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Madelaine McMasters

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Everything posted by Madelaine McMasters

  1. Madelaine McMasters
    Thank you for pointing out that you mangled the quote. The literal translation makes sense. Your English class example actually doesn't resolve my question, as "cannot" might be caused by either lack of ability or lack of permission. More context is often required for clarification. This, of course, has no bearing on the distinction between "cannot" and "won't", which is where you mangled the quote.
  2. Madelaine McMasters
    How is "cannot" different from "not able"?
  3. Madelaine McMasters
    Owwww, must you ring the bell so loudly? Where, oh where do I start?
  4. Madelaine McMasters
    We were not invited to Mensa. By the time I heard about it, I already knew I was reasonably intelligent (certainly different), and I liked hanging out with curious people (mostly adults). I thought of Mensa as a merit badge. I brought up the idea and my parents looked into it. I think it was my excitement about joining that ultimately shut the idea down. Sometimes I need tough love. What I didn't realize at the time is that intelligence and curiosity are two different things and curiosity takes me more places.
  5. Madelaine McMasters
    Based on a purely non-scientific, non-random reading of the tea leaves, I suspect that there are many others here who could say the same. But won't. 😎 This is why Groucho's motivations are as suspect as my own. Do I tell people I reject Mensa as a way of suggesting I'm better than they are? Do I tell people I reject Mensa because they actually rejected me? ("I hate ice-cream" after dropping my cone on the ground.) Do I claim to be nefarious to get people to think I'm not? Did my father refuse to reveal his IQ with the expectation his reasoning would lead everyone to believe he was brilliant? Get back to me when you have the answers. Be prepared to show your work.
  6. Madelaine McMasters
    Some years ago, I published the following diagrammatic explanation of my nefarious plan for world domination, using Facebook as my tool. I am, of course, so nefarious that revealing the plan cannot stop it. In Step 1, I infect a small, isolated group of minions (you here in the forum) with some absurd ideology I've made up. In Step 2, I send you all out into Facebook, to spread the news far and wide. The most important part of all this is that I would never join a club that would have me as a member, so I observe the resulting chaos from a great distance. If you look closely, you'll several small "islands" of nonconformity that survive the conversion. That's my admission of imperfection, without which you'd think I was delusional. Feel free to imagine you're one of those nonconformists. Self delusion is an equal opportunity employer.
  7. Madelaine McMasters
    My childhood friends, upon introduction to our family banter, would often have that reaction. Most quickly figured it out and joined in. A few never recovered. My local Ace Hardware store had, for years, been run by the same family, with very low turnover in the core staff. When I was an infant, my father would sometimes take me into the store and weigh me on the hardware scale, which was used to measure things like nails that were sold by the pound. He'd banter with the staff, who was soon teasing me over all many of things. I learned to tease them back. This has been going on for fifty years. I was heartbroken when the family sold the store and turned over virtually all of the staff. I loved walking through the front door and yelling "Kevin? Jim" Anybody home?" As the student temp employees up front looked at me askance. Nothing made me happier than hearing a disembodied, familiar voice boom from some distant aisle... "Maddy? What did you break now?"
  8. Madelaine McMasters
    I was pretty young when taught that weirdness is a virtue. Surprise and delight want novelty. Weirdness provides it. The McMasters family motto is "People are weird"* *And we are people.
  9. Madelaine McMasters
    Yep, all three of us passed and I was pretty excited about it. Dad refused to reveal his scores because "Once people know, they'll wonder why I haven't done more with my life." Emotional IQ is pretty damned important, as is diversity. You never know just what kind of smarts will be needed to get you out of your next pickle, nor whether you'll have them. I'm quite fond of Groucho's quote, but his motivations are as suspect as my own.
  10. Madelaine McMasters
    My bad. I was thinking of the Linden kissing booth.
  11. Madelaine McMasters
    Regarding Mensa, my parents and I all qualified when I was young. I wanted to join but they demurred. I no longer wish to join. I wonder of Mensa membership means what we think it means. I wonder if declining membership means what we think it means.
  12. Madelaine McMasters
    Since I'm most of the people in SL, I've got a big say in whether there is an intelligentsia or not. I ain't sayin'.
  13. Madelaine McMasters
    I am, I think, about as peeve-able as you. Where we might differ is that I love to feign peeve-ment over things that are completely inconsequential. Many things that peeve other people actually amuse me. My Apple watch, Siri, and the "intelligent" voice assistant in my car have been endlessly amusing, as their artificial smarts reveal just how daunting a task even being stupid can be. I was at Menards yesterday, buying lumber. The 2x4s were not marked in any way, and the cashier could not find their description in her "big black book". I was able to find the items via their webpage, so she could check me out. Having underestimated my needs, I was back later that day. I photographed the signs, with SKUs, over all the piles I picked from, so I could speed my subsequent checkout. The same cashier was on duty, and we had a good laugh over both the failings and wonders of technology. Oh, I also bought her a chocolate bar, having heard her comment about wanting one to the customer ahead of me in line, who'd bought one from the impulse display I was standing beside. So much opportunity to rant, so much opportunity to make people smile. So much opportunity to do both simultaneously.
  14. Madelaine McMasters
    Sometimes, the more I think about something, the less opinion I have.
  15. Madelaine McMasters
    We're all being grooooooooooooomed!
  16. Madelaine McMasters
    I think that's fine. The context for the exchange is well defined and only those who wish to participate actually do.
  17. Madelaine McMasters
    It ain't that easy!
  18. Madelaine McMasters
    ...sets you on fire* *Good grief, are you all gonna manipulate me like this? I feel so uuuuuuuuused!
  19. Madelaine McMasters
    The hair worn by my little devil is the first purchase I ever made in SL, in April of 2008, two days after joining. The money for the hair was gifted to me by a stranger, who took me under her wing briefly. Though that person left SL a dozen years ago, her kindness and generosity sold me on SL, too. I have been trying to pay it forward ever since. I have only three decorations in my 35 LI skybox. Two of them were gifts from Scylla, who listens well enough to know that the cheap (to her) trinkets she drops will have great value to me. She also knows that if my skybox is filled with her treasured gifts, I can't rez things that will set her on fire, drown her in quicksand, or spin her around until she vomits. She's in this for herself, people. Humans have a long history of gifting as a means of establishing and maintaining connection. Anonymity can hamper that. Yep, it's hard to surprise with the expected.
  20. Madelaine McMasters
    You didn't miss it. Bree never mentioned anonymous gifting. I sorta inferred it because we already have a super simple way to do it explicitly.
  21. Madelaine McMasters
    It takes some effort to donate anonymously in RL. I don't see why SL should be any different. I don't think an anonymous gifting system would be gamed to launder money, because LL knows the identities of both parties of any financial transaction, for logical and legal reasons. I can see such a system being gamed for griefing, however. Having L$ fall from the skies can make people uncomfortable. Last holiday season, many of us, me included, were gifted things or L$ by an anonymous forum moose.Those gifts were accompanied by innocuous/humorous notes. Still (understandably), some people were uncomfortable. Imagine the angst one could cause by dropping L$1 on random people, with no explanation, or even a nefarious one. I can see the abuse reports piling up in LL's inbox. If I understood @Alwin Alcott correctly, any anonymous payment button would have to be matched by a "Refuse anonymous gifts" checkbox somewhere. I agree. I'd check mine.
  22. Madelaine McMasters
    
drowns you in a pool of Milk of Human Kindness, brings it to a boil to make “Cream of Scylla”, then burns it all to a crisp
  23. Madelaine McMasters
    What a load of BS! You’ve got working me over for donations down to a “fine art”, so my acts of kindness are not the least bit random. They’re programmed by you! To add insult to injury, I asked you to shut up about it and here you are blathering it all over the forums. Why oh why do I put up with you? Don’t say it, don’t you dare say it. Adorability is no damned excuse.
  24. Madelaine McMasters
    You’ve misspelled moron. It’s spelled gee oh oh eff. ETA: it just occurred to me. Goof off becomes
 Gee! Oh? Oh! Eff off!
  25. Madelaine McMasters
    The spork of cones...
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