Uhhhh Nazi Germany was definitely not atheist lol. I know there have been other massive genocides, but the holocaust is rather hard to overlook. Likewise the Ottoman empire was not exactly atheist either
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Hot Takes
- Thread starter Crux
- Start date
Mild take: I think it’s healthy to take a balanced approach with optimism and cynicism.... but people (especially in the work place, double for those in positions of power) who insist that a mask of positivity be worn in any and all scenarios are in fact murderers with bodies in their freezers.
There are few things I trust less than a fake smile, as at that point I don’t feel that I can have an honest conversation with that person. I feel this way because of how I feel internally when I am the one faking positivity. I am doing so dishonestly and being manipulative to see the desired response from whoever I’m talking to. How can any relationship of any sort (professional or otherwise) be functional if it is disingenuous at the most basic level? *shrug*
There are few things I trust less than a fake smile, as at that point I don’t feel that I can have an honest conversation with that person. I feel this way because of how I feel internally when I am the one faking positivity. I am doing so dishonestly and being manipulative to see the desired response from whoever I’m talking to. How can any relationship of any sort (professional or otherwise) be functional if it is disingenuous at the most basic level? *shrug*
I agree that "the mask" tm feels extremely dirty to wear, and I can't even really wear it convincingly as I can't hide my emotions/intentions for shit. I think that trying to force others to wear a mask is an extremely wrong thing to do in order to achieve some "good vibes only" policy at work. I agree that that is shit.
I think that the reason that it is bad to enforce on others is that, to me, trying to remain positive in all conditions could be a positive act of sacrifice on one's part. By avoiding expressing negative emotions, perhaps one may prevent others mood from being negatively affected as well. Particularly in high stress times in the workplace, I am thankful for people that keep a positive attitude.
I sometimes get that inkling when interacting with somebody that the happiness and jokiness is just a thin facade. At the very least, I don't know how one would be so positive without acting. I know a lot of people like that actually. But with said people, I do genuinely get the impression that they care strongly about others. As expressing negative emotions has next to zero practical application, I think that "faking it until you make it" and attempting to uplift others by retaining a positive mood might be an ideal.
When I get into a self-improvement kick, I often try and fail to keep it good vibes only. I find that I tend to be received somewhat better, but feel much worse internally. That may be because I am carrying a greater emotional burden, which could be seen as positive or negative on an individual basis.
Thanks for the take, as I enjoyed responding to you. This is something I've thought a lot about before.
Time for lots of typing because I feel a rant coming.
I said this because at my job I was just written up for “insubordination” and when I asked them to elaborate they said “you were asked to be positive and you refused”. So a little backstory, my boss is on vacation. We are “essential workers” during a pandemic, but okay. His assistant is an abrasive, disrespectful man who has no indoor voice and whose preferred method of communication is barking.
All week long this man has been disrespectful to me. He’s told me “ that’s your job” and walked away when I asked for his assistance. He put his hand up in my face and said “I’m not even listening” when I answered a question he asked. He scheduled me to come in first thing in the morning after a closing shift, which is against policy, but more importantly for an insomniac that needs the good drugs to sleep, can make me lose about four days of sleep afterward. Which it did. I addressed this a week earlier, but he didn’t change it.
So he overhears me tell a woman I work with that the schedule is bad and says “you know what, if you’re not gonna be positive you can go home.” I said “I don’t want to be here anyway” with clear regard to a conversation we’d just had about me not getting any sleep. So he said “fine, I don’t wanna see you, bye” and stormed off.
Two days later I’m cornered in the office by him and another upper management guy and told that by going home, I was refusing to be positive and that was insubordination. I said “you don’t control what I say” and they disagreed. I listed all the many ways I felt I’d been disrespected that week, to which they replied “so you think what you did is okay?”. I said “no, that’s not what I said”, which they repeatedly argued with and wouldn’t let me continue speaking at that point.
The best part is they bring up the woman I was speaking to and try to guilt me and shame me by saying “she wears a heart monitor, you’re stressing her out with your complaining.” ..... except she was complaining too.... and I am the one she asked to monitor her for symptoms in case something went wrong.... because she and I closed together the night before and were so understaffed she worked long stretches by herself and skipped her lunch break. So we were complaining to each other.
And I am written up for not being positive.
It is this kind of twisting of what positivity actually is that makes me disgusted by it. As there is no practical application for voicing negativity (though if you’re speaking to honest, well meaning people, they may respond to your negativity and try to enact change on their part instead of trying to pretend everyone is happy), there is no practical application for false optimism. If my direct superior is incompetent, disrespectful, and insecure, I will not pretend that I am satisfied so that he feels better. Is he going to pretend to be competent to make me feel better? No, because he’s not capable of doing so.
It’s like when you tell a grieving mother it was god’s plan. This is kinda of a second hot take in a way, but it’s related. That is a positive outlook, but it is false. You cannot claim to know that there is some grand plan for everyone and that god’s plan for your baby was to kill it. AND WHAT KINDA BENEVOLENT GOD DOES THAT. But never mind. Notably, nurses are now trained not to say this sort of thing. Because it is false and hurtful. I just wanted to demonstrate how this kind of attitude isn’t just about workplace bullshit. When my sister (who struggled to conceive due to ovarian cysts) carried a baby to 8 months, put together a nursery, bought the clothes and everything, had to decide between giving birth and her son being alive for a few minutes, then dying, or letting him die in the womb and delivering him stillborn, the nurse said it was “god’s plan”. For months after that, my suicidal sister would talk about how angry it made her. She was obviously devastated by loss, but filled with rage by this attempt to frame her loss with fake positive silver lining bullshit.
To summarize, the mask is bad mmkay. While maybe there is no benefit to whining or complaining (though there is also no harm done in small time trash talk with colleagues) I think there is a huge benefit to not only allowing your emotions (whether small like mine or immense like my sister’s) to process naturally and freely so long as you’re not... ya know... stuffing anyone in the fridge... I am a rage filled, spiteful, generally miserable person. And I keep all of that in check for the sake of others and my relationships with them. But to superficially pretend all the time that I am not that person would drive me to the point that I am unable to check myself. It is unhealthy.
THE END
I suspect there are multiple labor law violations occurring here, as well as breaks in your organizations own internal policies. and I'd be shocked if a supervisor is able to communicate like that consistently with the employees they supervise in a healthcare setting and get away w it. see if there is a number at your work, a lot of healthcare places have a number you can call to get a half hour of free legal consult. Obviously you won't be suing, but just pointing it out will usually get them to btfo hard and probably get your supervisor disciplined. The path here imo:
step 1: talk to lawyer
step 2: talk to HR afterwards if any violations of labor law or internal employee code/policy have been violated
you might skip step 1 if you feel confident that you can characterize events as labor law violations, but if possible, accessing a lawyer and relating that you have done so will usually scare HR shitless. the other option i see is bluffing by saying to HR that your supervisor created the uncivil work environment through intimidation by yelling and sticking his hands in your face. tell them ur consulting with a lawyer and see how red their faces turn. feel free to pm even if you think my advice is bad.
http://www.softpanorama.org/Social/Toxic_managers/Legal_issues/insubordination_threat.shtml
lays out the criterion for insubordination, im p sure the charge against you doesnt meet any of these standards
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Thanks for that, heh. I’ve considered seeing what my options are as far as HR is concerned, but assuming the issue is dropped tomorrow I would prefer not to prolong it. Also, I’m grocery “essential”, not healthcare, but still, I appreciate it. My actual boss (the one on vacation) is a really well meaning guy who has always treated me with respect. So I’m hoping now that he’s back I can work in peace!
Dexit was the best thing to happen to Pokemon
I genuinely think that the culling of the Pokedex was by far the best decision Gamefreak has made within the past 20 years. This was a positive in everything, from a gameplay standpoint, to a financial / product standpoint, to a competitive standpoint. As I have been playing Pokemon casually since I was but a wee lad, hiding my gameboy advance underneath my blanket when it was bedtime just so I could get through Petalburg woods real quick in Sapphire, never have I had more fun playing the game than I did when I got Pokemon Sword. This game revitalized the best aspects I had about Pokemon since a kid, the feeling of excitement in getting a new Pokemon, in discovering how certain Pokemon worked, in evolving and getting cool new ones and seeing the Pokedex fill out with wonder. I do not think I would have had that same feeling had Dexit not happened.
There is the most cogent argument of the Pokedex as was being unsustainable. Coding and game development taken up with entering unnecessary sprites, an ever increasing amount of Pokemon added to games with no sign of slowing down. Graphic design taken up with designing 3d models for 900+ little creatures, most of which the average player will not even be able to catch or use. From a technical standpoint the National Dex was unsustainable, with stat changes, moveset implementations, visual models, quirky gimmicks like Pokemon Camp being needed for every Pokemon. It's a lot of manpower for very little tradeoff and turns collectathons like Pokemon into a Frankenstein's monster esque abomination where people cart over their living dex as some insignificant achievement.
From a fun standpoint Dexit allows people to explore new Pokemon. Rather than leaving the choice up to the player, of which I take the opinion that people will almost always prefer comfort over novelty, games like SWSH force the player to use new Pokemon and to stay away from long time favorites. You guys know how many times I've used Leafeon in a playthrough? How many times I've used things like Roserade, or Lucario? It was certainly a breath of fresh air being forced, essentially, to use mons like Orbeetle, Coalossal, Appletun, Hatterene, and more. No, my entire team was not gen 8 Pokemon, I certainly spent my time chasing down a Lapras at the end of the game, and I also caught a Roserade to use, but that I was exposed so heavily to these Pokemon indicates great game design to me. I cannot tell you what Pokemon differentiate between gen 6 and gen 7. XY and SM were awful blurs where I just used comfort Pokemon, aside from like, Aegislash and Aurorus. I don't even remember what Pokemon I used in gen 7 when I played Sun. And the reason is that none of that shit sticks out. Gen 5 Pokemon stick out because we were FORCED to use those Pokemon, and I think that is why a lot of people hold a lot of love for those games.
I think there is certainly a crowd of people that tryharded to get every single Pokemon possible and hold it to be a great achievement, that were upset when it was announced that the new games were not coded with their favorites and that they could not just port over their dex. I think that people miss the point of those games, they don't understand how difficult it is to make a fair curve and balance for new admissions to the dex with a much more limited pool. I do enjoy that they got rid of a lot of superfluous mons in SS. I hope going forward that these games operate similar with culling of the dex. I just wish they had kept the movepool culling too as the games were better with a hard restart of the series. Anyway I've rambled on long enough, feel free to respond to this
I genuinely think that the culling of the Pokedex was by far the best decision Gamefreak has made within the past 20 years. This was a positive in everything, from a gameplay standpoint, to a financial / product standpoint, to a competitive standpoint. As I have been playing Pokemon casually since I was but a wee lad, hiding my gameboy advance underneath my blanket when it was bedtime just so I could get through Petalburg woods real quick in Sapphire, never have I had more fun playing the game than I did when I got Pokemon Sword. This game revitalized the best aspects I had about Pokemon since a kid, the feeling of excitement in getting a new Pokemon, in discovering how certain Pokemon worked, in evolving and getting cool new ones and seeing the Pokedex fill out with wonder. I do not think I would have had that same feeling had Dexit not happened.
There is the most cogent argument of the Pokedex as was being unsustainable. Coding and game development taken up with entering unnecessary sprites, an ever increasing amount of Pokemon added to games with no sign of slowing down. Graphic design taken up with designing 3d models for 900+ little creatures, most of which the average player will not even be able to catch or use. From a technical standpoint the National Dex was unsustainable, with stat changes, moveset implementations, visual models, quirky gimmicks like Pokemon Camp being needed for every Pokemon. It's a lot of manpower for very little tradeoff and turns collectathons like Pokemon into a Frankenstein's monster esque abomination where people cart over their living dex as some insignificant achievement.
From a fun standpoint Dexit allows people to explore new Pokemon. Rather than leaving the choice up to the player, of which I take the opinion that people will almost always prefer comfort over novelty, games like SWSH force the player to use new Pokemon and to stay away from long time favorites. You guys know how many times I've used Leafeon in a playthrough? How many times I've used things like Roserade, or Lucario? It was certainly a breath of fresh air being forced, essentially, to use mons like Orbeetle, Coalossal, Appletun, Hatterene, and more. No, my entire team was not gen 8 Pokemon, I certainly spent my time chasing down a Lapras at the end of the game, and I also caught a Roserade to use, but that I was exposed so heavily to these Pokemon indicates great game design to me. I cannot tell you what Pokemon differentiate between gen 6 and gen 7. XY and SM were awful blurs where I just used comfort Pokemon, aside from like, Aegislash and Aurorus. I don't even remember what Pokemon I used in gen 7 when I played Sun. And the reason is that none of that shit sticks out. Gen 5 Pokemon stick out because we were FORCED to use those Pokemon, and I think that is why a lot of people hold a lot of love for those games.
I think there is certainly a crowd of people that tryharded to get every single Pokemon possible and hold it to be a great achievement, that were upset when it was announced that the new games were not coded with their favorites and that they could not just port over their dex. I think that people miss the point of those games, they don't understand how difficult it is to make a fair curve and balance for new admissions to the dex with a much more limited pool. I do enjoy that they got rid of a lot of superfluous mons in SS. I hope going forward that these games operate similar with culling of the dex. I just wish they had kept the movepool culling too as the games were better with a hard restart of the series. Anyway I've rambled on long enough, feel free to respond to this
I like being forced to use the new pokemon a la gen 5 but not coding pokemon into the games so we could transfer up our faves into the games post-game was the biggest issue I had w/ it. Especially considering models were futureproofed and this is one of Nintendo's Big Dog IPs so the manpower, especially on the switch, and resources should certainly be there for all the pokemon the be implemented. A great part of pokemon is there are many ways to play and taking out one of the ways (nat dex hunting + transferring up and using treasured faves) is imo limiting the series in a bad way.
To be honest, I kinda want a game where there are no prior gen pokes included. A brand new dex in an expansive, well developed region. No worrying at all about past gens and just 100% attention to creating a great new experience. I’d extend this to prior mechanics, even the fossil of a battle system would be heavily retooled.
The past is just a burden on the series and in order for it to be good again, it needs to be remade almost, if not entirely, from scratch.
The past is just a burden on the series and in order for it to be good again, it needs to be remade almost, if not entirely, from scratch.
Boy do I have good news for you
There will never be the political appetite to ban guns in America.
The Republicans would obviously never entertain the idea, but neither will any Democratic administration. The reason is simple; banning guns would be a surefire way to lose the next election as millions of single issue voters turn out for a Republican candidate promising to repeal the ban.
Unless a considerable cultural shift occurs, this particular debate is nothing more than a distraction from other important issues.
The Republicans would obviously never entertain the idea, but neither will any Democratic administration. The reason is simple; banning guns would be a surefire way to lose the next election as millions of single issue voters turn out for a Republican candidate promising to repeal the ban.
Unless a considerable cultural shift occurs, this particular debate is nothing more than a distraction from other important issues.
the true hot take here is that the republicans will never ban abortion either
This is not a hot take. I don't think America will ever ban guns as it's woven into the fabric of the country. There are always going to be those Republican states who will not give a shit what other people think.
species clause makes no sense. there is zero reason that a team with multiples of a pokemon is inherently unbalanced, broken, and/or unfun. if anything, having multiples of a pokemon can lead to interesting metagame dynamics. if a strategy gets particularly overbearing then it's possible to implement bans such as: only max of 3 gengars on a team.
why is smogon so attached to species clause? i believe that it's rooted into the same primal and irrational biases such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on. it is a purely exclusionary logic with fear of examining where it leads us to.
why is smogon so attached to species clause? i believe that it's rooted into the same primal and irrational biases such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on. it is a purely exclusionary logic with fear of examining where it leads us to.
The main games also have a species clause for online battling.......
So.....? Smogon decides the clauses/bans/tiers to apply on the unrestricted "natural code" of pokemon and construct metagames out of it. GF's optional clauses in very specific situations is meaningless.
e:
There is always an option to use multiple pokemons in PvP battling. You can not enable species clause in a casual battle in SS online battling for example.
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Are you calling orch a racist?
i think in theory the idea of supporting minorities is great but often allying is a synonym for blind support without engagement - you're effectively a fan and only following something because it's a trend, not because you think it's right based on any sort of engagement with the principles at play
here's the thing, you *can* assume some people's pronouns. You can assume mine, because I fit in with a cis-male stereotype. That's why you'll never see me disclose my pronouns until the day comes that I change them. That's why I cringe a bit whenever I see a cis woman or man put up their pronouns which are bleeding obvious.
based post in general
as for some hot takes of my own:
1. it's completely reasonable to delay the US election because of coronavirus
2. in countries where abortion is freely available, men should not have to pay child support. The ultimate choice to raise a child is the woman's, and they can decide whether their financial situation is good enough to raise a child. And before anyone says that's the cost of having sex, there's the underlying asymmetry where a woman can de-risk herself but a man can't. There's also the fact that you can absolutely practice safe sex and accidentally conceive. I would like a system where you can enter a binding contract pre-sex which both parties can sign which abdicates the guy of any responsibilities or rights regarding babies created between them.
1. it's completely reasonable to delay the US election because of coronavirus
2. in countries where abortion is freely available, men should not have to pay child support. The ultimate choice to raise a child is the woman's, and they can decide whether their financial situation is good enough to raise a child. And before anyone says that's the cost of having sex, there's the underlying asymmetry where a woman can de-risk herself but a man can't. There's also the fact that you can absolutely practice safe sex and accidentally conceive. I would like a system where you can enter a binding contract pre-sex which both parties can sign which abdicates the guy of any responsibilities or rights regarding babies created between them.
As a gay man, I’m going to mansplain heterosexual reproductive rights now lol
Joking aside, I do agree that there should actually be a mutual decision on the raising of the spawn (barring the decision to abort, which lies with the woman), I don’t think many people are ready for that conversation.
I DO think, however, that child support should very much still be a thing. Divorces happen, parents still want to parent their child even if they don’t want to be with each other. That said, child support favoring the mother to the point of denying the father his own livelihood (precisely what happened to my stepfather when I was growing up) needs to be illegal. Having grown up with not one, not two, not three, but FOUR divorces between my parents and their assorted spouses, I think a child support system where the parents can meet with experts who can guide them down the best path for THEM and bind that contractually instead of turning it into a legal battle would be very helpful.
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KPOP is an incredibly damaging industry and is the embodiment of capitalism
This applies to most music industries but specifically to kpop. The west has mostly moved away from trying to mass produce pop stars in a factory. The fact is its a feast or famine industry and they are pumping out tons of new groups every year and abandoning the ones that have very little success. Every single aspect of kpop is basically focus grouped to death to give the most ear pleasing product to the masses. its not a counterculture, its one of the most corporate things you can support.
This applies to most music industries but specifically to kpop. The west has mostly moved away from trying to mass produce pop stars in a factory. The fact is its a feast or famine industry and they are pumping out tons of new groups every year and abandoning the ones that have very little success. Every single aspect of kpop is basically focus grouped to death to give the most ear pleasing product to the masses. its not a counterculture, its one of the most corporate things you can support.
