norea-armozel

I have a funny little story about outsourcing failures from my parents. Beechcraft for years has been trying to find ways get their costs down. They've been warring with the unions for years on everything: healthcare and wages mostly. So, when they started outsourcing to Mexico parts of aircraft like the wiring harness and the fuel bladders. As a result there's some bad blood between them and the Salina Kansas community. The union had no real way to force them to stay, so the jobs went. When Beechcraft setup the plants they offered above average wages (daily payment too) to workers in Mexico and even gave them their own tools (that was normal but any replacement tools for workers in the US had to be bought by the workers from the company at least as I remember with my mom complaining years having to buy hers when she use to work for them as well) but despite all that most workers in the Mexican plant would quit the first day and sometimes leave with not only their own tools but any other equipment they could find. So Beechcraft hired US contractors at a much higher price than former US employees to do the same work in Mexico (how does this work exactly? I really would love to talk with a former Beechcraft executive as to how they computed the financial numbers for this little venture someday.) and even then the quality of the fuel bladders and wiring harnesses were terrible. Most of the fuel bladders leaked and so they often had to be fixed at the Mexican plant (no plants state-side to do fixes were available). Last I heard from my dad who still works for them that they were trying to bring back some of that work to the US but in Arkansas. Frankly, I'll be surprised even then they'll get viable QA setup so long as they focus purely on the cost side of things.

What is it with people in the US and pornography in general? I've never been able to wrap my head around it and I was born and raised here in the US.

>These days? In all of human history your likelihood of being a slave was pretty high. Talk about real meaningless. If anything we live in a rare break from slavery which is an outlier.

Slavery and drudgery are not what make work meaningful or meaningless.

>I think people need to learn some real expectations of what work means and perhaps to read Studs Turkel's Working before they get to complain about their cush white collar jobs being these horrible things.

As someone who's work in factories, grain elevators, grocery, retail, and currently work in software development I can tell you the meaningless of modern work is the same regardless of the drudgery involved. The fact you equate drudgery with meaningless work shows you have no clue as to how the working classes operate (being that I come from the working class I have some insights to impart here so I'll try to be patient with you). What makes work meaningless for the vast majority of humans is the total lack of control or the inability to perceive the end goal (ex. a factory assembler who'll never see the final product or that they have no say what the product should be or even if it's worthwhile to produce it).

The lack of goals or any kind of connection to our work is what drives many people to quit or change jobs regardless of whether it's in an office or in a kitchen or on a factory line. Churn happens because people are intentionally left to be nothing more than trained animal in their task. Punch in, make quota, punch out. And repeat, forever. So, I'm not exactly sure what part of the physical comfort matters when the psychological deprivation weighs as hard as a herniated disk does on a laborer (I know both have similar impact thanks to my mother). And I can say that both physical and psychological pains and deprivations are hell from my own experiences. It's not to say that gilded cages aren't pretty but they're still cages.

Yeah I think I agree on the meaninglessness of work these days. And I don't mean that the individual task isn't perceptible as some part of a larger goal but I mean that much of the work I've done was utterly worthless or outright scrapped after the business decided it wanted to go the opposite direction. Not only is this frustrating from a personal point of view but it's also wasteful professionally. I'd rather have unpaid time off while the business finally figured out their strategy or goals for me before stepping into the office. At least then I would have time to do something else (paid or otherwise). Plus, it wouldn't be a waste of other resources such as purchasing licenses for third party software we'll never use in part or in whole or wages that could've been part of another budget for a viable product. All in all, it's this kind of wasteful nature that means the meaninglessness more painful to me since I can't point to a product or service with my fingerprints on it. I can't say "I helped make that possible" or "I helped that company add value to their client's experience."

I'm not sure if Musk's contention makes sense because intelligence isn't a uniform attribute to systems (biological or synthetic). Specifically, what passes for intelligence is just the proper applicable, discovery, and/or refinement of algorithms which we can do easily without intelligence (as in self-awareness and raw analytical capability). Just run through all possible paths or solutions on a sufficiently fast computer and you'll eventually get all the possible solutions to any given problem. It's not a matter of intelligence, it's a matter of lifespan and applicability.

I can totally see something like that needing full programmatic capability, but anything consumer grade should be read-only in terms of functionality. A refrigerator in my home kitchen doesn't need an API to maintain temperature within an acceptable range vs electrical consumption where as a warehouse refrigerator does (like those that might be part of a smart grid agreement to give over control to utilities with a price discount as a benefit).

More often than not I'm trying to buy things not on Amazon anymore. Like my most recent (and expense) purchase was a telescope from Orion. I just don't trust Amazon to vet their sellers. If they can't be bothered to make sure what's sold is the real thing then I'm not going to buy from them. It might cost me a bit more in the retail price but at least when I buy from decent online stores or reputable bricks and mortars I know I'm getting what I expected to buy (even if it's not top of the line).

Or even simpler: don't put any kind of writable software/firmware on the dishwasher in the first place. Beyond maybe some scheduled washing options, why does a dishwater need to be IoT'd? Seriously, I think all this is meant to pad the price of the appliances rather than give users an actual working product.

>How are you boned, exactly? Having to conform to social expectations while in public applies to everyone.

Due to the fact that I don't identify as a man in any capacity (I'm transgender here obviously). So when (not so much if anymore) I transition if I ever go back home to Kansas it's not likely I'll find work there in any capacity outside of maybe working remotely. So, saying I should conform to social expectations of values which aren't economically significant in themselves or even professionally significant (programmers and developers in general aren't exactly pastors at a church when they're conducting their profession) is kind of silly. Me being transgender isn't an option, it's called gender dysphoria and it's in the DSM for a good reason (as in there's no curing it and honestly I don't see why I should have it "cured"). So, not to be too mean asking me to not be openly transgender (because I'm here in my mid-30s wrestling with this so that means the window of having hormone replacement therapy do wonders on my face is closed) is akin to asking me not to have blue eyes. Both are part of who I am, both are not chosen by me. And both are basically neutral onto themselves. I shouldn't have to write a paragraph about this to you or anyone but it seems folks like yourself still are invested in the social ideology that "them silly little queers" should either not exist or you think our lives are purely optional. To which my question for you is this: if my life is optional then how is yours not optional? I hope you understand what I mean by optional.

I think this article does touch on something that's always bothered me regarding healthcare. Specifically on the problem that insurance is tied to healthcare. To me insurance is about covering risks that are liable to occur no matter how much one may minimize them. In contrast, healthcare is about routine and extraordinary care of human beings. It's not something I believe follows properly with insurance business models which is why often they cut corners to make it profitable. Otherwise, I suspect many health insurance companies today would be bankrupt if they didn't attempt their corner cutting. Rather than leaving healthcare to insurance business models we need to finally admit that maybe it's no different than roads or other infrastructure and have it handled by the US federal government for better or worse.

In theory, yes. But that depends on how many healthy cells or stem cells that change to replace them there are. It's a big complex problem really that I think people understate. It's part of why we heal so well up to a certain point in our lives (the ability to remove and kill off faulty or old cells). This wouldn't be a fountain of youth but more like a fountain of "not needing a nurse to wipe your ass when you're 95."

>Moving the goalposts isn't "inherent dishonesty"?

What I stated was an example and there's no historical trend as it stands towards there being anti-Catholicism resurgence (for now). But as an example none of your examples apply even in Eich's case considering he's head of new business venture in browser micro-payment systems. And he's still a major contributor to various JS standards. So, pardon me if I don't buy your bullshit when it comes do your fantasy of anti-Christian sentiment being some sort of thing here in the States (hint: it's not).

>And similarly, we could ban gay sex because it spreads AIDS. Don't like it? Move.

Not comparable because everyone benefits from sharing the costs of health insurance. It's why roads aren't wholly private anywhere in western-style countries. The cost of infrastructure isn't easily serviced by isolated bureaucracies or revenue streams. As for gay sex spreading AIDS I gotta burst your bubble but sharing needles among heroin addicts has a similar to GREATER transmission rate. Also, having sex unprotected whether it's homosexual or heterosexual produces exactly the same results. So, you're deflecting by trying another dishonest comparison. I suggest you retract it.

>Notice how your argument can be applied to defend any law apart from laws against emigration?

Nope, because you're trying to find an absolutist position where none was stated. I think you need to read what I wrote again then actually address my points and not your imagined version of them.

>Entertaining how you simultaneously criticize me for (accidentally - I meant to say "enjoy the absence of sectarianism") saying I support sectarianism, then engage in it a couple of sentences later.

There's nothing sectarian about excluding those who support state violence as a means to destroy democratic processes and free association of various ethnic and religious groups. Nazism is by definition incompatible with a free and (classically) liberal society. You can either have Nazism or you can have liberalism. You cannot have both. They're matter/anti-matter in terms of analogies (most apt IMO).

I'm not sure if Bezos and company know what they're getting themselves into with the US grocery business. It's a cut throat business which has not just some big players but several small to medium sized grocery chains (some as subsidiaries and some as stand-alone companies). And I can tell you as someone who's work in grocery the profit margins are thin outside of the US holidays. Frankly, if Bezos thinks this is going to lead to adding actual profitability to the delivery of their other products I'm not sure I see that possibility materializing under the guise of grocery stores and grocery delivery. I hope they have plans to retreat from that business when (not really if) Kroger and Walmart hammer them on the price. Otherwise, I can see them learning a painful lesson in the near future.

Am I wrong in assuming that electronics firms just don't realize the special nature of the rise of modern consumerism? What I mean by that is that I think it's obvious that consumerism as we've known it isn't sustainable in practice. Sure, there's always going to be a demand for new devices but I think the rate of replacement of them is and will be very slow for a long time. Once devices get good enough or service demand well enough then it becomes a different market entirely just like how cars are today (people replacing them years later and not just every year).

>I don't recall Kansas folks trying to tell NY what to do about LGBT. That's the point I was making.

As someone who was born/raised and lived in Kansas until three years ago I can say that Kansas evangelicals have regularly tried to browbeat leftists and moderates in other states and cities.

>We're already there - just ask Brendan Eich, Curtis Yarvin or Donald Sterling.

Are any of these people unable to find work, pray as they wish, or life safely without threats or acts of violence? If the answer is no then their public faux pas aren't equivalent to being actually ARRESTED and KILLED as many folks (even German Princes) were during the Thirty Years War. The fact you want to dilute the impact of religious sectarianism shows your inherent dishonesty on these matters.

>Companies do check social media to make sure people haven't expressed views outside the overton window, e.g. being anti-gay or anti-fat.

That's called capitalism. Don't like capitalism then abolish it. Because the moment you become a professional or an entrepreneur under capitalism you become private property of the board of directors and anyone else who has legal authority to hire/fire you.

>See also my reply to Rayiner which asks the question why people who prefer not to buy health insurance (as opposed to people who prefer sex with men) don't also get equal protection under the law.

Well I prefer not to have to wear pants at work but that doesn't mean I should have the liberty to lounge around in my pajamas like some lazy ass college student. We do things like insurance mandates as a compromise between having a sprawling public bureaucracy versus a series of small and possibly more efficient private bureaucracies (as this point I'm not convinced of this benefit myself). Like it or not, that's the way our system works. Want to live in the US then you get health insurance (for now). Want to drive a car then you get car insurance, too. All this libertopia nonsense doesn't work especially in the US where private businesses are effectively the second federal government.

>Personally I quite enjoy sectarianism - I like the transactional society, where even a Nazi can peacefully purchase a Pepe-as-Hitler cake without getting sucker punched by a cowardly masked thug.

I'm sure you'd love it in Mugabe's Zimbabwe or 1990s Balkan states then where if you don't toe the line you're dead. Because that's where sectarianism leads. It's not many little enclaves that live in peace, it's many little enclaves that shoot at each other literally. And those Nazis do deserve a swift kick in the breeches since their ideology by definition seeks to abolish all democracy. You can't co-exist with someone who wants to disenfranchise you. It's either their way or the highway (which usually ends at a death camp). And they have no qualms with using violence to ensure their way is accomplished.

I think the biggest reason for this trend is the decline in health and human services across the various states which have large rural populations because it's been the politically expedient thing to do when budget crises happen because it's assumed they rural pops will just move to the big city and get the services there. Little do they realize that takes MONEY. So, when you're dealing with the same economic downturns which cause the budget crises also lead to underemployment and unemployment you're not going to see many of those folks move because they have no money or very little of it. Ultimately, there needs to be an honest discussion among the rank and file of the American conservative movements on these matters. Specifically, they need to acknowledge that their whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality isn't working and that a whole new program needs to be adopted. Specifically one that acknowledges that Randian/Right-Libertarian approaches are dead ends in terms of sustainability. Whether they like it or not they need to accept that there needs to be some level of welfare in government especially now when the greatest disruption to employment opportunities are ahead of us (not behind us). We can't assume there will be plentiful well paying jobs that can/will emerge in the rural sections of the US. We need to assume the opposite as distance is costly to most industries and there's barely an operable infrastructure to support building up those rural parts of the country (especially when it comes to the Internet-based IT jobs). If there's anything they should do I think an infrastructure bill that focuses on getting Internet access and education programs out to the rural parts of the country would be a good first step on top of rebuilding and augmenting existing welfare programs.

>Rural America didn't start your culture war.

As someone from Kansas I can say that many people in that state have wanted and pursued legal/social action against LGBT people for as long as I can remember. Whether you want to admit it or not there's a strong undercurrent of anti-LGBT still alive and well in parts of the country, especially in the rural areas. The only time these folks "tolerate" LGBT people is when we toe the line of what is deemed "normal." So, if you're an effeminate gay man well it sucks to be you in rural (and most of south central) Kansas. If you're transgender (like me) it's double that. Basically, if you're not presenting straight (aka "normal") then you're boned.

>Incidentally, people in cities try to push around rural folks all the time - forcing them to bake gay wedding pizzas...

And all that talk about forcing people to cater gay weddings, well that's part of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment as one other commentor pointed out. If we throw out that law then that means I can open any public facing business like a bakery and refuse to hire or serve Christians. Let's see how long before this country goes back to the days of the Thirty Years War where we're even asking people if they're a Catholic or not before transacting business. Seriously, think about the consequences of this before asserting that anyone's force to do anything because as long as you got a society you got compromises and more so if you got government with relatively uniform laws. Those compromises ensure sectarianism is kept to a minimum. Now which do you want if you're a rural Christian American, sectarianism where you got an equal chance of being the victim of it or possibly having to cater gay weddings once in a while but getting paid well? BTW, catering in this instance isn't celebrating sin either nor does any part of the Bible say you can't economically benefit from transactions that are not in themselves sinful (ex. you can still sell guns to people whether or not one of them happens to be plotting murder for which you have no foreknowledge of).

I think some information is often a mixture of truths and lies which is why I tend to filter out all the major left/right media outlets on my Google News feed. I'm just not interested in playing fact checker for every newspaper because they have some left/right crusader journalist that's willing to die on a hill for a particular current political talking point. If those folks are going to mix lies with the truth then I'm going to take the risk of being an ignorant jerk that says "I don't know, I'll have to read up on it" than be led down a blind alley of someone's ideology masquerading as "the truth." Essentially, the most correct position in the majority of cases to be conscientiously ignorant and open to discussion when it's applicable to your life. Beyond that, be as dumb as the rest of humanity to the ins and outs of any issue if it's not interesting or fun to you.

Edit: also, I think this doesn't apply to matters that are of immediate relevance and consequence. So I do think someone like POTUS or a US Senator should stay informed if possible.

It's largely irrelevant. A few million from college student fees is never allocated to the transportation portion of the budget. Also, the Department of Transportation (federal) has program for infrastructure. If you all don't want that money spent then ask the majority GOP to ax those programs. But as long as those programs exist then California and all other state governments have the right and duty to get as much return on those tax funded programs as possible.

Much of the reason why anti-intellectualism is held in high regard is because of the historical basis of the intellectuals being apologists for the rulers of civilization. Whether it's Milton Friedman being friendly with Augusto Pinochet who had no qualms throwing people out of flying helicopters that didn't comply with his right wing ideology or Trofim Lysenko who had his opponents killed or exiled under Stalin, intellectuals have a storied history of propping up bad regimes and bad policies so that they can bargain with said regimes to execute their own side projects (ex. Lysenkoism). Part of that comes from the fact that they believe their pursuits are divorced from the social and political dimensions when in reality they're so heavily tied to them that it's inescapable. Like it or not, they need to realize that they must be part of the social and political dimensions to mitigate the dangers of anti-intellectualism. That means there needs to be some form of science education/advocacy (like John Dobson did in some regard with astronomy or Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson had done for astrophysics) and participation in the political process such that the common person (the non-intellectual/scientist/expert) can digest what is said and done by intellectuals rather than cloistering the knowledge away behind thick books and thicker language. I'm not sure any of those suggestions can yield positive results but it seems it's better than cozying up to the current US President or hiding behind some tech billionaires to pursue your dreams of Martian colonies.

I'm quite glad to see people are beginning to recognize the benefits of labor unionization. I know that for some the idea of unions is horrendous but that's due to how many unions have become just another boss where they call the shots and not represent the grievances of their members. At its core the ability to collectively bargain is the best thing anyone can do under capitalism whether it's for wages and benefits as workers or lower prices on goods as consumers. To impede or outlaw that behavior fundamentally is anti-market propaganda and it should be met with fierce opposition by all.

Or we could socialize healthcare for all then treat gene edits like this as we do vaccination. We offer only those edits which would prevent chronic and termination disorders in life but leave anything else that's merely socially undesirable like neuroatypic "disorders." I know this suggestion isn't bullet proof, but it's better than letting crackpots do this in the shadowy corners of society creating all kinds of changes which lead to more suffering for the people that would bear these gene edits (I can imagine there being some weirdo rich couples that wouldn't mind turning their future kids into Nosferatus despite the adverse social impact that would have on them).

Remember, these are the kind of people that conflate wealth with owning even a used refrigerator. Or having a used car or anything else that's a modern staple of industrial societies. It's all about the idea that poorness is a sign of sinfulness. And that the righteous are magically immune to the misfortunes of the corrupted material world. Essentially, it's a heretical belief that so many Christian Americans love to entertain even if they verbally denounce it. I really wish more Christians would denounce such heresy to the point of shunning even politicians from their congregations. Maybe then we'd see this nonsense dropped for good.

Not to be mean, but I use to be one of those menial workers (I've worked as a janitor, factor assembly, plastics, etc) and most folks were very much motivated but they weren't able to take aim at careers when they have children or relatives to care for. Also, not everything one may do for work includes what they truly aspire to do. Just because the work seems menial to you doesn't mean it's not a challenge for them. There's plenty of explanations but none of them fit with the narrative of listless proles.

At some point, they need to be cut out of the discussion which is why I support taking private initiatives to stave off the worse of AGW without their support. So if it means they get the White House, they can have it. I'd rather have a sustainable ecosystem and set of permanent and private institutions that supplant theirs to maintain that ecosystem. When a significant portion of private power isn't bending a knee to the old order that folks like Stephen Bannon (and to some extent Hillary Clinton) continue to worship then maybe we'll become a more mature civilization in which large scale issues like AGW aren't held hostage by the posturings of politicians.

I think it's more apt to say that with automation that increases in sophistication the fewer labor hours you will need to maintain it and it's successive replacements. Meaning that absent a theoretical breakthrough in AI, we'll still see a permanent dislocation of labor across all sectors over time. It's just inevitable but how we deal with it isn't.

I think for most people in the world, pork products are more likely to be a source of the parasite than cats though. And there's quite a few people who eat pork even outside the US.

Most yogurts play nice with my stomach in moderation. If I eat lots of it then gas city and pain for me.

In as much as it's pre-Marxist and pre-Utopian socialism, sure. But if you told a hardline ML that this was socialism they'd probably call you a deviationist or some other buzz word.

I think in part your solution is on the right track but not the complete answer (hell, I don't think I have a complete answer myself). In my opinion, the additional work would need to be done to focus on further decentralization of governments and businesses since both have been on a trend toward further centralized bureaucracies that rarely respond to their respect stakeholders (citizens and consumers). In my view that would mean businesses should be held in common by the workers as a term of employment. Think of it was a credit union but you just happen to work there. Entrepreneurs and managers will always be in the mix of this because honestly individuals sometimes get good ideas but they shouldn't be off the hook with incredibly vast sums of wealth as to allow them to create their own fiefdoms. After all, they too are just one person in an ocean of people.

What's funny about this idea is that it's not mine. I remember a long time ago that I use to go on a web forum on the New Speak Dictionary site. The site owner styled himself a Libertarian Syndicalist and he espoused very similar views here. I think it's inevitable that this might become the normal state of things if people become aware of this possible alternative to centralized state vs centralized business.