Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Vorpal clearly has no intention of engaging in a good faith debate around this topic and has lobbed unfounded accusations against Emiliana, so consider the call for a permanent ban thirded.

Relatedly, this is why I detest that "choose not to be offended!" general conference talk from a while ago. Too often I've seen people use it to justify their poor behavior and blame others for the consequences of said poor behavior.

I like the idea of giving my kids my last name as their middle name. My husband gets to give his last name to the kid, so why shouldn't I? I say this as someone who wasn't given a middle name and has dealt with a lifetime of awkwardness because of it (a few months ago I had to fill out a very import...

I've got a big international trip planned in a couple of months (read: lots of awesome new things to see and less easy access to Internet/WiFi than I usually have) and I am so looking forward to using that time to do a news purge and reset the way I usually follow news. Hopefully when I get back I'l...

Cognoscente wrote:Hey y'all

This [strike]month[/strike] year has been pretty shit huh

FTFY

File this one under "corrections I liked": http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/89951/ My mayor (city of ~45,000) was elected by a margin of 50-60 votes. This sort of thing happens at the municipal level all the time. Hardly anyone bothers to vote, so the people who do vote have an exaggerat...

He cited a Divine Comedy parody video as evidence for his thesis statement. Good critical thinking there, buddy.

https://theboard.byu.edu/questions/88983/

OMG ZED THANK YOU. Mormons love their false dichotomies, and it absolutely drives me up a wall.

Cognoscente wrote:You know how I know this question-asker isn't married?

Because her euphemism for nudity is "nakey"?

On the topic of Facebook echo chambers, if you use Chrome you should give the PolitEcho extension a spin. It analyzes your friends list and newsfeed and gives you a sense of the political leanings of both (interestingly, it says that my newsfeed leans more liberal than my friends list as a whole). A...

This one's for you, yayfulness: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016 ... gions-map/

It's possible we're in a Facebook academic group together! Does this person have red hair and a first name that starts with S?

One of my students couldn't come to class the day after the election because she felt unsafe. There was a swastika painted at a bus stop at my grad school alma mater. It's disgusting what's happening and I think it's important to show solidarity with people who are legitimately afraid about the resu...

I'm going to respectfully disagree with that. A good number of people are grieving or outright angry over the election outcome. Why not channel some of that anger into a public demonstration? Yeah, it's not going to stop Trump from becoming president, but there are other reasons to protest.

What Zed said. (That's cool that you got to be in a focus group for it! I have a friend who did a focus group for the initial website when it came out a few years ago and he had good things to say about that process too.) Also, this is going to come out more cynical than I intend, but I think this w...

I'm not sure what sort of "intervention" this reader had in mind, but I'm pretty sure that all possible interventions would fall into one of two categories: "interventions that do not work" and "interventions that are illegal." This person's going to go through with th...

I think a line from Michelle Obama's speech at the DNC convention is appropriate here: "When they go low, we go high." Sure, Trump has made a habit of criticizing people based on their physical appearance and attractiveness, but I don't think it's appropriate to respond in kind. Plus, ther...

If another crazy wedding story would make you feel better: my bishop almost died during my sealing.

Yes, and they are a very, very, very, very bad idea.

Oh man, those opportunity costs. I was very, very lucky in that my PhD was fully funded and I had no student loans and I was even able to sock away a little bit of my meager stipend into my savings account, but it also means that I'm 31 and just starting to save for a down payment on a house and bui...