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A generation of American men give up on college

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Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#691

Post by zepto »

teawrecks wrote: post #680
zepto wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't expect to play a game, give one team an advantage for the first half, give neither team an advantage in the second half, and call it a fair game at the end. The game you are referring to is one in which you presuppose dividing people into ‘teams’. I.e. you are simply assuming that racism is forever and that the only fairness comes dividing people by race and then balancing resources according to racial gr…

> The game you are referring to is one in which you presuppose dividing people into ‘teams’. No, you're arguing against an artifact the analogy instead of acting in good faith to understand the meaning. Consider a game where all players are independent, but the "referee" arbitrarily chose half of the players to get an advantage. Let that be team 1, and everyone else be team 2. We got a new referee in the 2nd half, an…

As far as I can see you just restated the idea of dividing the world into teams based on race. That isn’t an artifact of the analogy.

That is the basis of racism.

We can accept that a game like this was played, stop playing it, and work to undo the damage without continuing to play the game.

>> A non-racist solution is to support anyone who has been less advantaged in wealth building.

> So socialism, totally agree, in general that is the direction we should move back towards.

No, I don’t view socialism favorably and it’s not implied. Creating institutions or programs that facilitate higher levels of economic participation by those who start with less does not imply socialism.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#692

Post by lern_too_spel »

dnissley wrote: post #397
happythen wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way. Being white is definitely a leg up. Well, at least for me, a white guy, no college degree. Life is much easier. I don't think there is any support missing for us, that actually sounds hilarious. We need to work on lifting others up.

Can you hear yourself though? Can you put yourself in the shoes of a young white man? They are recipients of this message on a regular basis. When many of them end up having a difficult time despite being told how easy they have it, and how if they received help that would just be resources being taken away from less privileged people, it's easy for them to think something's wrong with themselves, to feel unwanted, d…

The examples in the article tell a different story. Mr. Briles could easily go to college if he wanted to. It's just that he would rather stay at home and "invest" in cryptocurrencies and make music, and his parents fund it. That is a very privileged position to be in.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#693

Post by teawrecks »

zepto wrote: post #691
teawrecks wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The game you are referring to is one in which you presuppose dividing people into ‘teams’. No, you're arguing against an artifact the analogy instead of acting in good faith to understand the meaning. Consider a game where all players are independent, but the "referee" arbitrarily chose half of the players to get an advantage. Let that be team 1, and everyone else be team 2. We got a new referee in the 2nd half, an…

As far as I can see you just restated the idea of dividing the world into teams based on race. That isn’t an artifact of the analogy. That is the basis of racism. We can accept that a game like this was played, stop playing it, and work to undo the damage without continuing to play the game. >> A non-racist solution is to support anyone who has been less advantaged in wealth building. > So socialism, totally agree, i…

No, no individual or group consciously decided how races should be divided, that happened naturally. What you're saying its that acknowledging the divide exists is racist, which is the classic "color blind" excuse.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#694

Post by refenestrator »

nemo44x wrote: post #682
refenestrator wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'useful idiot' part that I replied to.

“Useful idiot” is a term coined back in the day to describe people who unwittingly spread the propaganda of communists without really understanding the ultimate goals. In this case being a progressive while disagreeing with the leading ideas of the movement. And no it doesn’t mean a vote for Trump. It means not supporting candidates that parrot this type of rhetoric and to not support causes/movements that are a part…

Worth reflecting on how the John Birch Society looks in retrospect, now that you mention it.

Prophets, or paranoid fools? Are we looking back and saying, gosh, we should have listened to them, that damn Jane Fonda ruined America.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#695

Post by zepto »

teawrecks wrote: post #693
zepto wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can see you just restated the idea of dividing the world into teams based on race. That isn’t an artifact of the analogy. That is the basis of racism. We can accept that a game like this was played, stop playing it, and work to undo the damage without continuing to play the game. >> A non-racist solution is to support anyone who has been less advantaged in wealth building. > So socialism, totally agree, i…

No, no individual or group consciously decided how races should be divided, that happened naturally. What you're saying its that acknowledging the divide exists is racist, which is the classic "color blind" excuse.

> No, no individual or group consciously decided how races should be divided,

I think the Portuguese, the British, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, and the Danish consciously chose Africans to be imported as slaves to America. Don’t you?

Jim Crow laws were consciously written by people who were deciding how races should be divided.

Race isn’t even a natural category.

> that happened naturally.

Are you seriously suggesting that slavery and Jim Crow happened ‘naturally’?

> What you're saying its that acknowledging the divide exists is racist, which is the classic "color blind" excuse.

This is false. If you can find somewhere I argue for that, you’ll be able to quote it.

Here is something I did say:

“We don’t have to ignore the effects of racism. There is nothing wrong with looking at the kinds of disadvantage it has produced and then acting to support those who are impacted.”

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#696

Post by staysafeanon »

WalterBright wrote: post #188
mih wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why shouldn't one run low voltage wires through same holes as AC wires ?

If you run, say, the telephone wires through the same holes, they'll pick up a maddening 60 Hz hummmmmmmmmmm. You're screwed because when this is discovered, the house is finished, and it gets very very expensive to rewrite it. The closer the low voltage wires are to the high voltage ones, and the longer the distance, the more hmmmmmmm they'll pick up.

This isn't the main reason running low and high voltage through the same conduit is not code compliant though.

The reason you don't mix low/high in the same raceway is because if exposed low/high voltage conductors come in contact with each other, the low voltage cable has a much higher chance of catching fire.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#697

Post by staysafeanon »

lhoff wrote: post #175
mih wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why shouldn't one run low voltage wires through same holes as AC wires ?

The AC voltage will induce noise onto the low voltage wire. That noise can be of a higher voltage then the low voltage and damage the equipment behind it. See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_induction

This isn't the main reason running low and high voltage through the same conduit is not code compliant though.

The reason you don't mix low/high in the same raceway is because if exposed low/high voltage conductors come in contact with each other, the low voltage cable has a much higher chance of catching fire.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#698

Post by etripe »

webnrrd2k wrote: post #677
the-dude wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with sentiment, and I discovered early on in my adult life : Iedereen doet maar wat ( Dutch ) Loosely translated : Everybody just fucks around , wether it is car mechanics, doctors or laywers. Would love to hear a more canonical term for the phenomenon. edit: And if it is absolutely critical it is done right? Do it yourself.

In the US it's usually called "half-assing it" or doing it half-assed.

It's closer in meaning to "no one really knows what they're doing". Half-assing implies lack of effort. This expression implies lack of insight or direction.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#699

Post by aksss »

zepto wrote: post #666
teawrecks wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a few hundred years of race/gender based policies working in favor of whites/males, I don't know what else we would expect from a deliberate effort to reverse it. You can't expect to play a game, give one team an advantage for the first half, give neither team an advantage in the second half, and call it a fair game at the end. Yeah, it sucks for individuals in the meantime, but we were simply never going to ac…

> You can't expect to play a game, give one team an advantage for the first half, give neither team an advantage in the second half, and call it a fair game at the end. The game you are referring to is one in which you presuppose dividing people into ‘teams’. I.e. you are simply assuming that racism is forever and that the only fairness comes dividing people by race and then balancing resources according to racial gr…

> This is just more racism

You never hear the tree-hugger saying, "it's my turn to clear-cut forests with unsustainable abandon". No, the goal is to stop clear cutting forests with unsustainable abandon. That's how I was raised to think of racism. You don't straighten up by stopping racism over here while increasing it over there. You stop racism by stopping racism.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#700

Post by aksss »

dgb23 wrote: post #379
bmj wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not convinced that all those men need to go to college, but they clearly need something. This. We are seeing the results of what was reported in the book Boys Adrift . My older son just graduated high school. He has no interest in college at the moment, and has shown a gift for working with his hands. He is currently doing a carpentry apprenticeship with an acquaintance that runs a renovation and design company.…

I very much struggled with discipline and motivation at university and eventually dropped out. It was not until I started working when I became a highly motivated self-driven learner. Now I love studying and learning (and teaching), but I do it at my own pace and I choose the things that matter for my work or are just plain fun. Looking back a decade later, it would have been very beneficial if I didn't go to univers…

My dad used to quote somebody in saying, "Education is wasted on the young".

My experience sounds similar to yours. Though, when I tried to go back to school to dive in again, I found the 'system' was highly oriented towards parenting 18yo kids in all the worst ways imaginable. It was nauseating and unbearable being in that environment, and even going through the application/acceptance process (filling out pledges for conduct, right-thinking, etc). Much has changed with online learning, but I still feel the B&M universities are a very ill-fit for independently-minded adult learners.

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