punkwalrus

One of my best friends lost her place of living when her boyfriend of 4 years said the relationship had actually ended in his head 2 years previously, but he needed the rent. But then he found a new girlfriend to grift from, "opened the relationship," and they edged my friend out. I am still mad they did that to her; she was so heartbroken and damaged from that.

Okay, say this was true. I'm not saying it is, but let's carry this argument to the next step.

IQ is a score that shows how well someone can solve problems and think compared to other people their age. It doesn’t measure how smart you are in every way, but it can help show how strong your brain is in certain kinds of thinking. So let's say, okay, they aren't born smart, but we'll train them to BE smart, and this screening will make it easier because we won't be working upstream against "the dumbness," or whatever. Kid has the capacity to be smart, now all we have to do is train them, right?

Next, you have to assume that their parents and environment allows for this. These services will be available for rich parents only, which historically have been a better environment for teaching. But it also will give these "high IQ kids" access to parents of conservative, "Christian values" as well as liberal rich kids. So now we have a problem. What if having a high IQ also leads to insanity? We haven't even defined what "smart" is, really, and so a lot of conservatives, "smart" means "stronger than your enemy." Intelligence without compassion breeds psychosis, and leadership qualities that are sociopathic and ruthless. And that INCLUDES turning on their own kind. But that's what they want, right? "Survival of the fittest," a kind of social Darwinism.

"Sorry dad. I know you raised me to be the head of the company, but I gutted it instead, and will be funding my super-race and frankly...? You're genetically inferior. Goodbye."

I find them too windy and noisy half the time. They are also wet half the time, either from condensation or recent rain.

Layoffs are not bad press. Not to the shareholders, the only ones who matter to these types. I used to think "oh, layoffs mean the company isn't doing so good," but shareholders see "they reduced cost but lost no customers, thus increasing value of the company should it be sold."

"Are these 'weather weapons' in the room with you right now?"

I was out of sugar, so I tried to sweeten Kool-Aid with honey. Nope. Just god-awful.

I had an assistant who didn't really need the job, but her parents forced her to have one. She was the youngest, and only girl, of a family of 5 siblings. All her older brothers worked at the race track that their family owned, and she was dating someone they didn't approve of. I liked her boyfriend, he seemed friendly and soft-spoken, but her folks were like "if you're going to date whom you want, you better have a job and live on your own." Well, one day, she got mad because I asked her to work a shift she didn't want to. So she simply didn't show up, which really fucked me over. So I called her up, pretty pissed. No answer.

She didn't show up for 3 days. So I fired her for job abandonment. She didn't really need the job, right? Her parents owned a racetrack.

A week later, her folks called me, and asked if I'd seen her. No, she didn't show up for work ever again. They panicked. "OMFG WE DON'T KNOW WHERE SHE IS!" They immediately assumed her BF kidnapped and/or murdered her. The police were called, an investigation was opened up. Her BF's address showed he'd moved away. I had to sit with the police and go through an interrogation about her last whereabouts. She became a missing person, and once a week for two months, her parents called and asked if I had heard anything. The detective called with more questions. Then her car was found in an impound lot: it had been abandoned and looted in a New Jersey parking garage. Then the calls petered off and stopped.

A year went by, and I assumed the worst.

One day, one of the employees in another store in the mall told me he saw her with her BF. I didn't believe them, but then other people said that they'd seen her, and corroborated some stories she told them. Apparently, she had been planning to run away for some time, and just ran away with her BF and went NC with her family. That didn't work out so well, because both had trouble finding jobs and then their car got carjacked. Both of them were forced to return home, and her parents were forced to reconcile that she was never going to leave her BF.

I was pretty pissed, though, that I thought she was dead.

Cats can pant, I have seen it happen in times of extreme stress, and is often a bad sign. Like dogs, cats may pant if they are anxious or overheated. Strenuous exercise may be another reason, especially after a huge fight. Once your cat has had a chance to rest, calm down and cool down, this sort of painting should subside. However, even this type of panting is much more rarely seen in cats than in dogs. So, if you’re not 100% positive about why your cat is panting, it’s best to bring her to the vet.

A side note, however, I misread this as "since cat's don't like pants like dogs," and wanted to point out that dogs also do not like to wear pants, before my anti-dyslexia medicine kicked in.

When eventually washed off, the aerogel is handily broken down by soil microbes.

I am not going to claim to be an expert on any of this BUT that wording sounds suspiciously like bullshit. Maybe it's not, but it's one of those phrases that sounds like when vitamin companies claim that more B12 has shown to fix whatever ails you. Or "our plastic is environmentally friendly: 100% recyclable, and breaks down into teeny micro-particles over time, and gets absorbed by the sea life like ordinary sand..."

That explains why it's so hot outside.

I have had two tech jobs like that, even before COVID, starting in 2016. The first time, it was a company that outgrew their workspace. They put us in 'rent-an-office' spaces for a bit, and then my boss started working from home a few days a week. Then he allowed me to. We moved to a new office, but it was always empty in my section. That was fine, too, but the commute was terrible, so I started doing 2 days a week, then once a week, then a few times a month. I rarely saw my other coworkers in person, and nobody said anything aloud.

The next job started because of COVID, and when they started doing RTO, they also wanted to do "hot desking" (no assigned seating) and open office plans, and I was not having that. I was not going to work in a "cafeteria" like setting. So I got contracted work and have worked from home 100% for several years now. Nobody has office space, and we work all over the world to collaborate. I get paid very well.

I hope i never had to go back to an office. I reach retirement age in about 15 years, and I am hoping to make it.

I think this is one of the extreme examples of revenge instead of rehabilitation. It's a prime breeding ground for control freaks who want to punish those that break the rules, and will stop at nothing to try to accomplish this by dealing out damage via a morality defense. And I think a lot of parents know this, at some level, as revenge for not conforming to their definition of normalcy. "Retribution for being bad." Like mob mentality.