etrevino

This was 20 years ago and a lot of people were paid by check. So the only way to reclaim the money from them was to underpay folks. They probably just handled it that way for everyone.

Even now, at my Federal government job when someone is overpaid we issue them a "debt letter" and then reduce their pay until the account is balanced. I assume it's because of the same reg/statute that fixes the clawback to 16.7%.

lol, that's pretty good, I agree with you.

What was it? I arrived too late.

You're right

Maybe I misunderstand you, but there is Tkinter if you want a GUI included with Python.

The Wiki article is something I wish I had time to edit. Yes, there was an attempt to ensure that the right sort of thing be printed, but it was also about making sure that no one else could print certain documents. You'd license a bible text to be able to regulate that it's the correct type of bible being printed, yes. You'd then see who else was printing bibles and shut them down. Okay, that's all correct, but there's more to its foundation than that. For example, in the UK, one individual had the sole right to profit off the last testaments of people to be hanged in Newgate Prison. In the 17th C, Parliament gave this power was to a preacher who in turn designated a specific printer. That power is what allowed the preacher (and the printer) to profit: no one could (legally) copy it. Regulating printers was the only way to ensure profit for an author and it was an attempt to guarantee conformity.

Can you explain why it's bad?

That's fair, but this is why the "targeted at Oxbridge kids" thing is so important. Sure, some are paying with loans, but most don't need them.

Really, this isn't about targeting a specific level of education, it's about targeting a specific class.

Not everyone is motivated by money. And if these are Oxbridge kids they may not need the cash anyway.

I think that just depends on your definition of spy. If you're thinking, say, Americans being undercover or sneaking onto bases (instead of using local assets to do it) then it would probably fall under the Special Activities Center, which is a subset of the CIA.

While you're right that these folks aren't undercover in the sense that their identities are known, that those identities are linked to an intelligence gathering agency is not known. A lot does happen out in the open and it always has. Being a member of the diplomatic service gives them protection when they're operating in a foreign country. You operate out of an embassy and if you're arrested they usually trade you back to your home country, because diplomatic immunity.

That's old and "expired" data from over thirty years ago and the family member I'm discussing is open about it, now. What needs to stay quiet (in this instance) is operational details, not that this person did the work. So your point doesn't really stand. I felt it was useful information and it was information that was safe for me to share, so I did.

The Financial Times article is, of course, intended to promote the service to women and it really doesn't hide that fact. You can bet that MI6 reviewed the article before it went to publication and everything in there was vetted a thousand times. It wouldn't shock me if small, fake biographical details were added into the article to obscure who these people really are. We don't know. The fact is, though, that since this piece is probably meant to advertise the service and-- given where it was printed-- it's probably directed at Oxbridge women. That is, women who have more job mobility than most. MI6 wants women to know that they won't be viewed as honey pots and that they can have a family. So the article is probably going to be an accurate representation at some level: since these particular women can leave if they want to, you don't want to misrepresent what they're getting into if you intend to keep them.

Right. Lot of judgments made without considering how this might work long term in the real world.

> Lol. It's supposed that one of them (i.e the mother) should behave like and adult and own it. Of course nobody forced her to choose serving her country but I believe in this case she failed both her duty to family & country.

> It's just proof that not all the people are up for this job.

It's understood that family members will know to some extent. If nothing else, this is so that they know to be wary of security threats many people would otherwise ignore. She's almost certainly not sharing details of operations, she's instead sharing with her daughters why things are the way they are in their household.

I've said in other comments, this is another world and the concerns here are different. It's not like it is in the movies.

Again, that family members will know to some extent is understood, which is why she felt comfortable admitting it in the interview, otherwise she would have lost her job and the article would have been kiboshed by the security services.

I replied to the parent comment above, but it's worth replying to this. The kids might not know what mom did before this, but the way the mother operates was long ago normalized for them. The mother probably never lied-- they usually don't-- she probably just never shared. What the mother does is a job that isn't necessarily in conflict with her love for her children. People have to balance the effort they put into their job (as opposed to the effort they put into their children) all the time. She still gets to make that choice, at least in the US and the UK (as is the case here). That choice may cost her her job, but that's true of any job.

This is all to say, it's highly doubtful that this had the impact to their relationship that you're imagining here.

I can speak as someone who was in the same situation as the teens. This is about the time that the kids begin to cotton on to the fact that things aren't quite right. Really, this is the point at which the parent has to start lying (as opposed to saying something like "oh I work for the government") or trust to their children's discretion. The kids' entire raising up to this point has normalized strong patriotism and a parents' inconsistent presence as a result of that patriotism. This likely came as no real shock to them.

This is a different world and I didn't realize how different until I went away to college.

Speaking as an historian here and not as a linguist: In my experience, a language that has only four cases usually has a method for expressing all eight, they just won't be formalized in the same way. For example, English has no formalized second person plural, so you might use "y'all" or "everyone" as a kludge.

What you quoted above actually kind of reinforces GP's point. And if you read the article you cited it agrees with GP.

> [W]hat I think many people outside our profession don’t understand is how unfortunately unequal all aspects of secondary education are in this country. And unlike some other inequalities — like access to fancy internships or expensive extracurriculars — our empirical research shows the SAT/ACT actually do help us figure out if someone will do well at MIT.

> It turns out the shortest path for many students to demonstrate sufficient preparation — particularly for students with less access to educational capital — is through the SAT/ACT, because most students can study for these exams using free tools at Khan Academy, but they (usually) can’t force their high school to offer advanced calculus courses, for example. So, the SAT/ACT can actually open the door to MIT for these students, too.

This is satire. McSweeney's is a humor literary journal.

Key quote from the woman: “Apparently, the mouse jiggler was the last straw since I had been missing standups and having ‘thunderstorms’ and ‘power outages’ since I started.”

Sounds like she's been skiving off in general. She's lucky she's still employed at all.

The Trophy Weapon System can intercept and defeat anti-tank missiles and grenades and has been proven in combat. Both US and Israeli tanks have those mounted on them. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss tanks as dead. Just older tanks without active countermeasures are dead.

Think about this differently: as you have more relationships you learn what you can tolerate and what you can't. The less experienced you are, often the more patient you are with red flags. I'm sorry if not owning all of a person's firsts makes you feel inferior, but that has to do with your self esteem, which is probably what undermines you and makes you insecure. She can love you more than she's loved anyone ever, even if she's loved someone before.

Basically getting banged around. It's like a series of rapid blows. In the case of aircraft it's where everything just rapidly swings from side to side.

They look like this: https://www.healthyplace.com/sites/default/files/uploads/201...

There are some that let you hook up headphones as well. It's all about bilateral stimulation and some people get it better through touch as opposed to visually. From the APA:

"During EMDR therapy, clinical observations suggest that an accelerated learning process is stimulated by EMDR’s standardized procedures, which incorporate the use of eye movements and other forms of rhythmic left-right (bilateral) stimulation (e.g., tones or taps). While clients briefly focus on the trauma memory and simultaneously experience bilateral stimulation (BLS), the vividness and emotion of the memory are reduced."

https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/eye-movement-r...

It doesn't just have to be the eye movements. They'll also use little tappers or paddles that sit in your hand and vibrate alternately. They also have ones with sound that do something similar. For me, the vibrating paddles plus the sound works best, but they all work.

It's fascinating.

The poster suggested the possibility that they're incompetent to create a counterfactual, not that they are.

I believe they actually buy an annuity with a bank.

My parents got me the Tengen version of Tetris back in the day. They didn't know the difference, of course, and neither did I. What I remember is that it looked different from my friends' version and it had two player. Pretty neat stuff. I don't know where all of my games went, unfortunately.

This person's goals seem to be different from yours. Why not let him or her study what they're interested in without acting as if it's a mistake? What you see as a mistake in degree choice is based on your experience coming from your school living your life.

Japan started the war with a surprise attack, but Russia intended to go to war with Japan and everyone knew it. Japan just figured that, as the smaller country, it ought to try to seize what advantages it could

I think that we should break down your thesis into two parts:

1. Those acts preceded by a reason, i.e., the acts are informed by a rationale. The acts are rational to those actors, no matter how irrational they seem to us.

2. Those acts justified in the breach by a rationale. Those are irrational acts.

History has both, of course, but it's the second one that we should fear, because it's unknowable and unpredictable. The first one we can try to predict by understanding an actor's milieu.