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		<title>I now fully embrace the use of the word &quot;they&quot; as a singular pronoun. &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2016/05-May/11.xhtml&gt;</title>
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			<h1>I now fully embrace the use of the word &quot;they&quot; as a singular pronoun.</h1>
			<p>Day 00431: Wednesday, 2016 May 11</p>
		</header>
<p>
	My transcripts from the high school came in the mail today.
	It seems that they didn&apos;t have a problem with the lack of a telephone number as I feared that they would.
	It&apos;s so hard to tell who is going to throw a tizzy over people&apos;s not having telephone numbers and who will just move on without a second thought.
	My grade point average on these transcripts isn&apos;t good.
	The problem was that I was depressed and didn&apos;t care about anything during that phase of my life.
	I barely even graduated.
	I later found out that my depression was caused by an unknown-to-me allergy to milk, so when I went vegan, that cleared up.
	It was too late to fix my grades though, I&apos;d been out of school for quite a while.
	If the university actually gives me a chance, I&apos;m certain that I can do better than back in high school, though they don&apos;t know that.
	I&apos;m really hoping that they don&apos;t dismiss my application.
	Along with the transcripts came the immunization records that I requested.
	That means that they did have that information on file.
	I had only requested that record to see if they even had it, as they said that they don&apos;t have immunization records for every past student.
	I&apos;ll probably mail one of the official transcript copies tomorrow.
</p>
<p>
	<code>&lt;table/&gt;</code>s are still being problematic, though I&apos;m now contemplating simply using &quot;[(nested table)[&quot; and &quot;]]&quot; to denote one table that is interrupting another from the inside.
	This would allow me to keep tables fairly readable while still dealing with elements in the order in which they appear.
	The idea still needs some work though.
	I decided to take a ride through the local forested park to clear my head a bit.
	My goal was to reach all of the numeric landmark posts, most if not all of which mark forks in the path.
	I was going to try to visit them in order so that it&apos;d be easy to know which ones I&apos;d visited and not, but due to their layout, that would&apos;ve required a lot of backtracking.
	Looking at their map, I found that all but one of the markers was on one of two main paths.
	Between the one marker that lies between the two paths and a downed bridge on one of the paths, some backtracking would still be required, but I could take a more efficient path by simply following the color-coded main paths.
	After a while, I passed a post that labeled the path that I was coming from as not being the one that I should have been on though.
	I wasn&apos;t sure if I&apos;d taken the wrong path accidentally, if the map was wrong, or if the path marker was mis-labeled, but it was clear that my current strategy wasn&apos;t as effective as I needed it to be.
	I left the park and will try again tomorrow.
	Next time, I&apos;ll make a list of each trail marker that&apos;s supposed to be on each path in the order that I&apos;m supposed to pass them.
	That way, I should know exactly if I make a mistake.
</p>
<p>
	Having left the park far ahead of schedule, I rode down to the discount store to get an over-sized envelope to enclose the regular-sized envelope containing one of the official transcript copies so that it&apos;s ready to be sent tomorrow.
	I&apos;m unsure of postage, but as usual, I&apos;d prefer to take it into the post office myself as opposed to stamping it and leaving it in my mail box.
</p>
<p>
	It bothered one of my friends that I used the word &quot;it&quot; to reference the cat that I interacted with yesterday while I was weeding the flowerbeds.
	They feel that use of the word &quot;it&quot; promotes the idea that cats are just object; cats deserve more respect than that.
	The fact is though, I&apos;ve used the word &quot;it&quot; to describe baby humans as well.
	I use that word as the de facto pronoun for anyone that isn&apos;t likely to get offended by it.
	Sex and gender have nothing to do with most conversations, so there&apos;s no reason why either should be brought in through the use of segregated pronouns.
	The gender-based pronoun system is moronic and should be dropped.
	I&apos;ve been using &quot;he&quot; and &quot;she&quot; when I think that I know the gender of someone that&apos;s likely to be offended by being called an &quot;it&quot; and &quot;he/she&quot; when I&apos;m unsure.
	Using &quot;he/she&quot; is too clunky when the gender is known, but using &quot;he&quot; and &quot;she&quot; promotes this bifurcated pronoun system and helps it continue.
	I&apos;ve avoided use of the singular &quot;they&quot; in any semi-formal context (such as my journal), as it&apos;s a plural word.
	Even in singular form, it takes plural verbs.
	You don&apos;t say &quot;they is&quot;, you say &quot;they are&quot;.
	To me, this meant that such singular use was invalid.
	I&apos;ve avoided esoteric pronouns invented to solve this problem because they&apos;re not understood by most people and because most of those that do understand would probably think such avoiding of the usual pronouns is foolish; after all, most people don&apos;t seem to see any problem with the gender-based pronoun system.
	Change begins with yourself though.
	I need to drop masculine and feminine pronouns from my vocabulary.
	I did a Web serach and found that the most usable set of pronouns seems to be the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/Spivak_pronoun#Elverson_1975_set_.28ey.2C_eir.2C_em.29">Elverson pronouns</a>, dating back as far as 1975.
	They are based on the word &quot;they&quot;, and as such, would probably be mistaken as the singular &quot;they&quot; by most people.
	They&apos;re perfect for avoiding being part of the problem while also not standing out like a sore thumb in public.
	A bit later though, it was pointed out to me that the singular word &quot;you&quot; also takes plural verbs.
	Grammatically, &quot;you&quot; is a plural word, but it&apos;s perfectly accepted for use in referring to a single entity (for some reason, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/Singular_they#Comparison_with_other_pronouns">the dedicated singular pronoun &quot;thou&quot; has been mostly dropped from English</a>).
	Singular &quot;they&quot; is no different, but is much more widely accepted than dedicated, singular, genderless pronouns.
	All that I really think that we need to do is de-gender singular pronouns, but if that requires removing the concept of singularity as well, it&apos;s worth the sacrifice.
	I now fully embrace the use of the word &quot;they&quot; as a singular pronoun.
</p>
<p>
	While I was thinning down my belongings, I came across the old scrap laptop that I bought <a href="https://authorednansyxlu.onion/en/weblog/2015/05-May/30.xhtml">a while back</a> for parts.
	Originally, the goal was to get my other laptop, <a href="/en/domains/thinkpad-x60s.local.xhtml"><code>thinkpad-x60s.local.</code></a>, to even boot.
	It turned out not to be needed though.
	Later, I did end up using the <a href="/en/weblog/2015/06-June/04.xhtml">keyboard</a> and one of the <a href="/en/weblog/2015/06-June/10.xhtml">Wi-Fi cards</a>, so the purchase wasn&apos;t a waste, but I still feel bad getting rid of the thing.
	Today, I took what will probably be the final part from it.
	I do need to thin down, and the off chance that maybe another part will be useful isn&apos;t enough to warrant keeping it around.
	<code>thinkpad-x60s.local.</code>, in addition to killing every battery that it&apos;s used, has an overheating problem.
	I suspect that the fan has become damaged.
	I&apos;ve removed the fan from the scrap laptop, and will likely attempt to swap the fans tomorrow.
	There are a few complications though.
	When I first tried to dismantle the laptop to look for bugs (as the <abbr title="National Security Agency">NSA</abbr> detained my laptop for a while during shipping), I couldn&apos;t get the thing apart.
	Some of the screws are stripped.
	Furthermore, removing the fan from the scrap laptop required ripping a strange, thin sponge that was glued across it.
	Hopefully that doesn&apos;t need to be intact, but I anticipate that removing the fan from <code>thinkpad-x60s.local.</code> will require similar damage.
	Lastly, the two laptops are slightly different models.
	I have no guarantee that the fan will even fit, and if it does fit, I&apos;m not entirely sure that a messed-up fan is responsible for the overheating problem.
	All that I can do is try and hope for the best.
</p>
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