In 2017, it was observed that Trump had ticked all but two boxes. Now that he’s bent on controlling the media, it seems there’s just 1 remaining. But there is still free media, so perhaps it’s more like 1.5.

Some have commented that the elections are already fraudulent, but I remain skeptical of this. I’ll admit that gerrymandering is a problem, but gerrymandering has always been a problem so it’s not a bright-line for me. Still, I can’t shake the idea that the main reason there hasn’t been a fraudulent election under the 47th presidency so far is that there hasn’t been an election at all yet.

Either way, you don’t need every box checked to be alarmed.

more elephants than I expected tbh

I don’t really know how to do that other than to dig through replies from hexbear users pointing out how much vitriol they use. But in general, there’s a lot of name-calling (e.g. since you disagree with me, you must be a “white cracker,” “minstrel,” etc. – wtf kind of problem these guys have with minstrels I don’t understand); a lot of posting of flippant reaction images instead of actual responses, and so on. They’re clearly very angry about politics, which I get, but also have no interest in actually debating politics with any level of subtlety; even when I agree with someone in broad strokes but disagree about a particular item because I think it’s counter-productive to their own cause, I just get harshly told off. As a result, I can only assume they imagine everyone else is disingenuous.

I align more closely with hexbear politics than almost all non-hexbear users. IMO, their politics is not the problem – they’re just an astoundingly toxic community.

Seems like a fine community to post in, if you consider your self woman-identified. (See sidebar.)

Obviously, it’s wrong to gatekeep ways people talk. That idiot should shut up – you can talk however you like. But I’ll answer the question you asked – “what the fuck does that even mean?”

From a linguistic perspective, there is a notion of masculine and feminine speech patterns – that is, phrases or words that are most frequently used by women and phrases that are most frequently used by men. In languages other than English, this is often easy to spot – for instance, in japanese, there are pseudo-gendered first-person pronouns. Similarly, “umai” (tasty) is often considered more masculine than “oishii” (tasty). In English though, it’s much less common. I could think of “honey” or “dear” – e.g. “ohh, honey, no!” or “hello my dear” are rather feminine phrases – in my life, I have mostly heard women use those words in that way, and when men use them they tend to be considered “effeminate.” It’s also apparently more common for men to say “uh” and for women to say “um.”

There are probably subtle differences in how often various phrases are used by men vs women if you were to carefully make a tally – but honestly why bother. That’s just descriptivism. To say that men and women should speak in different ways is prescriptivist, and just plain wrong. So I wouldn’t worry about the way you speak – if somebody is upset with that, it is that person who is wrong, not you. As someone whose partner is a tomboy/butch woman, I must say I wouldn’t expect her to switch to using more feminine speech patterns.

If it’s concerning to you anyway, something you can keep in mind is the well-known linguistic phenomenon that new ways of speaking tend to flow from women to men more than vice versa. This is true in every culture studied so far as I know. For instance, it used to be considered an exceptionally feminine thing to say “like” all the time “he was like, …” “that’s so, like, …” but now it’s pretty ubiquitous. So if your speech doesn’t sound feminine today, it might have sounded overtly feminine just 25 years ago.

My motivation is seeping back in. Looking forward to being productive on the things I want to do :)

You’ve misunderstood me entirely. This is not merely an argument of semantics. Being talked over is a really bad thing, and yeah, I obviously don’t want that to be a thing that happens more. In contrast, increasing the proportion of men is essentially by definition the thing that I’m asking about in this thread – why aren’t men permitted. This means you’re begging the question: “permitting men would be bad because it would increase the amount of posts by men.” You’re just asserting that’s bad for some reason. I’m really not being pedantic here.

Anyway, if you’re trying to educate me about basic etiquette, you obviously think I’m arguing in bad faith. So let’s just call it off here.

I think I understand the problem you are pointing out. You’re saying that the forum shifts to have too many comments by men. But that’s not the same thing as being talked over.

(Sorry for the late response.)

I actually don’t agree that this is “talking over.” For one thing, this is a tree-structure forum, so on any give root-leaf path, the man is only 50% of the messages (and this is more relevant IMO). For another, I don’t even see what this man is doing wrong. He is politely responding to every response in turn. But ultimately, I just don’t think this really counts as “talking over” – I experience being “talked over” in real life a lot, and it feels like being unable to get a word in. It does not feel like “being able to say as much as I want to, and then get a direct reply,” which is the experience all the women you have described are having.

Can the rest of us please use copyrighted material without permission?

deleted by FBI

It stands for fornication

You may have missed the word “pipeline.” I’m not denying people change, but this meme is suggesting that good intentions are the first step toward bad intentions.

I did not say that men are the victim, though I don’t dispute it either. I said it’s sexist. I also didn’t say it was a slur.

Anyway, I hear my friends in tech use the term a lot. They aren’t referring to white-hat hackers, they’re generally referring to vapid entrepreneurs.

you’ve got too many sig figs

Surely it’s more than 3k. I see quite a few in Canada.

Not even going to be as deep as the Kola Superdeep. Disappointed.

I could be wrong, but I think “tech-bro” as a term isn’t meant to apply to everyone in tech. It’s mean to capture the intersection of tech people and “bros” – the kind of guy who likes football or something.

Of course that’s just what it’s meant to be; if people use it for all men in tech then yeah it just becomes a sexist and luddite terminology.

Bad meme. Implies “information wants to be free” leads to “have you considered monetizing empathy?”

I hope I’m like this guy when I’m 98.