I got pepper sprayed in the military. In order to be allowed to wear pepper spray on our belts (for law enforcement), we had to be pepper sprayed and fight someone off.

I found it strange, because it’s not like we had to know what it was like to be shot and fight back. It was also one of the worst experiences of my life. Getting accidentally splashed across the eyes with hot sauce ended up not so bad simply by comparison, so I had that going for me.

A put a hole in the side of a helicopter that left it grounded for a week.

I accidentally tapped it with another piece of the helicopter. I’m happily working on helicopters that are made of metal now, so no more of that nonsense.

Edit: also, honorable mention because it wasn’t my fault, but I made a helicopter drop an external fuel tank when it took off… by replacing a light bulb. It was on the button that makes the helicopter drop the external tanks, but there are failsafes so it will only do it in the air. Apparently the internal switch got stuck, so the second the weight was off of the wheels CLONK… and a tank was laying on the active runway. Excellent.

I like how a lot of these comments start with two people having opposing views but seemingly reasonable, then they slowly devolve into absurdity.

Except they don’t? At least, I haven’t personally come across any in real life. And I’ve known plenty of vegans and bicycle enthusiasts.

I am, by the way, neither vegan nor hard-core bicyclist.

If it’s something you want and your partner doesn’t care one way or the other about, it shouldn’t factor in.

If you want to make the candles you use around the house, maybe they smell nice, maybe they get used, maybe they’re cheaper than store-bought, but that’s a hobby.

If you do a bunch of baking, especially for people outside the home but even inside it, and your partner isn’t all about you cooking, that’s a hobby, and you clean up your own mess. That’s not chores (unless you’re getting paid).

Chores are necessities to keep the communal house going, not anything that takes effort.

Most bears try to avoid you. The best thing you can do on a nature trail is be noisy, talk a bunch, make sure the bear knows you are there. Because they don’t want anything to do with humans.

The second worst thing you can do is surprise a bear.

The worst thing you can do is get between a baby bear and its mom.

This is the type of thing that could be answered if people followed banal statistical data the way sports people follow sports data.

“This is the first time since 2017 they’ve scored over 30 points in the third quarter in a home game during the pre-season.”

Yeah, okay, fair ban.

You’re missing the point. It’s not a one time thing. Evidence existed, that evidence was found, and that’s what made it change to being accepted.

That evidence still exists, so if you claim dinosaurs don’t exist, we can just point to the evidence that still exists. That evidence didn’t get spirited away like golden plates to heaven. We’re still finding dinosaur bones.

If you claim dinosaurs don’t exist, I would point to the wealth of evidence that they do. If you were raised in some religious cult that never taught anything about dinosaurs and taught that the Earth was 6000 years old, and therefore didn’t think giant creatures existed hundreds of millions of years ago, it would absolutely be on the person claiming they exist to show you dinosaur bones. Which is evidence.

Your premise is incorrect. The burden of proof for quantum mechanics is on the people claiming they exist. They provided those proofs, which is why people believe in them. I haven’t studied quantum mechanics, but if you asked somebody who does, they could offer proof or evidence. And if they couldn’t, then your claim it doesn’t exist (until proof was proffered) would be correct.

I get what you’re saying, and I’m not arguing it.

However I am always amused at the “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” comment, because invariably the people doing the hating hate both (the game that allows the player to exist, and the player for perpetuating it). It’s always been a funny comment to me.

Like when you complain about a particular type of corruption in a politician (which is technically not illegal) and you get “Don’t hate the player, hate the game,” when the whole point is we should change the system so that politician can’t be corrupt. I feel like people get lost in this idea that a person working within a bad system is inherently blameless because the system allows the bad thing (it’s not wrong if it’s allowed), any criticisms made must inevitably be directed at the person doing the bad thing in that system (undeservedly, hence the “don’t hate the player”), and that since it’s in that person’s self interest to perpetuate that system it is also in their interest to treat the system as immutable.

Like, you can’t have it both ways. Either you recognize the system is bad, even if you benefit from it, and it should be changed, OR you are the system and deserve to be criticized for it.

This and huge taxes on AirBnBs. I live on an island that is a regular tourist spot, and housing is so scarce there are people who work full time living in tents in the woods because they can’t find a place to live.

In Alaska.

And there are still a bunch of AirBnBs here.

There’s a teen center 2 minutes from my house. Is it not normal to have a teen center?

One of the benefits of my job (military) is my upward movement is almost entirely based on my motivation. A huge portion of the competition (as it is a competition) is a test on both the service at the level you’re moving into and your particular specialty. But there’s also time in rate (the pay grade you are currently at) and time in service, both of which get capped at a certain point (we call those “dinosaur points”) so your chances improve the longer you’re in. It also includes award points (medals, basically) and some other things, and finally employee review (the next largest chunk after the test).

So work hard to get a good review and study for a test, and you move up. But that’s not always a good thing. I sat at E-5 for a long time because I loved the job I was doing, and I was making decent money (about 60k after taxes), but then I was such a “senior” E-5 that I got to do the job I loved less (being a helicopter flight mechanic, maintaining and fixing aircraft) and the next level up stuff more (managing people, mentoring, supervising), so I just decided I would make the effort and get paid for it (which I did).

As much as people in my service complain about how advancement (promotion) works, every story I hear about how absolutely arbitrary and shitty it is in the civilian world I’m reminded how good I have it.

Say it out loud.

“Do you like fish sticks?”

'Yeah

“Then you’re a gay fish.”

Kanye in the show didn’t get it and thought people were calling him a gay fish. So if real Kanye didn’t get the joke, and got mad because he thought South Park was calling him a gay fish… that’s just incredible.

I live in Alaska, so… Basically just a pair of Xtratufs by the door. Sandals and running shoes get added during the summer. Big snow boots come out for the heavy snows.

Inside I just wear socks. If I need to pop out, I pop the xtratufs on.

I can’t imagine not taking shoes off and just wandering around the house with shoes on, tracking the outside in everywhere. I don’t even know anyone who does that.

A captain? Of a shuttle? A-hurr hurr hurr.

I wish Picard had come out with a “shut up Wesley” at that point.

So my biggest issue with Wesley was what an elitist douchebag he could be. He would openly disparage non-Starfleet people, in a way that was at least unprofessional, and at worst outright insulting (like the shuttle pilot picking them up for that crash-on-a-deset-planet episode).

And at the same time, he sucked up to the people above him or who could help his career so unabashedly.

I think you are confused about the source of the deficiency.

When we make an exception for a particular gender, race, religion, etc, we imply that an exception is necessary for this class. Which is to imply that there is a deficiency, but not that it is inherent to that class.

The deficiency being corrected is in society. How society has treated that class is a failing in society itself, and an exception needs to be made to correct (and fix) that deficiency. To take an example you made of handing a crutch, the crutch is going to society to help get their leg (that class) healthy again after what they had done to it, so it can be whole. Ideally, the crutch would be a temporary thing until the body can heal its leg, but the crutch isn’t the solution in itself.

Broadening that out, society has a deficiency as it mistreats, say, trans people. Trans people exist and should be an accepted part of society treated the same as everyone else, but bathrooms, sports, etc, have excluded them or mistreated them. That may not be able to be fixed immediately, but while we work toward a society where bathrooms, sports, etc, are inherently inclusive of trans people (I can’t sat for certain how that would look), exceptions must be made to keep society functioning reasonably while it heals its deficiency (like a crutch for a person who broke their leg).

I hope that clarifies things for you. Your assumption that the deficiency is inherent to the marginalized group is what is faulty.

One of my coworkers was talking about how his wife (a truly hateful woman) was complaining about having been to a bathroom at a particular airport, and how they had changed them for trans people (she presumed). In particular, they had made all the stalls have floor-to-ceiling doors for privacy. I responded “wait… she’s mad because they made the bathrooms better for everyone, because they did it for trans people? That is an objectively better bathroom situation. I can’t imagine being upset by that.”

People can still manage to be upset, but if they did do that for trans people (and I’m honestly not convinced), that’s fantastic, and is a perfect example of what you’re talking about, I think.