30 May 2016, 7:10 am
30 May 2016, 7:50 am
General statements: Yes this is a long post - what difference would it make if this were split up into 3 or 4 posts, it's still the same amount of words and time to read. Skim and scan it if you don't want to waste time reading this as you have work, I personally wouldn't waste all of my valuable time reading this either. I am addressing two individuals in this post, so scroll down to your name in bold for my response to you personally.
RetroGamer:
"In broad terms yes but it's all based on secondhand accounts..."
And that's usually the kind of information I get myself. Second-hand accounts as my family/friends have rarely experienced 'the system' as well.
Though when I said 'the system' regarding psychology, I just meant I don't be a part of it. Being in a family of essentially mentally ill low-lifes/criminals has some advantages, namely they know the shadier and darker sides of the medical field.
"I don't know about your school but my school didn't explain it at all..."
ATAR is 'Op score' here, but it's basically same thing but with a different name. Good news is my school at the very least explained ranking system.
"Not only do they not explain ATAR but they don't explain in detail which subjects you have to choose for a given career."
Heck yes. I did Maths A (QLD maths = Pre-voc/low level, and Maths A, B and C. C = best, A = lowest but still in the mainstream tier.
Did Biology but soon realized Maths B was needed.
"With schools like that students have to hope their parents have been to university to explain it to them..."
So true. I know little to no one who can offer any sort of insight into what I would be in for if I went to university. Literally no one to ask, no one to turn to.
Of course there's 'general' information I can google, but it does not compare to someone's actual real-life experiences. Brochures and advertisements are useless in this regard.
"My single mother dropped out part way through year 10 and is totally unemployable."
Year 9 for mine, not single atm, but has luckily had a few jobs. That was when I was little though and she hasn't had one in probably a decade.
"This is what you call the poverty cycle..."
I'm aware of the poverty cycle and yep I can see how it applies to my family.
And they certainly do.
"Now once you get into university the system is no less complicated..."
So you agree most of our high school's curriculum's are absolute useless rubbish. 
"It's not really hard labour...."
Hm. Might look into it then.
"Think carefully about that, not because I think it's immoral but because I think you may regret it later."
Don't worry, I d every single day. For the very reasons you suggest I should. However, it is possible to study and be on DSP. Better that than juggling 3 part-time jobs to make ends meet. Thank f*ck I'm Indigenous.
"I'm not trying to be mean or judgemental, I'm just trying to help you have a happier life with less regret..."
I hate technology. Dealing with technology has never been my thing, despite being a millenial and an aspie at that. I've only ever had bad experiences in IT classes in school and dealing with technology in general.
I'd have to use a new and confusing program basically every assignment. They were alwyas buggy and glitchy even straight after installation on the school computers. They would delete my sh*t no matter how much I did or how hard I tried to save them. This resulted in me not even trying because the useless teachers couldn't/didn't do anything about it, except of course encourage me to start from scratch or they'll fail me. 
I'm tired of dealing with it most of the time tbh. I'm tired of being bombarded with a million and one updates what feels like every week. I'm tired of just trying to browse the net but being told I need to update my broser. Worse still, I recently got the news Apple will stop giving Google Chrome updates on older macs such as mine.
Technology makes me feel powerless. Many websites now force you to sign up/subscribe just to access even the basics of their content, there's broken automatic soap dispensers at the local shopping centre toilets that have been broken for about 6 months. I can't even wash my f*cking hands anymore, apparently. Restaurants rely on machines to the point if their drink/ice cream machine breaks down, they can't serve you half the menu. I can't even eat what I want anymore sometimes. If we're going to have automatic cars I WANT manual/human driving to be an option.
Bigger machines already frustrate me to no end, but smaller technology? Don't even go there.
However, you're right about me being 'smart' and having 'potential'. I've been told this all the time and am destined for more than what most of my family are (poverty).
"When I was your age I used to hate teenagers with all their popular music and confusing slang lol. Nowadays I just envy them for all their ambition and potential, sigh."
Yes this is what I like about the youth. The only redeeming quality is their ambition., potential, optimism, etc.
If anything though, millenials have got to be the most over-idealistic and blindly positive generation I've ever come across.
This generation has seen the rise of 'geek culture' (usually fake posers) and a fetish for technology.
We have lower rates of care for the environment and politics than previous generations, higher rates of narcissism and selfishness, we consider wealth more important, and are less philosophical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials#Traits
I'm more of a pessimistic misanthrope half the time, so I naturally don't fit in. I'm left-winged and yet this generation is far to liberal for me.
"If you want a really quiet job maybe you could be an astronomer
My childhood dream. Not as far-fetched as I thought it used to be either. Maybe, but tell me, who's hiring? 
b19:
"what system? i had hundreds of people operating the various systems i wrote for them to use when i programmed for various companies, and they liked to use them because it was easy."
Education system is quite lackluster compared to some other nations, but nowhere near as bad as the U.S.
"people the whole world over like to be relieved of manual labor and if i can relieve people of their various disgruntlements, then their bosses not only experience a reduction in their necessity to deal with poor morale, but also an increase in efficiency that spells dollars."
Of course, though another complaint is quite figuratively the dying of labor work. Everything's run by computers and software nowadays that most people of blue collar work (mechanics, factory workers, etc.) now need degrees from uni and extensive technological knowledge.
It's not as easy anymore as it used to be. Tradies and apprentiships seem to be dying, at least in the traditional sense of the word (hand's-on rather than computer/technology work).
"most of the the girls at the places i worked in australia were very modest and unassuming but nevertheless aware of my power within the company and appreciative of the benefits i enable for them."
Are you bringing up past posts?
Yes, Australian women are nice. I don't dislike them at all.
"Don't hate the player, hate the game" or in clearer terms it's no Ad Hominem - it is not Australian women I dislike, it is Australian attitude/culture.
At least in my experiences, Australia seems to have this subtle, uncomfortably powerful Feminism vibe to it. Not 'Feminism' as in equality Feminism, but as in women wanting superiority or not caring about men's rights.
This extends for me not just for Feminism but for various ideologies.
As I said to RetroGamer I'm a misanthropic pessimist with controversial, politically incorrect opinions. Australian youth appear to typically be overly-liberal, overly-politically correct Social Justice Warriors (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... %20warrior) with a strong sense of western Marxism.
This one small branch of Australian culture, that is, our youth, I can not get along with or relate to as any sense of controversial of different views of the world are swiftly attacked and silenced.
I am an Existentialist with a completely immoral view of the world. I do not believe in right/wrong, good/evil or anything of the such whatsoever.
I don't believe in morals but ironically find great pleasure questioning morals to those that do believe in them.
My attitude is controversial in contrast to the typical pro-gender equality, pro-LGBT, pro-multi-culturalism of Australian youth.
They think I'm some sociopath of sorts when, on the contrary, I hold many of the same beliefs they do, just in a different way.
It's hard to describe in simplistic terms.
Otherwise, I love Australian women. They are amazing culturally.
"australia is not some oppressive place at all. if you do good work you will be rewarded healthily with wealth."
Yes, we have the world's second highest Human Development Index. Our debt is relatively low and wealthy high. The economy is good.
The only major issues are education system, legal system, and politics. Compared to most other nations our government is stable, but compared to most of Europe and the U.S., it's pathetically unstable and always changing.
Australia in itself isn't a bad place. My issues with Australia are that badness is coming. The calm before the storm. I sense political collapse, economic recession, etc.
We're a relatively young country, we haven't been around long enough to see just how desecrated we can become. It's good now, but it's all downhill from here.
30 May 2016, 7:58 am
RetroGamer87
Veteran
Joined: 30 Jul 2013
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,085
Location: Adelaide, Australia
01 Jun 2016, 9:24 pm
Also, this might sound like a strange one and it was partly my fault but I used to have a real problem with initiative. In some of my subjects they didn't tell me when and where to hand up my assignments then later they told me I hadn't submitted anything. I don't remember those days very clearly and I was on some very strong sedatives but I remember for at least some of my classes back then I used to hand in work on floppy disks.
And that's another thing, they way they used to/still do drug up students who don't learn by sitting still, listening and not moving or saying anything. Yes the drugs fixed my behavioural problems but they caused my grades to plummet. I didn't understand why all the other students were suddenly much smarter than me. I thought it was just because I was weak. I blamed myself.
I think maybe the doctor who put me on those drugs thought that getting me to be calm down was more important than me getting good grades. Or maybe he didn't even think of my grades, like he thought I could still get high grades while sedated. I'm sure he was never sedated when he was young. The reason why I think doctors have a lack of empathy in these cases is because when they were in high school they got an A+ on every single assignment they ever did. In other words they don't know what it's like to not be a genius, they don't acknowladge the problems non genius people have to deal with.
It's the same with politicians. Not that I think they're geniuses, far from it but to get into their lofty positions they were all workaholics from a young age. A lot of them studied law, which is much harder than most other uni courses (the ASD consultant at work majored in disability, she took one unit of disability and law and it was by far the hardest subject she'd ever did while all the law students in the class were saying how easy it is). I think that's why politicians don't have empathy for the common man who can't work more than 8 hours per day without feeling exhausted (or the common man who can't continue working while he's exhausted).
They don't want to help unemployed people because they've never been unemployed, partly through their extreme work ethic and partly through luck. It's like if you have a big crowd of people and start flipping a coin. You say "stand up if you think the outcome will be heads or sit down if you think the outcome will be tails, if you get it wrong you're out". You flip the coin ten times and there's only one person remaining in the game. He one through pure chance. I think some politicians or other successful people are like that. Through pure chance nothing ever went wrong for them. They never got any long term illness or anything like that (Until they do, look at Mark Latham, who rose very quickly through the ranks of the Labor Party until one day he got sick and dropped out of the federal election) so they have no empathy for sick people or normal people because they've never experienced that. Or if they got sick they just worked through it or studied through it. They think everyone can do that because they did. That's why doctors only give you two days off when you're quite sick, when they got sick they never took more than two days off because if they did they would have failed medschool, so while they were sick they went back to studying.
As for the schools, I had severe depression and anxiety at the time but I didn't even know there were such things as depression or anxiety. I just thought I was weak. Maybe the prescription drugs did it. The counselors were useless at diagnosing. They couldn't diagnose if your ass was on fire. One of them was also the gym teacher, yes he was the stereotypical TV gym instructor who liked yelling "hooo rah!" He thought the solution to complex psychological problems was to just "toughen up".
Did Biology but soon realized Maths B was needed.
I think a lot of stuff in schools is set up for the benefit of the teachers. They don't realize that the school wasn't built for their benefit. That's not the purpose of school.
So true. I know little to no one who can offer any sort of insight into what I would be in for if I went to university. Literally no one to ask, no one to turn to.
That's my experience with my rich snobby aunt. The one who comes up with detailed plans for her kids and expected me to have the same success without anyone to tell me how the system works. When I said I told her I was struggling at TAFE she said I was a "namby pamby winger".
So really that's the bias. Those in positions of authority, the doctor, the politicians and especially the managers have never known what it's like to fail and so they keep pushing people. There are some people lucky enough to enjoy their work and study so much that they get obsessed with it. Instead of having to push themselves through it they want to spend as much time as they can doing it because it's like a fun hobby for them. They find it exhilarating. Those guys will live a happy life but they don't realize that other people have to really push themselves to work or study. Unlike them, other people need to rest. Or there are some people with A-type personalities who aren't so much obsessed with a task they enjoy but just feel anxious when they're not doing a task regardless of whether or not they enjoy it. For these people, to slow down or rest causes them great anxiety. I really wish I could get into one of those mindsets (preferably the first one) because then I could not only work more effectively but also without it seeming like much work. Whatever work I'm doing could become the source of my happiness rather than something to be endured, it would be a big part of my life rather than something my life has to be put on hold for. People like these don't understand us ordinary folks. They don't understand why we get tired from what to them seems like very easy tasks.
The worst part about this bias is those who succeed keep on saying we live in a meritocracy but the positive feedback loops that reinforce wealth and poverty mean that really we live in an aristocracy. But in the old style aristocracies they knew they were living in an aristocracy. In the old days a pauper would ask a duke "Why aren't I rich like you" and he'd say "because you weren't born a duke". Nowadays with the illusion of meritocracy the poor and disadvantaged can ask the successful and the reply comes back "because you were lazy. It's all your fault." At least in the old days the duke never told the peasant it was his own fault he was born a peasant. Blaming the poor for being poor just adds insult to injury.
People think the poor can break the poverty cycle themselves. If they could do that, they would have already done so.
When I say they should have more emphasis on IT, I mean actual IT, not just using a computer. Some schools congratulate themselves for being very modern when they have a lot of computers but if these computers are just used as word processors for non IT related subject matter than they're not teaching IT. Even worse, recently some schools have started using iPads instead of computers. That's like trying to teach someone how to ride a bike using only tricycles. When I was a by, we didn't have a computer at home. Without the computers at school, I wouldn't even have learned how to use Windows. I know there are many other poor kids who don't have computers at home but use them at school but if the school uses iPads then they won't ever learn how to use a desktop computer. It's a totally different interface.
Imagine trying to get a job if you only knew how to use an iPad. You can bet the guys at the office would expect you to know basic Windows straight away. It's nearly as bad at those Macbook based schools. I've had to use both Windows and Macintosh at work so I know how different they are. I've worked at a Macintosh based office and found they were willing to teach me how to use Mac because they know most people are used to Windows but I'll bet if I worked at a Windows based office and only knew how to use Macintosh it would be a different story. If I only knew how to use an iPad I'd be the equivalent of the little old lady who can't use technology (my mother).
I heard from one year 10 student from an iPad based schools that they expect him to type lengthy essays on the touch screen. On a computer it's possible to type out a couple of thousand words in an hour but to do that on a touch screen would take ages. And then, when they get to uni and/or the workforce, you an bet they'll be expected to know how to touch type. Everyone at the office knows how to touch type. Literally everyone. Even the non IT staff. If you went through school with only iPads, you won't be able to touch type. If you went through school with only iPads and then went to university, you won't know how to use the computers there (if you also didn't have a computer at home). You can bet that a first year uni student is just expected to know how to use the desktops there. Even if you go into the information desk to sign up, they'll direct you to a desktop and get you to sign up on that.
Other than that, I think schools are just designed to get students used to doing useless, menial tasks without question so they'll be used to doing that at work. The most often taught lesson at school is obedience. That's the Prussian model we use. I think different students have different learning styles and they force everyone to adopt the same learning styles. If the curriculum matches your learning style than you'll cruise through with ease, if not then you'll have a very heard time while other students pass you by and while the teacher tells you the reason you're failing is because you're lazy.
My Fung Fu instructor says we can only concentrate really well for 90 minutes per day. For this reason we need forms of rest, other than sleep. Concentrating every waking moment doesn't work for most people.
Sometimes even when I'm certain I used the right password it still won't let me in for reasons unknown and when I go to password reset it sends the email to an account that's no longer used or if I get it wrong three times it locks me out. One time I had this banking thing that wanted to send me a text message code that would be valid for 3 minutes. The text came 5 hours later. I remember getting emails from Centrelink saying "We have a letter for you, please log in to read it", when I tried to sign up they needed my birth certificate, which I didn't have.
So yeah, I hate technology sometimes as well. Like when I wanted to watch a video file and my computer was broken and my so called "smart tv" had a message saying "unable to play file" or when I have obvious adware on my computer but every scanner says "0 results found" or when it took me ages to figure out how to pair an Android smart watch to a BlackBerry phone (I figured it out in the end) or when I have a computer than thousands of times slower than one from the 80s but it runs slower than one from the 80s because modern software is so bloated and filled with unnecessary GUI crap or when the computer says most of the RAM is in use so I increase the RAM and it still says most of the RAM is in use or when they stop making smartphones with keyboards (except the BlackBerry) and everything is on tablets and everything uses awful touch screens which is really bad for a kinesthetic thinker like me because there it gives no tactile link between hand and eye or when every phone needs a case because they have the screen flush with the front but if the screen was inset just a little way it would prevent 90% of cracked screens but they're more concerned about making the phone look trendy and minimalist rather than more durable even though all the trendy thin metallic phones will end up being stuck inside chunky rubber cases so no one will end up seeing their stupid design anyway or when the buttons are made really small so they'll look more trendy but this makes them hard to use or when the plug is in the powerpoint but there's no power because it's sitting inside without making contact or when Windows runs slow because the registry is filled with crap I never use or when...
I think sometimes our labour saving machines require more work to use than they save. For this reason I think we can never have a society where technology does all the work for us because we've reached the point where adding new technology actually increases the workload through added complexity rather than saves it.
Just imagine if these self-driving cars or other machines require an always on internet connection and it has to send a lot of megabits per second to work. Fine in places like America or the UK but with our National Fraudband Network and politicians saying we'll never need fast speeds (because they don't know about Moore's Law) it could mean in Australia your self-driving car will say "insufficient bandwidth available" and stop.
When every country but Australia gets fast Internet all websites and appliances will require a fast connection just to work, meaning none of them can be used in Australia.
What's happened is we have the government building infustructure that should be handled by 100% private companies. This is socialism. It's just like in socialist countries when even in a big city the electricity can black out for hours every evening or the running water can stop working for days at a time or the supermarkets have literally no food on the shelves meanwhile the politicians make speeches about how your country is richer and more prosperous than any other country.
Especially when you have have the police arresting people who reveal the truth about how badly the NBN is failing. That's exaclty like in a socialist country. It's like how in North Korea they arrest anyone who mentions the failure of the Ryugyong Hotel. A good government doesn't have to arrest people who criticize them. Australia is trying to catch up with North Korea. Eventually we'll have both the government and the infrastructure to match.
I think Australia is headed towads a type of right wing communism that combines the worst elements of the left wing and right wing.
Tell me, what are your interests. If you can turn that into your career you'll never work a day in your life.
If anything though, millenials have got to be the most over-idealistic and blindly positive generation I've ever come across.
Maybe one area where America is ahead of us is that it's less taboo to fail over there. Here it feels like if you fail at something you're screwed for life but over there you can just try again and maybe succeed the next time. Can't we be a land of second chances?
The extreme liberals and the extreme conservatives both want to end freedom of speech. They both make their own kind of ridiculous arguments but they both have the same goal. Power. The only difference is that they tell different lies to get the same power. They're both passive aggressive. They both play the victim and then accuse the other side of playing the victim.
I could respect liberals if they didn't spend so much time segregating people based on identity politics. I could respect conservatives if they were truly fiscally conservative instead of just saying they are than waisting billions of dollars on useless projects. If they didn't inflate their surplus by selling off public infrastructure(like Telstra). If they didn't say they're against welfare while hypocritically doling out corporate welfare and middle class welfare and upper class welfare (then again, the only reason my employer is in Australia is due to the tax breaks).
My childhood dream. Not as far-fetched as I thought it used to be either. Maybe, but tell me, who's hiring?
Just now they're building a big radio telescope array in Western Australia. Listen to The Science Show every Saturday on ABC Radio National. They have a lot of stuff about Australian astronomy. I suggest you get a PhD in astronomy, though you might be able to get in with just a masters degree. Just remember that astronomers don't get paid as much as lawyers or doctors.
If you're interested in that sort of thing, why not be a plumber. It's a well paid job. There will always be a need for plumbers. Civilization is literally dependent on plumbing. Even the Romans needed it. We could more easily live without electricity and computers than we could without plumbing.
Maybe the problem is the internet. With Google you can find thousands of articles that agree with opinions you already hold. With forums you can find like minded people. This means that the internet generation aren't used to seeing opinions that disagree with theirs. So when they see another opinion it shocks them. Another consequence is they don't know what arguing is. As I said, I got into a lot of arguments in my rambunctious youth but the SJW generation don't know how to formulate a proper counter argument. They just say "No, you're wrong!" It's like a reasoned argument is a foreign concept to them. Or they make claims without citing any evidence and then get surprised when you don't instantly believe them.
It really bothers me what will happen when these youth grow older and assume positions of power. Have you read Nineteen Eighty-Four? A lot of the stuff they do reminds me of that book. That could be where we're heading and it scares me. Also by George Orwell there's animal farm, where they repeat the same slogans over and over again. So every time I hear SJWs chanting the same simple minded slogan I think of "Four legs good, two legs bad" from Animal Farm. It shows how the dictator decided that his complex web of lies were too hard for the simple masses to understand so he distilled them into short, unreasoning slogans.
The truth is they will say anything to get more power. Even if it means contradicting themselves. Even if it means saying stuff that actually insults their own group. They will belittle their own group as a means of eliciting sympathy.
Anyway, while the western world is destroying itself and while western universities and work places are waisting time with SJW crap and expelling their best students and professors and firing their most talented workers for offending some talentless fatso, the Asians are studying and working harder and harder. You can bet they don't waste time on SJW crap. In fact they barely have enough time to sleep. So while us westerners are waisting time and firing our talent the Asians are studying 20 hours per day and getting smarter and smarter while we get dumber and dumber.
In a few years the industrious Asians will economically dominate us lazy westerners. You can bet they'll laugh at us when they see our universities waste time on SJW while their universities teach science and engineering day and night. They'll say "No wonder we dominated you economically, no wonder we have better science and technology than you, you wasted your time, expelled your most talented students and fired your best professors".
Truly this will be the Asian century, unless they all die from heart attacks resulting from overworking themselves.
02 Jun 2016, 9:28 am
"Which sides?"
My step-dad has seen and been involved with one-way and two-way drug deals between hospital workers and drug dealers.
He's seen doctors actually cut up some tablets and put meth or other substances and patch them back up again.
He's the type of guy you know is honest enough to believe most of what he says. He's seen a lot and experienced a lot and still just 35.
Because a lot of the family have mental disabilities, we also know of patient abuse, mental hospital horror stories, retirement home abuse stories, etc.
W're aware of just how apathetic and uncaring doctors and psychologists can be, who may only care about getting a paycheck over patient safety or well-being.
Like I said long ago - if you have mental illness, society doesn't care about making you better, it only wants you to be harmless.
"My school didn't even fully explain the grading system. Instead of A, B, C, D and F they had some other system where I usually got an SA for "satisfactory achievement" but since that was used to describe all any and all passes I didn't know if I got a high pass or barely passed. They should have just used the A, B, C, D and F system. That's easier to understand. I spoke to other people around Adelaide, some of them said they went through the RNM and SA grading system and some of them said they had the A, B, C, D and F system."
Nah, I had the same thing, but understood it.
Annoyingly unnecessary imho, and i still referred to 'SA's and 'VHA''s and that as just 'C' and 'A' and such even if not many others did.
"Also, this might sound like a strange one and it was partly my fault but I used to have a real problem with initiative. In some of my subjects they didn't tell me when and where to hand up my assignments then later they told me I hadn't submitted anything. I don't remember those days very clearly and I was on some very strong sedatives but I remember for at least some of my classes back then I used to hand in work on floppy disks."
I actually strongly relate to that.
Back in the early years of high school, I didn't actually understand the concept of assignments.
In Year 7 I has SOSE/social studies and and Art and did assignments in these but I didn't realize at the time they were 'assignment's. I just did what was instructed to pass e.g. write a report and research it? I will do just that. And I had more guidance.
Year 8 though I rarely submitted because I didn't actually learn how to do it on my own until year 9.
I still remember a Science draft I had to do that was actually lazy as f*ck that I did in about 10 minutes while also half-watching tv. I just thought it was homework.
Days are hazy for me as well.
"And that's another thing, they way they used to/still do drug up students who don't learn by sitting still, listening and not moving or saying anything. Yes the drugs fixed my behavioural problems but they caused my grades to plummet. I didn't understand why all the other students were suddenly much smarter than me. I thought it was just because I was weak. I blamed myself."
Yep, my risperdol made me weaker, depressed, and feel dumb and slow.
It originally helped when I was a wild, uncontrallable kid (aka I was a good kid turned bad around grade 3-5) but once I overcame those problems it was unnecessary, but it took me years to get off the damn meds (only this year I no longer have to take it). I stopped taking it cold turkey in year 10 and it helped me turn my life around.
"I think maybe the doctor who put me on those drugs thought that getting me to be calm down was more important than me getting good grades. Or maybe he didn't even think of my grades, like he thought I could still get high grades while sedated. I'm sure he was never sedated when he was young. The reason why I think doctors have a lack of empathy in these cases is because when they were in high school they got an A+ on every single assignment they ever did. In other words they don't know what it's like to not be a genius, they don't acknowladge the problems non genius people have to deal with."
Yep, somewhat true. Medical practiotionars are rarely mentally ill (obviously) so they don't understnad the mentally ill or disabled well enough.
It would be interesting if more aspie/ADHD/anxiety/etc. suffering psychologists and doctors existed - they'd offer a different perspective to the medical field.
"It's the same with politicians. Not that I think they're geniuses, far from it but to get into their lofty positions they were all workaholics from a young age. A lot of them studied law, which is much harder than most other uni courses (the ASD consultant at work majored in disability, she took one unit of disability and law and it was by far the hardest subject she'd ever did while all the law students in the class were saying how easy it is). I think that's why politicians don't have empathy for the common man who can't work more than 8 hours per day without feeling exhausted (or the common man who can't continue working while he's exhausted)."
That and they've probably lived a life of more privilege and access to better support networks than the common man.
My opinion of refugees is mixed but Tony idiot, a white british religious male, probably wouldn't understand the plight of African refugees if he tried.
"They don't want to help unemployed people because they've never been unemployed, partly through their extreme work ethic and partly through luck. It's like if you have a big crowd of people and start flipping a coin. You say "stand up if you think the outcome will be heads or sit down if you think the outcome will be tails, if you get it wrong you're out". You flip the coin ten times and there's only one person remaining in the game. He one through pure chance. I think some politicians or other successful people are like that. Through pure chance nothing ever went wrong for them. They never got any long term illness or anything like that (Until they do, look at Mark Latham, who rose very quickly through the ranks of the Labor Party until one day he got sick and dropped out of the federal election) so they have no empathy for sick people or normal people because they've never experienced that. Or if they got sick they just worked through it or studied through it. They think everyone can do that because they did. That's why doctors only give you two days off when you're quite sick, when they got sick they never took more than two days off because if they did they would have failed medschool, so while they were sick they went back to studying."
Precisely. Honestly, the majority of vastly successful people are the 1% who will never understand everyone else.
Becoming a celebrity is statistically impossibly rare. For every famous musician there are 10,000 no-names putting a lot of time, effort and money into music as well but are never ever going to be anywhere near as famous as the celebrity in their lifetime.
The celebrity can't just say 'hard work will get you there'.
Just as for every rich millionaire businessman, there's probably 10,000 small-time business and shop-owners who struggle to both make money for their business and invest enough to keep it afloat.
"As for the schools, I had severe depression and anxiety at the time but I didn't even know there were such things as depression or anxiety. I just thought I was weak. Maybe the prescription drugs did it."
Yeah, I felt empty and sad but didn't think about either conept yet.
"Yep, that sounds about right. The teachers understand the system so they assume you do to. That means they don't bother to explain it. Stuff like that happens to me at work. Everyone "just knows" stuff so no one ever explains it."
We were given books to explain university courses in year 11, but apparently the system had a 'complete change/overhaul' and by the time we got the new books early year 12, a lot had changed.
"I think a lot of stuff in schools is set up for the benefit of the teachers. They don't realize that the school wasn't built for their benefit. That's not the purpose of school."
Not sure what you mean by that.
"But if you fail, someone with university educated parents and grandparents will tell you that you failed because it was your own fault and because you didn't try hard enough and because you were lazy, etc.
That's my experience with my rich snobby aunt. The one who comes up with detailed plans for her kids and expected me to have the same success without anyone to tell me how the system works. When I said I told her I was struggling at TAFE she said I was a "namby pamby winger".
So really that's the bias. Those in positions of authority, the doctor, the politicians and especially the managers have never known what it's like to fail and so they keep pushing people. There are some people lucky enough to enjoy their work and study so much that they get obsessed with it. Instead of having to push themselves through it they want to spend as much time as they can doing it because it's like a fun hobby for them. They find it exhilarating. Those guys will live a happy life but they don't realize that other people have to really push themselves to work or study. Unlike them, other people need to rest. Or there are some people with A-type personalities who aren't so much obsessed with a task they enjoy but just feel anxious when they're not doing a task regardless of whether or not they enjoy it. For these people, to slow down or rest causes them great anxiety. I really wish I could get into one of those mindsets (preferably the first one) because then I could not only work more effectively but also without it seeming like much work. Whatever work I'm doing could become the source of my happiness rather than something to be endured, it would be a big part of my life rather than something my life has to be put on hold for. People like these don't understand us ordinary folks. They don't understand why we get tired from what to them seems like very easy tasks."
Exactly. Though I'm usually a very ambitious guy and do have the mindset that keeping still in life makes me feel miserable.
This is the source of my depression probably as I'm not making progress in as much areas as I want to.
As I have said so much on this forum, I am very lonely and finding things to do in my time solo has only made me feel like I'm wasting my life, because right now my family and I could be moved out of this hellhole, I could be attending university, but, most important to me at all, I could be building social connections and if I had a girlfriend could actually positively contribute to her life by being there for her, spending time with her and making her happy and she can do the same for me.
"The worst part about this bias is those who succeed keep on saying we live in a meritocracy but the positive feedback loops that reinforce wealth and poverty mean that really we live in an aristocracy. But in the old style aristocracies they knew they were living in an aristocracy. In the old days a pauper would ask a duke "Why aren't I rich like you" and he'd say "because you weren't born a duke". Nowadays with the illusion of meritocracy the poor and disadvantaged can ask the successful and the reply comes back "because you were lazy. It's all your fault." At least in the old days the duke never told the peasant it was his own fault he was born a peasant. Blaming the poor for being poor just adds insult to injury.
People think the poor can break the poverty cycle themselves. If they could do that, they would have already done so."
Yep, exactly. I'm a part of the unfortunate poverty cycle, but since my mother's generation and mine there is far more ambition in the family to become of something more.
My adult cousin and his girlfriend have successful jobs and a nice home. Pure middle-class (rare among the family).
Mum and step-dad want to start a business of some kind in the future, finally make some money for this family and live a better life.
The people my age on my father's side are more optimistic. Cousin 1 is a young athlete with potential, cousin 2 already has played regional/state/national volleyball and wants to be a police officer, etc.
I guess truth be told, I certainly should seize the day myself and live up to my full potential (like my mum and family suggest). The time is right for this family to be something more. 
"Yes I'd say so. They should teach more employable skills. They should have more emphasis on IT at a younger age. Trust me programming is something that year 6 kids would be capable of doing if it was taught to them."
Yeah, I know plenty of 12 year olds and such who can already mod computer games while I failed at it. 
"When I say they should have more emphasis on IT, I mean actual IT, not just using a computer. Some schools congratulate themselves for being very modern when they have a lot of computers but if these computers are just used as word processors for non IT related subject matter than they're not teaching IT. Even worse, recently some schools have started using iPads instead of computers. That's like trying to teach someone how to ride a bike using only tricycles. When I was a by, we didn't have a computer at home. Without the computers at school, I wouldn't even have learned how to use Windows. I know there are many other poor kids who don't have computers at home but use them at school but if the school uses iPads then they won't ever learn how to use a desktop computer. It's a totally different interface.
Imagine trying to get a job if you only knew how to use an iPad. You can bet the guys at the office would expect you to know basic Windows straight away. It's nearly as bad at those Macbook based schools. I've had to use both Windows and Macintosh at work so I know how different they are. I've worked at a Macintosh based office and found they were willing to teach me how to use Mac because they know most people are used to Windows but I'll bet if I worked at a Windows based office and only knew how to use Macintosh it would be a different story. If I only knew how to use an iPad I'd be the equivalent of the little old lady who can't use technology (my mother)."
I feel like that guy myself sometimes, but I know both windows and mac like the back of my hand. Windows is superior, obviously (this message being sent from an iSh*tMac from 2009).
"I heard from one year 10 student from an iPad based schools that they expect him to type lengthy essays on the touch screen. On a computer it's possible to type out a couple of thousand words in an hour but to do that on a touch screen would take ages."
Holy. F*ck.
I suck at this even compared to other people my age. Iphone or Ipad touch-screen.
"And then, when they get to uni and/or the workforce, you an bet they'll be expected to know how to touch type. Everyone at the office knows how to touch type. Literally everyone. Even the non IT staff. If you went through school with only iPads, you won't be able to touch type."
Was taught the basics of touch type only in year 8. Otherwise, I'm a two-finger guy.
"If you went through school with only iPads and then went to university, you won't know how to use the computers there (if you also didn't have a computer at home). You can bet that a first year uni student is just expected to know how to use the desktops there. Even if you go into the information desk to sign up, they'll direct you to a desktop and get you to sign up on that."
I agree, but think you're exaggerating a bit, though it probably is just because I know how to use computers.
Honestly, using a keyboard should be easy for non-experienced children so long as they can recognize the letters and numbers. But yeah, it's the mouse and other complicated stuff that might get to them.
"Good idea. It won't lessen your grades any and after you graduate it will make looking for work a lot easier. I used to know a uni student who also worked part time retail. I asked her how she managed and she just said "barely". I think she had zero free time."
Hell, I can still volunteer at retail like lifeline when I feel like it and also study. Experience in retail and learning at the same time. 
"I think I know what you mean. I get mad when I have to deal with paper work on actual paper because I usually lose the paper and I don't like having to buy a stamp and post it and I find myself wanting to do it all on computer but then I eat my words when I actually do stuff like that on a computer because it's even worse. They expect me to remember some password with an upper case letter and a lower case letter and a numeral and a special character and it ends up being different for every service because they all have different password requirements."
Just wondering, it's not my business, but do you also have ADD or ADHD in any form? I relate a lot to what you say, but some of it sounds more along the lines of you have an inability to focus and concentrate sometimes.
"Sometimes even when I'm certain I used the right password it still won't let me in for reasons unknown and when I go to password reset it sends the email to an account that's no longer used or if I get it wrong three times it locks me out. One time I had this banking thing that wanted to send me a text message code that would be valid for 3 minutes. The text came 5 hours later. I remember getting emails from Centrelink saying "We have a letter for you, please log in to read it", when I tried to sign up they needed my birth certificate, which I didn't have."
Centrelink only had me on basic access for my mygov, even though it should not have been in the first place. One two hour phone call later...
My PIN number was only a 'temporary PIN' since I only just started my account. You can tell I would have been pissed when I typed the CORRECT number at the Woolworths self-serve only to get it rejected. Luckily the worker was kind enough to hold onto my stuff for me. Why couldn't i have just gotten a proper PIN?
"So yeah, I hate technology sometimes as well. Like when I wanted to watch a video file and my computer was broken and my so called "smart tv" had a message saying "unable to play file" or when I have obvious adware on my computer but every scanner says "0 results found" or when it took me ages to figure out how to pair an Android smart watch to a BlackBerry phone (I figured it out in the end) or when I have a computer than thousands of times slower than one from the 80s but it runs slower than one from the 80s because modern software is so bloated and filled with unnecessary GUI crap or when the computer says most of the RAM is in use so I increase the RAM and it still says most of the RAM is in use or when they stop making smartphones with keyboards (except the BlackBerry) and everything is on tablets and everything uses awful touch screens which is really bad for a kinesthetic thinker like me because there it gives no tactile link between hand and eye or when every phone needs a case because they have the screen flush with the front but if the screen was inset just a little way it would prevent 90% of cracked screens but they're more concerned about making the phone look trendy and minimalist rather than more durable even though all the trendy thin metallic phones will end up being stuck inside chunky rubber cases so no one will end up seeing their stupid design anyway or when the buttons are made really small so they'll look more trendy but this makes them hard to use or when the plug is in the powerpoint but there's no power because it's sitting inside without making contact or when Windows runs slow because the registry is filled with crap I never use or when..."
Not the same situations as you, but that same consistent frustration.
I'm using a 2009 imac that does not get better. Understanbly it's an old computer, but it's so slow and buggy.
No matter how many files I delete to clean it out, it doesn't go faster. No matter how few tabs or programs open, it does not go faster.
It varies between slow and painfully slow throughout the day. A lot of the time my typing is too fast for the mac to keep up in real-time.
Internet constantly cuts for no reason.
I click the 'check updates' button and it says no updates available even if there should be.
If I were you, do not trust apple and never get a mac. I read up the reviews of even new programs and updates and they turn out to be bad (this has been the case for me too).
Apple customer service is rubbish and filled with far too many people because it's just that bad.
"Wow, those teachers are evil. And I hate it when they install software that doesn't work properly. Or sometimes it's just confusing to use. Later you may get to experience the horrors of the TAFE enrollment system which is like trying to navigate through a four dimensional maze. The lecturers at TAFE act like it's fine but the ASD consultant at work used to work at TAFE and she says she hated it as well. Even worse there was some new lady at the info desk at TAFE who kept on telling me to do the wrong thing and blaming me when it didn't work. She even told me to do the wrong thing after I told her this was the opposite way I did it last semester."
Oh joy.
That's another issue - technology moves so fast nobody f(cking undertands it anymore. Middle-aged adults, it may make some sense, but even many millenials don't and those that do? I don't understand how they can keep up with things.
"That's it. They always expect you to have the latest one or it will run slow or not be supported. But if it ran fast 5 years ago and the tasks you're using it for now are no different to the tasks you did 5 years ago why should it be slow? Because it's bloated."
Yep.
"And when I try to sign up it tells me that email has already been registered and that I signed up last year and that I should log in with my existing account but I can't remember the password. Everything is passwords nowadays! Why not just use a finger print scanner for everything. And all that extra crap they put in to increase security doesn't. Like when they want you to have a password and type in a text message code. That way they think a would be impostor will need two different devices. Unless he's using the browser on your phone in which case he can access the website, your emails and your texts all on the same device."
That's just it, my frustration against tech is already strong, and sites (especially WP, with its constant CAPTCHA and auto-logouts) make things worse.
"As Scotty said on Star Trek III, "The more complicated they make the plumbing, the easier it is to stuff up the works". I really think that unnecessarily complex technology is less reliable. We should value reliability over performance."
Society does not. And, yeah, very unnecessary. Wouldn't automatic/sensor based water taps and soap dispensers waste electricity while manual one's don't?
Apply this to the tech vs manual argument in general.
"I think sometimes our labour saving machines require more work to use than they save. For this reason I think we can never have a society where technology does all the work for us because we've reached the point where adding new technology actually increases the workload through added complexity rather than saves it. Yep, everything should have a backup plan."
Of couse.
"Just imagine if these self-driving cars or other machines require an always on internet connection and it has to send a lot of megabits per second to work. Fine in places like America or the UK but with our National Fraudband Network"
lol
"and politicians saying we'll never need fast speeds (because they don't know about Moore's Law) it could mean in Australia your self-driving car will say "insufficient bandwidth available" and stop."
Don't think auto-cars would be run by internet, but there's definitely going to be some way they are marketed as NEW! SHINY! EXPENSIVE! when they are very impractical, reliable, easily damagable poorly made products pandering to consumerism and the need for instant gratification of this generation. Also known today as 'Iphones'.
Of course I want reliable and good performing technology, but it seems the world doesn't give a damn about this.
It's just making everything shiny, flashy and expensive and using buzzwords and trying to brainwash the public into thinking it's a good product.
For example, if you updated to the new Windows, which is rubbish, I'm sure it was advertised as 'more speed, more control than ever!' when these are all lies and tech is becoming less and less about the user's own wants and needs and control.
"What's happened is we have the government building infustructure that should be handled by 100% private companies. This is socialism. It's just like in socialist countries when even in a big city the electricity can black out for hours every evening or the running water can stop working for days at a time or the supermarkets have literally no food on the shelves meanwhile the politicians make speeches about how your country is richer and more prosperous than any other country.
Especially when you have have the police arresting people who reveal the truth about how badly the NBN is failing. That's exaclty like in a socialist country. It's like how in North Korea they arrest anyone who mentions the failure of the Ryugyong Hotel. A good government doesn't have to arrest people who criticize them. Australia is trying to catch up with North Korea. Eventually we'll have both the government and the infrastructure to match."
*Sigh* well I'm something of a Socialist myself. Politically I can be quite divided at times. I'd say I'm a centrist leaning on left wing.
I support the theoretical ideas of Social Democracy, Anachro-Socialism, and (ironically) Libertarianism, but accept if these can't work out in real-life.
Idea political system to me is the perfect combination of socialistic and democratic elements into one society.
Ironically I don't relate to other socialist's as much as you'd think. They do have a 'one size fits all' SJW PC attitude.
Very forceful of their beliefs. They may be pro-LGBT, pro-feminist and pro-multiculturalism, but this does not make them good people if they silence anyone who speaks up against these things.
The difference between most other socialist's and me is simple: I am tolerant of intolerance, they are intolerant of intolerance.
"I think Australia is headed towads a type of right wing communism that combines the worst elements of the left wing and right wing."
Definitely. "One size fits all" sums up Australia.
"And don't you forget it.
Tell me, what are your interests. If you can turn that into your career you'll never work a day in your life."
*Sigh* well I am a musician, occasionally write, enjoy sports, philosophy, politics, poetry, psychology, space/science, new ageism/spiritualism, and a bit of history. Yeah, there's quite a bit of potential in there, especially regarding all those major 'p' hobbies, but at the moment I lack direction and ambition.
As 'smart' as I am, I feel 'too smart' to want to join the system sometimes.
E.g. as much as I like discussing politics, I'd hate myself if I ever became one because they're manipulative, uncaring bastards. Perhaps I'm more suited to political theorist/critic.
"Yes and many of them come up with a crap career plan and with blind optimism think it's guaranteed to succeed. In a way we need optimistic youth so they'll try ambitious stuff so just a fraction of them can succeed. The same optimistic youth with big plans could either succeed at becoming a doctor or fail at becoming a video game designer. Without such optimistic ambition we'd have neither and we need doctors."
Millenials seem so much more likely to follow artistic-based careers or video game designers.
They don't appear to have back-up plans at all aside from their part-time jobs.
I knew all the artsy kids in high school, so of course what they're up to right now is studying theatre and acting and visual arts and such.
As lucky as they may be right now (e.g. joining their uni productions and I know of one girl who acts and dances who was in the local Mary Poppin production and Legally Blonde), they probably don't see just how screwed they'll be down-the-line.
"I know the feeling. I was left wing but the extreme liberals have made me equally disgusted with both sides."
Thank god you're left wing as well. I thought so. You, like me, sound more balanced as well and not an extremist of the left.
The extreme liberals and the extreme conservatives both want to end freedom of speech. They both make their own kind of ridiculous arguments but they both have the same goal. Power. The only difference is that they tell different lies to get the same power. They're both passive aggressive. They both play the victim and then accuse the other side of playing the victim.
I could respect liberals if they didn't spend so much time segregating people based on identity politics. I could respect conservatives if they were truly fiscally conservative instead of just saying they are than waisting billions of dollars on useless projects. If they didn't inflate their surplus by selling off public infrastructure(like Telstra). If they didn't say they're against welfare while hypocritically doling out corporate welfare and middle class welfare and upper class welfare (then again, the only reason my employer is in Australia is due to the tax breaks)."
YES YES YES.
"Observatories are hiring. There are several in Australia, both radio and optical. Australia is one of the best countries in the world for astronomy. We have massive deserts far from the city lights and radio interference. Also the dry desert air is easier to see through. We're one of only a handful of countries with a view of the southern skies. Even though on Earth the southern hemisphere is mostly ocean and not very much land, there are just as many stars and galaxies in the southern skies and less countries that are able to observe them.
Just now they're building a big radio telescope array in Western Australia. Listen to The Science Show every Saturday on ABC Radio National. They have a lot of stuff about Australian astronomy. I suggest you get a PhD in astronomy, though you might be able to get in with just a masters degree. Just remember that astronomers don't get paid as much as lawyers or doctors."
...Maybe. I'm not too concerned with the pay tbh. I never wanted to be rich but just to survive and that important bit of extra that's enough to save up and still have access to much of life's luxuries.
"Not so. I had a tradie in today to fix the blinds. Remember that computers can't fix things in the physical world. Show me the computer that can fix my blinds. Computers can control things in the physical world. A lot of our physical infrastructure is computer controlled. But none of it can be fixed by computer. It's only computer controlled when it's working. If they need to put in a replacement pipe or wire, they send a tradie in.
If you're interested in that sort of thing, why not be a plumber. It's a well paid job. There will always be a need for plumbers. Civilization is literally dependent on plumbing. Even the Romans needed it. We could more easily live without electricity and computers than we could without plumbing."
Nah, REALLY not the hard labor or even just tools/constructer/hands-on type, despite also disliking technology.
White collar without having to deal with bullsh*t technology, knowwhatimsayin'? 
"Have you experienced this in person? I keep hearing about it in MRA themed Youtube videos but I've seen very little of it with my own eyes."
Yes. Aussie households seem to have the woman as dominant over the man. It's very subtle but visible. The Feminist's I met come across and claim to want equality, but subtly you can see they preferentially fight for women's rights over men's.
Every date I've been on, my 'traditional masculinity' and chivalry has been rejected in favor of their feministic mindsets. I believe whoever asks should do the paying, but instead they thought we should just pay individually each time.
They never allowed me to pay for them, it was always about 'their way'.
Young males tend to find it harder here to get an apartment than young women because people make assumptions.
There's also the typical sexism against men that also exist in feministland (america), e.g. a man must be strong, a man can't be weak, a man being weak is impossible.
I have agoraphobia. I feel what women feel, if anything a lot of the time I have it worse than they do. Women tend to feel afraid of walking alone at night home because she is vulnerable. I feel this even in broad-daylight, and I'm a fit soon-to-be young man!
I feel the same sort of anxiety they feel when young men make them uncomfortable, but I'd be laughed off if I said to a security guard 'those men are making me very uncomfortable and I feel like they might rob me or something' while if a woman says it every man woman and child in the room will come rush to her aid.
"Good. Politically incorrect means you're thinking for yourself. A lot of new ideas that will one day be the norm start of being politically incorrect. If you're politically incorrect that means you can be a conduit for change. Those who call themselves progressives aren't pro change. They have this ideology and they're not open to improving it. Going by the dictionary this makes them regressive. And they call themselves liberals. Going by the dictionary this makes them conservative."
Exactly.
"This is worrying. I'm sure you've had more contact with youth than I have so you'd know. I fear the SJWs will take us back to Victorian attitudes towards sex or Soviet style control over speech. The worst part is the SJWs can claim anything, no matter how ridiculous and if you point out how wrong they are you get ostracized. It's like pointing out the emperor has no clothes. Exactly, if you make a really good point instead of trying to come up with a proper counter argument they just silence you. They say if you don't agree with them that means you're supporting the thing they're against."
For instance, because I simply don't believe in good and evil, I don't believe murder is wrong. Controversial? Yes.
But when we complicate the question: Is executing a serial killer who has already killed a few of his fellow prisoner's 'wrong'? Is a soldier killing a terrorist in defense of their nation 'wrong'? If you're lost in the middle of nowhere and being hunted down, and escape is nearly impossible, is it wrong to kill your threat if no one would ever find out?
They also understandably assume if I don't think murder's wrong, I would find pleasure in doing it myself.
I have no interest in doing it to anyone, and not just this, but death hurts me too. If my friends or family died I'd feel sad too.
It's just, I don't believe things are 'right' or 'wrong' just because of how they make me feel.
Just because something makes you feel bad doesn't mean it is objectively/factually bad. It just means YOU think it is bad.
Just as something that makes you feel 'good' is not right.
If a psychopath feels GOOD when he kills people, that doesn't make murder 'right' now does it?
I don't believe Hitler was 'evil' either - he was a man simply acting in his own self-interest, like all politicians.
Of course it makes me feel bad what he did, but that doesn't mean I say it's 'evil'.
You can just tell how popular THAT opinion would be with most other people, young OR older.
"I think the current generation of young people has been raised to be intollerent of other people's opinions. When I was that age, we disagreed with each other all the time but we just accepted it as a normal part of life. Yes we argued about stuff but we still acknowledged the other persons right to make their own argument and we would try to convince them using a well thought out counterargument rather than silencing them. Silencing your opponents is want guys like Stalin or Kim Jong Il do. It is not for civilized people.
Maybe the problem is the internet. With Google you can find thousands of articles that agree with opinions you already hold. With forums you can find like minded people. This means that the internet generation aren't used to seeing opinions that disagree with theirs. So when they see another opinion it shocks them. Another consequence is they don't know what arguing is. As I said, I got into a lot of arguments in my rambunctious youth but the SJW generation don't know how to formulate a proper counter argument. They just say "No, you're wrong!" It's like a reasoned argument is a foreign concept to them. Or they make claims without citing any evidence and then get surprised when you don't instantly believe them.
It really bothers me what will happen when these youth grow older and assume positions of power. Have you read Nineteen Eighty-Four? A lot of the stuff they do reminds me of that book. That could be where we're heading and it scares me. Also by George Orwell there's animal farm, where they repeat the same slogans over and over again. So every time I hear SJWs chanting the same simple minded slogan I think of "Four legs good, two legs bad" from Animal Farm. It shows how the dictator decided that his complex web of lies were too hard for the simple masses to understand so he distilled them into short, unreasoning slogans."
I'm familiar with it.
"It sounds like you've studied a lot more philosophy than I have."
Existentialism basically means I don't believe life has meaning, but it is our job to create our own meaning.
Nietzsche (the creator of it) definitely holds many of your views and was something of a centrist libertarian VERY opposed to the 'hive' and herd mentality of socialism (though socialism/communism didn't exist at the time, but he disliked their precursors).
He shared our views on morals - pure constructs by 'man', nothing more.
I share his meaningless view of the world. It's why I'm fine with typing such long and detailed post. What matter does it make if it's short?
Nothing matters. Nothing at all. My entire life and existence is insignificant and unimportant, so I might as well try to make it feel as important as I can anyway.
I also don't take a lot of what I say seriously sometimes. Nietzsche was a lot like me - politically incorrect, controverisal, blunt, and has a certain playfulness and finds joy in the irony and meaninglessness of life.
"No, they are the ones who are sociopaths. They don't care who they harm for their cause. They have no empathy.
The truth is they will say anything to get more power. Even if it means contradicting themselves. Even if it means saying stuff that actually insults their own group. They will belittle their own group as a means of eliciting sympathy. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Australia is the worst country, except for all the others. Australia has many faults but we're probably better off living in Australia than Africa. At least Africa doesn't share our obesity epidemic but if I lived in America I wouldn't have to pay as much tax but there would be a higher chance that I'd get shot. If I lived in Somalia I wouldn't have to pay any tax at all but there'd be an even higher chance I'd get shot.
Crap, you're right. My only consolation is that if we're screwed the rest of the Western world is probably screwed as well so at least we're not the only ones. Maybe we'll be slightly worse off because I think Australia combines the worst elements of the US and the UK.
Anyway, while the western world is destroying itself and while western universities and work places are waisting time with SJW crap and expelling their best students and professors and firing their most talented workers for offending some talentless fatso, the Asians are studying and working harder and harder. You can bet they don't waste time on SJW crap. In fact they barely have enough time to sleep. So while us westerners are waisting time and firing our talent the Asians are studying 20 hours per day and getting smarter and smarter while we get dumber and dumber.
In a few years the industrious Asians will economically dominate us lazy westerners. You can bet they'll laugh at us when they see our universities waste time on SJW while their universities teach science and engineering day and night. They'll say "No wonder we dominated you economically, no wonder we have better science and technology than you, you wasted your time, expelled your most talented students and fired your best professors".
Truly this will be the Asian century, unless they all die from heart attacks resulting from overworking themselves."
Too true.
RetroGamer87
Veteran
Joined: 30 Jul 2013
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,085
Location: Adelaide, Australia
04 Jun 2016, 8:57 am
I get that they have other patients. I get that there aren't that many doctors. Because it's necessarily so hard to become a doctor that few people are able to do it. I admire them and I'm horrified at what they had to go through to get there.
I guess that's why we have to import so many doctors from India. I thought that all Indians must be workaholics to become doctors and IT professionals until I realized that it's only the 1% of Indians who are able to come to Australia on work visas. Only the 1% most talented who are either doctors, dentists or among the better computer programmers. No wonder the Indian lady at work was smarter than everyone else, not because all Indians are smarter but because only the best get out of India.
They mentioned that they had a grade called VHA but the teachers never used it on anyone. It's like they didn't want to take the extra time to distinguish which students got SA and which students got VHA. Most of the teachers were apathetic.
So if SA is a C then I guess I got a GPA of 2.0. That's pathetically low. If you average out all the subjects I failed it becomes about 1.1. Ouch. All the smart people got 4.0.
But people will still blame me, they'll say it was my fault, say I didn't try hard enough. Most of the time I think the same thing.
I guess I could have stopped taking it. They never forced me to take it. It's just that I didn't even realize that was what was causing me to feel that way. I was on it so long I thought that I was just naturally dumb and slow. I didn't know the pill was doing it.
And with the withdrawal symptoms I'd temporarily get dumber if I went off it for a few days so I was never off it long enough to realize I could be smarter without it.
They have PSAs telling adolescents not to take addictive drugs and then they give them addictive drugs. That's pretty f****d up.
Maybe I deserved it for acting like a rebellious brat. That's how I got stuck on it in the first place.
Maybe they should have given me some more challenging school work so I wasn't bored all the time. Then I wouldn't need to act up. After I went on Risperdel I went from thinking the school work was boring and too easy to thinking it was too hard and confusing. I went from getting a distinction saying best in school to bottom of the class in the same subject. Different teacher though so no one ever noticed the difference. Not even me. I guess it impaired my deductive reasoning as well.
Hell, I think I did better when they had me on amphetamines. They didn't calm me down any but at least I felt like I had plenty of energy.
The worst part is the medical residency. I was a bit horrified when I heard they work for 72 hours, sleep for 4 hours and then work for another 72 hours. My work ethic doesn't quite extend that far.
My opinion of refugees is mixed but Tony idiot, a white british religious male, probably wouldn't understand the plight of African refugees if he tried.
I know that Australia has a very low population density as a whole but the trains and roads are crowded here so doubling the population of our cities would put a burden on our infrastructure that it wasn't designed for.
On the other hand, the right deals with immigration the same way the deal with many other problems. They say it's too expensive to deal with so then they deal with it in a way that costs twice as much and accomplishes half as much.
They say they don't want those migrants claiming welfare here so they detain them in an expensive prison that costs ten times as much per person as just paying them the dole would.
That's what I can't stand about the right wing. They say the government can't afford to spend more than it takes in in revenue and that the government can't spend money on everything people want it to, which is true but the those same politicians end up blowing billions of dollars on some other government project which is just as useless.
The ones that say we can't afford to pay out Centrelink benefits will fund expensive white elephant projects. If there's a shortfall in the budget they should cut that other crap first. Centrelink should be one of the last things to be cut, jut before the police and fire departments.
And I can't stand the way the right whingers act like if we cut the dole it will make everyone on the dole suddenly decide to go out and get a job. Like it's possible to get a job in just 5 minutes. Like most of them weren't already looking for a job.
If you have a city with two million people and a million jobs, not all of them are going to be able to get jobs.
They say you have to increase / broaden your skillset to be employable. This is true but it won't work for everyone. Here's why.
Did you hear the one about the two guys who encountered a bear in the woods. One guy turned to run away. The other guy said they couldn't possibly run faster than a bear. The first guy said he didn't need to he just needs to run faster than the other guy.
To get a job you need to be more skilled than the other applicants but no matter how skilled you all are, you can't all be more skilled than each other.
It seems like the top 50% of society can get above minimum wage jobs. If everyone was twice as skilled, twice as educated and worked twice as hard, the top 50% of society would still get the above minimum wage jobs, it would still be the same number of people and it would probably be the same people.
But the conservatives say everyone just needs to work harder and study harder to get the best jobs. It doesn't work for everyone because no matter how hard everyone tries everyone can't fit in the top 50%. The harder everyone tries the more it raises the bar.
And those in the bottom 50%, with a minimum wage job or no job, they call them losers and tell them they should have tried harder. But someone is always going to be in the bottom 50% of the population.
And when they say to broaden your skills you end up with many different skills, some of which you won't use and you can't use them all in the same job. It's like their advice is to be a jack of all trades and master of none. The real way to get skilled work done is to specialize, not be mediocre at everything.
It's the same when well meaning but short sighted politicians think they can lower unemployment by raising the school leaving age or getting more people into university. Yes it will raise the average level of education. Yes employers do prefer more educated employees (even when their degree is in a different subject they say it shows they're good workers with persistence and self-management skills) but employers higher the most educated workers so raising the average isn't going to increase the number of people in the top 50%.
It will just make it harder to keep up. Those who were already planning to stick it out to the end of high school will now find more crowded class rooms in the later years and school funding spread thinner for more students.
If before only 40% of students finished high school and you artificially raise that up to 90%, it just means the guy who had to drop out due to illness or depression is now in the bottom 10% instead of the bottom 60%. So now he couldn't even be a retail worker.
Trying to make everyone go to university just means there are more qualified workers than there are positions in that field. If everyone goes to university then expect to see a lot of university graduates working in retail. If only some people go to university than expect to see them working in their field of study.
Once again making more people go to university isn't going to fit more people into the topo 50%.
What happens if a society literally tries to fit everyone into the top 50%? Look at places like China or South Korea. They get to take the university entrance exam only once. Over there every first year uni student is an 18 year old. There's no such thing as a mature uni student there.
South Korean university isn't really any harder than ours is but first they have to get in there. They have enough places for about half the student population but they seriously expect everyone to get in.
It becomes a sort of an arms race. You have to try harder than the guy who's trying to try harder than you. The tragedy of the commons is that if they all had a gentleman's agreement to study no more than 12 hours per day or something they'd all have the same advantages and disadvantages so it would still be fair but if just once tries to do that he will be disadvantages.
They wake up at 6AM and arrive at school at 7AM. The school day goes from 7AM to 5PM. 10 hours. Then they have about 5 hours of homework. Except they don't do it at home. Travelling back home would use up too much time so they just sit at their desk in their class at school and work independently. This goes on until 10PM. Then they catch the bus to a private cram school.
Those who go to cram school have an advantage so that means everyone has to go just to keep up with the rest. They stay at cram school and get home at about 2AM. Then they sleep for 4 hours and wake up at 6AM.
They even have a saying. It doesn't sound as poetic in English but the saying is, "If you don't want to go to university, sleep for 5 hours per night but if you want to go to university, sleep for 4 hours per night".
Don't they know that teenagers require more sleep than adults? 4 hours per night could screw up their neurological development. Not to mention it's pretty hard to study when you're dog tired. I guess they're used to it because on 4 hours of sleep they can learn advanced calculous and a second language, tasks I can't do even when I'm well rested.
My Kung Fu instructor says we can't really concentrate for more than 90 minutes per day and we do the rest on auto pilot. Maybe. That sounds about right for me but they seem to concentrate for more than 90 minutes per day.
I'm not saying Australia will become like that (unless we get into direct economic competition with Asia or we have a large migration from Asia making it the cultural norm). A former manager of mine said when she was in Hong Kong she was expected to work 20 hours per day. She did for 6 months then transferred from HP Hong Kong to HP Australia because she couldn't stand it.
I don't think we'll become like that, most Australians won't work or study for work for 20 hours per day out of sheer self-preservation. Some people who have tried have had heart attacks but even with our more sober work ethic the principle is still the same that making everyone work harder won't fit any extra people into the top 50% and it just makes it harder for those who can't. Raising the bar puts them further below it.
I think even trying to automate everything won't help. Automating a factory is so complex it takes as many people to maintain a robotic factory as it does to man the machines in an old style mechanised factory. The only difference is instead of needing a thousand unskilled workers now you need a thousand workers with robotics degrees.
Maybe that's the reason why we need to raise the bar and increase the average level of education. Not because it will reduce unemployment but because as technology becomes more advanced and more complicated, it just becomes more complex to achieve the same thing.
I know we use computers and machines to save labour, but they become so complex that it takes as much work to operate and maintain them as it would have taken to do the same task manually. Like those finicky online forms that ask you for ID you don't have. In theory it's easier than filling out a paper form and posting it but in practice you lose about as much time as you save.
The celebrity can't just say 'hard work will get you there'.
I guess it would be more accurate to say all people who are successful work hard but not all people work work hard are successful.
I mean at that age your brain is changing rapidly so if you get depressed it's hard to know if it's a natural change or an anomaly. It's probably the most common age for undiagnosed depression.
Yet it's also the age where depression makes the most difference. It effects your grades so it could be the difference between being an engineer or a retail worker for the rest of your life. If you get depressed at 40 it won't be as bad. It's easier to hold onto your existing career than start one because you can use existing skills and it's far less competitive.
Not sure what you mean by that.
I don't really have a desire to sleep in. But I did when I was your age. It's just natural for teenagers to want to sleep later than adults. So if some older person calls you lazy for not getting up at 6AM, he's wrong. He shouldn't assume everyone is like him.
But the schools start at 8:30AM. In some other countries they start at 8AM. In some other countries they start at 7AM. With the time it takes to travel and get ready, you probably have to wake up at least an hour before school starts.
After about 25 most people do their best work at about 9AM. I know I do now. So why does school start early? So class can be going at the time when teachers are most comfortable. Half an hour for home group and then class beginning at 9AM.
This is set up so the teachers can be the most comfortable. It does not make the students more comfortable. For who's benefit was the school built, the teachers or the students. Who's being tested, the teachers or the students? Who's in competition? The teachers or the students? Who has to absorb a lot of information? The teachers or the students.
But the guys who run the facility will naturally set things up for their preference.
You're already smarter than most of the general population. That's a good start for your competitiveness. Don't be afraid to use affirmative action. It worked for me.
I know it might seem like a career is a heavy workload but you get used to it. Do something everyday and it becomes normal. I'll bet even South Koreans get used to working 20 hours per day. Ok, maybe not.
But trust me after a few months the 8 hour day seems normal. And one of the keys to that is that you're not at home. If I try to do something constructive at home, I end up doing it for 5 minutes, procrastinating for about 30 minutes, doing it for 5 minutes more, etc.
But if I'm in an office or a classroom, I can work more continuously because there's nothing else to do there. It's a different place and it feels normal there. There are other people around you doing the same thing. I could never study at home very well. I used to do some of my assignments at school in the library. At TAFE I'd try to get as much of the assignment done in class time so I could keep my momentum.
Sometimes it can even be enjoyable. You have tasks and you complete them. I find that very satisfying. Video games are structured in the same way. After a while I realized I used to use video games as a substitute for a career. Playing a goal oriented game all day takes about the same amount of mental effort as sitting in an office all day.
The only problem with sitting in an office is the amount of physical effort requires is about zero, which leads to me feeling a bit restless. I guess if I did something physical like construction I'd be less restless and about 10x as healthy. I try to set aside a bit time for exercise most days but it's nowhere near as much as all day and I'm less motivates when that exercise serves no practical purpose. Some of those construction workers get paid $100,000 per year too.
A lot of depression is circumstantial. It goes away when you solve the problem that's depression you. There's also a component that's chemical that doesn't go away or comes and goes on a cycle.
I read an article that said depression is a state of mind that evolved to help people deal with problems. You get a problem, you feel depressed. While depressed you think about the problem a lot. You end up thinking about it so much that you actually think of a solution. That's how it works for me anyway.
Get a good a job and you'll be so much less depressed. It worked for me. I'm sure you can do it as well. That's no mere platitude you really do have the ability.
You don't need to get a girlfriend because you're moving soon. Get one when you arrive. Better yet get one at university. Think of all the nice college girls you'll meet. University has a brilliant social scene with many recreational activities organized on campus by the students, or so I've heard. A better place to meet young women you could not find.
Windows has similar problems and to make matters worse, they put a lot of stuff designed for tablets onto your desktop or laptop.
As you said Windows is still superior. I think some of the back end code in OSX is better optimized (registry, start up sequence, etc) but the graphics in OSX are a bloated mess (both technically and aesthetically) that use unnecessary system resources (as in Windows). I find it strange the "beautiful" computer favoured by artists has a GUI that looks like it was designed by a talentless art school dropout.
But the worst thing about Mac is that the design philosophy is "patronising" to the user. They assume the user is an idiot. The more they try to make it easier to use the harder it gets to use because the advanced features are hidden away.
Holy. F*ck.
I suck at this even compared to other people my age. Iphone or Ipad touch-screen.
I fail at using touch screen phones. That's why I have to stick with my BlackBerry. Not only does it have a keyboard, it even has a mouse. So much easier for me to surf the web using a mouse. It's a shame there aren't many apps that support BlackBerry anymore.
Lots of people have iPads. I have an old netbook to travel around with. It fits in the side pocket of my jacket. It's about the same size but it has a keyboard. Then again, my half brothers can type very fast on an iPad.
Suffice to say, for a lot of things I like old technology. I like old netbooks and old BlackBerrys. I like playing on old Super Nintendos and Megadrives. I was sad when they turned off analog TV because I couldn't use my old pocket size CRT TV set anymore. That saved me on family fishing trips (I hate fishing). I still carry around an old Game Boy Color sometimes. At least the screen is visible in bright sunlight.
That guy who has to use an iPad at school. He's 15 and I think he hates modern technology even more than I do. He got rid of his Android phone and bought a chunky blue late 90s Nokia candybar phone with a black and white screen and Snake. You know the type. He doesn't use it because he's too poor to afford a new one. He just likes it better.
The world may move to iPads but offices won't and like in school, half the work is documenting what you've done.
I agree, but think you're exaggerating a bit, though it probably is just because I know how to use computers.
One time I was in year 11 graphic design. There was a girl sitting next to me who had never used a computer before. Not the best class for her to take. The teacher gave her a little help but she didn't do very well.
Now that I think of it I should have helped her. I spent most of that class procrastinating anyway. She was quite pretty too. Back then I had more interest in Star Trek than girls. Girls used to flirt with me in class and I didn't notice.
Anyway if someone shows up to uni without knowledge of how to use a computer I know there are definitely TAFE courses that teach the very basics of using Windows.
Good thing iPads and phones still use a qwerty layout. When I was young and didn't know qwerty I was slower than 1 finger typing. Lots of hunting, not much pecking. I expected all the keys to be in alphabetical order and the qwerty order seemed very strange to me. I've seen other people in the same boat.
One difference is that people with ADHD focus better when they get put on amphetamines. A few years ago I got put on amphetamines because at the time I was morbidly obese. While it gave me energy it made my focus and concentration even worse. I had racing thoughts so I couldn't focus on just one thing.
When I was on Risperidone, I could actually focus a lot better. If only it didn't make me exhausted to the point of narcolepsy it might actually be useful. I don't think it actually made me stupider, I was just too tired to think. It made everything tiring.
I hear we're all going to transfer VDSL internet soon instead of ADSL internet. Slightly faster, much less reliable. Tends to drop out when it rains. Also has a shorter range than ADSL.
What I hate is that they argue about how much speed we need but reliability is always more important that speed. The upper middle class neibhorhoods will get fiber. Forget how fast it is, fiber is extremely reliable.
How do they expect students of high school or uni to do their assignments with internet that drops out a lot? And the newer stuff will require a constant connection instead of just connection at the time you submit your assignment. You have have to use software that only works with constant connection as a part of their anti piracy system. That type of thing is becoming more common. You'll at least need the net for research and accessing the school network from home to view requirements, material, etc.
So the upper middle class will have internet 24/7 and those in lower class neighborhoods will have VDSL which drops out for hours per day. This will mean they don't get as good grades. They either have less time to do their assignments or they have to stay up late waiting for the internet to come back on meaning they come to class sleep deprived the next day.
So after the lower class fail high school or university due to massive internet drop outs, the upper middle class will turn around and say "You failed because you were lazy and you didn't work hard enough like we did". They never take circumstance into account.
As time goes by software gets bigger. A lot of it is made in America. If America gets faster internet than us, they'll make their software with the expectation of very fast internet. If we don't have that here, expect software developed in America to either be slow to download, slow to use or not work at all. If you study IT you have to download and use a lot of esoteric programs from the uni's network. At very least you could lose a couple of hours that could be spent studying while you wait for the damned program to download.
As for your old Mac, you won't do well if your slowed down to half speed while you're trying to do assignments. At uni you may have a much heavier workload so you'll need all the time you can get even if you're working at optimal speed.
There's a girl at work with an old Macbook from about the same year. She put Windows 10 on it. It seems to run a lot faster.
Either that or you might be able to get your uni to provide you with a basic but modern laptop. Or you could even buy one with your HEX loan.
If I were you, do not trust apple and never get a mac. I read up the reviews of even new programs and updates and they turn out to be bad (this has been the case for me too).
Apple customer service is rubbish and filled with far too many people because it's just that bad.
What I don't get is those smug Apple fans who say "It just works". There's tons of stuff that doesn't work with Macs. They act like they never go wrong but they do.[/quote]That's another issue - technology moves so fast nobody f(cking undertands it anymore. Middle-aged adults, it may make some sense, but even many millenials don't and those that do? I don't understand how they can keep up with things.[/quote]I just wish they'd hurry up and get to a steady state. They have to run out of stuff to invent eventually but they're prolonging by releasing incremental upgrades so they can sell more devices. What a waste of resources.
Funny, the shopping centre near me has manual soap dispensers but sensor based taps. At least they work.
Later on, when all cars are driverless they could get rid of traffic lights. Broadcast the stop and go signals on the internet. No driver means no one has to actually see the traffic lights. Or better yet, with superhuman timing they could just make it so the cars all go through the intersection at the same time but they're all timed to miss each other. With mass networking they could slowdown or speed up very slightly in the kilometers before they intersection so they pass through the intersection at the exact right millisecond.
Good way to save time but it will be very dependent on having an always on internet connection. The 'net connection might act like a dead man's switch. If it goes off, the car just stops to be safe.
They all want the same kind of power but different parties tell different lies to get it.
They think silencing their opponents is a sign of their strength but it's a sign of their weakness. Any group or organization that has to force tight conformity of ideas is very weak. It's like their integrity is held together with band-aids.
They want everyone to think the same yet ironically they call it "diversity".
You'll have to deal with a lot of gobbledygook ironclad BS in law but you also get to examine ethical problems from a philosophical point of view. You get to do that in economics as well. You like socialism? That's fine. You just have to write an essay explaining why you like socialism.
If you do law you might get to do some politicking later. Get a chance to try out your ideas for society in the real world. There's good money in law as well.
Electrical engineering might also be an option or even chemistry. Both have a lot of science. Howabout medicine? Med school has a lot of science. It's a good place for smart guys like you and as a doctor you could help a lot of people. If you want and you don't care about the money too much you could even join Mëdecins Sans Frontiëres.
Or go for astronomy.
As lucky as they may be right now (e.g. joining their uni productions and I know of one girl who acts and dances who was in the local Mary Poppin production and Legally Blonde), they probably don't see just how screwed they'll be down-the-line.
He seems to know about every play ever written and has absolutely perfect posture. It didn't do him much good though. His upper middle class parents were livid when they found out he was majoring in theatre.
The annoying thing is that people have actually accused me of being right wing just because I disagreed with the BS from the extreme left.
They don't get that I can like some stuff from an ideology without liking other stuff from that ideology. Probably because they don't think for themselves and form their own opinions. They just follow the group. I've even heard people struggle when their group says something they dislike. They act like they're committing a sin by disagreeing with their political group.
For me it's no sin at all. Think for yourself. I think we're free to take the bits we like and discard the bits we don't like. Some people act ashamed for doing that. Like they betrayed their group. They're very dogmatic.
Just now they're building a big radio telescope array in Western Australia. Listen to The Science Show every Saturday on ABC Radio National. They have a lot of stuff about Australian astronomy. I suggest you get a PhD in astronomy, though you might be able to get in with just a masters degree. Just remember that astronomers don't get paid as much as lawyers or doctors."
...Maybe. I'm not too concerned with the pay tbh. I never wanted to be rich but just to survive and that important bit of extra that's enough to save up and still have access to much of life's luxuries.
You can survive on that and still have access to life's luxuries. When I said they don't get paid much I meant they don't get paid as much as they deserve. Especially since most of them have PhDs. You can survive alright but it's not a cash proffesion like doctor or lawyer is.
If you want $60,000 to $70,000 per year, be an astronomer. If you want $200,000 to $350,000 per year, be a doctor.
The frustrating thing is that while women are dominating, they claim they are dominated. While they have this power, they claim to be oppressed. They say the law discriminates against women but what law gives men a right that it doesn't give to women? While women are subtly controlling men, they claim that society is set up so men control them through the mysterious and indefinable "Patriarchy".
I think women, especially young women take advantage of old fashioned chivalry while also demanding new rights and privileges through new style feminism. So they get extra privileges from both the old fashioned and the new style ends of culture.
Young men naturally like young women better than they like other young men. They're just a natural bias for young men to be nicer to young women. Young women know about this and take full advantage of it but these same young women claim that men are biased against women while they see men treating women better than their fellow men.
They say men are all organized to mistreat women. I don't see it. I see women get treated better by men than they do by other women.
All this pressure to look a certain way? Most of it comes from competition with other women rather than from men. The thin women on those supermarket tabloids? Did the patriarchy put them there. No because those magazines are made by and for women.
I just think feminism is kind of misogynist. The way they tell women they're weak and they need extra help when really women can be strong and succeed on equal footing. If they tell women they can't succeed in a man's world due to "misogyny" then women might not try to compete in the same careers.
Look at the Ghostbusters remake. The trailer got a lot of downvotes on Youtube. So the feminists call that misogyny. They say it's because guys hate seeing women in Ghostbusters. Well of women liked it wouldn't the trailer have at least 50% upvotes?
The truth is the Ghostbusters remake is misogynist. It has women but they all look like idiots. I want to see a movie with smart women, not stupid women. I believe women can be just as intelligent as men.
The worst part is the black lady, the new Winston. They make her look even stupider than the rest. She's a racist mamy charicature straight out of the 1950s. She reminds me of the black maid from Tom and Jerry. Yet not licking that makes me a misogynist?
Some movies with women are good and some are bad yet it's like they expect me to like all movies with women or I'm a misogynist. They think in absolutes.
Just like the ban bossy campaign. Sure it's wrong to call women bossy when they're not being bossy but to put a ban on calling women bossy means that when they're actually being bossy you can't call them bossy. Believe me both men and women are equally capable of being bossy.
And for the feminists to claim there are no female CEOs is very disrespectful to all the female CEOs. If I met the CEO of HP I'd ask her what she thinks of this.
It's kind of misogynist too. The reason is because the feminist leaders want the same thing every other group leader wants. Power. They'll do anything for power. They'll even make women look weaker than they actually are in order to get power. If claiming there are no female CEOs will get them power they'll do it even though it's disrespectful to women.
The feminist leaders want power and they want the young women to be their unwitting, thinking footsoldiers. They'll promise to help them but they only want to use them as minions.
Just a few months ago I moved into a very nice apartment. It's a new building. Very modern. Very posh. Not too far from the city and only 300 meters from a major transport hub. Not only is the unit on the top floor but it's on the corner. The corner ones are bigger than the side ones. It's literally the best apartment in the building. And the building is set up for high speed internet. And it comes with a dishwasher. The balcony is large enough to throw a small party on and what a view.
I couldn't believe out of all the applicants they chose me to get this apartment. I think I know the reason. Because I also put my girlfriend's name on the application. Even though I didn't list her as a tenant, only a resident. Hell, they wouldn't give an apartment this nice to a bachelor. Actually there are very few bachelors in this building. It's mostly couples, families and single women.
I think it also helped that the whole application with filled out with GF's neat handwriting. They love neat handwriting and girls typically have neater handwriting than guys.
Even when they claim that men need feminism so they won't have to be macho men. There's a video on Youtube from Canada. A man mentions his problems and a the feminist lady snarkilly says "Oh boo hoo! Cry me a river". But when she talks about her problems she expects him to take them seriously. She expects him to take her problems more seriously than his own problems.
Some guys in a Canadian university tried to set up a men's group to help men with depression. The feminists got it shut down. Didn't you hear? Men don't get depression. But women can get depression and you all have to feel sorry for them.
One of the feminists said if the men have depression they can seek help at their feminist healing circle. If they went their they'd here about how everything is their fault and come away even more depressed.
I've heard of men asking why feminists don't help with men's issues and they say "We're feminists, we help with women's issues, if you want to deal with men's issues form your own group" but when the men actually form their own group it gets shut down and they get told they have to seek help from the feminists.
So it's catch-22. If you ask them for help they say they won't help you, form your own group and if you form your won group they get it shut down and say you have to get help from them.
You legitimate problems. Expect them to be marginalized, first by feminism and then by society as a whole. But if a young woman experiences the same problem, it will be taken seriously and then you'll be lectured about how you have to do your part to help while no one helps you.
And after you help women and give them privileges men don't get, they'll thank you by calling you a misogynist pig and then they'll you that you get more privileges than they do.
They don't want both sexes to be treated the same or else they'd focus on the individual rather than on group politics. Any law that deals with men or women is sexist. A non-sexist law would deal with people.
But when we complicate the question: Is executing a serial killer who has already killed a few of his fellow prisoner's 'wrong'? Is a soldier killing a terrorist in defense of their nation 'wrong'? If you're lost in the middle of nowhere and being hunted down, and escape is nearly impossible, is it wrong to kill your threat if no one would ever find out?
They also understandably assume if I don't think murder's wrong, I would find pleasure in doing it myself.
If you studied philosophy you could examine whether or not Hitler had free will or if he was acting in accordance with predestination. The only problem is philosophy doesn't lead to employment.
I'm familiar with it.
04 Jun 2016, 9:55 pm
Still amazing how a dating-related question has turned to a topic of society, politics, philosophy, technology and economics.
"I guess that's why we have to import so many doctors from India."
Funny, because the Indian doctors I get tend to be incompetent idiots with broken English.
That's not racist, the one's I've just had to deal with aren't very good at what they do.
I got a medical exemption for Centrelink and the idiot doctor made it for 1 day rather than a month. When we got it corrected, I looked over the paper again and realized just how many English errors there were.
Agoraphobia = Agararaphobea Social Anxiety = Socsail Anxieyt, etc.
When we got it fixed all the new (another Indian) doctor did was change the printed date to one month and didn't even change the old doctors signature but wrote his own on the paper with pen and ink and gave it a stamp of approval with his name and medical centre on it.
This happened very recently.
Also, the same Indian doctor that originally gave me the incorrect date also gave me a mental health check last year and was supposed to send away my referrals for the psychologist and to get my medical records transferred but didn't even do it after 4hrs wasting our day in the doctors.
"Most of the teachers were apathetic."
Damn. 
"So if SA is a C then I guess I got a GPA of 2.0. That's pathetically low. If you average out all the subjects I failed it becomes about 1.1. Ouch. All the smart people got 4.0."
Well I don't take GPA into account as that's U.S. system, isn't it? QLD uses OP and 'Selection Ranking', in which I did average in both of them.
OP = 1 good, 25 bad. I got like 16 or something. Straight C kid through 11th and 12th grade. Good thing is most QLD courses only require C minimum in most subjects.
"They should just call it the fail high school pill. Or the never get into university pill."
Ah, so you've been on the same thing. It brought me no benefits. Look up online and majority of users report bad experiences.
I will PM you the worst horror story I ever heard from a Risperidone user. It's very long but a very fascinating read if you find the time to do so.
Like I always say: Society does not give two-sh*ts about curing the mentally ill, it just wants to make the mentally ill 'harmless' from disrupting the system. And if that means essentially killing your brain and making you survive life rather than thrive and live it, then so be it.
"The worst part is the medical residency. I was a bit horrified when I heard they work for 72 hours, sleep for 4 hours and then work for another 72 hours. My work ethic doesn't quite extend that far."
GAH! No f*cking way.
"I know that Australia has a very low population density as a whole but the trains and roads are crowded here so doubling the population of our cities would put a burden on our infrastructure that it wasn't designed for."
Agreed. At the very least, though, I think Australia enjoys being near the coasts too much. We need to expand inland but most future plans are just expanding outland to connect inland cities to coastal cities.
For instance many South-East QLD plans I've heard just want to connect the sunshine coast, gold coast, brisbane, toowoomba and every town in-between together.
We've got so much damn space if we just found a way to start going west and make it work.
Yeah, sure, it would suck to live in the desert in the middle of nowhere, but there can be pools and such. Many aussies already live in rural or secluded outback areas.
Many people in other nations live in small desert towns and such. No such thing seems to exist here except for the WA major cities (also typically coastal cities).
But yeah, they both usually don't have the right idea.
"The ones that say we can't afford to pay out Centrelink benefits will fund expensive white elephant projects."
In Abbott's campaign they actually exaggerated the debt when our debt has always been better and smaller than most other countries.
He made it seem our relatively mild deficit was worse than it actually was and that Rudd was screwing things up.
If anything the Liberal party and Joe "Cøck" Suckey has only made things worse.
I agree about the skills thing.
"It will just make it harder to keep up. Those who were already planning to stick it out to the end of high school will now find more crowded class rooms in the later years and school funding spread thinner for more students."
F*ck. Yes.
This is why I find it hard to even consider high school an 'achievement' anymore.
I only consider it and easy part-time job of some kind the bare minimum required to be considered a 'success' in society.
Even then more and more people are just attending university and higher education and some go even further than that.
Eventually high school won't be a success at all and will be considered the new primary school, so getting a high school certificate would be equal in value to only finishing Year 7 (in today's society, considered failure as you didn't even try high school).
Same thing with everyone getting better and higher paying jobs and careers.
The truth is the world needs the working class. The world still needs bus driver's, janitors, etc.
We can't live in a world where no one is willing to clean up the sh*t all over the public bathroom floor "Because I've got a degree in Biology! I shouldn't have to do this lowly work! I'm better than that!"
I've noticed millenials also tend to be far more pickier and have higher standards of what kind of job they want to do, and want the workforce to accomodate to THEM rather than learning to ADAPT to the different standards of the workforce.
The only reason I am picky is I actually have Asperger's and do find certain jobs harder than others, especially very hands-on work.
Learning a task takes great instruction and time for me and if I'm 'left to my own devices' but don't know what to do I get very nervous and have panic attacks and freeze up.
Hard labor and construction jobs or any complex hands-on, tool work (construction, mechanic, etc.) aren't the thing for me.
Computer and IT is hard enough for me and that's just having to click a mouse and use a keyboard.
Anyway, another issue is like you say too many degrees become over-saturated with equally educated individuals wanting the same job.
Biology, known as one of the most appealing sciences, already tends to fall into this category. Another one in the near-future: Marine Biology.
Just how many people have you met or heard say they want to do 'Marine Biology'? I've met probably 5-10 in just high school alone.
It's like they know Biology is over-filled so they pick the next best thing.
'Engineering' may unfortunately be another one too eventually. Don't know about IT but I'm sure that's getting there as well.
The Arts? No question, they typically always are.
And yet another issue - like I was saying earlier, jobs that traditionally did NOT require a degree but simply hands-on mentor-apprentice teaching (e.g. mechanics, construction, etc.) now DO require 4 years of study to learn the same things (possibly even less) than what you could have just learnt if you decided to help out your Uncle or whatever with his mechanic shop business.
And what about self-taught individuals as well?
So we now have individuals who actually KNOW about a subject but require YEARS of study to revise what they already know just for a piece of paper.
I've even heard plenty of stories of experienced veteran workers for a company with great knowledge and experience of the job being fired over some 22 year old fresh out of uni with a degree in the same field. I even heard one story of the uni graduate knowing LESS than the veteran.
I personally am self-taught in creating electronic music and, while not many courses exist, there's a 6-month course for an Electronic Music Production diploma at a Brisbane uni.
See, the course is for absolute beginners, and the assignments end in making a full-blown song, but I'm not sure just how much the course would cover.
Maybe I could pick-up a thing or two I didn't know yet or skipped, maybe I won't learn anything new...
Just as at the moment I self-study philosophy by reading books written by and about the one's I'm interested in.
I know the Japanese system of Jigon Jugoku or whatever it's called - freaky stuff just how hard they have to work and study.
"Don't they know that teenagers require more sleep than adults? 4 hours per night could screw up their neurological development. Not to mention it's pretty hard to study when you're dog tired."
This is what I'm so uncomfortable with being a millenial.
So many of us stay up so late in uni and such to study we only get about 4 hours of sleep or even pull 'all-nighters'.
I never understood it. I never understood the whole 'stay up till 4am typing your assignment' thing.
Maybe most people just procrastinate and then rush to get it done.
I always just do a little at a time, realistically, and still get my ideal 7 1/2 to 9 1/2 hours sleep. 9 1/2 hours is ideal for teens but due to my insomnia I get 7 1/2 minimum and average about 8 hours but at least I'm trying.
That's probably why I could never be a doctor or even just study some of the harder and more overwhelming courses that require 2-minute noodles, coffee and staying up till 4am to wake up at 8 and rush to class.
Disgusting and pathetic how over-worked students and society has become.
"I think even trying to automate everything won't help."
This is my next point.
Considering just how f*cked technology is, was, and seemingly always will be, technology may only make things worse.
No one truly cares about quality technology and just about NEW! SHINY! BUY NOW! instant gratification.
The same thing may happen with automated factories and such. The robotics companies just want to sell their product and will do so possibly without consideration for testing out every bug, every glitch, etc.
Have you heard the popular theory the world will eventually be like Terminator or the Matrix (rise of the machines).
People claim it would happen when machines become more perfect than people.
I think it's the opposite - technology is so flawed, buggy and cr*ppy, it will be the end of us because we CAN'T make it any better, or merely don't WANT to.
"Maybe that's the reason why we need to raise the bar and increase the average level of education. Not because it will reduce unemployment but because as technology becomes more advanced and more complicated, it just becomes more complex to achieve the same thing."
Maybe...just maybe...
"I guess it would be more accurate to say all people who are successful work hard but not all people work work hard are successful."
I'm sorry but I tend to disagree all successful people worked hard to get where they are.
If your quote implies many unsuccessful people may have actually worked harder than some successful people, then I would agree.
There's 100,000's of musicians worldwide working their a55es off daily, some never achieving fame or even just a small independent following.
Plenty of 60 year old musicians who never sold a successful album that made them more than just a couple of hundred dollars, while we have a55høles like Justine Bieber who posted ONE single song to youtube, heavy in autotune, not written by him, produced by someone else, and that was their 'big break'.
I've noticed a lot of famous 'singers' got their big break from a single song, while Macklemore for example has been making music for many years and his first charting single was at 28, and even then most people never reach his level of success at ANY age.
"It's probably the most common age for undiagnosed depression."
Some even believe it's not possible for teens to get depressed. Smh. They attribute it to 'teen angst' (e.g. whiny emo's crying about their parents yelling at them for not doing their chores, etc.)
"Let me give you an example. Do you ever feel tired when you get up in the morning, like you want to sleep in some more. I don't, even if I don't set the alarm I naturally get up between 6 and 7 and feel fine about it."
My natural waking time varies between 8:30 and 9:30.
But yeah, I've also read teens biological clock is kind of wired for them to not go to bed early at nights.
Instead they're forced so early in the morning to make it to school.
The U.S. is even worse though - I hear they start classes at 8:00-8.30 when mine are at 9:00.
A lot of countries actually start classes in the afternoon, I've heard e.g. Spain and a few others places. Starting school at 1pm and finishing at 7 or so would be f*cking awesome tbh! 
"This is set up so the teachers can be the most comfortable. It does not make the students more comfortable."
Teachers may have more work (because they teach more than one class e.g. must mark the assignments of not one year 10 class but two), but they also have far more free-time than the students.
I'd say it'd be pretty cruisy being able to just chill out in the staffroom for lessons 1, 2 and first lunch and only have to teach students in lesson 3 and lesson 4 (we had four classes per day, at my old high school it was 4 periods, at new high school 8 periods but still just 4 lessons which confused me even more).
It's probably why, as I've noticed, on Thursday and Friday afternoons students are absolutely drained because of the long week while teachers are also exhausted but relatively fine.
A thursday student is like a tuesday teacher.
"You're already smarter than most of the general population. That's a good start for your competitiveness. Don't be afraid to use affirmative action. It worked for me."
Thanks. It's certainly the depression that has contributed to my lack of motivation and lack of a happy social life of good friends, along with adopting existential/nihilism.
"The only problem with sitting in an office is the amount of physical effort requires is about zero, which leads to me feeling a bit restless."
Good. I lift weights and do cardio for fitness in my spare time. Hard labor jobs would also make it harder for me to be fit and healthy ironically because it would cause over-training (training the muscles too hard, too much to the point you lose muscle/get pains) and depending on the job cause unintentional muscle growth in unwanted areas. For instance my chest is currently weak/delayed so stronger shoulders and back will only make it look even more disproportionate. I can't risk gaining extra shoulder strength in which hard labor work I naturally would.
My arms are also getting to be a bit too big for my physique. I'm not doing for a bodybuilder look, I'm going for a toned look.
Went to a big school which required always going from Point A to Point B. I liked to run to classes and do parkour and was sport at lunch breaks so you can tell my days were pretty active and by afternoon when come time to workout I'd be drained. I require the opposite - an inactive job so I have energy to spare.
The retail place I volunteer for 4 hours a day makes it hard to workout in the afternoons, but if I really push myself I can at least get half a workout done (which results in basically doing no physical activity for the next 1-2 days to rest).
"I know that feeling. You can make your depression work for you as well. I find that kind of depression makes a really good motivation."
Hopefully, though sometimes I think it's a chemical/chronic depression.
However yes, whenever I have a girlfriend or good friends to hang out with all the time, I feel much happier and even if I still have depression, at the very least it's so minimized it doesn't affect me anymore.
"That's no mere platitude you really do have the ability."
An inspiring teacher tried to get it in our heads we have more potential than we think we do. I hope that's the case.
"You don't need to get a girlfriend because you're moving soon. Get one when you arrive."
Of course. Just our move has been delayed. I had no idea when we'd be moving. It could have been anywhere from Jan to June before Mum has to resign the lease and we're lucky we got this place before then.
"University has a brilliant social scene with many recreational activities organized on campus by the students, or so I've heard. A better place to meet young women you could not find."
Hopefully I enjoy it and have a good social life. The only problem is when not consistently practicing my social skills, I get rusty which makes first impressions worse.
If I had one or two friends to hang out with all the time, I'd have the confidence necessary on those all too important first days to introduce myself.
I am using other methods to work on my confidence though, like anti-anxiety and stress relief pills (not rubbish from the doctors, but stuff I discovered through my own research i.e. over the counter).
Plus, do take into account I'm the one a part of this western marxist, overly-liberal feminist PC SJW paradise generation.
The few who aren't like this just tend to be the drug dealer/a55høle/illegal street racing/druggie/criminal/low-life hoodrat wigger types.
I never truly found 'my kind' in high school and I'm starting to think I'm so diverse as a person I don't fit into any specific groups or types of people.
My personality is like a jack of all trades, master of none for various different types of people, from 'bro' to nerd to hipster to hippy to edgy badass to prep.
Perhaps this is a good thing as I have a diverse personality and, yeah, I'll admit I can actually get along with a wide-range of different people, but these friendships tend to be shallow as I don't fit in enough with any group.
I'm slightly geeky but the geeks are too geeky for me, with their interest in all this modern sci-fi and fantasy cr*p, I'm a 'bro' who likes casual drinking, sporty, smaller parties, etc. but my sport is swimming, not footy like the other guys, and I'm not the clubbing type. I'm hippieish but not the full blown vegetarian gluten-free organic types.
Maybe I should stop classing people into 'groups' and just see people as people but it's hard not to, and everyone just feels to extremist for me. Balanced people are definitely my kind.
"Suffice to say, for a lot of things I like old technology."
Of course, RetroGamer.
I too am more the 'own older phone for its practicality, not its fancy-smancy features.' type.
I originally wanted an old '90s style flip phone. But settled on a Nokia.
"I've seen other people in the same boat."
Haha. My mum was a young mother and speaks of how computers and tech were completely new to her. She's 34 now so she definitely took classes in school simply on how to type letters using the old '90s computers and such.
Were you a part of THAT generation or did things like Google and Napster or such and the internet already exist in some form by the time you started in high school?
"As for your old Mac, you won't do well if your slowed down to half speed while you're trying to do assignments. At uni you may have a much heavier workload so you'll need all the time you can get even if you're working at optimal speed."
Nah. I'm getting a laptop for Xmas. Lucky me as it's the third one I've had as the last two broke or got viruses months after I got them. 
So grateful to my Mum.
The second laptop isn't even broken, well shouldn't be. It could a Trojan so I reset it to factory settings, but everytime I put the reset/setup discs in it always gets stuck. Disc one finished and then asks to install disc 2. I open the disc tray and put 2 in but then that screws everything up for some reason and you have to restart.
There should be NO issues. Reset it to factory, have the installation discs.
Now I'll have to take it so some snobby techie and pay them hundreds just to re-install the f(cking computer.
It's not even a mac, either.
"What I don't get is those smug Apple fans who say "It just works". There's tons of stuff that doesn't work with Macs. They act like they never go wrong but they do."
If you look on apple websites, every single positive review basically just says "It works. It's great and amazing. I love it" but in an entire paragraph rather than just a few words.
Most negative reviews, however, actually describe in great detail every issue they've had, including taking it to Apple shops to get it fixed and only encountering rude workers.
I think the positive Apple reviews must be damn bots or Apple company workers paid to buff up the reviews on Apple sites to make the product look good so an Apple product that deserves a 4/10 ends up being rated 7/10.
"I just wish they'd hurry up and get to a steady state. They have to run out of stuff to invent eventually but they're prolonging by releasing incremental upgrades so they can sell more devices. What a waste of resources."
Yes it's all too fast.
"Good way to save time but it will be very dependent on having an always on internet connection. The 'net connection might act like a dead man's switch. If it goes off, the car just stops to be safe."
But why would you support that idea? It appears to me you do when I think it's fundamentally flawed.
"Yeah, that's what happens when you realize both parties are full of s**t.
They all want the same kind of power but different parties tell different lies to get it."
There is no good and evil, only different ways of acquiring the same thing.
Left-wingers have a 'one-size fits all' attitude that wants to make everyone essentially the same, the far-right such as Hitler wants to eliminate any difference to make everyone the same.
"In my honest opinion it's just impossible for a perfect political system to exist."
But we can sure seek the next best thing. Democratic Socialism (Orwell was one) for the win!
"Yep, they should focus on the needs of the individual, not the needs of the group."
Ironically, that's what Socialism is supposed to be about, at least that's what I as a socialist think it's about.
The needs of the individual within a community, so that said individual can be of the best condition and live the most suitable life to contribute to said community.
"So were the Soviets. So are the North Koreans. So was the fictional society in Nineteen Eighty-Four."
Don't just target the 'false left' though - Hitler was far-right and he certainly silenced people, as did the right-winged Stalin.
I also believe the U.S. can be just as atrocious, they just do it in far more sneakier tactics.
"They want everyone to think the same yet ironically they call it "diversity"."
Yep.
"That's right. Expect feminism to do nothing to change that."
See, you say you don't believe Australia is inherently misandrist (opposite of misogynist - women having more rights and power than men) but now are agreeing with every point I bring up to say Australia is Feminazi's paradise.
"If you studied philosophy you could examine whether or not Hitler had free will or if he was acting in accordance with predestination. The only problem is philosophy doesn't lead to employment."
I do want to study a few things though unrelated to employment but for the sake of learning, e.g. music, philosophy, possibly theatre.
But those are just for the learning experience and to supplement the income of the actual genuine career I'd be studying.
"I hope they still have George Orwell in English class. The millennials really need to learn how to stop that kind of propaganda."
Only covered it in Drama.
It was an analytical essay on a theatre production of it.
"If you get bored with that you can try Nihilism where life doesn't have meaning even if you try to create your own."
I vary between both. I especially feel Nihilistic when depressed, and existential when positive and optimistic.
"Wasn't he a contemporary of Marx?"
No?
Various interpretations of his beliefs philosophically, politically, culturally, etc. all exist, but it's widely agreed upon he was very individualist above all else.
I see some interpretations say he was anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-democratic and anti-capitalist and many other things. I relate strongly to him in many ways, doesn't mean he and I agree on EVERYTHING.
I personally can see a lot of Libertarianism in his political beliefs.
On the one hand he hated 'the state' and the 'herd mentality' (aka the 18 century version of the SJW movement) but, at the same time, hated the idea of the 'common man' and having to toil away for the rich and wealthy, believing the lower classes to be slaves to those with power (anti-capitalist).
Either way he actually was very apathetic to politics, it's just a political tone can be seen in his works.
You know what I mean - how you can guess someone's political stance even if they don't tell you but by how they act.
Hitler and the Nazi's actually twisted his words (also Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown and his sister took over his work and wrote Nazi-type stuff) to support Nazism but Nietzsche was against Anti-semistism/Jew Racism and against Nationalism (which is what the Nazi's were).
05 Jun 2016, 2:53 am
05 Jun 2016, 3:48 am
Lol.
The Aussie's have invaded.
I wonder if this post will be on the fourth page or if we'll finally get to page 5.
EDIT: Nope...still 5th page. Maybe I should continue making long off-topic posts with this one. Don't know what to say though.
RetroGamer87
Veteran
Joined: 30 Jul 2013
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,085
Location: Adelaide, Australia
11 Jun 2016, 5:06 am
I didn't really have any problems with foreign doctors but one time I had teeth pulled by this petite Asian girl dentist. She didn't really have the physical strength to be pulling teeth. Maybe dentist wasn't a good line of work for her
Agoraphobia = Agararaphobea Social Anxiety = Socsail Anxieyt, etc.
It's not surprising. Like the Philippine girl at work. She went to school from 7AM to 5PM, 6 days per week. Two 15 minute breaks per day. She still had some homework but hopefully it wasn't a lot. Anyway, starting from 5 years of age she had English class. English class every year until year 12.
So given that it's no surprise she can speak English fluently. Aside from the fact that she's been living in Australia by herself for several years. I have known foreigners who stuck with their own people in Australia and most of their conversations were in their own language. However, living on her own meant she had to speak English.
I'm sure places like India or China or Europe have a lot of English classes too. Age makes a difference. Maybe the younger crowd were taught English better. I notice my new doctor is an older Indian and he types with two fingers. At first I thought it was because in India the schools were too poor to afford computers. Then I realized he's about 60 so when he was in school there were no personal computers in any country.
Of course it's disrespectful of your time too. It's not just doctors. The amount of forms we have to do for all sorts of things. It gets worse as you get older. Some on paper, some on the computer, either way it's time consuming. Filling in your tax return is a pain.
I always have a to do list of paperwork to do during my free time. And none of it comes from work. It's all stuff from outside of work. It actually takes up a lot of my non-work time.
That's the thing, if you work an 8 hour day, you can expect to spend more hours on non-work related paperwork. Especially if you're kind of slow at paperwork like me. Well organized people may be able to do it very fast but I'm not well organized. Also some of it is on the computer. If your computer is slow, expect it to take a long time. If your internet drops out, you may pay a late fee through no fault of your own.
I think it's ridiculous that they say, 8 hours work, 8 hours sleep and 8 hours recreation when we have to spend some of the 8 hours recreation time on things like paperwork. And nowadays they want to know so much detail. It seems like they have the most callous disregard for our time. Sometimes they won't even let me fax a form. They say they need my real signature. Because my real signature makes it true but my faxed signature might be a lie? I told the truth but do they think it's impossible to lie if I signed it?
And paying bills? Sometimes I feel like getting the money isn't the hard part but dealing with the paper work is the hard part. Like trying to find the bill, find which part of the bill has your number on it, trying to tell which number is the "account number" and which number is the "customer number" trying to remember your username and password and the answer to your secret question and the question to your secret question. All this so you can log onto the electric company website. Then you need to do that all again to log onto the bank website so you can your account number and BSB number, etc.
So really I have enough money to pay the bill but I can't pay it if I can't log in. If your internet drops out when your bill is due you'll get a late fee. The always think it's your fault.
In our society no one ever wants to accept blame yet everyone always wants everyone else to accept blame.
It works differently in different countries. The Americans criticize the Japanese for using Windows 98 but the Americans require payment lots of stuff via cheque. There was an Australian who moved to America. He sent his rent cheque in the mail. The mail was slow. He had to pay a late fee. The landlord said "Always send your rent cheque well in advance sir". The Australian asked if he could log into his bank website, go into payments and make the bank automatically send a fixed amount once per month. The landlord said "I've never heard of such a service sir". Funny because that's how I pay my rent.
So different countries are behind in different ways. We can laugh at them for being behind in some ways and they'll laugh at us for being behind in other ways.
The notion that all people are equal means people think all people had an equal chance at success. This is not true. Some people never got a chance.
Agreed. At the very least, though, I think Australia enjoys being near the coasts too much. We need to expand inland but most future plans are just expanding outland to connect inland cities to coastal cities.
For instance many South-East QLD plans I've heard just want to connect the sunshine coast, gold coast, brisbane, toowoomba and every town in-between together.
I think the solution isn't to make cities bigger or smaller, it's to make them less centralized. Everyone works in the city. If you spread out the work places, so that people in the outer suburbs don't have to travel far to get to their work, that would be the end of traffic jams and overcrowded trains. It wouldn't matter if a city is big, small or enormous, if it was decentralized it wouldn't have traffic problems. And then they wouldn't need to build wider roads and freeways, leaving more space for houses and shops.
Yeah, sure, it would suck to live in the desert in the middle of nowhere, but there can be pools and such. Many aussies already live in rural or secluded outback areas.
Many people in other nations live in small desert towns and such. No such thing seems to exist here except for the WA major cities (also typically coastal cities).
I know Australia has a lot of space but I don't think space is important. I think what's important is that any new town or city has to have an economic purpose to justify it being in that place. If there's a mining town or something then it has a good economy. If it's in the desert it doesn't matter since you can get water there. You can truck food in easily. The people won't starve.
But if you put a town randomly in the desert with no economic purpose than the town's economy will starve. It would be a town of unemployed people. Sure you could have shops and pubs and people working in those shops and pubs but this so called "service economy" isn't enough for the economy of the whole town. You can't make everyone work as a waiter when all their customers are also waiters. There's no source of money going into the shops or restaurants so the economy winds down. Having their only their own employees as customers is not sustainable.
I feel like this is gradually happening in major Australian cities. They've shut down so many factories and they say, "It's ok, we're transitioning to the service economy". BS! Listening to that is like listening to the band play cheerful music while the Titanic sinks.
The service economy is no economy. Funny how these people say you can't get something from nothing but their economic plan is reliant on getting something from nothing.
Shops and pubs and restaurants always spring up outside of a factory or other major employer. This is normal. But without something like a factory in town the shops have no reason to be there and the people have no reason to be there.
So I think this is the real reason why Australia has little space. The real reason why Australia is a small country. We can easily make the desert habitable if there's an economic reason to do so. Don't worry about finding a source of water, we have trucks for that. But we only have a limited amount of places with some source of money.
He made it seem our relatively mild deficit was worse than it actually was and that Rudd was screwing things up.
In some ways this education is good for young people but the bad is it delays their entry to the work force. Uni will give you one kind of maturity but joining the work force early will give you another type of maturity. The former will expose you to a wider circle of new ideas but the latter will expose you to greater responsibility and independence.
It's like inflation. Value is based on scarcity so the more dollars they print the less valuable they become. The more people get high school diplomas or university degrees the less valuable they become. So trying to solve unemployment through increased inflation is like trying to solve poverty by telling the mint to print ten times as much money.
Anyone can be a bus driver but 20 years from now the busline may instead be hiring driverless bus repairmen and programmers. If we automate all the working class jobs then we need many robotic technicians to run the robots. Robots can never function independently but it means we end up with no unskilled jobs and many vacant positions for qualified positions.
If we can't fill these positions ourselves they'll make up the shortfall by getting technicians from India.
I'll bet pushing everyone into college also increases the college drop out rate too. It means people who aren't suited go onto higher studies. Without as much pushing only the really smart ones would.
Why does everyone go to uni? Maybe it's a bit of envy, maybe a part of it is the schools make it look like there is no other option. They even have projects to get the not so bright students into a four year degree. Waste of time. Getting the dullards to qualify is a monumental task that requires two or three years in community collebut after they get into uni they're almost guaranteed to fail if they're on the wrong side of average. So instead of wasting time and resources on this, why not teach them a trade like carpentry or baking?
As you said we need a working class but the schools themselves also need to realize that.
Just how many people have you met or heard say they want to do 'Marine Biology'? I've met probably 5-10 in just high school alone.
It's like they know Biology is over-filled so they pick the next best thing.
Or are these students from your school more interested in animals? In that case maybe they should study zoology. Zoololgy focoses on the whole animal but biology focuses on parts of the animal. Sometimes visible parts and sometimes microscopic parts. Or so I've heard. I never actually took high school biology. Did you? Did you get to cut up any frogs?
And those students at your school who want to be marine biologists? Are they mostly girls? Forgive me for thinking in stereotypes but aspiring to be a marine biologist sounds like such a teenage girl thing to do. Maybe they want to swim with the dolphins
I hope they realize that a marine biologist is an actual scientist with a PhD and that the only thing harder than becoming a scientist is being one. If I tried to do a PhD in marine biology I'd probably die from exhaustion.Worse yet, after you've had no income for the past 4 years, you also have a 50,000 to 100,000 debt. An apprentice would have no debt.
Here's the worst part of all. I don't know about you but I learn best by doing things. At work I hate it when they either give a presentation on how to do a new task or get me to read a lengthy document instructing how to do a new task. This time is wasted for me because it all goes over my head and the only time any of it sticks in my mind is when I actually do it, hands on. I can learn how to do a lot of things hands on but reading only allows me to learn academic things like history, reading does not allow me to learn practical skills like how to actually something.Is it the same for you?
I actually enjoyed my time studying IT in TAFE because it was mostly practical. I especially enjoyed the classes on programming. We learned how to program by programming. That's it, just programming. It was 100%practical. No theory work, no essays about programming. We passed our exams by writing programs, not by writing essays about programming.
I liked that. But that was TAFE, not university. One of my uncles, the one who works in IT, learned how to program at university. He said it was about 90% theory and 10% practical. He didn't like that. There's even a guy at work who got into uni to study software engineering, disliked the amount of theory work, dropped out and then studied IT at TAFE just so he could have less theory and more practical. Yet for some reason in IT the TAFE graduates are looked down upon compared to the university graduates. Why are uni students better? Because they like having 90% theory? Because they demonstrated a better work ethic by handling about double the workload in uni as compared with TAFE? Because they demonstrated a higher level of sycophancy by unquestioningly doing all the useless assignments at uni instead of the useful assignments at TAFE? I don't know.
Well here's the thing. You said a lot of the hands on jobs that used to be taught throughapprenticeshipare now taught through a four year degree. As we've established these four year degrees are about 90% theory and 10% practical. I don't know about you but I can only learn how to do stuff by doing it. Hands on. As an apprentice I'd get to do plenty of hands on stuff. As a uni student? Not so much. So if we've moved fromapprenticeshipto uni, that means it pretty muchscrewedme and many other people like me. The way the education system is headed, all the hands on learners are screwed.
Is it that way in high school as well? Is it too much theory and not enough practical? This is like discriminating against people who's brainsprefertheoreticallearning. Those people will have an easy time getting high grades in high school. Ditto when they get to university.
I didn't even mind theory for moreacademicsubjects like English and history but I could never make the leap from writing about it to doing it for practical stuff.
Anyway maybe this is why the universities are now 60% and 40% guys. Or part of the reason. Because high schools focus on so-called "soft" skills. These arefavoredmore by girls. True there may be a few girls who dislike "soft" learning and a few boys who like it but on average it's usually a girl thing. If the boys don't get the grades they don't get into uni and then they don't get aprofessionaltype job. No wonder young women get paid more than young men. Because the guys were less likely to get into uni and join a profession.
At least I think girls are better at soft skills. Like my Aunt. She got very high grades in high school, went straight to uni and got a masters degree. She must be great at theory work but she seems to know little about technical things. She seems smart when I talk to her about history and culture but dumb when I talk to her about science andtechnology. See? She did very well in our system using soft skills.
That's why in some subjects you spend more time writing about what you learned than learning it. Or why sometimes when you go to pay a bill you spend more time proving you are who you say you are than actually paying it. Without the correct form, it's like you don't exist in society.
I've even heard plenty of stories of experienced veteran workers for a company with great knowledge and experience of the job being fired over some 22 year old fresh out of uni with a degree in the same field. I even heard one story of the uni graduate knowing LESS than the veteran.
You know you can even get a degree in management? Yes it will teach you how to do the paper pushing parts of management (which make up a large part of the job) but it won't teach you about the type of work that you end up managing. You could be a manager in IT who knows nothing about IT for example. This leads to disaster.
So many of us stay up so late in uni and such to study we only get about 4 hours of sleep or even pull 'all-nighters'.
Maybe most people just procrastinate and then rush to get it done.
In some western countries this is very common. So much so that employers actually expect your resume to list the jobs you held while you were at uni (and the jobs you held while you were at high school). I read a story on the web about a woman who did a degree. Four years of full time study in her late 20s. She went for a job interview. The interviewer asked her why she had a 4 year resume gap. She said those were the 4 years she was in college. He asked her how she was able to support herself. She said her husband supported them both during that time. The interviewer said this was evidence she was lazy for not holding a part time job while studying full time in college.
Maybe this is less common in Australia but my wealthy aunt (not the aunt I mentioned before, a different one) is insistentthat her 15 year old daughter have a job while she's doing year 10 to make her resume look better. It has absolutely nothing to do with needing the money since they're very wealthy. All this while she's doing extra classes at school.
I feel a bit sorry for her having a tiger mum like that but also a little bit jealous. Like maybe if I had a tiger mum I'd be more successful today lol
At least her mum doesn't make her take piano and violin and tennis and water polo anymore. The funny thing is my cousin seems to be happy and well adjusted. Her executive mum hates cooking so she feeds the whole family on McDonald's yet none of them ever gets fat. Her whole family looks and acts perfect like they come out of happy families magazine. The inside of their big ass house looksspotlesslyclean like the pages of a furniturecatalog. You'd never know she has 3 kids. Her holiday home is just as clean. Her whole family is sickeningly perfect.
I don't think the 2-minute noodles is really a requirement. Maybe they eat it because as students they're poor but I can say from experience that ice cream or Subway is just as fast, if not faster and there are typically shops around educational institutions so if you're pressed for time you don'tnecessarilyhave to live in 2-minute noodles. At TAFE I used to walk out of class during in exams, walk across the road and buy an ice cream. They didn't have a rule against leaving the class room. If you're studying at home and pressed for time then maybe frozen lasagna? Unless you buy those 5 packs because you need to get 5 meals for $2.50 lol. Is that how poor uni students are?
You can't live on carbs alone. Those noodles don't have any vitamins in them and you need vitamins for brain function. Then again I used to frequent those pro-ana sites when I wasobsessedwith dieting. It's funny how those girls were literally starving and yet they still got straight As and managed to complete uni courses that I wouldn't be able to do when well fed (and some of them had a job as well). Or thosegymnastswho, while starved by their couch would train for 9 hours, go to school for 6 hours and do 3 hours of homework while their swollen ankles sat on ice packs, then they sleep for only 5 hours and they still get straight As. It'sinfuriatingbecause at that age I ate more than enough, had no injuries and had more free time on a weekday then they do in a month yet I still got low grades. Ok I'll try to stop being jealous of people who have a better work ethic than me
The sad thing is that because of the popularity of Apple, competing brands have become a lot more like Apple to try to win customers. So you can either buy Apple or you can buy something very similar to Apple. If you want something complete different no one makes it. If everyone copies one brand it means there's no consumer choice
That's why I'm sticking with my oldBlackBerry. It's atotallynon-Apple design. It's a retro-smartphone
People claim it would happen when machines become more perfect than people.
I think it's the opposite - technology is so flawed, buggy and cr*ppy, it will be the end of us because we CAN'T make it any better, or merely don't WANT to.
Then the end of the world comes when we're totally dependent ontechnologybut that technology is really unreliable.
Remember they try to make stuff as cheaply as possible, which not only means they skimp and the materials andmanufacturingbut also the programming and bugtesting. Bugs get through and hastilly written programs turn into bloatware.
Remember a lot of this stuff is carelessly made by underpayed, overworked workers. Not only the impoverished 3rd world guys assembling the thing but also the programmers. You know programming is one of the most overworked fields? They usually get paid by the year so doing more overtime won't add to their salary. So the managers make unrealistic deadlines, leading to 16 hour days and 7 hour weeks. And the whole time you have to work flat out. For me, the longer I work in a day the slower / worse quality my work is yet these guys keep going at burst speed.
And the managers? One former manager revealed that hepurposelymade the deadlines too close so he could make the programmers do a lot of overtime because they were on a fixed salary so that meant that he could get more work out of them for the same amount of money and that he could do more work with a smaller staff.
Why do companies do stuff like this? Because of marketplace competition. The successful company is the one that makes the most product for the least cost. The unsuccessful companies are the ones who go out of bussiness, meaning only the successful (slave-driver) companies remain. It's like natural selection. It's also a race to the bottom. If workers fear unemployment then it's a race to see which sycophant can overwork himself the most while they have corporatepropagandaabout what a virtue it is to work harder and harder.
You can add that to your arguments against capitalism if you haven't already. Remember also that if you work extra hard one day they'll expect you to do it the next. They take your burst speed to be your normal speed.
I'm sorry but I tend to disagree all successful people worked hard to get where they are.
If your quote implies many unsuccessful people may have actually worked harder than some successful people, then I would agree.
Some even believe it's not possible for teens to get depressed. Smh. They attribute it to 'teen angst' (e.g. whiny emo's crying about their parents yelling at them for not doing their chores, etc.)
I'd say it'd be pretty cruisy being able to just chill out in the staffroom for lessons 1, 2 and first lunch and only have to teach students in lesson 3 and lesson 4 (we had four classes per day, at my old high school it was 4 periods, at new high school 8 periods but still just 4 lessons which confused me even more).
It's probably why, as I've noticed, on Thursday and Friday afternoons students are absolutely drained because of the long week while teachers are also exhausted but relatively fine.
A thursday student is like a tuesday teacher.
School was a long time ago for me but last year, in TAFE, one of the lectururs said she had to work until 1AM every day grading papers yet she still had a 9am start.
Here's an article I found. Scroll down for a fun story about the life of a teacher.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... -americans
My arms are also getting to be a bit too big for my physique. I'm not doing for a bodybuilder look, I'm going for a toned look.
For me fitness was going from morbidly obese to slightly overweight with a small pot belly. Unless I wear a tight shirt it looks flat.
I've certainly been in social situations where I didn't get in with the in crowd so I watched alone from the sidelines. I can tell you that that kind of trap is far too easy to fall into so watch out for it.
Especially theprofessors. Remember the olderprofessorsare at the right age that they were young adults at the time of the hippie movement. Some of yourprofessorsmay be former hippies. Yes they did have hippies in Australia, it wasn't just an American thing.
If yourprofessoris middle aged then he might be a former 80s Yuppie like Alex Keaton from Family Ties.
It's just that girls asking me out triggered my social anxiety in a big way and I didn't understand subtext enough to know what flirting was.
But I wassurroundedby girls and in an environment where no one cared about my income or lack of dating experience because everyone was a dating noob and no one had a job lol
Maybe I'm doing ok now to have started dating in my 20s because there are aspies in their 20s at work who have literally never been on a date. There but for the grace of God go I.
When I was 11 I took an early class in high school and the teacher showed me how to to it myself. By this time Google was a thing. Once he showed me how to search for whatever I wanted and explained using quotes to me I was fine. I already understood the concept of clicking on stuff I wanted from the offline computers at primary school, though when I was 8 or 9 the teacher practically had to show me how to use Windows 95 from scratch because my previous school had been Mac based lol. Some of the classrooms had Windows 3.1, which confused me a little bit. In kindergarten the computers were all DOS, they we didn't really use DOS itself, we just played games on them
When I was about 6 I stayed at after school care a few times and the room we were in had arcade machines set to free play. That was one of the joys of the early 90s. I remember there was an arcade machine outside of the local deli. I hate to think what crappy entertainments the after school care has now but I think I can safely assume it's not arcade machines.I guess all the kids play games on iPad or iPhone nowadays. Touch screens. Ugh. I have a feeling the kids nowadays would have no idea how to hold a Playstationcontrollerbecausethey only play crappy ass games on iPad.
Yes it's all too fast.
Sometimes I think maybe they discovered how to make modern computers in the 70s but decided that instead of releasing them to market they should make incremental upgrades to people have to buy many computers, each one slightly more advanced than the last.
But why would you support that idea? It appears to me you do when I think it's fundamentally flawed.
What do you think of Australian politicians. Do you think they're doing a good job of governing or do you think they're corrupt?
Imagine those same politicians micro managing the economy and controlling every factory, every business and every farm.
The problem with politics is no matter who wins the election you always get a politician and all politicians are bad. They're always power hungry lying manipulators, no matter which party they come from.
The trouble with socialism, is that when it puts the means of production in the hands of politicians, it assumes these politicians are not corrupt but all politicians are corrupt. Democratic elections are no guarantee of getting uncorrupted politicians, as you have seen for yourself in the last few elections. The voters can always be fooled. Remember that they voted for Abbott. Would you like Abbott controlling all the means of production?
The election is usually won by whichever politician is the most skilled at lying and making himself look good. As a consequence, the winner is someone who lies a lot, therefore corrupt. Remember also that those who seek power are those least fit to wield it.
I realise that putting the means is production in the hands of corrupt businessmen is harmful but putting the means of production in the hands of corrupt politicians is at least as harmful.
Politicians can do more to ruin the economy because businessmen lose power when they lose too much money but politicians can lose all the money and still retain power, leading to widespread poverty, as has happened in socialist countries such as North Korea.
Before you say North Korea isn't a true socialist country, let me remind you that is a No True Scotsman fallacy.
If anything 3rd wave feminism makes Australia more misogynist because 3rd wave feminism is misogynist. I admire strong women. I believe women are the equal of men. But 3rd wave feminism teaches women they need things to be easier for them. Strong women don't need a handicap to compete against men. I don't like how 3rd wave feminism teaches girls to be damsels in distress because this is misogynist.
Only covered it in Drama.
It was an analytical essay on a theatre production of it.
Ironically this made me not take drama. Back then I thought girls were scary
I vary between both. I especially feel Nihilistic when depressed, and existential when positive and optimistic.
No?
RetroGamer87
Veteran
Joined: 30 Jul 2013
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,085
Location: Adelaide, Australia
11 Jun 2016, 5:40 am
EDIT: Nope...still 5th page. Maybe I should continue making long off-topic posts with this one. Don't know what to say though.
14 Jun 2016, 5:18 am
“Ouch. There are a lot of Indians and other foreign people at work. The funny thing is they all speak perfect English. Sure they have accents but they have clear pronunciation and perfect grammar. Most of them can spell in English better than I can lol.”
Eh, it’s all about experiences than to be honest.
I do find it harder to trust foreign workers as I’ve only had nothing but issues dealing with them.
And I actually agree about the English thing. Foreigners who know it tend to know it better than us.
It’s pathetic how illiterate so many native english speakers seem to be, especially from the U.S. and in some unfortunate cases Australia too.
“I'm sure places like India or China or Europe have a lot of English classes too. Age makes a difference. Maybe the younger crowd were taught English better. I notice my new doctor is an older Indian and he types with two fingers. At first I thought it was because in India the schools were too poor to afford computers. Then I realized he's about 60 so when he was in school there were no personal computers in any country.”
That’s probably it.
The young Indian and foreign exchange uni students I would ride the bus with back in 11th grade all had very good English, the veteran doctors I’ve come across and middle-aged taxi drivers haven’t.
“Like I said, doctors always rush you. Most of all the GPs. They miss things when they try to diagnose you. If you want a good diagnosis go to a specialist. Even then it's hit and miss. Ever hear stories about people with rare diseases who took ages to get it diagnosed?”
Sometimes.
I’ve heard of misdiagnoses too.
Anyway, it’s been quick and incompetent GPs that prevent me from seeing specialists.
Last year we simply wanted a referral to the psychologist and the indian doctor gave me a full mental health assessment and didn’t even send the referral. 4 damn hours.
“That's the thing. Half of the people who go to see the doctor are there to get forms signed rather than because they need treatment. I know we only have a limited amount of doctors and their time is limited but if we don't make healthy people see the doctor to get a form signed then maybe they'll have more time to treat sick people.
Of course it's disrespectful of your time too. It's not just doctors. The amount of forms we have to do for all sorts of things. It gets worse as you get older. Some on paper, some on the computer, either way it's time consuming. Filling in your tax return is a pain.”
As I’ve heard.
Of course the sick should take priority.
My last doctor appointment the schedules got switched around and the doctor had to kick a woman and her baby out of the office just for me and my dad to see him.
They should have took priority and there was another available doctor basically sitting around doing nothing who only saw one patient every 20 minutes or so the whole time we were there.
We could have just saw him...
“I always have a to do list of paperwork to do during my free time. And none of it comes from work. It's all stuff from outside of work. It actually takes up a lot of my non-work time.”
Yeah paperworks frustrating, but what’s moreso is also constantly being harassed with letters or online messages or texts from corporations.
I’m talking about recieving about 100 texts from Centrelink a day saying the exact same ‘centrelink was contacted on... about your intent to make a claim’
It was the claim for youth allowance I made all the way back in november, and they’re still sending it. I’m already f*cking on it.
“That's the thing, if you work an 8 hour day, you can expect to spend more hours on non-work related paperwork. Especially if you're kind of slow at paperwork like me. Well organized people may be able to do it very fast but I'm not well organized. Also some of it is on the computer. If your computer is slow, expect it to take a long time. If your internet drops out, you may pay a late fee through no fault of your own.”
“I think it's ridiculous that they say, 8 hours work, 8 hours sleep and 8 hours recreation when we have to spend some of the 8 hours recreation time on things like paperwork. And nowadays they want to know so much detail. It seems like they have the most callous disregard for our time. Sometimes they won't even let me fax a form. They say they need my real signature. Because my real signature makes it true but my faxed signature might be a lie? I told the truth but do they think it's impossible to lie if I signed it?”
Never heard that phrase but obviously I can see why it exists.
Yes that’s true, no one truly spends their 16 hours away from work free from responsibilities.
There’s paperwork, etc. and even just being too drained for recreation and such.
“And paying bills? Sometimes I feel like getting the money isn't the hard part but dealing with the paper work is the hard part. Like trying to find the bill, find which part of the bill has your number on it, trying to tell which number is the "account number" and which number is the "customer number" trying to remember your username and password and the answer to your secret question and the question to your secret question. All this so you can log onto the electric company website. Then you need to do that all again to log onto the bank website so you can your account number and BSB number, etc.”
Hell yes.
I’m pissed that MyGov is connected to Centrelink and I can essentially access 90% of centrelink services when I don’t technically have a centrelink account.
And everything from centrelink is soon being moved to mygov. But my mum said that it’s said that for over a year now.
So sometimes I am blocked from accessing centrelink services because i need to ‘log into my centrelink account’ which I don’t have yet I am logged into MyGov yet it doesn’t work today so the next day it will.
So if I set up my centrelink account and password having to actually go into the office, it may soon at any moment all be moved to mygov.
Why does mygov even exist, i wish I could have just started a centrelink instead of essentially having a half connected half not connected mygov. It’s a headache.
“So really I have enough money to pay the bill but I can't pay it if I can't log in. If your internet drops out when your bill is due you'll get a late fee. The always think it's your fault.”
Yeah mum’s had issue with such things and doesn’t like it herself how banking and bills and that have all been transferred to internet.
“In our society no one ever wants to accept blame yet everyone always wants everyone else to accept blame.
It works differently in different countries. The Americans criticize the Japanese for using Windows 98 but the Americans require payment lots of stuff via cheque. There was an Australian who moved to America. He sent his rent cheque in the mail. The mail was slow. He had to pay a late fee. The landlord said "Always send your rent cheque well in advance sir". The Australian asked if he could log into his bank website, go into payments and make the bank automatically send a fixed amount once per month. The landlord said "I've never heard of such a service sir". Funny because that's how I pay my rent.”
Damn. O_O
“US? Maybe not. I spoke to a young guy at work. He said they used GPA when he was at university. In Australia.”
Depends on the state I guess. It’s surpising how many countries have individual state laws, guidelines, etc.
My Dad passed the NSW learner liscense test quickly but took ages to do the QLD one.
Makes more sense for most things to be federal.
Moving to another state shouldn’t feel like almost moving to another country regarding how ‘the system’ works.
“And after they do that some middle class relative will still say it's my fault I didn't get into uni because I was lazy and because I'm a whinger.
The notion that all people are equal means people think all people had an equal chance at success. This is not true. Some people never got a chance.”
Pretty much.
“They tried stuff like that with Adelaide too. It didn't work either. In the 50s and 60s they thought they could build a satellite city a little way North with it's own bussiness district. This ended up becoming just another suburb with a damned long commute, contributing to urban sprawl. So many people drove from from up there through the inner suburbs to get to the city that they had to widen the roads in the inner suburbs, which meant they had to demolish houses in the inner suburbs, which meant the people who got evicted had to move up to the outer suburbs, increasing the number of people who had to drive through the congested roads.
I think the solution isn't to make cities bigger or smaller, it's to make them less centralized. Everyone works in the city. If you spread out the work places, so that people in the outer suburbs don't have to travel far to get to their work, that would be the end of traffic jams and overcrowded trains. It wouldn't matter if a city is big, small or enormous, if it was decentralized it wouldn't have traffic problems. And then they wouldn't need to build wider roads and freeways, leaving more space for houses and shops.”
I did Geography in senior year and as fun the class was because it was so damn easy, I actually learnt a lot of useful stuff and it’s one of the few classes I could say I learnt anything useful or relevant that year.
I agree and we did study economics and city structure and such for a while, e.g. types of cities, infrastructure, etc.
I learnt of the city design plan where the CBD is in the exact centre, the inner city workers on the outer circle, and the most outest circle being the factories and industries, and the potential negatives of this city structure.
My city has this exact structure but has failed and become a congested, confused mess where plenty of neighborhoods are an odd mix of both industry and suburbia so we have major highways running through many parts of the city right next to suburban houses (this is my case, my street is the first off a highway so the highway is literally right there and a shopping centre a few clicks up, plenty of indutry and factories on the same street and my high school a 1km walk down an off-street.
Suburban house streets next to national highways, shopping centres, high schools and factories and local shops/businesses all in one spot.
“Building lots of medium sized, inland cities worked for America. Would it work here? I don't know.
I know Australia has a lot of space but I don't think space is important. I think what's important is that any new town or city has to have an economic purpose to justify it being in that place. If there's a mining town or something then it has a good economy. If it's in the desert it doesn't matter since you can get water there. You can truck food in easily. The people won't starve.
But if you put a town randomly in the desert with no economic purpose than the town's economy will starve. It would be a town of unemployed people. Sure you could have shops and pubs and people working in those shops and pubs but this so called "service economy" isn't enough for the economy of the whole town. You can't make everyone work as a waiter when all their customers are also waiters. There's no source of money going into the shops or restaurants so the economy winds down. Having their only their own employees as customers is not sustainable.”
Well that’s what I want. Find a way to make it work, economically, socially, politically, environmentally, whatever.
Those were also the four major categories in Geography for building a new city or town or making developments and what the advantages or disadvantages would be in each category.
We used it as our guide/framework in constructing arguments for assignments/tests/essays why or why not a town in a certain place would last or an already economically damaged town and what it could do to improve it’s economic situation.
“Shops and pubs and restaurants always spring up outside of a factory or other major employer. This is normal. But without something like a factory in town the shops have no reason to be there and the people have no reason to be there.
So I think this is the real reason why Australia has little space. The real reason why Australia is a small country. We can easily make the desert habitable if there's an economic reason to do so. Don't worry about finding a source of water, we have trucks for that. But we only have a limited amount of places with some source of money.”
Agreed.
“Yep. If they make it so that everyone graduates high school than it no longer becomes a special achievement.”
With university attendance rates rising so sharply as they are for millenials, this is essentially the case today.
“But you need a special achievement to get ahead. You can't use it to get ahead of everyone else if everyone else already did it. This is why so many people go to uni these days, in part to get ahead of the crowd. But this leads to the crowd going to uni, so going to uni no longer makes you special like it did 50 years ago, it makes you average. It makes those who don't go to uni below average when they used to be average. It also leads to more people getting a post grad degree as the only way to get ahead of the crowd. Remember that post grad degrees are not only extremely difficult but they increase the size of your student debt and mean you don't begin earning until your mid to late 20s.”
And it’ll only get worse from there, where everyone will want to get post-grads, and then post-grad is average, and then god knows what’s better than that will be average.
“In some ways this education is good for young people but the bad is it delays their entry to the work force. Uni will give you one kind of maturity but joining the work force early will give you another type of maturity. The former will expose you to a wider circle of new ideas but the latter will expose you to greater responsibility and independence.”
Exactly. Though uni students can work part-time and such, but that’s nothing compared to entering legitimate career paths early as well.
“In that case we should not shame them but we may be moving towards a skill based economy.
Anyone can be a bus driver but 20 years from now the busline may instead be hiring driverless bus repairmen and programmers. If we automate all the working class jobs then we need many robotic technicians to run the robots. Robots can never function independently but it means we end up with no unskilled jobs and many vacant positions for qualified positions.
If we can't fill these positions ourselves they'll make up the shortfall by getting technicians from India.”
Yes I see this happening.
More and more the world is having no place for unskilled workers.
As ‘good’ as that may sound as it may encourage people to work harder to be skilled, it also means those that fall behind will fail in the workforce or even just getting a job.
There are plenty of undereducated or uneducated people today who could still do hard labor blue collar work, but the more skill based the world becomes the more obsolete they become, thus possibly worsening poverty even more.
“Yet they soon ger used to it. There are already plenty of people with degrees doing menial jobs. They'll do it if they have to. The trouble with everyone getting a degree is it means people are less likely to find work in the field of study. If less than half the population got degrees then they probably would get jobs in their field of study.”
Or it could have the opposite affect and have less people doing menial jobs.
These jobs still have to be done but no one is willing to do them.
So the menial tasks are replaced by technology, but people need to be more educated to use the technology, but everyone being more educated to do menial tasks that were easily achievable for the uneducated in the past results in too many people with the qualifications to do said task.
Catch-22 Inception...
“Why does everyone go to uni? Maybe it's a bit of envy, maybe a part of it is the schools make it look like there is no other option. They even have projects to get the not so bright students into a four year degree. Waste of time. Getting the dullards to qualify is a monumental task that requires two or three years in community collebut after they get into uni they're almost guaranteed to fail if they're on the wrong side of average. So instead of wasting time and resources on this, why not teach them a trade like carpentry or baking?”
Exactly.
But it’s because we seem to be moving toward a society where you DO need the 4 year degree, at least it seems that way.
“Better get used to it. Even a non computer job might be heavy on computers for filling in your timesheets and self-evaluations and also use email and instant messaging for correspondence (even with people who are sitting just a few paces from you in the same room). Sometimes even if you tell them something you have to put it in an email to make it official (e.g. holiday leave request). If you get back after illness expect to fill in the sick leave on the computer. It's all drop down menus, etc. Just as you get used to it, they change the system.”
Why do you think I, ironically as a millenial, hate technology myself?
People assume I can understand technology better and probably assume as a millenial I can not relate to or understand the struggles middle-aged adults are having with the technological shift as well. That’s just it - I can.
“Really? I've always thought physics was more interesting. I suppose biology does have some very interested systems, like how the mitochondria function within the cell or how DNA is read, etc.
Or are these students from your school more interested in animals? In that case maybe they should study zoology. Zoololgy focoses on the whole animal but biology focuses on parts of the animal. Sometimes visible parts and sometimes microscopic parts. Or so I've heard. I never actually took high school biology. Did you?”
Yes. I know, it’s very much based on the inner-workings of the human or animal body or such.
“Did you get to cut up any frogs? ”
Eh there was one pig lung cutting session but I didn’t feel like doing it.
“And those students at your school who want to be marine biologists? Are they mostly girls? Forgive me for thinking in stereotypes but aspiring to be a marine biologist sounds like such a teenage girl thing to do. Maybe they want to swim with the dolphins I hope they realize that a marine biologist is an actual scientist with a PhD and that the only thing harder than becoming a scientist is being one. If I tried to do a PhD in marine biology I'd probably die from exhaustion.”
They sure are. Some males too though.
And yeah, they do seem to have the incorrect ‘swimming with dolphins’ idea in their head.
Like being stationed at some dolphine marine life eco-system science facility and thinking there’s lots of interaction with the dolphins.
That’s probably the romanticisation of it.
“That sucks on so many levels. An apprentice gets paid. A bit less than a full worker but he still gets paid. Now while your getting a degree you have nothing to live on. So you either have to have a part time job while you're a full time student (I know people who've done this and I don't know how they did it without going mad from the total lack of free time) or you have to continue living off of your parents, while an apprentice would have some degree of financialindependence.”
Exactly.
And ‘one’ part-time job? Really? It seems more like 2-3.
“Worse yet, after you've had no income for the past 4 years, you also have a 50,000 to 100,000 debt. An apprentice would have no debt.”
Yeah.
This is what I’m referring to.
You’re believing most jobs will become a skill-based society but the issue is the ‘skills’ will be technology-based, and doing so requires more techncal knowledge than ever before.
This is what I’m arguing.
Cars are so computerized now for instance, so you’ll need to probably go to uni to become qualified.
There’s only so much you could learn from your Uncle about mechanics, and it’s likely if he didn’t go to uni and only knows about non-computerized cars he won’t be able to teach you much.
“Here's the worst part of all. I don't know about you but I learn best by doing things. At work I hate it when they either give a presentation on how to do a new task or get me to read a lengthy document instructing how to do a new task. This time is wasted for me because it all goes over my head and the only time any of it sticks in my mind is when I actually do it, hands on. I can learn how to do a lot of things hands on but reading only allows me to learn academic things like history, reading does not allow me to learn practical skills like how to actually something.Is it the same for you?”
Pretty much.
“I liked that. But that was TAFE, not university. One of my uncles, the one who works in IT, learned how to program at university. He said it was about 90% theory and 10% practical. He didn't like that. There's even a guy at work who got into uni to study software engineering, disliked the amount of theory work, dropped out and then studied IT at TAFE just so he could have less theory and more practical. Yet for some reason in IT the TAFE graduates are looked down upon compared to the university graduates. Why are uni students better? Because they like having 90% theory? Because they demonstrated a better work ethic by handling about double the workload in uni as compared with TAFE? Because they demonstrated a higher level of sycophancy by unquestioningly doing all the useless assignments at uni instead of the useful assignments at TAFE? I don't know.”
Damn.
“Well here's the thing. You said a lot of the hands on jobs that used to be taught throughapprenticeshipare now taught through a four year degree. As we've established these four year degrees are about 90% theory and 10% practical. I don't know about you but I can only learn how to do stuff by doing it. Hands on. As an apprentice I'd get to do plenty of hands on stuff. As a uni student? Not so much. So if we've moved fromapprenticeshipto uni, that means it pretty muchscrewedme and many other people like me. The way the education system is headed, all the hands on learners are screwed.”
Exactly.
“Is it that way in high school as well? Is it too much theory and not enough practical? This is like discriminating against people who's brainsprefertheoreticallearning. Those people will have an easy time getting high grades in high school. Ditto when they get to university.
I didn't even mind theory for moreacademicsubjects like English and history but I could never make the leap from writing about it to doing it for practical stuff.”
I’m not sure, depends on your classes I guess. It seems to be a nice combination in high school for the most part.
Subjects like English are pretty much supposed to be theory based and there’s not many ways for it to be practical.
“Anyway maybe this is why the universities are now 60% and 40% guys. Or part of the reason. Because high schools focus on so-called "soft" skills. These arefavoredmore by girls. True there may be a few girls who dislike "soft" learning and a few boys who like it but on average it's usually a girl thing. If the boys don't get the grades they don't get into uni and then they don't get aprofessionaltype job. No wonder young women get paid more than young men. Because the guys were less likely to get into uni and join a profession.
At least I think girls are better at soft skills. Like my Aunt. She got very high grades in high school, went straight to uni and got a masters degree. She must be great at theory work but she seems to know little about technical things. She seems smart when I talk to her about history and culture but dumb when I talk to her about science andtechnology. See? She did very well in our system using soft skills.”
What do you mean by soft skills?
I think you’re saying such as boys in high school are more likely to do construction/metal/wood works, possibly phyiscal education, etc.
Yeah, you’re right.
“Remember that the world is run bybureaucrats. Thebureaucrats believe if they can't measure something then it doesn't exist. So they believe that self-taught skills don't exist if there's no diploma to prove it exists.”
Seems self-taught skill and experience at your field though may be less valued than a uni degree and no experience.
Pretty hard to be a self-taught programmer now even if you’ve succeeded at the job before when there’s uni kids fresh out of college to take your spot.
“That's why in some subjects you spend more time writing about what you learned than learning it. Or why sometimes when you go to pay a bill you spend more time proving you are who you say you are than actually paying it. Without the correct form, it's like you don't exist in society.”
pretty much.
“Yes I've heard stories like that too. I've also heard stories of experienced workers who retained their jobs but ended up being managed by clueless 22 year olds fresh out of university. I think there was a thread about that scenario on WP 1 or 2 years ago.
You know you can even get a degree in management? Yes it will teach you how to do the paper pushing parts of management (which make up a large part of the job) but it won't teach you about the type of work that you end up managing. You could be a manager in IT who knows nothing about IT for example. This leads to disaster.”
Of course.
“Sounds like fun but employment is far fromguaranteed.”
It’s a hobby...but my personal example.
Replace music with self-taught mechanic or other such things for someone else.
“I'm not sure. When I did a Cert II at TAFE at first I thought it might be too simple for me and that it would be nothing but stuff I already knew. It turned out to be about half and half. Half stuff I knew and half stuff I didn't. It was still a good experience for me.”
That’s the possibility with courses tailored to absolute beginners though.
If you’ve been doing programming type jobs since 14 and start studying it at uni at 20, how much more could you possibly learn in 4 years? Is it worth the debt? Should a piece of paper really trump self-taught knowledge, experience, and then the extra knowledge learnt from that experience?
See what I mean now?
“Which books?”
Plenty.
Primarily Nietzsche books as he’s the pioneer of Existentialism, my own personal beliefs, but plenty of ‘general’ ones as well.
“I'll Google that later when I want to read some horror stories. I have a morbid fascination with the limits of human endurance. Partly because I'm a little bit jealous of those who have what it takes to succeed under extreme conditions.”
True.
“Not just in Asia. Stuff like that happens in the West.”
That’s why I’m uncomfortable being one.
It ain’t just competitive Asian nations that are over-stressed and over-worked and over-educated with useless degrees.
It’s here too now.
“Maybe most people just procrastinate and then rush to get it done.
Maybe the reason could because they're trying to "work their way through college". e.g. they go to class in the day and work as a waiter in the evening. So what time do they have to do their assignments? Only the time between midnight and 4am. Then they sleep for 3 or 4 hours and do it all again.”
Sounds like paradise./s
“In some western countries this is very common. So much so that employers actually expect your resume to list the jobs you held while you were at uni (and the jobs you held while you were at high school). I read a story on the web about a woman who did a degree. Four years of full time study in her late 20s. She went for a job interview. The interviewer asked her why she had a 4 year resume gap. She said those were the 4 years she was in college. He asked her how she was able to support herself. She said her husband supported them both during that time. The interviewer said this was evidence she was lazy for not holding a part time job while studying full time in college.”
Holy f*ck. That could be me if all I want to do is part-time retail volunteering while studying.
“Maybe this is less common in Australia but my wealthy aunt (not the aunt I mentioned before, a different one) is insistentthat her 15 year old daughter have a job while she's doing year 10 to make her resume look better. It has absolutely nothing to do with needing the money since they're very wealthy. All this while she's doing extra classes at school.”
Yeah, the whole ‘get experience while you’re young pressure’ has been suggested to me as well.
“At least her mum doesn't make her take piano and violin and tennis and water polo anymore. The funny thing is my cousin seems to be happy and well adjusted. Her executive mum hates cooking so she feeds the whole family on McDonald's yet none of them ever gets fat. Her whole family looks and acts perfect like they come out of happy families magazine. The inside of their big ass house looksspotlesslyclean like the pages of a furniturecatalog. You'd never know she has 3 kids. Her holiday home is just as clean. Her whole family is sickeningly perfect.”
Sounds like aussie middle to upper middle class.
I don’t like it myself.
Too perfect, have never known struggle in anyway, and the prepetrators of slander against the lower and lower middle class.
“I don't think the 2-minute noodles is really a requirement. Maybe they eat it because as students they're poor”
It’s a figure of speech, a metaphor referring to the fact they ARE poor.
Young people with a job and living away from home find it hard enough financially, let alone uni students with a debt and 2 part-time jobs.
The whole stay up till 4am working on assignment 3 hour sleep night survive on two minute noodles and coffee have a cheap bombed up second hand car uni kid stereotype.
It sounds like absolute hell.
“but I can say from experience that ice cream or Subway is just as fast, if not faster and there are typically shops around educational institutions so if you're pressed for time you don'tnecessarilyhave to live in 2-minute noodles. At TAFE I used to walk out of class during in exams, walk across the road and buy an ice cream. They didn't have a rule against leaving the class room. If you're studying at home and pressed for time then maybe frozen lasagna? Unless you buy those 5 packs because you need to get 5 meals for $2.50 lol. Is that how poor uni students are?”
See, I care far too much about my health and living a healthy lifestyle to want to overwhelm myself like uni students seem to.
That’s what I’m getting at.
I eat extremely healthy and eat 6 meals a day, yes 6. I also lift weights and try to find the time to exercise for one hour, at least 3 days a week.
I like to get the ideal 8hrs sleep and like to minimize stress.
There are plenty of young men who might enjoy eating healthy and bodybuilding and can still make their healthy lifestyle work while studying but it’s a hell of a lot harder than for you average person who cares less about eating healthy and getting their exercise.
Not a negative stereotype or generalizaton, just fact - most people are very apathetic about their health, diet and exercise.
“You can't live on carbs alone. Those noodles don't have any vitamins in them and you need vitamins for brain function. Then again I used to frequent those pro-ana sites when I wasobsessedwith dieting.”
This is what I’m getting at.
My healthy diet would be dampened if I was a white N.T. studying at uni as I wouldn’t have Indigenous benefits and also not be on disability.
“It's funny how those girls were literally starving and yet they still got straight As and managed to complete uni courses that I wouldn't be able to do when well fed (and some of them had a job as well). Or thosegymnastswho, while starved by their couch would train for 9 hours, go to school for 6 hours and do 3 hours of homework while their swollen ankles sat on ice packs, then they sleep for only 5 hours and they still get straight As. It'sinfuriatingbecause at that age I ate more than enough, had no injuries and had more free time on a weekday then they do in a month yet I still got low grades. Ok I'll try to stop being jealous of people who have a better work ethic than me “
Yes it’s possible to have healthy diet and lifestyle and juggle your work and study but overwhelmingly difficult. That’s the pissy part of it.
Anyway, ever heard of UP&GOs?
I’m serious.
They’re very convenient - breakfast in a bottle, pretty much.
Every morning instead of cereal my first meal is two Up&Gos, and a protein shake (milk with two scoops of choc-flavored protein powder, stirred). I also have Multi-vitamin pill, Vitamin D pill and Anti-stress/anxiety pill with water after.
This plus the occasional fruit (typically banana) is not only very healthy and nutritious, but has a lot of protein, fats and carbs first thing in the morning to provide me with energy, along with the B vitamins which are also good sources of energy, and Vit-D.
It’s changed my morning routine for the better and helped me eat quicker in many situations e.g. if I have to leave the house at 9.30 I dont have to waste 30mins eating cereal when I could spend 5 max having what I normally have.
“Yeah, everything's about trying to maintain an image and keep upappearances. I should try to avoid falling into that trap again. Instead of being like that I should try to bepragmatic.”
What do you mean?
Stop caring too much about your image and such?
“Hence why Macbooks and iPhones are so popular. But recent Androids look more like iPhones and Windows 8 / 10 look like something Apple designed to run on the iPad.
The sad thing is that because of the popularity of Apple, competing brands have become a lot more like Apple to try to win customers. So you can either buy Apple or you can buy something very similar to Apple. If you want something complete different no one makes it. If everyone copies one brand it means there's no consumer choice
That's why I'm sticking with my oldBlackBerry. It's atotallynon-Apple design. It's a retro-smartphone ”
Damn, I can see that now. No wonder all products including windows are sh*t now - they have been influenced by apple.
“That actually makes sense. If robots try to take over the world they will break down or glitch out.
Then the end of the world comes when we're totally dependent ontechnologybut that technology is really unreliable.
Remember they try to make stuff as cheaply as possible, which not only means they skimp and the materials andmanufacturingbut also the programming and bugtesting. Bugs get through and hastilly written programs turn into bloatware.
Remember a lot of this stuff is carelessly made by underpayed, overworked workers. Not only the impoverished 3rd world guys assembling the thing but also the programmers. You know programming is one of the most overworked fields? They usually get paid by the year so doing more overtime won't add to their salary. So the managers make unrealistic deadlines, leading to 16 hour days and 7 hour weeks. And the whole time you have to work flat out. For me, the longer I work in a day the slower / worse quality my work is yet these guys keep going at burst speed.
And the managers? One former manager revealed that hepurposelymade the deadlines too close so he could make the programmers do a lot of overtime because they were on a fixed salary so that meant that he could get more work out of them for the same amount of money and that he could do more work with a smaller staff.
Why do companies do stuff like this? Because of marketplace competition. The successful company is the one that makes the most product for the least cost. The unsuccessful companies are the ones who go out of bussiness, meaning only the successful (slave-driver) companies remain. It's like natural selection. It's also a race to the bottom. If workers fear unemployment then it's a race to see which sycophant can overwork himself the most while they have corporatepropagandaabout what a virtue it is to work harder and harder.
You can add that to your arguments against capitalism if you haven't already. Remember also that if you work extra hard one day they'll expect you to do it the next. They take your burst speed to be your normal speed.”
That pretty much is one.
Indistribution of wealth, segregation of socio-economic ‘classes’ because of this which causes social, political divide, and unbalance of work/effort compared to recieved benefit/reward. Growth in workplace competition causing lackluster production, massive debt for the youth, decrease in value for education, and as I’ve argued above potential increases in poverty.
“That's what I meant. It can be like that in the corporate world as well.”
Then that IS what you meant.
That plenty of unsuccessful people could actually be working harder than some person who simply got their lucky break.
Just think about how many musicians today are absolute rubbish.
Not sure what you think of modern music but many famous musicians lack knowledge in musical theory, do not write their own lyrics, do not produce their own songs.
Justin Bieber does nothing but sing (badly) and have his producers gloss autotune over his voice.
Meanwhile for every famous Justin Bieber there’s 100,000 people who can sing, play mutiple instruments, write, produce and distribute their own music, etc. but can’t pay the bills with it let alone make any money from it at all.
And in the corporate world?
Some lower class immigrant from a war-torn nation studying at uni juggling 3 part-time jobs can still lose out on a job to some upper middle class white kid whose parents payed his way through uni.
Successful people may have ‘worked hard’ but they also often have advantages over those who remain unsuccessful, if at the very least their only advantage is a vast support network of friends and family.
It’s not what you know, it’s who you know as well.
“Some even believe it's not possible for teens to get depressed. Smh. They attribute it to 'teen angst' (e.g. whiny emo's crying about their parents yelling at them for not doing their chores, etc.)”
Pretty much.
“Right. I know that most teens don't want to sleep 'till noon (I was the exception and after high school ended I did this everyday) but most teens want to wake up 1 or 2 hours later, as you say, 8:30 or 9:30. But if school starts at 7 or 8 or 9 and it takes a while to get ready in the morning and it takes a while to travel there you end up waking up at 6 or 7.”
Exactly.
When mum couldnt drive me at 8 (school starts at 8.30) I had to catch the damn bus at 7.30. It was only a half hour difference but it felt like hell having to wake up so much earlier as I also had to walk to the bus stop.
The closest bus stop to my school was also a fair distance so that meant a lot of walking in the morning when Im still tired, drained and have only had breakfast for energy or sometimes not even that as i skipped eating plenty of the time (this was before i started a healthy diet and such, and could afford up&gos instead of relying on mum).
Worse still, the bus was always late or the proper bus wouldnt come so I’d have to catch a different bus to a bus stop even further away and pick up the pace if i didnt want to be late.
One morning last year in senior year i had to walk to school (different school). 1km but felt so drained. In the afternoon it’s almost nothing as even if i ran around school all day at least i had more food in me.
“I don't know about this. They may have to grade a lot of papers or plan lessons. Their free lessons might be spent on tasks like that. They may have to stay at school until 5PM.”
Yes it is what they do in their free time, but they have far more spare time than the students.
Teachers did argue to me they have more than one class to grade, but students also have more than one class to do assignment work in, so it balances out.
I dont know.
Say a teacher teaches year 9 math, year 12 math, year 9 english and year 12 english. Four classes to grade. 30 students each. 30 x 4 = 120 total.
But grading assignments is probably easier than actually having to do one from scratch. Not much easier but definitely easier.
And teachers have been at it long enough to be experienced and use to it, but even high school seniors will struggle with doing an assignment as for each year the material gets harder for a student, but for teachers even if they teach new material each year, the level of difficulty remains the same.
“You should really do something to address your depression before it has deleterious effects on your education/career like it did for me.”
It won’t.
And it’ll probably be the same thing that motivates me that motivates you - social status.
I am a strong believer in social status as well.
Being of lower-middle class background means most of the people in my family and those they associate with are of lower social status.
I am far more ambitious, hardworking than most of my family, I care more about my health, my hygiene, my social life and general level of success.
I don’t want to get stuck with the lower-middle class single mother smoker heavy drinker unemployed high school dropout centrelink parasite associates herself with criminal young boys and men types as my ‘league’.
I’m above that and will do anything I can to be above that.
“Wow, I never thought about it like that. I've never been in danger of looking like a bodybuilder.
For me fitness was going from morbidly obese to slightly overweight with a small pot belly. Unless I wear a tight shirt it looks flat.”
Yeah, I know.
Btw, that’s called ‘skinny-fat’.
“You do parkour? Cool!”
Thanks.
“It doesn't always work like that for me. Whenever I have a girlfriend I start getting paranoid that I'm missing out on some prettier girl.”
Well my standards are far lower than yours but definitely not low enough to want to end up with the bottom of the barrell.
I only got paranoid when i was worried id be dumped constantly in my second relationship.
My first girlfriend dumped me twice and it didnt matter if i thought positive or negative so I thought the same thing might happen in my second relationship and i guess it was a self-fulfilling prophecty.
“Yeah, I've definately heard of students who went through 4 years of uni while being extremelysociallyanxious and totally reclusive.”
I will be careful.
“Which ones? Do you take Executive Stress Relief Formula B?”
May try it.
For now I take OciBest, an extract of the Ocimum tenuiflorum plant. Google it.
“Since you like socialism you'll fit right in at uni. Half of the students and 3/4 of the proffessors will agree with you.”
Not my type of socialists though.
Millenials are the one-size fits all social justice warrior feminist generation that shut down any sort of negativity or alternative views.
I’ll be optimistic though...
“For a couple of years I had a small clique of dateless outcast nerds like me. Meanwhile, girls kept on flirting with me while I didn't notice or when they actually asked me out I rejected them. Man I was stupid.”
My best friend is your stereotypical neckbeard fovere alone MLP online gaming anime type, to put it nicely.
At my old high school (been to three, this was the second) back when I lived in cairns I befriended these two slightly sporty outcast geeks, though the younger brother was decently social and popular but still a major geek type. I guess that is my kind.
Those two and my best friend have been my strongest friendships.
Socially awkward outcast to the point we don’t even fit in with regular nerds/geeks.
But I often feel I’ve ‘outgrown’ my current friends in social status.
I like them but feel they may only bring me down.
I am fit, healthy, hygienic and they are out-of-shape, unfashionable and unhygienic.
Doesn’t do me very well if I was trying to pick-up girls my age with them. They may judge me for who I’m friends with instead of me.
“But I wassurroundedby girls and in an environment where no one cared about my income or lack of dating experience because everyone was a dating noob and no one had a job lol
Maybe I'm doing ok now to have started dating in my 20s because there are aspies in their 20s at work who have literally never been on a date. There but for the grace of God go I.”
I had two girlfriends in senior year, and went on 3 dates with one other girl.
7 dates total.
“I know the feeling. Have you seen a Woody Allen film called Zelig? That's me ”
Nope, Might look into it.
“Yes. I remember the teacher telling me how to use theInternetin early high school.”
After school care when I was a kid was things like board games, or sporty/physical games (not me, a friend did it).
Today?
Probably just stick every kid to a sh*tty ipad.
“Not bots. I know there are many people out there who actually think like that.”
Blind consumers.
“They even said an iPad is a substitute for a gaming computer. Who plays games on an iPad? It's terrible for games!”
That is the standard today.
Worse still, it’s a new medium for constant advertising and money-making schemes.
You know those facebook games where you have to use real money to get in-game money or watch ads to get free money?
Those began on facebook, they are pretty much standard among all ipad games now, including kids ones.
Just another way to get kids begging to their parents.
“Sometimes I think maybe they discovered how to make modern computers in the 70s but decided that instead of releasing them to market they should make incremental upgrades to people have to buy many computers, each one slightly more advanced than the last.”
ALL the time i think the military and scientific community have/had access to certain technology before it was released on the market.
There’s some theories for instance the military used computers and internet and such before it was released commercially and i definitely believe this is probably the case.
“I never said I liked it, I'm just used to tech companies making products that are based on flawed ideas.”
Me too. And your idea is probably what they’re thinking.
And then the company will gush and boast about how ‘amazing’ their product is, ‘more control than ever, more productivity, faster speed, more ogranizaiton’ and all the other bullsh*t so many ads for modern tech products boast about.
And all the reviews are the blind consumers gushing the product completely.
"Maybe. I think the problem with capitalism is it puts the means of production in control of the rich. Socialism promises to put the means of production in control of the people but in practice it gives ownership and control of the means of production to the government, not the people.
"
Depends on the type of socialism. I've heard some aim to put the means of production in control by 'worker's unions' and other such terms.
But yeah you’ve got a point.
And no, politicians having power is even worse.
Though Communism is more like that then Socialism.
"What do you think of Australian politicians. Do you think they're doing a good job of governing or do you think they're corrupt?"
No and yes.
Our government is so politically unstable it's ridiculous.
I entirely can’t stand the liberal party, labor is...meh...
The greens are...okay, to say the least. I prefer them over the others but they’ve always been the minority party so at the very least I wish Rudd won over Abbott.
The exact people who seemed to vote for abbott are the upper middle class white Australian crowd that consider us types lazy dole bludgers and blah blah blah.
“
The problem with politics is no matter who wins the election you always get a politician and all politicians are bad.”
Eh...I like your sense of pessimism, and that’s not sarcasm.
Well then if capitalism won’t work and socialism won’t, i guess nothing will.
I simply prefer socialism principles at least.
“Before you say North Korea isn't a true socialist country, let me remind you that is a No True Scotsman fallacy.”
It’s a poor one at that, or at the very least has changed it’s values to the point it is loosely based on Socialism.
Words mean nothing, it is actions that describe something.
Feminism by definition is fighting for equality when it doesnt seem to be about this at all but women superiority.
China is classified as a Communist country when it’s Capitalist hell.
Nations I would call truly Socialist are Free Territory, Chile, Iceland and plenty of European nations have heavy socialist influences while not being entirely socialist.
"Not quite as atrocious. I'd take the U.S. Over North Korea or the Khmer Rouge."
Fair enough. I would too, but there's a lot about the U.S. I don't like. I'd take UK over U.S.
It’s certainly not the worst country in the world but there’s plenty of somewhat sneaky and subtle issues with first world nations that may not be as noticable as third world nations.
Obviously living in the middle of Afghanistan would suck - poverty, lawlessness, etc.
But in first world nations there’s a clear imbalance of wealth just like third world nations.
In third world nations the government may have all the money and the general population none, in first world nations the government and the 1% have almost all of it, the middle class is dying/non-existant anymore due to the imbalance, and most people end up becoming lower class/lower middle class.
Third world nations may be more lawless but oppressive rule and law is no different. The U.S. is not as ‘oppressive’ as N. Korea but there’s plenty of European nations and other places that allow a lot more liberty than U.S. law.
"If anything 3rd wave feminism makes Australia more misogynist because 3rd wave feminism is misogynist. I admire strong women. I believe women are the equal of men. But 3rd wave feminism teaches women they need things to be easier for them. Strong women don't need a handicap to compete against men. I don't like how 3rd wave feminism teaches girls to be damsels in distress because this is misogynist."
Alright, I get it now.
I’m just tired of typically feminist’s making everything a women’s issue.
I have heard plenty of feminist’s say for instance a man hitting a woman is considered wrong but a woman hitting a man isn’t because ‘society sees women as weak and inferior’.
I’d think it the opposite - it’s not because women are weak, it’s because men are considered strong and can take whatever a woman deals to him.
I’m tired of hearing things such as this.
There are plenty of issues that may well be men’s issues but feminist’s make it about them.
So I guess I agree with you then.
I can see what you’re saying when you are women wanting to be at an advantage over men implies women are weak and need power over men, but I’d also like to think maybe it’s just women LIKE having power over men, not necessarily because they’re weak.
And that, would be misandry which is women believing men are inferior/women should have power over men, not misogny.
I am tired so sorry if what I say sounds disjointed.
There does at least for me seem to be some subtle fourth-wave feminism influence here in AUS that is a side-effect of Australia’s Americanization of our culture.
I think Australia’s culture over the years has simply become more and more American influenced especially things such as Feminism.
"I should have taken drama. The counselor said it was the best place to meet girls because the boys were outnumbered."
It really, really was.
To be fair though, I only ever had a total of four crushes on fellow Drama students and the furthest I ever got with any of them was asking one out using the internet and getting a no.
Lol you just reminded me my former drama class was just four males including the teacher. It was a small class in general though and there was only like 7 girls.
"I'm pretty sure Nietzsche died when Hitler was only 12 years old."
He suffered a mental breakdown before that and was sent to live with his sister. Every released work after this was tampered with by his sister.
Nietzsche may have been dead but the Nazi's still pulled up his older works, especially the stuff after his breakdown, and used it to fuel their ideology.
*Deep breath*.
What a way to end the 4th page. Went out with a big bang (long a55 post).
