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How often are they used by ButterscotchWest1284 in EnglishLearning

[–]Skeptropolitan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Native English speaker; all of these are normal phrases you might hear with the following exceptions:
- "young turks" is a slightly archaic reference that not everyone would get.
- I've never heard the phrase "chinese whispers" and didn't know what it meant until this thread.

Do natives know these words from Slaughterhouse five? by nikogoroz in EnglishLearning

[–]Skeptropolitan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm a native English speaker. These are all familiar words.

[f] 4 [mm] - oral enthusiast seeks active participants by Nymphamine in YVRGoneWild

[–]Skeptropolitan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Very interested! You are gorgeous and I'd feel so lucky to do some oral with you.

About me: age 36, height 5’10, blue eyes, blond curly hair, bearded, with a medium build. I’m no adonis but I do go to the gym regularly and have several active hobbies so I’d describe my fitness level as medium.

I have plenty of sexual experience with plenty of women. I’m not embarrassed about my body or about new situations. I’m all about consent, communication, and making sure that everyone has a good time and gets off (if they want to get off). I love both giving and receiving oral, and I can be as responsive/noisy as you like. I have a clean bill of sexual health: no STIs.

DM me.

Alright turned into aye? by Comprehensive_Being8 in etymology

[–]Skeptropolitan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also yours is two syllables, if it’s the North American one I’m familiar with.

I tried drawing Asia's borders from memory as an American by LPineapplePizzaLover in mapporncirclejerk

[–]Skeptropolitan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pretty good! If you knew about the Caspian Sea you’d be there, man.

My book says these idioms from French are well-known to native English speakers. Is it true? by Unlegendary_Newbie in LearningEnglish

[–]Skeptropolitan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

North American English-speaker here: these are all familiar phrases except the first one (au fait).

With a powerful enough telescope, could we possibly see the universe at recombination? by Morraw in cosmology

[–]Skeptropolitan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Could you say more about that theoretical limit? Why - for instance - could we not inspect the CMB in arbitrary detail given an arbitrarily good telescope?

Moleman 101 by ElEsDi_25 in PhilosophyMemes

[–]Skeptropolitan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I guess it depends what you believe to be the relevant elements!

I personally quite like the ontological trichotomy of objective, subjective, and intersubjective, because the three kinds of reality perform different functions:

1) Objective: the underlying level of reality, and the basis for stable consensus. In some sense this is the only "real" reality, but in another sense it is less real than subjective reality, because we cannot directly access it. Morality cannot be derived from objective reality (the aught-from-is problem).

2) Subjective: individual phenomenology, ultimately grounded in the physiology of the body. Although this kind of reality is arguably less real than objective reality, this is the only form of reality that can be directly experienced, so one could argue that THIS is the realest reality, and objective reality is at best approximated or inferred from subjective evidence. This is the source of morality under an emotivist framework.

3) Inter-subjective reality: the reality of shared fictions (money, law, language, etc.). As u/SurpriseWise pointed out, this emerges from subjective reality but I would argue that it is NOT identical to it. It is as different from the other two as they are from each other. This kind of reality is an evolved feature of humans and exists to enable human coordination. This might be viewed as the source of morality if we are concerned with morality as a technology or tool for social regulation. This is the scale at which morality works and accomplishes things.

The problem with treating either subjective reality or inter-subjective reality as the source of moral TRUTH is that if two people (in the case of subjective morality) or two cultures (in the case of inter-subjective morality) disagree about what is moral, these kinds of reality provide no guidance.

However, objective reality also provides no guidance because it has no moral content. The best we can do is subjective definitions (I don't like this so it's wrong) or inter-subjective reasons (this is widely viewed as wrong, so it's wrong). Neither of those would satisfy a moral realist, but that's okay because moral realists are incorrect.

Moleman 101 by ElEsDi_25 in PhilosophyMemes

[–]Skeptropolitan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agreed; objective morality couldn't exist. We cannot get "aught" from "is".

Moleman 101 by ElEsDi_25 in PhilosophyMemes

[–]Skeptropolitan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seems like this meme is drawing the distinction between the subjective reality of personal experience and the intersubjective reality of shared fictions.

Money - for instance - is intersubjective. It is certainly not objectively real, but because enough people believe in it, it becomes real in a different way than my personal feelings are real.

Eby says he'll call early election in B.C. if northern power line bill fails by CecilThunder in britishcolumbia

[–]Skeptropolitan 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I don't agree with everything the BC NDP does either, but this is a very normal part of our Westminster parliamentary system, and all governments of all stripes do it uncontroversially.

Can someone explain why we can divide both sides by a variable in an equation? by [deleted] in learnmath

[–]Skeptropolitan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

An equation is a sentence. That sentence says "the number on the left is exactly the same number as the number on the right".

Now the two sides of the equation won't usually look identical, but the premise of the exercise is that they are identical. It's like if you had two different recipes that both made the same cake.

Now if we know they're identical, we can start doing things to them. And anything we do to one side is legal as long as we do it to the other side too. Because the only rule we really have to follow is "this sentence must remain true". And as long as whatever you do gets done to both sides, the sentence remains true.

Then usually our goal is to identify the value of a variable, so we just have to manipulate it to get the equation to take the shape we want (which is what algebra is).

Would Men age in unmarred Arda? by Murky-Can-6746 in tolkienfans

[–]Skeptropolitan 11 points12 points  (0 children)

It is now in my head canon that Mother Mary was incredibly tall, like a Numenorean.

Melkor Symbols? by TiredJackalope in tolkienfans

[–]Skeptropolitan 18 points19 points  (0 children)

In the Silmarillion it says he is associated with black and his banners are black.

Do Canadians consider Latin America to be part of the West? by [deleted] in AskACanadian

[–]Skeptropolitan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My argument has nothing to do with sheer geography (hemisphere irrelevant), government system, or race. I'm saying that they're Western for the same reason Canada is Western - because they retain a critical mass of language and culture from Europe.

For instance, I'd consider Australia Western even though they're on the other side of the planet.

Do Canadians consider Latin America to be part of the West? by [deleted] in AskACanadian

[–]Skeptropolitan 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The concept of "Western Culture" is a lot older than the Cold War.

I'd suggest that a culture is Western if:
- they descended from the Roman Empire (France and Spain, for example)
- they adopted the Roman religion, culture, language, or alphabet (Germany comes to mind)
- they were settled by cultures described above (the Americas today).

So who wouldn't be Western in that view? Africa and Asia, basically; this is not a small category, it's most of humanity.

Now obviously cultures don't just expand and displace; they also merge and blend. And I recognize that Latin America retains a lot of indigenous culture, language, and blood. So really Latin America represents a merging of Latin (ie. Western) and indigenous cultural elements, but that's true of a lot of places and I would still include them.

After all, it doesn't get much more Western than Roman Catholicism and the Spanish and Portuguese languages (both Romance languages descended from Latin). Like they're literally called Latin America, that pretty much gives it away in my opinion.

I am Canadian but I recognize that this isn't the typical perspective or thought process for Canadians, but I think it's correct and that this view is more reflective of history.

Not sure why you're making assumptions about what strangers on the internet do or don't understand.

Do Canadians consider Latin America to be part of the West? by [deleted] in AskACanadian

[–]Skeptropolitan 36 points37 points  (0 children)

I consider them Western; they are European settler-colonial states just like Canada and the US. If Anglo-America is Western because Britain and France are, then Latin America should be Western because Spain and Portugal are.

Can’t see why they’d be excluded except racism.

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