Indiana's Attorney General Todd Rokita launched a tool for parents to report "gender ideology" in schools. Users immediately began sending memes in protest,
      • gregorum@lemm.eeEnglish
        91·
        9 months ago

        After our office consistently heard from student, parents, and teachers about objectionable curricula, policies, or programs affecting children, we launched the Eyes on Education portal.

        Our kids need to focus on fundamental educational building blocks, not political ideology - either left or right.

        Eyes on Education is a platform for students, parents, and educators to submit and view real examples from classrooms across the state.

        The Office of the Attorney General will follow up on materials submitted to the portal that may violate Indiana law using our investigative tools, including public records requests, and publish findings on the portal as well.

        To view examples or submit to the portal, select the school corporation and name of the school and upload your documents.

        Upon submission, someone from our office may contact you for additional information or clarification.

        Submissions to the portal will be reviewed and published regularly.

        this is the most ridiculous rhetorical doublespeak I’ve seen in a while. kids need to focus on education, not political ideology, so let’s shove some political ideology down their throats? And, of course, the ass-covering BS logical absurdity that anything “objectionable” must, certainly, be unsafe for children.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            37·
            9 months ago

            They want objectionable Shel Silverstein? Because that can be arranged.

            (I don’t want them banning Shel Silverstein or anyone else, I just think it’s funny that they want to ban the only non-dirty stuff he ever did.)

          • gregorum@lemm.eeEnglish
            13·
            9 months ago

            by the time I was in school - the age we were reading Silverstein - was the mid-late 80s. he’d a had couple banned by then, but my teachers were in love with him, so I got to read most of his books as a kid. what books of his weren’t assigned were to be found in our school’s library and were often fought over. we had a school that really pushed a curriculum that relied heavily on using both the school and local public library for research, even in elementary school. I remember my parts being annoyed at how often they had to take me to the library for even basic schoolwork.

            I loved it.

            I really lament that, today, with the internet, there isn’t a central public repository of trustworthy information for research. the closest is Wikipedia, and, for what it is, it’s pretty fucking great. It’s a great jumping-off point for anyone to start learning on any subject, and I’m super-glad it’s there.

            bringing it back around, Shel Silverstein was a wry observer of humanity but poked his finger in the eyes of too many powerful critics. He had a way of opening the minds of people - especially children - that made people who would like to manipulate the weak scared that Silverstein’s message would make their efforts more difficult. It’s no wonder the would wish to silence him.

          • prole@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            12·
            9 months ago

            Shel was a known cannabis user and a bit of a hippie. That’s probably why.

            Fun fact, he also wrote the Johnny Cash song, “a Boy Named Sue”

          • oatscoop@midwest.socialEnglish
            7·
            9 months ago

            The theater adaptation of Where the Sidewalk Ends was one of our middle school plays at our decidedly “rural” school.

            One mom had a problem with it, and it was only with the “rebellious” bits. She shut up when every other parent rolled their eyes at her. It’s crazy how attitudes shift.

        • Mario_Dies.wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          182·
          9 months ago

          I sent them a copypasta

          Title

          BBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPsnnnnniiiiiiffffffffffff…oh yes my dear…sssnnnnnnnnnnnniiiiiiiiffffffff…quite pungent indeed…is that…dare I say…sssssssnniff…eggs I smell?..sniff sniff…hmmm…yes…quite so my darling…sniff…quite pungent eggs yes very much so …ssssssssssssssnnnnnnnnnnnnnnniiiiiiiffffff…ah yes…and also…a hint of…sniff…cheese…quite wet my dear…sniff…but of yes…this will do nicely…sniff…please my dear…another if you please…nice a big now…BBBBBBRRRRRRRAAAAAAAPPPPPPPFFFFFFFFLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPFFFFFF Oh yes…very good!..very sloppy and wet my dear…hmmmmm…is that a drop of nugget I see on the rim?..hmmmm…let me…let me just have a little taste before the sniff my darling…hmmmmm…hmm…yes…that is a delicate bit of chocolate my dear…ah yes…let me guess…curry for dinner?..oh quite right I am…aren’t I?..ok…time for sniff…sssssnnnnnnniiiiiiiiffffffff…hmmm…hhhmmmmm I see…yes…yes indeed as well curry…hmmm…that fragrance is quite noticeable…yes…onion and garlic chutney I take it my dear?..hmmmmm…yes quite…BBBBBBRRRRRRRRPPPPPPFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTT Oh I was not expecting that…that little gust my dear….you caught me off guard…yes…so gentle it was though…hmmmm…let me taste this little one…just one small sniff……sniff…ah….ssssssnnnnnniiiiiffffffffffff…and yet…so strong…yes…the odor….sniff sniff…hmmm….is that….sniff….hmmm….I can almost taste it my dear……yes….just…sniff….a little whiff more if you please……ssssssnnnnnniiiiiffffffffff…ah yes I have it now….yes quite….hhhhmmmm…delectable my dear……quite exquisite yes……I dare say…sniff….the most pungent one yet my dear….ssssnnnnniiiifffffffffffffffffffffff….yes….

      • Gerudo@lemm.ee
        30·
        9 months ago

        Man, that form doesn’t verify any contact information. It sure would be easy to flood it with genuine concern in picture format.

      • andros_rex@lemmy.world
        7·
        9 months ago

        Use tor before they start filtering it. That’s usually what they block first. Submit from multiple IPs to make it harder to filter. Be realistic - there are websites that’ll help you generate fake names, addresses. You can even use ChatGPT to write time wasting comments. Try to avoid using real people’s names so you don’t get innocents harassed.

  • MooseLad@lemmy.world
    124·
    9 months ago

    And just when I thought my state couldn’t get much worse, we’re wasting time and taxpayer money for witch hunts.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      67·
      9 months ago

      I think you missed the time and taxpayer money that has already been spent on persecuting Dr. Caitlin Bernard for performing a legal abortion on a raped 10-year-old. Rokita has been doing witch hunts for a while now.

    • dmtalon@infosec.pub
      321·
      9 months ago

      Hello fellow Hoosier, I emailed our school superintendent last year when the stupid book banning bill thing was proposed, and then passed. I wanted to know if there would be a way to tell if people requested books to be banned, so I could go out and buy them for my kid to read. (because obviously they must be read worthy)

      I followed up with him recently since the bill had passed. He did, at least, inform me that no ban requests have been made. So at least in our school there wasn’t some crazy people waiting to start complaining and getting books removed. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to search for banned books though which I would like to see as an option.

      • MooseLad@lemmy.world
        4·
        9 months ago

        Well that’s definitely encouraging. I’m from a small town (my graduating class was less than 60 people), but I haven’t heard about any book bans here either.

        • dmtalon@infosec.pub
          3·
          9 months ago

          I actually filled out their form, with my info but didn’t meme them. I wrote out a paragraph or so message about how disingenuous the GOP has been. That this Grandstanding and fear tactics are what has been “dividing” people and that his webpage/form, along with other bills they continue to introduce are the problem. I also reminded him that children aren’t racist, homophobic, (should have included religious) until adults teach them these things.

          I’m sure my message will get lost in the memes but it made me feel better.

  • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
    1041·
    9 months ago

    topics deemed to be “political ideology” in schools

    Don’t you dare pledge allegiance! Don’t you dare play the anthem! Don’t you dare promote capitalism!

    • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
      241·
      9 months ago

      I still very clearly remember reading Harrison Bergeron in school and having some idiot school teacher act like “that’s that socialism kids!”

      How the hell is that socialism? A reference to income based taxation? If anything, following the big scary Soviet and PRC model, they’d have pumped Harrison full of roids and told him to rip a capitalist pig dog in half for his landing.

      And, of course, Vonnegut agrees it isn’t about socialism, no matter what American school teachers have been ordered to teach.

      https://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/may/05/vonnegut_lawyers_could/

      • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
        21·
        9 months ago

        I mean you wanna be technical about it socialism is a much wider spectrum of ideas than Communism. There are definitely people who define it strictly by the presence of the worker co-op or as anti-capitalist but that’s one floating idea in a nebula. Market Socialism for instance is basically a blend of capitalism and socialism where things like capitalist incentives are still maintained but regulated and systems of social support are expanded to make up for the gap of the whole capitalist “not my monkey not my circus” washing of hands of social responsibility to be an active part of a community. It’s basically anti-capitalist in the same way putting up a privacy fence is anti-neighbor… So a wide spanning income based taxation could be construed as sort of Socialist but its basically the air we breathe as far as a norm goes.

        But Harrison Bergeron is more like the Conservative satire of what “Cultural Marxism” looks like in practice. The strawman idea that is designed to make people clutch their individuality and random blessings like something someone wants to forcefully take away from them… It’s a metaphor for things like social programs and inequality conscious measures that lift up disadvantaged people to allow them access to participate in society but not a particularly good one as it pre-supposes that lifting someone up is the same thing as crushing persecution of the naturally gifted.

        Your teacher was half right, the story is about Socialism but it’s a hostile framing of Socialism in complete bad faith using the conventions of science fiction to paint an overblown dystopia with hyperbolic absurd metaphors that underline the anxieties anti-civil rights advocates had when it was written.

        The whole thing makes more sense when you consider that hardcore disability advocacy groups that started the path to creating the ADA basically was beginning to gain traction when the book was being written.

          • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
            2·
            9 months ago

            Ah, I see I was unclear on some points.

            I am not saying the author is a conservative making a bad faith arguement about Socialism. Quite the opposite. He’s a leftist making the strawman cold war anti socialist rhetoric and turning it up to 11 to be absurd. But this actually has nothing to do with the intention of the author. While Vonnegut was for the most part was known for his anti-war anti McCarthist bent not all of his catelog is cohesive. Harrison is one where his intentions, at least in his writing execution, were fairly grey. He was writing the Conservative conception of Cold War depictions of Socialism and civil rights advocacy but its one of those death of the author moments where the satire struck some perceived “truth” with a conservative audience. Knowing the author it is generally leftist is what allows you to unlock the actual possible intentions of the satire but that effect is sometimes negated due to an unfortunate habit of the polarized audience.

            Think of it as a Steven Colbert Report effect of satire. You expect absurdism to be recognized in a work based on external knowledge of the author and the level of over the top tricks you employ but your audience… If they exist on the other end of the spectrum doesn’t recognize who you’re making fun of because you instead miss the mark and create a warped mirror that makes you popular on both sides. Colbert, in character, was extremely popular in conservative spaces because he essentially masqueraded as an over the top demagogue and they took his satire as their own “sticking it to the libs”. This particular story ended up being so on the nose to conservative belief at the time that they took it and literally and are using it as their own propaganda.

            • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
              1·
              9 months ago

              Yeah, definitely missed your meaning towards Vonnegut’s intent.

              And you would think he made it a bit obvious when Bergeron rips off his weights and declares himself Emperor, but as you say the conservatives typically don’t see that as an unreasonable attitude.

              • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
                2·
                9 months ago

                It is my fault for being too ambiguous in my phrasing.

                But yeah… Dude’s teacher going “and THAT’S Socialism” is essentially the effect at play. When you hit all the reinforced points of Conservative emotional reactive training with just a bigger hammer they don’t know to look for the cues that the author and the message are at odds. . A lot of the rhetoric of Conservativism is based more on vibe than on solid social or media literacy so if you just replicate the vibe the programming kicks in to stop thinking critically. They do recognize it as hyperbole… Most of the time. I have known some spectacular idiots

                You’ve probably noticed but all but the absolute most obtuse satire does not work on conservative audiences.

  • TengoDosVacas@lemmy.world
    1043·
    9 months ago

    We gonna have to Stonewall all over again nationwide, aren’t we?

    I’m not gay myself, but the math is simple: is it human?..then it has human rights.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
      9·
      9 months ago

      This isn’t the first time the christofacists have created a snitch line and had it filled with junk spam. What makes them think “this time it will work!”

          • dumpsterlid@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            The thing about conservatives is they are babies, they can’t handle an actual policy discussion and they don’t care. They just want a story about a bad guy to hate and they don’t care about any aspect of reality that doesn’t interface with that story they like. In the conservative viewpoint of the world NOTHING matters except narratives pre-processed into those little applesauce juice packs for kids that they can slurp up without having to use a spoon.

            If you start talking about the boring reality of governments and movements (I hate that “organizing” is a perfectly accurate term for building movements lol but that’s exactly what the work is) how change happens through policy making and how those policies can have reallllly annoying details that make them backfire or have the opposite impact they are supposed to (CAFE regulations with trucks and gas mileage in the US) conservatives just shit their pants and start screaming at you.

            Conservatives would really like to be able to enjoy their baby food without someone else (them it is always them) making another steaming turd appear in their pants, ruining the whole experience yet another time, but it almost never happens which is why they are so angry all the time. They are babies.

            • DrPop@lemmy.world
              1·
              9 months ago

              Conservatives like using numbers over statistics until it matters. I remember them comparing the BLM move protest to the Jan 6 insurrection by quoting property damage as a justification. I have to speak to their emotions and hopefully makes some sort of connection before I can even begin to get them to understand my side.

  • GladiusB@lemmy.world
    941·
    9 months ago

    Let’s create an AI to call them and keep reporting the person pushing the bill. And calling them assholes.

  • Queue@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    872·
    9 months ago

    Can someone try to “Little Bobby Tables” them? Just put some SQL injection shit to make the servers more of a dumpster fire?

        • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
          15·
          9 months ago

          Pretty sure this would fall under the several parables in Christianity where Jesus or God basically tells people that exacting judgement for biblical sin is the domain and privilege of God alone and that it’s not the job of people to act on it.

          But if Christians didn’t get pushback for being terrible to people they wouldn’t feel persecuted and they all want to suffer somehow to feel like they are Christ-like themselves. The Bible is very much written from the perspective of having it’s work cut out to be radical upheaval of the status quo. I don’t think there was much thought that they would basically recreate the structures they were fighting against by becoming economically as powerful as nobility. When you really start digging everything from the expectation of extreme celebacy to the idea that giving money to the church is a virtue that should be rewarded with respect and prestige in the church isn’t Jesus… It’s Paul. The notoriously power hungry guy who who fell off a horse, hit his head on a rock and hallucinated Jesus.

          • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
            132·
            9 months ago

            Without Paul there is no Christianity. The James community got wiped out. What’s more without Paul there is no Bible either.

            27 books and 13 attributed to him alone. Of the remaining only 5 are popularly referenced. Of those five 1 is Jesus recast in the mold of Paul (Mark) and the other is about the merry adventures of Paul. Since John copied Luke, Luke copied Matthew, and Matthew copied Mark even the parts about Jesus aren’t really about him.

            You don’t know what Jesus really said, you can’t even confirm the man existed.

            Here is the truth and I am sorry it hurts. Your god is made in your image. The Jesus you like tells us a lot about you and nothing about what really happened. If you are a SJW type then Jesus is one, if you are an authority type than Jesus is one as well, revolutionary, closeted homosexual, enlightened being who knows about aliens, into peace, into diversity, into charity, into institution building… There are as many Jesus’ as there are people who worship him. The greatest Rorschach test ever made.

              • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
                2·
                9 months ago

                Bart Erhman. He wrote a series of popular books on the NT and pretty much is the guy everyone is going to recommend to get started with. He also has a podcast.

                In terms of the book attributions Wikipedia has a list I am sure.

                In terms of what happened to James community I am not sure the best place to get started would be. Maybe start by learning about the purposed authors of the Gospel of John.

                In terms of my assertions that Mark was recasting Jesus as Paul well you are just going to have to look around. Start by finding a basic textual criticism class on Mark. If you would like to know why I said that I can give you a breakdown of my arguments but a real historian could do a better job.

                In terms of me saying that they all copied from each other again Bart. Me and him disagree about John but he he agrees with the rest. You also might want to read up on the Synoptic problem and Q, M, and L sources.

                Let me know.

            • radiosimian@lemmy.world
              2·
              9 months ago

              I usually steer clear of religion but the Rorschach test idea is amazing, never looked at it that way until now. Cheers!

            • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
              1·
              9 months ago

              Point of order regarding the hostility here - I am not a Christian. Closest spiritual philosophy I ascribe to is Shinto. I dislike Paul in a general sense because I am a trans non-binary person and I grew up in a town where Christian kids were awful to me mostly based off the sex negative nature of Pauline doctrine where I intuit the man was a sex repulsed asexual who really was fond of telling other people what to do and setting that up as the default state of Christianity is very good at creating situations of sexual/religious trauma.

              I study the bible and the origins of dogma for historical purpose to help make greater sense of the complex nature of how individual schisms of the church impacted the world. I am aware Jesus has the same situation going as Aristotle and Confucius where what we have of his philosophy was written down by his students or his students students. It’s at best a warped lens.

              Still the picture painted that remains of Jesus, or this idea of Jesus… does have some identifiable philosophies. Mostly comparable to the classical stoics.

              But at least part of the situation in figuring out the formation of the early church and the development of is to look at the early adopters. The bible is not meant to be be read through as a full endorsement of every rule. Leviticus for instance is “the rules of the tribe of Levi” and are essentially a snapshot of the sort of rules created by the priesthood of that particular time. It gives context of where dogma comes from potentially so that one can extrapolate what is God’s law and what is cultural. There is no divorcing Paul from the modern church due to him being the core around which the whole thing aelf legitimizes… But a Church, any church or the conception of an organized church is not Christianity. As movements go using the document as a historical document (more or less in the same way we would use Monmont or Herodotus) you can recontextualize a very different conception of the religion and there is nothing really to stop you from following it.

              • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
                1·
                9 months ago

                Still the picture painted that remains of Jesus, or this idea of Jesus… does have some identifiable philosophies. Mostly comparable to the classical stoics.

                Yes when you ignore data that doesn’t agree with you, you can find data that does. There is no universal agreed upon method of verifying that the oral tradition

                • Existed
                • Accurately reported what really happen
                • Self-correcting so it could remove what didn’t happen

                Besides which we really do not have a reason to believe that a country bumpkin illiterate preacher in that culture and place would know and invoke Greek philosophy. The very word we have for a person going against God Apostate comes from Epicureanism by means of Aramaic.

                But at least part of the situation in figuring out the formation of the early church and the development of is to look at the early adopters. The bible is not meant to be be read through as a full endorsement of every rule. Leviticus for instance is “the rules of the tribe of Levi” and are essentially a snapshot of the sort of rules created by the priesthood of that particular time. It gives context of where dogma comes from potentially so that one can extrapolate what is God’s law and what is cultural. There is no divorcing Paul from the modern church due to him being the core around which the whole thing aelf legitimizes… But a Church, any church or the conception of an organized church is not Christianity. As movements go using the document as a historical document (more or less in the same way we would use Monmont or Herodotus) you can recontextualize a very different conception of the religion and there is nothing really to stop you from following it.

                Cool. Are you trying to convince me or Christians? Your argument is that Christianity doesn’t have to be terrible it just is. It is a fixable problem. Which might be true since hey as I said it is all a Rorschach test. There is no historical Jesus so anyone can make him say whatever they want. Now where does this get you? In theory if multiple things happen in a very specific sequence something awful could be good, for a small amount of time.

                Why don’t we just cut out the stalling and middleman and just all become atheists humanists? No? Fine go retrocon the Bible and pretend you have some means of detecting what can’t be detected.

                • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
                  12·
                  9 months ago

                  My general issue with atheists is that they are generally complete asshats about people who do believe in anything and even the suggestion that any belief system other than their own should be taken seriously as a potential core function of identity causes them to go on a massive hostile tirade where they treat everyone else in the room as an idiot.

                  If you are as big an asshole about any belief than your own functionally you are basically just Christianity 2.0 as far as trying to flatten the spiritual landscape. When people become hostile towards you with that behavior you earn it. I don’t know what religious trauma got you where you are but taking it back to the drawing board for a hard think about how you are turning it around and inflicting it on others.

                  No I don’t think Jesus was particularly up on Greek philosophy but it’s not actually all that hard a philosophy to hit upon. Most of the stoics did so in isolation because essentially it is a trauma response. Sometimes someone randomly pops up out of the landscape with a similar idea call it the convergent evolution of ideas.

                  And Yes, convincing Christians is in part my deal because I am queer and as a whole we need to fight these beliefs just to stay alive but Christians aren’t going to become athiests. You do not fight belief with disbelief, they spit that back in your face because that’s not how faith works.

                  But by all means act a complete social paraiah that makes the work harder by making them believe that people are trying to rip away what’s precious to them. Drive them to believe they are persecuted and call them idiots so they dive back into their book and their churches with a self righteous relief at having dodged the devil once again. Ask yourself what that ego hit of proselytizing your atheism with vicious slow burn rage looks like from the outside and then look at the men on the street corners telling us how we’re all going to burn in hell waving their holy book and ask yourself if your behaviour towards others is all that different.

            • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
              12·
              9 months ago

              you can’t even confirm the man existed.

              Well, that’s going a bit overboard. Unless you have someone’s mummy, you can’t confirm that any ancient person existed. Obviously some people existed, otherwise we wouldn’t exist.

              The Bible is the most printed book in history. There’s more surviving written evidence that Jesus existed than some Roman Emperors. It’s just an atheist belief that Jesus “probably didn’t exist”.

              Whether you believe he was a divine figure is different. But there’s more written evidence about him and what he believed than most people in history.

        • saintshenanigans@programming.dev
          6·
          9 months ago

          It doesn’t matter what Christianity says. These piles of sub-human filth are just trying to keep America at its own throat so we focus on human rights issues instead of paying attention to the bills they actually care about.

          This shit is all smoke and mirrors and at this point I don’t think they’re going to get the idea until the rest of us start acting real French

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
    766·
    9 months ago

    As someone who figured out my gender using calculus (mapped dysphoria over time and found the derivative. Yes that is way too much work) I may have to do a troll

    • username_unavailable@lemmy.world
      13·
      9 months ago

      Wow, in Doctor Who back in the 70s he runs in a classmate from Galifrey who calls him ( an equation) abbreviated as “Theet Sigma”.

      I like the idea that there was something about the doctor that they didn’t understand about themselves and had to do the math. Not sure if that would make the equation part of the question or answer but it’s interesting.

      Thank you, hope you’re on a lovely path.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
        16·
        9 months ago

        Thanks, it was definitely a strange experience but learning calculus gave me new frames of reference to think of all sorts of problems and that was one of my major problems at the time. It’s part of why I think that math and science are just as important as the humanities for well roundedness even if you’ll never use them. They teach you to think differently just like history and literature do.

        And yeah it was fuck 9 years ago now. I transitioned shortly after and am now at the point I spent so long hoping to get to where it’s all in my past.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
      122·
      9 months ago

      That’s actually incredible finding out your gender with calculus lol what an awesome way to find out lmao

  • KᑌᔕᕼIᗩ@lemmy.mlEnglish
    66·
    9 months ago

    And then what, send the teachers and kids to re-education camps?

    Isn’t this the same kind of thing some people get upset at China over?

    Wtf.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    63·
    9 months ago

    Excuse me, but as a Hoosier, I expect you to always use the full title when discussing Mr. Rokita: Attorney General, Colossal Shitrag and Future Governor Todd Rokita.

    Why yes, it does suck here.

  • Melllvar@startrek.websiteEnglish
    55·
    9 months ago

    In making the announcement on the Tony Kinnett show, livestreamed on YouTube, Rokita stated that investigators would pore over submissions and post any they believed to be credible onto a publicly viewable database.

    In other words, they’re not going to act on the ones that don’t align with their own political ideology.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    542·
    9 months ago

    From the list of reports:

    The script for Eurotrip, with a note not to tell Scotty

    Scotty doesn’t knoooooooooooooooow

  • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.worldEnglish
    45·
    9 months ago

    Why do the hard stuff like work to materially improve the lives of everyone in your state when you can do the easy thing like whatever the fuck this is?