221–230 of 236 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
More money than an apprentice machinist or more money than a professional? I would guess the former, which is a pity.
His claim was more than a professional. Apparently going rate for a CNC mill operator is something like $14/hr. Maybe my friend is full of it (and believe me, I gave him a TON of flak for quitting).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've got just about zero tolerance left for people who don't view other people as people , instead of embodiments of their socioeconomic-racial-gender status. A person is not their balance sheet, their skin color, or their preferred type of partner. The truth is that--barring sheer crazy--anyone would play the cards dealt to them as well as they can muster. This "Check your privilege" stuff, once a useful exercise in…
70% chance angersock is a white male.
Don't you understand how much damage that type of thinking does, and how it's as bad as the progress we've been trying to make against, for example, dismissing a woman's opinions out of hand because they're a woman's?
Don't turn try to turn back the clock on equality, especially in a medium where ideas actually can stand on their own merits (or lack thereof).
We call ourselves innovators, but most of us are really just iterators... That's a fine line. The most significant innovations are often iterations. (Google comes to mind.) Why do we do this? Because we want to get rich, of course. I disagree with "Because we want to get rich". And I definitely disagree with "of course". Real hackers do this because we just have to . It just so happens that currently it's also a grea…
prisoners are kept in jail That's cool, but if you are in the US, given the fairly dumb laws on a lot of things (drugs, mainly), how do you feel about helping to oppress the population? Are you only helping with really violent offenders? insurance claims are processed properly Isn't this just propping up an awful system? Wouldn't it be better to actually try and fix the base system? ~ As for the rest, good work!
We need prisons. If you can't put people in jail, what do you do with people who rape or kill innocent people because it's fun and/or profitable to do so?
I assume from the tone of your post that you'd disapprove even more strongly of using torture or a swift and sure death penalty to deal with such people (assuming the specifics were found not to run afoul of the Constitution's prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment" and were able to get enough political support to be implemented; passing both those hurdles would be extremely unlikely in practice).
So what's your alternative? What "enlightened" country do you live in, and what do they do with criminals?
I agree it would be nice if we could shut down our prisons. It would also be nice if people didn't get sick or die, if nobody was poor or hungry, if we had spaceships that could travel to other stars or galaxies as easily as airplanes travel to other countries or continents. But we can't just ignore the facts and limitations of the real world just because we don't like them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a middle class guy but for whatever reasons for the past 20 years or so I've lived largely in poorer communities. It's not some charity thing either. I just like to save money. And this dude is right, drug dealers don't make much money. They really lack options, like most people in their situation of being poor, minority, and young. The jobs like mowing lawns barely exist (often because there aren't many lawns).…
The other problem that I've noticed is a lack of emphasis on saving. I lived in a lot of poor neighborhoods as well and worked a lot of entry level jobs. I remember working at a catering job making $9/hour that was abusing the catering regulations to get the workers to work 60-70 hour weeks without overtime pay. (It was a shady but legal loophole) I loved it because I had just come out of a bad situation and had some…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people can't save. The poorer you are the more expensive things get. Food costs have doubled. So has fuel, which in turn increases utilities. They barely scrape by.
It's circular. You drink because you're depressed because you're poor because you spend all your money on booze. Yes food is expensive, but you can buy a bag of rice and a bag of onions and a bag of potatoes, and eat decent meals of stir fried rice and onions, baked potatoes, onion soup, etc for far less than mcdonalds. Takes almost no time to prepare too. People just don't realize it. That's where targeted education…
(In fact, I think the fact I don't drink has actually harmed my career, because I don't really socialize as much as I used to. My SO hates alcohol. I like it, but can't partake.)
The main reason why poor people are poor is because they make like $8.50 an hour and no benefits. Also, grocery store stats refute your assertion about foods. The bag-it-yourself stores sell more per customer than the mainstream supermarkets.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But they do. Let me explain. I grew up in a barrio , which is a latin ghetto. Junked cars in front lawns, domestic disturbances every night, shootings, drugs, all of that stuff. Every kid in there made money by pure hustle. There were no jobs available for any of us. Some kids cut hair (then went on to become barbers), others worked on cars, but most sold drugs. There were startups, but all were of the illegal variet…
Do kids in the Barrios these days have access to Android phones? It would be good if at least some of them can get to information and bootstrap some education / skillset from there.
they're like the masses of people who got interested in the internet after it was on tv all the time and advertised. (which includes people of all classes of course)
they didn't get exposure from college, like i did, or exposure from work, like many office workers and management did. they got it from tv, and see it as a complement to tv or cable tv (which many, many poor people don't have).
so right off the bat, they don't see internet as more important than television or video games or other things, when it's probably the most important thing in telecommunications in the past century.
now, that said, there's a lot of working class computer users out there. in fact, when it comes to socializing online, i think the working class have been doing it more than anyone else for the past 10 or 15 years, because hands down, the internet is the cheapest way to socialize and meet people. i don't know for sure, but i suspect it's been a very important part of socializing for all the brainy kids in middle and high school.
look at the people being busted for being in Anonymous. it's a mix of classes. they're not all rich kids like Aaron Swartz (RIP).
that kind of leads me into some things that the rich and middle class can do to help the poor. i think the best thing ever has been free and open source software, especially linux, but the whole culture of giving it away, making sources available, and giving away free documentation. i've learned a ton this way, and meet people who have modest resources who are learning programming. a lot of sysadmin jobs are held by people who were working class, too. it's huge on so many levels.
another, which I've done, is just fix up old computers and give them away. i'm sure we all do this. just set them up with xubuntu and open office or something similar. maybe buy some ram. maybe show them how to repair it.
share your wifi password, or go open.
repairing computers for free or cheap helps too, but i'd say only if they really can't afford it. if they can, they should just hire one of the local shops.
Microsoft has done a lot towards making MS stuff cheap or free, and giving away hardware, for people in need or for nonprofits. I think that's helped a lot. FOSS can't really do the same, in the same way, but it's going to get there soon with open hardware.
i think app stores are good. they lower software costs for consumers, and reduce the risks for capitalizing software development. i think the ubuntu software center is a good thing and supporting that by buying and developing for it will help.
i wish i had studied spanish. it would be easier to organize some kind of computer network across buildings. of course, this violates contracts -- so forming an ISP that would allow customers to resell internet links would be a really useful thing for poor communities. also, fighting for legislation to protect this kind of peering service would be good.
facebook's new PAC looks like it won't help working class entry level IT folks, because it will fight to boost H1B. they're also going to push for charters and, probably, reforms to replace classes with online classes. so organizing against that within communities could be good.
I think library-based hackerspaces are also a good thing. Fight to fund those.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
70% chance angersock is a white male.
See, the toxicity of this is that, were the facts in support of your obvservation, it would cause many to completely ignore whatever I'd said as "typical white male privileged bullshit." Don't you understand how much damage that type of thinking does, and how it's as bad as the progress we've been trying to make against, for example, dismissing a woman's opinions out of hand because they're a woman's? Don't turn try…
And who made up the categories, and laws that discriminated based on categories, and who still holds the power to use those categories. It's largely white people.
It seems to me like denial, hypocrisy, or both.
(I say that as a person of color. Being Asian, I am a relatively privileged color, too, compared to black and brown people. That's just a fact. At the individual level, though, I know plenty of black and brown people who not only have more privilege than I, but grew up with more than I did and have networks that are more powerful than mine.)
It was going OK until he said to get a 40 and drink it on the curb. Fuck you, whatever the fuck your name was.
Why fuck me? I mean, I'm just curious. If you're going to tell a stranger on the Internet "fuck you", it might be illuminating to find out why. And it's Josh. Josh Ellis. Since you sort-of asked.
You might as well have said go to a Mexican neighborhood and buy some weed and smoke out on the corner, or say go to a Black neighborhood and buy some crack and smoke it in the car, and then check out how fucked up the situation is.
Or how about go to the trailer park, buy some speed, snort it and check out how jacked up the hillbillies are.
I read the whole article, and even share some of your sentiments, but that one part really upset me. It kind of killed the article for me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
More money than an apprentice machinist or more money than a professional? I would guess the former, which is a pity.
His claim was more than a professional. Apparently going rate for a CNC mill operator is something like $14/hr. Maybe my friend is full of it (and believe me, I gave him a TON of flak for quitting).
Generally these are experienced pro's though, so guessing you gotta start at the bottom and work up.
But that's where I say pity, thought I don't know your friend's circumstances, and certainly if he needs the money now then it's the right choice. But so many just choose the quick, easy money now, and as a result the skilled trades in general are a dying art.
It was going OK until he said to get a 40 and drink it on the curb. Fuck you, whatever the fuck your name was.
Why fuck me? I mean, I'm just curious. If you're going to tell a stranger on the Internet "fuck you", it might be illuminating to find out why. And it's Josh. Josh Ellis. Since you sort-of asked.