![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 64 to 88 of 135. Go back in thread:
Posted by sigismund on July 22, 2018, at 5:45:07
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by beckett2 on July 21, 2018, at 15:10:28
>The tragedy and outrage is the US hand in destabilizing Central America. Trump loves to blame the victim. As does Stephen Miller.
Ah yes. I only heard a couple of things about Stephen Miller at university or whatever you call it.
A psychologist would just say it was projection of guilt, 'Caliban's rage at seeing his face in the glass'.
Manus is this island (Is it in New Guinea?) to the north of NG where we send / have sent the boat people, of which there will be many more with rising sea levels, for example from Bangladesh. Thus the borders are being militarised by people who pretend they don't believe the science but use this as an opportunity to..........well, I don't know what they want, apart from winning elections. (The conservatives of the past often seem so much more rounded.) They are surprisingly successful. We'll see if Trump wins in 2020. Does he really live on cheeseburgers? I was hoping Rupert still had a bad back, but hear he is holidaying with Jerry in the Mediterranean.
Since the collapse of the MSM I don't get to see that much about Australian politics. FDOTM is our politics, I am ashamed to say.
Posted by sigismund on July 22, 2018, at 14:20:00
In reply to Re: Paul Jay » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on July 21, 2018, at 14:50:07
>US, Russia and China. Isreal and Iran.
Don't forget Saudi Arabia, our brave ally in the war against terror.
>What would be the benefit of war with Iran? It can't be oil?
It may be more silly than it appears. Before federation Queensland, that state in the north east sent a gun boat up to the island of New Guinea to seize it as a colony. What else can you do with your time? The British were not impressed and took it for themselves. The Japanese needed to feel civilised helping and disciplining 'lesser breeds without the law', as did the US more than 100 years ago. Where is Puerto Rico anyway?
It could be revenge for the Iranian Revolution. One might have thought that the poisons, weapons and information given through Rumsfeld to Saddam, and a million dead was enough.
Putin has no interest in regime change in Tehran. If it's not oil it's the one belt one road, pipelines, and the switch from the US$ as the reserve currency.
Posted by sigismund on July 22, 2018, at 20:12:42
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by sigismund on July 22, 2018, at 14:20:00
No, no. A couple weeks ago I went to a convention at the, its called the IRE, Investigative Reporters and Editors; it was a group started in the 70s, in the wake of Watergate. And the conventions have slowed down in recent years as the economy has faltered, the newspapers have laid off people, and etc., etc. And Im not talking, Im not blaming the lack of reporting on lack of resources; theres still plenty of money to do the stories. But what happened, usually they have six, seven hundred; the last convention, just three weeks ago in Orlando, had 1,800 people sign up. Becauseheres my reading of ittheres so many young kids who are appalled by the rise of Trump, and Trumpism, and the vulgarity thats creeping in, much more so directly. Young kids are flocking back to journalism schools, because they see, still see journalism as a way to maybe get things changed. Theyre not running the venture capital like they were decades ago; theyre running the journalism. Eighteen hundred is an enormous crowd, of mostly young; people in journalism school, people in small newspapers, people in the internet. So I was wildly impressed by that, in a downtime when the markets bad, theres so much, theres stillBob, theres still a lot of people out there wanting to get more from the newspaper business that theyre getting, and the media business that theyre getting. And they, I think the whole Trump thing could be a boon for journalism in different forms. Newspapers are in trouble, but there are different forms. So I end up feeling pretty optimistic right now about newspapers, the future; today, no, were still, the main papers are still stuck in a rhythm thats just, I dont quite understand, they wont get out of it. But I think changes are coming. Im glad I did what I did now, because I do have something to say to young kids. And Im saying it. I go around saying it all the time. I think you do, too. I think what youre saying is, we do need a change. That it cant go on this way, because look where we are. Were in dire straits around the world. Were not liked, were disliked. Were waging war. Were seen as the most dangerous country in the world. All the polls show that, the approval polls, 42 percent of the people in the world dont like us, et cetera, et cetera. And so it has to change, or were in for someI dont know, the next generations will be in real trouble. So I think we still have time to change it.
Posted by alexandra_k on July 23, 2018, at 2:08:18
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by sigismund on July 22, 2018, at 14:20:00
I had heard vaguely about detention camps in Australia. Or just out of Australia (so what goes on there is not covered by Australian laws - or similar). It isn't something that I have followed, though. I have also vaguely heard that NZ has detention / refugee camps in Auckland, and probably other places around the country, too.
It is a really hard thing. I guess it takes time and money to process people. To have people look into their story, I mean, and see if there is coroboration for who they are. Whether they have certain qualifications, or not, worked certain jobs, or not, whether they are involved with people who may have hostile intention, or not. And so on... Whether they are the criminals of the country, the major persecutors who have realised their time is up back home and that is why they are fleeing for a 'better life'. Or whether they really were the victims of the unaccountable persecutors back home...
I do worry that most of the immigrants we accept (in NZ, anyway) are likely to be persecutors back home. Because people here seem so very corruptable by shiny things. So... How bad do detention / refugee camps need to be in order for only those genuinely seeking refuge to be willing to be placed in one? I think there may be an element of that... An element of that in the advertising about them -- I mean.
Consider the middle managers in Ireland... The ones who got rich(er) from subdividing the land into smaller and smaller and smaller blocks to sublet. Those people. As a group it seems that those people are most culpable. But I guess those are the people who made enough to flee... And, from their perspective, if they didn't subdivide smaller and smaller they wouldn't have made the money they needed for them and theirs to flee... The problem (well before the famine) was the extreme poverty that had such a high proportion of people in Ireland getting by with sections only small enough to support them with potato... And of course 'groups of people' is problematic.. And me (especially) is a really great fan of not blaming the... uh... idiosyncratic... for the failings of their various groups.
Sigh.
I usually... Interpret... An ambiguity in refugee situations. It is common to see a man tightly gripping a woman's wrist with a child carried in front of him.
If it was a true family situation... I think it likely the guy would be more protective of the woman and child... Rather than brandishing them about as... Hostages.Apparently there is evidence that those who have been victimised are most likely to go on to be persecutors / abusers. That's how come one of the Medical Schools here asks about whether you have anything to declare (or whether the police may have anything to declare) about your status not only as persecutor (offender of crimes - whether you have been the object of inquiry OR convicted) BUT ALSO whether you have been recorded as having been the victim of violent crime. Or a witness of violent crime. Because that's the point of ''Dexter'' - right? To make sure that the (rather large) class of people who have witnessed violent crimes never ever ever ever ever get to obtain professional employment. Because of ''Dexter'' (folk psychology and the hollywood psychopath) - right?
It's not at all about blaming the victim. Or about keeping the oppressed (those who lacked the power to have the record expunged) oppressed... It's for the good of us all?
Yeah, right.
Australia really does have some wonderful cartoons / cartoonists. That is CLASSIC about the potato (the abundance of potato being a symbol of wealth, clearly).
Sigh.
I have to sit the UMAT on Wednesday:
I can't talk about any of the practice material questions, but mateship, sports teams, and the like, are themes that have occurred. I won't lie, I seem to do best on the 'Aussie values' section (aka 'Interpersonal reasoning'), but it is an odd thing. To be sure. They are actually fond of cartoons -- and interpretations of them. Australia does indeed like a good cartoon. I won't lie -- some of the questions are brilliant. But some of them a a bit odd, for sure.
Posted by alexandra_k on July 23, 2018, at 3:31:00
In reply to Re: Paul Jay » alexandra_k, posted by beckett2 on July 20, 2018, at 19:36:12
The Sims is a computer game.
This is probably far more than you wanted to know, but the first 2 minutes tells you the basic idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohwbklm3w_E
The Sims seasons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5XWyPgUCm4
valentines day is in the spring? (fall southern hemisphere)
thermostat inside the house? (lmfao)
no skin cancer from sunburn? (i remember the non-burny sun)
harvest meals in fall / autumn? (spring southern hemisphere)
winter for indoor decorating? (bbq beach time over here)It is sort of a user interface friendly version of second life... I think... sorta...
I remember being simply blown away by how fun dancing was in second life. Virtual dancing. Yeah. The Sims just sorta works... In some weird way...
I spent nearly a year in North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
I also visited St Louis, for around a month.
I was diverted to a Texas airport at some point and was disturbed that the largest fries that I could buy from the airport McDonalds were not very large indeed (Mike Moore does not know what it means to try and survive on potato, methinks).I was amazed at how different States genuinely did have something like a distinct feel of different countries (says the girl from NZ where Australia is a different country).
I have never been to Europe (e.g., England vs France sense of different country).
But some sense of diversity in the USA, for sure.
Also some sense of diversity within North Carolina, for example. I had one hispanic friend who was a grad student at Duke -- but otherwise only saw hispanic people serving in the lunch cue or working on the road works. UNC Chapel Hill was all about women's rights (around 1/2 the graduate student intake being female) -- but my heart went out to the one (and only) local, black, graduate student in the department. Who was rather ashamed(?) to acknowledge all of us in front of his actual friends... Diversity...
Beckett... Are you a girl or boy? You don't have to say... Typically girls have more trouble with long limbs, but is not always the case. My core strength is terrible. I don't quite understand this because I have a short torso with long limbs. I have only recently come to understand that the idea of long limbs is that weight creates torque -- so with longer limbs you need a stronger core than most because you have more torque (force trying to rotate) than most transferred from your longer limbs. So... The dwarven folk are stronger for their shorter limbs... It isn't that they have a stronger core than me -- it's that they don't need as strong a core as me because their limbs simply don't create as much torque about their joints. So... They can move the weight better (from a stronger core -- since you can't shoot a cannon out of a canoe) whereas I have trouble because I leak power from my core because my limbs are so long and everything sort of goes... All mushy, really, and collapes into a pile of mush whah whah poooooooooor me. Buuuuuuuut long limbs are fun in the pool...
I have learned 'train the muscles - spare the joints' is really really true. If you can activate the relevant muscles (basically all the muscles you have got) about the joint then you can hold the bones such that they don't create much stress about the joint. It is a hard thing to train, though. Requires a lot of focus. Into what is most comfortable for the joint -- which is simultaneously often what is hardest with respect to muscular recruitment about the joint. Basically training the muscles to activate to pick up the load instead of grinding the cartilage / bones. It's a fiddly little thing to be doing... It's what I've struggled to be doing such that I can do the weightlifting that I do (to the extent that I can do it). Weightlifters (with their naturally dwarven stature) simply don't understand what the big deal is... But swimmers get it... Because with swimmer limbs (long limbs) having muscular control of the lever (arms and legs) about the joint such that you don't distress the joint is a really big deal. I've worked really hard and from a swimmer point of view what I can do (that I've worked hard for) is an accomplishment. The dwarven folk are still puzzled at how / why 35kg front squat (*ss to grass) is really very genuine work for me, indeed, when the dwarven folk females in my weight class are front squatting around 100kg, however...
I am lifting still, a bit. Not as much. I would like to be lifting a 15kg womens bar with 10kg bumper plates (so 35kg total for clean and jerk and snatch) but I only have access to 20kg bar and 40kg with bumpers is too much for training weight... And with less than training weight I can't drop the weights if I get into trouble... So... Just mucking about the with 20kg bar mostly and trying to get my front squat back to a 5x5 @ 35kg at least - and ideally up to 5x5@40kg because that will give me a little to burn...
My ankle dorsiflexion and foot flexibility generally is getting quite a lot better in the pool... Which is good... But then I really need to work on strengthening (on land) the new ROM I've got (or I'll likely injure the joints - for sure).
Hospice helped my Dad die comfortably, too. I do appreciate that. Even though... Everyone was too quick to... Accept his death. I don't know...
Yeah, the surgery tourism. I don't know why we haven't gone that route, here. I mean, all the sell-out ways to make money that people are constantly up to that seems like the really f*ck*ng obvious no-brainer of a money making scam to anyone with half a brain solution... I mean ACC and no fault ffs... No right to sue for f*ck ups...
Change is often appealing. I understand the desire to experience more of the world. For sure. I still have it, too. I've just become so very much aware of how so very nearly the same geographical terrain can result in such fundamentally differnet experiences depending on where you sit in some sort of a hierarchy.
Perhaps the thing to do is to simply move on until you find yourself with an acceptable way of / position in life.
That's why people flee flee flee all the skilled and talented people can't flee any more quickly than they are currently doing from here... Because those people don't thrive / flourish here. That's simply not... Rewarded. Or something.
Posted by alexandra_k on July 23, 2018, at 3:46:54
In reply to Re: Paul Jay » beckett2, posted by alexandra_k on July 23, 2018, at 3:31:00
beckett: there is a youtube video that is linked from the blog post.
she doesn't dolphin kick (up and down undulation) underwater... she turns onto her side underwater and tuna-fish kicks (from side to side).
and, of course, now that she's proven it to be a faster technique...
now (and only now)
bio-physics steps in to say 'sure because of this'
but, uh,
why aren't they predicting future technical innovations, then??
Posted by alexandra_k on July 23, 2018, at 3:53:24
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by alexandra_k on July 23, 2018, at 3:46:54
of course, a problem is that the side-side undulation is more effective then the up-down undulation becaues the side-side undulation doesn't hit interference on the bottom of the pool...
... but it casts out interference waves to the swimmers in the lateral lanes besides...
technical innovation -- or cheating??
it's up to the legislative bodies. and you hope they do their job.
i don't know what they will say...
in breaststroke, at least, they limit underwater to 15m and 2 dolphin kicks.
i wonder if it would be technically innovative to do those 2 dolphin kick in a tuna-fish (horozonal) rather than dolphin (vertical) position.
?
masters games... here i come...
if i ever manage to rehabilitate smokers lungs (more than 10 years previous) for the task, of course... could take some work...
Posted by alexandra-k on July 23, 2018, at 8:32:06
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by alexandra_k on July 23, 2018, at 3:53:24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8cOq7YWXys
stretch, stretch, stretch yourself long in the pool...
Posted by alexandra-k on July 23, 2018, at 9:14:56
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by alexandra-k on July 23, 2018, at 8:32:06
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hokqRs9GbrI
they really are.
but, still, one day orthopedics and physiotherapy and so on and so forth will develop such that people have similarly caring, knowledgeable, and responsive treatments from conditions that threaten to undermine their mobility.
lolz
how many generations??
Posted by sigismund on July 23, 2018, at 21:34:36
In reply to Re: Paul Jay » sigismund, posted by alexandra_k on July 23, 2018, at 2:08:18
>I had heard vaguely about detention camps in Australia. Or just out of Australia (so what goes on there is not covered by Australian laws - or similar). It isn't something that I have followed, though. I have also vaguely heard that NZ has detention / refugee camps in Auckland, and probably other places around the country, too.
Ours are off the mainland, to the north of New Guinea (Manus) or north-east of the Solomon Islands (Nauru), above NZ, well away from the press, without possibility of visas for them.
The psychology is similar to Trump's separation of children and then blaming it on the Democratic Party. There's that little cruel twist that one almost admires for the imagination that created it.
Posted by alexandra_k on July 25, 2018, at 21:02:36
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by sigismund on July 23, 2018, at 21:34:36
> Ours are off the mainland, to the north of New Guinea (Manus) or north-east of the Solomon Islands (Nauru), above NZ, well away from the press, without possibility of visas for them.
Yes.
I think you will find there are prison camps / refugee camps / detention camps secluded away in the outback, too. But, yeah, I imagine the message is mostly 'don't try and get into Australia unlawfully because you will likely find yourself stuck in a camp outside Australia'.
> The psychology is similar to Trump's separation of children and then blaming it on the Democratic Party.I don't know anything about any of that.
Well, my test is done, now. I don't feel good about it, actually.
I don't see any personal or financial gain to be had by anyone at all to hear my opinion that the test was around 40 questions too long which forced people into making decisoins between time spent on a question (which would result in getting a question right?) vs getting through more of the questions (because some of the questions seemed easier to figure in less time than others). It was also really hard to know whether you were getting them right, because sometimes more complex questions require you to do more checks on them, but there really wasn't enough time to do complex checks on them...
Anyway, I got through the whole thing, and got to (I hope) sensibly answer some of the ones I missed on a first pass near the start)... But I really didn't get back through more than a few pages before having to just fill in anything at all so as not to leave blank fields on the form. I worry I made the wrong decision to move forwards quickly to get through the whole test and that it may have resulted in my getting them wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Because it takes a bit of time to actually read the question and probably I over-estimate how much 'thinking time' goes in to actually answering it and / or checking it has been answered properly once you've actually parsed the task... I don't know. I may have done better to have resigned myself to not finishing and to have really worked out some of those earlier ones that I could have worked out (I think?) I don't know.
I guess part of the idea is to overload things and see how they break...
I felt upset / disapointed that a lot of the section two questions felt like personality test questions to me. Genuinely ambiguous and what emotional tone do you read into the situation. Aside from avoiding obvious ones like 'everything is always about sex' and so on... Sometimes it was less clear which of the characters they wanted you to resonate with mostly. I imagine I didn't do well on this section because they would want more along the lines of happy / bubbly / normal than someone identifying more with the sick / injured / a-typical? Who knows...
I don't even trust any of the above, at all, with respect to any of it. Designed to see how they break, for sure.
I had the weirdest dream the night before.
Turned up and was instantly hungry but no way to get food. We were herded about really quickly. The employees making comments I don't remember about 'we treat you like sheep now because xxx' And we got herded into various rooms and sat down and talked to for a bit.
Then we were all herded together outdoors and there was this ravine or valley with this sort of a... Underside of a bridge with metal beams or it was a rope bridge or similar... SOmething likethat sort of a structure. ANd we were supposed to go across that.
And there was something like that at camp when I was my first year at intermediate. Around 11 or so. ANd I really didn't like my teacher much (and she really didn't like me much) but we had mostly the same hobbies (pre-existing). So she turned out to be my hockey coach and symphonic band teacher, too (I already played the violin). And on camp there was this rope bridge. And I was terrified about the height really terrified and I didn't want to go across. And there was a lot of pressure for me to do it. And one of the parents offered me lots of kit cats or similar.. Not really offered sort of bribed.. Anyway... I tried. And I got about 1/4 of the way across and I just froze. And I couldn't open my eyes and I couldn't move I just just stuck and so terrified. And eventually I think the teacher had to come out and coax me into looking at them and following them back but I've never been so scared in my whole life.
Anyway... In my dream a couple people bounded off to do it and most of the people sort of ambled off after... And I just sort of hung my head becaue there was no way I could do it.
And there was something odd about cremated remains had been scatted over the bridge or something to... Bless it, or something. Only there were chunky bits (it's harder to cremate things to an actual ash than you might suppose) but in my dream even that morphed into fresh people mince.
And people were running / flying across the bridge so fast they were eating bits of it. Like how if you run in teh bush at night you sort of inhale / eat hoo hoo grubs.
And there was a guy who was leading the whole thing. Really tall and handsome and charasmatic. And he was looking at me with... Disdain? that I wasn't participating in the process... But his attitude to those who were was ambiguous, too. Whether they stood out for being the best or whether they stood out for being the worst / most corruptable. He wiped his finger in the swarm (somehow the people mince was like a swarm of locusts or something around the bridge) and offered it to me 'want a taste'.
And I turned my head away and hung back.
F*ck*ng strange, huh.
I do not normally have f*ck*ng strange super-vivid dreams like that.
I don't usually care at all... But I wonder what it means.
Posted by alexandra_k on July 26, 2018, at 3:30:00
In reply to Re: Paul Jay » sigismund, posted by alexandra_k on July 25, 2018, at 21:02:36
the real rope bridge was like this:
only, it was a lot higher and the stream under was a lot smaller and rockier. we were only to go across one at a time because it would sway...
it seems very cruel to me, now.
i'm sure they wouldn't be allowed to do that to kids, now.
I do get a fear of falling, sometimes. when I look down. That was the trouble, I looked down to see where I should place my feet and then I freaked out. I remember it was really f*ck*ng slow to back track back because I could only move at all without looking down at my feet and I had to try and feel out whether I had my foot well positioned enough (I didn't have a lot of upper body strength to trust I'd be okay if I lost my footing). Anyway... The whole thing seems actually unsafe to me, now. And disrespectful of what I knew about my actual capacity / capability. I simply do have a bit of a 'does not funtion at height' situation going on. I mean, I'm okay in buildings because I forget, but if I look down I fear falling and lose my sense of balance etc...
I suppose it's just about fear of corruption. Of being corrupted. Of perhaps people being corrupted. Of perhaps being placed in a position where people try and make me believe that you need to do x or y or z awful thing... And whether or not that's true... I guess I think there would be something wrong with me if I wasn't worried about such things...
Only it's probably too introspective and self-absorbed... Or something...
I think there is supposed to be a lesson about huddling with the herd because what's the alternative? You just want to get in with a group where the group is going places / mostly going to be okay and then try and huddle into 'normal' in that setting...
Which is a bit odd for me because usually people try and encourage me to huddle into groups where doing so is really not at all in my interests.
Anyway... It's done, now. Onto the next hurdle.
Posted by sigismund on July 31, 2018, at 22:47:37
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by alexandra_k on July 26, 2018, at 3:30:00
https://therealnews.com/stories/gore-vidal-interview-series-with-paul-jay
Posted by beckett2 on August 3, 2018, at 1:23:57
In reply to Re: Paul Jay and Gore Vidal, posted by sigismund on July 31, 2018, at 22:47:37
Posted by beckett2 on August 3, 2018, at 1:59:17
In reply to Re: Paul Jay and Gore Vidal, posted by sigismund on July 31, 2018, at 22:47:37
Have you read any James M Caine? Los Angeles noir. 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They'? (That's not by Caine) I was on a noir jag for sometime.
Posted by sigismund on August 3, 2018, at 19:06:53
In reply to Re: Paul Jay and Gore Vidal » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on August 3, 2018, at 1:59:17
I have not read James McCaine, but I did see 'They Shoot Horses Don't They?' in the 70s.
We're not waiting for the miracle any more. Like AH said at the start of Barbarossa 'The world will hold its breath'. We're doing that.
So it's the Chinese with the Iranians then?
Well, it's one way to live a life. I really doubt it has to be this bad.
The MEK sounds interesting. Life long celibacy, or do I have that wrong?
Posted by sigismund on August 3, 2018, at 19:12:14
In reply to Re: Paul Jay and Gore Vidal, posted by sigismund on August 3, 2018, at 19:06:53
>The MEK sounds interesting.
Too much more mention of them and the MSM may have to mention the Iran - Iraq War.
Posted by sigismund on August 3, 2018, at 19:15:12
In reply to Re: Paul Jay and Gore Vidal, posted by sigismund on August 3, 2018, at 19:12:14
Posted by beckett2 on August 3, 2018, at 20:25:45
In reply to Re: Paul Jay and Gore Vidal, posted by sigismund on August 3, 2018, at 19:12:14
What's MEK?
Posted by alexandra_k on August 6, 2018, at 6:30:41
In reply to Re: Paul Jay and Gore Vidal » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on August 3, 2018, at 20:25:45
I don't know anything about any of this...
Posted by sigismund on August 6, 2018, at 19:58:22
In reply to Re: Paul Jay and Gore Vidal » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on August 3, 2018, at 20:25:45
The MEK is the front organisation that Pompeyo and Bolton expect to take charge in Iran after the successful-whatever there, so they say. Whether they can believe that, I wouldn't know.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 8, 2018, at 15:24:03
In reply to Re: Paul Jay and Gore Vidal, posted by sigismund on August 6, 2018, at 19:58:22
I want to go to Israel and swim in the dead sea...
I suspect I'm not the only one.
Posted by beckett2 on August 8, 2018, at 20:38:25
In reply to Re: Paul Jay and Gore Vidal, posted by alexandra_k on August 6, 2018, at 6:30:41
> I don't know anything about any of this...
I might know 2% :)
Posted by beckett2 on August 8, 2018, at 21:16:16
In reply to Re: Paul Jay » sigismund, posted by alexandra_k on July 10, 2018, at 20:01:53
I know this post is from a ways back in the conversation, but, or so, economic hardship in AU is filtering onto my radar. I hadn't realized there was as much economic difficulty for many people. Is there actual homelessness? Forgive my ignorance.
> > https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/03/fiona-the-underemployed-bettong-v-malcolm-goldplated-trufflecustard-turnbull
>
> I shuddered a lot at this one.
>
> Because (if Australia is anything like NZ) there are a lot of phoney jobs out there. I mean, there are things they call 'jobs' but you need to purchase a uniform (and / or pay for the uniform to be laundered) and you need to pay for parking in the vicinity etc... Such that the hourly rate you earn is actually less then the costs involved in taking the job.
>
> I used to believe that they wouldn't make you do anything like that if you were a genuine person...
>
> But my more recent experience of things in Dunedin, particularly, leads me to believe that actually, yes, that is precisely the sort of things that some people would do.
>
> Stanford Prison Guard experiment-style. Or Nazi electrocution experiment-style.
>
> There are people who are forced to work at these job agencies. Who have quotas on how many people they need to give those awful 'jobs' to. If they don't send people to those awful jobs - then they will be next. They will be sent off to one of those awful jobs instead...
>
> These actually are the sorts of pressures some people are operating under.
>
> And it would be nice to think that these people must be fundamentally base, or something, to be treated, so.
>
> But my recent experience of things in Australia and New Zealand... And that's simply not so.
>
> And I think 'who would make all of these people do these awful things? and why?' Because there really is enough for everyones need...
>
> And I think it is about human depravity. The urges... Needs... Some people have in genuinely sadistic directions.
>
> Something about how not everyone can grow up with self-esteem. Who would dance in our strip clubs? And what would the point of a high speed internet connection be if there wasn't so much porn?
>
> People want things... And there need to be people who will do fairly much anything for money. There needs to be something that will incentive things... There need to be incentive structures. Not for meaningful work... But precisely for things that aren't meaningful work at all. The real value of it... You have to keep self esteem pretty low, indeed, because it's hard to overestimate just how sick so many people really very genuinely are...
>
>
>
>
Posted by beckett2 on August 8, 2018, at 21:28:52
In reply to Re: Paul Jay and Gore Vidal, posted by sigismund on August 3, 2018, at 19:12:14
> >The MEK sounds interesting.
>
> Too much more mention of them and the MSM may have to mention the Iran - Iraq War.Good lord! There is a limit to what I can read or catch up on. Sigh. I'm very much ignorant of Middle Eastern politics.
What surprise me was learning in a podcast that Trump had private business dealings with Iranian Revolutionary Guard before and during the election despite national sanctions. Here's a short article.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-iran-business-ties-trump-didnt-disclose
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