domain:aporiamagazine.com
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1hr ago
The ones you get as a student prominently say something like "valid for work only with DHS authorization" on them, though.
OliveTapenade
1hr ago
I think it's because the United States already uses imperial, switching over carries a cost, the United States is large enough that there is no pressure to switch for the sake of standardisation with neighbours, and the United States is historically quite bad at top-down standardisation and national reform. There are fifty states, some might embrace metric and some would resist it, and the federal government would struggle to make it compulsory - it would incur both state resistance and widespread popular resistance. Whichever government tries to make the switch is going to face a lot of complaints, and the other party is inevitably going to seize the issue and portray themselves as soming to save your measurements. Lastly, Americans hate being made to conform with the rest of the world - there is a very strong sense of national exceptionalism and defiance. The ingrained sense of "but we're different" wins out - from everything from climate agreements to conventions on landmines, the US has a tradition of being the exception. Telling the rest of the world to piss off usually goes down well domestically. It's a bit like the British attitude to EU regulations, or the Japanese attitude to whaling. Maybe on its own it wasn't a big issue, but the moment it becomes an issue of pushy, arrogant foreigners telling us what we ought to do, the US goes, "You know what? I'm gonna start doing it even harder."
Disclaimer: I'm Australian, Imperial units are garbage, metric is superior.
teleoplexy
1hr ago
I've seen it - liked it a lot. I was wary of it too, and specifically I'm seeing how the "Dear subhuman scum" crowd who cheered for Don't Look Up loves it and it pisses me off just because I don't want to be associated with them in any way. It uses our modern political background to explore kooky characters and their psycho-sexual relations, which is what PTA is really interested in. I'd even dare say in parts he criticizes the resistance libs too, although it's much more subtle than Eddington, for example. If you want to dig deeper, beyond political, there's stuff to chew on - or at least I certainly found something.
OliveTapenade
1hr ago
That's my experience, anecdotally. People sometimes measure things in feet and inches, but I take that as just because feet are a practically useful, everyday measure that there isn't a good metric equivalent for. Every now and then I hear people say 'miles', but at least in my generation, every time I hear 'mile', I need to mentally multiply by 1.6 in order to visualise what it means.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1hr ago
Evidence that you have been asked to judge the work of others, either individually or on a panel
This one's basically a free space. Reviewed coworker's code? Check. Gave your teammate feedback on their performance? Check. Etc.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
1hr ago
The only thing Australians generally still do in Imperial is human height measurement.
DiscourseMagnus
1hr ago
...the metric system? Really? Are you sure? I grew up on a lot of anti-metric-system propaganda but it was all just about it being smug Euro garbage that infringed on American pride and so on. And on the other hand I've heard a lot of interesting (conspiracy) theories on what the mark of the beast might be but none of them remotely resembled the metric system. That's unusually stupid.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2hr ago
Has anyone seen One Battle After Another yet? Is it the lib resistance bait all the (ostensibly positive) reviews make it out to be? I've enjoyed a number of PTA's past films, but all the reviews using the words powerful or important or timely give me a bad feeling.
lagrangian
2hr ago
Roth IRA limits are not that high. ~250K currently, with for two-income family - or moderately well earning one-income - is not a lot. Once you hit that, no Roth for you.
Mega-backdoor Roth 401k allows up to 70k/year contributions with no income limit. Your employer has to offer it. FAANG does. It's a normal roth in terms of tax treatment.
When leaving the employer, you can convert to roth IRA with no penalties. Even better, you can leave it as non-roth until leaving the company, again with no penalties (but ofc you pay the income taxes to convert to roth).
KingOfTheBailey
2hr ago
A government that cannot maintain territorial integrity is a government I consider to be "too small".
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3hr ago
Yeah, weird. Almost as though they had different conditions which led to them taking different actions.
They almost all either switched prior to mass education and industrialization in their countries, or they half-assed it and ended up with a weird Frankenstein system like the UK, Canada, and Australia
TIRM
3hr ago
I like when then they bust someone and scarily state that he had a few guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition in his home. Pretending as though that is noteworthy or strange.
srf0638
3hr ago
A different post reminded me that I just finished Anton Myrer's Once an Eagle, a sprawling midcentury epic supposedly beloved among America's military officer corps. Doesn't really get into gear for a while but no regrets. Now chipping away at John Holt's How Children Fail, as reviewed in the ratsphere--so far, some of the phenomenology of confusion seems exceptionally penetrating and insightful, but there's a good deal that seems wrong or confused. And there's not much of a positive program yet, but after all it's not called How to Unschool.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3hr ago
I don't really disagree with that, but it's not relevant to the argument. I can think of a lot of jobs I think are net negative.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
3hr ago
I'm a big fan of Lionel Shriver's The Mandibles (published in 2016). Mania was a fun take on cancel culture. Apparently her latest novel is set to take on immigration.
TIRM
3hr ago
Public school administrators as a parasite class. The teachers are far below these people.
But I actually think most school administrators are not productive in a "positive net value of their labor sense". There's been a multi-hundred percent increase in school administrators in the past few decades. There's some correct level of administration and then there's the Iron Law of Institutions run wild. I think we are far into the second case regarding public school administration.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3hr ago
Same reason we don't use the metric system
We don't use the metric system because it's not in the rational interests of people to switch. The imperial system sucks for kids (because they have to memorize the conversions), and if you have to do the math by hand I guess, but your typical adult already knows the conversions they need and has a calculator to handle the math. So they get no benefit, but would have to put up with learning all the new measurements. There's no upside for them.
anon_
3hr ago
This may be true, but the price of accepting that (for us in the US) is that our government will never get a handle around removable aliens.
Zephyr
3hr ago
The parallels between being woke and being in a religion have definitely not gone unnoticed.
MayorofOysterville
3hr ago
Thats about what I learned approximately five years later from your timeline.
There was a minor American evangelical opposition to bar codes and the metric system. Both accused of being the mark of the beast. I'm not clear if these people in particular were able to block it's adoption, but they existed.
Of the era ramblings in this manner.
Much more modern example of similar ramblings.
Accusations that the metric system is somehow linked to the mark of the beast originated in, at the latest, the 1870s. This is an OG conspiracy theory picked up by some Americans in the 1970s.
There are other fringe Christians also long opposed to metric system based on an unrelated understanding of the holy meaning of the inch. So metric system advocates are also working for the devil.
"Let's count units by 10s."
"The devil put you up to this?"
Kind of approximately the last century and a half. At least for some fringe minority.
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