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.

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.

“It’s not gay if there’s no penetration.” - Romans, probably
Well, I guess that makes everything other than lodging a Neutron into another Atom, as not-gay.
“Its not gay if you’re the top.” - The Egyptians 
Also the romans.
Pretty sure that’s the Romans, too. (And more accurate than what PugJesus said.)
Because you need to be able to read recruitment advertisement?
I mean, the army will take almost anyone now too lmao.

Was turned down, can not confirm.

Long list of automatic DQs anymore.

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]

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.

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!

“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.

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

Apparently not though, because apparently:

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

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.

If an old friend said to me “I do pilates anymore” I’d say “excuse me?” I’d assume I hadn’t heard them correctly.

It would be as if someone said “I get”. It’s an incomplete sentence. Or, if someone said “You should speed down here.” Do they mean increase or lower your speed? That combination isn’t used in normal English. With an emphasis on speed it would probably mean “you should go quickly down here”, like maybe down this street. But with the emphasis on down it’s confusing.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_anymore#Examples

“A servant being instructed how to act, will answer ‘I will do it any more’.” (Northern Ireland, c. 1898)

Positive anymore - Wikipedia

So you talk like your from the 19th century?
How do you feel about dumb old Gaul?
“It’s dumb”
(Happy approving scribbling of notes)
My rule of thumb is that anybody who talks about having a high IQ doesn’t.

[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.

But, 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”

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.
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.
Uh, you can get a job with the military pretty easily. Some won’t qualify, but most will be happily accepted.
Fuuuuuck that
You don’t want to be blown to pieces and then die in a foreign land? ARE YOU A COMMUNIST?