch the news on video. I read what I want to know, and I read what others take the time to write out thoughtfully and concisely. Because you specifically targeted fantasy, I started to object, but I see some validity in what you say. I don't think it's necessarily any single genre that's at fault here. Science-fiction and fantasy are perfectly reasonable human pursuits, as are historical stories like Westerns and other period pieces. But being a fan of British TV, I think where the US is guilty of what you claim is our fantastically myopic and wishful perspective on normal life. British shows thrive often by being very realistic and gritty, where many US shows depict some kind of imaginary world where everyone hits their cue and there's never a hitch in the conversation and everyone always knows just what to say! And the laugh tracks still let us know when somebody was witty, since we can't be trusted to figure that out on our own. And since 1996, we have no standards that require our news shows to be anything but entertainment. That may be one reason why we allow such wishful thinking in our television, because the news is like a horror show meant to make us afraid and the sitcoms let us pretend we didn't just watch the news.