Sliwa being tacked on like an afterthought was hilarious to me for some reason
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Not inherently, but I went to a school where the enforcement of the uniform code was overly Draconian. For example, there was a rule that boots were not allowed, so at the beginning of term, they had students line up and pull their trousers legs up so that an assistant headteacher could measure how high the shoes went (because that was one of the ways they defined shoes Vs boots). My step-brother's new school shoes were 1cm too tall, and they sent him home with a note saying that boots weren't permitted.
My step-mum called up the school and went ballistic at them for it, refusing to buy another pair of shoes. This was a socioeconomically poor area in which many families would struggle to afford one pair of shoes at the beginning of the year, so this assholish enforcement of the rules was absurd. If you can only tell that the shoes aren't permitted when a student pulls up their trouser legs, what is the problem?
I think that some of the logic behind the strict uniform code was that there was a perception that higher performing schools in better areas would have nicer school uniforms, and I wonder whether they were trying to work backwards from that, as if maintaining the uniform code could defy all the socioeconomic adversity that families in this area faced.
Aside from the excessive enforcement, I like the uniform code. It can mask income disparities within the student body if everyone is wearing the same thing. I felt insecure about how poor my family was, and it would've been worse without the uniform, I think. I also liked not having to think about what to wear, and it seemed to make it easier for my mum to strategise laundry to ensure we always had clean uniform to wear.
I also liked wearing a blazer because it meant I always had reliable pockets. Important things like my phone and my bus pass went in my inside pocket, which had a zip. Then there were two large exterior pocket which were good for pens and the like. It made it easier to avoid losing or forgetting things.
I think a happy medium would be possible. School uniforms could act as a blank canvas on which students could experiment with other forms of self expression.
My own country (the UK).
That's a weird response to the question, given that I do currently reside here. However, I don't feel like I'm doing much living. There's so much more that I could be doing if I wasn't constantly struggling for money
I used to do this, because it didn't seem to cause any issues — until it did, and I lost a lot of data.
Friends tell me that seeing Kneecap live was incredible
Any recommendations for punk electronic music? I've been wanting to get into making electronic music because disability means that's a more accessible genre for me than playing traditional instruments, but it's daunting to get into a new genre
Edit: this accessibility thing is also why electronic music, as a genre, has so much potential to be punk, which I find very cool
I'm sorry that you find this relatable. Unfortunately, I do too. It seems pretty unlikely that your parents aren't your real parents, but regardless, it's valid and okay to wish that you had different parents.
I don't necessarily wish that I had different parents, but more that I wish my parents were different people when they had me. That probably doesn't make much sense, but what I mean is that I am estranged from my parents because it wasn't possible to have an emotionally safe relationship with them. My mom in particular tried her best, but she was pretty messed up from abuse that she suffered as a child. I often wonder how things could've been different if she'd been able to get a bunch of therapy and find a supportive community before she had kids.
Like I say, it's okay to feel wistful, just try not to ruminate too much. The key thing to remember is that you deserve good parents, and it's reasonable to feel grief if that's not something you have; I've found that trying to force myself to not feel hurt by the unfairness can just make the sadness more intrusive.
Having shitty parents is a pretty tough disadvantage, and certainly I often wonder how many of my mental health problems are attributable to my childhood. Your background doesn't need to define you though. I know many people who, like me, became properly estranged from their parents, and felt liberated afterwards. It sucks that I had to go no contact with them, but after I had the freedom to build a life of my own, it was a healthy step. I also know many who were able to build a healthier relationship with their parents as adults — basically what I tried to do, but it worked out well for them.
The point that I'm trying to make is that you're not defined by your parents. Not now and not ever. Just never forget that you deserve love, care and respect, especially from your family. I've found this is a key thing for avoiding the wistfulness spiral into a deeper depression. If your blood family isn't able or willing to give you the support you need to thrive, then take it from me that family isn't just something you have by blood, but it can be something you build, and that found family is valid.
For a while, I was subscribed as a patron to Elisabeth Bik's Patroeon. She's a microbiologist turned "Science Integrity Specialist" which means she investigates and exposes scientific fraud. Despite doing work that's essential to science, she has struggled to get funding because there's a weird stigma around what she does; It's not uncommon to hear scientists speak of people like her negatively, because they perceive anti-fraud work as being harmful to public trust in science (which is obviously absurd, because surely recognising that auditing the integrity of research is necessary for building and maintaining trust in science).
Anyway, I mention this because it's one of the most dystopian things I've directly experienced in recent years. A lot of scientists and other academics I know are struggling financially, even though they're better funded than she is, so I can imagine that it's even worse for her. How fucked up is it for scientific researchers to have to rely on patrons like me (especially when people like me are also struggling with rising living costs).
Ultimately it's up to you, but my view is that our best way of resisting AI is to build community and human connection. A friend who is an artist told me that AI has changed how and where they share their art, but that it would feel like a form of "complying in advance" if they stopped sharing their art at all.
They said that they feel completely confident that AI art will never be able to replace human art, because to them, art is fundamentally a conversation, and Generative AI is incapable of participating in a conversation, no matter how good it gets at emulating real artists.
I'm turning the terminal font green so I feel like a Real Hacker(TM)
(Though when I'm actually coding stuff, I change it back because syntax highlighting doesn't work when everything is green)
It does mean something to them, but not in a way that will stop you from getting laid off; what it means is that after laying you off, they'll quickly come to regret it and scramble to try to fill the knowledge gap they now have. I know a few people who were called up by the company basically begging them to help. A couple of people I know were able to leverage this to get a short term position contracting (at exorbitantly higher rates than their salary way), and a few others instead just cackled in schadenfreude.
Sometimes I do get YouTube telling me that I need to disable my adblocker to access a video, so they do try to block that stuff (though I suspect that the infrequency with which this happens combined with the fact that not everyone does experience it when some people do report this happening suggests that they're just testing methods of detection and blocking)
Usually when it happens, I just go into my Ublock settings and update stuff. I can't remember that ever not working. It feels like a low-key arms race, in a cold-war kind of way
Gay humans exist today, they existed throughout history, and they will continue to exist for as long as humans do.
Do you consider Uhura being a bridge officer to be "pushing a narrative"? Because that was a political statement in much the same way that gay characters in Star Trek are (arguably more so).
It sucks to be a person whose very existence is political in this world that we live in now. Sci-Fi that includes those people is a way of saying "hey, wouldn't it be nice if people could live their lives without their existence being the battleground for political ideology.
One of the people who provides disability related support to me is Welsh and I can't wait to show her this
I was talking about this recently with someone (read: ranting as they nodded sympathetically) and I finished up by saying "what's the point of 'smart' tech if the humans who use it are steadily disempowered and ultimately, made less smart?"
I've recently been dabbling in HomeAssistant and learning how to set things up properly feels like it's been making me more smart.
A friend of a friend worked at a petrochemical plant of some sort. They took the job reluctantly, because they had been struggling to find work for the kind of engineer that they were without it being somewhere deeply unethical. They reportedly ended up covertly feeding intel to climate action protesters and direct action groups.
Apparently it helped somewhat, but it was still pretty stressful
Do you have a link? Because if you tell me you found it but don't tell me where, then that may put you at risk of being in the same ring of hell as people who comment "nvm, solved it" to their tech forum posts.
If you weren't so determined to feel offended, you'd see that there's plenty of chill white dudes in this scene. You are welcome here, if you would only be open to actually being a part of building a community. You don't need an invite to this party, you just need to be open to working with others with different lived experience to your own.
We'd love to have you, if you ever decide to open yourself up to growth.
I'm not sure. The purpley pink one reminds me of the bi flag, and the pink one reminds me of the pink used in the lesbian flag, but those flags both contain other colours. If I had to guess, the artist was trying to keep it vague because it would be difficult to include flags of all relevant communities.
I think it may be a deliberate choice for the other dice to not map directly onto other flags, so as not to detract from the trans flag. Indeed, while LGBTQ+ people of all sorts are facing oppression in the current US regime, trans people are the demographic that's most "on the front lines", so I agree with the choice if so.
Vim has long since won the war. I say that as an emacs user who is familiar with using vim because it's installed by default on the vast majority of computers I interact with nowadays