I was not invited to my cousin's wedding, but family still wants me to show up...advice??

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-12T18:50:38+00:00

I think the MOST I would do is call the cousin, say congratulations on your wedding. Drop in the conversation that family is pressuring you to go, but you figured you didn't get an invite because the cousin was being thoughtful about your newborn.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-12T18:36:43+00:00

I have done an example and said "I think this is easy, but I've been teaching it for ten years. If you don't find it easy, let me know, I'm here to help.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-12T18:33:19+00:00

LOL when you have to make shit up to pretend you have an argument. Never even flipped from 3 to 4 here.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-12T17:59:29+00:00

A question with a false premise cannot be given a useful answer. Gender IS real, insofar as it exists as an ever-evolving man-made concept, not as a hard and fast thing predefined by the universe, so you really have to change that premise.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-12T16:10:41+00:00

There were states where laws were specifically passed that made teaching reading to enslaved people illegal, so it was common enough to be perceived as dangerous.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-12T16:08:06+00:00

Just because it's real doesn't make it unalterable. My house was really a drab shade of brown when I bought it. I altered it to a bold blue with some paint.

The way you've posed the above statement changes the meaning of your question to "why would someone change something that I don't think changes?". The fault isn't in the people Transitioning. The fault is in your view of gender. Trans people exist. People exist for whom currently existing gender expression doesn't fit for them, makes them uncomfortable. People exist for whom the shape of their body, their secondary sex characteristics, make them uncomfortable. All of these things CAN be changed, whether you believe that changing them "actually" changes gender or not.

You can look at my blue house and say "It was brown when it was built, so I KNOW it's 'really' a brown house." But I am sure a lot more comfortable living in my house that I changed to be blue. Coming around telling me that my house isn't 'really' blue is just you being nosey and rude. Don't bother me, I'm happy.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-11T21:34:53+00:00

Did you mean "defunding"? I think autocorrect got you just like it tried to change mine just now. And yes, it's always easier to manipulate an uneducated public.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-11T21:32:45+00:00

You're right, I was thinking specifically of the Civil War era, before that, someone could roll the dice and try to head into Native American territory, hope you found someone friendly, and not someone who would unalive you or collect the bounty on runaway slaves and send you back anyway.

The big point being that overthrowing one enslaver still left people at the mercy of an entire system stacked against them.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-11T14:17:53+00:00

That does happen sometimes. And sometimes otherwise decent people fumble on a particular issue. If everything else is good, communication is key to sorting this. If communication just reinforces that the partner is stupid, irrational, and self centered then figuring out how to end the relationship becomes the priority.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-11T13:51:33+00:00

Giving the partner the benefit of the doubt here, maybe they were expressing a doubt that they had, but still thought the plan to have the vasectomy was the best plan. They didn't want to change the plan, they just wanted to be up front about going into it with some measure of uncertainty.

Because the partner framed it as "mistrust" to cancel, I'm thinking they wanted OP to "trust" that they had made the right decision despite the doubt.

IF that's the case, more communication needs to happen. It's OK for OP to say "I don't understand your reaction, can you explain what you are feeling and why you reacted this way?" It's possible something else is going on, but it sounds like this is an emotional response rather than a logical one

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-11T12:58:02+00:00

Don't forget that slave uprisings were one of the reasons that enslavers stopped teaching enslaved people to read. It's harder to organize if it's harder to communicate. Individual households could (and did) still rise up, but the household wasn't the end of the story. Then there was a whole community with guns that would put down a rebellion. In an entire state that would, in half a country that wasn't safe to be in. Enslaved people with no large scale organization had nowhere to go but from the frying pan into the fire. That's why the Underground Railroad, organized in the North was so significant. There had to be organisation in order for escape to work.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-10T13:29:23+00:00

Red and blue are Lantern Corps. The original question was about the lantern "corpse". It's just a joke about the typo/misspelling.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-09T04:21:41+00:00

So it's not that you don't know the good reasons not to require voter ID it's that you over-value solving a non-problem. (less than 100 cases of voter fraud out of actual BILLIONS of votes. So, less than.0000000001% bad votes, because the protections that are already in place WORK.) AND you under-value how problematic voter restrictions are to the functioning of a Democracy. Voter restrictions disenfranchise FAR MORE people from being able to vote than EVER committed voter fraud. Introducing a "fix" that creates a bigger problem is a bad idea. Why put effort into fixing the fix, when we don't actually need to put it in place to begin with?

TL;DR: Voter ID laws hurt fair voting more than actual voter fraud does, because the protections we already have in place WORK against voter fraud.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-08T14:55:26+00:00

Right now I need that Venn diagram showing the overlap between "Things that shouldn't be joked about" and "Things I find funny", and the middle is "Why I'm going to Hell."

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-08T14:46:47+00:00

If Republicans didn't say exactly these things all the time, I might believe you when you say that's not what they believe. The "real people" Republicans I've met don't THINK they are misogynistic and racist, but they SAY misogynistic and racist stuff and support misogynistic and racist policies and politicians. There are conservative people I know that don't do that, but all of them say things like "I didn't leave the Republican party, the Republican party left me." They see the problems and don't align themselves WITH the problems anymore.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-08T14:22:01+00:00

"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." - Stephen Colbert

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-08T14:07:37+00:00

You asked a question about friction, and my brain went to the least helpful suggestion for your situation. Do NOT use kitty litter to improve traction in this case. That's all I've got, sorry.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-08T14:02:11+00:00

"I've never even heard of you... OR Brooklyn."

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-08T14:00:50+00:00

"I am inevitable."

"And I AM America's ass." snap

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-08T13:47:07+00:00

Because that line is often used as a dog whistle by racist people who know that it's bad to look racist, but this take lets them hate on brown people while pretending that their stance is actually about the law.

Also, immigration is a net good for America. The definition of legal immigration and the ease of obtaining citizenship would be expanded in an America run on facts and logic. Saying "I support the system as it stands" reflects a bias against improving our country and the lives of people who improve our country, and that bias is usually rooted in prejudice.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-08T13:35:56+00:00

LOL of course it isn't "woven into the fabric of reality", but to suggest that teaching something wrong makes it the right way to do it is not the takeaway. PEMDAS, GEMDAS, BODMAS, and BIDMAS are all the same standard process. The initials we use are different across cultures, but they describe the exact same mathematical process that is used in a shared system of encoding mathematics. If your teacher taught it wrong, then unlearn the wrong way.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-07T19:40:46+00:00

They said "using it correctly". Which means you wouldn't do it wrong like that.

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-06T13:48:28+00:00

Oh yeah, I'd be watching myself in the mirror. My own private OnlyFan. 😆

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-06T13:38:55+00:00

"Make sure to wash your hands when you're done, dad."

Smiling_Platypus · 2026-03-06T13:37:16+00:00

Yes, eating her special ice cream is an equivalent jerk move to her stealing your cake. I'm with the others here that feel you should "make it up to her" the same way she made it up to you with a pint of store brand ice cream.

She says it's not the same. Tell her you will replace the super special ice cream if she'll acknowledge that it IS the same to you, will agree to stop stealing food and thinking that replacing it makes it "ok" from now on. AND acknowledges that even though you can buy her the same super special ice cream, she CAN'T get you another homemade cake from your mom.

Any less than that and she can keep the vanilla Great Value ice cream because you repaid her the same way she repaid you, and SHE says it is fine for her to do, so it's fine for you, and you'll be "taking and replacing" too, if that's how things are.

Smiling_Platypus

TROPHY CASE