DesertFox-
The very model of a modern major general
+794|6654|United States of America
I've just come out of the rabbit hole and it does seem all quite the facade. Some fucking like 21-year old with an awful haircut is tryna charge $8k for lifestyle consulting. Get the fuck outta here, kid.

People bragging about a bunch of big businessy numbers and taking pictures of fancy hotels and from planes, but the only actual businesses I've seen are like franchising various shitty stores or flipping shitty looking houses. You'd think with all the money they're allegedly making, they could retire early and enjoy life. It's all for showing off to the other rubes on the internet, though, seemingly. It's honestly kinda sad.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
There are actually very few industry consultants in my arena, you work for a company or you don't.

In my whole career I've only had contact with one consultant, and he was a retiree who pottered along for a bit longer with the same company because they just couldn't find anyone else.
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uziq
Member
+492|3422

DesertFox- wrote:

I've just come out of the rabbit hole and it does seem all quite the facade. Some fucking like 21-year old with an awful haircut is tryna charge $8k for lifestyle consulting. Get the fuck outta here, kid.

People bragging about a bunch of big businessy numbers and taking pictures of fancy hotels and from planes, but the only actual businesses I've seen are like franchising various shitty stores or flipping shitty looking houses. You'd think with all the money they're allegedly making, they could retire early and enjoy life. It's all for showing off to the other rubes on the internet, though, seemingly. It's honestly kinda sad.
this sounds like a totally regular 'influencer' flex. social media platforms are littered with these grifters who front as if they are highly successful and 'manifest' their success. it's all about curating the outward image of a successful person.

i think the trump era really emboldened these people and brought the grift into the mainstream. trump himself was an acolyte of a legendary 'lifestyle guru' who wrote the textbook on 'positive visualization' and 'the power of positive thinking'.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
America has had snake oil salesmen a while now, its not really new.
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
yes but the trend lately towards people shilling 'lifestyle programs' is relatively new, like the 'wellness' industry which intersects with this stuff in gross and interesting ways. or like, for instance, a renewed interest in astrology and horoscopes, or healing crystals, or whatever the fuck in younger people nowadays (especially girls). these things come and go in waves and right now the irrationalist-claptrap grift is way on the ascendancy.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story … ng-215704/
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Yes, the automation dividend is paid in full, now no-one knows what to do or how to earn money.

An - um - friend in the UK tried literally everything, masseuse, aromatherapist, reiki healing, beauty treatments, a - um-  few other things and eventually teacher - when she started teaching massage she realised those poor people grasping onto that dream were duped and she'd been too. Wholly soul-destroying.

Low-skilled men are on the scrapheap, so are low-skilled women. What to do.
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
i don't think automation has much to do with the rise of quackery. living in uncertain times or an increasingly complex world, maybe, i could grant that hypothesis some purchase. there's nothing about self-driving lorries that drives people to fucking reiki healing.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Yes, your average unemployed truck driver is probably not going to gracefully pivot to healing crystal installations or lifestyle coaching.
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Cybargs
Moderated
+2,285|6686

uziq wrote:

i don't think automation has much to do with the rise of quackery.
too much internet and the zucc
https://cache.www.gametracker.com/server_info/203.46.105.23:21300/b_350_20_692108_381007_FFFFFF_000000.png
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Petition for Tony Blair to have his "Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter" rescinded
https://chng.it/kMSJz8Zmp9
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
yeah no shit. isn’t going to happen.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
In the U.K., if you have a lifetime of doing special things and not embarrassing the country, you have a chance at becoming a knight or something? Kitchener came from a nothing family and eventually became an Earl for instance. Does that still happen rarely or is that practice no longer around?
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
There are honours etc which don't mean much and there are peerages which entitle you to sit in the House of Lords.

Both are in the gift of the govt or monarch.

At the present time if you give GBP1m to the conservative party that will buy you a lordship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Lebedev
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
the number of hereditary peerages was cut to shreds under the new labour government. who, then, incidentally turned the house of lords into a politico-clique chamber for 'advisors' and party donors. so we got rid of hereditary power and replaced it, instead, with plutocracy, basically. great stuff.

in times gone past, yes, those hereditary titles would have been given out at court to courtiers/retired politicians/imperial do'gooders at the discretion of the monarch. although some of the peerages and 'landed' titles go back to the norman conquest, effectively, so we are talking extended patrilineal bloodlines going back to william the conquerors' barons. there might be a few that are extant from even before this time but i don't brush up on my debrett's very often.

with that said, i'm still glad for the HoL and think they perform their function reasonably well. the 'cash for titles' thing is obviously a complete travesty of democracy and needs to be reformed and/or thrown out entirely.

knighthoods are generally given out for public servants or people who have been prominent in public/civic life for their entire lives. there are lower orders, beneath  the knight deal ('sir' or 'dame') which generally recognises your contributions and good works. whether that's charity, public service, being a noteworthy public figure, etc. that's what the 'order of the british empire' (OBE) is. there's several ranks of that, too, just to make it more confusing. you could probably think of the sort of knighthood that tony blair got, 'the order of the garter', as the presidential medal or something like that. probably only about 20-30 people alive at any one time have that senior-most title.

i'm not surprised tony blair got one. depressed, yes. surprised, no.

with that said, i think there's something more than a little suss about dilbert continually ranting and raving here about the evils of tony blair and his heinous war crimes (p. true), but then wanting to deny afghans or iraqis refugee status in the UK/europe/australia/etc. you can't continually highlight tony blair's monstrous deeds in the region and then demonize the people who are trying to flee said devastation. how the fuck does that work? is tony blair guilty of monstrous crimes? if yes, then understandably there are going to be human victims of said crimes, no?
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Yes, Britain etc can just take in as many people who want to come.
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SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
Put them all in Scotland. North Ireland and the Falklands too just to see what would happen.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422

Dilbert_X wrote:

Yes, Britain etc can just take in as many people who want to come.
funny isn’t it. the coalition partners could all afford to put in billions for war contracts and armaments but now they can’t afford a few thousand refugee families.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Its a few thousand/yr with the borders closed, it would be in the hundreds of thousands or millions with the borders open.

I think Aus peaked at 100,000/yr with moderate enforcement.
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
except nobody is advocating open borders for all refugees. never happened. oh well.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
How many refugees do you think Britain should take then?
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
it seems pretty obvious that there should be a sliding scale based on nation’s ability to absorb refugees economically/socially. the coalition nations who have had so much to do with recent disasters should not blush away from taking a modest number of fucking refugees.

it’s amazing. we go and destroy other countries in the name of a thing called ‘democratic freedom’ and then thin-lipped fuckers like you want to pull up the drawbridge for the war-torn and dispossessed. what an advert for democracy! no wonder so many radicalised young men would want us dead.

the idea we ‘don’t have room’ or ‘can’t afford it’ is so self-evidently a complete and total wankery that it’s not even worth talking about. the only thing we can’t afford, apparently, is common humanity or basic fucking responsibility for our actions. especially those people who would turn away afghans who literally risked their lives and perma-blacklisted themselves and their entire families to help us during the war years. imagine how duped they feel: risking their lives and fighting for a new form of society that evidently the western standard bearers don’t really believe in. ace. we should be burning with shame.

in any case, your continual correspondence-column level rhetoric on this is dishonest. every country has a pretty well-defined legal framework and protocols in place for accepting refugees. we literally have never ‘opened the gates’ and been ‘flooded’. to get asylum in the U.K., like australia, is incredibly fucking difficult and you know so.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX

Dilbert_X wrote:

How many refugees do you think Britain should take then?
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
we could start by taking every single refugee and their family who provably helped us or were on our payroll in afghanistan. we have made them pariahs at imminent risk of violence or death in their home countries.

pretty sure international law as well as the UK’s own asylum policy defines a legitimate refugee as someone who is fleeing persecution for fear of their life. well we handily just created quite a few of those. it’s our moral responsibility to take them.

not that you’d think this from reading our right-wing press.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-04 01:26:39)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
How many, in total, in a normal year.
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
the U.K. currently grants asylum or resettlement to ~10-15k people a year. this for one doesn’t strike me as a scary number that needs to be throttled. 25,000 refugees a year would hardly lead to the breakdown of society into chaos, would it?

but why stipulate arbitrary figures? the point is that applying for asylum is a legal process, not a lottery where 1 in 10 gets the winning ticket.

if every medium-sized western nation took 10 or 15 thousand refugees a year, as they surely could afford to, wouldn’t that be a boon to the world and a huge help to the afflicted?

at a certain point your line of questioning on this is very much a diversionary tactic. the implication being ‘when is it too many?’, which you couch in economic language - ‘can we afford it?’ - when what really bothers you is the idea of a lot of non-whites and non-christians settling near to you. i am not interested in this rhetoric.

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