Mewis
3d ago
I feel like this is a little bit unfair on zoomers here. It's true that online applications are kind of a waste of time, the response rate is so poor. At the same time the boomer nostrum of "just go in and give them a firm handshake" might have worked for (white) men back in 1955, an age when people were happy to hand out junior executive positions to (white) dudes they just met, but it's just silly in this day and age. The old world is dead, but the new struggles to be born - in the meantime we have crappy online job boards.
Personally, looking for temporary work in New Zealand, I've gotten work through all of online applications, pavement pounding, agencies and word of mouth. There's value, too, in being aggressive - just asking people you meet if they know of any work going has some response rate. I think maybe some people worry they're being pushy but most managers do not like looking for new staff and are happy to see people who just want to work.
(More that all of this is for low wage/status work. The game is totally different if you want like, a real career)
Mewis
13d ago
Who are 'artists'? Can you speak plainly and say what you actually mean instead of sneering and generalising like this?
Mewis
1mo ago
Expensive and politically unfeasible make it sound hard, not easy. Perhaps it would be better to say that it's simple - depositing a hundred thousand dollars in the bank account of every pregnant woman would be very simple, but also very hard.
Mewis
1mo ago
That seems like poor policy. Even a pretty aggressive procreator is going to struggle to reach 4 21+ GC at 65, and it would in turn strongly penalise the family if the 21 year old grand daughters are forced into work and taxpaying instead of procreating.
Mewis
1mo ago
Some degree of sovereignty is needed, in which case you are no longer Mr Money, Private Citizen.
Mewis
2mo ago
Or he could just raise his leg and turn slightly, causing your underpowered hit to glance off the meatiest part of his body.
Mewis
2mo ago
I've always been reluctant to take an antidepressant. My mother took them once and she says they made her almost suicidal.
Exercise has never helped, personally. I'm pretty rigorous about exercise but even when I did physical labour job + regular lifting I still hated myself.
I think it's less about what I'm doing wrong and more about what don't have that's right. I don't have a relationship or a career or any real accomplishments.
Mewis
2mo ago
The knife cuts both ways, however. Logically, there will be happy days in the future. But even on the happiest days, I think - none of this will help, or change me - I will be depressed and ashamed and worthless again. And then I feel further ashamed - for not appreciating my own fortune, for not being sufficiently grateful, for not being as positive and upbeat as I should be.
All this is well and good, but besides the point. As your Bible says, man does not live on bread alone. I am capable, sometimes, of enjoying myself. I can masturbate or drink alcohol or play a video game or watch an entertaining video. I can take a walk through nature or something more traditionally considered to be pleasurable. I can engage others in pleasant, polite conversation. None of these things make me feel less cold or inhuman on the inside, though they might distract me.
I have been depressed on and off for about 2.5 years. I don't think there's some biological mechanism. My moods don't seem to be correlated with sunshine days, diet, or supplementation. My testosterone is quite low but that's about it.
For for a moral inventory, I honestly don't feel that anyone has ever had a negative impact on my life (except myself).
The question, I think, is about desire and happiness. Is the route to happiness followed by putting aside or ignoring your idiosyncratic desires. And if so how do you separate your own desire from that of society.
Mewis
2mo ago
I don't know about famine. I knew the autarky years were very rough for Spain, especially coming after years of civil war.
Mewis
2mo ago
The US looks fine to me. Obviously not perfect, but then China is hardly building utopia either. I couldn't say who would win in a war.
As for Jack Barsky, it's not clear what, if anything, his case proves. This very ideologically committed spy did not manage a decade before he became a bigamist, and just ten years in America, he refused his order to return to the USSR. So I don't expect that second generation Chinese born and raised in the US will possess any loyalty to China. The spy's contradiction is that he must maintain total loyalty to a faraway entity while not also cultivating any loyalty to the people he actually lives with.
And as well, it's not obvious that it's that easy to just walk into the corridors of power. Barsky ended up as a programmer, not in the State Department.
Mewis
2mo ago
Why not? People get guidance by taking LSD, consulting horoscopes and talking to God.
Mewis
2mo ago
Well, we've come around from 'seeking external help is always bad' to 'sometimes seeking external help is good and sometimes it's not'. I guess I can't argue with that.
Mewis
3mo ago
If Trump is still running for President in 2040... I mean, I don't really want to think about that.
Mewis
3mo ago
I agree that it remains to be seen whether this can be sustained. And the US also still has a lot of visionaries like Elon Musk. But it seems like the tide is going out for them.
Mewis
4mo ago
My understanding is that DEXA scans aren't really that reliable and that headline bf levels are not very useful. Personally I just go by how tight my lifting belt is. Unless you're very obese fluctuations in your body fat should be apparent.
And it seems like fixating on the scan right now is hurting more than it helps. You're unable to start cutting now because if you lost weight now, it would go unmeasured.
Mewis
4mo ago
Well, I don't understand how if the consequence of any peace deal is that Putin will attack, that doesn't imply that war is inevitable. It's true that's not the exact words what you said, but it seems like a pretty direct implication. Unless I'm misunderstanding, in which case I invite you to clarify.
Mewis
5mo ago
Distrust is not what is at issue here. Distrusting Putin is rational. Claiming to be able to read his mind and predict what he might do in five years is not rational.
Mewis
5mo ago
I enjoyed it well enough but found myself blocked on progression due to no artifacts and that raising the difficulty made it quite unfun and frustrating.
Mewis
5mo ago
Many otherwise mundane activities can elicit a sexual response in some people. It doesn't follow that because of a minority of paraphiles, that those activities are sexual.
Mewis
5mo ago
I am a gay man, so it's not that I don't get it (though I'm more of a leg extension man myself). But then, some people are turned on by women shopping for wonder bread. That doesn't make it sexual.
Mewis
5mo ago
I personally started doing longer sets of touch and go deadlifts recently, but that sounds like a good way to dial in technique.
Mewis
5mo ago
Thanks for the advice, I have the lord of the rings movies on a laptop, my phone and headphones, plus books, hopefully that keeps me entertained. I'm pretty good I adjusting my sleep schedule, and I will arrive at my hostel early evening, so I reckon I'm good to sleep Sunday night.
I can see my hips shooting up. I think it's me not pulling the slack out of the bar. I never really felt much of a need for straps, I use chalk and it's enough for me to rep out 160kg. Only issue there is that on my right hand my thumb ends up colliding with my thighs at the top.
Sure, it's understandable why the Austrians demanded those concessions - they anticipated that the Serbians would be unwilling to comply or unable to within the very small timeframe offered, which would justify a military invasion. As you say, it's very understandable realpolitik - which is to say, lies and disregard for the weak.
(I don't think this is really that similar to Afghanistan. The AH interest in Serbia and the Balkans was long-running, part of a grander expansionist policy. But Afghanistan did not fit all that well into American foreign policy. If anything, it has interfered with and muddled long-term State Department strategy.)
The Russians had just as much stake in the Balkans as the Austro-Hungarians did - it was there, and they wanted it for themselves.
I don't see how Germany having Austria's back is defensible and France having Russia's back is not. Fact is it's just moronic not to help your allies. Was France supposed to just twiddle their thumbs while the Germans defeated their ally, knowing that they would soon be next? This is always a problem with alliances and commitments - those that you commit yourself to alliance with might take advantage of your reliance on them to do what they wish. Of course, this was not a problem for Germany and Austria.
Germany wanted a general war in 1914. Germany's guarantee to Austria was intended to increase the likelihood of war. They were ready for war and confident of victory. France and Russia were not. In addition, many in Germany feared that Russia would become an unbeatable foe if their army was successfully modernized. German strategy sought to knock the French out of the war quickly in a repeat of 1870, and then settle in for a longer and more grueling conflict against the Russians.
All of which can be laid at the feet of the German militarists who sought in 1914 to dominate Europe through force of arms. The fact is that it was they who loosed Lenin on Russia. The fascists who arose in Germany were no aberration, for they were cut from the same cloth as the Prussian militarists who were the driving force in 1914. Had the Germans simply accepted the status quo in 1914, all these things and more could have been averted. Instead, they chose escalation. They chose to believe that war was inevitable, and made it thus. All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.
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