The Small Rants Thread X: Turn Down for Bitchin'

[Solo]

...my mind is full of fuck right now.

I have an acquaintance that cosplays frequently as TWD's Michonne. She's caucasian (well, about as Caucasian as one can get in Brazil, mixed ethnicity grab-bag and all) and she bodypaints for that particular cosplay - at great cost, one might add, since she has to put on some seriously heavy makeup.

Someone complained that her costume was racist because of said body paint.

Help me out here: how the fuck does dressing up as a celebrated black character and doing a good job of it make you RACIST?!

To answer these questions, we will need pics.

[brujon]

...my mind is full of fuck right now.

I have an acquaintance that cosplays frequently as TWD's Michonne. She's caucasian (well, about as Caucasian as one can get in Brazil, mixed ethnicity grab-bag and all) and she bodypaints for that particular cosplay - at great cost, one might add, since she has to put on some seriously heavy makeup.

Someone complained that her costume was racist because of said body paint.

Help me out here: how the fuck does dressing up as a celebrated black character and doing a good job of it make you RACIST?!

We live in strange times, where everyone's sensitivity seems to be at its maximum. Political correctness is the norm, and its trendy to be seen "defending" the minorities. Problem is, because its trendy, people tend to go overboard with it. The result is, we have a lot of extremism going on right now.

You call someone out as racist on Facebook, and suddenly you have a lot of people cheering you on, giving you a bunch of likes & shares, and you're like, hell yeah, i'm popular dawg. Do it in a crowd, and suddenly you have a lot of people backing you and a story to tell.

A little while back, during Carnaval, i saw some people criticizing heterosexual males for the traditional crossdressing that happens during Carnaval. I was like... Uh... What? Yet, some extremists were saying that it's "offensive" to actual crossdressers/trans people, and that tradition should be abolished.

I'm seeing more and more people defending censorship over freedom of speech, increased government control over civil liberties, wanting to abolish this, abolish that, ban this, ban that...

Some dangerous thinking, that.

[Kuroimaken]

Ah, yes. The "it's okay as long as it's not me" crowd.

I also see no reason why crossdressing would be offensive to trans people. Isn't the whole point to accept them as the gender they're most comfortable with? If that's the case, then it's not crossdressing in a conceptual sense.

[brujon]

Ah, yes. The "it's okay as long as it's not me" crowd.

I also see no reason why crossdressing would be offensive to trans people. Isn't the whole point to accept them as the gender they're most comfortable with? If that's the case, then it's not crossdressing in a conceptual sense.

They were bashing on the fact that it was hetero males doing crossdressing "for fun" during Carnaval, said it was like mocking the cause, etc... It's a load of bull. These people aren't exactly known for making convincing or even logically consistent arguments, it's all emotional. Which is why you shouldn't even bother arguing with these kinds of people.

In fact, in my experience, i've seen that nothing ticks them off more than just plain ignoring them, saying something like "yeah, whatever" and walking away. Pisses them off beyond belief. People like this, they crave attention more than anything. They WANT you to talk back to them. It gives them the attention they want, and a reason to continue hearing the sound of their own voice.

Almost all of them don't even really truly believe in the crap they're spouting, they're just parroting the shit they've been force-fed by the media or by their friends. It's quite sad, really, that they don't really believe in anything, they're just really trying to belong to something.

[Amechra]

So I'm currently skating on thin ice.

I recently changed my avatar over on GitP - and I'm hoping that no one figures out where it's from.

It is literally cropped and rescaled from a piece of straight-up pornographic art; however, the mad scientist was just too perfect to let pass. I didn't leave anything suspect in, but...

We shall see.

Here's it is, to see if I missed anything.

[phaedrusxy]

Well since a GIS turns up nothing, I'd say you're safe. The only way for someone to call you out would be to admit that they also look at the same porn... (or I guess read this board... so I'd suggest you scrub this thread ).

[altpersona]

erg, tryna get get my martyr stones to take flight... having trouble finding the way to get em on reddit.

so far /r/religion didnt want me...

[Kuroimaken]

So I'm currently skating on thin ice.

I recently changed my avatar over on GitP - and I'm hoping that no one figures out where it's from.

It is literally cropped and rescaled from a piece of straight-up pornographic art; however, the mad scientist was just too perfect to let pass. I didn't leave anything suspect in, but...

We shall see.

Here's it is, to see if I missed anything.

You'll have to show me the full picture sometime. 

[Amechra]

So I'm currently skating on thin ice.

I recently changed my avatar over on GitP - and I'm hoping that no one figures out where it's from.

It is literally cropped and rescaled from a piece of straight-up pornographic art; however, the mad scientist was just too perfect to let pass. I didn't leave anything suspect in, but...

We shall see.

Here's it is, to see if I missed anything.

You'll have to show me the full picture sometime. 

Sadly, Scientist Lady's Head is the only really good part of the picture. I only came across it because I was checking updates at the artist's site (who does have some stuff I am into mixed in among the other stuff.)

[Unbeliever]

A little while back, during Carnaval, i saw some people criticizing heterosexual males for the traditional crossdressing that happens during Carnaval. I was like... Uh... What? Yet, some extremists were saying that it's "offensive" to actual crossdressers/trans people, and that tradition should be abolished.

The blackface explains the response to the original situation Kuriomaiken was referencing.  Presuming there's anything to it at all.  It's a particular history that pushes a particular button.  But, generalizing it to other countries or neglecting other local traditions ends up being a bear trap.

Brujon's example reminds me of something local here (New Orleans).  One of the Mardi Gras krewes (analogue to Carnivale) is called Zulu, and it is the traditionally African-American krewe, started, of course, when krewes were racially segregated.  THEY, by tradition, march in blackface.  The conventional wisdom is that it's to allow anyone to march with them, regardless of race, uniting everyone under a single banner.  But, if you've been trained to associate blackface with Minstrel Shows, etc., it will throw you for a loop.

In both cases, though, I'm sure a quick google search would have confirmed that this is at least a longstanding tradition, and not somebody going out of their way to be offensive.  I mean, out of context if I said "the Zulu Krewe marches in blackface every year" you might do a spit take.  But, wikipedia would have cleared the issue up in 2 seconds.

[dman11235]

So my thermal professor sucks.  Like, a lot.  So far in the two weeks we've had class, and he's used three real world examples of thermal mechanics that are just super wrong.  Like super, hardcore, wrong.

First, he was talking about how car doors are hot in the summer.  because apparently they literally get hotter than a bucket of water on the side of the road.  Technically this is true, kind of?  He main point was that they feel hot because metals absorb heat fast, meaning they get to the air temperature faster than water does.  Again, technically true.  However, they do not get that much hotter than the air temp (or rather, the temp of the inside of the car, because metals conduct well.).  He then went on to say how in winter they're cold because at night they lose heat faster than water.  The actual reason?  The exact OPPOSITE of the reasons he said, it feels hot in the summer because it loses heat fast (puts energy into you fast), and it feels cold because it gains heat fast (pulls heat away from you fast).

Second, talking about thermal contraction and expansion, specifically with water.  Things expand when hot, and contract when cold.  So his explanation?  The molecules literally get smaller.  Like, the bond lengths.  This is technically true, but the amount it shrinks is so small as to be meaningless.  Also, his reason for water expanding under 4 C?  The hydrogen got too close together, so as it cools further, they get further apart.  Yeah.  Actual reason?  Molecules/atoms get closer together, due to electrostatic forces and other stuff.  Water becomes a crystal, so gets into the crystal arrangements as it cools past 4.

Third, today.  Oh good lord was it horrible.  Apparently hurricanes are caused because hot air above an ocean (because the ocean water doesn't increase in heat, so all the sunlight heats is the air).  And because land heats up faster than water, the air over land is cooler than the air over water (yeah....remember the first bit?).  because of this, hurricanes move towards land!  ignoring the ones that move away from land.  Like all of them.  because they form closer to Africa than the US.  And the ones in the Pacific go away from land.  And all of them form really far away from land.  And apparently tornadoes are just hurricanes but on land.  And they don't form in winter because the land is cold, so the wind goes out to sea and thus no hurricanes.  Real reason hurricanes form?  NOTHING AT ALL to do with that.  It's evaporation.  And updrafts from the evaporation.  WARM water.  Nothing to do with land.  Coriolis effect causes them to move like they do.

[Kuroimaken]

I feel you, Dman (though I could've sworn hurricanes form when a hot air mass and a cold air mass clash... or was that something else entirely?). I'm having a similar issue with my Administration-applied Psychology teacher. Pretty much everything she speaks is something I knew of beforehand from therapy. And then she goes on to bash rationalization as a response (not as a defense mechanism; AS A RESPONSE) and claiming that psychology is innately illogical (I could actually hear Freud rolling over in his grave over that one).

And I was like "God fucking dammit woman, I could snore a better class than this with five minutes of preparation and Google".

Seriously, thus far I'm 2 for 2 on psych-based classes in this course being utter and complete shit thanks to the teachers responsible.

[muktidata]

First, he was talking about how car doors are hot in the summer.  because apparently they literally get hotter than a bucket of water on the side of the road.  Technically this is true, kind of?  He main point was that they feel hot because metals absorb heat fast, meaning they get to the air temperature faster than water does.  Again, technically true.  However, they do not get that much hotter than the air temp (or rather, the temp of the inside of the car, because metals conduct well.).  He then went on to say how in winter they're cold because at night they lose heat faster than water.  The actual reason?  The exact OPPOSITE of the reasons he said, it feels hot in the summer because it loses heat fast (puts energy into you fast), and it feels cold because it gains heat fast (pulls heat away from you fast).

Lmao.. maybe the bucket is white and the car doors black?

[linklord231]

My freshman year of college, I had a geology professor who spent an entire week telling us that global warming wasn't real.

[Gazzien]

Why would you write this.

Half a feat for bardic performance as a bard of your level. Half a feat for that. Why. Just. Dear god, why.

[dman11235]

I feel you, Dman (though I could've sworn hurricanes form when a hot air mass and a cold air mass clash... or was that something else entirely?). I'm having a similar issue with my Administration-applied Psychology teacher. Pretty much everything she speaks is something I knew of beforehand from therapy. And then she goes on to bash rationalization as a response (not as a defense mechanism; AS A RESPONSE) and claiming that psychology is innately illogical (I could actually hear Freud rolling over in his grave over that one).

And I was like "God fucking dammit woman, I could snore a better class than this with five minutes of preparation and Google".

Seriously, thus far I'm 2 for 2 on psych-based classes in this course being utter and complete shit thanks to the teachers responsible.

No, that's tornadoes.  Hurricanes are hot, moist air from oceans rising up through a column.  Similar to how thunderheads form, but on a WAY bigger scale (and thunderheads aren't exactly small).  That's why hurricanes form in warm waters, and get stronger in them.  They get weaker in cooler waters and over land because there's less evaporation driving their systems.  And they move the way they do because of the Coriolis effect.  Prevailing winds at the equator are east-west, and at about 23 degrees they're west-east.  Because they form at the equator, they are traveling west, but get deflected because of their spin away from the equator, until they get north enough that they start moving drastically in a more eastern direction (still west, but much much slower), and the net result is north.  If a storm is powerful enough and waters are warm enough (gulf stream helps in this regard, if it hits it at the right time) it can start going east actually, a little, and that's how storms sometimes travel up the east coast of the US.  In the southern hemisphere it's mirrored over the equator.  You have to keep track of hot spots and cold spots though, so it gets tricky, but it's almost the same.  Note that Brazil doesn't get hit by may strong ones, that's because there's not a lot of space for them to get going.  Too little time for them to get up to speed.

[Kuroimaken]

We do get some wicked storms though. Couple of years ago one of our towns was struck by one, and to this day they can't tell if it was a cyclone or a typhoon because they're not exactly sure how it was formed - that's how rare it is for us to get anything up in that scale.

Would it help if you knew that, geographically, it hit the southernmost part of the country?

[dman11235]

Cyclones and typhoons are the same thing.  Just different areas on the map.  It's a hurricane if it's in the north atlantic, a typhoon in north pacific, and a cyclone in the southern hemisphere.  So it was a cyclone.  Technically they're all cyclones because that's the weather phenomenon, but still.  Most of the wicked storms you experience aren't these, however with rotating winds upwards of some set mph (kmph), they become a hurricane from a tropical storm.  If you were hit by one, there's a very very small window where it could have formed off the coast of Africa, and then did something similar to Hurricane Sandy, crawling up the coast just off of it, following the current.  That's the only way it would have been able to form and then gain enough strength for that.  The other storms are probably (I'm guessing, I'm not all that familiar with south Atlantic weather patterns) just really big storms, like how we get in the US every year with Nor'Easters and such, and maybe tropical storms too (because those probably hit the center coast of Brazil all the time in season).

EDIT: Look at a map of ocean currents and you'll see why you don't get hit by many.  They need warm water to spawn and grow.  Ocean currents tend to follow the coasts and go west at the equator, making a big ol' circle in that ocean, so they all go west at the equator, east near the poles, carry warm water to the poles on the western edge of an ocean, and cold water from the poles on the eastern edge.  They always deflect away from the equator, just like the tropical storms do.  Now, with cold waters at the eastern edge of an ocean, they will never form just off the coast of Africa, it needs to be a little further out.  So look at a map, how much space does it have to form in the South Atlantic?  They won't form too far south, so there's almost no space or warm water for them to get going at all.

[Kuroimaken]

Yeah, it was big news at the time because it was pretty freaky for it to have happened. Here where I live we get at least four days of truly TORRENTIAL rain a year, the kind that will fuck up power lines, bring down bridges and whatnot, though compared to what happened at Torres (the town that got cyclone'd) it's not too bad.

[brujon]

Yeah, it was big news at the time because it was pretty freaky for it to have happened. Here where I live we get at least four days of truly TORRENTIAL rain a year, the kind that will fuck up power lines, bring down bridges and whatnot, though compared to what happened at Torres (the town that got cyclone'd) it's not too bad.

Yeah, we barely hear about the kinds of freak storms that have names here in Brazil, it just doesn't happen for some reason. But we do have our own kind of freak weather as well.

Here in Brasília, we get about 6 months of no-rain, and about 6 months of torrential rain every single day. To be clear, yesterday schools didn't do P.E because the local government declared state of alert, because humidity dropped to 13%. It has come down to less than that in the past, and it's not uncommon either.

Then when it starts raining, it doesn't stop. It rains every day, for multiple hours a day, sometimes with no breaks in-between for a while. And some of these rains... I can't describe it. The drops are huge, really huge drops, that you can actually feel the weight when they fall on you. There's so much water coming down at once, it feels like you're swimming in the air. And, sometimes, these accompanied by strong winds. Not tornado-force winds, mind you, but really strong winds.

I remember distinctly one time i was outside the house when it happened to begin such a downpour, and the wind was strong enough that even though i was under a building (our apartment building here have the ground-floor as an open area, top floors supported by pillars, it's pretty cool), and with about 10 meters of roof between me and the rain on all sides, i was still getting blasted by rain. It was coming in SIDEWAYS.

The wind was also strong enough that i needed to hold on to something to avoid literally skating along the wet smooth stone floor. It was pretty insane. Streets flooded with water, cars and trashcans were dragged, garages became underground water caves, and the damage was pretty fucking intense. In some areas roofs were ripped out and all.

The rain part happens almost every year with little done by the government to prevent additional property damage (sigh), and we always hear on the news how some other states have it even worse, with landslides, bridges fallling, roofs collapsing, streets flooding...

At least we don't have volcanoes or tornadoes to worry about, though. I think the country might've been wiped out already if we have those, if i'm to go by what they've done to prevent our minor weather inconveniences...