AAA: Ask America Anything

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Madrigal
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Re: AAA: Ask America Anything

Post by Madrigal » Mon Jun 21, 2021 1:16 am

ashi wrote:
Sat Jun 19, 2021 11:34 pm
I have no sense of the timeline, but at present anti-union sentiment is extremely strong. They just take your money for nothing and block changes that would create new jobs. That coupled with the running narrative that you deserve to earn so little money and suffer, because only lazy people stay in those sorts of jobs.
That last sentence actually reminded me of this exchange I had with an American guy who was laughing his ass off because some workers at a box-making factory protested the closing of their plant. He was like, "Dude! You fold boxes! Get another job!" After my initial astonishment, the idiosyncrasy behind that reaction struck me as hilarious.

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jyng1
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Re: AAA: Ask America Anything

Post by jyng1 » Mon Jun 21, 2021 2:00 am

ashi wrote:
Sat Jun 19, 2021 11:34 pm
I have no sense of the timeline, but at present anti-union sentiment is extremely strong. They just take your money for nothing and block changes that would create new jobs. That coupled with the running narrative that you deserve to earn so little money and suffer, because only lazy people stay in those sorts of jobs.
Non union labour in the U.S. makes 81 cents to Unionised labours $1.00

I don't know how much money they take a fees in the US but it would have to be a lot to negate the 20% wage advantage.

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SomeInternetBloke
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Re: AAA: Ask America Anything

Post by SomeInternetBloke » Mon Jun 21, 2021 2:47 am

@Ashi, I like how you leaned into the honesty of that answer.

"Yeah, it was vewy good ... just like a syringe of chocolate chip cookie dough. *heroin nod* mmmmm" :cookies:
"My favourite song from one of my favourite albums, Nena asking you to please, please let her be your pirate. So smooth and joyful, I have to listen to it three times if I listen once" - ashi

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ashi
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Re: AAA: Ask America Anything

Post by ashi » Mon Jun 21, 2021 5:16 am

jyng1 wrote:
Mon Jun 21, 2021 2:00 am
ashi wrote:
Sat Jun 19, 2021 11:34 pm
I have no sense of the timeline, but at present anti-union sentiment is extremely strong. They just take your money for nothing and block changes that would create new jobs. That coupled with the running narrative that you deserve to earn so little money and suffer, because only lazy people stay in those sorts of jobs.
Non union labour in the U.S. makes 81 cents to Unionised labours $1.00

I don't know how much money they take a fees in the US but it would have to be a lot to negate the 20% wage advantage.
I was characterising the anti-union sentiment. That sentence wasn't treated kindly by the editting process.

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SomeInternetBloke
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Re: AAA: Ask America Anything

Post by SomeInternetBloke » Tue Jun 22, 2021 12:01 pm

ashi wrote:
Sat Jun 19, 2021 11:34 pm
I am not sure I am capable of fielding a convincing answer to this
K, no prob. Another question - kinda vague: do you like gators? Anything about you that corresponds with alligators only shortened as in, gators? Do you like the color green? Are you fond of roommates and the city of Vancouver? Just checking. No reason. Don't bother if I'm out in left field. Also, pick a number between 1 and 5. I'll get it right every time. Don't believe me? Just watch *cues brown skinned brass band*.
"My favourite song from one of my favourite albums, Nena asking you to please, please let her be your pirate. So smooth and joyful, I have to listen to it three times if I listen once" - ashi

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Utisz
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Re: AAA: Ask America Anything

Post by Utisz » Sun Jun 27, 2021 7:04 am

ashi wrote:
Sat Jun 19, 2021 11:34 pm
If you mean from the other side, well ... Canada gets a lot of the most clumsily ignorant Americans because it s far more accessible than anywhere else in the world as you don't need a passport or pesky foreign language skills to enter or navigate. (Americans will wander into Québec, stare blankly at anyone speaking French to them, and complain about signs being in French. (85% of the population speaks French natively. Many more do as a second language. Including the large number of African immigrants.) Something that only baffles me more as time goes on because peopel seem to speak non-English language everywhere in the US that I have been ... specifically, I hear Spanish and Arabic daily.
This also (pleasantly) surprised me in New York. Was there with a Chilean PhD student whose English is not so good, but to whom I am grateful because when I first arrived to Chile, he would speak Spanish to me when hardly nobody else would. Anyways, we were speaking Spanish a lot in New York and it surprised me that a lot of (non-hispanic) people would talk to us in Spanish. Like waiters and waitresses in restaurants and stuff. Kinda broke a stereotype for me that a lot of (non-hispanic, non-Asian) folks in the U.S. are monolingual.
I have no sense of the timeline, but at present anti-union sentiment is extremely strong. They just take your money for nothing and block changes that would create new jobs. That coupled with the running narrative that you deserve to earn so little money and suffer, because only lazy people stay in those sorts of jobs.
If I understand the lay of the land correctly, there was a lot of union corruption, and the old-school unions were often intertwined with mob-ish influences, or at least with more mundane forms of corruption. This has muddied the waters considerably regarding unions?

My perspective of unions in the U.S. is also influenced a bit by police unions, which I perceive to be influential, but in a harmful way, kinda like those unions relating to those with power amplify that power, but unions to represent the powerless don't even exist?

That's a huge pity. The lack of collective bargaining in the U.S. seems to create a huge power imbalance.
They are only more liberal if you mean "obsessed with developing and organising around dubious micro-identities at the cost of class analysis and collective action". There is no longer any meaningful left in the US or Canada, and I'm not going to cheer for neoliberalism in pink hair and a pride T-shirt just because the only alternative is slightly worse. Liberals, mostly liberal men, have spent the last 50 years waiting for the problem people to die out while becoming them because in general, men grow more conservative as they age while women grow more radical and ignored/marginalised.
My overall impression is/was that those obsessed with micro-identities are overly amplified in social media, relative to the actual representation, also amplified by the right. Like a lot of ire (like CRT) is really a thing invented by the right to broadly paint the left with?
Right now, what the super woke endlessly self-congratulatory young people are doing in not voting at all while harassing reporters and candidates for the tiniest perceived misstep and comparing feminists to nazis for suggesting things like "women are oppressed on the basis of their sex". Which I realise sounds insane, but I have spent the last ten years watching feminists be harassed and attacked as these loons are increasingly brazen and free to protest any feminist event, and even libraries for carrying their books, with impunity. I have no hope for or faith in any of these assholes.
It reminds me of something I heard about U.S. politics like the people on the right will vote for the devil if they lean towards any of the shibboleth policies (anti-abortion, pro-guns, etc.), whereas the left are looking to fall in love and will hate anyone who makes the slightest misstep.
starjots wrote:
Sun Jun 20, 2021 6:45 am
We are going to attend a kid's 'real' wedding in Mexico, I hope, this September. My wife is concerned about how formal they may or may not be - my daughter-in-law's family comes from Mexico City and are much more sophisticated than we are.
I'd say that they locals won't really care. I mean inevitably they will put it down to cultural differences, and probably they are also concerned about making y'all at home.

This was a thing for my brother's wedding as well. He got married to someone from Malaysia, and her father owns several hospitals there, or something, very well to do, whereas my family is from rural Ireland. I dunno. I think most of those sorts of problems are invented in people's own heads.

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Catoptric
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Re: AAA: Ask America Anything

Post by Catoptric » Wed Jul 14, 2021 5:57 am

Does this experiment explain the "PC" or new liberal culture taking effect?

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/t ... ts-of-nimh
The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the ‘Rats of NIMH’ (and the cartoon 'The Secret of NIHM' is probably inspired from it)

The experiment was repeated many times and each time the colony collapsed, resulting from a 'Behavioral Sink.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
Societal egress and ennui
Hello / Goodbye / Just a moment / Nothing / Cosmic / Man / Dream / Civilization / Open / Contact / Tremble / Gas / Memory / Transcend / ^2

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Spartan26
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Re: AAA: Ask America Anything

Post by Spartan26 » Sun Jul 18, 2021 5:53 pm

Utisz wrote:
Sun Jun 13, 2021 6:54 am
Is it true in the U.S. that people really need to work two jobs to survive? Like I saw a documentary that was talking about an EMT (aka. a skilled worker), and he had to work two jobs just to have a basic standard of living.
This is really sad and it really depends on a number of factors. Many skilled laborers have second jobs to pay off school debt, they live in expensive areas but are starting off, or they are saving for a house. Some like nice things like an electric bmw, tons of subscription services and meal kits delivered to their door. In their defense, they're prolly saving not paying one bill in exchange for something else. Like no fuel charge and not eating out as much. But it's hella expensive out here. Boomers would get mad at younger generations "wasting" money on avocado toast but really the $20/month they save really isn't going to help when they need to retire. Like great, that $3,000 you socked away by going no-frills, will buy you an extra 1/2 month at the nursing home. Good luck to ya!
Utisz wrote:
Sun Jun 13, 2021 6:54 am
Also do you ever use the metric system? Do any products use metric in terms of litres or grams?
Lemme answer the second part of that question first. All Americans know what two litres are because that's what the size of soda pop bottles. I would say pot smokers will know what grams & kilos are but then ask coke users and they'd give you a totally different guesstimate.

We're cool with 100 meters when it comes to the Olympics track races but we've seen Canadian football and reject it on grounds that the 100 meter field is too big.

starla
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Re: AAA: Ask America Anything

Post by starla » Sun Jul 18, 2021 6:10 pm

Utisz wrote:
Sun Jun 13, 2021 6:54 am
I do have one or two more questions.

To the men of the U.S. and/or Canada, if you have like a jacket that zips all the way down, is the zip itself on the right or the left? To the women of the U.S. and/or Canada, if you have like a jacket that zips all the way down, is the zip itself on the right or the left? (Also accepting answers from other countries, and also buttons on trousers.)
The zip is on the right. I think.
Utisz wrote:
Sun Jun 13, 2021 6:54 am
Is it true in the U.S. that people really need to work two jobs to survive? Like I saw a documentary that was talking about an EMT (aka. a skilled worker), and he had to work two jobs just to have a basic standard of living.
Wages for EMTs are scandalously low. Like, I would not want a grocery store cashier in charge of saving my life, but that's about how these folks are paid. I have no idea why anyone does it. Most other skilled work pays well enough in most areas to have a decent standard of living, but most Americans are shit with their finances. I have a coworker who is an operator in our factory and her boyfriend is an electrician, and she talks about how they could have owned a paid off house by now if they didn't go to the casinos every weekend. Most spend their money on crap though, not gambling. And they need a big house to house all their crap. Maybe they could afford a small one, but then they'd have to get rid of their crap. You also see people doing stupid shit like spending $40k on a motorcycle for commuting so they can save money on gas. Idk how many years it takes for something like that to pay off, but that's a lot of gas at US prices. And this guy had 3 kids so he still had to keep his car. Unfortunately, housing prices are through the roof right now, so unless you have a wad of stock option money to throw at it, owning a home is out of reach for most first timers these days. Rents are very local; in some areas they're climbing at an alarming pace and in others they're falling.
Utisz wrote:
Sun Jun 13, 2021 6:54 am
Also do you ever use the metric system? Like would you be able to convert from MPH to KPH? Do any products use metric in terms of litres or grams? Or would you know your own height in metres, or you own weight in kilos? (What about Celsius?)
I use the metric system at work. I use the internet to convert. I weigh about 55 kilos, I think.

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Utisz
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Re: AAA: Ask America Anything

Post by Utisz » Wed Jul 21, 2021 3:50 am

starla wrote:
Sun Jul 18, 2021 6:10 pm
Most other skilled work pays well enough in most areas to have a decent standard of living, but most Americans are shit with their finances.
That's interesting! I would have said the opposite somehow, that Americans in general tend to be more frugal (maybe out of necessity). I guess it's all relative though. Like if you compare that with somewhere like Argentina where inflation is out of whack and people just spend as much as they can ... might be an extreme case though.

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