Jojo

Then you have already lost, and are without honor.

Latin Perfida vermis or “treacherous worms”. Seems the Halo authors also think wormy thoughts.

…and then it exploded.

TOS style

As if it wasn’t a recurring theme in most Trek.

Most women start getting those when they’re around 12.

Yeah, we’re supposed to be getting some civil rights/workers rights riots riots right about now. Wanna help?

To say nothing of have, an, or, and a.

Sounds like an interesting article, especially if her most distinguished majesty liked it.

I mean I get that this is satire, but was there actually a Pokemon thing?

Tried to make a sex joke about tasting people but I guess I just literally don’t know what about that is sexy, so someone else do it

The categories that encompass “man” or “woman” or whatever are socially constructed. The outlines of those categories especially are so far from being absolutes of nature or physical constants.

But people still have an innate sense of themselves and their own identity. So even though the rules are made up and the points don’t matter, people can still know which box they go in based on that sense.

For some people, they’re just comfortable in the box everyone right they’d go in and never think about it. Stone people don’t care which box they’re in and so never bother to think about it. There’s all our cis folks. Stone people don’t really care which box they’re in, but they do still think about it and decide they go outside any of them. Some people think they go in one box sometimes and either box at other times. There’s the nonbinary folks. And then there’s people who can tell they fit in a box, but everyone seemed to think they’re actually in the other one until they mistake was pointed out.

The boxes themselves are totally made up, but they still exist. And since they exist, people can still tell which ones they go to. The fact that the boxes are fake doesn’t make them not “real”, it just makes enforcing them and telling people you know what big they should be on better than they do stupid.

Sorry, but… “scientific”?

“I see,” said the blind man to his deaf dog who was sitting on the corner of the round table on the third floor of their two-story building.

But were they born, though, or forged in the stellar furnace of Nidavellir?

Ooh, an interrobang.

English can do lots, like antidisestablishmentarianism.

I mean can’t, or won’t?

propaganda (usually uncountable, plural propagandas)

1. (as a neutral word, dated) Agitation, publicity, public communication aimed at influencing an audience and furthering an agenda.
2. (derogatory) Such communication specifically when it is biased, misinformative, and/or provoking mainly emotional responses.

I’m using sense 1, here, and yes, Picasso’s Guernica is propaganda. It was commissioned explicitly to raise awareness and funds for a war. It is also, and separately, art.

I don’t think all communication is propaganda, but I also don’t think all communication is art. If you’re choosing to create something and call it “art” while also trying to push a particular message, it is (at least almost) certain that you are also intending to convey an emotional and influential message. Perhaps there need not be an agenda, except your own desire to send the message you hope to.

Edit: formatting

The interpretation is valid. But that doesn’t mean communication hasn’t broken down. In the case of a text message, the “true purpose” isn’t to entertain or to elucidate deep truths about the world (usually), it’s to convey a message.

Art with the goal of covering a single message is, in a word, propaganda. Propaganda that succeeds at being art may or may not succeed at being propaganda, but as art, the message intended by the author is not as important as the interpretation of the audience. Tolkien said he hated allegory, but it doesn’t make Lord of the rings not allegorical, it only makes it not deliberately allegorical.

The fact that you used the word misunderstood means you understand that an interpretation can be wrong.

If you are attempting to use art to communicate, then that can be understood as you intended or understood differently, i.e. misunderstood.

If you send me a text that says “Take the frogs over to the bank” and I take some amphibians to the river, that isn’t a wrong reading of that sentence even if you wanted me to take some roads over to the money storage location (a valid, if unusual, way to parse that sentence). I misunderstood you, but my reading is not any less valid than yours.