dandersh

Our mother in law is staying with us due to the unexpected passing of her husband, and we have been experiencing this first hand as we look for a shared home.

Not only is there no multi-gen homes in our area (exurb an hour away from a major city) but it's difficult to find a layout where a part of the house can be a mini apartment or her own personal area. It seems like more basements are finished now and some of the design decisions have been quite odd to say the least.

Worst of all is that we're not allowed to buy some land and throw a small structure or trailer/rv on it for her. Even though it's for family it's not allowed as it could be rented out in the future.

The entire process has been stressful and aggravating, and is made worse by everyone sharing the same space working and going to school.

I'm puzzled by your citation of Vietnam given that after the war America enacted a trade embargo for ~20 years and tried to hamstring their economy through agencies like the IMF. Outside of maybe Cuba you couldn't have chosen a better example to prove GP's point.

Vietnam's reforms are to create the materialist basis for Communism. They're pretty up front about this, how there's no "one size fits all" socialism, etc.

"The idea that a communist movement could have existed without KGB interference is equally absurd."

This was the case throughout Latin America. Castro, Bosch, Allende, etc. Furthermore there are no examples of the KGB interfering on the scale of the US (specifically the CIA) in places like Cuba, Chile, etc.

"Communists in the USSR (and backed by the USSR) stole property on a vast scale and murdered or enslaved people by the millions. The CIA did many bad things but it is very hard to out-do the USSR on evil acts."

All of which pales in comparison to the settling of the new world, America's settling of the west, etc.

If we want to focus on the 20th century there is nothing comparable to the use of nuclear weapons or America's actions during/after the Vietnam war where they engaged in the largest bombing campaign in history and use of Agent Orange.

"The US is a fundamentally mercantile country that found out the hard way (through two world wars) that non-interference doesn't work. It very reluctantly adopted the role of world police."

This is a lie. After the US expanded throughout the continent to their heart's content (by killing/removing the existing inhabitants) they began expanding beyond their shores as evidenced by their involvement in the Philippines and Cuba as well as their deployment of the marines in other areas of Latin America from 1898 on.

Cuba, in particular, was initially ruled as a colony until it was deemed too expensive. Then Cuba was granted its "independence" alongside the Platt Amendment, which gave the US de facto control over Cuba's domestic, foreign, and economic policy and resulted in them interfering regularly in elections, deploying marines to protect American property, etc.

ChapoTrapHouse, which was the largest left wing sub.

Edit (since I can't reply): r/politics is American liberalism, which is centrist.

This played out how many (myself included) speculated it would.

1. t_d would not be banned as long as it was moderately active (it's basically been dead for months)

2. If it goes, ChapoTrapHouse gets banned as well.

The big thing here is that Chapo served as a clearinghouse for the "dirtbag left" and was incredibly active. The expectation that it would be banned was increasing even before the anonymous warning over the weekend. It was common for users to get warnings/3 day bans for "posting violations of content/upvoting violated content" without specifying the specific post or rule that was alleged to have been violated.

It's clear that including Chapo was a weak, "both sides" move.

I worked about 3.5 years at 2 huge companies, one as an employee (company #1) and the other as a consultant (company #2) as a developer.

There will often be inertia, delays, and even silence when having to go through organizational processes. It took almost 2 weeks for me to receive my laptop at company 1, and then I sat waiting for a week for word of security clearance for a piece of software. At company 2 I started applying for internal full-time positions a month and half before my contract was not going to be renewed (more on that later). I got a single in person interview (after waiting a month for pointless phone screens) my final week. The first few weeks after I left I was getting pinged asking for phone screens on positions I had applied to earlier.

There will be key people who carry tremendous weight politically, fiscally, and operationally. Finding them and making yourself visible/useful will be tremendously beneficial. I was lucky that both people who interviewed me fit this bill. I ended up getting moved into better, more enjoyable roles as a result. The security clearance I mentioned previously was resolved within a few hours of my direct manager emailing the security team manager (who she knew) asking what the status was (I was denied and they never bothered to inform me). These people are valuable for getting you where you want to be in the company, and tend to be more visible internally which is likely to make you more visible as well if you working with/for them.

There are going to be organizational decisions that are inexplicable, and there are limitations to the power of the people I mentioned above. At company 2 the first team I was on was one of 5 that were working on a single web product. The product lead was invaluable due to his domain knowledge and product skill. When I talked to him my final week he told me he was being moved onto another team during a key phase of his current product. The final team I was on myself and another dev was ineligible for FTE because we weren't physically located in one of the 3 areas the team members were located, even though the entire team itself was remote and they had been unable to hire new developers for the past couple of months that we were there.

Sometimes the company is rigid to the point of it being painful, and you're told "That's just how we do it here". We were expected to release a fully fleshed out, bug free product by a set date with zero wiggle room. This happened despite not having anyone to onboard it to for almost a month after release, after which it was barely used because the company decided to focus their efforts elsewhere.

Make a point to have a solid grasp of what is going on in other teams and the company at large. This will help you in seeing any funding/resource changes coming that will directly impact you.

Be mindful of politics and pick your battles wisely. You may not want to do one or both, but knowing who pulls great weight and who is aligned with who should keep your role cleaner.

There are likely going to be people who don't pull their weight, and they can even be above you in rank. Often times this is well known and there are reasons why, even if it's something as silly as the company doesn't fire FTE.

Meetings. There will be more of them than are needed, longer than is needed, and where you aren't needed.

Sometimes teams/groups can have drastic culture changes from the company at large. It can be remote vs in-office, everyone on the team works daily together in a large office (ugh), communication styles (email vs chat vs phone), lunch together/alone, etc.

First of all, congrats!

One of the most important things I've found is to know exactly what is expected of you. Everyone has different ideas about what an architect is, and an architect's responsibility in one role can differ from another role. For example, how much coding are you expected to do, and in what capacity?

You're going to have to be able to stand up for yourself. It might be a senior dev that thinks they should be in your role, or a BA/PM that tries to push through a feature/change. You're going to have to explain why you made certain choices and took certain paths.

Your communication skills will need to improve. Now previous in person conversations might be better off documented. You're going to need to be clearer while also being concise. This is where knowing the expectations really helps: how much should be documented and how thoroughly? You may end up speaking to business more or less than you did previously and must adjust accordingly.

Good luck and I hope this helps!

In my admittedly limited perusing of the sub I've found that often the exact opposite result occurs: the OP is called out for their behavior and then actively defends themselves in the comments or is completely oblivious to why they're seen that way.

In 2012 you were building sites and even applications with a stagnant language (JavaScript) that lacked any module/bundling support while having to support multiple browsers with differing standards. Routing, state management, dependency resolution, etc. were handled on an ad hoc basis if at all.

The current complexity is a result of addressing these issues and doing so at a rapid pace.

Unfortunately this information was expected to be divulged and collected before the internet was widely used. Policies and infrastructures were not put in place (or ignored, as I've personally witnessed) to protect this information once it was digitized.

At the same time, there should be a real discussion over why so much information is being demanded, why SSN's are being overused as they are, etc.

A couple of them are via Pluralsight, which is only free via a temporary trial (10 days).

The others that I checked are available via Udemy, 2 of which are not free but heavily discounted, as most Udemy courses typically are.

That's impressive, I can't say the same thing about my 2013 retina.

It wasn't until the last ~6 months that I noticed a drop-off in battery performance. Not sure if it was from streaming football/hockey games or my tendency to throw it into sleep mode thinking "I'll have time later tonight" while keeping my server/db/container processes still running.

The bit about Trump ordering Lewandowski to deliver a dictated message to Sessions to limit the investigation to future elections (Volume II pg. 90-94) is something new and interesting.

Disabling JavaScript should be a suitable work around as it requires JS to run their check for private browsing. Also I have JS disabled by default and I have no issues accessing articles from the NYT, WaPo, etc.

Hopefully seeing someone (even as well off as NYC is) push back against showering taxpayer dollars on a company of Amazon's stature will lead to a reevaluation of taxpayer subsidization for corporate relocation/expansion.

This is a poor analogy for multiple reasons:

1. Basketball is entertainment, and 'The Decision' was the result of years of speculation by the fans and the media. Furthermore you see similar spectacles for such things as National Signing Day, where top recruits hold press conferences to announce what college they are attending.

2. There is animosity and jealousy towards 'entitled millionaire athletes' that was made worse with players being able to control their own destiny instead of suffering under terrible management. "If they get to choose where to work and do so with their friends, why can't I" yells Joe Six-Pack.

3. The super team. Somehow NBA fans forgot or were ignorant of how absolutely stacked championship teams had been throughout history, featuring multiple hall of fame players and coaches. Elements of #2 play into this as well where it is management, not players, that should build championship teams.

4. A player like LBJ is far, far more likely to deliver (which he did with multiple championships) in the NBA than a company like Amazon is to deliver a value worth the taxpayer dollars they absorb.

The worst dev I ever worked with was overly negative, complained about everything, was indirect and passive aggressive, and was dramatic over the smallest things. Specifically they would know what an issue was and who was responsible before the fact, yet would cry afterwards and exaggerate the effect.

Some examples:

Talking about issues they had seen to a dev that they knew was responsible in a "This isn't good, how did this get here and from whom" type manner, even though they already knew who and what was responsible.

Digging through newly broken tests, determining that they were the result of update payload configs not being changed in the tests, and then proclaiming "Now all tests are untrustworthy and thus useless".

Waiting until after features/architectural decisions were implemented to point out flaws and provide solutions "If only we had used X this wouldn't have happened."

Acting as if the product either was in a precarious position or that the users/BA's/PO's were clueless and cause it to fail soon.

No they're not, their idea of freedom of speech extends no further than "I want to say whatever I want."

Their longstanding history of doxxing, conducting raids, etc. on those who they disagree with are the exact opposite of actual proponents of free speech.

I must admit, it has been entertaining watching how the meme's proponents have acted as if they have uncovered some great Truth of the human experience, when in fact it's nothing more than the tired old "I am a critical thinking individual while those who disagree with me are not." wrapped in video game nomenclature.

I suspect that deep down this was an attempt at coining a "new" SJW after the term had gone mainstream.

Had a similar event, only involving a hit and run where eyewitnesses had written down a plate and description of the car.

After a few weeks of getting nothing from the police, we asked to speak to a cop known for how no nonsense and rigid she is. Later that day she informed us it was a county vehicle driven by a county employee that was responsible.

"For me, it's not the gambling aspects of it, per se. I am an avid Magic: the Gathering player and never decried the way its loot boxes (boosters) work. It's the fact that, the way these boxes have been handled by many games noticeably warps the design goals of the game from "make an engaging experience" to "motivate the player to buy more loot boxes".

What I mean is that many modern games have loot boxes or microtransactions permeating its design to such a degree that most features seem planned around how they motivate players to spend more money in-game."

Star Wars Battlefront 2 at release was a perfect example of this. The entire experience was built for someone to either grind incessantly and/or spend real money to acquire currency to unlock items as only weapon mods were acquired via accumulated experience and not loot crates. Even the awarding of credits were loosely tied to performance. The "level" of a hero/trooper/ship was the number and rarity of star cards you had, not how much you had used them. There was no shared marketplace so the only way to get a certain emote, or pose, or star card was getting lucky and pulling one. It was often the case that you would pull items for troopers/heroes/ships that you would barely (or never) use.

As a result of all of this you ended up with things like "rubber banding" where players would use a rubber band on their joystick to prevent themselves from being booted from game modes. This had a particularly harmful effect on the Heroes vs. Villains game mode, as its small number of participants (4v4) and scoring via target system meant having one or more "rubber banders" on your team put you at a severe disadvantage and wrecked the experience.

Sure, if you ignore the data around wage stagnation, income inequality, accumulated wealth, etc.

When you actually look at the data it tracks with another development, one often ignored (as you yourself did here): the decline of union participation and activism.

I distinctly remember a debate that occurred for a time under GWB around "values voters", with "the left" (broadly and generally speaking) asking why Americans voted against their economic interests in favor of "moral values" and "the right" (again broadly and generally speaking) arguing that for some "moral values" hold more weight than economic interests.

I mention this because there is a deliberate attempt to remove responsibility of blue collar workers from their plight. All those guys you mentioned? Yea, they were elected. GHWB on the strength of being Reagan's VP, Clinton was re-elected after NAFTA and his VP Gore won the popular vote, GWB won in 2004 on the strength of "values voters", etc.

"B..Bu..But Obama!!!"

I hear this all the time when it comes to rebutting criticism of Trump. It's interesting how such a terrible president who made such awful deals has so much in common with Trump...

Before all of that you had Reagan Democrats, who were complicit in the decline of worker's power and rights while supporting economic and trade policies that undermined blue collar jobs.

They were never "forgotten and left behind", they signaled to the elites that they were happy to vote against their economic interests for whatever the culture war issue of the day is.

"He actually doesn’t talk bad about immigrants"

"He does badmouth _illegal_ immigrants, true"

So which is it?

It really doesn't matter though, as the point is that he is putting the blame on others (immigrants, other countries and their trade practices, etc.). Whether the immigrants are "illegal" or not doesn't matter in this context: it's an out group that grievances can be directed towards.

I'd be remiss if I didn't leave this here:

“Allowing the immigration to take place in Europe is a shame,” Trump said. “I think it changed the fabric of Europe and, unless you act very quickly, it’s never going to be what it was and I don’t mean that in a positive way.

“So I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad,” he continued. “I think you are losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist ten or 15 years ago.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/07/13/t...

Raising the specter of globalization ultimately is just hand-waving the problem away. For example, when are we determining that globalization began? If we claim in the 1990's than how does that explain a similar hollowing out effect suffered by urban black America in the previous decades? If we decide to go back to Columbus, well that certainly isn't going to explain anything.

Unfortunately many explanations look outward or cast blame on shadowy groups ("The Elites") and refuse to look at decisions made by Americans themselves. There is no consideration of voting against interests in favor of culture war issues. No discussion of the movement away from organized labor and activism. Refusal to evaluate the consequences of an "Every Day Low Price" consumerism that demands the lowest cost of products.

I'm not trying to absolve globalization of responsibility, rather I'm trying to say that it's not helpful to point the finger at it and refuse to look deeper.

This post engages in the myth that there exists an America homogenous enough that all of it can suitably be represented by a single media outlet...and when it isn't something nefarious (in this case leftist elitism) is at work.

The problem isn't The Atlantic or the National Review providing specific, sometimes narrow views. The problem is the lack of intellectual curiosity, confirmation bias, and tribalism engaged in by many political consumers.

Wait, if they were forgetting that they were writing the notes, why did the handwriting look like the landlord's and not their own?

This reminds me of something similar that I experienced.

When I was younger my mother and I started noticing food missing in that there would be less of a bag of chips than we recalled. Nothing was ever completely eaten and the food had to have been opened first. We were pretty sure something weird was happening, and then one day we got home and I noticed there was a can of pop missing. I was absolutely certain I knew how many were left, so at this point we were convinced someone other than ourselves was responsible. After talking to other residents in the townhouse complex we find out we're not the only ones that this is happening to.

Fast forward a few days and I'm locked out of our townhouse. I went to my friend, who lived a few townhouses down, and asked if I could hang out for a bit as I was locked out. He proceeds to tell me that the caretaker's daughter who lives in one of the townhouses has a master key and can let me in, as she did it for him before.

We walk over to her place and he asks her to let me in with her master key. I will never forget the mix of anger and fear in her face as she weakly tries to deny having the key, only for him to bring up past incidents she has let him in. She relents and walks us over to my townhouse and lets me inside.

Amazingly, after that day we no longer had food and pop go missing.

I have to agree. I noticed with more recent philosophy works (including some on this list) it could feel like the philosophers were more interested in arguing with one another than educating the reader.

I also think this is part of the reason why philosophers like John Dewey aren't as well regarded as they should be and/or used to be.

There's a series of books titled "Very Short Introduction" where many of them will cover schools, topics, and thinkers involved in philosophy. They run about 150-200 pages and often provide a good overview of the material. I read the books on philosophy, philosophy of science, Habermas, etc. and they were very good.

I would start with "Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction" by Edward Craig, see what catches your interest, and go from there.

Also +1 for Russell's "A History of Western Philosophy".