I Don’t Know If This Is True, But I’ve Read That The X-men Are A Deliberate Metaphor For Being LGBT+.

@johnhocksbur

PSA: The wage gap isn’t real

I’m going to try to go through these a couple at a time to see if I can help.

U guys have one (high-)school?

That depends on where you live. Some states make you stay within your school district (which is a group of schools in roughly the same area), others don’t. Even if your state lets you go to other districts, rural areas and small towns will often only have a couple of schools close enough that you could feasibly get to them. If you live in a city, you’ll usually have more options, but sometimes they’re all similarly bad.

For everyone? 

Some people also choose to homeschool, although usually not for high school.

Some states  have charter schools, which are still public schools but aren’t part of a school district. They tend to be more specialized than district schools.

If your parents are rich or you get a scholarship you can attend a private school as well.

With one degree? 

Typically, a given high school will only offer one degree.

Like, what do u do if you get bad grades? Drop out of highschool? Do u still get a degree? 

It depends on the person and the school. As far as I know, all states have a minimum number of credits required to graduate and get a degree, and some schools and districts add onto those requirements. You need to pass a class to get credit, but even a D- still counts as passing. If you fail a class, your options vary by school. At some schools you can make it up with summer school or online courses, but at others you have to actually retake the class. Some people do drop out of school, but that happens for other reasons as well.

If you drop out or age out of the system, you can also take a test to earn a GED, which is supposed to substitute for a high school diploma.

Why do you have a separate school for grades 9-12?

First of all, not all schools are 9-12, although many are. There are a few reasons for this division:

1. Many public high schools are large enough that it wouldn’t make sense to add younger students as well.

2. It may not be safe to put elementary schoolers in the same building as high schoolers.

3. The licensing requirements often are different for teaching elementary, middle, and high school. 

What are standardized tests,

There are two main types of standardized tests in the United States:

1. Legally mandated tests

Because of No Child Left Behind (a law passed in 2001), schools have to do well on this type of test or lose their funding and possibly be closed down. In theory, they cover basic material that every student is supposed to be able to do.

2. College admissions tests (SAT/ACT)

These are multiple-choice tests that students take to get into college. They have a LOT of problems and by in large do not measure what they’re supposed to measure.

Both types have their issues. I tend to consider the ACT/SAT less effective as measuring what they’re supposed to -- I did very well on the ACT, and in large part that was because I was a fast reader, not because I was actually better at the material covered than my classmates. 

y do u get so much homework, 

First of all, most of the reports of people doing massive amounts of homework a night are exaggerated. If you don’t stop to check social media, watch Netflix, etc. it doesn’t take that long at most schools. 

With that being said, it’s still a fair amount. Some teachers assign busywork, which increases homework time without providing real benefit. Fundamentally the issue is that every teacher views their class as most important and assigns homework accordingly.

y do they matter so much?

I assume this refers to standardized tests. Standardized tests are frequently assigned a high weight in college admissions because some high schools grade more strictly than other schools and colleges want an allegedly objective metric to compare students from different schools.

I hope that makes sense! Feel free to ask me if you have any other questions.

Important Question

Can someone pls explain the American school system to me?

Like… U guys have one (high-)school? For everyone? With one degree? Like, what do u do if you get bad grades? Drop out of highschool? Do u still get a degree? Why do you have a separate school for grades 9-12? What are standardized tests, y do u get so much homework, y do they matter so much? I’m confused. (And why do u have the same subjects EVERY.SINGLE.DAY?)

sry if those were too many questions but like… ¿??¿¿¿¿?????¿???¿????

AMERICA EXPLAIN

“it’s just my opinion”

Newsflash: Opinions can be bigoted. Often times opinions are bigoted. Bigotry operates off of opinions. It being your opinion doesn’t absolve you of bigotry, it just proves it more when you say such.

Hey, anon, would you mind sharing how you obtained what you believe to be my password? (Assuming, of course, that you were in fact talking about me.)

Do you want her blog's password

I assume you mean @mjollydragon‘s because she just reblogged something of mine raising an argument against me but regardless, the answer is no and fuck you very much for asking. I can fend for myself without that sort of snake in the grass censorship, thanks. especially in relation to the theology of a religion I have spent literally all of my conscious life learning about. 

And one for the road. Fuck you.

@slatestarscratchpad

My possibly-incorrect understanding of the tax bill is that it doesn’t implement all the deductions at once, which suggests that it wouldn’t add the same amount to the debt this year as it would in, say, 2024. This means that the “x dollars per year” formulation is problematic because it will vary radically depending on which year we look at.

(This seems like it could be solved by “x dollars per year starting in 20whenever, but there might be some reason why that doesn’t work.)

The news I read about the tax plan says it will add $1 trillion to the national debt. Occasionally it ends with “…over the next decade”.

Is there a reason this phrasing is preferable to “will add $100 billion per year to the national debt” or “will add $10 trillion to the national debt over the next century” or “will add $2.50 to the national debt over the next microsecond”?

If not, are headlines like “NEW TAX PLAN WILL ADD $1 TRILLION TO DEBT” completely arbitrary, since they could have made it any number by changing the (unspoken) time course?

Binary gendered language is one of those things that often goes unnoticed even at churches that are trying to be LGBTQ inclusive. Breaking the binary is a simple change that can make a difference.

How might you incorporate this language into your prayers, sermons, and church activities? 

(Source: Latina Rebel)

Note: The phrase “the chart” refers to the graph in iamretrograde’s post, titled “Comparisons of Intimate Partner Violence Against Various Categories.”

I did a reverse image search on the chart, followed by searching for the text. This led me to this site http://chart-mining.com/comparison-of-intimate-partner-violence-against-various-categories/, which has the graph followed by a source. They source it as being from http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS04C02 . I followed the link, but it didn’t have the image, just a page telling me that I could use the website’s search bar to help find what I was looking for.

I tried searching for some of the keywords used on the image with the site’s search bar and discovered two things:

1. The site has an extreme anti-LGBT+ agenda and is extremely biased.

2. I could not find any mention of the supposed statistics. I did find this article: http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF08L44.pdf , which says, “ ‘Domestic violence is reported to occur in about 11 percent of lesbian homes,’ the article [this is referencing another study] states. It goes on to claim that this is ,about half the rate of 20 percent reported by heterosexual women.’ However, this comparison fails to note that the highest rates of domestic violence among heterosexuals occur among those who are divorced, separated, cohabiting, or in sexual relationships outside of marriage; married women experience the lowest rates of domestic violence of any household arrangement.” Which, as far as I can tell, is claiming that this is study doesn’t count because heterosexual married women are less likely to experience domestic violence than unmarried heterosexual women who have a male partner. This may be true, I’m not sure, but I fail to see how this proves their point. In addition, these figures are significantly lower in both cases than the figures given on the graph.

I then looked up the article they reference. It’s here: http://www.glma.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageID=691 . The organization publishing it, the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (yes, they will also be biased) has removed the statistic and didn’t cite their sources, so that’s mostly a dead end. I found a few other sources, but all of them have various flaws (convenience sampling, over-specificity, etc.) that make them not useful.

Overall, I could not find anything to back up the statistics in that graph. If we accept the statistics provided by an anti-LGBT+ organization, who have a vested interest in the opposite result, then we have clear evidence that domestic violence occurs at lower rates among two-woman couples than one-man one woman couples. Since two-woman couples would have twice as many opportunities to occur, this would seem to indicate that, from a domestic violence point of view, it is safer for a woman to be in a relationship with another woman than with a man. Furthermore, it is safer overall for everyone than that chart indicates. (This does not mean the given statistics are good! However, they are less bad.)

If someone can find a source to back up the chart, I will absolutely reconsider this; until then, it looks like its claims are false.

Heterosexuality is Stockholm Syndrome

Do you ever think about how, in ATLA, Iroh was still actively leading the siege at Ba Sing Se ~5 years before the show started?