Or convince him he’s rich, I guess. He just pardoned a bunch of rich despicable people.

I think this is a much more useful strategy for convincing people to change. If someone like I did, mentions they aren’t happy about, for instance, pronouns, then people start lashing out. I might have had a conversation on this, but honestly the tone in some of the responses isn’t likely to convince me to listen. Even when I start out saying I’m going to end up on the losing side of this.

Language evolves because people force it to.

Sometimes, yes, often, no. New slang is naturally picked up and often makes it into the common vernacular, not because people are forcing other people to use it, but because people voluntarily start using. The same goes for loan words. The enter the language, and sometimes get mutated over time in that particular language. When “tablet” became popular someone tried to pick a Danish word for it, but it didn’t stick. Same goes for many other computer-related words, which ended up just being the English word.

But, if you choose not to respect the wishes of others, you will suffer consequences.

This is the aggressive attitude that immediately makes me reluctant to adhere to any special pronouns people may choose. I don’t know if you meant this as a lightly veiled threat, but people can become very aggressive if you “misgender” people.

The reason some languages have a gender binary is often because that society forced a gender binary on people to control them.

I haven’t heard this before, do you have some reading material I can explore?

Inventing entirely new pronouns is no more ridiculous than inventing yet another television show character or yet another tiktok dance craze or yet another romance novel or yet another $15/month subscription service that does the same things other service do or writing yet another magazine column.

I would tentatively agree, if not for the fact that “the consequences” you mentioned above for ignoring any of these things are that I don’t have to suffer them. The consequences for misgendering Elliot Page is ostracization, even if he isn’t in the conversation or likely to ever hear about any conversation I will ever have about him.

Where you put your effort shows you what you care about.

That is true. And I really don’t care that much about trans people. I want them to live a life without oppression with the same freedoms I have, but aside from that I care as much about them as do about the guy who lives in the apartment down the street, whom I’ve never met. And to that end, I think there are things that are reasonable to request from others in society, and I think there are things that are not. And changing the language for them I don’t find reasonable, just like I would ask anyone to change the language for me, and shame them if they didn’t. In the same vein, if people are so horrified about trans people using the wrong bathroom, just stop gendering them. To me, the only reason why we gender them anyway is because men take their bits out in front of everyone, so if we remove that part, they are virtually identical.

Pronouns. I get that they matter a lot to some people, and of course it’s super annoying (if not worse) to be referred to in the wrong way, but I find it unreasonable to demand being referred to something outside of the gender binary, simply because that’s the way language works.

I am aware that English has used “they” for a person of unknown gender for ages, but for one, I don’t think it’s something that you should demand people call you when they actually know your gender, but also I really hate that this is making its way into other languages like my own, that has never had this convention. Inventing entirely new pronouns is just ridiculous, I have a hard enough time to remember your name.

I am also aware that language evolves, but this is not evolution, it’s forced, and if one group of people can try to force a change they prefer, I’m as much in my right to resist it if I don’t like it.

People are super passionate about this though and in fifty years I’m sure I’ll be seen as a fossil for not getting with the times now - in fact I’m sure certain people see me like this now.

I don’t know, I think I’ve seen a frog it might look like more than Kermit…

People don’t care about federation. Or vendor lock-in.

I haven’t tried bluesky, but mastodon seems a little broken by design. I’d you go to a post you are always told that the host server may have more replies. Things like that make it seem immature and perhaps just a bad solution compared to a monolithic approach.

If you don’t like the instance (why wouldn’t I?) you can just move to a different one. Yes, and restart my network. It’s not really a good solution. I would like to exist on mastodon and just use some server. If I don’t like it, continue somewhere else.

Guys: Fascinate her with a wheel of cheese.

A salesman for the company forged sales orders. As soon as the company started billing the supposed customers he was discovered and asked to leave immediately. No severance (which you by law are entitled to), just leave, and we won’t file charges. I have no idea what possessed him to do something so stupid…

Is no one going to comment on the “magnified five times under a microscope”? Five times? What kind of weak, low refraction plastic lens, cost of bubblegum microscope are you using to magnify your enormous monster ants?

Some moron in highschool…

Use hand lotion. Dude, my hands are dry, back off!

Spotify daylist (search for it). Better than discover weekly imo, and changes multiple times during the day.

So, if they were endangered cows and your friend didn’t like milk, the milk would be vegan…?

It dissolves, that’s where dust comes from.

Or The Wandering Inn. It’s a slow burn, but it burns for ages.

Danish: I can confirm

So it’s misdirection. It should be “You’re the product”. Free or not doesn’t matter.

Firefly

And by the end I feel like it almost started.

Farscape. Always farscape.

I had to rent an apartment for two months in between my old apartment was sold and my new house was ready. The apartment was furnished, so everything had to go into storage. Immediately after we moved in the owners told us they had put it up for sale and we would have potential buyers coming by now and again.

I wasn’t homeless, and in the grand scheme of things this was just a small pitstop in a fairly great (if somewhat badly maintained) apartment, but then, my other moves have been much smoother, so here we are.