I had to do this...I'm so sorry...

[PCIntern]

(Not really)

I finished my morning shift of listening to people, whine and complain about everything in the world and took myself out to the supermarket to buy some lunch. So I’m at the counter, deciding what to purchase, and a lady picks up a package and says to me, “They put a $.50 service charge on this (pre sliced cold cuts).” I looked at what she was holding, and it was a plastic bag which said $3.99 a pound and there was .755 pounds for a total price of $3.01.

I said to her, “There’s no service charge on this.“ She looked at it and said, “Well, my friend who works at ShopRite said they do that.“ My response was, “Well, not on this one so I guess you’re lucky.”

She then said, out of seemingly nowhere, “They say everything is fine when everything costs a fortune. She says everything is fine and it isn’t.” My response, knowing full well who “She” is: “Well, I know what you mean, but I don’t vote for rapists because my mother was raped when she was young.“

Her jaw just went slack and I said, “Have a nice day, now..” And walked away.

[live love laugh]

1. I think you woke her up.

[yonder]

2. I admire your quick feet ... feat works too!

[maxsolomon]

3. Half of the US population is below the median in intelligence.

Last edited Thu Sep 26, 2024, 12:10 PM - Edit history (1)

LOOK AT THE FREAKING LABEL FOR THE SERVICE CHARGE, IDIOT.

[Maru Kitteh]

5. Or yahno, do the math? In all fairness though, it must be TERRIFYING

to go through life that stupid. Never knowing how to figure out if you're being treated fairly. Having no resources to determine truth from what the lady who works at RiteAid told you. No wonder they're all so motivated by fear.

[Biophilic]

14. Hadn't thought about it like that. No wonder they're scared and angry.

Of course it doesn’t help having a national party and it’s so called leaders echoing Fox News and vice versa.

[lastlib]

18. "Life is hard. It's harder if you're stupid."--

--Lt. Col. Benjamin Vandervoort, The Longest Day

[Blue_Roses]

49. Writing this one down

too good to pass up!

[llmart]

43. Most of them don't even care that they're stupid.

They are also intellectually lazy. If you point something out to them and show them the correct way to look at it they don't even bother to learn something new. They go through their entire lives day by day without ever getting any smarter because they don't want to. Also, their favorite line about college is, "I have street smarts and not book smarts." They're actually proud of their ignorance.

[3catwoman3]

47. Ignorance and arrogance make a very bad combination.

Have you seen the neologism ignoranus? Someone who is both stupid and an asshole.

[ShazzieB]

48. Most of them don't even KNOW that they're stupid.

Not on a conscious level, anyway.

[lastlib]

51. Many of them REVEL in it.

They take being stupid as a badge of honor. Being smart makes you an "elitist," which they think is one of their worst insults.

It staggers my mind.

[jfz9580m]

50. Well

Fear of being or rather looking stupid is probably one of the greatest fears people have.

But our very polarised and stressed world doesn’t offer many opportunities for correcting past stupidity.

Your post connecting fear and stupidity reminded me of a rather interesting piece I saw a few days ago on an article from a couple of years back on fear:

https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/the-fear-frequency-researchers-identify-brain-waves-linked-to-fear-response-352183

It is interesting. Fearfulness probably acts as a powerful disrupter re real learning of all kinds. Which then makes the world more not less scary. The less you know the more fearful you are and the more fearful you are the less you learn and so on. A vicious cycle...

But it is not as if stupidity is a static thing or as if you or I or anyone else is just irredeemably stupid. Anyone can fix a lot of it with learning and then it wouldn’t really matter that much how stupid you once were…

Okay one still may not understand, for instance, whether this is a real paper title or not: The Predicted Fluctuations in the Hamiltonians of Synchronized Quantum Systems (I am just making stuff up…that is gibberish not a real paper and I have no idea how idiotic a title that is). But one would understand enough of the world to navigate it better.

[Trueblue Texan]

23. Right?

I swear to God they are EVERYWHERE! If I were going to be buried I'd want it written on my gravestone, "So many stupid f***ing people here! Good riddance!"

[erronis]

25. It's actually the "median", not the "mean".

The median is the number where half is above and half below.

The mean may be skewed up by some really bright people but is probably skewed down due to the magats.

[maxsolomon]

32. Ugh, I second guessed myself on that one.

First thought: median. Second thought: no, that can't be right. It's a term you wouldn't think of immediately. mean?

I must be below the median...

[soldierant]

38. If you are aware of the term "median," you are almost certainly not below it.

Even just being aware that there is more than one kind of "average most likely puts you above the median. And, if you also know the term "mode," I'd bet money on it.

[lastlib]

52. Elitist.

.


.




(I might've pointed it out if you hadn't...)

[muriel_volestrangler]

53. Ah, but, the IQ "scale" was designed to be symmetrical, so the mean and median are the same

There isn't a true numerical measure of intelligence (unlike, say, salary). There is just the "scale" of results from tests. The tests put everyone in order, and then the scale is set so that the mean, and median, are "100", with a normal distribution with standard deviation of 15.

IQ scales are ordinally scaled.[77][78][79][80][81] The raw score of the norming sample is usually (rank order) transformed to a normal distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15.[4] While one standard deviation is 15 points, and two SDs are 30 points, and so on, this does not imply that mental ability is linearly related to IQ, such that IQ 50 would mean half the cognitive ability of IQ 100. In particular, IQ points are not percentage points.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Current_tests

[erronis]

57. You, and and maxsolomon are absolutely correct!

I was thinking that it involved a subset of the population which wouldn't necessarily hue to the median == mean.

Thank you.

[Elessar Zappa]

29. Well, that's probably true in every country.

But you don’t see Sweden electing a Trump-like figure. (Sweden is just a randomly chosen country to make a point).

[AloeVera]

30. You get what you pay for.

Sweden invests heavily in public education. It shows.

I always thought the amount of stupidity in the U.S. was directly related to its reluctance to properly fund a good education system.

A smart populace would not fall to the fake charms of Fox and Trump so easily.

[GiqueCee]

39. That shit-brained skid mark, Senator Dick Armey...

... once said, with his bare face hanging out, that Bill Clinton "never met an education program he didn't like," and in his diseased Republican mind, that was a pejorative.
Republicans know that intelligence and empathy skew heavily to the left, and they don't want an educated and caring society, because they won't vote Republican. That goes double for the malicious shitgibbons that have hijacked the GQP.

[AloeVera]

44. The discrediting especially of higher education is the worst.

The push for devolution and dumbing-down would make Darwin turn in his grave.

Of course dumbing down is necessary for establishing authoritarian, oligarchic rule. Can't have an educated electorate seeing behind the curtain.

[Seinan Sensei]

45. I took the IQ test and scored a "90"

That's still an "A" isn't it?

(Duhhh)
....

[magicarpet]

4. Electro-shock therapy,......

.... might be quicker. A huge lithium battery on a handcart. Wheel it with you wherever you go..

[niyad]

34. Hey, I could probably carry one in my purse, with the leads handy,

and a remote switch. Now THAT would make my little excursions fun! Although. . . living in a slightly bluer area of fundieville, I do not encounter too many of them.

What I REALLY need is something small and easily disguised to drain the batteries of cars with the orange creature crap all over them. Something like a reverse universal remote.

[onecaliberal]

6. I love this.

This is where I am too. I will
Flat out ask them how they support a rapist?

[mitch96]

7. "I don't vote for rapists because" I was just in Michigan and most of the people I was with were MAGA Ford

Last edited Wed Sep 25, 2024, 06:41 PM - Edit history (1)

retirees. We were at the Henry Ford Museum and I was raving about the place. It was quite the display.
I mentioned to one of the retirees
Ol Henry was a Nazi loving ANTI-SEMITE but knew how to hire engineers and make stuff work..
LIke you...... a jaw drop and no comment..
n

[John1956PA]

8. That woman lives in an information bubble sealed as tightly as that package. n/t

[erronis]

26. And about as smart as a bunch of variety meats.

That's what cold cuts used to be called. The scapings from the slaughterhouse floor packaged as bologna, salami, liverwurst, etc. The good cuts were sent to our soldiers (and the fat cats.)

[John1956PA]

42. Thank you. I did not know that term.

I have heard that during WWII there was a choice-cuts underground market here in this country.

[gristy]

9. I wonder what she might have done next if rather

than walking away, you had just stood there, looking at her, not moving, not speaking. Now that would have been interesting.

[onethatcares]

10. I usually just say

"The government doesn't set prices" I really can't argue with the dumbness of Americans anymore and I find it easier on my BP to let it go at that.

[Mblaze]

11. You would think that they have

Given up their confidence in the "wisdom of the free market". They seem to want government interference in product pricing and yet they work against the party that has actually worked to cap drug prices. They are a very confused lot.

[BattleRow]

24. Just wait till Project 2025

removes the social from their security.

[erronis]

27. Oh, they will remove the security too. Off to the poor-house.

[jaxexpat]

12. Though every cell phone has a calculator function, stupid/lazy people defend fools' gossip over mathematics.

It was oil change day. Wife and I were talking in the auto service lounge about how something remined her of something we saw in New Mexico the previous spring. A woman there interrupted our conversation to tell us we should have spent our travel dollars in the US. I started to explain that we were in NEW Mexico and either her geographic comprehension was very shaky or sh'd mis-.....wife places her hand on my shoulder, gets my attention, shakes her head and we smile together. After 35 years of marriage the connection is instantaneous. We both understood this (75 +/- yo) woman was the product of a social system where all she had to learn was how, since she was white, polite folk never disagree with gentility. *

* That's "Southern" for, "either you're with me or you're a goddamned Yankee "agitator".

[sheshe2]

13. Boom!💥

…..So sorry that happened to your mom, PC.

[Brainfodder]

15. Why bring mom into it, I don't vote for rapists END OF SENTENCE!

[PCIntern]

16. No.

Because it has more impact. And she was.

[Blue Dawn]

20. I am so very sorry about your mother's experience.

I am a victim of rape myself, and I was trying to think of a way to respond to a relative who voted for Trump and plans to vote for Trump in November. What you said to that woman was a powerful statement; I think I will use you as my example when speaking to my sister.

I appreciate your sharing this, PCIntern. Thank you.

[ecstatic]

55. Republicans tend to lack empathy.

If it had been left open-ended, it probably would not have made much of an impact. The comment, as delivered, might make her imagine her own mom or family member being attacked by trump.

So now she's probably going to go home, Google "tRump rape," and hopefully end up on an entirely new algorithm and trajectory.

[Marthe48]

17. She will not fear zombies

or, maybe she will

[Figarosmom]

19. Ha. . Nt

[1WorldHope]

21. Good for you!

[Warpy]

22. Oh, I'm hoping you really said that and said it loudly enough for everybody to hear it

Deflating a moronic blowhard is always fun, but it's a lot more fun when there is an audience.

[Clouds Passing]

28. Quick wit

[sellitman]

31. Bravo!

Shutting them up is quite a feat these days.

[J_William_Ryan]

33. "I will flat out ask them how they support a rapist."

They don’t believe he’s a rapist – that’s the problem.

Such is the willfully ignorant blind partisan right.

[niyad]

35. No, you ignorant little twit, they just price per pound accordingly.

[PCIntern]

36. Yeah but but but...

Someone she KNOWS who WORKS AT A STORE told her this. Typical RW liar. Someone on tv told Trump that they’re eating the dogs and the cats so…

It’s so easy.

[niyad]

37. I applaud your self restraint, even after hours of listening to idiots whining.

You were far kinder and more patient than I would have been. But then, my claws need frequent sharpening, and I have NO patience.

[AllaN01Bear]

40. holds head and does loooooong lurch groan.

:

[Joinfortmill]

41. Wow!

[calimary]

46. No apology necessary, PCIntern!

Most of these wannabe saboteurs aren’t expecting to be challenged. So when you do, because you know better, and you’ve been paying attention, that can often embarrass them into silence. That’s what you might call The Civilian’s “Shock ‘n’ Awe”!

[ecstatic]

54. She'll probably stay home now.

Which is probably for the best. Good job!

[reACTIONary]

56. In my "debates" with online "friends" I cut to the chase...

.... and just point out that TSF is a convicted felon and a rapist. Saves a lot of time and trouble.

[Emile]

58. Awesome reply.