Listen, man, I can get stuff wrong sometimes. I’m still not convinced I am in this case, but, even if I am off on one very specific niche use of a word that rarely, if ever, comes up, attacking my entire livelihood over it, as though it defines every facet of teaching English, is an insane overstep.

I am not so arrogant as to assume words can only ever have one meaning, nor to attack a stranger on the internet over a disagreement on that meaning. I have also made no such logical fallacy. You asked if I was “sure”, and followed up with a suggestion that I had never spoken with a native English speaker. I said yes, I am confident, and then offered up my background as evidence that, at the very least, your assessment on my experiences is incorrect. I can see how you could conflate that as a call to authority, and perhaps should have phrased things in such a way that doesn’t leave room for such assumptions. That said, I’d advise against jumping down people’s throats based on assumptions, else you’ll end up doing things like building a strawman argument, while simultaneously accusing others of logical fallicies.

I’m done with this. The level of vitriol this discussion has been laced with is unwarrented and suggests that any further conversation is a waste of time. This entire disagreement should have been:

“Hey, I think X is right.”

“Well, this says Y is right, so you must be wrong.”

“I mean language is funky and weird, a lot of words mean different things in different spaces, so whatever.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

Everything beyond that was grossly unnessecary, terminally online, internet arrogance that we’d both be better off without.

I’m not sure if you found my original statements challenging to follow, but nothing you’ve said contradicts what I’ve said. Parts of the definitions I’ve provided are strewn in the definitions you’ve provided, and differing definitions of specific word case isn’t unusual, even within similiar cultures. Language is fluid, and the same words can mean a lot of different things.

There is often a gap between common-use language, and the academic function of words (see “racism”). This is why I emphasized the relation of the definitions I provided to the fields of anthropology and sociology, as well as why I stated it is a use almost exclusively found, in my experiences, in academia.

I don’t appreciate the strange, ignorant, tongue-in-cheek jabs at my background. If you think I have something wrong I welcome you to say so, but the strange sense of superiority you’ve attached to your comments is unnessecarily insulting.

I am literally an English teacher, and have spent years editing university papers for English as an additional language learners. Yes, I am sure.

“People” is a generic term for more than one person.

“Persons” denotes a singular distinct grouping of people. Ie, Native American persons.

Not part of the question, but “peoples” is used for a plurality of distinct persons. Ie, “this had great impact on the various peoples of North America” would be a sentence to lead into a discussion on how an event had varying impacts on each unique cultural group in North America. This is largely only used in academics, specifically anthropology and sometimes sociology, but understand this use helps clear up the reason for the distinction between “people” and “persons”.

He can do his job while failing to understand or accept what a transgender student of his is going through, as long as he, you know, does his job, in which the act of respecting and protecting the rights of his students is a core requirement. Creating an environment where the student feels safe and accepted is base level requirement for being a teacher. Choosing to actively disrespect a student when they’re only asking for a completely reasonable, socially accepted courtesy is strictly not doing his job.

It is no one’s “religious right” to create a hostile environment for another, and to do so targeting a minor is abuse. It’s no wonder he was barred from the school.

Listen, I won’t dig into all the tech and philosophy of decentralization and anti-corporate ownershipa. There are other people here for that. But let me tell you why I am enjoying it: it’s small, it ends, and it feels like early internet.

I load up Lemmy, and see a series of disjointed memes, or a current ongoing meme (like pondering the orb) and absorb that for a short while. I see a couple world news articles, a couple about Trump and a couple about places that aren’t the US. I read an article about Ryzen’s new chips not performing well on Windows and see someone’s retro-gaming setup. Then, after about 10-15 minutes of scrolling, I go “oh hey, I remember this post from yesterday”, and then I close Lemmy because, and this is the important part, I’ve hit the end of new content in my feed.

I still get the news, I still take in a couple memes about the current state of politics, or a celebrity flying her plane altogether too much, but I am never stuck here. There’s no one trying to rage bait me for the sake of user engagement, and any argument I find myself in wraps up and moves on. I don’t feel disconnected, but I am also never completely absorbed, and my life is better for it. Sure, sometimes while I am waiting in a line I load Lemmy only to discover there’s nothing new for me in the hour since I’ve closed it. Sometimes I do the age old, “looking to busy myself”, close Lemmy because there’s nothing to see, immediately open Lemmy because I am looking for something to occupy my Internet poisoned brain. But being bored for a minute here and there is worth it, if it means a lot more free time because I am no longer absorbed in the rat race of infinite scrolling social media.

I think Lemmy is better in a series of ways, but the one that really matters is that it helps me put down my phone, and do things that I enjoy.

The military program started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID misinformation. The Biden White House issued an edict in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found.

???

Not saying I’m super impressed with the bidden admnistration, but "started it with an explicit goal of spreading misinformation and “took them a couple months to put a stop to it” are not the same thing. Your statement sounds like it’s trying to draw that false equivillency.

It’s no great secret that the Trump administration was peddling in vaccine misinformation.

The only surprise here is how much damage it caused in the Philippines in particular.

The insanity and ignorance necessary to call prison “a sweet life”.

What’s the goal here? There’s no way you’re this willfully ignorant, right?

Of course he was. He hated the job, so why else would he want it back?

Reddit is mainstream. Being mainstream makes it a huge target for political propaganda efforts. It’s filled with bad actors and astroturfers spreading misinformation as wide as they can.

Until they take massive measures to curb such behaviour, Reddit will continue to be a pit-hole. At this point, I hesitate to even say that hole is filled with “people”.

Late stage capitalism be like: “look at how much money it cost when all this food essential to human life went to waste!”

The problem is the way we are told to treat adults as kids.

We go all the way through school repeatedly being told that the adults have the answers, they understand everything that we don’t, they know how to tackle the things that seem to big for us, and, most importantly, they don’t make mistakes.

So now that we’re adults, even though we cognitively know by now that it was all bullshit, it’s hard to turn that training around. We make mistakes, don’t have the answers, and sometimes struggle with parts of the world that we’d expected would make sense by now. We know that the adults before us were no different, but it’s been so long that it’s hard to internalize that we, now, are just like them.

Your imposter syndrome is programmed. It’s not your fault.

I think there’s a big difference between knowing that answers exist and with time, energy and resources you could learn them, but it’s just too impractical to do it all, and blindly accepting that no one has the capacity to know something.

Plus, science backs up claims with evidence, experiments and data, and, at least to some capacity, a layman can parse that information. Fundamentally, science is provable, even if you won’t get 100% of it. Religion is strictly founded in the fact that no one is capable of parsing anything it teaches.

In 100 years, very few of those people will be remembered. In 1000 years very, very few of them will have had a tangible, lasting impact on the world.

We are meaningless specs of dust in the universe. Don’t hold yourself accountable to imaginary standards being set by the rare few that manage to create a footprint a microcosim larger than the spec of dust they are. Enjoy yourself and create as much joy as you can in your tiny corner of reality as possible, and you’ll have lived a damn good life.