those are good articles (the top 25) but the site has a left liberal bias which shows only censorship from the right. I have followed https://ground.news/ for a while which shows stories missed in what are classified as right, left and center media...
Are we really saying that a story about a world record sized pumpkin is being “censored”? Come on. At a certain point people just have to accept that “nobody cares” != “censorship”.
Dang, I guess trying to tell the world about kids getting thrown in jail for kickbacks is somehow "left liberal bias". US Conservatives have fallen so far from the Teddy Roosevelt push for small government, maintaince of our national parks, and justice for the oppressed it's actually insane
good luck - I really feel for you and know others who have struggled with similar job search frustrations...
I lost a position over a year ago and found myself scrambling for a new role as an older person in tech. I thought of a few things that might help.
In my case I was trying to move into medical tech software infra role in NYC. I needed to find ways of talking to people in the target field in a low pressure way - I got an invite to https://lunchclub.com/ and started having chats with people who worked in tech with a medical focus. I met someone who worked for the CDC and another person who was a nurse who developed a new kind of injection needle, etc
I could ask them lots of questions about their work and get comfort in talking about related topics. It helped in my case as it helped me relax - I am not extroverted and I needed to develop fluidity in this way. I am not recommending lunchclub over any other such service - it is the one I used. I would guess there are more option in this space... In my case I found a job in a nonmedical field but the company is a pretty amazing fit and I feel lucky. I feel like the ability to relax in the interview process really helped.
Another thing I thought about with your post is - consider not applying for junior positions - the ugly language in the response letter you got is telling you that I think. It requires bravery and squelching the 'impostor syndrome' feelings but you are not a junior employee. You have life experience. Look for employers that seem to signal that they will hire based upon your aptitude rather than "x years in such a position".
Another question - are you contacting companies directly? YMMV but I get much better interactions with internal recruiters than head hunters. Try targetting companies even if they don't list exactly the job you are looking for.
Are these devices (Free Style Libre) safe for contact sports? I wanted to wear one and even got a scrip for one as i am pre-diabetic. I do BJJ 4x a week and am concerned about the device on the arm getting dislodged or broken. I thought about neoprene arm sleeve, etc.
Anyone have experience with contact sports and such devices?
When I was doing a lot of sports (though nothing quite as high contact as grappling), I'd put a couple of strips of kinesiology tape over the sensor which helped a lot with keeping them on.
You need to put something non adhesive between the back of the sensor and the tape though, to avoid pulling it off when you change the tape.
Really beautiful site. Made my morning. I wear mechanical watches on a daily basis (I rotate between a few Maratec/CountyComm models) I like the size, weight and the sound and the feeling of the counter weight moving around. And the feedback of the bezel as I time an egg or a load in the dryer...
I really like the correspondence between the respect for the ingenuity of this technology and the "handcrafted" WebGL.
Last line:
"With creative use of miniature gears, levers, and springs, a mechanical watch rises from its dormant components to become truly alive."
It has a stiffness that holds its position without being tacky or sticky. doesnt slip like an ace bandage might. great for covering bandages or wrapping ankles, etc
And "Kinaesthetic tape" (KT) also nice when recouping from twists and sprains...
It looks like CountyComm sold out. I remember the type items being different (actual mil-spec over-run type of stuff), and now it looks like they're just selling tacti-cool things now.
They didn't use to have Twitter or Facebook share buttons on their comments (did they even have comments?), they didn't have a "VIP" program, carbon fiber combs, glow-in-the-dark patches that say "operator", etc.
Good for them I guess, but oh well. I guess I'll never buy that Universal Cleaning Stick from them now.
The "Coban" (=cohesive bandage) tape is great, but I've only ever seen it used on animals, for whom it's also sold as "Vet Wrap". It sticks to itself, but basically nothing else, which is great for securing things to a hairy/furry limb.
came here looking for this comment as its one of those minor peeves - duck tape is from WWII era and is a water resistant cotton tape - modern home depot duct tape is a plasticky, sticky all, purpose fastening tape (not so good for sealing ducts, btw).
There is something called gaffer's tape which I feel like might be more similar to the original duck tape.
To be really technical about it: there's a reasonably popular brand of tape called "Duck" (https://www.duckbrand.com/). They refer to their main product, which is a kind of duct tape, as "Duck Tape." To clarify that the term "Duck Tape" refers only to their company's product, they refer to it as "Duck Tape® Brand Duct Tape."
So the phrase "Duck tape" is fine, if you capitalize the first word and use it to refer to tape made by the Duck brand. Likewise, "Duck Tape" is fine, if you capitalize both words, since it is the name of the specific product line made by Duck.
In fact, if you call store-brand adhesive bandages "Band-Aids," and you call store-brand acetaminophen "Tylenol," you could argue that it makes sense to call store-brand duct tape "Duck Tape." And if you don't always capitalize "Band-Aids," you could argue that it makes sense not to capitalize "Duck Tape" either.
So I would argue that using the phrase "duck tape" to refer to duct tape is fine, provided you accept that it is effectively a genericized trademark.
Fascinatingly this folk etymology is incorrect. According to Wikipedia[0], the “duck” refers to cotton duck[1], a strong fabric that can be made waterproof, from which the original duck tape was made.
“Duct tape” (with a T) is in fact the retronym and was coined when duck tape started to be used for ducting.
All of this doesn’t explain how Duck-brand tape managed to get a trademark on an existing generic term.
To clarify: I'm not claiming that the phrase "duck tape" in its original sense was derived from the branded product "Duck Tape"; as you point out, the phrase "duck tape" came first, and was derived from cotton duck.
However, if you use the phrase "duck tape" not in its original sense, but as (effectively) a new word--as a genericization of "Duck Tape"--then you would (IMHO) be quite correct to call duct tape "duck tape."
I guess this depends on whether you think that this use of "duck tape" is actually a new sense of the phrase, or just a continued misusage of the preexisting sense.
I would argue for the former, since IIRC the phrase "duck tape" actually fell out of popular usage for a while before the time when the Duck brand emerged.
This suggests that the phrase "duck tape" was effectively resurrected with a new meaning--that of a genericized trademark derived from the "Duck Tape" brand.
Google Ngram Viewer seems to partially back this up--note that "duck tape" declined in popularity from 1943 to 1963, slightly reemerged around when the Duck Tape brand got its name in 1975, but only really took off between 1987 and 2007: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=duck+tape&year...
I can't explain why usage increased slightly between 1963 and 1975, though. Hmm...
On a tangent to the topic of adhesive bandages, as a bit of a connoisseur of tapes myself, I want to mention that the best band aids I've ever found are Nexcare Waterproof Bandages[1]. Even if you don't care about waterproofing, they stay in place massively better than any other type of band aid I've tried. Years ago, Consumer Reports rated them as the very best as well. Most other adhesive bandages, especially cheap ones, are ridiculously awful, coming undone within minutes.
There is a chess training program called "Dr Wolf" which has a learning mode where you play the computer. At certain points it asks you to switch positions to see the weakness in your previous move - it is striking how effective that is to seeing the weaknesses in one's defense.
I am not particularly skilled in chess but the LiChess puzzles are a daily practice on the subway... I think it is my favorite. I really like the puzzle scenarios where you are down material but the correct series of moves leads ot a win. This insight is a confluence with BJJ where sometimes you can be in a bad position and reverse out of it...
that is a very memorable incident - not least for the number of lives lost. I am not sure if it was deference as much as reverting to a native speech pattern in a critical moment.
"We are at takeoff" is what the pilot said and a native English speaker would have said something more like "We are taking off". A subtle difference - I grok what he was saying after the fact but in the moment the other's understanding was something like 'the KLM plane is currently at the starting point for takeoff'.
All these are just guesses on my part - I think of this incident often, particularly in terms of clarity and 'closed loop' comms under stress.
some years back I worked on a project with Korean Air on exactly that topic, cockpit communication and honorifics... A compounding factor was that pilots and crew often came from military backgrounds.
I learned about a number of air disasters and PanAm/KLM crash[1] in Tenerife 1977 really stuck with me. In the transcript a Dutch pilot says something like "We are now at take off" when he was indicating that the plane was in the process of taking off. (an idiomatic way of expression)
There was already much stress on the situation as an incident at another airport caused massive traffic rearrangement across Europe. Under stress we revert to native ways of expression. I tried to keep this incident in the back of my mind throughout the project, and since...
What is really maddening about Korean neo-confucian society is this automatic social hierarchy based on your age, as if to suggest someone who is older than you is automatically infallible and has authority over you. It was exported to Japan (Senpai and kōhai is a direct model of Korean sunbae, hoobae) but it doesn't seem to practice Confucianism this strictly, there really is no other countries that take it this extremely.
It reminds me of the Japanese invasion of Chosun dynasty, how the rigid military/confucian structure made communication impossible and largely allowed unopposed landings by Hideyoshi's army.
> It was exported to Japan (Senpai and kōhai is a direct model of Korean sunbae, hoobae) ...
Hmm I don't exactly know which way the terms were exported, but many people blame modern Korea's ageism on colonial Japan (at least partially), where the Japanese Empire tried to run itself as grandiose military barracks and trained everyone to be subject to the social hierarchy. Rigid hierarchy and hazing was a huge problem in the Imperial Japanese military.
The Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) had numerous issues but actually ageism wasn't as prevalent. Confucian scholars regularly made friends with each other over five or ten years of age difference. (You may think "so what?" but that pretty much never happens among students in modern Korea.)
Also, one reason that Joseon allowed Japanese landing at the start of the invasion of 1592 was that that division of the navy was led by Won Gyun, one of the worst admirals in Korea's history. Shortly after the war began he ordered his own fleet burned and ran away.
(Later, the legendary Yi Sunshin was imprisoned after being framed by Japanese espionage, and Won became the commander again. He then sailed the whole Korean fleet into a death trap at the battle of Chilcheonnyang, losing almost the entire fleet. Won ran away and likely died. We don't know exactly what happened to him.)
Confucianism and ageism existed far before the 19th century, the fact is that Chosun dynasty was the result of a military coup when the general tasked with attacking a weakened the neighbor Yuan dynasty (China) struggled to maintain legitimacy and thus forced upon a new state religion called Confucianism that ousted Buddhism. It was under this system rigid hierarchies regarding one's class, education, ageism were enforced. You can see the difference from the earlier Korean kingdoms like Silla that imported and cultivated Buddhism leading to female rulers and greater tolerance for "LGBT".
Chosun was rife with corruption, rigid social hierarchy except through state examinations one could join the ranks based on skill and stability. It was very stable because of the oppressive social hierarchy based on neo-confucian ideals. The royalty were corrupt and immoral (with the exception of Sejong who created the Korean alphabet) and the last Chosun queen herself spent most of the state's treasury on luxury goods.
Not many missed the Chosun dynasty, well apart from North Korea which introduced many of its traditions (punishing 3 family generations of state designated criminals is from this era), ageism, caste, oppression of women, sexual minorities and male chauvinism. In fact Japan's colonialism brought more equality and ended caste system with meritocracy. Any modern claims of "collaborators" or such are moot, because it was a failed monarchy state and Korea simply was without any political direction.
Korea's success is economic success is largely owed to the Japan (the first capital investments and transfer of technology was from Japan to normalize relations) and its imperial economic system of zaibatsu (chaebol) and the 5-year economic plan that the strongman Park Chung Hee used was straight out of Manchukuo.
anyways just rambling on here as I eat pistachios about my understanding of korean history as an outsider on a friday evening.
It isn't based on individual age. I know Korean cousins with a 20 year age difference where the younger one gets the honorific because his lineage is older and he's an earlier generation. They never speak Korean with each other.
It is. you are using a special anecdotal case in a family situation (that same person would use honorifics towards their friends who are much older) to negate the rest of Korean society that uses one's age to decide who is above and below you, and the necessary honorifics. DK effect is quite laughable to see from a non-Korean.
I invite you to address your professor or sunbae or the elderly without honorifics and see their reaction. You wouldn't be able to use your race card very long.
From my vast expertise (sarcasm) from watching Kpop, Korean variety shows, and Korean movies, the whole age thing is pretty rampant and adhered to, at least from those lenses. I mean, they have literal discussions while shooting regarding asking direct ages in order to speak "familiar" or not. It is pretty weird and arbitrary, especially with the way Koreans measure age.
those media you consume are a reflection of society. koreans use honorifics with strangers until they signal they wish to communicate casually and usually its completely subjective. somebody will only differ by mere months and demand you use honorifics (bullying). somebody will differ by few years and do not enforce it. its completely subjective and adds to the stress of interaction between strangers.
As a low-ranking middle aged average white guy from a small 1st world country: if I go to Korea can I get a status boost?
I have seen low-rank white dudes get status upgrades in other Asian countries for a variety of reasons. One architect told me how he was hanging with high status Indonesians, and how he could name-drop NZ politicians (for example, the minister of finance) because our culture means low-rank citizens can personally know people in high-rank positions. Perhaps I can manipulate the Korean status game in my favour because my background is somewhat unmeasurable.
No, they have a label for someone who tries to do what you described, they are called 루저벡홈 or literally "Losers back home", or typically a white person that uses their racial status exactly in the manner you described.
It might have worked in the 60s or in South East Asia but certainly will not work anymore in East Asia, especially in a hyper connected world. In fact many foreigners who achieved celebrity status by lying were quickly cancelled.
By large, a non-asian person in East Asia is largely limited to an exotic animal at the zoo. Somewhat of a novelty for kids and adults to point and laugh "wow! we have foreigners in our country speaking our language".
You would see the same response towards a monkey suddenly speaking Korean or Japanese.
You'd exist largely outside of the neo confucianist status structure. You'd be a foreigner in a way that is hard to understand if you've spent all your life in the heterogeneous melting pots.
I'm many cases this would apply even if you are Korean but grew up outside the hierarchy (i.e. grew up in the US)
You'd have some status as a us citizen as a white person, but it's complicated and a double edged sword
A better place to get a status upgrade could be the UK. A New Zillund accent doesnt really slot in anywhere in particular in the Brit class system so you are granted a kind of free pass while they work out your abilities. (Experience from last century - may have changed!).
If it's same as senpai/kouhai system I'm familiar with, it only works in an organization, and either you'll carry your batch number/generation ID/year joined in that org, or you're out of the system as an age-free subject matter expert.
