Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

Discussion in 'SBAF Blogs' started by purr1n, Dec 26, 2018.

  1. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Best job, not the highest paying job is what I been living by. At my banking gig I been there for almost ten years. Yes, I could go some place else and make more money.

    However, I stay for the following:

    * Almost eight weeks of PTO.
    * Great medical benefits.
    * Be in the office two days a week, and the rest of the week I'm at home.
    * I don't hate my boss or my peers.

    As I get older I just want to focus more on the benefits of a job than the salary. The amount of PTO I get is nuts, and you must pay me so much more if I want to give that part up. Even today people focus too much on the $$$ than actual vacation days. You need a mental break at times, no joke.
     
  2. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    That's really sad. I never before met anyone who actually lived there: it's always been about tourists and the occasional news report, and perhaps I never thought properly about it.
     
  3. rlow

    rlow A happy woofer

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    Thought this was interesting and relevant to the thread (and Marv’s feelings on the Terminator and Communism):

    https://shoutout.wix.com/so/80N1aRs7q

    This is Mike Powell, the former dealer/distributor for Denafrips, Kinki Studio etc.
     
    Last edited: Feb 29, 2020
  4. penguins

    penguins Friend, formerly known as fp627

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    Whole quote is truth, but the 1st point is so true in today's buy it all society/mindset. 2nd point stuck out to me and my own life story, etc.
     
  5. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    It's happens to everyone.

    My dad was a design engineer at Racal (1200 baud modem) in the late 70s. He did extremely extremely well in the 80s, jumping from one company to another. Accounting for inflation, his annual salary was more than mine ever was. When the economy temporarily bombed in the early 90s, he lost his job. I remember him being out of work for a long period of time until a family friend got him a job as a QA / Test engineer for a contract manufacturing company. He worked his way up to overseeing this department.

    I went from software engineer to systems architect to client-server architect to security assessor to IT director back to security assessor and to security architecture. From high-tech to insurance to health care to financial to media & entertainment. Every transition (except the first one when I was only a few years out of school) resulted in lower pay, where I had to work my way up again. I tended to choose smaller less stable but more dynamic places to work, hence my moving around more than most. It's only now that I've developed sufficient maturity and patience to work at a global corporation. Had I been younger, I would not had the patience - I would have hopped on my motorcycle to never come back. I actually enjoy the politics angle now - the how to make friends and influence people angle of it.

    I feel most sad about some old colleagues who are working like dogs at places where they have either burned out or are in a state of constant minor discomfort, but dread leaving because the pay and benefits are good. To me that's hell. I keep encouraging them to hop over to more interesting things, but they won't. At some point (like almost now), their skills will erode to the point that I wouldn't dare recommend them to anyone.
     
  6. yotacowboy

    yotacowboy McRibs Kind of Guy

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    This is, unfortunately, not true in the public sector. Shit floats much better in the public sector.
     
  7. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    That is very interesting question why no one is preparing for the increase of global temperatures.

    I think part of it is entirely absurd confidence in the predictions of climate science, and the climate models have something to do with it. Never so many put so much faith into something that they do not understand.

    So let's assume that the models are not really accurate, not in the sense that they overestimate the impact of CO2 emissions, but that they underestimate it. What if, even if we reduce Co2 emissions to the acceptable level, again as predicted bythe models, the temperature keeps rising? To say that is impossible, that we know exactly what is going to happen and how to prevent it, and any variation from those scenarios are not worth considering, is just silly.

    Adaptation is not that difficult to imagine. Japanese adapted their building codes to earthquakes, new Florida homes are protected against rising sea levels etc etc. A lot can be done if we direct more effort and funding to this goal.

    So why 100% of effort and funding goes into stopping the warming, zero into adapting to it? If the goal is to survive, it would be reasonable to try to adapt.

    Addressing this question is important if we want to explain a widely accepted, although not very well understood, political approach to climate change. We must stop it or else...

    It almost looks like the goal is not survival, but salvation, some kind of moral redemption of humanity through saving the Earth. Something like religion maybe...
     
    Last edited: Feb 29, 2020
  8. Stuff Jones

    Stuff Jones Friend

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  9. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Taking steps to adapt is boring, difficult, takes time and effort to assess risks, and are ultimately unpopular (I want to live there right next to the beach! I want to live at the top of that hill!). Human beings are silly, not pragmatic, and prefer religious solutions that come with a purity test. It's too difficult to face the truth, millions in Asia wanting a better standard of living, established western countries wanting to maintain their lifestyle. Going on idealistic crusades is much more fun.

    For example, it still bugs the heck outta me that Governor Jerry Brown cited "new normal" when the fires swept through my neighborhood in 2018. Never mind that the exact same thing happened in 1978 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Agoura-Malibu_firestorm) where lessons learned (establish green belt defense shield against fires) were not implemented. My neighborhood received noticed from the fire department to fricking clean out our brush before fire season otherwise the city would do it and bill us. Being a somewhat sensible person, I did this. I didn't want to pay to do this, but I did anyway because it was the right thing to do. The six homes that burned down in my subdivision did not do this. And it turns out the city never followed up. Evidently, those notices from the city were just empty threats.

    Going up to the state and federal level (I'm not sure who's responsibility exactly), there also used to be controlled burns in the Santa Monica mountains. Evidently, this stopped after some time. I'm not sure when. Maybe it was budget cuts from the state, so that high-speed rail (now cancelled) could be built. I dunno. After 1978, the next major fire was in 1995, but as with these things, people forget.

    So who's ass is on the line here? The state? Or is it federal? Heck, much easier for Governor Jerry Brown to blame climate change than government incompetence and land mismanagement. The fact is that a ton more people moved into these hills (marked fire hazard by the USGS) than in 1995 or 1978 prior.

    Easier to blame the boogeyman than ourselves.

    I'm not a climate change disbeliever. But I do happen to hate climate change fans. It's sort of like "hating" on Dave Mathews or Teslas. It's really more about hating Dave Mathews fans or Tesla drivers.
     
    Last edited: Feb 29, 2020
  10. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    On the US DOD emissions, sure there's a lot of energy used nonsensically for pointless endless wars. But let's keep in mind that most operations are to maintain the peace around the world. For better or worse, the USA is the world's policeman (or Lone Ranger). Seriously, without the USA, most of the Pacific Rim would belong to China by now, the Middle East, for however bad it is currently, would be much worse, with oil poor countries like Japan totally screwed, and I'm pretty sure there would not be a single Muslim left in Bosnia or Albania, because obviously Europe didn't give that much of a shit with what was going on in their backyard in the 90s, or at least didn't want to pay to clean up the mess, a mess that was a spillover from WWII and the Cold War. (And no, I'm not one of those Americans who thinks America won the Cold War. The Europeans won it themselves).

    But let's take a look a CO2 emissons over the past 20 years from USA DOD operations.
    https://www.oyetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen2BShot2B2019-06-142Bat2B4.58.182BPM-2.jpg
    [​IMG]

    Now let's take a look at Germany in 2017 / 2018
    [​IMG]

    So aha! I knew it all along! It's those evil krauts selling their BMWs and Benzs around the world! 313 mi. T for energy production to power their mostly export manufacturing which used 163 mi. T! (While combined operations for USA wars and general peacekeeping support tipped below 60 mi T.) Of course this conclusion regarding the Germans is utter nonsense! So please, let's not blame the US military. If you use a Class A power amp (I am guilty) instead of Class D, then you are very much at fault individually.

    P.S.
    • You are also a bad person to the environment if you take Uber (Uber cars loiter around wasting gas, emitting CO2, and clogging roads and highways without passengers much of the time).
    • Climate Change Activist: Nicer to the environment than to people.
    • True change comes from inside.
     
    Last edited: Feb 29, 2020
  11. mscott58

    mscott58 Friend

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    Yeah, in my experience both of these can be true. As a young engineer in training in college I worked for a very large chemical company. During my time there I helped develop and build a process that reduced waste by millions of pounds and actually created a byproduct that was used to more effectively treat waste water - felt pretty good about it. Then back on campus a "Birkenstocks-with-socks" earthy crunchy type saw me wearing my company jacket and stormed up to me in an air of smug and yelled at me that by working there I wasn't being ethical. She stormed off after making her point and didn't even let me respond, so never knew (and probably didn't care to) that I had done more to help the environment from the inside than she ever had a chance of doing using her approach. To each their own I guess, but I still felt good about my work...
     
  12. atomicbob

    atomicbob dScope Yoda

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    @mscott58 : good engineers and scientists know how to be progressive within the system, something very much underappreciated by both insiders and activists.
     
  13. penguins

    penguins Friend, formerly known as fp627

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    In all seriousness, I wish these types of know it all people would disappear. Not die, not suffer, just disappear. Yeah, at some colleges and social circles/cities/states this would probably mean 90% of people disappearing. But these people go out into the world and make existing problems worse and *most importantly* bury real solutions in noise... even worse they get equally small minded people on the other side to say GO TEAM GO THROW BALL GOODERSSSS!!!! and double down on supporting all the problems that seem to be steadily turning the US into a 3rd world country... Not that these people don't need to disappear too but they seem to be outnumbered by the first group right now...
     
    Last edited: Feb 29, 2020
  14. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    As Tocqueville noted when the republic was young, Americans are on the one had a pragmatic people, but equally (if not more) a very moral people, such that our national character is really moralistic in a fundamental way. This was true then no matter what your politics were, just as it is now. What's "new" is that when the Protestant consensus died out in the cultural and sexual revolution of the 1960's, the underlying basis of this strong moralism was in the main secularised (despite America still having a significant traditional Christian minority). One the downsides to all this (there are upsides of course) is that generally whereas religious people are on a whole more conscious of their moralism, secular people tend to be unconscious of theirs. Secularism, by definition, claims the 'neutral', 'non-religious', and 'real-as-opposed-to-faith' ground. So it tends to be non self reflective and critical of its own moralistic stances and assertions, which is to say that it is very often immature/childish in its assertions and expressions.

    in other words none of this is going to "disappear", as it is a basic aspect of our culture/character and has been since the beginning.
     
  15. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Birkenstocks with socks = rich parents. Not too different from my other favorite saying: only rich kids could afford to be hippies. The poor kids got drafted. They live in their own consequence free world.

    --

    Some Asian girl on Twitter was offended that UCB released a FAQ on Coronavirus that explained that xenophobic behaviors from people would be a normal response.

    Her line was "how is this normal"? Sadly, UCB retracted it.

    The fact is human beings are human beings. Heck, when I took my kids out to DTF (xlb dumplings) at Century City, there were all these Chinese people speaking Mandarin. l saw my kids look at each other. Then my kids and I looked at each other.

    We all knew and we were thinking the same thing: Coronavirus!

    This behavior is normal.

    And no. We never had a bad Uber experience with people asking us if we had Coronavirus. I should have spoken Mandarin to my kids to test it out though for fun.
     
  16. penguins

    penguins Friend, formerly known as fp627

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    ^ Laughed at restaurant moment. Same shoes with friends a few days ago.

    ---------------------------------------------

    On a different note: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/27/21155254/automation-robots-unemployment-jobs-vs-human-google-amazon

    Summary: How bean counters combined with metric monitoring robots are abused / used to squeeze life, mind, sanity, and soul out of workers + automate supervisors away.

    My own ironic prediction: Workers will ultimately become less efficient when squeezed to death. May then (unsurprisingly) unionize in an overly strong fashion, which will ultimately screw company productivity (probably more than the metric robots ever got them) and worker+company competitiveness (loss of business = loss of jobs and $ all around).
     
  17. magnium

    magnium Facebook Friend

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    Overall great and timely advice for my own situation.

    This quote above is why I moved to LA a few years ago, but realize that my old boss may be in a position beyond her capabilities.

    About a year in, I joined middle management (vs leaving then) to see for myself why this place was dysfunctional operationally. While I’m two levels below my old boss, it’s just disappointing to see a person’s character flaws mess up a mid-sized organization. It doesn’t help that my direct supervisor acts like middle management instead of the role that she’s paid a lot of money to do.

    I had a discussion with my old boss a week ago, and she is aware of my unhappiness at work.
     
  18. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Effects of Coronavirus on NO2 emissions
    (NO2 is a much nastier greenhouse gas than CO2, but no one wants to talk about it).
    [​IMG]


    An inconvenient truth:

    @Psalmanazar 1
    Greta Thunberg 0
     
  19. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    It is way worse than that. Germany, entirely obsessed with CO2, pushed diesel engine cars in spite of the fact
    diesel engine exhaust contains more NO2 than gasoline engines.
    CO2 is present everywhere, yest it is a greenhouse gas, but is harmless to people. NO2, on the other hand, is a chemical poison, that simply kills people over time, children in particular.
    But Germany went as far as eliminating NO2 from emission tests, which greatly contributed to the Volkswagen debacle. In other countries the problems were equally severe:
    The Guardian: "diesel-related health problems cost (the British National Health Service) more than 10 times as much as comparable problems caused by petrol fumes. Last year the UN's World Health Organisation declared that diesel exhaust caused cancer and was comparable in its effects to secondary cigarette smoking."
    But NO2 kills just people, and in the eco obsessed world this is nothing to worry about.
     
  20. elmoe

    elmoe Friend

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    Greenhouse gases include NO2, plenty of people talk about it, it's just a much smaller percentage of total emissions than CO2 so the overall impact is much less important.
     

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