Yeah, I spent about 8 hours going over every person this election, including local mayor, city council, and board of education members. And, yeah, 8 hours isn’t an amount of time everyone has all in one block, but most of the research was pretty easy to digest quickly, and I could’ve split it into a bunch of 5-minute pieces whenever I had a bit of time over the course of a couple months. I get that it’s not the most interesting or calming activity, but I think people could at least take a small amount of enjoyment knowing they’ve properly educated themselves on the goals and qualifications of all the people on their ballot.

Sounds to me like the kid is also having some feelings surrounding the breakup and subsequent remarriage that aren’t being addressed. Why does he want you to come too? Is he hoping it might bring you and his mom back together? Does he feel uncomfortable around the new stepdad, and wants you around because he’s more comfortable when you’re around? I think if you have a conversation with him as to why he’s asking for you to come too, it might influence how you approach the situation, or at least give you a better way to explain why you can’t come due to your own reasons.

I know this is a difficult decision on your part for how it affects you, but your son is also in a very vulnerable position right now, and needs both of his parents paying attention to him and the feelings he’s having, even if he doesn’t know how to express them directly. My parents broke up suddenly due to cheating when I was around the same age, and it was a traumatic time in my life because my parents both assumed I was old enough to “get it.” I wasn’t. Family is one of the main sources of stability in a young person’s life, and to have it fall out from beneath you isn’t something you get over on your own very easily.

This is the whole reason we have strict building codes for door hardware. Locks have to be able to open in a single action, and room with a larger occupancy have to have panic devices that can open the door just from falling on them. The panic devices were invented after a major theater fire killed a bunch of people thanks to their stupidly-designed fancy locks that nobody could figure out how to open during the panic.

Damn, stopping the strike without gaining anything is going to kill their negotiation power. Now NYT will have all the power in the world to just keep saying “Yeah, we’re working on that deal. Any day now…”

I honestly haven’t seen a lot of real ridicule. Sure, there are memes and other internet things, but those are easily dismissed. I need people going up to them on the street and just laughing at them, like their entire persona is pathetic.

The internet has connected us, for sure, but it also stole the impact that real, in-person interactions can have, both positive, like having a friendly conversation with a stranger on the street, and negative, like with the shame that comes from knowing your behavior is being rejected by your peers.

I think that has to do with why doxxing is a popular way to up the ante in situations like these - things are a lot more real when they’re not behind a screen.

I don’t think ridicule will change the person being ridiculed for the better - I don’t think anything really could until they make the choice to change for themselves, which people rarely have the desire to do. Ridicule is more to quiet people who are displaying bad behavior, incentivizing them to promote it a little less, and to send a message to others who idolize such people that they might want to reconsider who they look up to.

I would say that’s exactly what we’re doing now, and it’s not working. It seems people can live with being called cruel, and maybe even enjoy it. But I think the feeling of being ridiculed is something more fundamentally at odds with a person’s self-image, and eats away at their confidence more than other forms of societal rejection.

I think the vulgarity might just be what keeps it from being ableist. I’m learning in this thread that most commonly-used words for “unintelligent” have historically been used for actual diagnoses in the medical field for people with actual disabilities, which inexorably ties the word to the concept of being unintelligent by necessity, instead of by choice. So, something vulgar that would never be used by the medical field for a real disability can, at least in theory, be used to describe someone as being willfully ignorant without the baggage of a medically-oriented usage history.

That’s a great point. The use of a more indirect shunning methodology is interesting; I feel like it’s classic - what was used before the modern point-and-laugh method, but again I worry that it doesn’t drive home the message that the behavior is undesirable. It’s more something that 2 adults would agree is a scathing commentary on the bad behavior, but a child - who is more impressionable and therefore necessary to teach what not to do - wouldn’t understand is meant to be rejection of the behavior. But maybe that’s just another facet to the issue - maybe our society has become too reliant on fast, easy-to-understand quips, when we really need to subtly guide it back to the more thoughtful, introspective lexicon of yesteryear.

But if someone had shit for brains, that would definitely be a disability, haha! Good thing that’s not an actual condition, so it would work perfectly, thanks for the recommendation!

I wholeheartedly agree. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, like every day a new word I use is considered offensive, but I try to remember that it’s all coming from the desire to be more mindful of the people around us, and in the end it’s not too hard for me to find - or even just make - another word to convey what I need.

Oh, nice, thanks! I’ll check those out!

That’s fair for his case. But I do think that calling someone something generic like “scum” doesn’t drive home enough what they did wrong. Making fun of such people likely won’t change the person themselves, it’s more sending a message to onlookers that the behavior is undesirable and shouldn’t be emulated, so being more specific about what it is they did wrong is still important. I suppose we’ll probably just come up with new words as the need arises. I’ll have to keep up on the scene so I don’t fall behind, haha!

Yeah, someone else corrected me, sorry about that! I’ll be honest, it’s a word I use myself to describe someone who is willfully unintelligent rather than being disabled. I’m trying to find another word now to describe Nick; it’s important to publicly make fun of such people - clearly being silent about their bad behavior has only made our cultural and political climate worse. “Ignorant” is the closest I’ve gotten, but I can’t see myself pointing and laughing at someone, calling them “ignorant,” you know?

Ah, I see. Sorry, I thought they were highlighting that particular part of their comment to draw attention to the slur itself. I suppose that could be construed as a slur, though I do feel as though it’s more often associated with someone who COULD be smarter and more open-minded, but chooses not to be. Maybe it’s a bit pedantic, but I think it’s important that, while we don’t make fun of people for what they are unable to do, we absolutely DO make fun of people for what negative actions they CHOOSE to do. Is there a good word for someone like Nick Fuentes, who is unintelligent not due to a disability, but due to their own bad choices that should be shunned? I’m thinking “ignorant” but that doesn’t seem to have the same oomph.

Ah, alright, my mistake. That was the only word in the phrase “An ableist is someone who discriminates against people based on disabilities.” that I could have seen as being construed as a slur. What word was it that you would say is a slur, then?

Wait, do you think the word “disability” is a slur? As someone with a disability, that’s… just unnecessarily confusing. A slur is a word so ingrained with malice that even someone saying it without harmful intent causes real harm. It takes a LOT to make a word that volatile. There are some things I can’t do, abilities I am disassociated with, disabilities. The issue isn’t that they exist, it’s with the cultural acceptance that they exist, and that I have to do things differently from some others to meet my needs. Trying to govern the word just makes it harder to do that, like you’re trying to sweep them under the rug. I mean, what am I supposed to call myself that someone would understand if I can’t say I’m a person with a disability?

I don’t honestly think that would work. They’ve been conditioned to take comfort in not knowing things. I’ve seen the thought process unfold in front of me hundreds of times: “If a republican did it, it was a good thing and part of the plan, even if I don’t understand how yet.” It’s exactly the same thought process that they employ for their religion: “God is good and does good things, even though terrible things happen to people all the time that God must have allowed if he exists, there’s always a plan, even if we don’t know it.”

Stage 2 generally means that the cancer hasn’t yet spread, except maybe to very nearby lymph nodes, meaning treatment can be very successful so long as its somewhere accessible by surgery and you don’t wait too long. Stage 2 treatment is very different from stage 4 treatment, but if you wait, that’s where it’ll get to.