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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 14th, 2023

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  • That’s fair. I didn’t mean to imply anything about the drug use.

    The way OP views the world reminds me of how I see things when I am experiencing certain depression symptoms. I tend to filter my view of the world so that only the negative things are true, and it makes it harder to do anything positive in my life.

    When my symptoms let up, either through treatment or sometimes on their own, I can still see the negatives but they’re there with a lot of positives, too.

    If OP does have depression, it’s possible that treating it in a more effective way would be the answer to their question.



  • The link above had this to say about the author:

    I learned what an unhappy individual he had been: an alcoholic, prone to depression. “I have always understood the Nazis,” Golding confessed, “because I am of that sort by nature.” And it was “partly out of that sad self-knowledge” that he wrote Lord of the Flies.

    So not necessarily allegory. It seems more a bleak worldview portrayed through fiction.



  • You messaged me directly rather than responding in the thread, but messaging back is failing, so I will respond here.

    There is no theory involving deities that fits the models of the universe we have based on observable evidence, and there is no evidence in support of any theory involving deities.

    For anything else we would say that this thing doesn’t exist and leave it at that.

    Agnosticism gets lost in the fallacy that since it’s logically impossible to prove non-existence we must hold open the possibility of existence without evidence.

    So I’m an atheist because it is the default state to be, it makes no statement requiring evidence, and it doesn’t require fallacy.




  • City.

    I want to be able to surround myself with a variety of people and cultures, while also being able to surround myself with the community that makes me feel welcome.

    Growing up gay in a rural town that was relatively progressive was still a nightmare, and the town’s best feature for me was the commuter train that took me to the closest big city.

    I love having access to basically everything relatively easily and I love having a multitude of options for all the things I have access to. Small towns can’t provide that.

    I also hate yards, though gardens are nice.

    So yeah, for me while I have found some small towns I could make work, I would always be giving up things that I value to do so. Big cities are the best, and smaller cities can be good, too, but I’m a city boy through and through.


  • For me the important difference between the two isn’t just a zoning problem, it’s a people problem.

    Small towns, like the one I grew up in, even ones that are comparatively progressive, are still a nightmare for anyone who doesn’t fit in with the community norm.

    Big cities let people find their community because therefore a lot of different ones to try.

    This doesn’t go away with different planning or by fucking cars or whatever the kids are into these days.



  • I would parade the cheaters through town naked while ringing a bell and saying “shame” over and over again.

    Or just give them a 0 for the assignment if I had evidence of cheating.

    Not being able to solve a problem in class that they could solve at home is not evidence of cheating. Neither is not showing your work on hard problems, especially in the take home format where students could not only use other resources, but other sheets of paper, if they wanted.

    If showing all your work is required for answers, then I would have clearly stated that prior to giving the students any work and remind them before all tests to do so.

    If you are sending take home tests over a vacation, you also need to, as a teacher, clearly define what is and isn’t cheating if it’s not defined in your syllabus.

    As the teacher it’s your job to set the requirements and boundaries clearly, and not be reactionary when you’ve failed to do so.

    It’s unclear from your description if you gave proper guidelines on all of this, but it does seem like you didn’t set up the requirement of “show your work, or I will accuse you of cheating without any evidence,” so I would prepare to get much deserved backlash from this.

    Getting the problem wrong on the board isn’t evidence of cheating, but it might be evidence that you need to cover that subject in more depth for the students. Learning is the point after all, not test scores and your pride.