OOTS #1120 - The Discussion Thread

[georgie_leech]

I feel as if this conversation is getting more heated than it reasonably should be allowed.

That's fair.

Look Zimmer, my point is that just because everything isn't fixed, doesn't mean things can't get better. You're in a position where you can fight for people that need it, and you shouldn't let the fact that the system of exploitation is still there prevent you from seeing the good you do accomplish.

[zimmerwald1915]

It's almost like ongoing problems are ongoing instead of immediately solved. Tell me your actions don't matter to the people you represent. Go on. Tell me your intervention isn't making their lives less terrible than it would have been without you or someone like you being involved.

They don't matter. In the three to five years it can take to secure a settlement or judgment, a typical FLSA plaintiff will have gone through as many jobs at about the same conditions (because despite there being laws against retaliation it turns out to happen all the time anyway, the remedies are inadequate, and it's often easier on the psyche to just get out of the old workplace), and the employer will have continued sweating his workers without pause or fled into a spurious bankruptcy, leaving them to look for new work. Judgments can be paid in multi-year installments of a few hundred or thousand dollars a month, and are drained to a high degree by parasites like me.

EDIT: missed the response to Rrmcklin. Let's talk about something else.

[Ironsmith]

So, then... anybody else just now getting the double meaning of the title?

[Rrmcklin]

I do now that you've pointed it out. I don't pay much attention to the titles though.

[Manty5]

Too much real-life politics are intruding. I don't have the power to tell you to knock it off and back my words up with force, but you keep it up and a mod WILL wander in eventually. I suggest you not make action on their part necessary, even if it's only for your own sake.

Also, after blocking The_wierdo, I've discovered that blocking the individual doesn't do very much when the individual decides to bait 10 others.

[Jasdoif]

Learning to manage addiction is a definite improvement for the addict and those in their lives.

In an esoterically similar vein, learning to manage ADHD is a definite improvement. It hasn't waned in the decades since I was diagnosed with it, but being able to (mostly) keep a particular chain of thought in my mind for more than a few minutes at a time has made life incredibly less frustrating.

[KorvinStarmast]

Also, after blocking The_wierdo, I've discovered that blocking the individual doesn't do very much when the individual decides to bait 10 others.

And therein lies the artistry ... Back to "where's Roy?" and "What's Durkula gonna do next?"

[Shining Wrath]

And therein lies the artistry ... Back to "where's Roy?" and "What's Durkula gonna do next?"

Roy is closing in on the vampires, and we're going to see that soon. I think Braidella dies first.

[D.One]

And therein lies the artistry ... Back to "where's Roy?" and "What's Durkula gonna do next?"

As Vampire Dwarf with Blue Curly Hair says, V, Belkar and Hylgia are in the back of the room, next to the entrance door.

From Durkon's and Greg's perspective, they are to the right side of the door.

As far as we knew from previous strips, Elan, Blackwing and Haley were close(ish) to V and Belkar, but they can be more to the left side of the door.

Roy entered the roon right after the giraffes, and before all the other except V and Blackwing. He's probably more in the front of the room, closer to the fireplace and to the vampire clerics, and is probably to the left side of the door, since he wasn't in front of Hylgia & Co from Greg's/Durkon's perpective.

That means probably that in one or two strips we may see Roy making an attack agains the vampire clerics...

[Ruck]

There's an entire section of the quote index on character development and growth

Yes, he has.

Heh, it turns out when I say "I think the Giant said this" it usually means something like "I'm on mobile and thus it's difficult to look up, but I feel confident it's there."

Given the direction the discussion of zimmerwald's POV of humanity went, though, I don't think it's prudent to add anything else or continue.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Too much real-life politics are intruding. I don't have the power to tell you to knock it off and back my words up with force, but you keep it up and a mod WILL wander in eventually. I suggest you not make action on their part necessary, even if it's only for your own sake.

Also, after blocking The_wierdo, I've discovered that blocking the individual doesn't do very much when the individual decides to bait 10 others.

Hence my continually bringing up in thread after thread that it would improve life for the rest of us if more people would just IL him since the mods won't redtext him.

[Thurulian]

What part of "futile" was unclear? You fight and you fight and nothing ever changes.

Things change that is the nature of existence nothing is ever the same. What is evolution if not progression? you say people cannot become better, and if you want to limit yourself that way then that is totally your choice but i choose to think differently because nothing is ever certain until proven undeniably. So unless you can provide some kind of solid evidence other than your own opinion you are just pushing a negative bias opinion that probably does not apply to anyone else.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Evolution is not progress. It is merely change. Some times it means you better adapt to the environment. Other times (most times, likely) you end up the same or worse.

[Thurulian]

Evolution is not progress. It is merely change. Some times it means you better adapt to the environment. Other times (most times, likely) you end up the same or worse.

and so change is not progress? whether it be forward or backward?

[Rogar Demonblud]

Going backwards is regress. Progress by definition means going forward.

And now I'm wondering what conjugation would be going nowhere. Egress is out. Congress is together. Agress?

[Thurulian]

Going backwards is regress. Progress by definition means going forward.

And now I'm wondering what conjugation would be going nowhere. Egress is out. Congress is together. Agress?

That is the most interesting question in this thread so far.


All i was arguing before is that people do usually progress throughout their lives and someones subjective negative opinion doesnt change the reality of human beings capability for positive change.

My example of evolution was not well thought out i should have just pointed out that no matter what task you perform, if you do it enough you will improve your understanding of it and improve your performance at said task. Therefore humans are extremely capable of changing for the better.

[Ironsmith]

Going backwards is regress. Progress by definition means going forward.

And now I'm wondering what conjugation would be going nowhere. Egress is out. Congress is together. Agress?

-gress is a Latin root, literally meaning "step". Progress is stepping "in favor of" something (contrast a Congress, (Con- as a corruption of Contra-) which would be stepping in dissent (yes, I know there's a political joke there, but I prefer to think of it as a philosophical statement... members of Congress step against each other, implying multiple viewpoints)). Egress is stepping out (E- being a corruption of Ex). Transgress literally means "step across" (presumably in reference to a boundary). Agress could be interpreted as either "step to" or "step away", since A- is just as likely a corruption of Ad or Ab... and given modern english "agression", it's probably still the former. Regress actually means "stepping again", which implies backwards motion so as to do something that has already happened (once, twice, thousands of times, etc.).

Sinegress ("without step"), Obgress ("step in the way"), or Ingress ("step in or against") would be your most likely bets, though I'm pretty sure that last one's been claimed by architecture. But I digress (Di-, corruption of De-, "from")

[Xaphan]

Evolution is not progress. It is merely change. Some times it means you better adapt to the environment. Other times (most times, likely) you end up the same or worse.

That... isn't how evolution works.
You're thinking of mutation (kinda). Evolution is inter-generational and includes not just the initial mutation, but also its spreading to the rest of the population over several generations via inheritance. Which usually only happens if those bearing the mutation are at least as likely to survive and breed as those who do not bear said mutation.
So yeah, whilst I kind of agree that evolution isn't progress (that's a pretty nebulous term in cases like this), it almost never means that you end up worse.

[factotum]

Which usually only happens if those bearing the mutation are at least as likely to survive and breed as those who do not bear said mutation.
So yeah, whilst I kind of agree that evolution isn't progress (that's a pretty nebulous term in cases like this), it almost never means that you end up worse.

Of course, some inherited conditions are recessive and thus those with them can breed just fine (haemophilia, for example). Then you get the ones which actually have a benefit under certain circumstances and can thus spread more widely, like sickle cell anaemia--generally a *bad* thing to have, except that it also protects against malaria, so in sub-Saharan Africa where malaria is a big killer, sickle cell is widespread. Evolution is a funny thing, all told...

[Ironsmith]

Of course, some inherited conditions are recessive and thus those with them can breed just fine (haemophilia, for example). Then you get the ones which actually have a benefit under certain circumstances and can thus spread more widely, like sickle cell anaemia--generally a *bad* thing to have, except that it also protects against malaria, so in sub-Saharan Africa where malaria is a big killer, sickle cell is widespread. Evolution is a funny thing, all told...

If it's beneficial but comes with drawbacks, I'm not sure how bad you can really call that... especially given the implication that the benefits, again, outweigh said drawbacks. You're somewhat fatigued all the time, but you're protected against a deadly disease? That only sounds bad in areas where said disease is a nonissue. Kinda of a matter of perspective.

Of course, once the threshold for survival's been reached, it's anyone's game... people have traits now that, in terms of evolution, are not naturally selected for, but are still entirely sustainable because the presence of people and civilization itself now supports them. Some even thrive in this way better than "naturally selected" people would, which would imply that we're still evolving, if not quite in the ways you might expect. A funny thing, indeed...

[Xaphan]

Of course, some inherited conditions are recessive and thus those with them can breed just fine (haemophilia, for example). Then you get the ones which actually have a benefit under certain circumstances and can thus spread more widely, like sickle cell anaemia--generally a *bad* thing to have, except that it also protects against malaria, so in sub-Saharan Africa where malaria is a big killer, sickle cell is widespread. Evolution is a funny thing, all told...

Isn't sickle cell the one where you only need one allele to get the protection, but two gives you the disease?
In any case, I'd argue that in a high-malaria environment, sickle-cell has made you more suited to your environment, even if in 99% of situations it would be a bad thing. Evolution doesn't care about 99% of situations, only the one you're actually in.
Also, selection pressures do operate over time against recessive conditions too, which is why so few people have haemophilia, and why sickle-cell is so incredibly rare outside of Africa.
Sorry, science is interesting.

EDIT:

Of course, once the threshold for survival's been reached, it's anyone's game... people have traits now that, in terms of evolution, are not naturally selected for, but are still entirely sustainable because the presence of people and civilization itself now supports them. Some even thrive in this way better than "naturally selected" people would, which would imply that we're still evolving, if not quite in the ways you might expect. A funny thing, indeed...

I mean, civilisation is a form of environment. The society you live in is part of your environment (if it weren't, being a bright blue bird with large, colourful tail-feathers would be a really stupid idea). If you're more likely to have more children, given your environment, than another person, you're better adapted for that environment than them. That's all natural selection is. You might say that the traits we're selecting for now are different from the ones which would be selected for in the wild, but that's like saying that the average lemur would do really badly at the bottom of the Atlantic. That's not where we live, so evolution doesn't care.

[woweedd]

They don't matter. In the three to five years it can take to secure a settlement or judgment, a typical FLSA plaintiff will have gone through as many jobs at about the same conditions (because despite there being laws against retaliation it turns out to happen all the time anyway, the remedies are inadequate, and it's often easier on the psyche to just get out of the old workplace), and the employer will have continued sweating his workers without pause or fled into a spurious bankruptcy, leaving them to look for new work. Judgments can be paid in multi-year installments of a few hundred or thousand dollars a month, and are drained to a high degree by parasites like me.

EDIT: missed the response to Rrmcklin. Let's talk about something else.

If you think it's all futile, well, A. Seek medical help. That sounds like clinical depression.and B. what are you even doing it for, then?

[Rogar Demonblud]

As towards B, probably for the same reason I keep slamming my head against the cinderblock wall of apathy to child endangerment. Someone has to, and I don't see many others stepping up.

[Kish]

If you think it's all futile, well, A. Seek medical help. That sounds like clinical depression.and B. what are you even doing it for, then?

My father-in-law's a retired lawyer. He's also, at the age of 66, dying of severe alcoholism.

My spouse, his daughter, said, in perfect seriousness, that in her observation of her father and his co-workers, if you're a lawyer, you have two choices. You can become the heartless, profit-motivated stereotype behind most lawyer jokes...or you can become an alcoholic.