Aw don’t be mean to Geoff! Dude can’t help being a bit backwards. His entire family died of plague and rooting for the 7th Crusade was maybe not great but it was a product of his time!

Just meet him on his terms you know? He likes board games. Challenge him to a game of Nine Men’s Morris and he’ll stop being such a downer.

You realize that the word narcissism is not fully encompassing of all aspects of the character in the tale that inspired the word though right?

The word describes self-centeredness on the shallow end and on the deep has a diagnostic aspect for a mental disorder that has nothing to do with sexuallity. Referring to asexual people as narcissistic for not being sexually attracted to people would be considered quite insulting. Look up the dictionary definition or the DSM for the disorder and show me where it mentions asexuality if you can.

You are halfway there. Those examples you gave define constructs but a lot of these things are not what philosophy uses to define social constructs. Scientific taxonomy constructs and linguistic constructs are things but they are fairly useless in discussion surrounding social constructs because while different cultures might draw the line differently around what exactly constitutes a “chair” vs say a “stool” or some such that’s more of just a linguistic boundry. Its basically always a thing you sit on.

Philosophy uses a bunch of different ideas labeled as different forms of construct to break down the idea of how different types of categorization or subjection happen… but when they start talking about “social” constructs they are specifically talking about categories of human interactions with something that have incredibly variable different potential contexts based on culture. It also requires things which are included or excluded from those category for not entirely practical reasons. Philosophy uses this to talk about how social categories are subjective creating or allieving tension between different cultural groups.

Food is actually a good example. There are a lot of things culturally considered food and non food items despite those items all having nutritional value and being safe to consume. In our increasingly cosmopolitan world a lot of expansion has happened to increase the size of the category. Like raw fish was not considered a food item by a lot of people when and where I was growing up. Now sashimi is everywhere and no one bats an eye. Digging for another example mice are technically edible but even raised and slaughtered cleanly very few would consider them valid as food. Whether what I put on your plate is deemed an disgusting insult or a delicious delicacy is really in the eye of the beholder and has caused a number of historical diplomatic and cultural issues around other cultures veiwing each other as inferior.

Just because something is a construct does not automatically make it a social construct.

Food is a social construct. For a social construct to exist you have to have a social category with shifting goalposts based on different context and cultural factors that are not rigidly defined. Like “Fat” - what is considered fat for a person is based on context. A supermodel is fat for being 5’9 and 145lbs but we would call a constructiom labourer skinny as fuck at those same dimensions. Each culture constructs it’s own version of what defines “fat” which is different and distinct from something than the medical guidelines for obesity or an expectation of reasonable health. “Fat” is in the eye of the beholder and represents overlapping cultural circles with varying degrees of consideration of what is excluded from the category.

The scientific concept of nutritional substance is not how we always define “food”. Culturally people contest what is considered food vs non food items based on cultural factors. Like eating mice for instance does have nutritional value but there are a lot of people who would contest them as being a valid food item even if they were raised in clean conditions due to cultural adversions. “That isn’t food.” has been uttered in all sincerity by people encountering strange delicacies that their culture has taboos against eating beliving it dangerous, unpleasant or just categorically not something intended to be eaten. Thus “food” would be in part a sociologically constructed category.

So like… Foe-Fiction?

I believe this is the famed Catch 22. The only proven way out is escaping to Sweden.

You got this! Just lean into the… Corners?

Totally not the black flag you’re talking about but my mom after a pride once asked if there was a “heterosexual flag” and I hesitated before saying “There is. But you really won’t like it.” She pressed the issue saying she wanted to see so I brought up that black and white monstrosity and she got SO mad.

“How can they do this to us! That looks like prison stripes!” I had to tell her the LGBTQIA+ didn’t make that flag, it was a bunch of heterosexuals who didn’t like pride. She was ridiculously upset by that until I remembered the Ally flag was a thing and upon showing her she immediately cheered up saying something to the effect of “Those bigoted losers can keep their dumb ugly prison flag! What are they allergic to color? My flag has rainbows!”

I love my Mum.

They are talking about anti-sodomy laws like the Buggery act of 1533 variations of which persisted specifically in American law in some states up until 2003 that criminalized consentual sexual relations between same sex partners (though in practice mostly for men). For a very long time it was a hanging offence through it went through a lot of different eras the punishment changed. Some of the early of medical horomones was high doses of estrogen to “chemically castrate” men who were caught and proven to have had same sex sexual relations.

So yes. Stay in the closet “or else” is accurate.

Some of the first European anti buggery law originated in the same 50 year period (1250-1300) that the Church started cracking down on it’s previously fairly lax veiw of abortion stemming from multiple debated theories of when “ensoulment” happened. The reason for this was the emergence of the largest wave of the Black Death that caused fears of the collapse of society so it was “make babies (the Christian approved way) or else”. Buggery laws, midwifery suppression and the castigation of “non fruitful” same sex relationships were basically just used to force the issue.

Democrats are bad at marketing because a lot of them come from the school of political jousting. It’s easy to lose touch with what the regular person believes politics is rather than the reality of the system where you can’t make solid promises because things can go very wrong and playing the game means setting up long term strategy where best case scenario you have to suck short term losses. They are mostly invested in long term preservation of the system so over promising and under delivering is a held fear. In vulgar terms it is shitting where ideologically eat.

Republicans however basically promise the moon the sun and the stars and then when it doesn’t happen they just rile up their base with anti-federal sentiments to make them rabid. There’s no brakes on the anger machine which means there isn’t a cohesive long term strategy. It’s whatever does the job right here and now so they can as a group benefit off the short term gains. It’s why so many of them are individually crashing and burning. No exit strategy - just commitment to scalp what you can out of the system and ditch before you get consequences. They know they can basically say anything and get what they want.

It’s a major FUBAR situation and Democrats are only now learning how to publicly perform a sense of political urgency.

Oof. I am sorry but facing the disgust you bear me doesn’t translate into a way I want to spend my time. At majority level I DO do this for enjoyment because I like to write… and maybe egotistically consider myself a philosopher albiet not one anyone is going to platform. As I saw it what both of us are doing on this forum is discourse. I am not performing for an audience regarding propaganda. From experience nobody tends to read long posts except the person I address them to. It’s part of why I keep them long. I am having a discussion with you.

I didn’t learn in the alabaster halls of acedemia. I couldn’t afford to chase a European history and philosophy degree so I just read a lot of source material. A lot of what I see happening reminds me of other points in history. When dealing with 1000 year spans no example is universal.

My take on philosophy is not American centric specifically. I am Canadian. I look at multiple democracies that have common philosophical ancestries to draw my conclusions some of which have aspects I admire and other aspects have earned nothing but my sharpest critique. America… Has very specific issues. Most of them are in places the discourse doesn’t really touch because Americans are blind to those things not being the norm.

On a personal note lot of the practical stuff I believe comes from more modern philosophers, Sarah Ahmed, Bhaskar Sunkara, Margot Susca, Ferric C. Fang etc etc etc. But adoption of a lot of the designs of government I am interested are stuck at university testing level. I know convincing people to get behind democratic lottery systems is not going to be an in my lifetime thing. There’s too many assumptions and things people hold onto regarding elections to give such radical ideas a shot. If we get lucky a Municipality level trial might be possible but there are far too many norms people cling to that require a lot of intellectual sparring. We don’t have the coffee parlors of the past and as I see it this platform is the next best thing. I use it as a training ground for learning dialectics so when I interface with politics face to face I am practiced.

I have had my share of union politics and trying to shift power structures to know that change is heartbreakingly gradual and most people who are full of fire but don’t understand the game get rebuffed by those systems… and they just become bitter. But those systems for better or worse are what is in power. Your choices in changing them are to play the game well ,get people onside through eloquence and building concensus and applying political pressure to the system to change - or to violently overthrow them… And personally I do not think violent overthrows ever work. But people don’t understand how important concensus is. Compromise and solidarity with stuff you don’t fully agree with is the engine that makes that run and we as a society were trained out of that. We are all individually acting like toddlers who think yelling and screaming will work. If everyone runs on absolute ultimatums demanding utter purity of all of their aims then nothing is achieved. Movements are atomized and inertia will breed anger until basically the pressure blows and in the end the anarchist uprising get crushed by the standing powers or the most powerful opportunist takes the wheel.

Honestly the enmity you show me here is not encouraging. If you think I am evil there’s not really a point in continuing. You have decided that I am not worth your consideration and you have your hackles up. I am not going to change your mind if you think I am scum so I will choose to part ways instead. So thank you for talking to me stranger. I appreciate your time.

Don’t personify candles damn it! I light them on fire! I don’t want to consider that the candles I immolated had lovers!

Identities inside the LGBTQIA+ have individual flags. The lesbian flag ans colors looks like this :

So if you pour a candle in these layers it becomes a lesbian candle.

Canadian here, we don’t do that either. Primaries is one of the many additional structural barriers to representive voting being adopted in the US and a step away from having more than two parties in their system. It also increases the campaign costs for candidates and exacerbates the issues with first past the post voting meaning running people becomes an exclusive exercise for the wealthy or people with wealthy patrons who make handshake agreements.

As I understand it, Instead of having parties internally figure out who they are running on the docket as party head like sane people they open it up to basically a second first past the post election of internal candidates. You register as a member of those parties when you register to vote to participate (or not) in the election before the actual election. Personally to one outside that system that just seems like an additional bundle of problems to deal with by doubling down an already outdated voting system that creates further issues of populism but some Americans are very fond of archaic systems. You know something something founders of our nation blah blah can’t change anything our fathers who art in 6ft of dirt didn’t personally come up with blah.

Forgive my glibness. Being a neighbour is hard sometimes.

How often do you sit cross legged on the floor? A lot of stretching routines are basic maintenance but getting to actual comfort is a different thing entirely. Getting up regularly and relaxing into floor sitting while watching tv has done me wonders personally. The first while is rough though.

Don’t get an SUV or Raised truck. They might be comfortable but they are dangerous to other vehicles on the road.

It might be more about what vehicles share the road. SUVs and pickups tend to cause the majority of fatalities in crashes because their bumper height basically being non compatible with cars and vans and their larger blindspots… That design might not play particularly well with the Keis in crash situations.

But that being said SUVs and raised pickups are menaces to road safety across the board and we should be looking at phasing them out.

I mean it could be using the percentages of another number. Like if there’s 20 ingredients and you drop one it’s a 5% reduction or if you added other non natural ingredients that would cause the percentage to drop… But whether it’s less or fewer would depend on information we don’t readily have because we don’t know if it’s ingredients by volume or of it’s a reformulation of ingredients… and may be at the crux of this grammatical problem depending on what you assume is going on?

It depends on context. If you are dealing with a percentage of overall types of ingredients by volume without changing the variety of ingredients you would probably use “less”. Like if you reduced the mix of milk related ingredients. You would use “fewer” to indicate that the number of individual ingredients had changed. Like if they got rid of two of the ingredients of an original ten.

This could be a category error?

Liberté, égalité, fraternité. The Americans learned it from you lot. Might do them well to remember.

Yup. They are lovable dum dums…

And by lovable I mean they will like exactly one person and wish death on everyone else. Just because you can have one as a pet and it will be your bestest friend doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Owls do not understand vacations or sick days.