After studying Spanish for years and helping out latinos who need help with English I"m always glad I grew up speaking it. Never mind the vowels, figuring out the accented syllable in a word can be an ordeal. For example "democrat" and "advocate" both are accented on the first syllable but "democracy" and "advocacy" have different stressed syllable locations.

Spelling and pronunciation are far less complex in Spanish and it's easy to determine the accented syllable in a word. But they make up for it with the subjunctive tense. And the past preterite vs. past imperfect, I still struggle with those.

Just going by your original statement I was hoping you were just being vague.

In times of stress it can be difficult to know if you own a gun or if the gun owns you.

*fist bump*

I've been following this story here. Sure was happy when they were found alive -- I had started to lose much hope after they'd been gone 4+ days.

The bad news today is that a Thai volunteer diver, a former SEAL, died on a return trip from setting up extra air supply tanks along the route. BBC coverage is very good:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44734385

Most cave diving experts think that it would be extremely risky to try to move the kids out by diving. One of the on-scene people from the US has said that none of the boys know how to swim, let alone dive, and the conditions in cave diving make it so that panic can quickly lead to disaster.

Unfortunately, a new complication has come up. Oxygen levels in the chamber they are in are now at 15%, down from the usual 21%. They are working to get piping in to supply fresh air, but logistics of that are difficult since they need about 3 miles of piping. And to make matters worse, heavy rains are in the forecast, which will further stress the pumping that they are doing to keep water levels low in the cave.

The Thai head of the Navy rescue operation was quoted today as saying that "At first, we thought the children could stay for a long time... but now things have changed, we have a limited time." If that is correct and can't be resolved (due to dropping oxygen levels, rising water, or whatever), they may have to opt for the risky exit via diving. So definitely not out of the woods yet.

More Black Men Are In Prison Today Than Were Enslaved In 1850.
Knowing the past is important to understanding the future. There have been improvements, but there are still disparities too numerous to list. The thought that blacks make up excuses is just ignoring present realities they have to deal with.

As for getting over slavery, well Blacks have been free less then half the time they were enslaved in this country. Studies have even concluded the stressful, violent and brutal traumas experienced over lifetimes of generations of enslaved people may even be pass down to there offspring.

Epigenetics, if one believes in that sorta thing, could lead to explaining why on top of current modern day racial based micro aggressions, bias and abuses of power things within the Black population as a whole in america are still broken. Neither political party is willing to address that.

I don't have any experience with this kind of mental illness. She was very scary to me.

But then at the end, it was clear she was in complete stress and fear and my heart broke for her.

Your video, The psychology of post-traumatic stress disorder, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_America_News_Network


The formation of the organization was announced on March 14, 2013 by Herring Networks, Inc., an independent and family-owned national video programming company owns and operates OAN and sister channel AWE (formerly WealthTV; the initialism being an acronym for "A Wealth of Entertainment"). When the network began in 2013 it had a limited partnership with The Washington Times.[1]

The network launched with the intention of targeting a conservative-leaning audience with OAN President Charles Herring telling CPAC that, “Fox News has done a great job serving the center-right and independent audiences...But those who consider themselves liberal have a half dozen or more choices on TV each day from which to get their news.”[8] Herring also stressed the network's separation of news and opinion content, with straight news reporting throughout the day and limited opinion commentary from evening talk shows, including The Daily Ledger hosted by Graham Ledger and The Tipping Point hosted by Liz Wheeler. Early advertisements for the channel touted the network's lack of commentary and focus on straight news reporting.[9] The channel was formally launched on July 4, 2013.

As of August 2017, One America News Network reached 35 million homes and had nationwide distribution from DirecTV, DirecTV Now, Verizon FiOS TV, AT&T U-verse, Frontier Communications, CenturyLink PRISM TV, and numerous regional video distributors.[10]

But can you blame 'all' of the problem on Bush/Obama?

I can recall many changes in the 80's from Reagan, huge cuts to school lunch programs, and many attempts to either reduce or totally eliminate the Department of Education.

In 89, Bush Sr. and the Governors of 'every' state held a summit, where they developed some of the first goals for future changes to education. These included some of the first recommended changes to standards-based education.

During both of Clinton's terms they steamed ahead at full speed on these goals, leading to massive changes forcing standards-based education. They implemented ESEA, which was succeeded by the two later programs you mentioned.

So we clearly can't pin it to just one group, as both led the charge at one point or another. This is what I meant by my statement. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives can point a finger and say, "Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?" They both grasped it and wielded it.

So, now as you mention, we have a climate which puts incredible importance on standardized testing. Because of this, and how the schools are funded, students are basically learning how to pass a test based on minimum standards as set by the government. Students aren't taught what they 'can' learn, but what the government thinks they 'should' learn.

I graduated in 1992, so I missed the true first wave of standardized tests. But if I had not been, I know I would have been *incredibly* frustrated at being forced to learn at a slower pace because all students needed to pass. I can almost guarantee I would have acted out, become more of a clown and troublemaker than I actually was in school, because I would have been bored to tears.

As you mention also, we have a highly media based group of children today. I agree cell phones should be not be allowed.

As far as the publishers, perhaps it is less than noble to prey upon the environment that we have currently. I can't blame them, however, because it would be akin to blaming cell phone makers for making products that children want for connectivity to social media. Like any company, they are in it for a profit. It just happens to be that currently the profit is more in tests than innovative learning tools/textbooks. They are simply doing what they have to do, like any corporation. I'm sure a lot of that includes lobbying to keep standards based education in place.

We can blame a lot of different groups, even parents. But that isn't solving the issue. I have my ideas of how to begin fixing it, which may differ from yours because I am not in the 'business' nor do I have children. I would say the following would be some baseline changes I would implement or suggest:

1. School Uniforms - It makes it harder to differentiate between children and helps against the forming of cliques.

2. A complete 180 from standards based education.

3. We have to invest more money into hiring more teachers. Smaller classes means less stress, more personal interaction, and more time for the teacher to be aware of 'problems' before they blow up.

4. Students should only be allowed to access devices owned by the school, ones that are for education and not instagram. What they have available before and after school is on their parents, but they shouldn't have it in class.

5. I will probably take some flack, but I do believe that vouchers should be allowed versus forced public school attendance. Forcing people who cannot afford private schooling to send their children to public education means you remove choice of the quality of learning. Once public schools start to even out in quality due to the aforementioned changes, then we can remove vouchers.

Pretty good video. Specific things:

Too many prostitutes: Most of the non-Thai people that complain about this went to the wrong places in Thailand. Pattaya was a tiny fishing village before the Vietnam war. Then, soldiers started getting shipped into the country for R&R. The Thai government didn't really know what to do with them, so they sorta passed the buck and decided to send them to Pattaya to relax. Bunch of stressed out dudes there, nothing to do, high demand for alternate activities ... the market answered.

Fast forward to today, and Pattaya knows exactly what put it on the map. I hate that place -- it is like what would happen if you took the worst/sleaziest elements of Vegas and Tijuana, and then built a "city" around it. Shittiest beach in Thailand, chock full of sleaze, disgusting. However, it is one of the most major tourist destinations. Gee, why could that be? Is it in spite of the nature of the place, or because of it? No false advertising here, you know what you're getting when you book a trip there. And if that is your thing, more power to ya.

Now, I don't want to act like prostitution exists in Pattaya and Soi Cowboy / Patpong in Bangkok, and is absent elsewhere. Far from it. Every town, down on to tiny ones, likely has a red-light district and brothels. The ones you hear about are sex tourism pits like those major ones, but the trade is alive and well pretty much everywhere -- and mostly caters to local Thais.

I've honestly never been to such an establishment or sought those services (in 11 years of being here), but I don't care that they are available. The most significant negative is that they are NOT well-regulated like, say, what I've heard about Amsterdam. Prostitution is technically illegal in Thailand. So the de-facto situation is that brothels have to pay protection money to police in order to avoid getting shut down or "inspected", etc.

Corruption is a major problem -- much worse than prostitution, in my opinion.


Too many ladyboys: It is certainly true that there are more trans people per capita here than pretty much anywhere else that I know of. It took me a while, being a country kid from Kansas, but I see that in pretty much the same light as the German narrator in the video at this point. Acceptance is good. You do you, man.

As a stereotype on the flip side of the coin, I think the ladyboys tend to be great in custom interaction kinds of jobs. Cashiers at 7-11, waitpeople at restaurants, etc. Polite, attentive, helpful. And often the most willing to attempt to use English. A lot of the best students that I've taught English to have been ladyboy leaning.


Freedom: I'm with @Mordhaus here. When your personal liberty is mainly due to the apathy / incompetence of the governing authority, and they may choose to get off their asses and revoke that at any time ... perhaps it isn't something to brag about. Very basic stuff like dissenting speech and protesting is met with being carted off for little re-education chats, etc. Pretty scary shit, actually.


Basically I tend to think that just like anywhere on Earth, there's a lot of good here and plenty of bad too. There's plenty of legitimate gripes with cultural elements and stuff in Thailand, but the most common ones (that the video pretty accurately listed) are pretty insignificant in my opinion.

You have a point, it was always double OH seven.

I remember the stress put on distinguishing zero from O back in college CS classes, quite a while ago. Presumably for the sake of the keypunch operators' time.

Indeed, when the only way of producing a character is to write it, distinguishing a character from a glyph may seem to depend on an absurdly fine point. Printers had to understand, but most people weren't printers. I have seen a number of older typewriters that dispensed with both 0 and 1: One just used O and l instead.

*howto as well. That must be a tame porcupine they took to the wild. I've never met one in the wild that wasn't stressed around people

I could probably work in a different field if the employer was willing to make certain exemptions for my issues. Realistically, I would have a very hard time dealing with stress and some of my meds would make working difficult (or even getting to work in some cases). Working in a high stress field like I was would be nigh impossible.

Thankfully, I have been in the right place at the right time (for the most part, in my career. I've worked for quite a few big-name tech companies at their height and I was always one of those people who took judicious advantage of employee stock options, so while not rich in any way, I am comfortably well off enough to basically 'retire' early. My wife works a job she loves, we own our home, and we decided against having kids a long time ago, so we are doing fine.

As a former employee under both Jobs and Cook, I can tell you exactly what is wrong with Apple.

When I started with Apple, every thing we were concerned with was innovating. What could we come up with next? Sure, there were plenty of misses, but when we hit, we hit big. It was ingrained in the culture of the company. Managers wanted creative people, people who might not have been the best worker bee, but that could come up with new concepts easily. Sometimes corporate rules were broken, but if you could show that you were actively working towards something new, then you were OK.

Fast forward to when Cook started running the show, Steve was still alive, but had taken a backseat really. Metrics became a thing. Performance became a watchword. Managers didn't want creative thought, they wanted people who would put their nose to the grindstone and only work on things that headquarters suggested. Apple was no longer worried about innovating, they were concerned with 'maintaining'.

Two examples which might help illustrate further:

1. One of the guys I was working with was constantly screwing around in any free moment with iMovie. He was annoyed at how slow it was in rendering, which at the time was done on the CPU power. Did some of his regular work suffer, yeah. But he was praised because his concepts helped to shift some of the processing to the GPU and allow real time effects. This functionality made iMovie HD 6 amazing to work with.

2. In a different section of the company, the support side, a new manager improved call times, customer service stats, customer satisfaction, and drastically cut down on escalations. However, his team was considered to be:

a. making the other teams look bad

and

b. abusing the use of customer satisfaction tools, like giving a free iPod shuffle (which literally costs a few dollars to make) to extremely upset customers.

Now they were allowed to do all of these things, no rules were being broken. But Cook was mostly in charge by that point and he was more concerned with every damn penny. So, soon after this team blew all the other teams away for the 3rd month in a row, the new manager was demoted and the team was broken up, to be integrated into other teams willy-nilly.

Doing smart things was no longer the 'thing'. Toeing the line was. Until that changes, nothing is going to get better for Apple. I know I personally left due to stress and health issues from the extreme pressure that Cook kept sending downstream on us worker bees. My job, which I had loved, literally destroyed my health over a year.

Holy shit i just went over to FB where he posted this video. The first few comments i read were so insanely toxic and stressful that I had to immediately go for a bike ride to help rid me of the anxiety.

Thank you sifters for being reasonable decent people.

If he is "following orders", then the top brass needs to get their shit together. There's no reason they can't organize the volunteers and dispatch them so they know who/where they are and what areas have already been helped. But I guess when your town's underwater, fuck help from Yankees.

Part of me wishes the driver would have just said, "There's a nice way to do that". I can't speak for the officer, but on it's face the interaction is shitty. Maybe he's super stressed about his own stuff. Maybe he's upset about having to help others and no one to help him. Maybe he thinks his orders (if there are any) are really stupid and is at odds with his superiors.

Whatever the case, ultimately he ends up doing a poor job of representing his dept., the city, and cops in general. Hope he and others learn.