Let me give you a related example that should shed light on their stubbornness…

If someone gets in an accident and hits their head, they might have a concussion. How can you tell? Basic first responder training says to ask several questions. What we don’t ask is, “Are you OK?” because the patient will say “yes” even when they aren’t OK. It’s answers to the other questions that give us enough information to get a sense of whether our help is needed.

It’s quite possible that some social workers are acting in a similar fashion to first responders here. They want the details because their checklist is longer than yours. (There are other reasons that social workers might be annoying, as others have explained, too.)

That doesn’t negate your frustration, but maybe it helps you understand one cause.

Can you explain what you felt was harsh?

Finding out people’s salaries is a good thing. It’s how you prevent your bosses from screwing everyone over. Of course that information might be sensitive so don’t go around inquiring willy nilly, but it’s definitely a topic that you can and should sometimes visit.

(I know this is a s*** post so it’s all good but some people don’t realize the value in discussing salaries, and they think it’s something that has to be super secret when that only hurts you, the employee.)

You still have spending wars. Politicians are bought and sold every day, and any large company probably donates to politicians of multiple parties.

I don’t see the problem originating from Congress necessarily being polarized. I think the problem is that corporate and big money interests are too strong, and they fund politicians that will try to divide the people on social issues so that they can distract the people from badness happening on the economic front. In other words, I think we’re seeing a problem with corruption that’s expressing itself as polarization.

Even the term “polarization” can also be used as a trap, because it tends to be used in a way that frames politics as a linear spectrum, and your views are somewhere between these two end points. In reality everything is far more complicated. People have highly nuanced views on many different subjects with good reason, and there’s no way you can easily capture it on one single sliding scale.

Nobody is attacking your father here. At least I hope they aren’t. My questions were about your knowledge and beliefs.

If I told you that your assumptions about my background or wrong, and if I told you that I wasn’t confused, what would you say?

… It’s kind of sad, because you could have been part of an interesting discussion, but you got careless and decided that you would go into attack mode to protect someone who wasn’t being attacked from … I have no idea what you think you were protecting them from. Clearly they were trying to get a sense of why people have various intuitions, and presumably they are willing to be somewhat introspective about the things they grew up believing, too.

If only people could have predicted this kind of thing a few decades ago… Oh wait, they did. But still it’s weird to frame it this way. We should have natural campuses because that’s better in general, not just because of the heat island effect.

People often make bad judgments based on incomplete information. As you know, it’s a sad fact that some parents do horrible things to their children. If those children leave, never come back, and never send money, good.

Some things are common within a culture, but even in places where most people are inclined to help their aging parents, like various countries in Asia, there are still children who reasonably choose not to do so. Cultural tendencies are simply that, tendencies. If your country doesn’t have a law requiring you to provide support, it’s because lawmakers know that in some situations it might be reasonable not to do so.

Did you notice how you wrote that you would be seen as downright evil, but you didn’t say by who? I feel like that’s something you ought to consider more carefully.

You gave an example of sending your father money, but you haven’t seen him for 17 years. This raises many more questions. Does he need your money? Is your money helping? If you found out that he didn’t need your money and it’s not helping, would you stop sending it? Are you sending the money to make yourself feel good, even though it’s not helping him? How do you think he would feel if you found out you were sending him money even though you’re jobless?

Finally, you used the word “unnatural” knowing that it’s just not true. That was certainly an antagonistic approach to the issue. Is that what you intended? Was it accidental? If it was accidental, what word did you actually mean instead?

Unclear how legit they are. Don’t rush judgment, especially when the victim and his associates are narcissistic liars.

Or rather, define “legitimate”. It matters in a situation like this.

No no, the attempt was to hit theother ear. Symmetry.

Nothing. Discovered mine long before.

Diversity, my friend. What will you do if the 401k doesn’t come through like you want? Bear in mind that the ultra rich and the big banks employ people who are really good at investing money. They have more experience and information than you. They’ll bail themselves, but not you, out in case of disaster.

“Show me the money” is not a good motto for long term savings. Inflation or poor investment can make that money disappear easily enough. Of course you don’t want to get scammed, so oversight is a good idea.

Not quite tho. He has lost in court several times. Paid for it. Forced to be there when the judge ordered it. And we shall see what happens in a few months.

But anyway, it’s no secret that the ultra rich don’t need to obey the law. That’s old news, sad to say.

Many companies love undocumented workers. Easy to abuse, underpay, overwork. So of course they hate it when those workers can easily get documented or citizenship. Following the law is such an annoyance. Cuts into the profit margin. That is why big business and the nationalists often work together.

The nationalists kinda know they’re getting played to generate corporate profits, but they also enjoy having a target to look down on.

I also like the Milwaukee Roundabout. No recent videos though, sadly. Gotta respect intersections that consistently pwn drivers.

I agree that the 24-hour news cycle is pretty horrendous and leads to a lot of unneeded political badness. At the same time, going back to the old style of political news is also a mistake. Hell, it let Nixon get reelected.

Rather than either of those options, it’s important for people to realize that they are actively consuming the news, and one way to protect themselves from being manipulated is to consume the news in different ways and from different sources. It’s surprisingly easy to do that these days, if you have a couple of different social media accounts or use an RSS reader, for example. Of course there are many other ways. It is our own personal responsibility to be active and aware enough to avoid getting manipulated in predictable ways.

• Shawshank
• The Great Escape
• Beyond the Clouds
• Groundhog Day

If something is in the public domain, there is no copyright covering it, so you should make as many copies as you feel like. Many public domain books are posted on the Internet Archive, where you can easily download them in various formats. Then you won’t have to work hard to get the data. Public domain artwork, likewise, is often available on Wikimedia Commons.