Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

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

  1. LetMeBeFrank

    LetMeBeFrank Won't tell anyone my name is actually Francis

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    I'm assuming he meant Gaijin, which is japanese for foreigner.
     
  2. robot zombie

    robot zombie Friend

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    I think he must mean "gaijin" which would more translate to "outsider" or something similar.

    I can fully admit that I'm more left than right, but I'm kinda tired of it myself. I feel like it takes real social issues and turns them into something much more droll. People get so used to seeing it they don't care anymore, and from then on none of it is real. Just makes a big show of all of it.

    It's great to be able to get a message out. Democracy man! f**k yeahhh. In an ideal capitalist world, having someone with a lot of money take to an idea that's meant to make things better would be an abso-fuckin-lutely amazing thing, but in this world it tends not to go that way. Every good cause gets subverted by people who's core advocacy interest is in cash and recognition. It's comforting to see it, and if you see it enough, you think things are getting better. They must be! Everyone is talking about it. Even McDonalds and Wal-Mart are running billion dollar ad campaigns!

    But on the ground nothing changes. People aren't more aware of anything. Just that much more sick of each other. By the time a revolution becomes commercially viable... well, it's been kinda dead for a minute, hasn't it?

    Honestly, the competition to be the 'wokest' company really exemplifies the problems that I have with that whole side of politics. Lets say you're a legitimately woke person. You are educated, you have unique, first-hand insight into systemic problems, you are passionate, you care about everyone, and you have found something that you think can make the world a better place for everyone. The question then becomes how to spread the message... how do you show people what you see and get them working together on it? After all, the more people who understand the same thing, who are motivated to work at it, the quicker we can have that success in our world.

    But man... for some reason the answer is always hyper competitive ideological posturing. I'll never understand it. For people who think the same, it's appealing, while the very people who would most need to hear the message are most likely to be directly turned away by the wokest of us. And if you're not willing to meet people wherever they happen to be with something and really try to nurture that understanding, you're basically just another jagoff claiming to know how the world works.

    If I said that in the wrong place, I'd be chastised quite a bit. I find it interesting that the same people who ask not to be criticized are happy to criticize everyone else. Sometimes, you really have to talk to people like children. And I don't mean that in a condescending way. I mean, really try to meet people where they're at instead of "Alalalala, I'm more woke than you. Why can't you be more like the Nike commercial?"

    I feel like that alone has the most caring people that we have in this country running straight into the arms of the very people who will see the cycle of stagnation continue, every single time. I'll never understand why people really believe that politicians and corporations are ever really on their side. It's still 'us vs them' in the end. No deeper understanding of one another's struggles. Just a carefully-placed projection. That's America in a nutshell, though. Always has to (at least appear) be on the right side of everything.

    I say "Stick to your guns, but hold no heroes." As in, don't let others say for you, what you can say for yourself.


    I gotta admit though... it was SUPER funny seeing all of those people burning their brand new shoes after Nike ran that one ad with Colin Kaepernick. I guess this is what our politics are now, in this budding corpratocracy.
     
    Last edited: Dec 4, 2020
  3. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    I don't know much about the word "woke." It's come into being since I left the western world. Seems that it means something like being aware of things that any decent person person would be aware of and making an effort accordingly. But it has been turned into a sneer by the not-so-decent.

    I was heartened by something in UK, that I read about recently. One of the supermarket giants put out a multi-racial ad, and (yep, we can be open about this now in post-Brexit Britain) got a heap of racist comment. The British supermarkets are normally highly competitive, but a group of biggies actually got together and produced a whole commercial break of back to back f**k you racists, we don't need your custom that much ads.

    Whether such a one-off is anything to crow about or not I really don't know, but I do just like that it happened at all
     
  4. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    Oh that would be really nice. And maybe at some point it meant what you said. These days "making your effort accordingly" means censorship, means mobilizing the Twitter mob, or forcing your employer, to get a person who is not woke enough fired from his or her job. It means attempts to cancel J.K. Rawlings for saying things that any sane person would consider obvious. That is mainstream woke. On the far side of the spectrum it means discussing what 2+2 should be in a just society.
    So I do not think at this point there is a away of going back to this nice, benevolent meaning of woke.
    Giving the voice in the media to decent woke people would be a good step but sadly some very woke, by your definition, but still decent and intellectually honest journalists were recently fired from their jobs or were forced to resign because of censorship. And @robot zombie put it very well: these days woke means "hyper competitive ideological posturing".
     
    Last edited: Dec 5, 2020
  5. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Yes I mean gaijin, I was tired folks. At least I spelled it wrong, which makes me happy since I'm not a total weeb.

    One text if going by Google Translate is why White People telling Japan how to run our country.
     
  6. haywood

    haywood Friend

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    Japan needs woke Jesus to teach them that Asians are considered white (adjacent) because they generally do well in school and life. See, hard work is cultural colonialism imposed on the rest of the world by the white man, so keeping Asian kids out of magnet schools and Ivy League colleges is for their own good, really.
     
  7. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    It's the same thing as a TV evangelist (say Robert Tilton) when he takes the serious pscyo/social/spiritual issues of his viewers, often lonely and isolated elderly, and tells them to put their hands on the TV and send him $money$ with Jesus' approval. Nike is manipulating this or that "concern" to sell you things. Of course corporate woke manipulation is several orders of magnitude larger and more influential than TV evangelism ever was or will be.

    I was recently reminded of "the original viral video" from the late eighties, the infamous Robert Tilton fart video. Someone should do the same thing to these Nike adds...just when allegedly oppressed and concerned asian kid or Colin Kirkpatrick takes a knee, "FAAAAARRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTTTTT" :p
     
    Last edited: Dec 5, 2020
  8. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Don't look at me @crenca. ;)

    Moments like this I'm glad I don't have TV. The idiot box is getting worse and worse.
     
  9. ultrabike

    ultrabike Measurbator - Admin

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    Or so I would like to say.

    Reality is different. This week a lab at my work place had to be closed for deep cleaning due to an employee reporting in sick with the virus. A few employees I know are quarantined, because they are sick with the virus.

    I'm fortunate to say that my immediate family has been so far sickness free. However, I cannot say the same thing about my extended family, some of which passed away recently due to this sickness. In one particular case, the grandfather actually survived the virus, but his son did not, and left behind a wife and a 2-year old. As far as I know, no prior respiratory medical issues. The body will not be released until next year, because the morgue can't keep up. He is likely in a freezer.

    A marine colonel friend of mine got it, and his older son did too. Interestingly his wife and younger son (both which have asthma) did not get it, arguably because the steroid medication they take make them less susceptible to the virus. But, if they do get it, nobody expects an easy outcome. Fortunately, my friend and his son recovered. I have similar recent stories from my children's school. I could go on about friends of mine whose immediate family barely made it, or did not. And such are the facts.

    Isolation policies are ineffective, largely because people (including policy makers) go around them and make them ineffective. Many folks lack discipline. I wear a mask at work every day. I don't like it, I also don't think it's 100% effective, but I understand it and I know it helps.

    From your responses, it seems you or someone close to you have yet to experience SARS-2. Good for you. But don't bullshit me. To some of us this is serious.
     
    Last edited: Dec 5, 2020
  10. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Since I am home and I am on a keyboard, I been noticing some interesting things near me.

    We already have local businesses in Jax demanding everyone to return to the office to work full time. My brother's employer required everyone to be back in the office after phase 3 reopening due to the company does not like WFH at all. Two months later someone had Covid-19. The office was closed for two days while deep cleaning was conducted and when finished everyone returned. Per my brother, the WFH thing with office meetings was not productive so the leadership at his place had enough of it.

    My employer is trying to figure out to make Covid vax mandatory to return to the office, even while they are reducing their office footprint. So far the lower level phone positions (customer service, collections, etc., remember I work for a bank) has been a disaster. It's from my perspective that my employer does not have a big enough pipeline to handle the amount of volume in the VPN network. This means calls keep getting disconnected, systems are slow, and productivity has been put in the gutter (much to the dismay of our VPs).

    So far from our "town hall" meeting they will do a hybrid of some days people will be in the office and other times they will be at WFH. Some employees (like me) will be perma WFH. I hope this would be good news for me (since parts of Jax has becoming too pricey on rentals and house prices are becoming too inflated for my taste), but since my GF (who I gotten her a job at my place) is one of the lower level employees, she will most likely be back in the office mostly full time. Kind of hard to pick a location since the bus system is terrible in Jax and she doesn't have a vehicle. This is why I'm still in the same area for 10+ years, even if the rental/housing increases has been steep from the last few years in this area, ewwww.

    I wished I can use WFH to get into a much cheaper area, but doesn't appear that will happen ATM, er.....

    And in FL state news when the next legislative session starts they will be discussing a Covid liability bill to pass to protect businesses from any lawsuits/employee terminations. I don't get why this bill is needed since the laws are very protected and favorable towards businesses from lawsuits and any lawsuits against a former employee. Legally it is super easy to fire someone who is employed in FL.
     
  11. ultrabike

    ultrabike Measurbator - Admin

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    WFH is unproductive and unsustainable.

    Folks have to keep their distance and do what they can to avoid spreading the virus. But I believe some isolation policies will need revision.
     
  12. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Agreed. For certain office jobs you can't do WFH. After seeing the clusterfuck on my GF's job, I'm like yeah this needs to be in a call center office in a cube. Of course I found out that no all phone call jobs are shit (looking at what American Express did for their major office in South Florida).

    Now if you are a higher level like me they are pushing you out from the office and making you do WFH 100%. No choice on that end if you prefer to work in the office and they can use the extra seats for more lower level phone employees. I do miss working in an office at times even if I hate dealing with the traffic.
     
  13. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    It depends. WFH requires new and different techniques, and technology that enables it. I had pretty much been working remotely anyway before the Wuhan pneumonia hit. The people I talk to and work with are spread around the world: Paris, London, Montreal, Texas, New York, Vancouver, Bangalore, Adelaide. We were already using Teams / SP with multiple meetings lined up for any particular day of the week. WFH really didn't make a difference. In fact, it increased productivity. I was less tired from waking up at 5am and driving 2.5 hours to and back each day. I actually had to learn how to stop working by closing the laptop lid at 5:30pm.

    WFH won't work well for the subpar employee though - the guys who just show up to collect a check.
     
  14. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Subplar employees or IMO lower level employees who are call center based works best in an office environment, at least from my personal experience. Each company I have to say will be different on how they approach it, like I forgot to say on my end since I am a higher level employee I can WFH 100%. However, the employer is making sure you are still in the office area just in case you need to go into the office. So while I am WFH 100%, I can't just leave Jax and move to GA or some other place in FL since they won't approve it. Employer too focused on making sure staff is in the footprint of the company (and not have them shatter around too much) I think it is minor BS but it is what it is. But I do wish my other half will be WFH 100% so we can be like the f**k we are paying this much for rent here.
     
  15. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING VIGILANT

    As many of you know, this is a critical time for me. I'm getting the house ready sale and it's North Padre Island or bust before X-mas. I also have diminished lung capacity from Valley Fever I contracted two years ago.

    A few days ago, the nice grandma with the shotgun in the house across the street from us asked my wife Julie if I could help move her husband Bob up from bed in the morning. Evidently, Bob was having a hard time getting up and moving about. He was one of the last to be struck by polio, so he was partially paralyzed already and may have just been having a tough day. Julie responded back that I was in the middle of a meeting, which was the true. When I found out, I felt super bad that I wasn't able to help. I told Julie that I would have gladly left my company meeting to help him out and to let me know next time a request like this happened. Some things such as helping a neighbor in need are more important than work.

    Later that day in the evening, we noticed flashing red lights outside of our front window. We saw a fire truck, a paramedic truck, and an ambulance. I guess it was a slow day for first responders. After about half an hour, we saw the paramedics take Bob on a gurney to the ambulance. We all thought it was a stroke or something like that. Well, it turned out to be the Wuhan Pneumonia. WTF right? That was the last thing I was thinking. The next day, we also found out that the grandma and their daughter (living with them) also had the Wuhan pneumonia virus.

    It suddenly dawned upon Julie and I how dangerous the situation is. Had I gone to help, there would have been a good chance that I had gotten infected, and then probably the rest of my family. Julie and I had spoken to grandma a few times earlier in the week, but we were always outdoors and at least six feet away, with us wearing our N95 masks (thanks @CEE TEE). My contact was more in passing, but Julie's was more direct, more often, and slightly longer. We called out primary care physicians, and after a phone call, they decided that we could be tested, but we had to wait a two days. I had to shake my head: wouldn't it have made sense for us to get tested right away? Well, I assume that the docs knew what they were doing and figured that it was unlikely that we got it from our video interviews.

    So anyway, Bob is OK now. They discharged him from the hospital and he's back home with an ample supply of oxygen tanks. Grandma has a headache, but we saw her sit outside on her front yard today taking in the sun. The daughter is totally asymptomatic. We still can't figure out how Bob got it. Because of his polio, he mostly stays at home anyway. The only thing he did recently was go out to Costco to shop and look around. It's entirely possibly the daughter, who is out and about more, gave it to him. From what Julie says, her mask discipline is pretty bad.

    If there's anything I've learned, it's that we still need to be vigilant. A cheap mask will ensure that you don't infect others, especially those at risk. The chances that they die are slim, but the chances that they are stuck with a crazy hospital bill are not so slim. If you are concerned for yourself as well, go for an N95 mask. A good N95 mask, properly worn, actually breaths easier and offers far superior protection (no gaps).

    Don't be a dick. It's possible to be infected and spreading the Wuhan pneumonia virus to tons of people without you knowing it. If you don't like the minor inconvenience of wearing a mask, then stay at home.
     
    Last edited: Dec 6, 2020
  16. jexby

    jexby Posole Prince

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    Marv- glad there was no immediate death of the neighbors and exposure to your family didn't occur.
    but it's called Covid-19. tongue in cheek or not, no need to be parroting the dumbshit fat old white cracker fuckwads in the Oval Office.

     
    Last edited: Dec 6, 2020
  17. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    I'm not sure how bad your now-former neighbourhood is compared to elsewhere when it comes to attitudes about the virus (I just know some random YouTube and TikTok buttheads on the west coast have been wilding like it was a 2012 rapture party— anyone remember those?), but that's literally the first thing most would have thought of, methinks, never mind that your neighbours don't go out for themselves. They still get supplies in from elsewhere, no, whether deliveries or someone making grocery runs, no?

    Heck, the UV sanitation wands and boxes and sheer volume of cleaning agents trading hands nowadays is remarkable. Sure a lot of it might just be nervosa with the personal air purifiers (sigh), but either way there's a great deal of vigilance verging on it becoming somewhat irrational.

    Glad to hear the cool people are doing well, and that you missed a bullet. With all due respect to their daughter though: *facedesk*
     
  18. perogie

    perogie Facebook Friend

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    The virus takes a few days to build up enough copies of itself in your system before a test would even reliably register anything so immediate testing after exposure would be ineffective. Plus a negative test would lead to a false sense of security and potentially more spread. Self isolate and test a little later was what I told folks. From your description of your interactions it does sound unlikely that you would have caught it. Hopefully your family and your neighbours family are OK and will stay OK.
     
  19. ultrabike

    ultrabike Measurbator - Admin

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    My understanding is that one has to wait 48 hours from the time of suspected exposure, to maximize the effectiveness of the test. Some coworkers where scheduling tests last week, and were told the same thing.
     
  20. Friday

    Friday Friend

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    And self-isolate in the meantime
     

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