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Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

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Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#301

Post by jakejake »

prawn wrote: post #282
jakejake wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tipping and basic etiquette (particularly involving dining) is one of the fundamental bits of culture everyone should research when traveling to another country. If you are in the US and received good service, but left crappy or zero tips then yes, you definitely leave a negative impression of yourself. Nobody will understand why you left a bad tip or just think "oh, he's a foreigner, he doesn't understand." They wil…

Tipping etiquette is far from basic and almost downright intimidating. Even when I thought I had tipping at restaurants under control, I then lived in fear of embarrassing myself not tipping people in hotels and I'd stayed in a dozen hotels before I suspected that the maid cleaning the room expected a tip! Once got caught without change in a bathroom in a club in Hollywood and was so embarrassed that I handed over $1…

Restaurant tipping in the US is fairly standard and shouldn't be too confusing or stressful. But I know exactly what you are talking about with other situations. For what it's worth, Americans are sometimes uncomfortable and don't know what the heck to do either! Hotels can be especially confusing.

Basically restaurants are the only place where tips are absolutely expected and you can make yourself look bad by not tipping. For anything else, if I'm not sure I usually just check a travel guide or go on forums and ask other people what they do.

I would do this if I travel to any country, just ask around at how you should behave if you want to fit in.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#302

Post by ceol »

hacker789 wrote: post #272
ceol wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah! It's about empowering socially awkward people who just have trouble holding conversations! That's why it's called "pick up artistry": because you're picking up conversations! Wait... --- I honestly wonder how far up your ass your head has to be to completely ignore just how saturated the PUA community is with terms designed to objectify, marginalize, belittle, and disparage specifically women, and just how many…

> Yeah! It's about empowering socially awkward people who just have trouble holding conversations! That's why it's called "pick up artistry": because you're picking up conversations! He didn't say the end goal is "picking up conversations". Mindcrime was almost certainly taking offense to the infantilizing attitudes expressed in the quote he included, not to its reference to sex. For the most part, the end goal is se…

I love how you automatically assume I'm a feminist or have some connection to the feminist community, despite me never proclaiming that. Is this another PUA technique? To fall flat on your face in an argument?

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#303

Post by pjlegato »

e12e wrote: post #273
pjlegato wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Armenian Radio. Caller asks us, what is difference between capitalism and socialism? We reply, under capitalism, man exploits man; under socialism, it's just the opposite.

True enough. I've never considered socialism much of an alternative, but I do think both (modern) anarchism and communism holds great promise. As for the more fundamental question of "why can't we just all get along?" -- we'll just have to keep working on it...

Once, there was a peaceful anarchic village, where everybody was perfectly equal and there were no laws or rules. People shared everything freely and never fought. Then, one day, the neighboring village invaded, killed all the men, raped all the women, and enslaved all the children. That was the end of that.

Even if somehow the whole world were to switch instantaneously to the state of anarchy, it would be a very short matter of time before someone internally decided to take over and enforce rules with the threat of violence. This person would then be the "government."

As for Communism, Armenian radio listener calls in and says, "We are told that true Communism is just on the horizon now. I ask, what is horizon?" We reply, "Horizon is imaginary line that always recedes as you approach it."

The fundamental misapprehension at work here is confusing two meanings of the word "system." There are systems created by humans, such as "the justice system of Japan." We can change those, since they derive entirely from human control. Then, there are emergent or natural systems, such as gravity. These cannot be changed simply because people decide they don't like them.

Capitalism is of the latter category. It is not a human-created system; it did not emerge from colonialism. It is merely the natural emergent behavior of actors under resource scarcity. As long as there are not enough resources for everyone to have what they want, there will be some variant of a market and capitalistic trade. It is not possible to alter this scenario simply because it doesn't seem pleasant; that's wishful thinking. All that can be done is to make the market more or less efficient.

The Soviet Union and North Korea, for example, have always had internal capitalist black markets, despite massive penalties. Prisons have internal black markets. Countries that try to control their currency's value have massive internal black markets for hard currency. Cocaine is readily available for a price almost everywhere in the world, despite massive and coordinated efforts to suppress that market.

The reverse also applies; in the absence of actual scarcity, it is impossible to enforce a market, since that is an emergent property of scarcity rather than a human-chosen system. Illegal music and movie trading online, for example, continue to grow despite massive efforts to prop up the market, because there is no actual scarcity.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#304

Post by pjlegato »

yaddayadda wrote: post #293
stephen_g wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry on behalf of them! I knew about the tipping culture because my grandfather was a general manager for a branch of a US based multinational company and had to travel there a lot, and my father had traveled a bit to use scientific instruments there (like synchrotrons). But to the average Australian - we have a very decent minimum wage and ridiculously good penalty rates (like, work a public holiday and you get dou…

"...I think people just don't expect that the US would treat people so much worse than we do..." The US would be in much better shape if your expectation was correct. Sadly, many Americans [1] think that tipping is a good thing for servers because if they work hard then they'll get good tips. [1] I've lived in the USA almost my entire life, and have never understood why "we" are "Americans" when there are many, many…

Scare quotes are unnecessary; nobody would confuse you with a cultural imperialist.

The country is called "The United States of America," so its people are "Americans." Similarly, people from "The United States of Mexico" (yes, that's its real full name) are called "Mexicans."

Languages evolve as an emergent property of people who speak them. Language usage is not subject to revision or control by self-appointed intellectual fairness monitors who unilaterally arrogate to themselves such an authority. Linguists call this practice "prescriptivism," and it is widely denigrated as (ironically) an imperialist tactic used by the power class to enforce their social position.

However, the principle itself is not limited to any particular political orientation; leftist prescriptivism is just as unsupportable in a linguistic sense as imperialist prescriptivism is.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#305

Post by hacker789 »

wpietri wrote: post #295
hacker789 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrong. Women aren't adults who can be held responsible for their own actions and decisions; they're vulnerable children who need to be protected at every turn. If you (as a man) visit an Apple Store just to look around, and you walk out with a brand new laptop, you're a customer. You made a decision. Yes, Apple works very hard to maximize conversions, but you're an adult, and it's silly to shame and vilify App…

We are all adults responsible for our decisions. We also are all adults, responsible for how we treat others, and how it shapes their decisions. Responsibility is not zero sum. The common name for the system in which men and women manipulate one another is called "patriarchy". (When you look beyond men and women, it's called "kyriarchy".) It's bullshit on both sides. There are two reason it's seen as worse for men, b…

This thread is not the place for a debate about whether life has historically been (or currently is) easier on men than on women.

So I'll simply say that it shows a remarkable lack of empathy and understanding for you to call those desperate men who resort to PUA tactics "powerful". Almost by definition, they are acting from a position of weakness.

I realize it's currently trendy to break the world down into large, tidy, digestible traits (maleness and femaleness in this case), labeling one as "privileged" and the other as "oppressed".

Life's way too complicated for that.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#306

Post by e12e »

pjlegato wrote: post #303
e12e wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True enough. I've never considered socialism much of an alternative, but I do think both (modern) anarchism and communism holds great promise. As for the more fundamental question of "why can't we just all get along?" -- we'll just have to keep working on it...

Once, there was a peaceful anarchic village, where everybody was perfectly equal and there were no laws or rules. People shared everything freely and never fought. Then, one day, the neighboring village invaded, killed all the men, raped all the women, and enslaved all the children. That was the end of that. Even if somehow the whole world were to switch instantaneously to the state of anarchy, it would be a very sho…

> Capitalism is (...) not a human-created system; it did not emerge from > colonialism. It is merely the natural emergent behavior of actors > under resource scarcity.

1) I didn't mean to imply that capitalism emerged from colonialism, but that the current distribution of wealth an power within capitalism is connected to colonialism (among other things).

2) I don't think you're assertion of capitalism being "an emergent system" is correct -- capitalism is defined by having capital and private ownership over means of production. There are many other systems for regulating scarcity (artificial or otherwise) (eg: feudalism).

> As long as there are not enough resources for everyone to have what > they want, there will be some variant of a market and capitalistic > trade. The reverse also applies; in the absence of actual scarcity, > it is impossible to enforce a market, since that is an emergent > property of scarcity rather than a human-chosen system.

3) You imply that there aren't enough resources. While that may be true, I think the issue is more one of uneven distribution. This obviously also depend on your clause "for everyone to have what they want". I think the current system encourages aggregation without much regard for what individuals actually want (Who "wants" Foxxconn to dominate in certain areas of industrial production?).

4) Not all markets and trade systems define a capitalist system.

Note also that I specifically said modern anarchism. That doesn't necessarily define away the right to self defence. Communism certainly doesn't.

The main difference between the two, is that communism seeks to maintain a form of government, highly localized and highly democratic -- but with the option to retain such things as a police force and a justice system (reserve the right of the government to use violence such as detaining and investigation of crimes for the common good) while anarchism is generally more sceptical of any power structure and any use of force against the individual.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#307

Post by Goladus »

prutschman wrote: post #298
Goladus wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negging a man is supposed to make him angry. To a man, a neg is effectively a taunt. Which demonstrates that you all fail to understand what a neg is and what it's supposed to be used for. A neg is more or less exclusively meant to be used on women who are exceptionally attractive AND who have an enormous ego because of that. It's meant for women who are always surrounded by fawning men who cater to her every whim be…

enko claimed that "negging" is merely a universal, gender-neutral negotiating tactic. You're merely reinforcing the point that it is in actuality a deliberate tactic to undermine a woman's self esteem--to take her down a peg because she is perceived as seeing herself as superior to a man.

You're merely reinforcing the point that it is in actuality a deliberate tactic to undermine a woman's self esteem--to take her down a peg because she is perceived as seeing herself as superior to a man.

Right, but in practice it doesn't work like you seem to imagine it does.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#308

Post by Nick_C »

vidarh wrote: post #290
mathattack wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you, and that's how I learned. :-) But I find it much tougher on the topics I'm learning today. Perhaps it's because the old stuff is hard wired because it needs to be, but I keep less of the new topics in long term memory because I can outsource that storage to Google?

I keep searching for stuff and finding old blog posts of mine I wrote after the first time I solved the problem...

and have little or no memory of writing... that happened to me only a few weeks ago. Pretty darn scary.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#309

Post by mathattack »

Nick_C wrote: post #308
vidarh wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep searching for stuff and finding old blog posts of mine I wrote after the first time I solved the problem...

and have little or no memory of writing... that happened to me only a few weeks ago. Pretty darn scary.

Old age, too much of the bottle, or both? :-)

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#310

Post by wpietri »

hacker789 wrote: post #305
wpietri wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are all adults responsible for our decisions. We also are all adults, responsible for how we treat others, and how it shapes their decisions. Responsibility is not zero sum. The common name for the system in which men and women manipulate one another is called "patriarchy". (When you look beyond men and women, it's called "kyriarchy".) It's bullshit on both sides. There are two reason it's seen as worse for men, b…

This thread is not the place for a debate about whether life has historically been (or currently is) easier on men than on women. So I'll simply say that it shows a remarkable lack of empathy and understanding for you to call those desperate men who resort to PUA tactics "powerful". Almost by definition, they are acting from a position of weakness. I realize it's currently trendy to break the world down into large, t…

The "let's not argue, so let me argue just a little" is bullshit.

As to your non-argument argument, I have plenty of empathy for the desperate. But I can still condemn them using what power they have to manipulate other desperate people.

Further: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th...

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