telling

She’s only saying it now because she wanted to see the look on Moses’ face.


Discussion (44)¬

  1. M27Holts says:

    Everybody IS BINARY…you are either one thing…or another…

  2. Shaughn says:

    Aye, you drink or you drink not. Cheers!

  3. Laripu says:

    I can’t think of how to phrase and appropriate Schrödinger’s cat joke. Schrödinger’s cat is really non-binary.

  4. Shaughn says:

    Isn’t the cat just ‘in transition’ ?

  5. M27Holts says:

    Schrodinger’s cat ? Non-binary? you certain?

  6. paradoctor says:

    MYOB! Mind Your Own Business!
    Here is a modest proposal of mine, the MYOB Amendment:
    “Congress shall make no law restricting the right of consenting adults in private to love as they will, if it harm none.”

  7. mcalex says:

    1001 001101 1001101 11110 0 1 0 1
    0000110 101011 0110100 011 0101 1

  8. postdoggerel says:

    There are only 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

  9. cjsm says:

    @paradoctor – I’d vote for MYOB

  10. Laripu says:

    That’s great! MYOB!! … Really?

    That’s exactly what the religious people would like to tell atheists. Why do you have to tell everyone that you’re atheists? Why not just shut the fû¢k up? Just MYOB!!!

    You don’t like that? You don’t like to be told to keep your trap shut shut about atheism so that religious people can be more comfortable?

  11. Vanity Unfair says:

    M27Holts. Werner Heisenberg might know.
    Test for understanding of quantum mechanics: how long does it take for the explainer to break down sobbing?

  12. Donn says:

    If they’re both non-binary, does that mean they could … get together?

  13. M27Holts says:

    Vanity Fair….that was the joke…

  14. M27Holts says:

    I like boolean algebra…most people wouldn’t…

  15. But people who are enby are FASCINATING, just as people who are trans are fascinating, and people who are transmasc are fascinating, and people who are transfemme are fascinating, and

    Wait. They are fascinating aren’t they?

    Aren’t they?

  16. henry Ford says:

    Be thankfull they are not myxomycetes ( slime moulds ): they have a basic one-locus multiple-alleleic heterothallic mating system, which controls syngamy between haploid amoeboflagellates to produce the diploid plasmodium.

  17. henry Ford says:

    Or so I’m told….

  18. Laripu says:

    Ophelia, generally, being binary or non-binary isn’t fascinating to me. But it seems it’s fascinating to the people that want to talk about it. That’s I apply MYOB to myself and not to them.

  19. Donn says:

    Slime molds are awesome.

  20. M27Holts says:

    I am more of a yeast man myself….splitter…

  21. M27Holts says:

    Fully oaid up member if Y.A.S.N.W.M.B….Yeast Appreciation Society, North West Manchester Branch…

  22. Dominie says:

    @paradoctor – that’s the kicker, though, “if it harm none”
    Because it harms my feelings of self-worth if you don’t do as I tell you
    Might be simpler to stick with “your religion does not rule me” … ?

  23. paradoctor says:

    This sentence is false.

  24. Alverant says:

    Barmaid must be a GenXer like me. We’ve been taught to keep quiet about who we are and avoid retaliation. Being an Atheist is part of why I got fired from two jobs. Thing is, if people don’t speak up the oppression will continue.

  25. Donn says:

    Waah. How do you get fired for being an atheist? I expect it’s possible to be an obnoxious atheist, but not strictly necessary.

  26. jb says:

    paradoctor — In the US at least, consenting adults already have the right to “love as they will” in private.

    And the comic does raise an interesting question: what exactly are the action items that follow from learning that someone is “non-binary”?

  27. M27Holts says:

    Donn. Very easily. Just state the fact that Mohammed was a butchering fantasist…and you get sacked for Islamaphobia…simples…

  28. Donn says:

    I’d sack you for poor spelling myself, but atheism wouldn’t be one of your offenses there in either case.

    I don’t think it should be necessary to say this, for most of us … maybe we aren’t Gen Xers … but it’s really possible for people with varying religious beliefs or lack thereof, to get along with each other quite easily. Especially for someone who knows better than to think any of it’s real, religion is of the least importance, and in most 1st world situations that’s kind of the cultural norm even among the religious. If you want to antagonize the Christians, it’s up to you, but I think ideally best done with people you won’t have to deal with much otherwise.

  29. M27Holts says:

    Eh? At least I can spell colour right…

  30. Laripu says:

    M27, that’s an indication that you’re still under the influence of the French Normans, who kicked your collective asses in 1066.

    Oh, pardonnez-moi: Arses.

    At least you don’t write it as couleur.

  31. Donn says:

    I used to spell that way, in my youth. It wasn’t really out of any love for the Commonwealth countries, though, I just had it in for spelling reforms after I was marked wrong for “axe” in the 3rd grade. Still write “dialogue” (but “analog”.)

  32. Laripu says:

    Since I grew up in Canada (40 years), I use the UK spelling when I write to people in the Commonwealth. I’ve been in the US for 26 years and now use US spelling when writing to Americans or mixed groups like this.

    Same with metric (mostly) / US (to Americans).

    I’ve found that engineers in any country don’t care. They mentally convert to whatever they like, in spelling and units. As did I.

  33. M27Holts says:

    Mathematical syntax is far more universal..as is most computer language syntax…I would use > in a text to indicate that one value is bigger than another…who wouldn’t eh?

  34. Donn says:

    “>” isn’t syntax per se, it’s a relational operator. Infix operators are supported by the average computer programming language as a syntactical feature – in contrast, taking for example Lisp which lacks the infix syntactical feature, the Lisp for “a > b” would be “> a b”, making it a little more plain that “>” is simply a function represented by a symbol rather than an alphabetical identifier.

    The idea of “universal … in most cases” seems somewhat paradoxical.

  35. M27Holts says:

    Syntax is the text code that is validated before being interpreted/compiled into macine code. Anything that is part of that string of text has to be syntactically correct to compile thus, I would argue “>” is syntax…

  36. Donn says:

    The code must conform to syntax rules, and in that sense represents syntax, but the syntax is the rules. Combination of lexical and grammatical structure. “a > b” is not the syntactical analysis, it’s text that could be subject to it. As Python programmers we would not be expected to make such distinctions, and people would just have to make the best of whatever comes out of our mouths, but correct use of language can help a little to sharpen one’s wits in case one ever needs them for something.

  37. OtterBe says:

    SNAP!

    Oh, no, he di’int!!

  38. arbeyu says:

    Hello, we invented English. If we spell it “colour” then it IS spelled “colour”.

    Just kidding.

    British spelling is a mess. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s an establishment plot to keep the less-educated and foreigners in their place.

    And I live in Scotland, where place names take it to a new level. Anyone not from Scotland want to guess how to pronounce “Milngavie”, the town near Glasgow?

    As for pronunciation, my take is that a word is pronounced how it is said by the people using it. I take pains to pronounce “lieutenant” the British way, knowing full well that the American pronunciation makes far more sense, and is closer to the pronunciation from the source language (probably French).

    The only word I feel that American English has entirely wrong is “aluminium”. Apparently, America “didn’t get the memo” that the word, originally “aluminum”, had been officially changed to match the spelling of other elements.

  39. Laripu says:

    About lieutenant: here’s the link to the entry in the Online Etymological Dictionary:
    https://www.etymonline.com/word/lieutenant?utm_source=app

    So it’s literally “place holder”. The link says that the OED rejects suggestion that the UK pronunciation comes from an old confusion of u and v. I’m not so sure, and I have another example of that possibly happening, albeit in another language.

    One archaic/poetic word for moon in Hebrew is l’vaná, from which derives the Yiddish word, pronounced levóna. It sure feels like that must have come from Roman LVNA. I can’t find anything like that pronunciation in any of the languages that influenced Yiddish or Hebrew: Arabic, Aramaic, German, Russian, Polish, Czech, Lithuanian. But it is something like luna in many Latin-influenced languages.

    https://translated-into.com/moon

    Germanic languages mostly have some variation of moon.

  40. Henry Ford says:

    Here is something that I use for Christmas party games, 5 verses per contestant, and a tot after every verse. I have more verses and pairs of words than are here, but…..

    https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html

  41. M27Holts says:

    Wot aboot Coloqualisms? When I state that one of my mates is a “low-light sprout merchant” – who would guess that it’s a nod to his preference for having sex with his Mrs as soon as he gets home from work! Or When yiu refer to arriving at the pub “Early doors” or “12 Bells”…Language is a living evolving thing…memetic transcription that is very localised, or it was untill the mither-net…

  42. arbeyu says:

    @Laripu
    Indeed, we still pronounce “lieu” as “loo”, as in “in-lieu of” (in place of) or “lieu-days” (the days off I never get to take for all the extra hours I work).

    I’d assumed that the British pronunciation of lieutenant was a comparatively modern affectation. I’d assumed that it had diverged since the colonisation of America, with the American pronunciation being closer to the original British English.

    But it’s equally likely that the American pronunciation shifted from the British with the influx of European immigrants (it’s pronounced “loy-tenant” in German).

  43. Toast in the machine says:

    Well, obviously. I mean, if you don’t *tell* people you’re special and interesting and oppressed how would they *know* you’re special and interesting and oppressed?

  44. Adrian says:

    There ARE only two types of people – those who are binary and those who are not.

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