DeltaAro

@roboticanary I know a very useful and versatile plant that was cultivated by humans since ancient time, but has unjustly fallen into disrepute in the last decades.

It can be processed into textiles, ropes, paper, oils and varnishes. Also its seed are very nutritious. It's a medicine, a food ingredient and can even be smoked.

So does it get any better than this?

On 11/8/2022 at 5:22 PM, Storm_leopardcat said:

.....the Quran does not say the Sun moves around the Earth, though. That is false. It is a huge misunderstanding which seems to have only come up in this century, strangely (and interestingly) enough.

LOL, necromancy. This thread lay dormant for five years. 🙂

Quite popular in recent times is the scientific miracle of the Quran narrative. Normally I'd think that "the Quran says that the Earth revolves around the Sun" would be a reaction to it...

Like if a Muslim claims that some verses contain scientific knowledge which was unknown during Muhammad's lifetime, a skeptic can also claim that other verses contain scientific mistakes. It all depends on the interpretation. 🤷‍♀️

Anyway, aside from this specific example, the whole science + Quran thing easily gets out of hand. On the one hand you have Muslims who regard the so-called scientific miracle of the Quran as an irrefutable proof. And if anyone isn't convinced they assume stubborn ignorance.

OTOH there are some who interpret the Quran in a certain manner and believe in that regardless of any scientific knowledge.

I mean even stuff like "common descent" (which is far better established than the actual mechanism of evolution) is basically taboo in many communities.

I like bamboo and pines (Pinus sylvestris).

13 hours ago, Harvest said:

Does anyone else here like Arizona tea?

The ice tea? 😋

On 11/8/2022 at 9:23 AM, Storm_leopardcat said:

I do not know much about British tea(s), or other types of teas.

So do you mean blends like "English breakfast tea" or Indian teas? Obviously the blending is the only thing that actually happens in Britain. Not the growing. 🙃 But blends usually have a lower quality than pure teas.

Pure teas from India should be called Indian teas, IMHO.

High quality Darjeeling 2nd flush remains my favorite. I like it even more than Chinese blacks (though they have a higher prestige).

On 11/8/2022 at 9:23 AM, Storm_leopardcat said:

But I'm not a fan of the chai (whether it be separate chai or mix chai) that is drunk here in Pakistan/south Asia, nor do I particularly like doodh pati (a form of chai, one might say).

I only know Indian chai, which is heavily flavored with cardamom, cinnamon etc.

They mostly use a very poor quality CTR black tea for this. But it doesn't matter anyway with this enormous amount of spices.

A cheap but actually very great black tea sold in Middle Eastern countries is Do Ghazal Tea (from Ceylon).

9 minutes ago, roboticanary said:

As for point 2. This is correct. They do have a decent interface where you can choose colours for each type of item (texts, backgrounds, etc) the limiting factor is my artistic skill rather than tech skill unfortunately. But what people could do is point to a particular piece of text/ background on a screenshot and say, e.g. that text is too dark, that background is too light, that might be better green etc and I can make those changes.

The most glaring issues are the black / dark fonts:

and the icons:

and the bright UI elements:

If you turn on dark mode and visit github.com you can see one of the IMHO best dark modes:

As you see it avoids large bright areas. The UI elements are all gray.

(I mean turn dark mode on in your browser)

PS: this browser setting is ignored by Arocalypse

19 hours ago, struggler_ said:

A better looking dark mode? I physically cant use light mode, and the design of dark mode looks pretty bad and quickly thrown together like it was a very last second thought.

I could redesign the header, if this is ok. This dark grey font on dark green is barely visible.

Regarding the rest, I don't know Invision but I guess they provide an interface and you don't need to seriously edit the bare CSS itself.

I guess this is because aromantic sexual feelings towards another person are from time to time experienced by allo-allos.

But still it's quite different if this exception is the rule.

OK, I actually don't identify as aro-allo. More like a mixture of aro + graysexual/aegosexual/akoisexual. Yes, I can experience sexual attraction but overall it's just too mercurial and weird to be classified as 100% normal allosexuality, IMHO. OTOH I also don't identify with the aro-ace experience. I mean sex is still of some (minor) importance in my life.

On 7/9/2019 at 11:38 AM, BlueKumul said:

How many religions do have a problem with asexuality, though? Christianity certainly doesn't - Jesus was an asexual and chastity is an ideal in most churches. Same for Buddhism. Islam might have a problem, as it want its followers to procreate. Paganism? Given its nature orientation, sex is a huge part of nature, so "traditional" heathens could have a problem. Based on lack of bigots in your community, I reckon you are a Wicca-like Pagan rather than a folkish one.

Mainstream Christianity assumes that Jesus remained celibate for his whole life.

But that doesn't mean he was ace.

Ofc, this question is rather taboo.

At least in the Bible nothing about Jesus' sexuality is mentioned and he never seems to feel any sexual attraction. Also Satan does not use such stuff (use your imagination, e. g. sexy demons) to tempt him. Rather he tempts Jesus with food.  Very ace.

Oh, btw, Thomas Aquinas at least stated that it would be sinful for a spouse to consistently refuse to "pay the marriage debt" (aka refuse to have sex). 🤷‍♂️

Still, overall at least Catholic Christianity regards sex as something very carnal and incompatible with highest spiritual purity. That's why priests have to be celibate.

For Pagans it's probably a lot of the symbolism which may make asexuals and non-cis-gendered people feel excluded. I'm not an expert on those religions but in their favor in 90% of cases this seems rather indirect. It's not like they officially denounce asexuality.

Ok, there are still the other 10% of Pagan communities that have turned rather fringe, like have extreme right-wing or suffer from a "TERF infestation".

On 10/29/2022 at 3:37 PM, Storm_leopardcat said:

Huh, interesting. Which else languages do not have gendered words?

Only one I can name right of the bat is Japanese.

Dutch is interesting because it has gendered words, but only two genders. Well, usually. But this is a very complex issue!

According to this most languages from Europe have a grammatical gender with only few exceptions like English, Finnish and Turkish.

In Asia it's much more common.

On 10/29/2022 at 3:37 PM, Storm_leopardcat said:

OTOH?

On the other hand? 🙂

1 hour ago, roboticanary said:

bit late for halloween

In GMT / UTC / CET it's November 3 now. But in Mexico it's still November 2, so Día de Muertos 💀, kind of on-topic still.

Oh of course, I don't celebrate any of such festivals.

I'm a devout believer and only observe the Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week.

That's it, nothing else!

7/10 ... pretty damn good, but not a genre I like, tbh.

8 hours ago, Harvest said:

Its usually just patriotic boomers who fear the 'americanisation' of Australia but I guarantee you they still watch hollywood movies, go to maccas and probably engage with winter festive imagery during Christmas despite it being during the summer for us.

I still find the idea of Halloween in spring weird. Because seasons ranked by scariness:

1. autumn 🍂👻
2. winter
3. summer
4. spring

Ok, Christmas without winter imagery is a bit weird, too.

But this holiday is less rooted in the year's cycle like Halloween and Beltane are, which are simply switched in the Southern Hemisphere.

I own a PS 5!

On 10/22/2022 at 10:40 AM, aro_elise said:

-vegan (about 2% of canadians are)

Vegan, too!

I also was a FreeBSD user for a long time.

Now I'm back to Windows 11, damn... not special anymore.

On 9/13/2022 at 11:35 PM, roboticanary said:

physicist 

That's not unusual (I had physics as a minor).

On 9/13/2022 at 11:35 PM, roboticanary said:

actual winner of second prize in a beauty contest (sadly no-one gave me a tenner)

i suppose forum admin counts, thats unusual.

Yes, that's more like it.

18 hours ago, aro_elise said:

once i spotted what i quickly realized was just a crab

Why is a crab ok, LOL? 10 legs vs. 8 legs, so?

I like spiders 🕸🕷. But I still subject them to (careful) forced relocation when they try to spin their webs in my flat (though personally I don't mind, but it's not accepted in my culture).

18 hours ago, aro_elise said:

mine's not unusual, it's arachnophobia.  it's quite severe though, like there are countries i can never visit, movies i can't watch.  even the little guys, photos, decorations, etc. cause at minimum a brief panic reaction. 

There are terrifying spiders in some horror movies. But you can create such horror versions of all animals.

I guess because arachnophobia is very common, spiders seem the no. 1 choice.

My young cousin is extremely arachnophobic and even convinced himself that some spiders can fly (actually not spiders but Opiliones), oh dear.

On 10/25/2022 at 12:16 AM, Neon said:

I doubt any but the most extreme politicians have any delusions that this will pass. The annoying thing is that generating discussion and outrage is the point, but not talking about it does more damage. It's a lose-lose situation.

After all the fringe stuff that has happened in recent times, of which pundits told us that it is absolutely inconceivable (like the repeal of Roe v. Wade), but still happened regardless... I'm sorry!

It's 2022 and if I learned one thing, it's that the range of possibilities has been opened up to a frightening degree.

I do not exclude anything from my considerations anymore. Except perhaps if it involves reptiloids. 😉

I'm not an expert of US politics, but in the midterm elections Republicans will likely take the house and maybe the senate. And you have this gerontocratic president, who might confuse the whole veto thing, so... yeah I would still consider the possibility that even this bill may pass.

I guess reptiloids are still a bit too implausible for me... ok, let's say I'm on the fence on this one.

16 hours ago, Harvest said:

Not a phobia, but I get rather anxious when other people touch certain possessions of mine, specifically technology ones. Even if I 100% trust the person if they're holding my phone I'll always have thing nagging feeling that they're going to take information from it.

Yess... but for different reasons. I think that they might break it, LOL. Does this count as a phobia? At least it's totally irrational.

In my teens my mom moved my computer (that I built myself and saved money for so long) out when she cleaned my room. So yeah, that tantrum was quite legendary.

It was basically her method to make me clean my room: "If you don't do it, then I'll do it for you!"

1 hour ago, nonmerci said:

You know I respect the Eiffel Tower. She was criticized everyday, people did not want her, and not only she made it but she is now a beloved symbol of Paris.

I don't share the sentiment of the artists' petition.

To me the Eiffel Tower is a symbol of power, technological progress and utopian aspirations.

I also like its "retro-futuristic" look. So the name of the restaurant in the tower "Le Jules Verne" is very fitting.

The association with romantic love OTOH is just bizarre to me.

PS: @nonmerci why is the Eiffel Tower a "she". It's not a ship! 😉

27 minutes ago, nonmerci said:

(I still don't get why people think we are more romantic than other countries)

I can understand that to some degree. But the association that everything stereotypically French must be romantic, is rather ridiculous.

E. g. how did we get from this:

We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection … of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower … To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream.

(from Artists against the Eiffel Tower)

to this:

On 10/23/2022 at 5:22 AM, The Gray Warlock said:

I'm never sure what they think things like this are going to accomplish. I went to grade school in Missouri (say no more am I right!) where there was no sex education until late middle school. But guess what? We all found out anyway. We knew what "the wild thing" was and told dirty jokes on the playground. And this was when the idea of a publicly accessible world-spanning computer communications network was a dream of some MIT undergrad. Even if this thing passes how on earth do they think they are going to shelter the tech savvy kids of today with all the world's knowledge literally at their fingertips from any kind of sexual issues? Especially when it'll come to their attention from hearing all the stink everyone is kicking up about it. Ever hear of the Streisand Effect folks? It's almost as if the politicians who come up with this stuff either don't think these things through or don't really care beyond using it to muster their voting base to the polls. Interesting this comes up just in time for the Mid-Terms eh?

IMHO it's not really about attempting to hide the existence of gay people (kind of futile). But that students don't get taught anything LGBTQ-affirmative like empathy, understanding and respect.

On 10/22/2022 at 8:56 AM, Storm_leopardcat said:

Okay, I saw and instantly thought of Stellaris. Is this Stellaris?

Yesss!!

Btw, with the new Overlord DLC you can vassalize other empires and build overlord buildings (holdings) on the vassal's planets.

So I imagine you could also create an empire "Romantic Republic of Valentinia," force it to spawn in the game, vassalize it (playing the Arocratic Empire) and build Aid Agencies and Outreaches on their planets.

Those are for the poor aros in this unfortunate environment, so they get some help and maybe even advice how to emigrate to the Arocratic Star Empire of Quiver. 😉

On 9/26/2022 at 5:41 AM, Storm_leopardcat said:

They must have looked plain before (what did they look like?). 

Generally this board is based on Invison, which uses FontAwesome icons (sadly only a small subset - the full FontAwesome also has some frog icons).

But there weren't really different badges, it was the exact same rocket icon for all members.

And yeah, FontAwesome icons are very plain, but that's kind of the point. They're supposed to be usable for a wide variety of websites.

1 hour ago, nonmerci said:

I remember when people talk about the American dream and think about it as an Eldorado.

So... who? Didn't this turn into an ironic term 100 years ago?

14 hours ago, Acearospec said:

It's infuriating and depressing that this is where we are today. 

Thankfully, like you said, it's unlikely to pass. Here's a clip from https://www.wabe.org/whats-in-the-so-called-dont-say-gay-bill-that-could-impact-the-whole-country/

"The bill’s prospects are nil while Democrats control the White House and Senate

The bill would not pass in the current Congress, given that such legislation is solely a Republican effort and Democrats have a functional majority in each chamber. Depending on the November election results, the makeup of the House and Senate could shift. Still, it’s not clear how many Republicans would support the bill, even if it is popular among a certain strain of the party. Even if the proposed legislation were to pass in a Republican-controlled House and Senate, it would be vetoed by President Biden. So don’t expect this bill to go anywhere, for at least a while." 

I don't think the intention is simply to get this bill passed, though that might happen. Because there's way too much dangerous 3D chess going on.

Still, if it only stokes up enough fear, conspiratorial thinking and intolerance and fractures alliances, this proposal has done its job.

PS: if European politics is crazy, the US version is positively insane. So I generally avoid commenting about it, because even stating bare facts enrages people.

Aro Stellaris, addendum:

I used the human portraits for the Arocratic Star Empire of Quiver, but how could I forget about this species portrait:

looks like our