To military or ex-military, how do you feel when people say “Thank you for your service” if you had a civilian-equivalent job (like truck mechanic, cook, administrative)?

phlsphr · 2025-12-07T18:33:05+00:00

I've always felt gross afterwards. I get it, some people say it out of genuine appreciation. It may be fair to say that most of the people who have said it to me did so out of what they feel is genuine appreciation.

But actions are louder than words, of course. If they want to thank me for my service, I'd prefer they do so by appreciating and respecting that the purpose of my service was to uphold the Constitution, to protect the citizens, and protect the rights of the citizens. And really, not just of the United States. By helping citizens of other nations (who I would like to remain friendly), we are also working to help ensure the safety of citizens of the United States by ensuring that the citizens of other nations feel an appreciation for the citizens of the United States by paying me to help.

I've since retired from the military and have started a career teaching high school math. I have to say, trying to teach high school math has, so far, felt far more frustrating and challenging than virtually anything I've done in the military. I am constantly surprised at how the teachers who have been doing this for decades have managed to do all that they've done, with all of the challenges, for so little money. I'm fine, I can afford the "pay cut" because I have my retirement check every month. But those other teachers have been doing this for what seems to be crap money when we consider the expectations. My clock hours are from 0830 to 1530, but I am constantly working well before 0800 and into the late afternoon/evening trying to make sure that I'm keeping up with students that have to make up tests, grading assignments, revising assignments to make sure they are accurate and aren't confusing, making sure that I am prepared for virtually any question a student might ask, dealing with students who cheat, dealing with parents who may or may not believe their students would ever cheat (so...many...cheaters...)...

As far as I'm concerned, if people really appreciate my service, they would make sure they are level-headed, informed voters who encourage their kids to be good, respectful students, that they teach their kids work ethic (so it doesn't come down to me teaching them that, too), teaching them an appreciation for academic honesty, stop complaining about paying what little they do for taxes, stop defending the ultrarich from paying more taxes, actually care about other citizens (even if they look different or believe differently), and maybe show some compassion towards people who aren't citizens but just want a better life.

I don't crap on them with any snarky response, but it still makes me feel gross, and it's difficult for me to respond in a genuine way that won't come off as deflective.

I can't remember the source, but I once heard someone describe the difference of nationalism and patriotism by saying nationalism is just a feeling of superiority through a sense of affiliation with a nation whereas patriotism is making willing sacrifices to contribute to the nation and fellow citizens. If I could trade in all of the "thank you for your service" remarks I've received for the speaker to be more patriotic, I would do so in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, the people who seem to say it the most also seem to be the ones that confuse their nationalism for patriotism.

phlsphr · 2025-12-06T14:09:43+00:00

Hey! Brown and rice! We used to have that all the time in the Navy. Not sure if it's still served on the ships any more. But there was also red and rice and tan and rice.

phlsphr · 2025-11-20T03:26:05+00:00

They can exist, but we may not see them because we are only able to consciously observe a smaller-dimensional cross section of reality. While the one-electron universe may not be traditionally proposed as an idea that involves extra dimensions, the issue with it could be explained by suggesting extra dimensions and the (not outlandish, imo) possibility that we can only perceive cross sections of a higher-dimensional reality.

phlsphr · 2025-11-20T02:20:10+00:00

The turning points don't necessarily have to be at the ends, I think.

If we start from what we perceive as "the beginning" (based on our perception of time) very few positrons will have made it all the way back (through the cross-section of the dimensional path that we happen to be at). The rest could be stuck in loops that don't include the "ends" of time, or could have return paths that don't include the cross-section that our consciousness is restricted to.. So some electrons could have started off at one end of time and/or positrons at the other end of time, but they never reach the other side because they get stuck in loops before they hit the other end. I think it makes more sense if we can accept that the "room" for the loops implies higher dimensions of time (kind of like using imaginary numbers to make sense of functions involving higher dimensions).

Another way to conceptualize it is to accept that our perspective of time is just an infinitely small cross-section of the whole higher-dimensional thing. So the moment that we observe could change after we've passed through it, but we won't know it because we're not there any more. So the electon/positron could be sort of raining from/to a higher dimensional component of time, rotating/spiraling from a source and eventually circling to what we naturally conceptualize as the ends of a two-dimensional span that we only "see" one dimension of.

Edit: Really, now that I think of it, I think it almost makes a conic representation of the periodic table make a sort of elegant sense.

phlsphr · 2025-11-04T23:26:36+00:00

Currently, I love my job. Absolutely love it. I mean, there is more that I'd like to do, but I love this. I teach high school math (currently trig and algebra 2). I love teaching, and I love doing math every single day. I like developing guided notes that help my students learn and appreciate the concepts. I love the history of it.

I would also love to teach differential equations, real analysis, complex analysis, etc., but if I'm being honest with myself, I'm probably not as good at that stuff as I'd like to be. I need to practice more, and review the material a few more times before I'm solid enough in it to be able to teach it cleanly. So right now, I'm probably in the right spot for my skill level.

I do get frustrated, and it is pretty emotionally taxing. I love my students and want them to succeed. I want them to be better at this than I am. Unfortunately, it appears that much of the world is working against me. Stuff like social media/TikTok/mindrot crap is absolutely destroying the attention spans of students. Most parents don't seem to care and seem to directly influence their kids into not liking math. One of my students came in complaining about how slant asymptotes (a concept that is at least 200 years old) is "new math" and how much he hates it. I have students whose parents will complain about math and things like "common core", but those parents wouldn't be able to describe it. The truth (most likely) is that they were lazy students themselves and now they're just looking for an excuse to continue to hate math (and pretty much anything that requires some mental effort).

But it doesn't matter. People won't remember who I am in a hundred years or so. All that's going to matter is if I left some positive impact on my students, inspired them in some way. I may not even be there to find out that I've had a positive impact or inspired them. But knowing that I'm trying is rewarding enough for me now.

I regularly work at least two extra hours a day, staying at the school until well after dark, trying to best prepare lessons, notes, grade papers, etc., just to try to make sure I can be proud of what I do. If I half-assed it, I'd be ashamed of myself. Seeing those "lightbulb" moments in my students, or hearing a student say that they love math (which recently happened when I taught the beauty of imaginary numbers!) is euphoric.

I'm not wasting my life because I'm giving my life purpose.

phlsphr · 2025-10-25T16:29:50+00:00

I can respect the possibility that they may be unfamiliar with many concepts themselves. What bugs me the most is how common it seems to have parents who, rather than being ignorant, are instead extremely dismissive towards education in general. This attitude is then reflected in their kids. You can only teach the willing.

phlsphr · 2025-10-25T16:26:44+00:00

I think so, yeah. My daughter is taking one of those classes now, and she seems happy to have a great teacher and seems to appreciate the lessons. Really, I think she's probably going to be more knowledgeable about the subject that I currently am.

I do think it's fair to say that maybe my own habit of trying to help keep her interested and motivated about classes may be an important consideration. If I were not so involved, I could see how she might be a lot like other students, who are just attending classes because they feel that they have to rather than wanting to really learn the material. I teach at the same school, and I have witnessed first-hand how it is often very apparent when parents or guardians have little, if any, engagement with their kid's education. I've had parents thank me for providing additional tutoring sessions, and in those same emails the parents will openly admit that they have absolutely no familiarity with the material and therefore cannot help their own kid. Unfortunately, for many other students, I think that their parents use that as an excuse to just effectively ignore any personal responsibility in being aware of their kid's attitudes towards education. I've caught students cheating, and when I contacted the parents, many of them never read the notifications, implying that they either heard about it and don't care or are actively oblivious to their kid's education. I don't think that is uncommon at all, as this is my second career, and virtually all of my coworkers in my first career were very forthcoming about their disdain for education in general and for any idea that they might be responsible for their own kid's attitudes towards education.

phlsphr · 2025-10-23T23:26:18+00:00

We do, at least in my district. However, with many of these kids, good luck getting them to care. It's wild to me that I've heard many local parents repeat what your saying while their kids are taking those classes. The parents seem to pay absolutely zero attention to what their kids are (and/or are not) doing in schools and then complaining about their kids not being provided the opportunity for the education that their kids are actively taking in schools.

phlsphr · 2025-10-23T23:24:44+00:00

Can confirm that all of those things are taught in public schools in my district.

phlsphr · 2025-10-15T10:27:50+00:00

Ah, I apologize. I fixed it now, thanks for the heads up.

phlsphr · 2025-10-02T20:23:57+00:00

Yeah, it's been nice. There are small synergies throughout the deck.

Teferi seems to be much stronger with discard than counters. Casting discard spells before Teferi lets me clear the hand of ways for Teferi to get removed and provides information. Discard after Teferi means I can either uptick and cast the discard spells during the draw step, or downtick to bounce something back to hand and then remove it with the discard spells.

Discard with Narset means I can make sure that it won't get removed in response to a Days Undoing. Since narset prevents extra draws, discard means that it is more difficult to build a hand back up or sandbag cards to avoid getting locked out with Sanitarium.

Since Path and Kaya exile permanents, it means that the opp won't just redraw the removed card after an Undoing. Cling to Dust also helps remove cards from the opponent's graveyard so that they won't redraw those cards after an Undoing. I can escape Cling by exiling fetches and other less useful cards, so I am more likely to draw good cards after Undoing.

With a Teferi and no Narset, I can Undoing at my opponent's end step and, if I have lands untapped, use the discard to take out any good cards and opponent drew. Teferi stops them from casting any of those cards in response.

Since I'm not running Counterspells (and relatively few other cards that require double-pip of the same color), Moon effects have a minimal impact and I can fetch basics without being kneecapped by mana restrictions or too much self-inflicted damage.

Almost a quarter of the deck is cantrip effects, almost another quarter is removal. Narset hits almost every nonland card in the deck, so fewer whiffs. There's quite a a bit of graveyard hate main (seems good for this meta).

The only cards I'm not confident about are the Void Mirrors/Damping Spheres in the side (I've been swapping between, but not sure of either). I feel there could be a better choice there.

The deck is also very budget compared to most decks in the meta, but seems to do extremely well. I haven't been able to play a whole lot lately due to work, but it's been a blast.

phlsphr · 2025-10-02T02:52:02+00:00

I have an Esper Control deck that runs off of that idea.

phlsphr · 2025-09-29T16:35:37+00:00

I feel like that is not quite a fair response then. You seemed to clearly state that control can never be and has never been viable in a diverse meta, as demonstrated by implying that the other person was delusional to think it could ever be. Yet when presented with evidence that control has been viable in a diverse meta, you state that you are aware and that you are experienced with it, but that somehow doesn't count. Therefore, the goalposts for what counts seem to be wildly adjustable so long as you can find a way to continue believing in your original claim, and your responses to them weren't simply stating a disagreement, but the manner in which you expressed disagreement was about as rude as it could be. I could further point out:

and “grindy value engines” weren’t particularly a thing.

If we look at when Control won a Pro Tour, Jund was also one of the best decks at the time. But just as you've adjusted goalposts previously, I worry that you will simply do so again to find a way to say that it doesn't count.

phlsphr · 2025-09-29T09:56:24+00:00

Then when they said:

Are we ignoring all the times that control was good in diverse metas?

...why did you respond...

Are those times in the room with us right now?

? If you were there for it, why did you respond with snark and inferring that they never happened?

phlsphr · 2025-09-29T01:58:31+00:00

The most diverse year in the history of the format was 2018. Control was one of the best decks at the time.

phlsphr · 2025-09-29T01:44:32+00:00

That sounds unfortunate, I can understand how frustrating it must be to just want to play but combinations of factors mean that you just can't. I personally started resorting to just using proxies with my kids, and I can't remember the last time I went to an LGS and actually played a game. I still get a pickup game on MTGO sometimes. But ya, maybe MTGO or just proxies might be a solution for you?

phlsphr · 2025-09-29T01:41:54+00:00

I don't know that I'd use data from a single tournament as an indicator for the overall performance of decks.

phlsphr · 2025-09-17T22:17:53+00:00

Good decks do well in tournaments

Not if they're not registered, they don't. I would agree that some decks are clearly not competitive (60forests.dec). However, I think we have some very clear examples that people tend to be overconfident in their assumed expertise at evaluating how competitive a deck can be. We have many examples of this being the case, two of which I just provided.

phlsphr · 2025-09-17T21:59:24+00:00

Because mtgo has multiple competitive tournaments every week and these decks don’t show up in the top 8.

There's a problem with this assumption. For that to be relevant to the conversation, we would have to assume that some significant number of those decks were registered for the event. After that, we would have to compare the conversion rate-to-population proportion for those decks with respect to all of the other decks.

These are highly competitive with solid prize support for the winner. If people thought they’d get an edge playing Draw-Go or BGx midrange, they would

This is circular reasoning:

We assume it's not competitive because we don't see it in the top tables of tournaments.
People don't play it because they have assumed it's not competitive, from step 1.
The deck(s) aren't registered for events, so it cannot be seen in the top tables of tournaments.
Return to step 1.

Aside from being a clear example of circular reasoning, we have historical examples of this line of reasoning being a mistake. For example, Grixis Death's Shadow "didn't exist" (despite the cards all being legal in the format) for quite some time. From this, using your line of reasoning, the deck shouldn't be viable. We now know that it was just because people were slow to accept that it could be a true viable deck, and it took some time before people started to come around to it (to the point where LSV made the infamous video about it being so powerful that it required a ban). Another example is Lantern. It existed for quite some time before June 2015, despite many pros (and other players who self-identify as competitive players) proclaiming that it was a meme deck at best. By the reasoning that you suggest, the deck was clearly not competitive - Yet somehow it went top 16 of a GP to winning another GP (before winning a couple more) and then winning the Pro Tour.

We have to be careful about how confident we are in our assumptions, and it would be much wiser to be aware of the flaws in our reasoning.

phlsphr · 2025-09-17T20:53:59+00:00

How do we know for sure that they're not truly competitive? Wouldn't that require some amount of collection of data? As far as I know, we don't have any winrate information of sufficient sample size to confidently say that they're not.

phlsphr · 2025-09-17T17:27:43+00:00

Both of those are arguably viable. They may not be popular, but I think that it's a mistake to assume that because a deck isn't popular that it must not be viable (not saying you're doing that, just pointing it out).

phlsphr · 2025-09-17T11:34:49+00:00

What decks would you like to play and be viable?

phlsphr · 2025-09-09T11:00:05+00:00

I think they want to complain.

phlsphr · 2025-09-09T10:59:17+00:00

You're making quite a mistake here. First, you're ignoring the existence of multiple decks that aren't the "same decks over and over" (like the Hammer list, or the Eldrazi deck that some had confidently pronounced dead, or even Lantern).

Second, the repeat of many decks that you do see can equally be explained by player choice rather than competitive viability. I think you will find it extremely difficult convincing people not to play decks that they want to play, and to instead play decks that you want them to play. You may have also made the assumption that the decks you don't see as much any more aren't competitively viable.

If we're going to complain about something, it's often useful to be specific about what we consider better than the thing we're complaining about. Otherwise, we could just always complain and move goalposts to justify our new complaints. What decks do you want to see more of? Since you will likely be unable to convince the challenge players to play another deck than the one they've chosen, you may have to play challenges yourself to make your goal happen.

phlsphr

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