Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer
User ID: 2666
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
16hr ago
I disagree with your scenario outlined here. First, because a "concerned parent" probably wouldn't just go in to the school. No, she'd probably go to the PTA first. So then, it's not one person going to the principal, it's a bunch of outraged soccer moms, threatening to raise a stink unless they Do Something.
Second, just a quick Google search returned a bunch of results. Like this case in California, albeit it was almost 13 years ago:
A middle school teacher who was fired after students learned she had appeared in pornography has lost her appeal to return to the classroom, her lawyer said Tuesday.
A three-judge panel unanimously decided Stacie Halas, 32, was unfit for the classroom. Halas was fired in April from her job as a science teacher at Haydock Intermediate School in Oxnard after online videos of her in porn were discovered by students and teachers.
"Although (Halas') pornography career has concluded, the ongoing availability of her pornographic materials on the Internet will continue to impede her from being an effective teacher and respected colleague," Judge Julie Cabos-Owen wrote in a 46-page decision issued Friday by the Commission on Professional Competence.
Halas was continually deceitful about her nine-month career in porn before she went to work at the school, the decision said.
Her lawyer Richard Schwab said Halas had tried to be honest but was embarrassed by her previous experience in the adult industry.
It's right there: fired for having done porn before she became a teacher, because the fact those videos are out there makes her "unfit for the classroom" in perpetuity.
And for a newer example, there's Texas in 2017, which also involves Libertarian politics:
A sixth-grade teacher at an all-girls school in Texas is out of a job and fighting to get her position back after district officials learned she worked in porn more than a decade ago.
Resa Woodward, 38, was removed from the classroom at the Young Women’s STEAM Academy in Dallas in November, after district officials received an anonymous tip regarding her work as an adult film actress, although a subsequent internal review cleared her of policy violations, the Dallas Morning News reported.
…
Woodward, who did not return messages seeking comment early Wednesday, told the paper that she was forced into pornography — saying “that involvement was not of my own choosing” — while living with an older man during a tough time financially. She eventually got herself out of the situation and finished school before becoming a teacher for the Dallas ISD, which serves roughly 160,000 students from pre-K through 12th grade.
But district officials got a tip in March claiming that Woodward worked in porn under the alias Robyn Foster, a name active in the business from 2001 and 2004, credited with 16 movies, according to a web-based adult film database cited by the Morning News.
…
Woodward, according to the internal report, told district officials she stopped working in the business in 2001 and thought a man she knew was retaliating against her by informing her employers of her past.
“I’ve been trying to live my life as far away as possible from this stuff for a long time,” Woodward told district officials, adding that no students, colleagues or supervisors knew of her sordid past.
Bauer then closed the district’s investigation in March, ruling that Woodward’s “past participation” in pornography did not constitute a policy violation.
Woodward’s work as a well-known activist for the Libertarian Party of Texas, however, would lead to her being outed, according to the Dallas Morning News.
…
Woodward told the Dallas Morning News that she wrote a post on Facebook last fall about a drunken driver that angered another man who claimed to be associated with the Libertarian Party in another state due to his beliefs about police. That man then detailed her past on social media websites, Woodward said.
Woodward then notified district officials of the post and she was placed on administrative leave on Nov. 29.
“They told me they were pursuing termination because it became public,” she said.
And it's not just women who get fired, either. From Florida in 2011:
A Miami-Dade teacher's past life in the adult entertainment industry has gotten him kicked out of the classroom.
The school district's investigation into Shawn Loftis, a substitute teacher assigned to Nautilus Middle, Miami Edison Middle, Fienberg-Fisher K-8 Center and Miami Beach Senior High, began last January.
…
But that time was cut short after administrators at Nautilus learned about Loftis' past. Under the alias Collin O'Neal, Loftis was a successful adult film star, even shooting movies on location in Miami Beach. After three to four years of success, Loftis went from in front of the camera to behind it and ran his own adult film company.
But then Loftis decided to change careers and get out of the business all together. Loftis said he wanted to sell his company and use his Master's Degree to teach. He qualified to be a substitute, taught for about a year until one day the past caught up to his present.
…
Loftis said he was terminated because it was determined that he broke a School Board rule which states:
"They are expected to conduct themselves both in their employment and in the community in a manner that will reflect credit upon themselves and the school system."
In addition to being fired, Loftis' teaching certificate is also in jeopardy. He said he may no longer be able to teach the lessons he wishes someone would have taught him years ago.
"I also want people to think before they dabble in that industry what they want to with their future," said Loftis.
Or then, moving over to Canada, there's Quebec in 2014 proving that time is no real remedy:
Pre-internet, you could likely move on from a career in pornography with only the occasional wondering glance your way. But now one Quebecois teacher, 73-year-old Jacqueline Laurent Auger, has had her past catch up with her after pupils went online and discovered softcore porn films she appeared in around 45 years previously.
She has now been dismissed from her position teaching drama workshops at the elite Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf in Montreal. “As educators, we had to ask what message is transmitted to all our students, boys and girls, from the first year of high school to the fifth, by the fact that the teacher of their drama workshops could now be seen on the Internet in the most suggestive of scenes,” the school wrote in an online statement, adding that they wanted to preserve “a calm setting free of allusions or discomfort that is unfavourable to our educational mission.”
Laurent Auger has called the move “completely absurd. I’m 73 years old. When I made those films I must have been 28 or 29. It was to make a living so that after[wards] I could work with great teachers and actors, in Paris and in Quebec. Come on.”
Sure, the culture has shifted in the past decade, but not that much, and not everywhere. So, again, I still don't see it playing out like in your scenario.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
4d ago
Frieren: "Why call out to a mother? Demons are monsters, and like all monsters, they don't raise their young. Once born, you are abandoned. You walk this world alone. That makes you ruthless, solitary creatures. Lone wolves with no concept of what family means. Explain."
Demon Child: "It's simple. That word stops humans. It keeps them from murdering us. Isn't that magical?"
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7d ago
I’m beating around the bush, but I’m pretty much talking about scam culture, being the winner, getting one up on the people that are outsiders to ‘my group’, and getting status points for exploiting my outgroup.
I’d like to reiterate that this isn’t an Indian only issue, but it’s a culture clash between high and low trust cultures and is worthy of discussion.
I know that this is one of a half-Native Alaskan friend of mine's biggest complaints about his fully-Native cousins. He's a devout Christian who believes strongly in the Golden Rule, while they make no effort to hide the ways they exploit the system, based in solidly tribalist views of ethics.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
12d ago
The counterpoint is "the government is outnumbered and an armed populace doing guerilla warfare wins pretty much every time", which is also true.
No, it's not true. In * Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present*, Max Boot calculates that, of all the insurgencies since 1775, about 78% of them failed. Of the 22% who did win, one of the necessary (though not sufficient) preconditions is substantial material support from one or more foreign states. (Also, AIUI, practically every case of successful guerrilla warfare has been against a de facto foreign occupation.)
The left is way better at this.
Yes, and the right seems unwilling to try to remedy that.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
15d ago
Yes, and thank you for pointing this out. Given how obvious this is, I don't know why it's so hard to get people on the right (as well as a few on the moderate left) to understand it.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
15d ago
In most other contexts, it is considered absurd to try and impose treaty institutions on a state that is not part of the treaty, even when you think that treaty is a good idea or should supersede other principles of international law.
I remember one of the times someone brought up online (as a possible novel solution to some issue of the time) Congress's Constitutional power to issue letters of marque, adding that the US is not a signatory to the 1856 Declaration of Paris banning them. A few Europeans all responded with the same message: it doesn't matter what the US Constitution says. That the US claims to retain this power is face-saving cope, as are the excuses given for why the US hasn't issued such letters since. The actual reason Congress won't issue letters of marque is because they can't, because the rest of the world considers the Declaration of Paris a universal ban, binding on signatories and non-signatories alike. And were the US to try to defy this binding international law, then the rest of the world will enforce that ban on the Americans receiving those illegal, invalid letters of marque, lack of ratification be damned.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
15d ago
Currently reading The Balkan Languages by Victor A. Friedman and Brian D. Joseph, from the Cambridge Language Surveys series.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
18d ago
I think you missed that you responded to Arjin, when the quoted statement you're arguing against was made by Eupraxia one comment up.
So, why are you attacking Arjin for a comment he didn't make — and even argued against — instead of the person who said it?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
18d ago
No? I think it's both funny and clever, and in the traditional vein of "devilish contracts are foiled by word-play" stories. There's always a catch to the genie's gifts, and the gifts of Sauron are no exception. The Witch-king, by this view, may in part have surrendered to the lure of his ring through "I will be truly immortal and no-one will be able to kill me", and then the loophole smacks him in the face.
That he is taken down by a woman and a hobbit is completely in harmony with how the demons are foiled in Hindu mythology. They perform penances to gain boons from the Supreme Trinity, immortality is not possible, so they ask for elaborate conditions ("nobody can kill me except...") and think they have gained because this particular set will never come to pass.
It's also not unknown in European tales either, beyond just Macbeth. My favorite for "complex loophole" bit is Welsh, from the fourth branch of the Mabinogi. Specifically, that Lleu Llaw Gyffes cannot be killed "during the day or night, nor indoors or outdoors, neither riding nor walking, not clothed and not naked, nor by any weapon lawfully made."
So he gets struck down at dusk, wrapped in a net, with one foot on a cauldron and one on a goat, using a spear forged for a year during the hours when everyone is supposed to be at mass.
Because, like you note, there's always a loophole to these things.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
20d ago
Nobody at your apartment complex wants to go through the effort of filing a complaint for something that doesn’t bother them.
You obviously aren't familiar with a certain type of (almost always female) busybody who goes out of her way to find where people are Not Following The Rules, and then making a big deal of it to whomever she can, mostly because she enjoys the petty powertrip involved in pushing people around, and making them comply just because you can. The one who will call CFS every single day if she sees you're not parenting your kids the way she thinks you should. The kind who get out rulers to measure lawns so she can rat people out to the HOA.
(I'm thinking of my late grandmother — the one who was a "special ed" teacher because the crippled and cognitively-impaired kids were easier for her to bully.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
20d ago
Having to band together with locals to fight nature is an amazing social lubricant.
Don't forget fighting hostile Natives, too. That was also a notable factor.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
22d ago
Thanks. A quick Google turns up the original phrasing, which searched in turn gives Douthat's original 2016 tweet:
A thought sent back in time to the theocracy panic of 2005: If you dislike the religious right, wait till you meet the post-religious right.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
23d ago
I'm looking forwards to Harris losing to Vance or Abbott or Rubio
But how would she do against DeSantis?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
23d ago
Go ahead and insert the Douthat quote.
Which quote would that be?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
24d ago
But if I were to meet an American who described himself as a white nationalist, I would put money on him having voted for Trump over any competing candidate.
You probably haven't listened to anyone over at therightstuff.biz, then. Several of them openly supported Biden over "Zion Don," and some of them even Kamala — because there's plenty of open "anti-Zionists" over on the Democrat side, while Trump is "practically one of the Tribe" since he "gave his daughter to one of (((them)))." That the "Russian Collusion" narrative about 2016 was right in every detail… except that it wasn't Moscow that meddled to install Trump and give him his weekly marching orders, it's Tel Aviv. That, contrary to what many on the right claim, Trump did accomplish in his first term everything the people who got him into the White House put him there to do: he moved the embassy to Jerusalem and gave tax cuts to Jewish billionaires.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
24d ago
My questiob is WHY do progressives still want to fight dead battlegrounds either lost permanently to the enemy or scorched to irrelevance.
First, I doubt they'd believe that anything can ever be permanently lost to their enemy — after all, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." It's a pattern in progressive historiography where prior failed attempts at pushing some cause are lauded as prefiguring the later successful ones. Second, I must once again quote Mrs. Britten's English Zone:
Early literature written by Puritans in America often appeared as first person narratives in the form of journals and diaries. Early American colonists wrote their accounts of immigration, settling in America, and day-to-day life in journals to pass their stories down. Many Puritans also wrote letters to send back to Europe to family and friends they left behind. Very little fiction appeared during this period; Puritans valued realistic writing with an emphasis on religious themes.
…
Even the letters they wrote to friends and family in Europe performed more of a purpose than simply communicating about their lives and keeping in touch. Puritans' religious beliefs affected their lives on all levels, and their writing illustrated their religion's values, such as the importance of the church and the influence of God in their lives. Writing often became instructive, teaching Christian values. The Puritans did not believe that literature was for entertainment; therefore, they frowned upon "entertainment" genres such as drama (plays) and fiction novels.
How do you demonstrate that you are one of the Elect, if you aren't promoting Virtue, fighting wickedness, and serving Christ DEI in everything you do?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
25d ago
How about believing that one "vaccine" doesn't work, independently of all the others that do?
I get it, you want to smear anyone who has concerns about the mRNA "vaccine" as a brain-dead "science-denier" who wants to bring back measles and mumps, but quite a few people — including most people I know IRL — accept that all the many real vaccines do work… but not the "clot shot" bioweapon.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
25d ago
the numerators and denominators of the approximating fractions
I think we might be using different algorithms. I generally use the "long division method" — though I admit that for later digits it mostly reduces to increasing amounts of tedious multiplication and subtraction. Do you use Heron's method?
How the fuck do you notice that?
Well, first I factored the denominator into 234=2*9*13. The tests you mention quickly ruled out 2 and 3 as divisors of the numerator, so that leaves trying 13.
Now, in this case, a used a particular divisibility rule that works for numbers with 4-6 digits, which is based on the fact that 1001=7*11*13 is a multiple of 13. Thus, if you "split" the number into its last three digits — in this case, 423 — and the preceding 1-3 digits before that — in this case, 332 — and take their difference, then the original number is divisible by 13 if and only if this resulting difference is also a multiple of 13. In this case 423-332=91=7*13, so it's divisible by 13; a bit of mental long division gives 332423= 25571*13.
(To explain in slightly more mathematical detail, I'm essentially taking 332423 and subtracting 332*1001=332332 to get 91, and since 332332 is a multiple of 13, 332423 and 332423-332332 are thus equivalent modulo 13.)
I also know divisibility tests for 7 and 11; the latter is particularly simple: add the two sets of alternating digits, then take the difference of those two sums; if that is also a multiple of 11 (including 0), then so is the original number.
Ex. 120681: 1+0+8=9, 2+6+1=9, 9-9=0=11*0, so it's divisible by 11 (note we also see at the same time that the digits all sum to 9+9=18=9*2, so 120681 is also divisible by 9). Much as the "sum up the digits" test for divisibility by 3 and 9 derives from 10^n ≡ 1 mod 9 (and thus also mod 3), this test for divisibility by 11 derives from 10 ≡ -1 mod 11, and thus 10^n ≡ (-1)^n mod 11.
Edit: fixed asterisks used for multiplication signs.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
25d ago
This goes right back to Marx and "false consciousness"
Actually, I'd argue the idea goes even further back, at least to Rousseau — his ideas of "negative education" and the amour de soi/amour-propre distinction.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
25d ago
I dearly hope that anyone who encounters 332423/234 in their professional life
Actually, this isn't too hard if you note that both the numerator and denominator are multiples of 13, and so it reduces to 25571/18, which (if you need it as a mixed number) is much easier to compute as being 1420 and 11/18 — or 1420.6111…
Then again, I'm someone who has a habit of trying to mentally decompose various integers I encounter into their prime factorizations, basically for fun, so…
(I'll also compute square roots by hand from time to time, just to keep my skills sharp.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
25d ago
Except to say that I'm not sure I have seen that, no. Perhaps someone will demonstrate it at some point, in which case I'll likely adopt the position and also be upset about the matter.
Jiro did it upthread right here:
Everyone here (minus the lizardman constant) thinks vaccines work
See, either you think "vaccines" work — *all vaccines, from the polio vaccine to mRNA Covid shots — or you think vaccines don't work, not a one of them.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
25d ago
Everyone here (minus the lizardman constant) thinks vaccines work.
I'd note that this kind of demonstrates one of OP's points — the lumping together of "all vaccines into one monolithic product and doctrine." That you either believe "vaccines work" — all things that we choose to label a "vaccine," regardless of how novel the technology — as a whole, or you want to bring back polio. That anyone who so much as doubts the mRNA shot must be a scientifically-illiterate moron who thinks Edward Jenner was a fraud and the MMR shot causes autism.
Plus, it's also consensus-building.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
25d ago
Thus, HBD-believing fertility-rates-concerned rationalists' thinking goes that lower IQs might be selected for and boost short-term reproductive fitness in the short term, while preventing us from solving AI alignment or colonizing Mars or any of that good stuff, and thus drastically reducing Homo sapiens's chances of long-term survival.
Look, I still remember how popular the opening bit of Idiocracy was with a lot of left-wingers all those decades back, well before "HBD-believing fertility-rates-concerned rationalists" were a thing. For that matter, I remember classmates from Caltech talking about how we needed "parenting licenses" out of mid-20th century sci-fi to keep the dumb, Bible-thumping rednecks from breeding too many future Republican voters, before we end up another moron like Bush the younger in the White House. (They also had either one of two explanations as to why this wasn't eugenics.)
Depending on how you define "conspiracy theory"… two come to mind:
That Carolyn Bryant Donham was telling the truth about what happened to her, and that Timothy Tyson is lying when he claims she secretly, off the record, recanted to him.
That the jury in Fulton County convicted the right guy for the murder of Mary Phagan.
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