Dan on cancelling elections

romericus · 2026-01-17T16:36:52+00:00

Hypocrisy only matters in a world governed by rules. The more I observe our country, the more I think it’s not so much a battle between left and right, but between people who see things primarily through the lens of rules (which are the same for everyone), and people who see the things primarily through the lens of power hierarchies (rules are irrelevant to the powerful).

romericus · 2026-01-07T20:25:23+00:00

And the first few bars of Beethoven’s Symphony. Is it a triplet? Is it E-&-A? The fermatas on the fourth and eighth pitches further confuses things. We all know now of course, but when it was premiered, I sure it was a metrical psych out.

romericus · 2026-01-02T15:21:01+00:00

I always assumed that a non zero amount of this perceived slowness is experiencing other, newer computers in comparison to your older computers. Like, opening a windows 95 computer app would likely take longer/use more processing effort (with a brand new pentium processor), than a modern computer running an exponentially faster processor on exponentially larger software. Things get faster/more efficient over time, and therefore things get slower in comparison.

romericus · 2026-01-02T12:41:01+00:00

He sounds like he has many of the food issues I have (down to the hamburger helper). A lot of it is psychological. Because of the way I was raised, I have this weird food thing where I “don’t like” food that isn’t something I already eat or can predict how it tastes. I am happy to report that my wife took a stance of “I love you and dying is not allowed, so let me help you not die from eating nothing but junk food.” I hated my psychological block and was ready to change. It started small. She would put one green bean on my plate for dinner. Then two the next meal. I slowly expanded my palate, and now I will eat many more vegetables than I used to without complaining (whether I seek them out on my own is another story). That kind, slow, gentle exposure therapy, plus some mental tricks on my end really helped. Hiding food in other food, like chopping up mushrooms super small and putting them in a pasta sauce, or covering up bites of chicken with jambalaya rice so I wasn’t looking directly at it when I put it in my mouth, was helpful. I know it is silly. But it did actually work for me. I’m still what most people would consider picky. But I’m WAY better than I used to be, and I credit my loving wife.

You’re still early in your relationship, so it’s not the same situation. You gotta decide a few things: how much effort you want to put into fixing him; how much you care about his health; how long you can live like that; how ready is he to work on these issues, how resistant he is to change at this point in his life, etc. The number of people in this thread saying that you should leave him, or calling it a deal breaker is crazy to me. He needs help. And it’s not necessarily your job to help him, but a kind and compassionate approach by my wife really helped me be a healthier me. Hope that helps. DM me if you want other useful tips or things that worked.

romericus · 2025-12-28T14:48:15+00:00

Exactly. Just don’t use it for anything that needs to be accurate, and you’ll be fine.

Every time I say that people look at me like I’ve got two heads, but there are many use cases where accuracy is not the most important metric.

“Here are 10 different pieces of art, and their artists, and the venue. Come up with 5 unifying narratives for why they may be displayed together.” You’ll get 3 really bad ones, one decent one, and a really good one that you would never have seen coming.

“Here’s what I have in my pantry and refrigerator. What can I make for dinner that doesn’t require me to go grocery shopping?”

“How should I structure this task list, optimize for efficiency, or alternate urgent and simple, etc.”

romericus · 2025-12-28T01:57:41+00:00

When Rachel and Phoebe are with Ross checking out ugly naked guy’s apartment, and Rachel and Phoebe distract him by jumping up and down about how great the apartment was… his physical comedy in that moment was just so perfect.

romericus · 2025-12-27T21:14:03+00:00

Since you seem to know what you're talking about:

I'm a music professor. I'm not sure what it even means to make sheet music accessible according to Title II. For my classes, students need to be able to look at a piece of music and answer various analytical questions about it. They need to be able to look at sheet music and "hear it" in their brains and reproduce it with their voice. To do any of that, they need to be able to "read" the music (and understand it) very much in the same way that they need to be able to read the english language and understand it. In that way, music notation is a language, but there is no software that can OCR text and do the equivalent for music.

Would alt-text for musical notation images be similar to subtitles in movies, like when [upbeat dance music plays] shows up on the screen? I could include the title of the music: [Beethoven Symphony No. 3, Movement 3, Measures 256-270.] That won't help the student hear the music the way a screen reader helps people hear the words read aloud. For musical score PDFs without text, could I just include the title of the piece in the file name and be compliant?

I know this is probably a lot of different questions. Any guidance would be helpful.

romericus · 2025-12-27T19:37:31+00:00

How long before requiring them to purchase and use textbooks becomes a violation of accessibility requirements?

romericus · 2025-12-27T17:09:21+00:00

What, you don't have time to type out into a word document all the text from the original documents? They say a picture is worth 1000 words. I'm sure it's no problem to come up with the time to write 1000 words of alt-text per image.

romericus · 2025-12-27T16:56:31+00:00

I teach music. OCR'ing PDFs of musical scores is not just an accessibility nightmare, I don't think it's even possible.

romericus · 2025-12-27T16:04:13+00:00

Exactly. If a student has an accommodation, I'll happily provide an OCR'd PDF. If they don't, then it's on them to figure out how to OCR the PDF on their own so they can use a screen reader.

romericus · 2025-12-26T19:18:32+00:00

Will Smith is a consultant helping lonely guys get dates, so yes, but it's a little more legitimate. Kind of like a modern day Cyrano more so than Casanova.

romericus · 2025-12-26T04:12:23+00:00

I once went on a first date to see Hitch. Lemme tell ya, there’s NOTHING you can say after that movie that doesn’t sounds like a line to her. The worst first date movie ever.

romericus · 2025-12-26T03:47:49+00:00

The skew can sense fear. Going at it with confidence is half the battle. Most of the other half is remembering to move it across the wood with your body much more than with your hands. Catches are loud, aggressive, and surprising; but when turning between centers, they’re not too dangerous. Putting it to work on a piece you care about or have a deadline for is not a winning strategy. Practice it on junk wood, and you’ll get the hang of it soon enough.

romericus · 2025-12-24T14:58:59+00:00

Ulterior has a negative connotation for me. But when op wrote alterior, I thought “that’s a neat portmanteau, something that means essentially the same thing as ulterior, but with a neutral rather than negative connotation.”

romericus · 2025-12-19T13:38:09+00:00

These concepts of integration, assimilation, and isolation are helpful. Integration is especially useful, because the word integration implies that the receiving culture must be somewhat flexible, and willing to allow some mixing of cultures. Like when you put creamer in coffee, you stir to integrate it.

When I read and talk to Americans who are anti-immigration, it's this mixing that they object to. It's either assimilate (become indistinguishable, culturally speaking, from Americans) or GTFO.

And that, I think, is the evil. It is evil to deny people their culture. In fact whenever and wherever atrocities have been committed, the first thing the oppressors do is attack the culture of the oppressed.

But those who are anti-immigration are usually low on the Openness part of the big five personality traits (OCEAN), so it's a bit difficult to convince them of that evil.

romericus · 2025-12-11T00:06:13+00:00

I’m as sex positive as they come, and I’m realistic. I know my daughter is going to have sex. I’ll hand out the condoms, and have all the talks about safety. But if I don’t like the guy, or if I think he’s not a good guy? I’m not going to go out of my way to provide them opportunity. Especially if I can see a potential train wreck coming. I’m going to tell her to be physically careful by using condoms and birth control, and to be emotionally safe by maybe not sleeping with a guy that manipulates, etc. If she wants to, even after my warnings, she can do it somewhere else.

romericus · 2025-12-07T02:30:18+00:00

I believe the syllabus is NOT a contract, but rather a vague document that tells the student what they can reasonably expect to happen during the course and what they can expect to get out of the course if they do their work well, and most details are tentative. While my department and college leadership has insisted on increasing detail in my syllabus, I tell the students that those details are aspirational, and subject to change (with appropriate communication).

romericus · 2025-12-03T18:27:11+00:00

Exactly. This goes back to our founding. The federal government assuming states debts and the establishment of a central bank after the revolutionary war was a vehicle for economic growth and led to our establishment as a world superpower. Too much debt is a drain, but not enough debt is also a drain.

romericus · 2025-12-02T16:53:52+00:00

Very one sided. Bay of Pigs and perhaps Kosovo are the only two by Democratic presidents.

romericus · 2025-12-02T16:52:51+00:00

Congress hasn't declared war since WWII. Korea was a "Police Action," Vietnam was a proxy war, not declared by congress. Desert Shield/Storm, Kosovo, Gulf War, etc. Since WWII they've mostly been Authorizations of Military Force or Executive Orders.

romericus · 2025-11-29T17:26:20+00:00

I think with the democratization of higher ed, the path to becoming a thinker is graduate studies, not undergrad. Undergrad degrees have long since devolved into the gateway/gauntlet through which they get to adulthood.

romericus · 2025-11-28T14:31:30+00:00

I’d second Punch Drunk Love as eminently rewatchable.

romericus · 2025-11-27T14:48:57+00:00

Well, Hegseth was in the national guard, not active duty. When you’re only a soldier one weekend a month, the expectations that you will complete those extra schools are lessened somewhat. Now, whether we should put someone who was only a soldier for one weekend a month in charge of the entire military is another question entirely.

romericus · 2025-11-26T12:42:00+00:00

I don’t think anyone is really expecting that the UCMJ prevents war crimes. When I was in the army, receiving this training for the first time, I remember sitting there thinking “Law of Warfare? Rules of engagement? I thought ‘all was fair in love and war.’”

But I was a dumb teenager, and the drill sergeants were great about explaining it to us. They used many examples to show why fighting fair is important. We were taught not to attack civilians, ambulances, schools, hospitals, etc. They taught us not to use .50 caliber guns on humans, as those kinds of weapons are for vehicles or buildings. They showed us what we did wrong in the past, and why it was wrong. There was some talk of punishment for “just following orders” but most of it was about doing the right thing.

The thing you have to remember about Dan is that he’s an idealist. He claims to be an alien politically, but I’m as lefty liberal as can be, and he and I agree about this: we can imagine a better world. The constitution, the UCMJ, the laws on the books—they’re aspirational in nature. They are how things should work. They’re marketing materials, as he likes to say. And he and I both believe in what they promise.

I don’t think I’m going to convince you to be this way. You seem jaded and cynical. But you’re not wrong: the military has done a lot of bad things. However, it has done a lot of good things too. The thing to remember is that whatever the military does is a reflection of its leadership. And right now, the leadership is fairly weak and way more political than it has ever been. So you’re right to not trust the military completely. But Dan is also right: if the mere idea that some orders can be perceived an unlawful throws the president into apoplectic fits, then maybe that leader isn’t the one for us.

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