...other advanced civilizations with nearby locations looked at our planet, said "well, there goes the neighborhood" and right quickly buggered off before their property values took a nosedive?
Eh, most people have a hard time coming up with something sincere at a time when people need sincerity the most. People in front of you could choose to give you a hug or pat on the back, but people who aren't kind of need a substitute and articulation is not an option.
I don't hate the "like" button, and I admit that and anything like it often fails to capture the complexity of human feeling, but I don't disregard it as "lazy", either.
Now, I grant that this country's a little bit trigger happy on issues of safety and security, and at times, it's kind of understandable.
But to call the police on a kid without probable cause is to teach kids that, hey, you might get the police called on you just for following your interests. And maybe, maybe you'll get an apology if someone in the whole chain of FUBAR actually sees that the kid isn't a threat.
No, the correct answer is to ask the kid to explain what it is. Tell him you're interested. Ask him to open it because you want to see the inside, and tell him how cool it is that he was able to construct that.
But to call the police on a kid, when it's hardly likely the kid really did have a bomb? No. You can't do that.
Most people that learn math. It doesn't mean that everyone who takes math thinks of him or herself as a mathematician.
Not that I think everyone should learn to code, but if everyone was taught to code, I'm pretty sure most of the people who learned wouldn't think of themselves as people who think they can code.
There's a reason why "sex toys" are sometimes referred to as "marital aids".
Some people use sex toys as a substitute for a partner, sure. But plenty of people use them as a supplement to a healthy sexual relationship.
So, I'm going to apply the same argument here as one would apply to the concept of "potential weapons": inasmuch as anything you can find can be used as a weapon, so, too, can anything be used as a sex toy.
Ergo: Ban everything.
Christ, what a limited perspective this woman must have about sex.
Well, I suppose the big problem is that, though you may have D&D fans like crazy (husband is one, I never had the patience for it), you never really had a canon story that people can get into: no inside jokes to cheer at, no story beats to hold your breath in anticipation of, no great epics that you could introduce anyone to as "great storytelling".
Great if you WANT to be creative and make your own adventure. Bad if you're an executive that wants the comfort of having a property that is popular enough to sell tickets, but otherwise has to create a story from whole-cloth.
Sounds to me like that's probably the attitude in a high-performance, high-pressure environment ("policies get in the way of getting work done"), and if the culture hasn't changed since your time there, then the attitude has only scaled up with the complexity of the system.
Not a knock on you, of course, and I hope you don't take it that way. You still have to rely on the user base to be the last lines of security within a system.
This is going to be an anecdote, so feel free to disregard as you will.
I'm a huge introvert, and have a pretty badly stunted ability to form relationships with people. Like, literally, "years of therapy, will never be the thing that most people call 'normal'" stunted.
Last year, I went to a church camp, where everyone was friendly and nice, and I knew absolutely no one. But if you were identified as "new", you got all the hugs you could have possibly wanted (no one did this without your permission). I left with a sense of well-being that I rarely feel simply because of the amount of human contact I received in that one week.
I can't say that I talk to anyone I met there now (see above). But it seems to me, if you get a little more human interaction than you normally might, you might start to feel a little more pep in your step. That's not "commodifying", that's just addressing the human need for companionship. And sometimes for people who are downright awful at soft skills, it may actually be helpful.
Because you're basically saying that in order for the environment to be pleasurable and fun (who knows, maybe the environment as described isn't even working), everyone needs to be doing the same thing. And if they're not doing the same thing...whoa, inequality!
Now, I don't know if this is a social experiment, but it's interesting. It may go so far as intended to be removing work-based relationship taboos: it's socially acceptable to get your jollies from women who are there precisely to be the ones with which men can comfortably express sexuality, while the women who aren't there to develop romantic relationships need to worry less about it, because the men have let off steam elsewhere.
And no one has said that female workers are uninteresting and unattractive, but even in the West, it's largely taboo to have office relationships, mostly from the "don't shit where you eat" principle.
Still this idea that women can be viewed sexually as a function of their jobs reduces all women may be sexist in and of itself. It assumes that men, once exposed to women as sexual beings, will reduce ALL women to functions of sex and nothing else. It also seems to assume that if one woman, anywhere, is a pornographic actress, that once a man comes in contact with said porn actress, every woman he knows ever will be reduced to being a porn actress in his mind, because how the hell else could he ever feel that women might be different?
So, Mr. Western Man, shall we dress women from head to toe in formless, opaque garb so that no man ever thinks about a woman sexually ever?
In fairness to gyms, it isn't like there are no maintenance costs.
Even if there isn't towel service, someone still needs to mop up all the sweat and dirty floors. And machines go down and need repair. And some of the smaller freeweights tend to wander off. And resistance bands get damaged and broken.
Am I saying that there are no maintenance costs with other services? Of course not. But to say a gym has no need for a consistent inflow of revenue is to tell me you've never actually been to one.
Additionally, there's a social aspect that's associated with going to a gym.
I find I put more effort into it when I'm around other people. Not because I'm particularly competitive, but because I'm there and I'm capable.
Also, classes help me put a structure to my workout routine. I admit I have a problem with severe lack of discipline if left to my own devices, but if someone has a workout ready for me, boom, I'll do it.
And, frankly, I need to leave the house and talk to other people, because even though I'm a grown adult, I have socialization problems. You can go to a bar to be with other people, sure, but if you have problems breaking the ice in random situations, you can always make a comment about the class you just did.
I can't imagine why this has suddenly become a thing. Outside of Netflix, which I understand, since movies are a way different beast than software and music.
If there's one damn thing right my parents taught me, it's about owning my own shit. Get things paid off as quickly as possible so that it's yours, and you don't end up dependent on anyone or anything for the thing you've paid for, especially if it's something you need on a moment's notice.
I've had to explain to more than one person that "the cloud" is a cute as hell idea, until "the cloud" is down for a few hours, or gets hacked.
Could there BE a bigger conspiracy theory than "who profits from good health?"
If you can find someone who is fanatic about a thing, then profit is not far behind.
For instance, in the circles I inhabit these days, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn't run several kind of obstacle course races. And what are those people doing to support that habit? Crossfit. P90X. Insanity.
And have you SEEN the cost of those things? Or the add-on supplements? Or, for that matter, the cost of obstacle course races?
Are those people in terrible health? Well, they're wearing themselves out fast, but they could be worse.
Like every group that people care to demonize, most people take the piss out of vegans, but once again, you're taking the shit you have to hear from the loudest of us. The rest of us aren't really interested in converting you. In fact, most of us wish you would just leave us alone.
So last week, probably due to a software update on my phone, my smartwatch (suck it, haters!) didn't automatically reconnect with my phone after coming back into range. I had to manually re-connect every time.
Note that I've had the damn thing for close to a year and this has not been a problem at all.
I looked all over the internet to see if this was a common problem, nada. I'm experienced enough to think that this is the sort of thing that can be fixed with a reboot or an update that I didn't quite get yet. So I write the manufacturer to ask for advice.
They tell me to send it in for service.
I'll repeat myself.
They were telling me so send my gadgets in for service for a bad Bluetooth connection.
I basically wrote them back telling them that the could go fuck themselves. I didn't use those words, I was polite, though not nearly as Tolkien was when he told the Nazis to fuck off.
And what do you know? One update later and boom, fixed.
So, fuck you, tech companies. I'm making it my life's mission to make sure everyone I know doesn't get fucked over the way you tried to do me. Point being: companies are out to make things harder to repair, or obfuscating the need for repair to make you dependent on them to make your stuff work right.
And by the way, you take away my right to replacing parts of my own gear of my own volition, and you'll see me gritting my teeth over cheap phones until the day I die, which at the rate at which my blood pressure rises every time I have to deal with your tech support probably won't be long anyhow.
(FWIW, this is not the first time I've ever told a company that I shouldn't have to send something in for service when an update should do the trick.)
I can't speak for outside the US, but inside the US, there's this mentality of cars being supposed to keep you safe if there's an accident.
Perhaps what you're seeing is the natural extension of buying an SUV to be "safer". However, instead of being in a big car that can take a hit, now it's being in the car that outwardly says "don't mess with me".
With stuff like this, we wonder why women complain or feel harassed?
I feel genuinely put upon when I hear guys say things like this.
So, I'm going to say this in every thread where I encounter this statement.
I am a woman. I do not feel harassed. Stop fucking speaking for women and let us stand up for ourselves if it is necessary.
Please do not presume to speak for me, and further, please look up the definition of "harassed", because even if the above statement was insulting to all women (it isn't), it certainly does not count for the dictionary or legal definitions of "harassment".
Slashdot Mirror
...other advanced civilizations with nearby locations looked at our planet, said "well, there goes the neighborhood" and right quickly buggered off before their property values took a nosedive?
It did? Because the words "communism" and "witch hunts" spring very quickly to mind when people talk about "Innocent until proven guilty".
Eh, most people have a hard time coming up with something sincere at a time when people need sincerity the most. People in front of you could choose to give you a hug or pat on the back, but people who aren't kind of need a substitute and articulation is not an option.
I don't hate the "like" button, and I admit that and anything like it often fails to capture the complexity of human feeling, but I don't disregard it as "lazy", either.
Whoa now.
Now, I grant that this country's a little bit trigger happy on issues of safety and security, and at times, it's kind of understandable.
But to call the police on a kid without probable cause is to teach kids that, hey, you might get the police called on you just for following your interests. And maybe, maybe you'll get an apology if someone in the whole chain of FUBAR actually sees that the kid isn't a threat.
No, the correct answer is to ask the kid to explain what it is. Tell him you're interested. Ask him to open it because you want to see the inside, and tell him how cool it is that he was able to construct that.
But to call the police on a kid, when it's hardly likely the kid really did have a bomb? No. You can't do that.
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
Most people that learn math. It doesn't mean that everyone who takes math thinks of him or herself as a mathematician.
Not that I think everyone should learn to code, but if everyone was taught to code, I'm pretty sure most of the people who learned wouldn't think of themselves as people who think they can code.
There's a reason why "sex toys" are sometimes referred to as "marital aids".
Some people use sex toys as a substitute for a partner, sure. But plenty of people use them as a supplement to a healthy sexual relationship.
So, I'm going to apply the same argument here as one would apply to the concept of "potential weapons": inasmuch as anything you can find can be used as a weapon, so, too, can anything be used as a sex toy.
Ergo: Ban everything.
Christ, what a limited perspective this woman must have about sex.
It might be my American sensibilities at work here, but does anyone else feel a little leery at that prospect?
That having been said, if he, like his predecessor, thinks of himself as a gamer, then I guess the HR concern has no bearing in reality.
Meh, I don't advocate that the solution for me is the solution for anyone else.
The argument is whether or not going to a gym is a waste of money. For me, not so much.
I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine.
Well, I suppose the big problem is that, though you may have D&D fans like crazy (husband is one, I never had the patience for it), you never really had a canon story that people can get into: no inside jokes to cheer at, no story beats to hold your breath in anticipation of, no great epics that you could introduce anyone to as "great storytelling".
Great if you WANT to be creative and make your own adventure. Bad if you're an executive that wants the comfort of having a property that is popular enough to sell tickets, but otherwise has to create a story from whole-cloth.
Sounds to me like that's probably the attitude in a high-performance, high-pressure environment ("policies get in the way of getting work done"), and if the culture hasn't changed since your time there, then the attitude has only scaled up with the complexity of the system.
Not a knock on you, of course, and I hope you don't take it that way. You still have to rely on the user base to be the last lines of security within a system.
*sigh*
This is going to be an anecdote, so feel free to disregard as you will.
I'm a huge introvert, and have a pretty badly stunted ability to form relationships with people. Like, literally, "years of therapy, will never be the thing that most people call 'normal'" stunted.
Last year, I went to a church camp, where everyone was friendly and nice, and I knew absolutely no one. But if you were identified as "new", you got all the hugs you could have possibly wanted (no one did this without your permission). I left with a sense of well-being that I rarely feel simply because of the amount of human contact I received in that one week.
I can't say that I talk to anyone I met there now (see above). But it seems to me, if you get a little more human interaction than you normally might, you might start to feel a little more pep in your step. That's not "commodifying", that's just addressing the human need for companionship. And sometimes for people who are downright awful at soft skills, it may actually be helpful.
Because you're basically saying that in order for the environment to be pleasurable and fun (who knows, maybe the environment as described isn't even working), everyone needs to be doing the same thing. And if they're not doing the same thing...whoa, inequality!
Now, I don't know if this is a social experiment, but it's interesting. It may go so far as intended to be removing work-based relationship taboos: it's socially acceptable to get your jollies from women who are there precisely to be the ones with which men can comfortably express sexuality, while the women who aren't there to develop romantic relationships need to worry less about it, because the men have let off steam elsewhere.
And no one has said that female workers are uninteresting and unattractive, but even in the West, it's largely taboo to have office relationships, mostly from the "don't shit where you eat" principle.
Still this idea that women can be viewed sexually as a function of their jobs reduces all women may be sexist in and of itself. It assumes that men, once exposed to women as sexual beings, will reduce ALL women to functions of sex and nothing else. It also seems to assume that if one woman, anywhere, is a pornographic actress, that once a man comes in contact with said porn actress, every woman he knows ever will be reduced to being a porn actress in his mind, because how the hell else could he ever feel that women might be different?
So, Mr. Western Man, shall we dress women from head to toe in formless, opaque garb so that no man ever thinks about a woman sexually ever?
In fairness to gyms, it isn't like there are no maintenance costs.
Even if there isn't towel service, someone still needs to mop up all the sweat and dirty floors. And machines go down and need repair. And some of the smaller freeweights tend to wander off. And resistance bands get damaged and broken.
Am I saying that there are no maintenance costs with other services? Of course not. But to say a gym has no need for a consistent inflow of revenue is to tell me you've never actually been to one.
(I will leave the easy jokes lying right there.)
Additionally, there's a social aspect that's associated with going to a gym.
I find I put more effort into it when I'm around other people. Not because I'm particularly competitive, but because I'm there and I'm capable.
Also, classes help me put a structure to my workout routine. I admit I have a problem with severe lack of discipline if left to my own devices, but if someone has a workout ready for me, boom, I'll do it.
And, frankly, I need to leave the house and talk to other people, because even though I'm a grown adult, I have socialization problems. You can go to a bar to be with other people, sure, but if you have problems breaking the ice in random situations, you can always make a comment about the class you just did.
I can't imagine why this has suddenly become a thing. Outside of Netflix, which I understand, since movies are a way different beast than software and music.
If there's one damn thing right my parents taught me, it's about owning my own shit. Get things paid off as quickly as possible so that it's yours, and you don't end up dependent on anyone or anything for the thing you've paid for, especially if it's something you need on a moment's notice.
I've had to explain to more than one person that "the cloud" is a cute as hell idea, until "the cloud" is down for a few hours, or gets hacked.
Could there BE a bigger conspiracy theory than "who profits from good health?"
If you can find someone who is fanatic about a thing, then profit is not far behind.
For instance, in the circles I inhabit these days, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn't run several kind of obstacle course races. And what are those people doing to support that habit? Crossfit. P90X. Insanity.
And have you SEEN the cost of those things? Or the add-on supplements? Or, for that matter, the cost of obstacle course races?
Are those people in terrible health? Well, they're wearing themselves out fast, but they could be worse.
Oh, fucking look. Another fucking strawman.
Like every group that people care to demonize, most people take the piss out of vegans, but once again, you're taking the shit you have to hear from the loudest of us. The rest of us aren't really interested in converting you. In fact, most of us wish you would just leave us alone.
So last week, probably due to a software update on my phone, my smartwatch (suck it, haters!) didn't automatically reconnect with my phone after coming back into range. I had to manually re-connect every time.
Note that I've had the damn thing for close to a year and this has not been a problem at all.
I looked all over the internet to see if this was a common problem, nada. I'm experienced enough to think that this is the sort of thing that can be fixed with a reboot or an update that I didn't quite get yet. So I write the manufacturer to ask for advice.
They tell me to send it in for service.
I'll repeat myself.
They were telling me so send my gadgets in for service for a bad Bluetooth connection.
I basically wrote them back telling them that the could go fuck themselves. I didn't use those words, I was polite, though not nearly as Tolkien was when he told the Nazis to fuck off.
And what do you know? One update later and boom, fixed.
So, fuck you, tech companies. I'm making it my life's mission to make sure everyone I know doesn't get fucked over the way you tried to do me. Point being: companies are out to make things harder to repair, or obfuscating the need for repair to make you dependent on them to make your stuff work right.
And by the way, you take away my right to replacing parts of my own gear of my own volition, and you'll see me gritting my teeth over cheap phones until the day I die, which at the rate at which my blood pressure rises every time I have to deal with your tech support probably won't be long anyhow.
(FWIW, this is not the first time I've ever told a company that I shouldn't have to send something in for service when an update should do the trick.)
It kind of depends, really. I went from cheap phones to expensive ones, because the expensive ones were better on performance.
However, if the quality of less expensive ones goes up (as it inevitably will), I'm going right back to cheap ones.
Heh. I'm no expert, but that's pretty much the impression I got.
It's almost like they expect us to have faith that the software works as expected.
What's that smell? Oh, sole-source contracts with options for technical support. Lots and lots of technical support.
Ka-ching!
So, will we be replacing the microbiologists with a very small shell script?
It beats me why, but I wish this came from a lost episode of "Better Off Ted".
Lem and Phil were my favorites.
I can't speak for outside the US, but inside the US, there's this mentality of cars being supposed to keep you safe if there's an accident.
Perhaps what you're seeing is the natural extension of buying an SUV to be "safer". However, instead of being in a big car that can take a hit, now it's being in the car that outwardly says "don't mess with me".
With stuff like this, we wonder why women complain or feel harassed?
I feel genuinely put upon when I hear guys say things like this.
So, I'm going to say this in every thread where I encounter this statement.
I am a woman. I do not feel harassed. Stop fucking speaking for women and let us stand up for ourselves if it is necessary.
Please do not presume to speak for me, and further, please look up the definition of "harassed", because even if the above statement was insulting to all women (it isn't), it certainly does not count for the dictionary or legal definitions of "harassment".