So today’s object lesson in obliviousness comes, as it so often does, from the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit.
The regulars there are discussing the important topic “Women are worse than a backyard full of cackling hens,” and one of the fellas pipes up with this, er, observation.
MGTOW dudes, I don’t know if you know this, but men do sex work too. I recommend you take it up for a week and see how “easy” it is.
@kupo
I probably miswrote. My apologies.
What if there’s an invisible polar bear sitting next to me in the break room right now? If you don’t hear from me again, I’ve probably been mauled.
@Alan:
Yes, they look white basically for the same reason frosted glass looks white: light gets bounced around and you see sort of an averaged-out version of all the light hitting them.
Anybody remember those fibre optic ‘trees’ that were all the rage for a while, with a light in the base so the light came out the ends of the branches? Polar bear fur is a lot like fibre optic cable: it’s pretty much transparent end to end, look at it from the side and it takes on the colours of the surrounding light because of the scattering, and the transparency varies by how much you bend it. Makes it great for temperature control.
I want a fiber optic polar bear plushie now.
I think Viscaria just solved one of the big questions in cosmology: Dark matter is polar bears.
I’ll put it up on ArXiv. We need to get the word out.
One of my favourite jokes of all time is about a baby polar bear. It begins:
“Mum, am I a real polar bear?”
and ends:
“Because I’m f*cking freezing!”
I’m sure you can fill in the rest yourselves.
Nobel Prize for Viscaria.
@ EJ
Have you seen the Horizon episode on Anti Matter? There’s a great interview with an astronomer. He’s just explaining why he doesn’t believe there are large amounts still left in the universe:
“Because if there was we’d see evidence of some force pushing everything away from each other…Oh”
Again, I’ve learned a lot, this time about polar bears.
But I am left with a disturbing urge to double-lock the front door to stop the bears getting in. Which is silly, because I have no way of knowing whether or not they’re already inside. What if I lock them in?!
Luckily I have a patented polar bear repellent bracelet. Special discount for Mammotheers, only €19.99.
I’m so confident in its effectiveness that I’ll offer a special money back guarantee* if you ever are attacked by a polar bear.
(*Offer not available north of Arctic Circle)
@Weatherwax:
If they’ve been inside all this time, they might not be hostile. In fact, they might be friendly. Have you suffered from infestations of seals recently? If not, the polar bears might be helping to keep them in check.
@Alan:
I’ll track down the episode. What you’ve said doesn’t sound like it’s in line with orthodoxy, but I’ll have to see it in context.
EJ:
Mood swings? Are you thinking of bipolar bears?
I’m pretty sure it’s the polar bears keeping the penguins away. Everyone knows they are mortal enemies, and the great Polar Bear/Penguin wars of the past were only settled by them moving to opposite ends of the earth!
Never trust a penguin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU2jSvrLDdw
NEVER.
I have been saying as much for years. I don’t care which one, but I’m sure I deserve one of them.
Alan:
I see you’re following the precedent set by Sharkbanz:
http://cbs12.com/news/local/wearing-shark-repelling-band-teen-gets-attacked-by-shark
1. Offer a deep but conditional apology in the possible case that the bracelet in question was possibly malfunctioning. Promise to investigate.
2. Remind that the product was explicitly not meant to be 100% effective.
3. Charitably assuming a malfunction in product, offer the customer a new bracelet instead of refund.
Rhuu,
According to MRA lore, penguins are whores. Perhaps polar bears are the bitter MGTOW of the animal kingdom, angry that third world penguins are while superior to western penguins, still living the easy life.
Nah. Polar bears don’t deserve that comparison.
As another autistic person, I’ll weigh in. The problem isn’t that autistic men are more likely to be misogynistic, it’s that the majority of those officially diagnosed with autism, due to bias from physicians, are male.
Autism is perceived as a male disorder and thus a lot of physicians diagnose it in boys but ignore the signs in girls (or misdiagnosed them with BPD). shitty organizations like autism speaks try to reinforce this by making “light up blue” marches and days.
so a lot of autism spaces are dominated by white men. it’s not autism that makes them like that, it’s the fact that they’re white cis men in a space with a lot of other white cis men.
As a female/afab (??) autistic person, I’ve sometimes felt excluded by the male autistics. but it’s not autism that causes misogyny, male entitlement along with the perception of there being no women in the room does.
@Jenora Feuer
So if you put some colored lights inside the polar bear…
Maybe we can make them swallow lightbulbs or cellphones or something, we can detect them. I picture something like a huge mousetrap to catch your invisible housemate bear.
Arctic Ape: holy shit, and CBS just laps up that bullshit?
Alan: I’ll take two! Iqaluit is below the arctic circle, but there’s the occasional bear (there were reports of one in the general area, last time I went skiing on the bay).
@Victoria
Hmm… Interesting. I buy it!
@numerobis:
Heck, Churchill, Manitoba isn’t even 59° N, and they run armoured tour busses for people to see the polar bears.
@ viscaria
I hear they all pretty much pay the same; so any would do.
@ sseba
I suspect the easiest way to achieve that is just walk past one with a lightbulb in your pocket.
@ numberobis & jenora
A friend emigrated to Canada. A few nights later I received a phone call (at ungodly o’clock). She was all excited cos there was a bear rooting round in her bin. Feeling privileged to witness this rare display of nature up close she felt she had to share with her new neighbours. Who just said:
“Bloody bears. Here’s the number for the bear removal bloke.”
@ Arctic Ape
I probably shouldn’t laugh at that story; but I can’t help it. You have to admire their chutzpah. “Here’s a free replacement. Let’s just stick it on your wrist. Oh, right. Well your other wrist then.”
I’d probably just have gone with “Oh you wanted the shark repellent one. So, not the shark attractor?”
@Alan:
Heh. Yeah, in some parts of the country, bears are pretty common. I grew up in British Columbia, and my grandparents lived down in the Kootenay Boundary, and I remember being in the car when my grandfather came to a rather abrupt stop driving along a two-lane ‘highway’ as a bear cub ran across the road. He waited a few seconds for mama bear chasing the cub to run across as well, and THEN started driving again.
Granted, there it’s mostly black bears, and the occasional grizzly, rather than polar bears obviously. Though once you’re closer to the coast there’s a significant sub-population of blonde and even white-furred ‘black’ bears.
Though the most famous Canadian black bear was born in Ontario, named after the city of Winnipeg in Manitoba, and spent most of her life in the London Zoo in England. Where ‘Winnie’ would often be visited by a young Christopher Robin Milne…
@ jenora
I love finding out stuff like that! Thank you.
Didn’t they find out recently that, rather than being separate species as was previously thought, grizzlies and black bears were in fact just the same bear with different fur colours?
ETA: same *species* of bear, not just the one bear who keeps changing his look.
This guy has NO idea what he’s talking about lol. I was actually just learning in one of my university courses how the main driving force behind the Phillipines’ economy is women. The Phillipines’ largest export is nannies. Men have unfortunately lost their jobs en masse and women are working their butts off as nannies to provide for their families back home. They are making good wages compared to what they would get at home and they are gaining new freedoms because of it, although they have to leave their families for long periods of time.