MrVilliam @ MrVilliam @lemmy.world

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7

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666

Joined

2 yr. ago

Why?

I don't have the kind of job that can be done remotely, but I'm all for remote work where it's possible and desired. My best friend hated working from home at the height of covid because he's an extrovert who can't really afford to go out much. Now he works from home Mondays and Fridays and I think it's kinda the best of both worlds for him. I think that employers that already have office space for workers that could effectively do their job from home should give workers a choice. Maybe hybrid workers have required scheduled days in the office just to make sure they're there to attend necessary meetings or collaborations or whatever rather than it just be them coming in when they feel like it, but the technology has caught up to allow way more flexibility than ever before. If I had a 100% desk job, I would move somewhere cheaper and never come in. I know I'm not alone there, and I think there's no reason to hold that option hostage. Covid proved that it could be done for most white collar work, and we can't let them try to squeeze that Pandora back into its box.

You're right and I hate it. I'm genuinely concerned about what happens in January 2025. Either Biden fumbles reelection and we have a fascist dictator in power or Biden wins in November and we probably see another coup attempt. If it's the latter, I wouldn't want to be working in the Capitol that day. If it's the former, I'm not convinced that there wouldn't be public executions of dissenting party supporters. I know trump is just a symptom of a much bigger issue, but him being alive and free in the short term is a threat to national security. I don't say this as a call to action or anything, but as a matter of fact. The American experiment may come to an end within the next year just because a fat, stupid, spoiled, greedy asshole has convinced enough stupid assholes to literally risk their lives to give him everything he could ever want. If we get out of this whole, we drastically need education reform to prevent 1/3 of the country from getting hoodwinked by the next grifter. Until then, I'm praying for that dipshit's 6th amendment right to a speedy trial. Or that his terrible diet finally takes effect. If there were a god worth worshipping, trump's diet wouldn't have allowed him to live beyond the national average in the first place, but here we are, shameless apes on a godless rock.

The article doesn't say, but if I were a betting man I'd put my money on the half that aids the party that is technically in power in the House yet achieving absolutely nothing; the half that is taken hostage by an extremist arm that is poisoning otherwise (presumably) respectable resumes. Can you imagine explaining in a job interview that you were a senior staffer for somebody like Boebert or Gaetz? I'd rather just say I was a senior staffer for "a member of Congress" and avoid talking about who exactly. I don't think I'd even mention which Congress because this session is so goddamn embarrassing to be affiliated with.

Fair assessment and kudos for trying something new. I thought it was meh on my first couple of listens, but it's among my favorites now, especially with good headphones. I really like the guitar tones, the vocal reverb, and everything the bass is doing. The drums very much have a "less is more" vibe, and I've always been a sucker for simple or classic stuff executed well. No solos or crazy fills because the album really doesn't call for it.

It sounds like you were digging the spacey, atmospheric bits and the atypical rhythms. If I'm understanding correctly, this was never gonna be the Radiohead album for you. The King of Limbs is more of a dark haunt with punchy percussion in the first half and then atmospheric I'm the second half. Kid A is spacey af but has a couple of very danceable tracks like Optimistic and Idioteque. Hail to the Thief is kinda both in every track, but I think you'd also like the time signature and changes of Go To Sleep as well as the general vibe of There There. I doubt you'll think any of those are masterpieces per se, but I think you'll find that they're closer to what you wanted, even if you only check out the tracks I singled out. Personally, I fucking love In Rainbows and only like the 3 albums I just recommended to you, but I think In Rainbows is safe in a lot of ways and you seem to be into the aspects that are a bit more experimental. For context, Kid A came out in 2000 after the smash hit albums The Bends and OK Computer, which were 90s guitar rock albums; the world expected the next album to be more of the same, but they took a hard left turn and got weird with it. How To Disappear Completely is on that album and I'd say that that song is an absolute masterpiece of atmospheric, uncomfortable honesty about dissociating from crippling anxieties that are impossible to actually escape from, centered around a two-note motif that will send shivers down your spine the first time you hear it on your second listen.

Sorry for the wall of text. Just excited to share stuff that might impact you in the way that art should.

At first, Jigsaw. Then I fell in love with Reckoner. Then 15 Step because it's such a danceable 5/4 bop. Then the reverb of House of Cards. Now I think Nude is my favorite. I slept on All I Need until I heard the 01-10 album with 10 second crossfade because it fits in so fucking well with OK Computer. I used to actually really dislike Videotape until I recognized that the piano strikes are not on the beat, even from the very start; they slightly lag.

Anybody who's a fan of the album and hasn't heard the From The Basement set, I can't recommend it highly enough. The performance of Nude may be even better than on the album. The way that Jonny rakes quiet upstrums in the chorus is strangely heartbreaking. But through the whole performance, they're fucking with a ton of equipment and not just playing guitars in a traditional way like most bands. They're tweaking knobs, using strange gear, and all somehow on the same page with some pretty awesome cues in unusual time signatures. They're not everybody's cup of tea, but it's impossible to see them in their element and claim that they aren't objectively skilled and passionate.

Of course there's a French phrase for this lol.

This is definitely the case. When presidents and congresspeople are in their 70s and older, it's pretty foolish to believe that they're trying to leave a decent country to their adult grandchildren. Late stage capitalism will find the breaking point for this strategy in the private sector, hopefully before the public sector finds the line where nukes are flying everywhere.

I'm a power plant operator, specifically now a ZLD operator. Basically I run the little water plant that pulls the solids out of our cooling tower blowdown and sends the (relatively) clean water back to the cooling tower. I also do routine operation of the RO-EDI system which gets us ultra pure demineralized water for the HRSG feedwater.

I was working for a major water chemistry company as a service tech. A coworker was running a few accounts which included a plant about 2.5 hours from me and he was having me come give him a hand here and there while I wasn't busy running his whale account (which was a big nuclear plant I'd been around for like ten years). I asked why we were cancelling a visit to that other plant and he said it was because they just lost a guy or two and the supervisor we were gonna meet with had to go on shift while they were short-handed. So I applied.

I came prepared for a lot of "classic" interview questions. One of them was what is my biggest weakness. Tip for you guys, don't just identify your weakness; talk about what steps you're taking to make it not a weakness anymore. I said my weakness was problem-solving and conflict resolution in a group, but I was enrolled in a weekly group meeting with diverse (but mostly STEM) professionals to work on communication, problem-solving, conflict resolution, critical thinking, and resource management. So, in a way, playing in that D&D group in my thirties was a big part of how I got my 6-figure job.

Threatening collective punishment to sway political action? That sounds an awful lot like a two-fer. An exquisite entree of genocide paired with a lovely glass of terrorism.

The America that Americans are taught that America is would've bombed the everloving fuck out of Israel right now. I truly cannot understand why the fuck we're still helping Israel right now. I must be a clueless dumb fuck because I see zero upside and a shitload of blowback for this, and I don't exactly have an Ivy League J.D.

Damn, I didn't know there was such a thing as a sommelier but for boots. How many licks does it take to reach your level?

Not me or my kids specifically, but I think barriers between genders will break down enough that within my lifetime we might hear people wondering why we were all so cool with gender segregated bathrooms for so long. Separate but equal in the 21st century.

For me specifically, probably my thoughts on movies. I think barely any newer movies are very good. Obviously there were plenty of bad movies "back in my day" but it truly feels like the studio executives and producers fundamentally do not give a shit about art. I could do a Ted Talk rant about this, but you guys have shit to do today so I'll keep it light. Indiana Jones. Compare the trilogy to the new entries. Objectively speaking, as stories and character studies, looking at effects and acting and score, analyzing cinematography and lighting, if you were to score each film 1-10, the first 3 are consistently 7+ movies (1 and 3 are 9+) while the nostalgia bait sequels would get 5s at best. They would rather milk existing IPs to prey upon our nostalgia to make a buck for killing the franchise's legacy than take a risk with new IPs. That's why we keep getting Star Wars, super heroes, board game adaptation, toy adaptation, video game adaptation, remake, reboot, and the occasional rushed book adaptation while the book is still hot. They are all about the bottom line, and so long as we keep paying to see shitty movies, they'll keep making shitty movies as it is a beneficial investment strategy. Boycott bad movies. Just wait for reviews.

The Patriot Act of Tamriel

Same. I can take tap water fine but my wife hates it. But even so, we both can tell by taste when the filter is toast. We can also tell from the way our bathroom counters get white buildup just by incidental water droplets during handwashing that we have excessively hard water. Not dangerous but not pleasant.

I don't think Doug invented it, but probably helped popularize it.

Yeah, I like Doug. Killer Tofu is unironically a fucking bop. But now that I'm older, Doug might have had some kind of social disorder or something lol. But he also has a ton of similarities to JD from Scrubs, another show I really liked.

I tried Guardians of the Galaxy on a whim because it was included with ps+ and I fucking loved it. I wasn't sure what to expect after the Avengers game turned out to be dogshit, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that GotG was basically a more approachable God of War but with 4 big Atreus partners, Gears of War's active reload mechanic, and the dialogue thing you mentioned. It was the game I didn't know I wanted.

Beyond: Two Souls. I think the biggest issue was the marketing. They tried to pretend that it could appeal to a wider audience, but I knew what I was actually signing up for based on who made it. If you didn't like Heavy Rain or Indigo Prophecy (aka Fahrenheit) then you also weren't gonna like that one. It's more of an interactive supernatural movie than a game. The gameplay is little more than QTE and wandering, but the story, acting, cinematography, and mocap are all really good or at least uniquely interesting for the medium, especially at the time. I still need to play Detroit too.

A woodworker who actively dislikes the hypocritical and predatory exploitation of lower class people and who is willing to do his part to save us? Are you Jesus?

For real. This seems like something that threatens musk and space x more than anybody else. The CIA effectively has unlimited money to replace whatever Russia takes down, but musk needing to pay to replace satellites to maintain starlink will hurt his bottom line. I don't think tin foil hat wearers would be all that unreasonable to make the assumption that this is a veiled threat to keep musk in line. I frequently hear the argument that "billionaires can't be bought" but I believe the exact opposite. They care more about money than morals and ethics, and can therefore be coerced by it either through hurting their bottom line or rewarding them with more of it. A dragon's hoard can never be too big for the dragon to accept more, and nothing hurts the drain more than reducing its hoard.

The real Simpsons joke is affording a big house with a garage, two cars, three kids, pets, and vacations on a single income from a high school education. My wife and I are a DINK couple each with associates degrees in a two bedroom apartment with no pets.

D'oh indeed, Homer. D'oh indeed...

My plant in particular has a roster of only about 30 people, only about 5 of which are what I would call entry level. Right now we're fully staffed, but every couple of years we get a few people who leave. We'll have probably two retirements in the next couple of years, and who knows who will say fuck this place and go elsewhere. But this is all for in-house stuff. I got into the industry as a contractor with a few different companies making less money and running harder for a long while, so that made me a much more attractive candidate. But really I just carry myself well and know how to sell myself and appear respectable even though I feel like a 10 year old trapped in a 35 year old body most of the time. Idk what I'm doing half the time, but neither does anybody else in this stupid world lol.

A super easy way to get your foot in the door for the industry is to look into companies that support outages. It can be irregular work that requires travel, but companies always need bodies just to be a general laborer. You might just be carrying shit for "skilled" workers for a while but you get familiar with processes and can find advancement opportunities from there. I started with radiological decontamination and radiation protection for nuclear plant refuel outages. Most of those guys seem to have like an 8th grade education, so it's pretty easy to stand out in a positive way and receive recognition.

Probably the best thing for my career to really get where I am was when I somehow talked my way into a job with a major company as a water treatment FSR to handle water treatment for a big nuclear plant. I learned a lot through that, and I'm still very much learning every day.