• 2 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • What is a “pointless pursuit”? History and any marginalized population by the list. So apparently when the government makes a plan for how to invigorate an area, they don’t need to know anything about it’s culture and history? We don’t need people who understand things like that. Every citizen is the same obviously any thing the government demands is correct and will work out for all populations.

    Also why does the state even fund PhDs? PhDs don’t enter industry and spin that economy baby, so that worthless. Doctors and lawyers can just take out more loans. It’s fine. Looking at that why fund programs for most master’s degrees? What companies require one anyway?

    I’m being flippang here because even as a STEM major, I’ve gotten so much mileage out of the “useless” part of my degree. Being exposed to those “pointless pursuits” allowed me to build things that people actually needed and avoid the pitfalls before we exposed people to them.

    When I was in school, I wondered why the state was forcing me to take these stupid humanities classes at an engineering university at that, but I see it now. Mine was a school where humanities students had to learn to code a bit, and engineers had to learn do media analysis and probably take more history than they wanted, but getting out into the world, I’ve found that the engineers who got that exposure are just better because they know there is a whole class of problem involving people and they know when it’s time to ask for help or when it’s time to do research.


  • Has the state been funding schools though? Because state funding has been falling across the board and if the state has an interest in being lean then they should focus on out of prop salaries of administration and sports spending. After all what interest does the state have in sports? By this line of reasons colleges should have to fund that themselves.

    This is of course setting aside that humanities does help society and is in the vested interest of the state. I’m saying this as someone who was a STEM major. Giving context to the world and giving people a greater understanding is useful for every major. It allows them to understand their world and make better decisions from their station in life.

    To take the stance that the state has an interest in funding “useful” degrees then no one should be allowed to do anything outside their education, which is aburd. People with different points of view and knowledge enhance professions, not destroy them. That’s what happens when a profession only has one allowable perspective to deal with infinite possibilities of the world.


  • Unless you are actively for killing people once they hit a certain age, demographic collapse is a real problem. You cannot care for the elderly with nothing but robots. Elders need healthcare. They need people in general and unlike young people they don’t move from dead rotting towns. In demographic collapse they don’t even have anyone to make them because they don’t have kids.

    See Japan for how demographic collapse is working out. Young people are being crushed by the weight of what it takes to care for too many old people. And the cycle is only getting worse because of course young people don’t have kids when very stressed. Japan has whole towns going to rot. They’re economy is experiencing negative effects from not having the expected amount of workers for what they need.

    You really want a gradually declining population. You want your birth rate to be about 2. 2.1 is the replacement rate. Currently the US is the only developed country doing this and mostly by accident due to immigration. The US is experiencing a much less pronounced pension crisis than other developed nations. Instead we can focus exclusively on our fascist regime bid for power. That’s our of population decline as well, but we get to fight against it since the US is fairly balanced in demographics (for now. It remains to be seen how the millennial generation will handle being dominant generation in a decade or so)


  • Public school? You mean that place that children are mandated to be? Also you forgot government. It was a whole thing. So if you’re a Muslim and you want to be a part of the French government, then I hope you don’t have any attachment to those head scarves. There are other religions ornamentation, but the head scarves one was the last one I saw. And whether school or a DMV clerk, it’s dumb.

    Also noticed I used two different labels for France rather than China. I think China is fascist with what they’re doing. France is xenophobic with what they’re doing.



  • Damn, if only there was some sort of established and regulated type of business where you could rent lodging by the night in New York City. I bet they could make a whole lot of money building big buildings full of rooms you can rent like that.

    As someone who has a big ass family, hotels fucking suck for families. When I compare my childhood vacations in hotel to what we do now in airBNB, we do airBNB every single time.

    Do you make a habit of charging your friends and family that come visit you?

    I have in the past when I was hard up for money because food costs for extra people can be great.



  • I was with them until they banned more than 1 guests at a time. Are you a couple needed somewhere quick to stay before going to an airport or something? Go die in a fire. New York only wants solo couch surfers. People who want a friend along. A single person with a child. A family in a money crunch, anyone really can just pound sand.

    That is a super bizarre and IMO indefensible position. If someone wants to host more than one person in their home for a short span why is does they city even care?

    I’m also worried about how this could be abused. What if you legitimately take someone (or even two someones) in for a week, kick them out and then they report you for being “an unregistered short term rental”. This is going to be a shitshow.

    Edit: alright I misread this morning. It’s 2. Still bullshit. Why have a limit at all with the other stuff. My same complaints apply now with one more person. It’s not like 3 people groups (aka 2 parents an a single child or one parent and 2 children, etc) are uncommon.

    IMO hotels just don’t fill the niche of needing a cheap single night or needing to have a bunch of people for a long time. Traveling with my family got so much better when airBNB became a thing.


  • I just felt like replying.

    1. Children probably need to be in school basically year round, but for less time. They need reinforcement, but can’t focus for long. The whole day could probably work if the 2nd half of the day was unstructured. This is basically how I’ve seen (successful) college students work. They tend to have a 3-4 hour block of classes and then between that they work on stuff at their own pace including studying, getting help, etc. This is how my kid’s grade school works and honestly, I was shocked all the kids score the same as the public school, so apparently no loss. It is a year round school and the kids are in school more days of the year, so I don’t know if it’s technically more or less effective.
    2. Accurate. Anyone who says differently is lying to themselves. Schools are also a monitoring service for abuse and a safe place for kids to escape hope abuse and maybe even report it.
    3. Before we had more grandparents involvement. I have a lot of memories of my grandparents doing things my parents now refuse to do and I have to do. Families with grandparent involvement are just less stressed.

    As for the 4 day thing, I’m interested to see how it works out. In Texas it has resulted in poorer outcomes for children on the whole mostly due to the safe place service schools provide.


  • You have a good point, but it’s not something most people would be interested and for good reason.

    We’re talking about children here. People who would let their teeth rot away if no one constantly fussed at them about brushing. People who don’t understand why they shouldn’t do a great many things that will actually kill them.

    We don’t actually care about what children want to learn. This article is talking about math that is taught before puberty. That’s the math that people are struggling with. That’s everyday math. We’re not talking about calculus here.

    You’re saying that there’s no pragmatic way to teach things, but really that’s not the problem of children and you know it. Kids get word problems and whatnot to tell them how math can be relevant, but just like English and history and basically all of school, they don’t want to do it. Math is weird because it actually builds on itself and you need to understand every part. It’s not something where if you forgot or never learned you can bullshit your way through.

    I’m speaking as someone who went to a top engineering college and my English 101 class had to check for literacy. I was the literal only student out of like 20 who got to skip the exam. Several of my peers were functionally illiterate from reading their essays and whatnot.

    It’s not just math. It’s everything and it’s the failure of the system that we do not fail children when they don’t achieve. If they don’t like it they can drop out at 16 get a GED or be known as the uneducated people they are.

    I guarantee you that if we went back to failing kids they’d learn more. My sister failed a whole grade and the embarrassment from it and the pressure from my parents was a fantastic motivator.


  • The maybe rheu shouldn’t advance and be failed? Like to me if you’re bad at a subject, you should be required to take it until you pass it, not push along to the next harder version of it. Kids don’t get left back or failed now. That is the problem. If you’re not ready fine, but you can’t take algebra until you pass pre-algebra.

    I’m speaking as someone who didn’t learn to read until 3 grade and still graduated on time and went to a good college. Failing classes is fine as long as you can also catch up if you rapidly learn the material as well.




  • Let’s just be simple about this: pensions and oth3r old age support. Who pays for those? Young people. If young people have to support a lot of old people, you’re gonna have a bad time. Everyone. The young people have have larger amounts taken out of their pay and old people who get less support because there are just literally not enough resources. And because old people outnumber young people young are pressured more and more under democracy to give more to older people.

    That is only one terrible thing from demographic collapse.




  • Because I’ve lived in shitty areas with actual drug dealers and BS like that. Less people have guns than you might imagine. Maybe it’s different in nowhere USA, but in urban shithole, USA and Middle class suburbia that’s about what I’ve found. People have like 3+ guns or none at all. I guess it’s possible all my friends are just hiding this from me for some reason and in my hometown I just happen to know all the people who shoot guns, but honestly it’s been rare that I’ve seen people with just one gun. It’s not that I’ve never seen it. My cousin’s husband owns exactly one gun.

    I don’t think there’s any way to get stats, but I think that the US has more guns than people lends some credibility to this idea.



  • This is such an annoying answer. I’ve had a strange man enter my home unannounced. I remember standing just behind a wall with intent to stab him with the knife I had because if someone breaks into your house you don’t assume a good time. Even without guns strangers are dangerous. That maintenance guy was seriously lucky I happen to recognize him in that split sec and stopped before stabbing him in the chest.

    I’m American and I’ve never worried about guns. They aren’t as common as people think in a lot of areas. Mostly we have a few yahoo’s with a shitton of guns and most people with zero. I’ve still been in several situations where I felt unsafe without guns even being a consideration. If this dude was doing all that at my house, I’d call the police and then wait with a knife like I did with that stupid maintenance guy I almost stabbed who should have known better.


  • It’s not that I disagree, it’s just that I can never see a scenario where both sides don’t have the same power. If you can quit at any time, then rhe employer can fire at any time. If you the employer has you give notice, so do you. I’ve never hear any stories online in different countries of the notice period not being both ways. And despite what one dude said to me sometimes weeks long, not a week. That would be actual hell.