I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write • Hacker News Board

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#131

Post by Auracle » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

Kye wrote: post #109

hutzlibu wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Yes the system makes it legal, but ‘landlords’ shouldn’t kid themselves that they are providing value to others." A landlord who takes care of building and maintainig the house etc. is not providing value? You think that happens automatically? I mean sure, it would be nice to live in a world where everyone is wealthy and capable enough to own and maintain their home. But there are actually people who like to rent to…

>> "A landlord who takes care of building and maintainig the house etc" How many actually do this? I don't know anyone who complains about landlords who do something useful. For example: there are people who build/buy and maintain properties to house queer people who've been kicked out of their homes after coming out or being outed. Often by landlords. No one would hate landlords as a class if useful ones were at all…

If you saw a typical apartment unit after people moved out you wouldn’t be asking that.

My parents own a 12 unit apartment building in a small town, and my dad is up there multiple times a week. There’s regular stuff like cleaning hallways, and then there’s stuff like “the tenant on the top floor installed a dishwasher themselves and it leaked while they were gone flooding their unit and the one beneath it.”

After most people move out the carpet needs to be replaced and the walls repainted at the minimum.

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#132

Post by arp242 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

hmwhy wrote: post #81

Maybe I'm joining the large amount of comments at the bottom for once, but this article is not just about someone who ended up being a teacher due to serendipity — he committed crimes to get there. I'm all for supporting people with disability, and there is no doubt that it requires courage to admit to being a fraud after so many years — but being dyslexic shouldn't be an excuse for anyone to commit crimes and get aw…

This guy was born in 1939. These events happened in the 50s. It's been a long time, and at no point is the article saying of even implying it's a good thing: it's just some young person struggling to get by doing what he could because he thought it was the only way to get anywhere in life.

I don't understand why some people feel the need to be so damn judgemental and moralistic about things.

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#133

Post by arp242 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

nayuki wrote: post #6

timonoko wrote: post #2

On Google translate you can test new phonetic spelling. "Wii shäl miit tu dei in Nyy Jork" works best in Polish, Icelandic and Finnish. I suggest we just ignore weird sounds like θ and ð and just use "th" as "thö" sounds reasonably good in those languages.

It would be nice if they used IPA instead of yet another informal nonstandard system.

I can understand what's intended with "Wii shäl miit tu dei in Nyy Jork" without even knowing what system is being used. In IPA this is "ʃæl miːt təˈdeɪ ɪn njuː jɔːk", and I have no idea what that says at all.

I find IPA fairly inaccessible for the casual user. There's a reason other systems exist.

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#134

Post by Kye » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

Auracle wrote: post #131

Kye wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "A landlord who takes care of building and maintainig the house etc" How many actually do this? I don't know anyone who complains about landlords who do something useful. For example: there are people who build/buy and maintain properties to house queer people who've been kicked out of their homes after coming out or being outed. Often by landlords. No one would hate landlords as a class if useful ones were at all…

If you saw a typical apartment unit after people moved out you wouldn’t be asking that. My parents own a 12 unit apartment building in a small town, and my dad is up there multiple times a week. There’s regular stuff like cleaning hallways, and then there’s stuff like “the tenant on the top floor installed a dishwasher themselves and it leaked while they were gone flooding their unit and the one beneath it.” After mo…

Respect is a two-way street. How many of those problems came from the ways people coped with absent landlords not fixing things? How many calls to fix the dishwasher preceded the self-install? How many of those people are on their nth slumlord and long past giving the new one the benefit of the doubt? You only have one side of the story from one apartment building.

Maybe your parents are good ones. Nothing I've heard from the other side gives me reason to trust this account.

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#135

Post by arp242 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

IntrepidWorm wrote: post #26

ghoshbishakh wrote: post #16

I still don't get it. How is it possible that he managed to go through the system.

Case and point: I wear glasses. In fact, I'm almost blind without them: my effective vision ends at about 3 feet. Though I am able to perceive distinction between large objects and people, everything dissolves into a fuzzy mess. In American public schools (in the northeast US, at least) in the early 90s, schools would test student vision every year during elementary/primary school years. They would use the traditiona…

Why would you memorize the eye tests? You were afraid that your low vision was "discovered"? Wouldn't that be a good thing?

I'm actually really confused by your story to be honest, I think there's some part that I'm missing somehow.

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#136

Post by arp242 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

high_byte wrote: post #72

waiting for the next article, "I was CTO for 17 years, but couldn't code"

I know you're joking, but I have actually had coworkers who literally could not program at all. And I'm not talking about high-pressure situations like interviews, non-realistic examples like algorithms, or a one-off fluke: they consistently couldn't program even the most basic of stuff.

How these people managed to stay employed as programmers is doing non-programming tasks and such, and copy/paste from Stack Overflow.

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#137

Post by spicybright » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

yesenadam wrote: post #105

wsatb wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer to rent, and am not rich. I live in a large metro area in the US where rent is not insanely high, though. As someone who is single, it comes with a lot more freedom and less to worry about. Probably not the best long-term, but it's less stress in my life in my opinion, so the trade off is currently worth it.

Ok, well, if not rich, it sounds like you have the choice of buying or renting. Lucky you! I don't know anyone who has that choice. The person I responded to initially only meant, I guess, that some people who have the choice, prefer renting. Hm..but they were also talking as if people without the choice, like renting: > it would be nice to live in a world where everyone is wealthy and capable enough to own and maint…

I strongly doubt GP has a choice. Not rich + insane rent means he's probably building up saving too slowly for a house near where his social group is.

It sounds like you've been burned by a landlord in the past and are taking it out on all of them unfairly.

I hate the concept of a landlord, paying a lot without building any equity, unlike a mortgage on property. But I've never had one that does absolutely nothing.

Between tenants, my landlords vacuumed, repainted, sometimes re-carpeted if needed, removed old tenants belongs left behind, etc.

I've had landlords be good about replacements of major appliances too. One thing I learned is you need to be assertive and advocate for yourself. Persistence and following up until they do something is key.

But I've had multiple washing machines, laundry machines, and garbage disposals be replaced for no charge to me, without me doing anything but letting them into the house.

I'm still getting a bit ripped off with inflated rent, but that type of convenience takes a lot off my plate.

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#138

Post by tuukkah » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

sampo wrote: post #119

tuukkah wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's surprising to me, perhaps because "th" appears in inflected words such as "ovathan", dialectal words such as "vasthaan", compound words such as "oluthana" and names such as "Elisabeth" or "Porthania". Also, I wonder what's the share of the pronounciations "t", "th" and "θ" in the word "theremin". (You can download a list of word forms encountered in some selected written texts here: https://kaino.kotus.fi/sana…

I only searched for 'th' in the beginning of the word. We can add these to the previous result: triathlon, smoothie, maybe also apartheid Also the dictionary finds huithapeli, häthätää, rustholli, but I don't think these have 'th' as a phoneme. https://www.kielitoimistonsanakirja.fi/#/*th*?searchMode=onl...

Nice new findings in the dictionary!

What do you mean by having 'th' as a phoneme? If you mean the sound "θ", I don't think any of the words are pronounced with one in Finnish, typically. Rather, they have a "t" sound followed by a "h", or just a "t".

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#139

Post by arp242 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

Ntrails wrote: post #30

ramblerman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes workplaces hell for everyone involved, both the idiots and the capable. I think your attitude is what makes the hell tbh. We should definitely teach everyone to be literate, and not just decide they should be "excellent coal miner"s instead.

Slight devils advocate. Is everyone happier with mandatory schooling for longer? It isn't that we shouldn't give everyone the chance to learn, but maybe some people really would be happier dropping out at 14 and just getting a job. Being at school where all you do is fail does not make for a good life experience! I think the answer is probably that we don't want parents pulling kids out of school early just to earn m…

My grandfather went to school until he was 14, but he was also highly literate, had a keen technical insight, and was generally fairly smart.

He wasn't unhappy in life, or the way his career as a factory worker turned out. At least, as near as I can determine those kind of things: he was an old-fashioned kind of man who didn't have a heart to heart with his grandchildren. He never ate pizza in his life, and refused to eat it when I offered to take him out to try it.

But at the same time I've always felt he could have achieved much more if he continued school. The reason he didn't was because his family was poor and another child working was needed to put bread on the table. A big reason this mandatory schooling exists is for these kind of reasons.

That being said, I do think there's too much emphasis on degrees; not having a college degree is almost something you're embarrassed of. My brother did basically a useless "animal care" study because he felt like he had to do A study (note: it's not a useless education, but there are tons of people doing it and very few jobs, almost no-one who graduates gets a job in that field and the impression I had from his friends is that it's mostly the kind of thing people do when they don't know what else to do).

Re: I was a teacher for 17 years, but couldn't read or write

#140

Post by high_byte » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

arp242 wrote: post #136

high_byte wrote: post #72

waiting for the next article, "I was CTO for 17 years, but couldn't code"

I know you're joking, but I have actually had coworkers who literally could not program at all. And I'm not talking about high-pressure situations like interviews, non-realistic examples like algorithms, or a one-off fluke: they consistently couldn't program even the most basic of stuff. How these people managed to stay employed as programmers is doing non-programming tasks and such, and copy/paste from Stack Overflo…

haha that was expected. I'm waiting to hear about imposter managers. and no, not imposter-syndrome managers, and not managers who are not expected to know how to code. I mean actual imposters who are expected to code, can't, and still nailed high profile positions.