Re: Rants

[nearly_takuan]

Last night I was too tired and happy to care, but not too tired to notice.

Public transit officers, this is the third time you have checked my ticket, which is normal, but it is also the third time you have walked straight past a group of well-dressed white men and women to do so. You put mine through a machine to verify its authenticity. Theirs stayed in their pockets for the entire ride, assuming they had tickets in the first place.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

[reboot]

This article annoys me on many levels: link

It only got written in the first place because of the "overseas threat"
Somehow the 58,000 deaths from MDR bacteria are worse than the 800,000 deaths from other causes?

I mean I get it. It is hard to get Americans to care about anyone's problems but their own so you need to make it "relevant" to the average reader. But still it annoys me....

[azazel]

This article annoys me on many levels: link

It only got written in the first place because of the "overseas threat"
Somehow the 58,000 deaths from MDR bacteria are worse than the 800,000 deaths from other causes?

Although I can see where you are coming from, I've got to admit I've got a very different perspective, probably due to our different jobs.

We're running out of antibiotics, and 58 000 deaths will only be the beginning. It irks me when Ebola gets so much coverage, but the apocalypse that is coming gets only a few mentions here and there.
Doctors prescribing antibiotics for virus infections should lose their license. The Indian government should make sure sanitation of hospitals is up to par, instead of relying on antibiotics as a shield. If we can't sustain our meat production / square meter without preventive antibiotics, we should reduce our production until we can.

Winter is coming, although it was so easy to prolong autumn.

[reboot]

This article annoys me on many levels: link

It only got written in the first place because of the "overseas threat"
Somehow the 58,000 deaths from MDR bacteria are worse than the 800,000 deaths from other causes?

Although I can see where you are coming from, I've got to admit I've got a very different perspective, probably due to our different jobs.

We're running out of antibiotics, and 58 000 deaths will only be the beginning. It irks me when Ebola gets so much coverage, but the apocalypse that is coming gets only a few mentions here and there.
Doctors prescribing antibiotics for virus infections should lose their license. The Indian government should make sure sanitation of hospitals is up to par, instead of relying on antibiotics as a shield. If we can't sustain our meat production / square meter without preventive antibiotics, we should reduce our production until we can.

Winter is coming, although it was so easy to prolong autumn.

Oh trust me, I know the risks of antibiotic resistance, resistance to antimalarials, antifungals, etc. It was just how this article framed it that irked me, especially since the use of antibiotics in newborns is not the main cause of resistance. It is the widespread availability of antibiotics without prescription in a good chunk of the world (including India), use of expired and attenuated medication, and over prescription by doctors.

[/rant]

[Gentleman Johnny]

It seems like every second or third OLD profile (and sometimes like six in a row) that I check out has some variation of "I like hiking, camping, football, riding motorcycles and shooting guns". Where I grew up, we have a more concise term for that: redneck.

[reboot]

It seems like every second or third OLD profile (and sometimes like six in a row) that I check out has some variation of "I like hiking, camping, football, riding motorcycles and shooting guns". Where I grew up, we have a more concise term for that: redneck.

Hey man, do not diss my people!

We also ATV, snowmobile and hunting

[WJMorris3]

It seems like every second or third OLD profile (and sometimes like six in a row) that I check out has some variation of "I like hiking, camping, football, riding motorcycles and shooting guns". Where I grew up, we have a more concise term for that: redneck.

Hey man, do not diss my people!

We also ATV, snowmobile and hunting

And now I can't get Jeff Foxworthy out of my head.

http://www.mtv.com/videos/jeff-foxworthy/95275/redneck-stomp.jhtml

[azazel]

Didn't realize that the #nofapchallenge would be so frickin' difficult.

I managed a streak of more than 8760 days (I almost got to the point I could say I managed a streak that was over 9000 ) and now after two days I've already almost blown through my willpower reserves? Fuck!

Remind me never to take up drugs or smoking.

[nearly_takuan]

Yes, thank you, Target Cashier. I am aware that these plain black cold-weather gloves are marked as "women's gloves". It also happens to be the case that they are virtually identical in design, color, and function to the "men's gloves" your store carries. The reason I went up an additional floor to find gloves that cost a dollar more despite requiring fewer materials to actually make is because your "men's gloves" do not fit me.

I am not optimistic about my chances if one day I have to scour the shops for "women's condoms".

[Gentleman Johnny]

It seems like every second or third OLD profile (and sometimes like six in a row) that I check out has some variation of "I like hiking, camping, football, riding motorcycles and shooting guns". Where I grew up, we have a more concise term for that: redneck.

Hey man, do not diss my people!

We also ATV, snowmobile and hunting

Not dissing, just saying economy of words counts. I've divided my matches into three distinct categories:
club girls (likes clothes, shopping, has pictures from nightclubs on the Vegas Strip)
gym rats ("I take fitness seriously, so you should too")
rednecks (see above)

Anyone who falls outside of that immediately has my attention.

[Gentleman Johnny]

Yes, thank you, Target Cashier. I am aware that these plain black cold-weather gloves are marked as "women's gloves". It also happens to be the case that they are virtually identical in design, color, and function to the "men's gloves" your store carries. The reason I went up an additional floor to find gloves that cost a dollar more despite requiring fewer materials to actually make is because your "men's gloves" do not fit me.

I am not optimistic about my chances if one day I have to scour the shops for "women's condoms".

"They're not women's clothes. They're my clothes. I bought them." -Eddie Izard

[BasedBuzzed]

Can we please skip the posturing hipster phase of importing identity politics? Your "wow, just wow. smh @ white logic" while having the skin colour of undriven snow, awkward cramming of untranslated buzzwords into Dutch text and disappearing from the face of the earth the moment a person of colour disagrees with you shitting up the convo contribute nothing at all.

[UristMcBunny]

Ugh. Was so looking forward to my new Winter boots. Then they arrive and are so cheaply made and poorly designed I can't even get my feet in them. New Rock have gone seriously downhill and I expect WAY better than this for £100+!

[waxingjaney]

Is £100 how many times you get to beat the designer over the head with them?

[The Wisp]

Ah, psychosomatic side effects to safe over-the-counter meds...

[WJMorris3]

Is £100 how many times you get to beat the designer over the head with them?

That's a sterling idea.

[BasedBuzzed]

Dear fresher: no, you do not get to decide what I should or shouldn't be offended by, or make your distress about how okay I am with these jabs at me my problem. PDD-NOS comes with tics, problems with eye contact and moments in which I don't notice I'm rambling, and when others deal with this I'll take humour over patronizing behaviour or close-minded discomfort any day of the week. Has it crossed your mind that if I hang out with these "assholes", I'm probably just as bad as them? Social circles like these exist through self-selection. Go find your own 'tribe'.

[Guest]

True .  Just got on The Mikey about absolutism, and you're right to get on me about it too, thanks.  I just . . . right now it feels like it happens a lot.  And I feel stupid that I keep trying because inevitably it happens and I feel so dumb and you know that saying that the definition of crazy is doing the same thing expecting different results?  I need to stop trying with a certain kind of human I think.  But that also makes me sad.  I'm just feeling sad.  

For that I thank you because I'm in one of those episodes again myself (although more mildly).

Also I have a bone to pick with that definition of 'crazy', because by that logic, waking up in the morning is crazy as shit.

[OneTrueGuest]

The Mikey - I'm sorry to hear that, just try your darndest to be particular and not absolute. We'll both work on it together (like the last couple days I'm all, "My career sucks!!" but no, it really doesn't, there are a lot of good things happening and that have happened, it's just right now things are a bit "meh").

As for waking up - are you waking up every morning expecting a different result from waking up? Because otherwise it's not crazy to do the same thing over and over, it's just a little maddening doing the same thing over and over and expecting something to be different this next time you do that same thing, that's all . (now if you keep waking up totally exhausted, maybe the thing that's "crazy" is going to bed at 4am and getting up at 8am say. And so that's the thing that needs to change )

[nearly_takuan]

I dunno, for me the results of waking up today were a bit different from the results of waking up yesterday, if only because of what came after.

ETA: To turn that into something that might be a little more obviously useful—one of the bits of "advice" I got early on was that maybe the first n women I asked out didn't want to go out with me because I'm Asian, or too short, or they don't know me well enough, or they know me too well, but the (n+1)th woman is a different person with different tastes, so the outcome might be different even if the action is the same. Of course, that was before n > k, for sufficiently large k, and now I'm in a domain where I do feel like I should probably just give up. But the logic still seems sound, I guess.

[Guest]

The Mikey - I'm sorry to hear that, just try your darndest to be particular and not absolute.  We'll both work on it together (like the last couple days I'm all, "My career sucks!!"  but no, it really doesn't, there are a lot of good things happening and that have happened, it's just right now things are a bit "meh").

Usually, I'm busy with other things or projects that I don't have time to think about girls and my singleness. It's a pretty "Fuck it, we'll do it live"-attitude in my day-to-day life when I'm busy. But it sucks seeing cute girls outside the lobby in the building where my class is that I'm in and not having the courage to talk to them to try and score a date. D:

Although, I've considered pulling a VitalyzdTV-style experiment only to get over my own anxieties (although this may be a bad idea, idk).

As for waking up - are you waking up every morning expecting a different result from waking up? Because otherwise it's not crazy to do the same thing over and over, it's just a little maddening doing the same thing over and over and expecting something to be different this next time you do that same thing, that's all . (now if you keep waking up totally exhausted, maybe the thing that's "crazy" is going to bed at 4am and getting up at 8am say. And so that's the thing that needs to change )

I don't wake up expecting different results, I wake up expecting different days and different things to occur IN that day. Why? Cuz every day is a gift and everyday above ground is a good day. Plus, I'm a firm believer in Chaos Theory, in which anything can and will happen. ;D

[nearly_takuan]

(Link TW: everything. Fuck it.)

Um, no, Asians are not "safer" from police than White people, as my dad (who has been followed through malls and pulled over for no reason) and my mom (who has not) can attest. Never mind my dad's parents and their siblings, who were young adults during the Second World War, full stop. But if they (we?) were somehow safer, that still would not make it okay for Black people to be unsafe. I do not want White people to be less safe. I do not want police officers to be less safe**. I just want Black people to be more safe. Like, a lot more safe. Because holy shit.

**(I do want them to pass a more rigorous standard of training and mental health, and I want additional government infrastructure to ensure that officers whose accumulated stresses leave them too psychologically volatile for work may retire in reasonable comfort; by the way more libraries too, please, and I'll admit that yes, taxing the wealthy more really is pretty much my answer to everything.)

[BasedBuzzed]

Two unrelated rants:
Hilarious how you diss corporate suits as people who half-ass everything and don't have passion for their work. Like every other job, it has people who genuinely enjoy it, and people who just want the lifestyle associated with it. The person who likes to get to know his personnel, tweaks the aspects of his company and wants to have a strong, personal brand identity he believes in vs. the market min-maxer who is only interested in the bottom line can easily be compared to the artist who is invested in his message, ponders and builds upon his earlier work, and spends an enormous amount of unquantified time gettin it out there and making people see vs. the half-asser who substitutes ideological choices for shortcuts(trying to do dada because it's less work), takes obscurity as a sign of quality instead of a failure to get his work out there, and only tears others down instead of building something up himself. Funny how much you fit that last description.

In other news, listen to your social circle when they tell you you need a break from the internet, whether it is for self-care, getting a level head or simply to get stuff done, instead of complaining to said social media that they are trying to limit your intertube time.

[nearly_takuan]

Sometimes I do wonder about all these women who list their age as 27 and their looking-for as people age 26-37. I mean, not trying to say they don't have the "right" or whatever, but I struggle to understand why that particular configuration seems so common.

Ditto women with otherwise great profiles describing all kinds of attractive personality traits but who end with "you should message me if...you're tall, athletic, and have a beard."

Possibly related: a directive to "take the initiative" reads to me like "please I want somebody to message me", which feels particularly odd when it's paired with other "message me only if you meet the following exact criteria" types of remarks. And putting "message me if you've read my profile" at the end of your profile seems redundant.

Oh, here's a gem: I'm supposed to relate to George Costanza, and also be confident and outgoing.

[Guest]

You know what grinds my gears? When I'm tryna play Sultans of Swing like Mark Knopfler and a damn string breaks on *my* guitar.

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