• PugJesus@piefed.socialOPM
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    14 days ago

    FUN FACT: There’s some limited evidence that literacy was higher in the Legions than in the general population. Not because it was a recruitment requirement, but probably due to a mixture of the low literacy of rural areas, that almost all promotion opportunities in the Legions required literacy, and the fact that bored soldiers pass skills around almost as often as STDs.

    • ulterno
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      14 days ago

      bored soldiers pass skills around almost as often as STDs

      You just gave me a mental picture of soldiers partially clad in armour, one teaching stuff to another while engaging in gay sex.

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            13 days ago

            Pretty sure that’s the Romans, too. (And more accurate than what PugJesus said.)

            • PugJesus@piefed.socialOPM
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              12 days ago

              Funny enough, I actually did a deep dive on Roman sexuality not too long ago. I put the “It’s not gay if there’s no penetration” bit because references to intercrural sex (favored amongst the Greeks) and frottage are nonexistent, while handjobs are considered ‘spicy’ but not really sex - and thus not really ‘gay,’ since the perception of Romans of ‘effeminate’ sexuality was centered around sex, not romance.

              For that reason, it seems intuitive to suspect that Romans probably didn’t regard these acts as sex - if they did, either condemnation (especially of political enemies) or depiction would seem likely, especially with their taste for pornographic artwork.

        • ulterno
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          14 days ago

          Well, I guess that makes everything other than lodging a Neutron into another Atom, as not-gay.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        13 days ago

        Long list of automatic DQs anymore.

        Using “anymore” with a positive statement is a weird regionalism. In most of the world, it only goes with a negative.

        • I don’t do pilates anymore [<- works because of the ‘not’ in don’t]

        • I do pilates anymore [<- doesn’t work, you want “still do pilates” or “still do pilates these days” or something]

        • It hardly snows in the winter anymore [<- works because it’s describing something rare]

        • It always rains in the winter anymore [<- doesn’t work because it’s describing something common]

        • PugJesus@piefed.socialOPM
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          13 days ago

          It’s long-established in its usage and while you can call it a ‘regionalism’, it’s accepted in numerous regions with significant geographic and cultural distance.

          If you aren’t the kind of person who kvetches about “ain’t”, or kvetch, for that matter, don’t kvetch about positive anymore.

          I do pilates anymore [<- doesn’t work, you want “still do pilates” or “still do pilates these days” or something]

          “I do pilates anymore” would be saying that I didn’t do pilates before, but I am now. So ‘still’ would make the sentence express the opposite of what it’s trying to.

          It always rains in the winter anymore [<- doesn’t work because it’s describing something common]

          It works because it didn’t used to rain in the winter all the goddamn time. Climate change has caused weather patterns to change, so if someone says “It always rains in the winter anymore”, that is saying that it used to snow in the winter (implicitly when what they remember they were young rather than speaking from a statistical analysis), but now it always rains instead.

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
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            13 days ago

            “I do pilates anymore” would be saying that I didn’t do pilates before, but I am now

            If you say so. To me that sentence makes no sense.

            • TheTetrapod@lemmy.world
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              13 days ago

              It’s not a construction that I would use often, but it definitely makes sense to me. Kind of a synonym for “these days.”

              • merc@sh.itjust.works
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                13 days ago

                Apparently not though, because apparently:

                “I do pilates anymore” would be saying that I didn’t do pilates before, but I am [sic] now

                • TheTetrapod@lemmy.world
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                  13 days ago

                  Yeah, that’s how I would interpret the phrase “I do pilates these days.” It’s like you’re catching up with an old friend and telling them a new piece of information since you were last in touch.

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            13 days ago

            If you aren’t the kind of person who kvetches about “ain’t”, or kvetch, for that matter, don’t kvetch about positive anymore.

            Excuse me, but my region uses ain’t but not “positive anymore” (which I’d literally never heard of as being anything but a straight-up mistake until your comment), so I’m gonna kvetch all I want!

            • PugJesus@piefed.socialOPM
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              13 days ago

              so I’m gonna kvetch all I want!

              Grue rings for his nurse while in the hospital. “Mr. Grue, what’s the problem?”

              “I can’t kvetch.” Grue says.

              A little confused, she asks, with more precision, “Does something hurt? Do you need pain relievers?”

              “I can’t kvetch about pain.” Grue says again.

              “Are you comfortable? Do you need any pillows or blankets?”

              “I can’t kvetch about how comfortable I am.”

              “Oh, is the food not to your liking? We can change your menu if you like.”

              “I can’t kvetch about the food.”

              Fed up with this one answer, the nurse asks with frustration in her voice, “… Mr. Grue, what exactly IS the problem?”

              And Grue says, “I CAN’T KVETCH!”

          • Tja
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            13 days ago

            First time in my life that I’ve seen it, and I’ve been online since times of analog modems. I’ve seen literally used to mean not-literally. I’ve seen “could care less” to mean “couldn’t care less”. But I have never seen this usage of anymore. Long established might be a stretch.

              • Tja
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                13 days ago

                I might have meant “widely used”, after all, English is not my native language…

                • PugJesus@piefed.socialOPM
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                  11 days ago

                  “Any more, the difference between a white collar worker and a blue collar worker is simply a matter of shirt preference.” (Madison, Wisconsin, 1973)[1]

                  “Everything we do anymore seems to have been done in a big hurry.” (Kingston, Ontario, 1979)[1]

                  “I’ll be getting six or seven days’ holiday anymore.” (Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1981)[4]

                  “Anymore we watch videos rather than go to the movies.” (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, c. 1991)[12]

                  I was trying to emphasize that it was long-established, but here’s the examples in the literal article I linked if you couldn’t be arsed to click on it.

    • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      [H]owever much all this soothes my vanity, and however much I appreciate being vice-president of Mensa, an organization which bases admission to its membership on IQ, I must, in all honesty, maintain that it means nothing.

      What, after all, does such an intelligence test measure but those skills that are associated with intelligence by the individuals designing the test? And those individuals are subject to the cultural pressures and prejudices that force a subjective definition of intelligence.

      […]

      The whole thing is a self-perpetuating device. Men in intellectual control of a dominating section of society define themselves as intelligent, then design tests that are a series of clever little doors that can let through only minds like their own, thus giving them more evidence of “intelligence” and more examples of “intelligent people” and therefore more reason to devise additional tests of the same kind. More circular reasoning!

      –Isaac Asimov, “Thinking About Thinking”

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        13 days ago

        I think I might enjoy hanging out with the kinds of people who could get admitted to Mensa. But, I don’t think I’d ever want to spend any time with anybody who actually wanted to be in Mensa.

    • PugJesus@piefed.socialOPM
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      13 days ago

      Imagine joining the Legions to get away from farmwork and then you end up on a foraging detachment literally cutting wheat with a hand sickle to keep the army fed in enemy territory.

      A day in the Legions is like a day on the farm…

  • AlexLost@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    Uh, you can get a job with the military pretty easily. Some won’t qualify, but most will be happily accepted.

  • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    It’s dumb but it makes sense on the business side. The reason they don’t hire over qualified people is because training costs money and they don’t want to hire someone that will quit at the drop of a hat as soon as someone offers them anything higher.

    • PugJesus@piefed.socialOPM
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      13 days ago

      I think it’s meant more as an exaggeration of a different phenomenon in modern job hunting, as the guy says that he’s not qualified ENOUGH for the pizza delivery job