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Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 03 Nov 2015, 09:18
by MotorWaffle
Admittedly I don't see this terribly often, but would like to make sure it doesn't become a common thing.

Can we not refer to everything we don't like as "fedora's for (x)"?
I've so far seen (quoted as exactly as I can remember):
E-cigs are mouth fedoras.
Dyed hair is the female fedora.
Swords are fedoras you hang on your wall.
Pocket-watch? Pretty much a pocket fedora.
MLP is basically a fedora incarnated as a show.

Basically I'm increasingly agitated at the internet's list of things that are unacceptable to like or enjoy. Fedoras themselves included.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 04 Nov 2015, 03:45
by Lord Chrusher
Out of our three night observing run, we lost half a night to a CCD failure and two nights to weather.

We only observed 2 star clusters out of the 16 we had planned.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 04 Nov 2015, 09:36
by AdmiralMemo
Started this job on October 12... Took until today to finally get someone interested in what we're selling.

And he doesn't qualify. :-(

This job sucks... Glad I've still been looking for other jobs in the meantime.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 04 Nov 2015, 11:48
by AdmiralMemo
Some nut in San Diego is sniping people from a rooftop. Image

Edit: And now someone almost burnt down their house on the street behind me by burning piles of leaves. I'm losing faith in humanity. :-(

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 05 Nov 2015, 14:06
by empath
What's that? Faith in humanity? Well, let's get right of that useless appendix-like part of your psyche for you! ;)

We got snow. "Occasional flurries" turned into actual mid-afternoon whiteout for a while, and then the sun went down and there was actual WHITE STUFF covering the streets. So the traffic is a maddening mix of idiots trying to drive on summer tires like everything's normal and keep speeding at maybe 30km/h over the 50km/h limit, and only marginally better over-reactors that are creeping around at 20km/h in 4WD SUVs with all-season radials on a 100km/h expressway.

I picked up the night driver for the cab, and stopped by a coffee shop for him, and as we were about to leave the parking lot, we were talking about how there will be a plethora of fender benders since everyone's forgotten how to drive in cold weather...and sure enough, on the road in front of us, one car rear-ended another. :roll:

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 19:43
by the_lone_bard
I'm so, so tired of having to fight tooth and claw for every tiny little thing in my life. I just hate it, I hate everything about life at this point.
When I was 18-19 I was still busy screwing my life up, for the last 4 years I've been trying to fix it after just not bothering to fix it when I fucked it up years ago.
So now I live in a world where I can't get anything. I have a bad credit rating, why? Because I don't have one. I was still smart enough to never sign anything I couldn't afford to pay for. Never get a credit card, or a loan I couldn't pay back, never rented a house I can't afford. So, guess I can't get a phone plan then. What's the easiest way to establish your credit rating, get a phone plan. What can't I get without a credit rating since I'm too old to get my parents to sign it? A phone plan!
I'm so sick of not being able to have the things other people do. I finally get things together enough to afford a phone, and well too bad. Can't get that Galaxy S6, you can get a cheap $15 throw away phone and a $2 pre-paid sim, it sends texts and makes calls with all the features of the early 90s.
I'm sick of the fact I have to chose whether or not to take my meds, not because I can't afford the meds, but because if I take them, I get so much more hungry and eat so much because my stomach stops with the malabsorbtion, which means I spend a couple of days eating all the food I can to the point I'm pushing the limits of eating too much (I don't pay for food, it's included in my rent cause my friends are awesome.) and still wind up so hungry I throw up nothing but bile. Because at least if I don't take the meds, I just get severe stomach pains which are arguably easier to deal with.
I hate the fact that not only can I not have nice things like everyone else, but that I can't even imagine what it's like. I can't imagine what it's like to have a new phone, or a high end gaming pc, or even an un-damaged book, because I've never had any of that. Because all I ever get is the cheap version, I get the 6 year old smart phone someone doesn't need anymore. My graphics card fails and I get someones 3 old one for $50 because I can't afford a new one. I get the books people have already read and don't mind lending to me now or are giving away.
I've done damn near everything I can the last year to get my life together, and I finally have a place to live, I feel welcome somewhere for the first time in my life. And all at the cost of being $950 in debt to my room-mates slowly paying them back as much as I can. That's a whole 2 weeks of working at freaking McDonalds worth of debt, and yet I can barely keep it from increasing let alone getting rid of it with my life right now because without a phone or money for travel and nice clothes or a hair cut of a fucking electric shaver since mine broke when I went to use it, and I look homeless now since $2 disposable razors don't get rid of beards, I can't get a job, so I'm trying to live off of $40 a fortnight. And I guarantee someone will read that and think "Why don't you quit smoking?" as if that $23 a fortnight would fix everything.
And it feels worse than you can imagine to know this will probably be yet another year, where I can't even buy x-mas presents for the 7 closest people in my life, that I see and speak to every day. I'll probably struggle just to get them all a card each.

And I can't even tell any of those 7 people about any of this, because if I do, they're gonna feel so sorry for me they wont wanna accept anything off me, not even a random can of drink or something as if them taking a can of coke off me is somehow contributing to the fact my life is fucked up.

Why does my life feel like a prison? Like no matter what I do to try and get my life together, there's just always something there to shut me down as if to remind me to know my place, you don't get to have a normal life like others, your place is to struggle and be useless and never go anywhere. Welcome to life.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 07 Nov 2015, 01:13
by AdmiralMemo
Regarding credit rating, here's a tip to help you (when you have a chance, since I can see you have money issues right now).

What I did to build a good credit rating was to get a credit card. Find one with no fees. The interest rate won't matter. What you do is that any time you were going to pay cash for something, put it on the card if you can. Then, set the cash you were going to use to pay for it aside, so you don't spend it. Then, when the bill comes at the end of the month, you have exactly how much you need to pay it off. You're not spending any more than you normally would have, and you're building credit at the same time. After doing a few years of that, I ended up with a better credit rating than my parents (who themselves have pretty good credit).

So, if you can get out of the financial hole you're currently in, that's a way to help for the future.

*hugs*

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 07 Nov 2015, 02:53
by fantôme
I was afflicted with severe poverty throughout my late teens and early twenties, even being homeless for a while. But I kept fighting, eventually got myself to a self-sufficient point. I still make a lot of sacrifices in order to have luxuries, and it's with a similar approach that I was able to (eventually) not be alone through my struggle: I was open about my poverty with my friends. At first, like you fear, Lone Bard, it was treated as some awkward disease and my friends would tip-toe around the very mention of money. But it took not long at all for them to realise that I had disregarded any pride I might have had about it, and they soon reciprocated in openness and just considerate pragmatism.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 08 Nov 2015, 08:13
by Phi
A lecturer left his students alone for half an hour with the following problem to solve: the five of us (me and 4 other girls) are in a spaceship somewhere in space, but there is only enough oxygen for 4 of us to survive, so one of us had to die. We had to choose which one. I volunteered to sacrifice myself, saying that being lost in space is a better death than most. But then the girl who asked me for the writing advise said that it is good I volunteered, because she was going to nominate me because I am a man. The other 3 girls agreed with her. So we had an argument about gender roles and gender equality.

Their view can be summarized as: "Men have traditionally went to war and died, while women did not, so men are supposed to protect women. We live in the 21st century where women should have equal rights and work, but men are and should be stronger than women, both physically and emotionally, and should be the provider of the family." Whereas, my view can be summarized as: "Men and women are equal and gender is a poor criteria to judge a person by, especially if you are choosing whether that person is more or less worth of dying compared to others. The fact that something is traditional does not make it right."

They said that they only need men because women cannot give birth to children on their own yet, and suggested that they can take my sperm before I am thrown out of the spaceship (because the idea of reproducing with me is apparently disgusting to them). They eventually said that they should keep my alive because I know more about astrophysics than more of them combined.

Such a view makes me angry, because it is stereotyping and judgmental (both of which are things the girl spoken about being against). It is viewing a person as a product - either a source of sperm or an incubator womb. It is deciding that men should be X and women should be Y - a view that causes so many people on Earth to be judged and tormented because they have a dumb criteria people expect them to fulfill. "Men should be strong and are not allowed to show emotions or care about how they look". "Women should be dependent on their men because they are naturally weaker."

And this bleeds into something that really bothers me about many (but not all, obviously) feminists - the idea that they want equality (or even superiority) without relinquishing the luxuries that come with inequality. They say that women should have equal rights, perform the same jobs and be treated as equal to men - but also, the man has to make the first move to initiate romance, the man has to pay for the woman, the man has to be strong and protect the woman, and the man must be the provider to his family. Can't people be seen as human first and men / women second? Why must everyone face the constant expectations to meet narrow criterias? Ugh.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 08 Nov 2015, 09:15
by Deedles
Wow, they sound, well .... dumb as a fuck, in lack of a more gentle way of putting it.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 08 Nov 2015, 15:00
by AdmiralMemo
Phi wrote:And this bleeds into something that really bothers me about many (but not all, obviously) feminists - the idea that they want equality (or even superiority) without relinquishing the luxuries that come with inequality. They say that women should have equal rights, perform the same jobs and be treated as equal to men - but also, the man has to make the first move to initiate romance, the man has to pay for the woman, the man has to be strong and protect the woman, and the man must be the provider to his family.
This is what I've been thinking for years, and I'm glad that I see someone else saying it.

You want the perks of the old system, then you take the deficits as well. It's a system that's been in place for a long time and it functioned. I mean, ideologically, you can argue whether it's a good system or not, but it did work on some level, because we're here. You can argue whether it was efficient, ideal, or right, but it worked to get us this far. Now, if you want to change to the new system, that's great. The new system seems to work just as well, and you get plenty of perks with it. But you take the deficits as well. (And really, if you're going for equality, it's not really perks, but lack of deficits, and not really deficits, but lack of perks.)

It's a zero-sum game. Let's say you have 4 numbers that you need to add up to 0. Well, you could do 0 + 0 + 0 + 0. There you go. Equality. Or you can do 6 + -3 + -5 + 2. What they're trying to do is remove the negatives and leave the positives. They'll take 6 + 0 + 0 + 2. That won't work. You need to balance the thing or the whole thing falls apart.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 08 Nov 2015, 15:08
by JustAName
Please don't have this discussion here, guys. I really want to start arguing but I don't want to shut down this venting thread and move on to epislon.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 08 Nov 2015, 15:36
by AdmiralMemo
Sorry about that. I heard Phi say what he did and needed to get that off my chest, because I didn't know it was there until he said it. (It's like my brain had this nebulous thing that it was thinking about, but until it saw the words written down, it couldn't express it. And isn't that what venting is about, on some level? Expression?) I withdraw any further discussion on this topic from this thread.

Also, with you saying Epsilon, and noticing this thread has "Delta" in the title, I'm assuming that before I ever got here, 3 other Venting threads were locked? (The "Delta" bit never clicked as the Greek alphabet in this context and I thought it was just some idiosyncrasy of LRR culture that I missed.) Well, we've got 285 pages in this one spanning over three years. I hope it stays running, but that's still pretty good.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 08 Nov 2015, 15:55
by Elomin Sha
Epislon! Epsilon! Epsilon!

I like the refreshes.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 08 Nov 2015, 20:36
by korvys
See, now I just want to vent my frustration at people not understanding feminism. :P

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 08 Nov 2015, 21:02
by Deedles
From what I can see it's not that feminism is being misunderstood, as the grievance seems to be with people who call themselves feminists, but that want their cake, but also want to eat it. In a word: Hypocrits.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 08 Nov 2015, 21:11
by korvys
Oh, I didn't just mean people here. I would say those people also misunderstand it.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 09 Nov 2015, 02:33
by Dutch guy
Please lets not start this discussion again. It was pretty much this exact topic that led to the demise of the previous venting threads.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 09 Nov 2015, 02:56
by empath
Despite this thread persisting for over three years and hundreds of potentially-contentious moments, the rules regarding it (that are alluded to in the thread title in every post) do - despite their well-defined nature - have 'wiggle room' and grey areas.

And this current exchange slides right into one of them. Everyone involved is both perfectly right...and absolutely wrong. :(


Oh, and an update on an earlier vent: the contest went...it was "pouring a bag of chips into a bowl". :shock: They had a quick youtube clip embedded on the page for a few days, and the sound was vaguely similar but a COMPLETELY different pitch to the sound in the Soundcloud clip RIGHT NEXT TO IT; my tin-foil-hat-wearing Inner Cynic is grumbling about altered clips and embarrassing fix-up jobs to get out of corners they'd painted themselves into.

...and to add salt to the wound, I've been so busy with the paperwork side of work (my broker learned I've got a background in bookkeeping...to be fair I'm ENJOYING getting all the bills and expenses sorted out) that I neglected posting about this mess...until after the contest has been over so long that the website is cleared out. :P

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 09 Nov 2015, 05:17
by empath
...but on the plus side, it seems Kapol was on the right track. :)

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 10 Nov 2015, 18:13
by Elomin Sha
Wow, that video of students and faculty members ganging up on two individuals concerning #ConcernedStudent1950, made me despair at people. I hate bullies.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 10 Nov 2015, 18:31
by viscomica
So the cleaning lady did not wash / hang properly a lovely dress Bebop gave me and now I'm furious with her. I have told her again and again how to do these things and she only goes "mhm, mhm" and then does whaever she wants when I'm away (I'm usually at work or a school). I have intended to do the laundry myself but still she would have to iron the clothings and somehow she'd mess that up too. Like... she has one job!
Honesly.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 11 Nov 2015, 14:32
by empath
okay, one last update about that dang radio contest; I found their YouTube account, and here's the 'correct' source of the sound.

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 12 Nov 2015, 18:01
by empath
Well...

After coming home from my taxi shift, I helped with supper, put my work stuff away, ate, checked emails and stuff, then dug out my logs to 'update the books'. As well as that, I gathered up the cash I had in my pockets and counted it out - three $20s, and seven $5s; I put the fives in work-shirt pocket (to be my float for making change for customers) and put the twenties together, folded them widthwise and put them somewhere...under something relatively heavy to press the polymer bills and make the fold take.

...and now I can't figure out where that 'somewhere' was. I've scoured the apartment and not only am unable to find the money, but also unable to even recollect where I was when I did the counting, sorting and folding. It's less about my profit for the last two days work, and more about this vagueness in my recent memory.

Don't get old kids; it's slow and subtle, but ageing is CRUEL to you...

Re: Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

Posted: 13 Nov 2015, 15:22
by empath
Okay, found the money...


...but it was in a spot I was CONVINCED I'd checked, so this helps my fiscal stability, but just undercuts my mental stability even more...I can't trust myself. :(