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I had an idea once for a political vampire story, in which vampires take control of Latin America and stop caffeine production, forcing North America and the rest of the developed world to stop working so damn long, thus allowing the vampires to roam more freely at night or something. Oh and causing the world economy to collapse, I think. Naturally, I didn't take into account the power of Mormonism.

complete this story post haste.

Nah, I had the idea like 5-6 years ago, don't think I'm ever gonna make anything out of it at this point. Everyone here should, of course, feel free.

I had an idea once for a political vampire story, in which vampires take control of Latin America and stop caffeine production, forcing North America and the rest of the developed world to stop working so damn long, thus allowing the vampires to roam more freely at night or something. Oh and causing the world economy to collapse, I think. Naturally, I didn't take into account the power of Mormonism.

In other news, I got a letter today from my health insurance provider which seems to say that because I was two days late switching my status from student to "voluntarily insured", I'm gonna be paying the two rates on top of each other for this month. I hope I got that wrong.

Worse yet, I just found out that upon arrival in Israel, I will have a waiting period of 6 months before I can get subsidized healthcare. I only plan to be there for 6 months altogether, in theory. To remove the waiting period I am welcome to pay a fee of 9,900NIS (about $2,560US at current rates.) Those motherfucking assholes. They actually made laws for this shit. I can see it already, I'm gonna end up working there a year after I meant to be gone, just to pay off all of the ridiculous fees that are gonna pop up on me. Because if I spent 5 years abroad, I obviously must be rich now.

[...] He makes the very typical mistake of assuming that all people enjoy learning in the same ways he enjoys learning (false consensus) and, sadly, proceeds to spend some time more or less bashing scientists for their scientific curiosity, as if science and art are opposites. They are not opposite, and the artistic mind, which asks "can I create?" is often the same as the scientific mind, which asks "what can I do with this creation?"[...]

Yeah, didn't remember he did that. The more time I've spent in science, the more it's become clear to me that it, too, is a form of art, or at least has be treated as such to flourish. So thanks, I probably won't be recommending the Lament again.

I'm going to sound crazy, but I think you have a shitty teacher.

I have had that idea, but I don't think she is. I think she may just have a teaching style so radically different from what I'm used to that I don''t understand it at all. I THINK (and this is just a conjecture) that she teaches math like other teachers teach art; I think she is trying to get us to just FUCK WITH IT and throw things at the wall to see if they stick. This just happens to be at odds with all my former experiences with math teachers, who just want you to follow the rules and get it right.

Unfortunately, one of the things I love about math, after years of art, is that I can just follow the rules and get it right.

So I suspect that I have some learning to do, with this chick.

I totally hear you, but I suspect that if this teacher truly sees math as art, she has the right of it, and is a rare and special snowflake in that. Are you familiar with Lockhart's Lament? (http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html)
IIRC, the gist of it is that teaching math as "just following the rules" is as silly as it would be to do the same with art, except that with math it's the norm. As a mathematician, Lockhart sees math as the purest form of art (because it is as abstract as humanly possible, meaning everything is potentially possible.) But it's been a few years since I read it, so I'm probably remembering it kinda wrong.

I'm weirdly proud to know about this.

Aaaaaahh!!!

Ich kann Deutsch fliessend. Hab grad nicht sehr viel Zeit, wenn es aber was kurzes ist helf ich gern.

Unfortunately I can't code that kind of thing, but wouldn't it, in this case, be possible to have the actual warning system stored and running outside the SMF installation, and just have the theme retrieve the data? I imagine a custom theme doesn't need to be maintained as often as other stuff. (Having the warning system separate from the SMF install would make it harder to have admins treated differently than other users, but that could be easily circumvented by just having a warning system admin password needed for whatever, and having you admin types share that password amongst you.)

Sorry for the back-seat driving, my programmer thinking just outstrips my actual coding skillz.

What vex said.

Would be cool if *anyone* could press a button to elevate the thread's level by one, but it would take admin action to take it back down. And if there were indicators for average butthurt level over the past 7 days across each board, and across the whole forum.
Of course, that would require someone who can code this kind of stuff actually coding it...

We have to be screaming and foaming at the mouth about our beliefs, to prove our credentials to our fellow-believers.  It's been like that since we founded the place, after the British fucked off and left us to our own devices (after dumping religious nuts on us for 200 years.  The fuckers.).

Sounds a lot like my home country, really.

fair 'nuff

"Socially liberal" involves a couple of different things.  One is the ability to do with yourself and with your life as you see fit.  The other is a load of different things that can be grouped together as a "social safety net".  This is definitely not in keeping with "fiscally conservativism".

Well, that's only true on a very American/GOP understanding of "conservatism". There are terrific capitalistic arguments to be made for universal guaranteed basic income (or a negative income tax, which is a different way to set up the same thing) but they won't fly in circles which have internalized the equation "social safety net = wasteful government spending" – a meme which simply negates the possibility that the social safety net could be an engine of economic growth and prosperity, as far as I can tell without much strong evidence to support said negation.