Mantergeistmann
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User ID: 323
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
elves never side with Morgoth
I mean, there was Maeglin, son of Eol, but he was also horribly tortured to encourage his betrayal, so I suppose that could be considered a bit of an extenuating circumstance.
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
The earliest known usage of "pop" is from 1812; in a letter to his wife, poet Robert Southey says the drink is "called pop because pop goes the cork when it is drawn, & pop you would go off too if you drank too much of it." The two words were later combined into "soda pop" in 1863
Mantergeistmann
2d ago
It wouldn't surprise me if TikTok had started pushing content suggesting it, but that's a pure guess.
Mantergeistmann
4d ago
One thing I don't see brought up is that maybe the best thing for Israel to do would be to sign the deal, get the hostages back, and then immediately just ignore the deal and spend the next couple of years killing every Hamas member on the face of the planet.
I mean, the current deal doesn't get all the hostages back. It merely sets up future negotiations over getting them returned. There's still several dozen (living and dead) remaining with Hamas for the near future, if not longer. Everyone calling this a "win for Israel" seems to be ignoring/accepting that.
Mantergeistmann
4d ago
I mean, during the US Civil War you had Union leaders talking about sending Northerners to take the land and houses of people in the South, but that didn't make it a campaign of genocide.
Mantergeistmann
6d ago
And, as far as throwing fuel on the fire, JK Rowling has weighed in:
The literary crowd that had a hell of a lot to say about Harvey Weinstein before he was convicted has been strangely muted in its response to multiple accusations against Neil Gaiman from young women who’d never met, yet — as with Weinstein — tell remarkably similar stories
My understanding is that the venn diagram of "people who hate Rowling for her trans views" and "Neil Gaiman superfans" is very close to a circle, so I'm expecting there to be either a lot of cognitive dissonance, deliberate head-in-the-sand, or crazy explainers as to why they're on the same side.
Mantergeistmann
8d ago
As Flintlocke's Guide to Azeroth once phrased it, "I mostly just picked my talents because the icons looked cool".
Mantergeistmann
9d ago
It’s like my hobby horse of black people in Medieval England
Were you the one who had a planned effortpost on that at some point?
Mantergeistmann
10d ago
I believe there were two types of attempts: the first via balloons, the second a seaplane launched from a submarine. But yes, neither method wound up causing any significant fires that I'm aware of, or indeed much damage beyond a few very unlucky casualties.
Mantergeistmann
12d ago
using depleted uranium rounds
My understanding is that the impact of that has been vastly overstated, usually by the same sorts of people who think the radiation from being near a nuclear power plant is worse than the radiation from being near a coal plant.
Mantergeistmann
14d ago
The latter. Although I'm still hoping someone/a tribe files a formal lawsuit based on a Land Acknowledgement, preferably incorporating the phrase "put up or shut up."
Mantergeistmann
15d ago
It seems arbitrary that we get to decide that all species must be preserved as they are now. Extinction and speciation are integral to how evolution functions. How can we justify trying to preserve the animal kingdom in aspic? Especially when the preservation mostly takes the form of preventing us from building anything.
It feels remarkably similar in some ways to First Nations: whatever land a given tribe/confederation occupied at the time of contact with Europeans becomes permanently and historically theirs--like a game of Civ ending at an arbitrary cutoff year, then that save state being imported to the expansion/sequel. Doesn't matter when a people took possession of a given tract of land, or who might have been there prior.
Mantergeistmann
15d ago
Only three figures/year? That could very well be worth it to keep their name out there for when they do want to hire. For a lot of places, that's chump change.
Mantergeistmann
15d ago
Are you sure it's a real position and not one of those "ghost job listings" I keep hearing about? If it had been a shorter amount of time, I'd assume they'd just written it to target one specific person as a formality, but if it's been posted for a while, then it certainly can't be that.
Mantergeistmann
17d ago
I mean, by that logic it isn't reasonable for a company to have a 1-year reimbursement requirement for paying costs for you to relocate, either.
Mantergeistmann
17d ago
That's exactly the way my company works. Presumably our HR departments are comparing notes and "working to industry best practices" and "benchmarking against the median of competitors".
Mantergeistmann
17d ago
Now, the odds of success are against you, but I find it far more disheartening to have the eventual mitigated success of the first two guys, rather than a potential start-up flame out.
Risk vs. Reward and all that, right? If I'm at a point in my life where I'm not responsible for others and have a bit of a safety net, the gamble is a great idea. If I'm the sole provider for others, well... maybe sticking with the safer route is better for me and those that rely on my income.
Mantergeistmann
17d ago
Employees have a sense of obligation to their employer, and vice versa. Fundamentally, they still perceive each other as members of the same tribe with a shared fate. They won't ignore their own self-interest, but they won't actively try to screw over the other just for some marginal short-run benefit.
That seems to be where line managers are incredibly important and influential. The differences I've seen (and felt) between "people are staying when they could leave for a slightly better offer because this manager is great to work for" and "people are leaving for a slightly worse offer because this manager is terrible" is... rather impressive.
Mantergeistmann
17d ago
I believe that clawback provisions on training costs are legal.
I work for a company that doesnt wipe its own arse without government approval signed in triplicate, as the saying goes, and we have something like this: if you get a degree with the company contributing money, you have to stay at least one year after completion, or you owe all that money back. Seems very reasonable.
I think it only applies to degrees/university courses, though, not other generic training/certificate opportunities (i.e. if I get reimbursed for getting my Project Management Professional certification, it doesnt matter if I leave the very next day after the reimbursement shows up in my account; I don't owe a dime of it back).
Mantergeistmann
18d ago
That said, Pete releasing an album titled "Best of the Beatles" was absolute genius.
Mantergeistmann
19d ago
That's the cybertruck that also appeared to have been filled with fireworks, right?
Mantergeistmann
20d ago
It's an interesting situation. On the one hand, I can see that being absolutely correct. On the other, my reading of Admiral Byng's court-martial is that he was absolutely hung out to dry for political reasons. Which makes for an interesting social/moral dilemma: if you were involved in the process back then, and knew (or had an idea of) the beneficial effects it would have on the future navy, would you choose to have an innocent man executed?
I often wonder this about the justice system in general: if it means placating the mob, is it sometimes worth committing an act of injustice to a single individual?
Mantergeistmann
20d ago
These jobs should be more or less easy-in-easy-out temporary employment for people who need cash to pay their bills. If you read some of the mid century "road" novels, you'll see how a pretty common modus operandi was for the protagonist to roll into town on his last dollar, pick up a few days work doing janitorial work at a auto garage or something, and then go on his merry (usually drunk) way of philosophizing. I've written about this before. It's not so much that people in the 50s/60s were raising full families on these unappealing jobs, it's that these unappealing jobs were the equivalent of day rate motel stays.
I think you're the first person I've seen in the wild who seems to agree with me thay not all jobs need to pay a "living wage", and that that's okay! That some jobs should be just for the high school kid after school or during the summer, or someone who isnt trying to support a family on it ling term. I don't know how you deal with people getting stuck in a rut and eventually not being ready for retirement, though... I'm sure many will say that it isn't their problem to make sure others don't make poor life choices, but that doesn't help convince the general population when the news is publishing sob stories.
Mantergeistmann
20d ago
"In this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others."
... as the generic term for a fizzy drink? If so, that's wonderfully contrarian.
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