As someone who took etiquette lessons, politeness is an incredibly effective tool for disarming bigots. You can either force them to reconsider their words/actions by directly and calmly confronting their behavior (by using the rules of society in your favor), or you can dip entirely while they appear to be in the wrong.
Both options are great.
Because the thing is, when bigots pick fights, they are 100% counting on you to get louder than them. Or meaner. They want you to react emotionally and provide fodder for their ‘You’re Too Emotionally Immature To Understand’ cannon.
What they aren’t expecting you to do is say one of the following phrases in a polite, concerned tone:
Are you okay?
That’s not the kind of language I was raised to use with others.
Do you need a moment to think on why that wasn’t acceptable?
This is no way to engage in intelligent conversation. Please try that again in a kinder tone if you’d like this to continue. (I really like this one because it lets you turn their public-shame rhetoric around)
For those of you who’d are spiteful and/or dealing with Fundamentalists/Evangelicals/generally shitty Christians:
What’s happening in your life to cause you this much anger? I can’t imagine hurting so badly that I need to hurt other people.
Who taught you it was acceptable to treat other people this way? Certainly not the Jesus I remember.
Whatever happened to 'judge not lest ye be judged’?
If I talked like that in front of my parents or grandparents I would be ashamed.
I think there’s something you need to pray on before we try and have this conversation.
And my all time favorite:
“It sounds to me like there are some seriously dark and angry forces at work in your heart.”
(Nothing stops a Christian bigot in their tracks faster than implying the Devil is causing their bigotry. But you MUST be calm, polite, and gentle with your tone and wording. It is absolutely fair to twist the rules and play them at their own game, but you gotta play hard.)
TLDR: It’s much faster to use etiquette, politeness, and rhetoric reversal when eviscerating idiots online and in person, because they aren’t expecting you to weaponize their behaviors back in their direction. Don’t get angry, get spitefully polite! :)
I once witnessed a very soft-spoken young Southern man take a hateful older woman’s hands gently in his and say “Sister, I am so sorry that the Devil has carved a home for hatred in your heart. I’ll pray for you.”
It was glorious.
This works with all sorts of inappropriate behavior. I work as the archivist in a public library, so I end up on the reference desk a lot, and sometimes patrons will say or do things that aren’t exactly appropriate. When patrons try to hit on me, I put on a teacher voice and calmly ask, “Is that an appropriate question to ask someone at work?” and it shuts them down immediately.
I haven’t seen a show like that since I was a teenager, when music was more meaningful because emotions were easier to access. Unfortunately, they don’t make music like they used to when my body felt good and my future was an open door to a sunny day. New so-called “music” just sounds like I’m in my late 40s and have a job I don’t like, ugh.
alright. in my tepidly professional opinion* here are the actual major red flags with the titanic submersible
first, stuff that people are clowning on that isn’t actually a red flag at all
using starlink satcoms for their overall [surface] communications
i know it’s fun to clown on elon musk but starlinks are like. Fine. they work fine as satcoms. this is not the issue. none of these problems would have been solved if they’d been using KVH or somebody else instead
also these have fuck all to do with the tiny sub, since radio waves physically do not penetrate water enough to be useful for communications lol
the stupid game controller to steer
it’s actually super common to use COTS (commercial off the shelf) parts like that instead of some bespoke steering system.
they’re easily replaceable if they break, they’re designed to be integrated into larger systems, and you don’t have to do a huge amount of design work before you can even steer your thing
that being said. here is the fucked up design stuff that i notice
Where The Fuck Are The Chairs
if you don’t have seats inside your vessel, you don’t actually have a way of securing passengers during rough movement. i suspect that this makes it very dangerous or difficult to ascend quickly in an emergency.
i presume that they mean “messages in the form of text, sent via an acoustic signal”, not “they are literally using cell phones to text each other” because obvs cell phones (and most radio) would not work
it’s actually extremely unclear to me what system the sub and the mothership are using to communicate. idk if this is a “technology reporting hard” issue or if these people are being deliberately cagey. anyway they’re probably using some form of underwater acoustic communications, but what specific form it takes idk
regardless, the fact that they’ve had problems with this system in the past is a red flag
and the fact that their sub has apparently no internal navigation system is also a red flag. “not having GPS” isn’t really, since GPS doesn’t really work underwater (you need radio 😔), but they should have some kind of internal navigation– at the very least “here is my speed and heading and based on that my expected position is here on a map”
in a power failure situation, they would have been SOL
while it is “normal” for structures that are exposed to regular massive changes in pressure to have fatigue (imagine bending a piece of metal in and out over and over, eventually it will break– you want to catch and replace that before it happens), it’s weird to me that
the vessel’s depth rating was downgraded
without any public statement about what repairs were done, it nevertheless went back to the 4000ft depth less than a year later (in 2021)
they obviously have no “black box” system or any way to locate a missing vessel
most boats are required to have this! because most boats are required to be registered with and inspected by various authorities!
these guys deliberately skirted that rule by launching off a boat rather than from a port and therefore avoiding the need to get registered or inspected. lmao!
not that it likely would have helped to save these people if they had been alerted earlier, but it shows a desire to cover up mistakes
and like. obviously. you should get your shit inspected. nobody taking paying passengers anywhere should be allowed to be their own safety inspection authority.
the original sinking of the titanic was what led to SOLAS (safety of life at sea) rules being instituted. they’ve been updated several times since then, but they don’t yet cover submersibles like this, since they are relatively new. it’s likely that this incident will cause a new interest in updating the rules. as they say: every regulation is written in blood
*i’m a mechanical engineer who works in the maritime industry, but not like, a particularly related section of the industry– i do shit with cargo containers mainly. no further info on my credentials will be given since i have no desire to doxx myself on tumblr dot edu. i’ve tried not to say anything too wrong or out of my depth in this post but my opinion is “guy with an engineering degree who reads news articles” level of informed. so take your maximum grains of salt
I know it feels like an understatement but you sometimes make more progress by pointing out that conservatives are fucking rude. going out of your way to call someone the wrong name because you don’t like them? rude. childish. this isn’t fucking kindergarten, Carl. she said her name is Jennifer. Everybody knows her as Jennifer. You are the one making things confusing. Grow up.
“misgendering is violence”: invites discourse over the TraNs DeBatE, puts people on the defensive, opens you up to accusations of liberal snowflakery, comes off as a hypothetical thought exercise
“Who the fuck is Jason? I don’t know a Jason. Oh her? You mean Jen? You mean fucking Jen? That’s Jen, dipshit.” : crystal clear. you’re making shit more difficult for everyone because you’re a rude manchild.
btw it’s fantasy, you really don’t need to worry about your world map making “sense” geologically or whatever. make that river flow backwards from the sea into the mountain.
Wait are you saying I don’t have to take plate tectonics ocean currents and mineral deposition into account when I make this map? But how will I know where the mountains with gold mines are, or what shores would have the best fishing spots? If I don’t map out this entire world in intricate detail, how will I know if this kingdom falls on a major trade route or is sidelined to the periphery of the classical empires?
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