Ironically, after working in production for over a decade, I’m hoping to go back to school for business management. Because it turns out that there’s zero career track and advancement potential if I stick with what I already know. Depressing shit.

If I drop that name, that gives people enough to figure out which school I went to, what years, and they can correlate that with my post history to figure out exactly who I am IRL.

I’ve probably posted enough already that someone with a large enough database could do that already, but dropping names would make it much easier for just about any schmuck with an internet connection and decent search skill.

(And believe me, I would love to tell people the name of the pretentious dick that was the head of the department, but… Aaargh.)

I went to school for fashion design. (Hence interacting with a famous designer in school. Come to think of it, the head of the department at the time was someone with a significant international reputation. And I still think he’s a pretentious dick.) These days I do industrial print media, because I burned out hard in school, due to a combination of raging, untreated ADHD and 48+ hour days working in studio.

I would not recommend fashion design to anyone that has any interest in a healthy work/life balance, and fast fashion has absolutely gutted anything domestic that’s of any interest at all.

I… Can’t do that without giving away far too much personal information. Unfortunately.

Fundraiser at a very expensive art school. I was a scholarship student at a cocktail mixer, and I was at the mixer because it was being held in the department I was majoring in. All of the people that were attending were fine arts patrons, the kind of people that drop tens of thousands on art without thinking twice about it. I was–literally–a punk kid with tattoos and shit tons of piercings, and I was supposed to be pleasant to people with millions more than I’ll ever have.

Got to piss off a world famous fashion designer that evening, so that was cool.

He is punching down and attacking a group of people who are suffering in “the new world” just like him, and a fucking bag of cookies is one of the few joys they can still aquire.

I know a lot of people that are quite overall politically liberal that feel this way. I know a lot of people that get upset at the idea of inmates being given “free” educations in prison because they still have student loans 20 years after school. People that support the ideas of helping people up, that are fully on board with LGBTQ+ rights across the board, think DEI is a good idea, think it’s critical that women have bodily autonomy, and so on, but still have a knee-jerk reaction to things that they don’t fully get, or haven’t had explained to them.

I don’t know if he meant the song that way, or what. I do know that the people coming into the White House in a few months aren’t likely to make things any better for people like him. Or people like you. Or people like me.

If you know anything about the history of punk music and east coast hardcore, Ian MacKaye was clearly one of the most principled people in the scene, and a genuinely good and decent person. So it’s really weird to hear that people ever got the weird idea that he was pro-racism or something.

Then again, The Dead Kennedys had to make “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” because they were sick of their shows being infiltrated by the wrong kind of skinheads.

An old soul in a new world… Dude the south lost and slavery is bad. I’m sorry

I think that’s an uncharitable reading. Which is understandable, but still.

I think that there are a lot of people–myself included–that would like to be able to make a living doing something that seems to matter, or where you make something. Like, factory work sucks in most ways, but it still feels like you’re doing something. Spreadsheets and order projections? Staring at a screen all day, sending polite emails to people you’ll never meet about ways to spend a lot of money electronically?

This “new world” of work and socializing ain’t great. I think it snuck up on a lot of people, and now a lot of people are feeling like they don’t know how to navigate the new reality of depersonalization.

Here’s another song that explicitly references it. Better song too, IMO.

If I remember correctly, Republicans in Georgia have consolidated voting locations in Atlanta–which is heavily Democratic–despite there being long line and hours of waiting in 2020. Is it intentional? 100%. In the rural parts of Georgia–and I’m pretty rural–you’re in and out in only slightly longer than it takes to read the ballot.

About 45 minutes, as I recall, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I think that was the year that marriage equality (e.g., gay marriage) was on the ballot in Michigan. (I just looked it up; it was a vote to amend the state constitution to ban civil unions and marriage equality.) That was in 2004. Since then, I don’t remember ever having to wait more than 10 minutes when voting in person.

Ooooo! Can I play?

Let’s say that you have a pro-genocide Republican, a pro-genocide Democrat, and an anti-genocide 3rd party candidate, but the anti-genocide candidate also wants to give all school children machine guns and grenades, and require cars to intentionally run down pedestrians?

Or or or let’s say that the anti-genocide candidate’s campaign is so bad that her own party is telling her drop out? .

how could you ever have a normal relationship with your pro-Trump neighbor/father-in-law/Uncle/Barber or what ever again?

…Why would I want to? Seriously, why would I want to have a relationship with people that have shown me that the things they value are antithetical to the things I value? I don’t give a fuck if people are nice to me; I want people to be kind across the board.

I am a native English speaker though…

Yeah, I’m not feeling a distinction in any of those in the way I speak. :/

Ether/either to me only sound different in the e/ei. Same with fox/vox and sip/zip (if someone just said the word itself, without context, I don’t think I could tell which they were saying because the f and v sounds are also very close to each other in my ear).

I would suggest reading some Ian Banks.

Really? They read pretty straightforward to me. THe only real issue I have is that I can’t hear a distinction between a thorn and an eth, so the usage seems arbitrary to me. I know that Icelandic people say there’s a difference, and at least one has tried to explain it, but I can’t hear it.

Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers specifically, not Heinlein’s.

You are technically correct that most people that call themselves atheists are agnostics. But that’s a little like saying that .999999999999999999 is 1; it’s close enough that it’s not going to make a difference in almost all cases.

If you have empirical, verifiable, falsifiable evidence that a god exists, then most atheists will change their opinion. A person that believes in a god believes despite a complete lack of evidence.

It’s not that an atheist is saying, “I know your religion is wrong”; it’s much closer to, "you have not presented any falsifiable evidence that your religion is correct.

There is currently no way to know.

It’s true that you can’t prove a negative. On the other hand, no evidence exists that would tend to prove that a god exists. The lack of evidence is quite damning, particularly since people have been trying to demonstrate the existence of a god for well over 8000 years. Miracles have almost entirely ceased in the age of forensics, modern medicine, and photography; it’s almost like they only exist when they can’t be documented.

I think that there are probably a lot of small companies that run in a more collaborative way. I also think that the probability of labor abuses increases along with the size of a company; once the owner/president doesn’t personally know everyone that works there, the odds of shitty things goes up sharply. Not that small companies don’t also have shitty owners, but it’s usually hard to be an asshole directly to someone’s face, unless you’re a raging narcissist or sociopath.