[ghporter]

Yesterday my wife came upon a post on Facebook with an arithmetic problem:

50 + 10 X 0 + 2 + 7 = ?

Don’t use a calculator…

This was clearly an opportunity for someone to show “how smart he is” and make other people feel stupid. It’s intentionally ambiguous, and structured to drive the reader to a particular (wrong) answer.

My wife and I discussed it, and I brought up the point that there is an order of precedence of arithmetic operators, calling for performing multiplication and division before addition and subtraction. Applying this rule generates the correct answer.

But my wife asked a valid question: where did the precedence rule come from? And I don’t have an answer. So math folks, where DID it come from, and why?

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

This was clearly an opportunity for someone to show “how smart he is” and make other people feel stupid.

No, it's an opportunity to catalog gullible boomers, especially people with low self awareness that believe they're smart but aren't smart enough to identify obvious engagement begging. The kind of people that would be easy to scam.

But my wife asked a valid question: where did the precedence rule come from? And I don’t have an answer. So math folks, where DID it come from, and why?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_...ations#history

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

No, it's an opportunity to catalog gullible boomers, especially people with low self awareness that believe they're smart but aren't smart enough to identify obvious engagement begging. The kind of people that would be easy to scam.

This.

[ghporter]

Thanks. Interestingly (to me, anyway) I had not looked at Wikipedia for this. My search simply found tutoring sites that explained the order, but not where it came from.

And I don’t doubt the scam-bait idea here. But I was only looking at it from a psychological angle which is “so called smart dude gets other people to feel stupid”. The purpose of this was not so much an issue as the psychological result.

[reader50]

I recall the early-2000s warnings to not cite Wikipedia as a reliable source. Remember those?

Today, Wikipedia is linked to constantly, and seems close in accuracy to Encyclopedia Brittanica. The latter is still around, btw, but only online since 2011. Last print edition was 2010.

[Laminar]

My favorite Wikipedia moment was when Turtle was parroting the pro-Ivermectin anti-vax lines and I linked to a Wikipedia article about testing or something and he made fun of the data because of the source, but then cited what was essentially i-love-ivermectin.com, a website created in May of 2020 as a source.

[reader50]

Hopefully all the Ivermectin people, who like their horse/cow medicine, have begun growing tails by now. Helpful for swatting flies behind you.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

My favorite Wikipedia moment was when Turtle was parroting the pro-Ivermectin anti-vax lines and I linked to a Wikipedia article about testing or something and he made fun of the data because of the source, but then cited what was essentially i-love-ivermectin.com, a website created in May of 2020 as a source.

Ha! Found it.

https://forums.macnn.com/showthread....07#post4421007

It's funny - after 11 months away from the forums, he showed up to tout Ivermectin only to get royally stomped down. So he goes dark for four months, then comes back to spread the pro-"natural immunity" narrative that was popular with the right wing media at the time, got stomped down again by his own sources, and hasn't been back since. It's gotta be tough having occasional contact with reality when you live in a bubble created by the right wing media.

[Thorzdad]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

No, it's an opportunity to catalog gullible boomers, especially people with low self awareness that believe they're smart but aren't smart enough to identify obvious engagement begging. The kind of people that would be easy to scam.

Why the ageist bullshit? I mean, gullible boomers? Really?

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by Thorzdad 

Why the ageist bullshit? I mean, gullible boomers? Really?

Are you not aware of Facebook scams? You're not friends with old people that engage with all of the manufactured content? I took a quick sample of old people on Facebook, it's stuff like this:







Are you mad that I used the term "boomer"? Do you think any negative attitude toward a certain age group constitutes ageism? Do you think stereotyping or generalizing behaviors and attitudes of an age group is ageism?

[Laminar]

Who do you think constitutes the majority of the members of all of the fake right-wing facebook groups? You think that's the 18-34 demographic in there?

https://apokerplayer.medium.com/exam...s-ff9b71894f57

https://www.technologyreview.com/202...2020-election/

[ghporter]

It looks like gutting public education has already had the effect the neos intended. Too bad it also means that there aren’t enough healthcare providers, not enough actual craftsmen to take care of things like the toilet clogging and such, and darn few people in tech who can go past “did you turn it off and turn it back on again?” Double-edged sword much?

Anyway, yeah, I see the targeting, but I don’t mention it much because I see it for what it is and just ignore it. I spent over 20 years teaching and working on complex technical equipment. My wife was so sharp that after she nearly aced her basic technical training course they asked her to stay and teach the course she just finished. We went on to get degrees in healthcare and practiced in areas that required understanding and use of some pretty advanced tech.

We are not kids, but we ain’t stupid, and we certainly aren’t technophobes. On the other hand, we don’t use “voice assistants” except to handle important messages while driving, and then ONLY through manually triggering Siri. There’s an old joke about the difference between tech bros and technologists that quotes the bro bragging about how IOT his whole life is, while the technologist points out that the most advanced device in his home is a non-networked printer - and there’s a 4 pound sledge hammer next to it in case it gets notional. We’re much closer to the latter…

But what I don’t get is how so many people MY AGE can throw up their hands and claim they can’t understand any tech. When my dad was in his 70s (in the 1990s) he took a community education class on using PCs. He wound up acting as a TA for the class because it was so simple for him (and he was great at explaining stuff). I think a lot of that “elder tech phobia” is believing the kids’ claims that “this stuff is just so new and fresh that you can’t grasp it”, ignoring the fact that it’s all based on technology that was fully developed when the 60 and 70 year-olds were young… I think it’s a matter of surrender instead of simply looking at what devices do and figuring them out.

[Spheric Harlot]

The absurd theater going down is beyond any resonable need for comment, apparently…

I'd completely forgotten how terrifying it was to wake up Every. Single. Morning. wondering what the dumbfuck madman with the nuclear codes may have threatened to do this time.

[andi*pandi]

United states of Trump will now include canada, greenland, panama, and the gulf of mexico for some reason.

[subego]

As an aside, Greenland can fit in the Gulf of Mexico.

[christ]

Originally Posted by subego 

As an aside, Greenland can fit in the Gulf of Mexico.

Don't give him ideas.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

The absurd theater going down is beyond any resonable need for comment, apparently…

I'd completely forgotten how terrifying it was to wake up Every. Single. Morning. wondering what the dumbfuck madman with the nuclear codes may have threatened to do this time.

Every time I think, "Maybe it won't be so bad," I remember what an absolute relief it was to start waking up in January 2021 and just know that the adults are in charge again. It was tangible, palpable relief.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by subego 

As an aside, Greenland can fit in the Gulf of Mexico.

You mean the Gulf of America.

[subego]

Formerly known as Twitter.

[Thorzdad]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

Every time I think, "Maybe it won't be so bad," I remember what an absolute relief it was to start waking up in January 2021 and just know that the adults are in charge again. It was tangible, palpable relief.

Word.
The dread/anxiety I’ve had since the election has only intensified as the asshole’s inauguration gets closer. It doesn’t help that I have friends, who are younger than me, that have decided to start taking social security early.

Their reasoning is that the cabal coming into power are going to chop benefits for anyone not yet enrolled. I mean, I’ve heard the threats about gutting socsec, but they threaten a lot of shit. My advisor isn’t concerned about it. He reminds me that slicing benefits would take congress agreeing to it, and socsec is the proverbial third-rail of american politics, especially given most of Needy Amin’s base are socsec age.

I still just want to fall into a four-year coma and just hope I don’t reawaken into a monarchy. It would still be better than the daily anxiety I have today.