Pretty much matches my thoughts:
A friend recently asked me what I would tell a young man thinking about enlisting in the military. (He had in mind his son.) I would tell him this, which I wish someone had told me:
Kid, you are being suckered. You are being used. You need to think carefully before signing that enlistment contract.
First, notice that the men who want to send you to die were draft-dodgers. President Bush was of military age during Vietnam, but he sat out the war in the Air National Guard. The Guard was then a common way of avoiding combat. Bush could do it because he was a rich kid who went to Yale, and his family had connections.
He dodged, but he wants you to go.
Vice President Cheney, also of military age during Vietnam, also didn’t go. Why? When asked by the press, he said, “I had other priorities.” In other words, he was too important to risk his precious self overseas. He dodged, but wants you to go.
If you take the time to investigate, you will always find this pattern. The rich and influential avoid combat. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton do not send young men to Iraq. The editors at magazines that support the war, National Review for example, didn’t fight. They are happy to let you go, though. The reason for the All Volunteer military was to let the smart and rich avoid service and instead send kids from middle-class and blue-collar families. It works.
In talking to recruiters, you need to understand what you are up against. You are probably nineteen or twenty years old, full of piss and vinegar as we used to say, just starting to know the world. Which means that you don’t yet know it. (Do you know, for example, what countries border Iraq?)
You are up against a government that hires high-powered ad agencies and psychologists to figure out how to lure you into the military. Over many years they have done surveys and studies on the weaknesses of young males to find out what will get them to join. They know that young men, the ones that are worth anything anyway, want to prove themselves, want adventure, want to show what they can do. Everything a recruiter does is carefully calculated to play on this. They go to recruiting school to learn how.
“The Few. The Proud.” You don’t think that came out of the Marine Corps, do you? These phrases—“An Army of One,” “Be All You Can Be"--come from ad agencies in New York. Nobody in those ad agencies, I promise you, was ever in the Marine Corps. New York sells the military the way it sells soap. It has no interest in you at all.
Recruiters know exactly what they are doing. They are manly, which appeals to gutsy young guys who don’t want to be mall rats. They are confident. They have a physical fitness, a clean-cut appearance that looks good compared to all those wussy lawyers in business suits. They invite you to come into a man’s world. They promise you college funds. (Check and see how many actually ever get those funds. Read the small print.)
And of course the military is a man’s world, and it is an adventure, and it does beat being a mall rat—until they put you in combat. Driving a tank beats stocking parts in the local NAPA outlet—until they put you in combat. Days on the rifle range, running the bars of San Diego far from home and parents, going across the border into Mexico—all of this appeals powerfully to a young man. It did to me. It beats hell out of getting some silly associate degree in biz-admin at the community college.
Until they put you in combat. Then it’s too late. You can’t change your mind. They send you to jail for a long time if you do.
Combat is not the adventure you think it is. Know what happens when an RPG hits a tank? Nothing good. The cherry juice—hydraulic fluid that turns the turret—can vaporize and then blow. I saw the results in the Naval Support Activity hospital in Danang in 1967. A tank has a crew of four. Two burned to death, screaming as they tried to get out. The other two were scalded pink, under a plastic sheet that was always foggy with serum evaporating from burns where the skin had sloughed off. They probably lived. Know what burn scars look like?
The recruiters won’t tell you this. They know, but they won’t tell you. Ever seen a guy who just took a round through the face? He’s a bloody mess with his eyes gone, nasty hole where his nose was, funny white cartilage things sticking out of dripping meat. Suppose he’ll ever have another girlfriend? Not freaking likely. He’ll spend the next fifty years as a horror in some forsaken VA hospital.
But the recruiters won’t tell you this. They want you to think that it’s an adventure.
Other things happen that, depending on your head, may or may not bother you. Iraq means combat in cities. Ordinary people live there. You pop a grenade through a window, or hit a building with a burst from the Chain gun, or maybe put a tank round through it. Then you find the little girl with her bowels hanging out, not quite dead yet, with her mother screaming over what’s left. You’d be surprised how much blood a small kid has.
You get to live with that picture for the rest of your life. And you will live with it. The recruiter will tell you that it doesn’t happen, that it’s the exception, that I’m a commy journalist. Believe him if you want. Believe him now, while you can. When you get back, you’ll believe me.
A lot of things in America aren’t what they used to be. The military is one of them. The army didn’t always use girl soldiers to torture prisoners. For that they had specialists in the intelligence agencies. You won’t get assigned torture duty, almost certainly, because the Army got caught. Ask your recruiter about it, just to be sure.
Don’t expect thanks from a grateful nation. Somebody might buy you a drink in a bar. That’s about all you get. Many will regard you as a criminal or a fool.
Wars seem important at the time, but they usually aren’t. Five years later, they are history. About sixty thousand GIs died in Vietnam. We lost. Nothing happened. It was a stupid war for nothing. Today the guys who lost faces and legs and internal organs back then are just freaks. Nobody gives a damn about them, and nobody will give a damn about you. A war is a politician’s toy, but your wheelchair is forever. If you want adventure, try the fishing fleet in Alaska.
Think about it.
From http://www.fredoneverything.net/GoingToWar.shtml
Edit: I've a bit to add. The military can be a very good experience. But if you are seriously considering joining, don't join the Army or Marines. These are the guys fredoneverything is talking about. If you absolutely have to go into one of these services, try to get a support position.
The Air Force or Navy is a better bet with a much lower risk of danger. Or the Coast Guard. Although the Coast Guard does get deployed to protect foreign ports. They also run drug interdiction along our coasts. They do the mission every day.
Join and learn a skill. Marching around and shooting a gun is not a skill. Mechanic is a skill; planes or cars or helicopters. Fix Generators or jet engines. Learn how to load a plane. Civil engineering is a skill. Air Traffic control is a skill. Fixing communications equipment is a skill. Insalling network stuff is a skill.
If you're going to do it, do it smart. Use the military for your goals and do your best to prevent them from using you for theirs.
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Friday, July 27, 2012
Complete Guide to Rechargable Batteries
There are
different types of batteries used in electronics, such as lead
acid, nickel-base, and lithium ion. Each battery is different in some
way, and so that means we have to treat/charge them differently. Let's
talk about three of them that are quite common.
Lead acid batteries are mainly found in vehicles like cars, golf carts, and the like. Nickel-based (aka Nickel-Cadmium) can be found in small electronics/toys and other equipment. Lithium ion is probably the most common, which you'll usually find in laptop batteries, phones, etc.
First charge
Lead acid batteries are mainly found in vehicles like cars, golf carts, and the like. Nickel-based (aka Nickel-Cadmium) can be found in small electronics/toys and other equipment. Lithium ion is probably the most common, which you'll usually find in laptop batteries, phones, etc.
First charge
- Lead acid: The battery should be fully charge. Apply a top-off charge before using.
- Nickel-based: Charge the battery 14-16 hours before the first use.
- Lithium Ion: Apply a top-off charge before the first use.
- Lead acid: You must always give this battery a full charge, as a partial charge can create sulfation.
- Nickel-base: A partial charge is good.
- Lithium Ion: A partial charge is actually better than full charge.
- Lead acid: A deep discharge can damage the battery.
- Nickel-base: Apply scheduled discharges only to prevent the battery from retaining memory.
- Lithium Ion: A deep discharge can damage the battery.
- Lead acid: Not applicable.
- Nickel-base: Apply a discharge/charge when the fuel gauge becomes inaccurate. Repeat every 1-3 months.
- Lithium Ion: Apply a discharge/charge when the fuel gauge becomes inaccurate. Repeat every 1-3 months.
- Lead acid: It’s okay to have device on when charging.
- Nickel-base: It’s always best to turn the device off during a charge, since a parasitic load can either alter full-charge detection, overcharge the battery, and/or cause mini-cycles.
- Lithium Ion: It’s always best to turn the device off during a charge, since a parasitic load can either alter full-charge detection, overcharge the battery, and/or cause mini-cycles.
- Lead acid: This depends on the charger. If the charger has correct float voltage, then it’s fine.
- Nickel-base: Always remove your device after a few days in the charger.
- Lithium Ion: This is unnecessary, because the charger turns off.
- Lead acid: It creates a slow charge from 32-113 degrees Fahrenheit / fast charge from 41-113 degrees Fahrenheit / the threshold is lowered above 77 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Nickel-base: It creates a slow charge from 32-113 degrees Fahrenheit / fast charge from 41-113 degrees Fahrenheit / the battery will not fully charge when it’s hot.
- Lithium Ion: Do not charge below freezing. Do not charge when above 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Letting the battery run out before charging extends battery life (not necessary for lead acid/lithium ion batteries, but only occasional full discharges for nickel based ones)
- Uncharged batteries become damaged over time
- For lithium ion batteries, it's best not to have the battery level too low too often.
- Leaving a device plugged in is bad for the battery (this is only bad for nickel-based batteries.)
Thursday, July 12, 2012
A Simple Explanation of Existentialism
There is the general sense that if you look at life, really just look at what's available to your senses and your intellect, you start to get this uncanny feeling that something weird is going on. Events aren't connected. Not every choice you make has a meaningful consequence.
We all seem to be very alone within ourselves, even when we're with other people, we can never really commune with them in a way that's really satisfying. Try looking straight into someone's eyes. If you really stare, what you find is that you can't look straight into their mind/soul/consciousness. Instead you start to notice these layers; you looking at them, them looking at you, you noticing them looking at you, them noticing you noticing them looking at you, you noticing that you've noticed them noticing you looking at them.... Anyway your bodies can touch, your gazes can meet, you can be as close as you want, but you'll always be two separate people trying to make sense of each other.
When you're alone what you notice is that if you look at the objects around you, start to see that these objects hold no inherent meaning.
When you really look at things and try to see them for what they are, you get the sense that the world around you is just this grey muck of indifference. The materials and objects around you don't care about you or your life. Your car won't try to keep working because it likes you, it's just a hunk of metal machined by humans that will run until it doesn't run, and that's that. It won't remember your birthday, it won't wait to break down until a convenient time for you, it will just break when it breaks and that can be any time at all.
But when you look at your car, you don't see a hunk of metal slowly falling back into a state of nature, you see a lot more. That's because the car has meaning to you, meaning which you assign to it yourself. You can be reminded of how excited you were when you first got it, you might think of kissing a pretty girl in the back seat, you might be comforted by the way it smells or be reminded of memories when you see the little scratches on the bumper from that time you hit that sign. Your consciousness assembles the sum of your experience with this car and puts it in a special place in your mind: This car isn't just a thing, it is something to you.
And that's really the trick of it. The person you love is someone to you, and you are someone to them. The person that you are for them is different than the person you are to yourself.
And who are you to yourself?
To yourself, you are something other than what you are. Yes, your identity, too, is assembled by your consciousness as a way of making your experiences and actions continuous and meaningful, not because you are that way on any essential level, but because that's what your brain does. It generates meaning.
What does that imply? Whatever god you prefer is generated by you and whatever community you worship with as a means of experiencing continuity in life and (perhaps vainly) through death. However a person seems to be, in your opinion, is generally not the way they really are, but the way you make sense of their behavior. Your opinions of objects, events, people, and society are all generated by your brain in order to make sense of them in a way that is continuous and comprehensible.
So what does it all mean? Here's where it gets better: it means whatever you want!
You have the power to change your opinions, choose your beliefs, and alter the meaning of your entire world. The old adage is that 'a depressed man lives in a depressed world'. In an existential sense, this is quite literal. The world around you doesn't have an opinion as to whether it ought to be depressed or happy, there are only blades of grass which sway when you blow on them, and a breeze which sways you along with the grass.
And so if you really get into existentialism, your mind becomes a paintbrush, and you can paint over the grey muck with whatever is most pleasing to you. You can make a world that is beautiful, one that is logical, one that smacks of a divine presence, one that is quirky and random, one that is fun, whatever you want!
You might seek to strip away all the irrelevant and invented meanings in your life in the hopes of seeing just how weird, random, and indifferent the world really is. This choice is open to you, but be careful. Your brain is built to generate meaning, and if you try to arrive at some true sense of what the world actually is outside of your version of it, you might get a little freaked.
Instead, maybe listen to a fellow like Camus and try to find a way to make it work for you. Or not, it's your choice after all, and that's the fun!
Original Reddit post by ThisisDangeruss
We all seem to be very alone within ourselves, even when we're with other people, we can never really commune with them in a way that's really satisfying. Try looking straight into someone's eyes. If you really stare, what you find is that you can't look straight into their mind/soul/consciousness. Instead you start to notice these layers; you looking at them, them looking at you, you noticing them looking at you, them noticing you noticing them looking at you, you noticing that you've noticed them noticing you looking at them.... Anyway your bodies can touch, your gazes can meet, you can be as close as you want, but you'll always be two separate people trying to make sense of each other.
When you're alone what you notice is that if you look at the objects around you, start to see that these objects hold no inherent meaning.
When you really look at things and try to see them for what they are, you get the sense that the world around you is just this grey muck of indifference. The materials and objects around you don't care about you or your life. Your car won't try to keep working because it likes you, it's just a hunk of metal machined by humans that will run until it doesn't run, and that's that. It won't remember your birthday, it won't wait to break down until a convenient time for you, it will just break when it breaks and that can be any time at all.
But when you look at your car, you don't see a hunk of metal slowly falling back into a state of nature, you see a lot more. That's because the car has meaning to you, meaning which you assign to it yourself. You can be reminded of how excited you were when you first got it, you might think of kissing a pretty girl in the back seat, you might be comforted by the way it smells or be reminded of memories when you see the little scratches on the bumper from that time you hit that sign. Your consciousness assembles the sum of your experience with this car and puts it in a special place in your mind: This car isn't just a thing, it is something to you.
And that's really the trick of it. The person you love is someone to you, and you are someone to them. The person that you are for them is different than the person you are to yourself.
And who are you to yourself?
To yourself, you are something other than what you are. Yes, your identity, too, is assembled by your consciousness as a way of making your experiences and actions continuous and meaningful, not because you are that way on any essential level, but because that's what your brain does. It generates meaning.
What does that imply? Whatever god you prefer is generated by you and whatever community you worship with as a means of experiencing continuity in life and (perhaps vainly) through death. However a person seems to be, in your opinion, is generally not the way they really are, but the way you make sense of their behavior. Your opinions of objects, events, people, and society are all generated by your brain in order to make sense of them in a way that is continuous and comprehensible.
So what does it all mean? Here's where it gets better: it means whatever you want!
You have the power to change your opinions, choose your beliefs, and alter the meaning of your entire world. The old adage is that 'a depressed man lives in a depressed world'. In an existential sense, this is quite literal. The world around you doesn't have an opinion as to whether it ought to be depressed or happy, there are only blades of grass which sway when you blow on them, and a breeze which sways you along with the grass.
And so if you really get into existentialism, your mind becomes a paintbrush, and you can paint over the grey muck with whatever is most pleasing to you. You can make a world that is beautiful, one that is logical, one that smacks of a divine presence, one that is quirky and random, one that is fun, whatever you want!
You might seek to strip away all the irrelevant and invented meanings in your life in the hopes of seeing just how weird, random, and indifferent the world really is. This choice is open to you, but be careful. Your brain is built to generate meaning, and if you try to arrive at some true sense of what the world actually is outside of your version of it, you might get a little freaked.
Instead, maybe listen to a fellow like Camus and try to find a way to make it work for you. Or not, it's your choice after all, and that's the fun!
Original Reddit post by ThisisDangeruss
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Poor People and Ridiculous Fashion Statements
When you're poor, there's a lot of shame that comes with that. Trying to look NOT poor is important to you. There are easy ways that poor people can work to make themselves look not poor- many of these methods develop into trends, which ironically becomes a signifier of poorness rather than a mask of it. But I digress.
When you're poor, the way you cover up poorness has to be visual and extroverted. You're living in a shit neighborhood, or in the projects, or in a trailer park. You can't make that look good, so looking good for you is outside the home. You make your clothes and your car look good. So, the hats- People like wearing hats. That's the start of it. But how do you designate a nice hat from a not nice hat? Most baseball caps get the tags ripped off, the stickers removed, and people bend the bill to make it fit more naturally. What does that mean? The hat is worn-in. It's used, even if only used by you. A hat that still has the manufacturer sticker and a perfectly level bill? That's a hat that was bought new. And you keep it in that condition as long as possible to SHOW people that you bought it new. Damage the hat or remove the holographic-stamped, custom stickers? Maybe you bought the hat at Salvation Army, or Good Will, or it's a hand-me-down or a hand out. But a perfect, straight-from-the-rack untouched hat? That's a SIGNIFIER that you're able to buy a hat.
I know it's hard to understand, but it's a pretty deeply engrained cultural statement. Why did Elvis wear white clothes? Because he was poor as shit growing up and he wanted to show people he could wear something white and expensive and not be worried about stains. Gets stained? Buy a new one. Wearing white shows you're rich. It's why Elvis wore white, it's why yuppies wore khakis rather than jeans, it's why Don Draper's costume designer gave his a pale trenchcoat rather than a dark one early on, it's why rich people have "white (clothing) parties"... And for that matter, it's why Johnny Cash wore black.
The white clothing thing is an old trend of showing affluence, used both by the rich and by the poor who wish to look rich. The hat thing is a new trend. Maybe it'll stay, maybe it'll go. Poor men who became rich- especially rappers- keep wearing their hats that way. As such, middle class and upper class youth copy it. So maybe it'll become engrained as a symbol of wealth. Or maybe it'll fall away. Pristine Air Jordans have been a symbol of wealth amongst poor communities for 20 years now, and who'd have thought that would last?
Orignal post by adam_frankenstein
When you're poor, the way you cover up poorness has to be visual and extroverted. You're living in a shit neighborhood, or in the projects, or in a trailer park. You can't make that look good, so looking good for you is outside the home. You make your clothes and your car look good. So, the hats- People like wearing hats. That's the start of it. But how do you designate a nice hat from a not nice hat? Most baseball caps get the tags ripped off, the stickers removed, and people bend the bill to make it fit more naturally. What does that mean? The hat is worn-in. It's used, even if only used by you. A hat that still has the manufacturer sticker and a perfectly level bill? That's a hat that was bought new. And you keep it in that condition as long as possible to SHOW people that you bought it new. Damage the hat or remove the holographic-stamped, custom stickers? Maybe you bought the hat at Salvation Army, or Good Will, or it's a hand-me-down or a hand out. But a perfect, straight-from-the-rack untouched hat? That's a SIGNIFIER that you're able to buy a hat.
I know it's hard to understand, but it's a pretty deeply engrained cultural statement. Why did Elvis wear white clothes? Because he was poor as shit growing up and he wanted to show people he could wear something white and expensive and not be worried about stains. Gets stained? Buy a new one. Wearing white shows you're rich. It's why Elvis wore white, it's why yuppies wore khakis rather than jeans, it's why Don Draper's costume designer gave his a pale trenchcoat rather than a dark one early on, it's why rich people have "white (clothing) parties"... And for that matter, it's why Johnny Cash wore black.
The white clothing thing is an old trend of showing affluence, used both by the rich and by the poor who wish to look rich. The hat thing is a new trend. Maybe it'll stay, maybe it'll go. Poor men who became rich- especially rappers- keep wearing their hats that way. As such, middle class and upper class youth copy it. So maybe it'll become engrained as a symbol of wealth. Or maybe it'll fall away. Pristine Air Jordans have been a symbol of wealth amongst poor communities for 20 years now, and who'd have thought that would last?
Orignal post by adam_frankenstein
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Rocks, Pebbles and Sand
A philosophy professor stood before his class and had some items in front of him. When class began, wordlessly he picked up a large empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks right to the top, rocks about 2" in diameter. He then asked the students if the jar was full?
They agreed it was. So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them in to the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. The students laughed. He asked his students again if the jar was full? They agreed yes, it was.
The professor then picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. “Now,” said the professor, “I want you to recognize that this is your life.
“The rocks are the important things – your family, your partner, your health, your children — anything that is so important to you that if it were lost, you would be nearly destroyed.
“The pebbles are the other things in life that matter, but on a smaller scale. The pebbles represent things like your job, your house, your car.
“The sand is everything else. The small stuff. If you put the sand or the pebbles into the jar first, there is no room for the rocks. The same goes for your life.
"If you spend all your energy and time on the small stuff, material things, you will never have room for the things that are truly most important. Pay attention to the things that are critical in your life. Play with your children. Take your partner out dancing. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal. Take care of the rocks first - the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just pebbles and sand.”
Original post by McMonocle
They agreed it was. So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them in to the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. The students laughed. He asked his students again if the jar was full? They agreed yes, it was.
The professor then picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. “Now,” said the professor, “I want you to recognize that this is your life.
“The rocks are the important things – your family, your partner, your health, your children — anything that is so important to you that if it were lost, you would be nearly destroyed.
“The pebbles are the other things in life that matter, but on a smaller scale. The pebbles represent things like your job, your house, your car.
“The sand is everything else. The small stuff. If you put the sand or the pebbles into the jar first, there is no room for the rocks. The same goes for your life.
"If you spend all your energy and time on the small stuff, material things, you will never have room for the things that are truly most important. Pay attention to the things that are critical in your life. Play with your children. Take your partner out dancing. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal. Take care of the rocks first - the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just pebbles and sand.”
Original post by McMonocle
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Future Danger of Overwhelming Student Loan Debt
Yeah maybe they theoretically don't look so bad from an extremely short-sighted balance sheet point of view, but they will completely destroy capitalism as we know it.
Since the mid/late 80s a generation has been brainwashed with TV and other forms of constant commercialized media into believing that self-actualization comes from consumption, fitting in and having more than others. We have also been brainwashed into believing we must go to college to be successful (that is, good) people. Now we can say this is the fault of the parents, or its the fault of the corporations or whatever. Doesn't matter. Point is, this is what is happening.
We have reached a structural employment crisis. There are not enough jobs. We can deduce statistically that those with college degrees are likely to do better, given extremely broad aggregate measures. While college can be highly helpful for some people, it isn't meant for everywhere. The promised jobs don't exist. We don't need 10,000 PHDs in every obscure social science, there is no known way to employ these people productively in existing businesses.
You may ask why? Why is it that we don't know how to use these people in society? Why don't the jobs exist?
Because our generation has been trained to be law-accepting, servile, submissive and rule-loving. We have had creativity, empathy and patience trained out of us. Initially this was viewed as good. Marketers thought they were creating perfect consumers, who would continue buying things forever. It was perfect monopoly capitalism: installing the idea of unique brands in children at ages as early as possible and making them believe only those brands could bring them joy. Perfect consumers.
What these idiots forgot is that CONSUMPTION ALONE DOES NOT MAKE AN ECONOMY WORK. They didn't train a creative productive workforce! They trained consumers! This is a huge part of why the economy is dying.
For the last 10 years, corporations tried to just hand jobs to otherwise useless idiots who only knew how to consume. Guess what? A corporation where all the grunt work is done by barely thinking consumeristic dolts, where the management is done by idiot consumption-side, short-sighted managers, has led to a crisis of productivity.
We find ourselves in a state where an entire generation has been psychologically trained that 'consumption = happiness' but that generation is also massively un- and underemployed. That is to say, our economic system has found no productive use for consumers.
The college loan crisis is the last hurrah of the system. As droves of trained idiot consumers begin to realize they are morons, they seek out education so that they may gain employment, so that they may continue to consume.
This is seen by the old idiot monopolists as a marketing opportunity. The monopolists planned for a wave of lifelong consumers. They sell us college degrees even though they know that 6-7/10 of us still aren't going to get a job we're qualified for. They didn't plan for a wave of lifelong wage earners.
They have no idea what to do with us BECAUSE THEY ASSUMED WE WOULD ALWAYS HAVE MONEY TO SPEND. Dunno how you're able to do much spending without any income. Such is the idiocy of mainstream 'keynesianism' and 'job creating' economic policies. Nothing grows by consumption alone, not in biology, not in physics, not in human economic interactions. There must be some transformative production of a new useful thing!
Well, ok, I'm wrong, there is one thing that grows by consumption alone with no creative production. CANCER.
The student loan bubble is the last gimmick, the last joke before everything comes falling down and a new social order is implemented. Our generation is realizing we have been lied to our entire lives. Consumerism brings you only despair, uselessness and mental disorders. To modify George Carlin's saying, we are finding that the American Dream is actually the American Nightmare. There are no jobs because none of these marketers know anything about economics, they just figured the money would come from somewhere.
We will realize we need to make our own economy, seperate and apart from these short-sighted psycopaths who have literally manipulated the thinking of much of our generation from birth. We will wake up from the American Nightmare. We will realize that it makes no sense to go 60,000 dollars in debt for nothing. Nothing but a pat on the back from our loan-shark financial rapists, thanking you for selling yourself into debt-slavery. Remember kids, student loan debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy! Your wages will be garnished for the rest of your life!
We will stop going to college, we will drop out and make our own society. It is quite possible this transition will be extremely violent, though it does not have to be. Either way, when students begin en masse simply refusing to enroll, refusing to make loan payments or simply refusing to pay money they don't have for a service they don't need, the student loan bubble will collapse, and it will probably be the death-nell in modern Anglo-American globalist crony capitalism, as the shock waves emenating from the collapse of the student debt market will be at least as financially devastating as the collapse of home mortgages. Its likely it will be even worse (for the current order), as our generation will begin a widespread all-out revolt against consumerism, not by choice but by necessity, as we will be the new underclass if we do not pull ourselves up by our own boot-straps.
I think the way forward is co-ops, permaculture, and sustainable energy. We have to show these yahoos that globalist monopolistic capitalism is not responsive to true social desires. Its not good enough for us. We can do better.
Original Reddit post
Since the mid/late 80s a generation has been brainwashed with TV and other forms of constant commercialized media into believing that self-actualization comes from consumption, fitting in and having more than others. We have also been brainwashed into believing we must go to college to be successful (that is, good) people. Now we can say this is the fault of the parents, or its the fault of the corporations or whatever. Doesn't matter. Point is, this is what is happening.
We have reached a structural employment crisis. There are not enough jobs. We can deduce statistically that those with college degrees are likely to do better, given extremely broad aggregate measures. While college can be highly helpful for some people, it isn't meant for everywhere. The promised jobs don't exist. We don't need 10,000 PHDs in every obscure social science, there is no known way to employ these people productively in existing businesses.
You may ask why? Why is it that we don't know how to use these people in society? Why don't the jobs exist?
Because our generation has been trained to be law-accepting, servile, submissive and rule-loving. We have had creativity, empathy and patience trained out of us. Initially this was viewed as good. Marketers thought they were creating perfect consumers, who would continue buying things forever. It was perfect monopoly capitalism: installing the idea of unique brands in children at ages as early as possible and making them believe only those brands could bring them joy. Perfect consumers.
What these idiots forgot is that CONSUMPTION ALONE DOES NOT MAKE AN ECONOMY WORK. They didn't train a creative productive workforce! They trained consumers! This is a huge part of why the economy is dying.
For the last 10 years, corporations tried to just hand jobs to otherwise useless idiots who only knew how to consume. Guess what? A corporation where all the grunt work is done by barely thinking consumeristic dolts, where the management is done by idiot consumption-side, short-sighted managers, has led to a crisis of productivity.
We find ourselves in a state where an entire generation has been psychologically trained that 'consumption = happiness' but that generation is also massively un- and underemployed. That is to say, our economic system has found no productive use for consumers.
The college loan crisis is the last hurrah of the system. As droves of trained idiot consumers begin to realize they are morons, they seek out education so that they may gain employment, so that they may continue to consume.
This is seen by the old idiot monopolists as a marketing opportunity. The monopolists planned for a wave of lifelong consumers. They sell us college degrees even though they know that 6-7/10 of us still aren't going to get a job we're qualified for. They didn't plan for a wave of lifelong wage earners.
They have no idea what to do with us BECAUSE THEY ASSUMED WE WOULD ALWAYS HAVE MONEY TO SPEND. Dunno how you're able to do much spending without any income. Such is the idiocy of mainstream 'keynesianism' and 'job creating' economic policies. Nothing grows by consumption alone, not in biology, not in physics, not in human economic interactions. There must be some transformative production of a new useful thing!
Well, ok, I'm wrong, there is one thing that grows by consumption alone with no creative production. CANCER.
The student loan bubble is the last gimmick, the last joke before everything comes falling down and a new social order is implemented. Our generation is realizing we have been lied to our entire lives. Consumerism brings you only despair, uselessness and mental disorders. To modify George Carlin's saying, we are finding that the American Dream is actually the American Nightmare. There are no jobs because none of these marketers know anything about economics, they just figured the money would come from somewhere.
We will realize we need to make our own economy, seperate and apart from these short-sighted psycopaths who have literally manipulated the thinking of much of our generation from birth. We will wake up from the American Nightmare. We will realize that it makes no sense to go 60,000 dollars in debt for nothing. Nothing but a pat on the back from our loan-shark financial rapists, thanking you for selling yourself into debt-slavery. Remember kids, student loan debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy! Your wages will be garnished for the rest of your life!
We will stop going to college, we will drop out and make our own society. It is quite possible this transition will be extremely violent, though it does not have to be. Either way, when students begin en masse simply refusing to enroll, refusing to make loan payments or simply refusing to pay money they don't have for a service they don't need, the student loan bubble will collapse, and it will probably be the death-nell in modern Anglo-American globalist crony capitalism, as the shock waves emenating from the collapse of the student debt market will be at least as financially devastating as the collapse of home mortgages. Its likely it will be even worse (for the current order), as our generation will begin a widespread all-out revolt against consumerism, not by choice but by necessity, as we will be the new underclass if we do not pull ourselves up by our own boot-straps.
I think the way forward is co-ops, permaculture, and sustainable energy. We have to show these yahoos that globalist monopolistic capitalism is not responsive to true social desires. Its not good enough for us. We can do better.
Original Reddit post
Happiness
Happiness isn't about having things or not having things, and its not about things being better then than they are now or will be later. Its about being happy. Right now. You have to be happy. If you look around, there is plenty to be happy about, we just stop looking is all.
Suddenly that inspiration doesn't "hit" and we jump on the computer for a few hours or weeks. We do what we have to at a job so we can come home and get high on whatever gets us high. We get a six pack and see what's on TV. We get another philly cheesesteak even though that gut keeps growing. Whatever it takes to get that burst of happy. We consume. because then we get our fix and we can sludge through another shitty day getting shit on by someone who was just like you, but they've had the blinders on so long they forgot altogether.
Truth is you have to fight for what makes you happy. Fight against yourself and how easy it is today to have everything. Fight the animal inside saying feed me, please me, listen to ME... and remember the real you. The one with dreams and goals. Realize that just because you can play games and watch movies and eat hot pockets doesn't mean you should.
Realize that the best things take work. And just being happy is the hardest thing of all. You have to know yourself. To do that you need to take a good, long, honest look at yourself and your choices.
Friday, May 04, 2012
The Purpose of Work
The purpose of work, believe it or not, is not to make a living. Its to keep you busy.
When you don't work, you think you will be happy, but in reality your mind becomes free to dwell on trivial things and you slowly, imperceptibly grow to become dissatisfied with life. Small things begin to feel like big things. The simple pleasures you used to enjoy in small proportions begin to lose their potency because now you have the money and time to indulge them in unlimited quantities. You begin to enjoy things less.
Ultimately you will have to go back to work to engage your mind and to keep yourself busy. Very few people can just do nothing and be happy. And those who can do so, I suspect, are either holy men, or feeble-minded.
When you don't work, you think you will be happy, but in reality your mind becomes free to dwell on trivial things and you slowly, imperceptibly grow to become dissatisfied with life. Small things begin to feel like big things. The simple pleasures you used to enjoy in small proportions begin to lose their potency because now you have the money and time to indulge them in unlimited quantities. You begin to enjoy things less.
Ultimately you will have to go back to work to engage your mind and to keep yourself busy. Very few people can just do nothing and be happy. And those who can do so, I suspect, are either holy men, or feeble-minded.
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
War on Terror vs War on Communism
Nothing is so irretrievably lost to a society as the sense of fear it felt about a grave danger that was subsequently coped with. -- George Will.
Reddit's demographic skews young, and people here don't often have the experience to be able to compare the modern "war on terror" to the "war on communism." The truth of the matter is that the war on terror is largely a peripheral concern in the United States, to a degree that Americans between, say, 1950 and 1989 would have loved to have. (As an aside, this is not to say that terrorism wasn't happening during the exact same period -- airplane hijackings in particular were relatively common during this forty-year period, and the thought process that developed on how to handle them played its own sad role on 9/11 -- just that it didn't filter to American cultural consciousness in a way that the "Soviet threat" did.) Yes, you see it on the nightly news, and yes, comedians make jokes about it and it informs both public and foreign policy -- but not to anywhere near the extent that communism did.
What the Americans saw: The USSR was, for at least a portion of its history, an aggressively expansionist and often foul-tempered entity with a largely opaque political process, a history of "disappearing" dissidents, and a united cadre of communist nations to back it up. Or at least, that was the American political establishment's experience with it. With the opening of the Soviet archives, we know a lot more now about the disagreements and infighting behind the scenes, and that what we thought of as being an unstoppable and belligerent empire was anything but. The Soviets didn't really want to go to war any more than we did (of course, exceptions existed on both sides), and each nation thought of the other as having all its ducks in a row and a united set of allies. Nope. Disagreements between the Soviets and Chinese over what to do about North Korea are pretty representative of stuff the Americans didn't know. It turns out the Soviets were no fools about what Kim il-Sung was up to and that they spent a lot of time trying to rein the crazy in. It didn't work and they sorely regretted having put him (and others around the world) in power, in much the same way that the Americans came to regret having supported their own batch of crazies in the interests of countering communism.
Not as crazy as it looks: This all looks insane with the benefit of 20+ years' worth of hindsight, but -- the more you study the era and how politicians on both side acted and why they did, the more you start to understand that, given the insanity of the time itself, just about all parties involved were actually behaving pretty rationally. The Soviets and Americans both behaved in a manner that made perfect sense for how their nations saw the world and their place in it. Or, to put it another way, look at the game theory governing mutual assured destruction. The idea of mass war with nuclear weapons is insane, but how people thought through it, and in essence, designed a system to prevent it, was actually pretty smart. Also smart was how quickly people on both sides recognized that the world was changing. I love to cite this article from 1989 as an example of the almost creepy prescience with which the U.S. military accurately predicted what it'd be doing today.
The Cold War's effect on the American perspective:
The world as a whole is safer and less violent than it's ever been, to a degree I think very few people truly appreciate. And if you want my honest opinion, future historians will see the modern "war on terror" as an inevitable development of the post-colonial world. They, too, will be writing in a period where that threat has passed and people are largely insensible to why it informed politics and culture the way it did. We are already starting to forget why the Cold War was as scary as it was.
Original comment by Cenodoxus
Reddit's demographic skews young, and people here don't often have the experience to be able to compare the modern "war on terror" to the "war on communism." The truth of the matter is that the war on terror is largely a peripheral concern in the United States, to a degree that Americans between, say, 1950 and 1989 would have loved to have. (As an aside, this is not to say that terrorism wasn't happening during the exact same period -- airplane hijackings in particular were relatively common during this forty-year period, and the thought process that developed on how to handle them played its own sad role on 9/11 -- just that it didn't filter to American cultural consciousness in a way that the "Soviet threat" did.) Yes, you see it on the nightly news, and yes, comedians make jokes about it and it informs both public and foreign policy -- but not to anywhere near the extent that communism did.
What the Americans saw: The USSR was, for at least a portion of its history, an aggressively expansionist and often foul-tempered entity with a largely opaque political process, a history of "disappearing" dissidents, and a united cadre of communist nations to back it up. Or at least, that was the American political establishment's experience with it. With the opening of the Soviet archives, we know a lot more now about the disagreements and infighting behind the scenes, and that what we thought of as being an unstoppable and belligerent empire was anything but. The Soviets didn't really want to go to war any more than we did (of course, exceptions existed on both sides), and each nation thought of the other as having all its ducks in a row and a united set of allies. Nope. Disagreements between the Soviets and Chinese over what to do about North Korea are pretty representative of stuff the Americans didn't know. It turns out the Soviets were no fools about what Kim il-Sung was up to and that they spent a lot of time trying to rein the crazy in. It didn't work and they sorely regretted having put him (and others around the world) in power, in much the same way that the Americans came to regret having supported their own batch of crazies in the interests of countering communism.
Not as crazy as it looks: This all looks insane with the benefit of 20+ years' worth of hindsight, but -- the more you study the era and how politicians on both side acted and why they did, the more you start to understand that, given the insanity of the time itself, just about all parties involved were actually behaving pretty rationally. The Soviets and Americans both behaved in a manner that made perfect sense for how their nations saw the world and their place in it. Or, to put it another way, look at the game theory governing mutual assured destruction. The idea of mass war with nuclear weapons is insane, but how people thought through it, and in essence, designed a system to prevent it, was actually pretty smart. Also smart was how quickly people on both sides recognized that the world was changing. I love to cite this article from 1989 as an example of the almost creepy prescience with which the U.S. military accurately predicted what it'd be doing today.
The Cold War's effect on the American perspective:
- Think about a forty year national nightmare with Soviet spies in the American nuclear program, nuclear weapons being moved to Cuba and within easy range of the continental United States (probably the closest the two countries came to all-out war before Khrushchev blinked), the "space race," and dick-swinging contests over Olympic athletes and scientific and cultural accomplishments.
- Think about Dead Hand and the rivers of ink spilled by commenters, academics, and polemicists for forty years about the potential for a Soviet-American War and what it would look like.
- Think about the German army's bald admission that it existed largely for the purpose of slowing the Soviet tank advance in the event of an invasion of western Europe.
The world as a whole is safer and less violent than it's ever been, to a degree I think very few people truly appreciate. And if you want my honest opinion, future historians will see the modern "war on terror" as an inevitable development of the post-colonial world. They, too, will be writing in a period where that threat has passed and people are largely insensible to why it informed politics and culture the way it did. We are already starting to forget why the Cold War was as scary as it was.
Original comment by Cenodoxus
IT Haikus
Clueless user wants,
the Office Paperclip back,
What is wrong with you?
Your server froze up,
kiss your documents goodbye,
next time run backup.
System infection,
Russian FakeAlert virus,
stop downloading porn.
Don't complain to me,
your system is ten years old,
I can't fix cheapness.
Client wants update,
Tech did not fill out ticket,
Need a crystal ball.
Internet is slow,
Somebody running torrent,
Fess up you bastard.
Tell you to restart,
You power cycle the screen,
Palm strikes face so hard.
To use Linux comp,
Requires savvy user,
They do not exist.
Want to go home soon,
Whoops, server just went fubar,
Another late night.
New linux install
Graphics driver, no bueno
You check back next year
Linux, Mac, Windows,
All well designed OSes,
End users, not really.
12 gigs to upload,
Comcast upstream is horseshit,
Moving to Japan.
Help desk is evil,
Those from outside cannot know,
Madness lies within.
Six AM, phone rings,
I can fake being awake,
Cannot fake happy.
Building a server,
Every part arrives on time,
Unless it's crucial.
Phone won't stop ringing,
Tickets like a waterfall,
Smash router, silence.
Call up MS tech,
Seven hours on the phone,
Ear is falling off.
Original Reddit post by debaucherawr
the Office Paperclip back,
What is wrong with you?
Your server froze up,
kiss your documents goodbye,
next time run backup.
System infection,
Russian FakeAlert virus,
stop downloading porn.
Don't complain to me,
your system is ten years old,
I can't fix cheapness.
Client wants update,
Tech did not fill out ticket,
Need a crystal ball.
Internet is slow,
Somebody running torrent,
Fess up you bastard.
Tell you to restart,
You power cycle the screen,
Palm strikes face so hard.
To use Linux comp,
Requires savvy user,
They do not exist.
Want to go home soon,
Whoops, server just went fubar,
Another late night.
New linux install
Graphics driver, no bueno
You check back next year
Linux, Mac, Windows,
All well designed OSes,
End users, not really.
12 gigs to upload,
Comcast upstream is horseshit,
Moving to Japan.
Help desk is evil,
Those from outside cannot know,
Madness lies within.
Six AM, phone rings,
I can fake being awake,
Cannot fake happy.
Building a server,
Every part arrives on time,
Unless it's crucial.
Phone won't stop ringing,
Tickets like a waterfall,
Smash router, silence.
Call up MS tech,
Seven hours on the phone,
Ear is falling off.
Original Reddit post by debaucherawr
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