shit_that_didnt_happen.txt: I'm finding it very hard to immerse myself in the lie.

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > shit_that_didnt_happen.txt: I'm finding it very hard to immerse myself in the lie.

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Danaru: Jun 5, 2012; 何 ??

4000+ upvotes on /r/atheism

# ? Nov 1, 2016 14:51

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# ? May 13, 2024 23:27

Trebek: Mar 7, 2002; College Slice

Furia posted:

Reminds me of the stdh with the little girl and the math exam with the bullshit "largest number you can make question".

Just thinking about it pisses me off

Ed Trice, Executive Director at Lightning Cloud Computing posted:

This post is about my fight against "Standardized Testing" in math, and what later became "Common Core." It goes back to 2008 when my daughter was in grade school. I got a call to come to the principal's office. I was surprised, as this was a real first. Like all fathers I suppose, we tend to think of our little girls as angelic and saintlike. In my case, this was the absolute truth.

"Your daughter was being disruptive in class."

It was like an arrow through my heart. I looked over at her. There were tear-streaked marks all down her face. She looked down at her shoes when I shot a glance over at her. And she started sobbing again. The principal continued his monotone diatribe, while I walked over to kneel besides my daughter and hug her.

"Really, Mr. Trice, that's not appropriate..."

I continued to ignore him. "Are you OK?" I asked her. She looked up, nodded her head, and sniffled.

"Tell me what happened" was all I said as I tried not to stare through the principal's skull with my X-ray vision superpower.

"Your daughter tried to correct her math teacher. The teacher explained why she was wrong, and she insisted that she was correct."

I laughed.

I knew she was right and the teacher was wrong. I couldn't wait to hear this one.

"What was the question?" I asked as the principal was about to interject a rebuke to my outburst.

The teacher was also present, and he spoke up. "The question was, what was the largest number that can be represented with 3 digits. I said it was 999, your daughter disagreed."

I remember thinking "Uh-oh. What the heck was she thinking?"

That's when she spoke up, anger in her voice, "Oh yeah? Tell me what 9 raised to the 9th power raised to the 9th power is then??"

Holy crap! She was right! Technically, the problem is not asking for the largest 3-digit number, which is exactly where my mind went upon hearing the question. The question is asking you to represent a number using 3 digits, so exponentiation cannot be ruled out.

I looked over at her and smiled and said "Way to go! You're 100% correct!" And I gave her a high-five. She smiled. Then cried some tears of joys as she laughed. She knew I had her back.

This one?

# ? Nov 1, 2016 15:13

LITERALLY A BIRD: Sep 27, 2008; I knew you were trouble
when you flew in

uugghhh

# ? Nov 1, 2016 15:19

Trebek: Mar 7, 2002; College Slice

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

uugghhh

Ed Trice has a great resume.

# ? Nov 1, 2016 15:43

Nyarai: Jul 19, 2012; Jenn here.

Trebek posted:

This one?

The long version of the story ends with every single other student in the country being marked wrong. :argh:

# ? Nov 1, 2016 15:55

Winter Stormer: Oct 17, 2012

Trebek posted:

This one?

What about factorials and bases other than ten, kiddo?

:goonsay:

# ? Nov 1, 2016 16:28

Furia: Jul 26, 2015; Grimey Drawer

Nyarai posted:

The long version of the story ends with every single other student in the country being marked wrong.

Yeah, I was thinking about that one.

Trebek posted:

Ed Trice has a great resume.

Jesus christ what a oval office

If you can't properly communicate what you did, you didn't really do it

# ? Nov 1, 2016 16:49

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Winter Stormer posted:

What about factorials and bases other than ten, kiddo?

It's funny.

I can express how I feel about that story

using only two digits.

# ? Nov 1, 2016 16:57

PittTheElder: Feb 13, 2012; Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Khazar-khum posted:

I was always getting in trouble for arguing with my teachers. My all-time favorite was when my third-grade teacher insisted "No mammal lays eggs!" So I checked out a library book on Australia and showed her the platypus. She at least had the grace to apologize.

I went through something similar once, my high school Chemistry teacher was lecturing about how the noble gases don't bond to anything, and I found some random sidebar in my textbook about how they actually will under the right conditions. I being a huge nerd immediately started asking about this, she basically just shut me down by saying stuff like that was totally out of scope.

Strange days back when you still thought your teachers were experts on their topics, rather than a little ways ahead of you.

# ? Nov 1, 2016 17:46

SneezeOfTheDecade: Feb 6, 2011; gettin' covid all
over your posts

PittTheElder posted:

Strange days back when you still thought your teachers were experts on their topics, rather than a little ways ahead of you.

Not to say that this isn't true, but grade-school classes are intended to be survey courses. You're supposed to get a general overview, and they deliberately exclude edge cases.

This comes up a lot for me as a trans person. You hear "XX = female, XY = male" or "vagina = female, penis = male" a lot from transphobes, because "it's basic biology!". Like: yeah, it's basic biology, which you learned in a class where they're giving you an intentionally broad overview of the topic that covers most cases but doesn't get into the finer details.

(Which connects up to the math story, actually; basic math tells you that nothing is bigger than infinity, but advanced math can acknowledge that there are multiple infinities, and so I wonder if ∞ counts as a digit. ∞^∞^∞ is a lot bigger than 9^9^9.)

# ? Nov 1, 2016 18:42

Decrepus: May 21, 2008; In the end, his dominion did not touch a single poster.

Danaru posted:

4000+ upvotes on /r/atheism

every religious word I know .txt

# ? Nov 1, 2016 19:27

Hardcordion: Feb 5, 2008; BARK BARK BARK

Besesoth posted:

(Which connects up to the math story, actually; basic math tells you that nothing is bigger than infinity, but advanced math can acknowledge that there are multiple infinities, and so I wonder if ∞ counts as a digit. ∞^∞^∞ is a lot bigger than 9^9^9.)

Infinity is a mathematical concept, not a number in the normal sense and definitely not a digit.

# ? Nov 1, 2016 19:55

CellBlock: Oct 6, 2005; It just don't stop.

Hardcordion posted:

Infinity is a mathematical concept, not a number in the normal sense and definitely not a digit.

It's definitely not a number, but typographically, it's just a sideways 8, which is a digit. :haw:

# ? Nov 1, 2016 20:30

Biplane: Jul 18, 2005

CellBlock posted:

It's definitely not a number, but typographically, it's just a sideways 8, which is a digit.

This checks out, I just flipped my screen and turns out it's true.

# ? Nov 1, 2016 20:35

gschmidl: Sep 3, 2011; watch with knife hands

The middle finger is also a digit.

# ? Nov 1, 2016 20:39

System Metternich: Feb 28, 2010; But what did he mean by that?

Besesoth posted:

Not to say that this isn't true, but grade-school classes are intended to be survey courses. You're supposed to get a general overview, and they deliberately exclude edge cases.

This comes up a lot for me as a trans person. You hear "XX = female, XY = male" or "vagina = female, penis = male" a lot from transphobes, because "it's basic biology!". Like: yeah, it's basic biology, which you learned in a class where they're giving you an intentionally broad overview of the topic that covers most cases but doesn't get into the finer details.

(Which connects up to the math story, actually; basic math tells you that nothing is bigger than infinity, but advanced math can acknowledge that there are multiple infinities, and so I wonder if ∞ counts as a digit. ∞^∞^∞ is a lot bigger than 9^9^9.)

I'm remember learning in school that "you can't calculate the square root of numbers ≤0!", Shorty afterwards my family was visiting friends, where the father was a professor of mathematics at the local university. I took a quick peek at his desk, and what am I seeing there first thing? √-1

I felt kinda cheated after that :v:

# ? Nov 1, 2016 20:45

sweeperbravo: May 18, 2012; AUNT GWEN'S COLD SHAPE (!)

Tunicate posted:

It's funny.

I can express how I feel about that story

using only two digits.

my reaction to this thread usually

# ? Nov 1, 2016 20:47

PittTheElder: Feb 13, 2012; Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Besesoth posted:

(Which connects up to the math story, actually; basic math tells you that nothing is bigger than infinity, but advanced math can acknowledge that there are multiple infinities, and so I wonder if ∞ counts as a digit. ∞^∞^∞ is a lot bigger than 9^9^9.)

It's pretty easy to make a way bigger number if you want to, the first thing that comes to mind is just doing ⁹9, which is equal to 9^9^9^9^9^9^9^9^9, which is an absolutely gigantic number, that can't be effectively expressed through usual notation. Significantly more than there are atoms in the universe, and that's just using two digits. Because I mean who is teaching their twelve year old daughter about exponentiation and not tetration?

# ? Nov 1, 2016 22:01

System Metternich: Feb 28, 2010; But what did he mean by that?

PittTheElder posted:

It's pretty easy to make a way bigger number if you want to, the first thing that comes to mind is just doing ⁹9, which is equal to 9^9^9^9^9^9^9^9^9, which is an absolutely gigantic number, that can't be effectively expressed through usual notation. Significantly more than there are atoms in the universe, and that's just using two digits. Because I mean who is teaching their twelve year old daughter about exponentiation and not tetration?

Tetration is cool as poo poo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTeJ64KD5cg

# ? Nov 1, 2016 23:20

Zelder: Jan 4, 2012

Suck my digit u nerds

# ? Nov 2, 2016 03:35

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

Zelder posted:

Suck my digit u nerds

Which finger?

# ? Nov 2, 2016 05:36

Khazar-khum: Oct 22, 2008; Cat Army
2nd Battalion

Bag

quote:

While this troper was in high school his schoolbag weighed much more than it should have considering that it only held books, papers lunch etc. It became a running joke among his year group to say that Saddam Hussein was hiding out there, even a couple of teachers got into it. One day the strap broke, and he had to get a new bag after school. Later that evening he transferred his stuff to his new bag and threw out his old one. Less than half an hour later the tv program he was watching was interrupted by a breaking news report, it turns out that Saddam had finally been captured. Both the troper and his school mates found that very amusing.
Over the course of the last 4 years of his noncollegiate education, This Troper had a bag which weighed between 35 and 57 pounds, while he weighed no more than 165 lbs during those years, and the first of the years he weighed roughly 145 lbs (which wasn't when the bag was lightest, and he had 4 floors to cover for classes that year)
In secondary school, this troper's bag was infamous because it was apparentley so heavy. The bizarre thing is that it seemed that the stronger the individual trying to lift, it the more difficult they found it. The captain of the school rugby team was only able to pick it up with a great deal of straining and was red in the face when he put it down again. On one occasion a P.E. teacher asked if the troper carried lead ingots around with him. Yet this troper, who isn't really that strong at all, found it light as a feather when he got it on his back. I Am Not Making This Up.

Phone

quote:

This troper worked in customer service for a large mobile phone provider and fielded a call from a woman going through a nasty divorce and saying all manner of colorful things about her soon-to-be ex-husband. He, meanwhile, had to soldier through the service script, trying his very best to avoid getting too entangled in the life of this middle-aged lady whilst still trying to solve the poor woman's issue of disentangling her ex's cell phone contract from the rest of the family's. Finally, the woman, satisfied with the arrangement, said "So what do I do now?" This troper replied, "Well, I've removed your husband, so everything should be fine, even if he gets a nasty surprise when his phone stops working all of a sudden." The customer said, "No, I meant what do I do about my divorce?" Finally breaking character, this troper said "Well, tell him he can have the truck and the dog, you get the kids and the house, and toss in an 8-track player and some old country music for his trouble." Not only was he NOT fired for this, the customer immediately said "Give me your manager, you deserve a raise." I still have the Outstanding Service Award "for going above and beyond the call of duty to Raise the Bar� for our customers!"

Metal

quote:

This troper had a teacher in his sophomore year in high school who decorated the class with medieval battle armor and blasted new age music. The kicker? Almost all the kids in the class had ADHD. Also, another IANMTU incident happened in a grocery store where the troper and his mom encountered two Mexican guys playfully fighting over a chicken leg in the pharmacy, a punk kid in the wine aisle, a hippie girl speaking another language to a guy in a leprechaun hat, a fat guy diving behind the seafood counter, a Goth Girl carrying yellow roses and a blond girl sitting in a shopping cart using fruit-by-the-foot as a whip while giggling insanely.

Pencil

quote:

This troper knows a creepy fat kid who apparently thinks he's something different every day. So far from what he's counted, he thinks he is:
Zac Efron, an opera singer, Mumble, Sonic The Hedgehog, cool, sexy, good with the ladies, Spongebob Squarepants, Joe Jonas, a football player, A Spartan (you should see him running around the school yelling...well, you should probably know), a good dancer, a penguin in general (he was *ahem* "waddling" around the hallways repeatedly shouting out "Penguins will take over the world...Penguins will take over the world...") Optimus Prime, Chuck Norris, Naruto, a Pokemon trainer, and the reincarnation of Elvis Presley. He also likes chewing on his I.D. lanyard and his pencil.

Gallagher

quote:

This troper's family went out for breakfast after church on Father's Day. Her mother has a penchant for seeing people who resemble celebrities and saying that they actually are the person � for example, a woman with long curly black hair may earn a "Oh, look, it's Cher" sort of remark. So Troper didn't think much of it when her mother commented, "Hey, it's Gallagher." (You know, the guy who smashes watermelons with a sledgehammer.) Out of the corner of her eye, Troper saw someone approaching the table, and thought that this person had heard her mother and was offended. She looked up...and it really WAS Gallagher, who was so delighted at being recognized that he joined them at their table for the rest of the morning.
Here's where it gets crazy. Troper's stepfather has the exact same name as an extremely well-known musician from India. It's a standing joke in the family that the musician is her stepfather's grandfather, even though he's no relation. A friend who was along for the meal made the joke to Gallagher, who thought she was serious, and told Troper's stepfather, "I did a lot of acid to your grandfather's music back in the 60's!"

Dances

quote:

School dances. Full stop. This troper attends a conservative ecumenical Christian school (basically read this as where Catholics and Southern Baptists live and learn in perfect harmony) that is notoriously anti-dating among its students, because the administrators feel it propagates the wrong atmosphere for learning. (I'm pretty cool with that, but moving on.) School dances are usually pretty boring and mundane, not to mention absolutely G-rated. Somebody got them to play "Never Gonna Give You Up" and a Rick Astley impersonator appeared out of the crowd, parted the seas of people and was rickroll dancing in the middle of the room for almost ten minutes. There were two Rick Astley impersonators, and at one point they got into a fight. The DJ also got away with introducing a snowball dance� which resulted in more same sex displays of attraction than I have ever seen before. However, the high point of the night was when, after one of my friends at the beginning of the night requested they play the Time Warp for her, they made it their closing number. I wasn't expecting it, and I was dressed as Dorothy at the time, ruby slippers and all� but oh, did we dance. The rest of the school just cleared back in shock as something like ten girls, all in full prim appropriate school dance costume except for one in a corset and chained miniskirt, loudly and vocally did the Time Warp. With audience participation. To sum it up� Dorothy doing the Time Warp.

# ? Nov 2, 2016 08:58

gschmidl: Sep 3, 2011; watch with knife hands

Khazar-khum posted:

Pencil

This one should be called "other tropers" and probably happened.

# ? Nov 2, 2016 09:16

Fathis Munk: Feb 23, 2013; ??? ?

Khazar-khum posted:

Dances

Why is this the one that just hurt me the most.

Such a mix of blandness and impotent rebellion and implausibility.

# ? Nov 2, 2016 09:22

fish and chips and dip: Feb 17, 2010

Khazar-khum posted:

Bag

How can anything be so aggressively boring?

# ? Nov 2, 2016 10:18

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

I had a stupidly heavy bag in high school, but it sure as hell wasn't anything to brag about. That kind of thing just gives you back problems.

# ? Nov 2, 2016 13:29

life is killing me: Oct 28, 2007

Can someone explain what a troper is? These seem to have little or nothing to do with actual tropes as I think of them so maybe I'm missing something?

# ? Nov 2, 2016 15:12

Furia: Jul 26, 2015; Grimey Drawer

life is killing me posted:

Can someone explain what a troper is? These seem to have little or nothing to do with actual tropes as I think of them so maybe I'm missing something?

Tropers are people that comprise the community of tvtropes.com

They are the worst nerds known to man

# ? Nov 2, 2016 15:14

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

The distinguishing feature is that they attempt to apply tropes to real life. This is possible (as tropes are often based on reality, even if fiction starts making them unusually common), but they take it to extreme levels to the point where a person's personality may be described using nothing but a series of half a dozen tropes.

# ? Nov 2, 2016 15:19

Furia: Jul 26, 2015; Grimey Drawer

Also they may or may not be obsessed with a single piece of fiction, but are obsessed with metafiction that describes pieces of fiction, and obsessively catalogue examples of metafiction in fiction

# ? Nov 2, 2016 15:21

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

life is killing me posted:

Can someone explain what a troper is? These seem to have little or nothing to do with actual tropes as I think of them so maybe I'm missing something?

It's like a goon but on another website. Hope this helps!

# ? Nov 2, 2016 15:22

hogmartin: Mar 27, 2007

Didn't someone say that they spun off the discussion site somewhere else? So there's one place talk about how this movie has Hard-Assed Sergeant With a Heart of Gold or this one has Disrespected Girl Who Shows Everyone That She's a Beautiful Person In The End and another for people to talk about 'lol I stuck pencils in my nose in middle school I'm so ~random~'

# ? Nov 2, 2016 15:26

life is killing me: Oct 28, 2007

I find the existence of tropers, then, simultaneously disheartening and amusing, since I didn't think in a million years that someone would take television tropes to this goddamn level.

# ? Nov 2, 2016 15:36

kimbo305: Jun 9, 2007; actually, yeah, I am a little mad

Re backpacks -- I was really stupid and didn't realize until sophomore year of high school that you could shuffle between books in your locker over the course of the day.

# ? Nov 2, 2016 16:00

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

kimbo305 posted:

Re backpacks -- I was really stupid and didn't realize until sophomore year of high school that you could shuffle between books in your locker over the course of the day.

Depends on your locker placement. I rarely used my locker because it would sometimes be in a separate building from all of my classes and I'd need to run (which is against the rules) to get anywhere in time. I ended up just adding a shoulder bag to my load to carry everything.

I've also read about some schools that tried to implement one-way hallways in a misguided effort to reduce crowding, which could force people to make a full circle to go to their locker because it was the wrong way down from the door.

# ? Nov 2, 2016 16:34

GOTTA STAY FAI: Mar 24, 2005; ~no glitter in the gutter~
~no twilight galaxy~; College Slice

Khazar-khum posted:

Metal

This one was begging for it

# ? Nov 2, 2016 17:39

Ytlaya: Nov 13, 2005

That Gallagher one confuses me. This part in particular:

quote:

Here's where it gets crazy. Troper's stepfather has the exact same name as an extremely well-known musician from India. It's a standing joke in the family that the musician is her stepfather's grandfather, even though he's no relation. A friend who was along for the meal made the joke to Gallagher, who thought she was serious, and told Troper's stepfather, "I did a lot of acid to your grandfather's music back in the 60's!"

How is that where it gets crazy? Meeting Gallagher happened before this, so it's not referring to Gallagher being there. Is it that it's ~totally crazy~ for her stepfather to have the same name as the musician? Or that Gallagher believed it? (edit: Or maybe it's that Gallagher did acid? In which case, lol)

I was expected some sort of ridiculous extreme STDH after the "Here's what it gets crazy" part, but instead there's something isn't really crazy or strange at all?

# ? Nov 2, 2016 18:30

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

Ytlaya posted:

That Gallagher one confuses me. This part in particular:

How is that where it gets crazy? Meeting Gallagher happened before this, so it's not referring to Gallagher being there. Is it that it's ~totally crazy~ for her stepfather to have the same name as the musician? Or that Gallagher believed it? (edit: Or maybe it's that Gallagher did acid? In which case, lol)

I was expected some sort of ridiculous extreme STDH after the "Here's what it gets crazy" part, but instead there's something isn't really crazy or strange at all?

Here's where it get crazy - I met a C-list celebrity, and my dad has the same name as a famous person!

# ? Nov 2, 2016 18:31

Samizdata: May 14, 2007

kimbo305 posted:

Re backpacks -- I was really stupid and didn't realize until sophomore year of high school that you could shuffle between books in your locker over the course of the day.

chitoryu12 posted:

Depends on your locker placement. I rarely used my locker because it would sometimes be in a separate building from all of my classes and I'd need to run (which is against the rules) to get anywhere in time. I ended up just adding a shoulder bag to my load to carry everything.

I've also read about some schools that tried to implement one-way hallways in a misguided effort to reduce crowding, which could force people to make a full circle to go to their locker because it was the wrong way down from the door.

Through hook or crook, I ended up with several lockers at the biggest high school I attended which were all over the campus. So I would park stuff in various lockers to make the trip easier. Later I spun things into a timesharing arrangement with others, which funded my soda and snack habit whilst at school.

# ? Nov 2, 2016 19:37

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# ? May 13, 2024 23:27

Samizdata: May 14, 2007

Oh God, I just realized it.

It's me.

The troper that didn't happen.

It's me...

:sob:

# ? Nov 2, 2016 19:39

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > shit_that_didnt_happen.txt: I'm finding it very hard to immerse myself in the lie.

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