Yeah I actually work in a dev team where about half of us picked up programming outside of college. That includes our boss, who’s also the most technically proficient in my opinion. He went through a Microsoft-certified boot camp instead. Some of my uncles are engineers that had college paid for by their company, since they were already shown to be valuable workers without it.

I get the appeal of being able to just look for a candidate’s school instead of doing more heavy-lifting when evaluating a candidate, but the growing over-reliance is to everyone’s detriment. Companies will be missing out on some real talent, and qualified applicants have trouble getting the opportunity to prove themselves.

I am not a lawyer, but consumer protections should generally kick in when an issue is actually evaluated in a court. If you are being charged for things you believe to be unfair, you would need to refuse to pay, then see them in action after the business escalates it. Often, a predatory business will give up when it knows it doesn’t have a case. But it’s pretty hard to work on behalf of a citizen if they ultimately are convinced that they do have an obligation to pay after all.

I agree with the other commenter on the first issue. If you have been paying the amount you were charged, and then hit with surprise retroactive charges, you would have a serious case in small claims. I expect a judge would favor you if it’s as described. $1000 for late fees is exorbitant, especially when the glitch was from their software and not rectified quickly. Unless you’re leaving out relevant details that explains the situation better.

For the second issue, needlessly cumbersome cancellation processes are considered dark patterns and may be illegal in some cases. These cases are being enforced more recently, even against large companies like Amazon. For your pest control case though, if you face pushback when cancelling it’s pretty simple to tell them you won’t be using their services and will refuse to pay. If you already paid, you may be able to issue a chargeback after explaining the situation to your bank. Seeing as how you would be being charged for services not done, I don’t see how the business could contest that after being informed of the cancellation. You would still be on the hook for a (reasonable) cancellation fee, as lost business from a cancelled reservation does represent real damages.

We are a country with a litigious history and we have recognized considerable rights for consumers. Just because you feel powerless doesn’t mean you are.

Of course, and any job will expect some degree of training anyway. But there’s only so much that can be tested for before hiring someone. A degree is just a reference from the university that you meet their standards of mastery at whatever major at whatever level. Some jobs expect you to have one just like some expect you to have references from individuals, but others will have other tests for qualification which may even just be an interview conversation. Apprenticeships are pretty similar; each is an individual or group staking their reputation on vouching for your competency. Even a GED or high school diploma is a reference, just from an organization or a public institution.

There doesn’t seem to be a pattern for whatever name politicians become known by colloquially, except last name is most common. Hillary makes sense to distinguish her from Bill, but I remember people generally using her first and last. Kamala is usually Kamala, but you see Harris too. Trump is Trump, but you’ll see people use his first name at times (like r/TheDonald). Biden is still referred to as Joe occasionally. Bernie was much more common than Sanders. For supreme court justices, it’s usually last name or first and last. I’ve never seen anyone refer to AOC as just Alexandria. Obama is Obama, but I’ve seen Barack in really informal contexts. Nancy Pelosi is first and last. Elizabeth Warren is either first and last or just last.

Arguing with someone on an online forum is very rarely going to set that individual on the right path, but I like to believe others who read the back and forth may be more persuaded. I often take initiative to explore a topic I knew little about beforehand because someone asserted something I found surprising or simply suspicious. If people go as far as to post references, it’s even less of a burden on me to learn something new.

I still can’t find anything about him being a pedophile. If you have something you can link about it I would genuinely like to know.

He was never given a reason for his permanent ban, but it is thought to be for for his view on trans athletes. He was temporarily banned earlier for saying “the rioting needs to fucking stop, and if that means like white redneck fucking militia dudes out there mowing down dipshit protesters that think that they can torch buildings at ten p.m., then at this point they have my fucking blessing…” in regards to a BLM protest, which was considered inciting violence. Not saying that’s a great statement but it’s pretty clear he’s talking about rioters specifically.

But neither of these thing make him a nazi. That label shouldn’t just be thrown around casually.

It’s interesting that he seems to get a lot of accusations of being far-right by the far-left and far-left by the far-right. I don’t know if there was some controversy I missed that inspired the pedophile comment, but calling him a borderline nazi is frankly ridiculous.

Here’s the introduction to his wikipedia page for anyone curious:

Steven Kenneth Bonnell II (born December 12, 1988), known online as Destiny, is an American live-streamer and political commentator. He was among the first people to stream video games online full-time and received attention as a pioneer of the industry.[4] Since 2016, he has garnered further attention for streaming political debates with other online personalities, in which he advocates for progressivism and liberal politics.[5][6] The New York Times has described Bonnell as a liberal,[2] while Bonnell has described himself as “a very big social democrat”.[6]

I think you’ll be hard pressed to find someone progressive enough for lemmy to like that will also be interesting to a Joe Rogan fan. I would recommend Destiny though. I wouldn’t say he’s like Joe Rogan, but he frequently does debates with commentators of all politcal positions including those with similar beliefs to Joe. He has an aggressive, confrontational style that would be your best bet at trying to demonstrate the weaknesses of the views Joe would advocate for.

If you’re not familiar with his views, Destiny could probably be described as a left-leaning liberal institutionalist moderate. His community can attract a variety of viewpoints and is relatively accepting of criticism for Destiny so your brother would have an easier time interacting with them than someone like Hasan.

It’s nice you are trying to look out for your brother like this. Good luck!

It wasn’t my decision, but getting fired from an exhausting job was amazing for me. I wasn’t going to pull the trigger myself, but walking out of my boss’s office I couldn’t keep a huge grin off my face. I was in no rush to find a new job so the months of uneployment that followed were some of the happiest of my life. And I have a better job now that pays less but is so much less stressful.

Socializing well is one of the hardest struggles of being a human, and even people that are naturally social still may not get along well with others. I like to recommend the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. Think of it like a “For Dummies” book on socializing. It has a lot of real-life anecdotes for difficult social situations people overcome and how. I should mention I just pirated the audiobook for it though.

Also, like others have said, I like listening to Healthy Gamer on youtube/twitch. He’s a real, active therapist with a lot of experience helping people with these kinds of things, particularly for gamers. You can also just play it in the background while doing other things.

This is good advice. Interactions between people usually have loose scripts, but are mostly improv, and a big part of that is encouraging the other person to keep talking about what they are interested in. The hard part for me is usually when I find I don’t have much to add, but usually I try to agree and paraphrase what they’ve said. This shows you’re genuinely paying attention and care about what they have to say, and invites them to clarify or keep going. Really, just try to find things in what others say that you can agree with in general and you’ll likely be in a pretty good spot.

If you say you are of the same religion as a bigot, you’re telling the bigots that you agree with them, even if you don’t.

Hitler and I may have agreed that the sky is blue, but if someone uses this to say we agree in general, they are simply being unreasonable. There are countless denominations of Christianity as a result of people disagreeing with each other about history and values. The Christian label is not synonymous with bigotry, and we could use more counterexamples if people seem to think otherwise.

This could probqbly an alias for “user error”.

Me too!

If you want to learn how to code, can’t you just google “coding tutorial for beginners” or something similar? Probably you would need to pick a language, but that would similarly be solved with “recommended coding language for beginners”. Then it’s very easy to find a resource that starts with hello world and gradually introduces new things. And I’m sure if it moved beyond a browser toolbox, a guide for setting up whatever IDE would be included.

Learning to code is by no means easy, but it’s possibly the best type of thing to learn when it comes to having a wealth of free, easily discoverable guides. The main obstacle is choosing to put in the time, and this comic removes that obstacle by forcing them to not put it off.

Ideally, an audience would pick up on the bad-faith side not addressing arguments, engaging in personal attacks, making unjustified claims, etc. and be unimpressed. The interrupting especially should prompt some intervention by a moderator, but usually they don’t have a means of preventing it from happening other than chastising after the fact so it still relies on some degree of human decency.

I’d still call it a debate, just a poor quality one.

For anyone else curious but unfamiliar, this is from “The Second Coming”, a poem by W. B. Yeats written shortly after WWI.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)

That’s true, but the information age allows us to be more keenly aware of problems that aren’t just local. Our new ability to be online has contributed to an uptick in mental health issues.

Fortunately, being able to shine a spotlight on problems in the world also puts pressure on us to improve. We do have issues like financial inequality and global warming that have recently gotten worse, but if you look at trends like violent crime, illiteracy, global hunger, extreme poverty, child mortality, or deaths to many longstanding diseases, it is hard not to realize that we’re actually collectively doing a good job of making the world better.