Aw, come on, way to miss the point. Even African American Grandmas were glued to their televisions during the Cuban Missile Crisis. They lived through the Vietnam protests, the 70's oil shock, Nixon's resignation and stagflation, and then saw the Berlin Wall fall in the 80's. As someone born in the 80's, I can only imagine the difference between what they thought and felt during 9/11 compared to me.
They (usually) have something which younger generations will always struggle with (simply by the nature of not being there), which is _perspective_ on which things are important at what scales. That isn't to say they're always (or even usually) right about everything, but their opinion should at least be valued as part of the conversation.
Hmm, I think there's a difference between heavily fictionalized external personal drama and the diffuse, anxiety-provoking miasma of social media and mainstream news headlines feeds.
Even if there isn't a huge difference, I feel like the relationship is more like that of an alcoholic or other addict. Do addicts really "like" their drug? Surely most of them know at some level that it's really unhealthy, and there's diminishing pleasurable returns even in the short term, but they still crave it as a release from their short term anxieties and problems.
There are conflicting stories, but I've heard a few different arguments (I'm not sure how accurate any of them are, though):
* The vaccine is stronger than a low-viral-dose infection; you wind up with more antibodies and more T/B cell engagement, so theoretically more robust immunity
* The vaccines might be better or worse than natural infection against the variants; on the one hand your body fought a whole wild virus and so the antibodies aren't restricted to the spike protein, like in the mRNA case, so your body might be less overfit. On the other hand, the vaccines seems to producer a stronger immune response, as stated above, so that might be better if the antibodies still mostly line up?
Honestly, even if I had Covid before, it seems to make sense to get vaccinated anyhow. It's free (man, why aren't all vaccines free?), Your employer is very unlikely to give you a hard time for getting it, or taking some time off for recovering from the common side effects of the second dose - it feels like the potential benefits (stronger immunity) outweigh the very limited risks (basically limited flu symptoms and a possible bruise at the injection site).
As a weird side note, at least among my cohort, the side effects seem to be a really clear marker of who's immune system recognizes the disease. My friends who didn't catch it all reported no problems the first time and symptoms on the second shot. My friends who tested positive reported symptoms from the first shot. I had to start immunosuppression after the first shot, but before the second (TNF Alpha Inhibitor), and the symptoms at the second shot were actually a relief that my immune system hadn't been tamped down too hard...
> I had to start immunosuppression after the first shot, but before the second (TNF Alpha Inhibitor), and the symptoms at the second shot were actually a relief that my immune system hadn't been tamped down too hard...
That gives me great pause. My personal preference is to avoid such experiences.
And same goes for my friends, first shot knocks out the positive cases.
> * Right now, not doing so is a strong social signal that you’re a special kind of belligerent asshole that probably hasn’t been vaccinated, and wants to pick a fight... *
Man, I'm sorry, but you read like the belligerent one here, judging people from afar. I wear a mask when possible (and will also likely continue to do so, despite being fully vaccinated) but this self-righteous attitude I think is an enormous part of the cultural problem.
I have always tried to follow a blend of cautious common sense and the science here, so my policy throughout the pandemic has always been
- Always wear a mask when indoors (other than at home or in my car alone)
- Wear a mask outdoors when it's difficult to remain less than 10 (not even 6) feet from other people. If I need to pass someone on a sidewalk, or someone's approaching me at an intersection, I put my mask on. And I make sure to cover my nose. And even with the mask on, I will usually opt to go into the street or otherwise create distance.
Despite this, I have been shouted at by people more than 30 feet away across a street and from people driving cars(!) about walking outdoors without a mask at times, when nobody has been anywhere near me. I'm sorry but this is just asinine. There has to be some time when it's ok to not be wearing a mask when you're not at home. I wear glasses and am otherwise visually impaired (I have an autoimmune disease which inflames my retinas). When I wear a mask, it tends to fog my glasses and make my vision even worse, sometimes dangerously so (I've been nearly hit by bicycles riding on the sidewalks tens of times - you can't hear them coming when they decide to come up behind you on the sidewalk despite the presence of the perfectly good bike lane) If I wore a mask while driving my reduced vision would make me many many times more dangerous than an unvaccinated person not wearing a mask outdoors, and yet I see this behavior all the time - even when the driver is alone in their car!
Furthermore, one of the times I was shouted at, I actually had a painful cut on my face, and wearing the mask aggravated it. I still would wear the mask if I was in a store or actually anywhere near someone outdoors, but that didn't stop someone from berating me from across a four lane street!
I keep seeing these self-righteous claims throughout these threads that "there is no reason not to wear a mask". Frankly I think these folks are mentally lazy - I learned in my first philosophy course that it's dangerous to use any kind of universal quantifier in your reasoning. I also learned that it's better to show empathy if possible, or at least extend the benefit of the doubt, but for some reason this pandemic and the politics seem to have completely shut any nuance and / or compassion off.
On top of that, you admit further down in this thread that you would just choose not to engage someone you didn't know. I'm sorry, but that means that you shouldn't complain about them, then. It doesn't seem like you've given yourself any hope of arriving at a more charitable conclusion than "this person is a belligerent asshole".
Ugh. Apologies for the tone. I'm not anti-mask, but I think this stopped being about the masks a long time ago, and the fact that we can't seem to collectively recognize it is incredibly frustrating.
I think the belligerence comes from the fact that multiple people were killed during confrontations with anti-mask individuals.
I certainly sympathize with your experience. I behaved very similarly and got yelled at once or twice for not wearing a mask outside. But at no point was I worried that they were going to pull a gun on me. Meanwhile, people making close to minimum wage with minimal (if any) health benefits had to put up with the anti-mask zealots just so they could pay their rent and keep food on the table.
I think this depends a lot on what the task is. If your goal is explicitly to build a factory or a real estate empire, then you're probably right. You're not going to get very far without a bunch of capital to start.
However, if your goal is to do something legitimately creative, I agree with the spirit of the article. Indie game developers often work absolute wonders in spite of (or maybe because of?) Their limitations, whereas super heavily funded giants like Google and Amazon seem to be unable to think through any problem where the solution isn't dependent on "we have really deep pockets; buy the creative talent"
Ironically, it could be argued that it's easier when Facebook is the only player in town; otherwise the argument might be "But my competition does it! It's a race to the bottom - I can't compete if I act ethically!"
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss medicine; we all just witnessed mRNA paying off its research tab, so it would seem.
CRISPR is at the beginning of its journey, but monoclonal antibodies are practically miraculous to people with a lot of autoimmune conditions. I have one which almost certainly would have blinded me 30 years ago. Today I can get an (admittedly enormously expensive, we still have progress to make there) IV infusion every couple of months which has practically no side effects and effectively forces the disease into remission. This drug (Remicade) wasn't around when I was born, and I'm only 39.
Just for clarity, how are you defining "Wealth" here? I tend to think of knowledge and skills as a form of Wealth, but it's reasonable for that to be debated; especially if all you're measuring is relative positions in a commodities market.
Either way, I think it's possible to argue that the US did generate Wealth in WW2, in the sense that it developed new technologies and knowledge that were eventually shared worldwide (I'm thinking mass production of materials like plastics, antibiotics, better research on nutrition, etc, statistical engineering techniques which eventually helped build up the Japanese auto industry), and that it trained a large portion of its population via the G.I. Bill and women working in factories, etc.
(None of this is to belittle all the damage done by the bombs, etc, and the US did have a massive advantage in non having it's production capacity wrecked like Europe, Russia and Japan. The broken window fallacy is a real thing)
Maybe this is a bit out of the spirit of the question, but I think of a lot of "domestic" skills this way, like cooking, cleaning and home maintenance, and knowing specialized dressing and hygiene. This stuff requires considerable time and effort to be good at, and you wind up paying a lot to get someone else to do it for you. Covid has forced me to actually live in my apartment (instead of just sleeping and showering here) and I've increasingly learned that the housewives of yore were actually a lot like managers and process engineers - they constantly need to take inventory and think ahead in order to efficiently keep ahead of all the entropy added in regular life.
It might also be considered a "soft skill", but there are some communication skills I think are really valuable in a technical space; like knowing which diagram to make which will most effectively summarize the complexity of your system and is appropriate for your audience. The tools for constructing that drawing will change, but the activity of sketching for communication isn't going anywhere.
Wait, I'm confused reading this. It's really hard to make out which of the abusive behaviors here are Google's, and which are Modis'. I don't really understand the relationship between those two institutions. (I'm assuming there's plenty of fault on both sides here, but it would be nice to understand the specifics)
How much of her direct day to day life is set by Modis? I figure Google pays Modis and Modis pays her? (If so, how much of a cut is Modis keeping?) Did Google directly provide her water bottle, or did it need to go through Modis? It looks like the threatening email she received claiming that she couldn't discuss compensation came from a Modis manager, not a Google one? Which managers were in the room when she was fired for her Facebook post? (I'm assuming Google ones, since they're on-site?)
She wasn't working for Google, she was working for a contractor. Go to a different datacenter and it will be staffed by a different (local) contractor. Same thing for most of the building's maintenance staff. What makes it news-worthy is that the owner of that particular server-rack was a high-profile company. Had the same thing happened at a datacenter owned by a bank, nobody would have reported on it.
Google was involved in her employment. The Alphabet Worker's Union filed a complaint against both Google and Modis. There's no reason to assume that only one company was involved, who was responsible can be decided by the NLRB.
It wasn't long ago that Google directly employed most of their datacenter techs. I know a couple guys who worked their way up from server monkey to SRE. It's sad to hear that that pathway seems closed off.
Sure, but if I own a house construction company and hire a contractor to do the roofs because I want to keep roof costs down at all costs I am responsible for the low salaries and poor conditions of my roof contractors.
I would say Google is completely responsible as they choose to hire contractors for the purpose of mistreating and exploiting them. If Google replaced this contractor or hired their own employees then Google shouldn't be blamed, but as is they hire people to do this for them. It's their fault.
They (usually) have something which younger generations will always struggle with (simply by the nature of not being there), which is _perspective_ on which things are important at what scales. That isn't to say they're always (or even usually) right about everything, but their opinion should at least be valued as part of the conversation.