Oceans Yet to Burn

argumate

Anonymous asked:

It's interesting being from Minnesota and going to the University of Minnesota, since all over the state, on the first Wednesday of the month at 1pm, they test the tornado sirens. Which, having grown up with them my whole life, I just glance at the time/think of the day and shrug. There are many students at said University without said experience/knowledge. And while at first it was amusing to see who had experience with it and who didn't, I then realized how freaky that must be for some.

argumate answered:

what exactly is one supposed to do when a tornado bears down on the town

mitigatedchaos

Go to the innermost ground floor room of the building, with no windows, to avoid getting pulled into the air if the roof is lifted off, or impaled by a high-velocity 2x4 ripped from a nearby building.

One day I’ll get to build my own apartment complex and add a concrete emergency bunker, but that day has not yet come.

argumate

the GPS trackers for autistic kids seems like a competing access needs problem, or at least there are regular stories about autistic kids going walkabout in Melbourne and being found days later shivering in bushland kilometres away; presumably parents are worried about that happening to their kids.

strayan problems

discoursedrome

marcusseldon

I think one big economic problem millennials face that is horribly under-discussed is that businesses just don’t really seem interesting in training people anymore, or at least not unless the person is in an unpaid/underpaid internship.

Like, in the ‘80s, my mom got a job as a programmer and was trained by the company. Prior to that, she had no experience with computers and hadn’t gone to college, and they trained her to program (granted, she wasn’t in a high level programming position, but even low-level programming jobs pay pretty well). Companies used to really invest in workers, and they don’t now. That’s unimaginable today. Companies now seem to expect you to get a four-year college degree that is directly applicable to the job, and at least a year or two of relevant internship experience, plus some self-learning on the side, to even hire for entry-level office work.

Of course, this new system makes younger workers much less competitive compared to older workers, and it means that any disadvantages you have (you have a mental illness, your parents aren’t supportive/wealthy enough to help you through an internship, you didn’t get a 4-year degree or got one at a lower-level institution,, etc.) multiply in how much they hinder one’s attempts to enter a given industry, because you have to do so much to even get your foot in the door.

discoursedrome

Yeah, this is one of a large variety of ways in which the private sector, running out of ways to become more competitive by generating value, has increasingly depended on pushing costs onto others. Even fiscal conservatives tend to be fans of “skills training” subsidies, so it’s easy for companies to just completely give up on training and entry-level recruitment and then argue that the government needs to save them from the skills gap, and universities need to better train students in whatever they need right now. Then a huge amount of money gets wasted training people for things that are useless by the time those people enter the workforce, but were in-demand three years earlier.

In general I think it’s really important to understand this pattern of cost-smuggling, because it’s probably the single most fundamental tactic used by modern firms to stay competitive. You also see it in, for instance, the tendency to outsource resume screening to third-party service providers, who boast about their proprietary algorithm but actually just discard any resume without appropriate keyword hits and the right degrees. Or just-in-time scheduling, or the tendency to offsource all capital costs onto employees/contractors except the ones absolutely necessary to maintain leverage, or firing people when they’re costing you money and then rehiring them when you need them again. There are simply far, far more opportunities to save money by tricking or forcing other people into paying than there are by actually doing things better, and in a competitive marketplace, you can’t afford to hold out for the latter type.

What’s funny is that it’s not even clear that these strategies do improve long-term profitability. The issue is that long-term profitability doesn’t matter; companies have to optimize for short-term profitability, and things that make them money over a period of many years in ways that aren’t obvious to shareholders or investors aren’t worth that much in the rat race.

mitigatedchaos

We may see an increase in relative performance by employee-owned and privately-owned companies for this reason.

Source: marcusseldon the invisible fist

argumate

un-neofriended

Someone please quickly explain baby clothing sizes to me

debthaver

baby clothes are smaller than most adult or even childrens clothes. i hope this helps

argumate

baby clothes, for sale, really small

mitigatedchaos

DID YOU KNOW?: The average adult baby can weigh over 500 kilograms!

shtpost

argumate

Leave the planet more or less as we found it.

theinflammablemammal

take only the entirety of the mineral reserves, leave only footprints

argumate

and the occasional genital symbolism carved into the mountains

mitigatedchaos

Moon is fair game.

The original American flag planted there is too small.

We’re gonna need Moon Excavators and about ten hundred thousand tons of red, white, and blue gravel.

shtpost augmented reality break

see-nn-girls sadly not blog of neural-network-generated pornography, merely ordinary bot

argumate

shtpost

mailadreapta

Anonymous asked:

Depressing thought: I was born in the brief sixteen-year period between a majority of Americans accepting interracial marriage and forgetting what marriage is.

thathopeyetlives answered:

mailadreapta

These Things Might Be Related

…. I suppose I should add that I’m not actually opposed to interracial marriage on principle, but it’s hard to deny that the same change in attitudes was driving both shifts.

mitigatedchaos

As you know, I’m in favor of allowing gays to marry, but prohibiting polygamous marriage.

I believe the key to doing so is to summon a new ideology into existence, based on an updated form of Nationalism.

Source: thathopeyetlives national technocracy