Trump fanatics
People being terrified of cities and public transit.
I’m terrified of public transit only because of my social/generalized anxiety disorder, otherwise I’d love to use buses and trains. I wish we had more passenger trains in the US.
I don’t know where you live, but in PDX it’s a hit or miss. If you go during rush hours on a work day in the suburbs, then you are mostly fine. Otherwise… You have high chances of being harassed by homeless people, spat on, threatened, leered at, smelling something awful. So yeah, not divorced of reality.
I live near Chicago, and the worst I’ve experienced is someone yelling or playing loud music. I’m not saying bad stuff never happens, but it’s much safer than driving (admittedly a very low bar).
Live in a city in the south where driving is required. Went to Chicago last year and decided to stick to public transit when we saw how much it cost to park. It was amazing. Sure some people were loud or smoking in the trains, but I could def live like that. Idk what everyone is complaining about with the 15 minute thing
I’m from the South and I always hated having to drive. I think it’s also nicer/safer to drive in a place with public transit than without, because some bad drivers know they’re bad drivers and will take another option if it’s available, plus it just means fewer cars on the road. No public transit just sucks for everyone.
Yeah I lived in Boston and never had problem with public transit, same in Europe. I guess left cost IS different and not in a good way.
You just described the for-profit mental health crisis which only persists because it is for-profit healthcare is detached from reality
How does this knowledge help me take the train safely?
I work in the development office of a tiny city that’s surrounded by a major city. It’s an enclave for the mega-wealthy. Literally every household is at least millionaires, and we have our share of billionaires.
It’s surreal doing code enforcement on people you see in international news, or getting a call about potholes from a Hollywood director. Mundane civic stuff, but with extremely weird, powerful, entitled people.
Also, the houses we review are insane. We were doing irrigation inspections the other day and a lot of the sprinkler system served arboretums (plural) inside the house.
There’s one I was reviewing that has 3 bedrooms, but 14 bathrooms. Because they have galleries, a library, wine cellar bigger than most houses, the staff kitchen, etc.
Our municipal code has separate ordinances for Guesthouses and Servant’s Quarters (not allowed to be as big if it’s servant quarters).
We have a family that bought a 10 million dollar property to tear it down and build a private soccer field for their kids to use.
We had a homeowner cut down a bunch of historic trees to make room for a new patio, resulting in a 6-figure fee for illegally removing the trees. We dropped off the citation, and they pulled out a checkbook and paid the fine in about a minute.
Rich people live in a different world, and I drive there daily.
Why do I do it? It pays half-again more than my previous city, and I occasionally get to say “no” to billionaires.
In a fair and equitable world, communities like this would not exist, because these people would not have that wealth.
All extreme wealth has been stolen from the working class. That’s the only way it can be obtained.
No disagreement here. I work there for the paycheck and make no illusions about it. Everyone on the entire staff feels the same way. We’re absolute professionals, but we hold zero personal loyalty to the city or its citizens. They may be super rich and have the power to crush any of us, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re all beneath us.
And, oddly enough, that attitude is why we’re good at our jobs. Rich assholes loving together are gonna have disputes, and having a city staff that looks down on them instead of being subservient like their household staff means we’re uniquely qualified to make them be better neighbors to each other.
Just this week, I got into an enforcement discussion with an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. It takes a special kind of officious prick to disarm entitled assholes and their lawyers with the power of bureaucracy.
For about 50 hours a week, I am that prick.
US politics.
SUVs
Immigrant parent that hates new immigrants. Of course, he’s a trump supporter.
Gender dysphoria feels unreal sometimes…
Are you okay, sis?
Honestly, I’m good right now! thanks for asking though! :)
I was reflecting more on how surreal gender dysphoria feels like, some days I’m just happy because I know I get to be a woman. On others I feel disconnected from reality, the latter happens less and less :D
Dreaming.
Driver’s in Atlanta Georgia.
The left two lanes on i85 are for faster drivers and right of way is a real thing!
Customers. Seriously, how absolutely incapable are some people. I wish I could force some of them to write down all the questions they have, make them watch a 5 minute YouTube video and then only bother me if they still need help. Jesus Christ it’s a hardware store not kindergarten where I’ll take you by the hand and tell you not to eat the crayons.
You mean, apart from liberals?
Boo
I was gonna say “tankies” but I see they’ve already announced their presence for me.
So kind of them to go out of their way to help a liberal like me 🤷
These guys really do a good job of being unlikeable
How is your genocide coming along?
Lol, my Genocide.
Oh, it’s going to stick to you and every other liberal. And we’ll be here to make sure you never forget it.
Ok
Donald Trump is not only running for president again, he might actually win.
If 2016 taught me anything it’s to not trust polls. Doesn’t matter how hard ahead Kamala is polling until your ballot is actually cast.
It also doesn’t help that you have the “Lemmy.ml” crowd calling you a fascist if you vote for Kamala, because in their twisted world having trump win is better eomehow
To your second point, it’s because most of them hate the US and/or capitalism, and want to see it implode.
…Without realizing that the only things that are going to fill that power vacuum are worse.
Are there better countries than the US? Damn skippy there are. Do any of them have enough power to do anything if the US implodes? Absolutely not.
That would be terrible for worldwide peace and stability. US has too much power and influence for an implosion to not cause worldwide chaos. Trump would mean US siding with other dictatorships, like Russia, China, Iran. Russia would likely succeed in Eastern Europe. Taiwan would likely be occupied by China. NATO vs an alliance made of US, Russia and China would be very uncomfortable.
Stupid doctors. Starting in the medical field, I had this notion that a doctor is this kind of universally intelligent, best-of-humanity kind of person.
Some of them are.
But some of them are absolute dumbasses who happen to have a photographic memory that carried them through med school… Like, full blown trumpanzee, falls for conspiracy theory bullshit, superstitious nutjob, knuckle-dragging, slack-jawed idiot.
It shouldn’t be possible. No one who makes it through med school should be mentally capable of instantly plummeting to the rock-bottom of stupid as soon as they step foot outside of their field of study (which fortunately most of those types deliver at least passable quality of care).
I do the same with lawyers. Some of the Trump lawyers have been so bad that I question the Bar exam’s ability to weed out the worst.
I’m not sure if there’s any field where everyone is qualified. It seems there is no perfect method for objective qualification, without letting idiots slip through the cracks.
One of the better methods is to have a supervisor watch them in practice, but how do you qualify a supervisor? The whole cycle repeats again
There are some really stupid doctors, scientists, electricians, architects and welders, all of which are occupations where incompetence can have dire consequences.
There are recent cases of flawed scientific papers, used as guidance for procedures (ex: surgery), and causing potentially thousands of deaths.
https://youtu.be/HTlKGKaOQPY?si=2oXTn6UdR0Fuxtgj
Cases like this is what feeds anti science movements and conspiracies. In many circumstances “science” shouldn’t be trusted when there is no line between flawed science and good science.
rock-bottom of stupid as soon as they step foot outside of their field of study
That’d be too many people around me, from the qualified kind. I’m not a doctor though.
Sorry, it’s impossible. It’s normal for people to be what you described. Just human.
I mean, if you actually manage to create a working procedure for such selection, half the people in the profession will have Aspergers, always red eyes and sleep at work, and the other half will be NT, but some bloody geniuses whose abilities would rather be used in something like fundamental science.
I know a few people closely that I’d consider a genius. I only know one that went into a field where their genius mattered. He changed fundamentals of microbiology. One high school dropout, one just surviving and making decent money doing whatever they try.
I only know one that went into a field where their genius mattered.
That’d be one more than I know, if we don’t count relatives.
One high school dropout,
My tribe.
one just surviving and making decent money doing whatever they try.
That actually sounds nice.
It’s not that doctors are stupid. Quite the opposite; I strongly suspect that, by any seemingly-objective measure of intelligence, doctors are going to average significantly higher than the general population. (…And veterinary doctors even more so.) Having cognitive biases, believing in conspiracies, etc., isn’t a symptom of stupidity; it’s a side effect of being human and having emotions. You’ll find that very highly intelligent people end up being more effective at rationalizing dumbass, batshit crazy beliefs; the number of engineers, computer scientists, attorneys, etc. that are, for instance, Mormon is astounding.
step foot
Bone apple tea!
Wooaah I had to google this one, it’s a bone apple tea I’ve definitely used!
I work in a manufacturing facility where the assemblers, mechanics, machinists, and technicians, are unionized. My white collar, not unionized colleagues simultaneously express jealousy about the benefits the union members get while also saying they shouldn’t exist while also complaining their own salaries are too low and not keeping up with inflation.
My dudes, this is what unions are for. If I worked one of the covered jobs, I would join the union in a heartbeat.
Join them, don’t try to tear them down.
Crazy how union participation peaked in the 50s with 1/3 of the workforce in one, at a time where a man without advanced education could provide for a wife, multiple kids and own a house.
Crazy that people aren’t rioting in the streets.
The Parasite Class. That’s what happened. These are people for whom any amount of wealth will never be enough. So they extract it out of the working class by cramming down wages, making all aspects of life precarious, and raising prices.
We all suffer and the 0.1% accumulare more wealth than they could possibly spend in a thousand lifetimes.
Yeah, my white collar, salaried, not unionized brother works for a major manufacturer and constantly complains about unions. Then he’ll go on to talk about all the overtime pay he gets while traveling … not appreciating that salaried positions don’t get overtime pay (in the US), and he has the union to thank for that.
while also saying they shouldn’t exist
what is their argument?
Nothing substantial, just parroting propaganda. Union workers are lazy. Unions are anti free market. Unions get in the way of businesses being profitable, which would in turn benefit employees.
…And yet, if the company treats employees in a way that employees feel is fair and reasonable, then employees are extremely unlikely to choose to unionize.
For a short time I had the pleasure of working with a small site that treated the union as a partner and not an adversary. On the company side, it was an EH&S manager, not even the EH&S lead, who led annual negotiations with the union. There were disagreements and compromises, but both sides walked away every year feeling benefitted and ready to collaborate for another year.
Well, Corporate can do better than that. They sent in HR to run things this year. Everything is an aggressive conflict. EH&S dude was immediately recruited to a company down the road and left. Cue HR’s surprised Pikachu face when all goodwill with the union disappeared overnight and the union is just as ready to play hardball.
I am glad I got to see one example of a company and union working together for mutual benefit. I think there will be vanishingly few situations like this throughout the rest of my career
I think that there are probably a lot of small companies that run in a more collaborative way. I also think that the probability of labor abuses increases along with the size of a company; once the owner/president doesn’t personally know everyone that works there, the odds of shitty things goes up sharply. Not that small companies don’t also have shitty owners, but it’s usually hard to be an asshole directly to someone’s face, unless you’re a raging narcissist or sociopath.
The expectation that people in office jobs can be productive for 8 hours per day.
As a person who works a trade this blows my fucking mind that you can get away with doing nothing.
I am productive for less than an hour a day. I don’t do anything. I have nothing to do. I drive for an hour each way to sit and do absolutely nothing so I can feed and house my family.
Some days I have to convince myself not to drive my truck into something at 85 mph. No person is meant to live like this.
The alienation of labor is real. Hang in there, we’ll need you when things get better.
Can’t you do something yoh like for the rest of the time? (I don’t mean LITERALLY the other 7 hours xD) Like reading, learning to draw,
learn Thai on duolingoetc.I try. I can’t really look like I’m not working or I’ll get in trouble. Sometimes I read, but that gets boring after a while.
I relate to you. I only have about 2ish hours of actual work a day on average, and I have to drag it out all day just to look busy. I never expected that it would feel soul sucking to have so little work but still be chained to your desk. I thought I was lucky! (And I certainly am in someways)
The irony is that when I first started, I was efficient and would read when I didn’t have anything to work on. But my boss didn’t like to see me reading, so he would give me more work. The issue is that there is only so much he can do at a time, so it resulted in me finishing assignments, and him being so overloaded he wouldn’t get to them until weeks or months later. Now I just pretend to be busy, so he doesn’t feel like he needs to give me more, and I’m not having to remind him of documents in review that are weeks old.
Sorry for the rant, I am currently sitting here pretending to be busy while slowly dying inside.
I agree! I’ve spent years perfecting the art of looking busy, and that makes my free time more enjoyable. Although there still are rough days.
How do they pay you to do nothing?
My last job was like that. I was needed for about an hour a week. I just sat and listened to podcasts all day every day.
My current job, I do about an hour a day, and outperform all of my colleagues. Luckily I’m at home most of the time and just lay in bed watching things all day with my cats. When I have to go into the office, it’s painful.
That’s a fantastic question. The company is foreign owned and it’s just a sales office. The CEO is a fantastical liar that hides things well, and firing a bunch of people would not look good for him. As long as we are making a profit, no one really analyzes how much fat could be trimmed. I don’t even care if it were me to get laid off either. Actually, please lay me off.
It’s fairly common. We have a team of 11 people that does the work of half a person. The 8 person team I’m on now does less work than I did by myself 2 years ago on a different team between those 2 teams, there are also 4 managers
Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door–that way Lumberg can’t see me, heh–after that I sorta space out for an hour. I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too. I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
You’ve got upper management written all over you.
Some days, like once every two years, you actually do it by accident; you come in, get shit done all day, and you get like a months amount of work done.
And then you get all nervous that someone might find out and set new expectations for you, so you have to kind of spread out the results of the work you did on that miracle day.
