Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@ThanosReXXX I try to avoid the place like the plague

Recent circumstances have led to me visiting the city twice in a single week! That's more often than I usually visit Amsterdam in a single year, but now I have a good excuse to avoid it for the coming two years

@ThanosReXXX Don't pull my chicken leg! It's the best part of the chicken!! Yeah, I don't think it's an achievement a town should be too enthusiastic to hold up.

Has anyone played 'This is the Police'? It's on sale in eShop for $11.99 instead of the usual $30 and the site review seems like i could look past some flaws.

@KnucklesFajita Good luck with the interview! I second everything Thanos suggests, as well.

@Octane And what excuse might that be?

@HobbitGamer A town or city having a good restaurant may not be something to be overly proud of by default, but it most certainly isn't anything to scoff at either. Even in a rather well-populated country like the Netherlands, this food and drink lover has actually had some trouble finding a decent restaurant (to my taste/in my opinion) in certain places, or at least: close to the place and/or hotel I was staying in at the time.

@ThanosReXXX "It is weird, though. Over here, there is no such animosity of one state/province against the other, except on a smaller scale, for example in sports matches, "

Well, over there they spent the better part of two millennia in a various on and off states of war between half the states and provinces until they nearly ran out of people to kill and land to lay claim to by the mid 20th century. You're enjoying the lull which probably only exists thanks to the invention of nuclear weapons, much as everyone hates them, otherwise, by now the Eastern front would have opened full scale 40+ years ago and Amsterdam would probably exist in some form of DMZ. Not really a fair comparison to name Europe of all places for having peace between nations like it's a cultural trait....it's like citing Japan's peaceful agrarian history...

All that said, CA's been a bit "odd" since long before you were born, but even going back, 25 years or so ago it was odd in a cool, interesting way. It was likable. Even enviable. If kind of weird. It's really been in the past 15 to 20 that it's gone wholly off the rails as Arkham IRL. That's not to say all of CA or all the population is bad (thus the current push and pull to split it up) but the dominant large population pools have effective mob rule over the rest. Ultimately the whole point of separate states and nations is that different places with different geography have different needs and develop different cultures naturally. CA was always way, way, way too big for its own good, there's no way it can adequately meet the needs of the inherently different areas under one umbrella. No matter the politics it really just makes sense for it to be different places for various natural reasons. The problem is the mob rule crowd enjoys lording it over the rest and refuses to let go. Ultimately 3 states where CA once was would probably be 3 happy states where one state constantly at war with itself used to be. Problem is I imagine the mob rule crowd would defect fast once they felt the tax effect. Heck half of them already do....they're in Denver now.

@HobbitGamer Oh come on, it's not like it's Chipotle.

@NEStalgia Yeah... I don't really think that "the lull" I'm experiencing over here, is happening thanks to nuclear arms. The Netherlands never had any to speak of themselves, and they were also never threatened with them by any other country if they wouldn't stop all the internal bickering amongst the provinces.

That is something that the Dutch had already taken care of in the late middle ages. We must of course remember that the United States is actually still a young nation, in comparison to almost every other country in the world. The Dutch, and many other European countries have already had that separate state rule that you want so much, for many decades or more, so that is nothing new to me.

It can certainly be beneficial, because decisions can then be tailor-made to a certain region, decisions that would make no sense in other areas of the country, and of course it's nice that one region isn't able to control, affect or influence another area, but that's about it, I guess.

But in the end, separate states rule or not, there's still only one government wherever you live, so whether or not it makes any really big difference in the larger scale of things, is definitely debatable.

@ThanosReXXX @NEStalgia
...... It's sort of like... Oh man, imagine if all your internal organs used fuedal governing systems instead of a brain heirarchy. Now THAT is a civil war

Also, I just got asked by an executive "Why are you Debbie Downer?", after giving my weekly reimbursement projections. My response? "Because the productivity of your employees makes me sad".

@Knuckles-Fajita Well, it seems like you're getting your wish, because with the current standings, football is going home instead of coming home...

@HobbitGamer Yeah... let's not. Topics like these are actually the only ones that me and NES have some more heated discussions about. That and him (half-jokingly) refusing to see me as a fellow countryman, but other than that, he's actually quite okay...

@ThanosReXXX My quota for visiting Amsterdam of course! I'm going to need to two years to mentally recover from that experience.

@Octane Hahaha, oh, that... Yeah... it basically took me my entire youth here to recover from and get used to that, but I'm fine now. Or so the voices in my head tell me...

@ThanosReXXX Well the natural result of Europe (pre-EU which turned out to be a really disastrously bad adaptation of what the US already disastrously badly implemented and mangled) was just actual separate unrelated countries. The intended role of the US was indeed separate states fully autonomous, but with a central government to facilitate, and only facilitate international relations, defense, and ensure the flow of commerce, communication, and transit between states. And not a single thing more. Thus the UNION of states, not a "nation" explicitly. We have Lincoln and Grant to thank for screwing that all up in their overreaching response to the Confederacy.

One government where you live, sure, but the whole point is that no government can be effective if it covers too big a population/area. Representation was the key. So that there's a direct, local immediate representation by voters is what governed the aspects of most people's lives. That was the same reason for the electoral college that today people loathe..."shouldn't the majority have the win"...no. Because tyranny of majority can't end well and historically never has. Just because one area has a concentration of people doesn't mean what they want should be forced on everyone elsewhere (CA's big problem, locally.) If we were to expand that line of thinking globally where majority wins, then China and India together simply rule earth and all must submit to their will. Shrink it to a US state, and the big city shouldn't tell everyone in the rest of a state how to live.

Technically the founders never fathomed the population density of the 21st century. It was rules for an agrarian society. To really work with the level of representation they intended, each current county would really be a state. Imagine if your only real government were just "San Bernadino, US" (or whatever county you were in.) Imagine how much sense of representation and people there would have if that was their only prevailing government aside from it's attachment too the union for foreign/trade affaris? That's more what the original idea was. It would let people's affairs/cultures be entirely within small numbers of agreement, without risk of foreign invasion due to size as that would be handled collectively as the union. Everyone would be their own San Marino.

@Knuckles-Fajita Had to edit a couple of comments, because I didn't spell your name right...
Don't know if you've missed them because of that, since I don't know if an edit also creates an alert on your side, but just in case that it doesn't, they're here and here. Oh, and somebody else had something to say to you as well, but he apparently copy/pasted my incorrect version of your name, so you may not have spotted that one either...

@NEStalgia Well, "technically" the founders actually didn't fathom a whole hell of a lot, such as gun ownership massively spiraling out of control. I'm pretty sure they never had that in mind, even for a second. But all of that is kinda moot and in some ways irrelevant. Societies change, people change, rules change etc. Or you could replace change with adapt, which will also work. Or maybe it's change AND adapt.

Either way, as long as there's people, stuff will get screwed up, so neither of us is ever going to see the day when all is going to be perfectly fine, and just the way we want it, that's just never going to happen. My old man always says that mankind is the worst thing that ever happened to this planet, and a lot of things that keep happening around the world, continually underline that statement and it's inherent truth.

But I think this is where I get off the politics boat. Primarily because I couldn't care less about politics, but also because we can't go too far into it anyway, because that's against the site rules.

@ThanosReXXX They actually fathomed a whole heck of a lot with the amendments system. They understood exactly what you're saying about changing societies. They baked the way to handle that right into the system. Those guys were really geniuses.

BUT it requires representation and the will of the people. The fact that ammendments are almost never written to change the things you're thinking about means there's not enough agreement across the union to enact the change mechanisms.....which actually means that the representation is working precisely the way it was designed to. 2/3 of states must ratify to consider a consensus of the people. That 2/3 of states seem to not want said changes, means the will of the people is being reflected, regardless of if some people "know what's best for others" It was never about getting the "right" result, but getting the will of the people. "Right" results depend on who has power at any time. But the will....needs a heck of a lot of people to all agree.

The system is really quite exceptional except where it's been trampled, burned, and ignored to get the "right" result as deemed by whoever has power to do so.

Vote for Fooligan!

"I'll fix everything"

@ThanosReXXX Thanks for the pep talk. Yeah its nice and quiet around here, and I know some people with some unfortunate tattoos now!

I will naturally take control in any given situation. When it comes to any kind of authority with me, you either earn my respect, or I put you in your place. This has been a common theme in my life. If things are run well, there are minimal cracks or difficulties, I'll respect you.

If you're a bad leader, demand respect, act high and mighty around your staff, I will not hesitate to voice displeasure. I have half a mind to do that for mum at work, while she's off ill.

They are forcing (Not giving a choice, forcing) new contracts that allow them to fire her if shes off ill for too long. Most staff already left because...yeah that's crappy.

But the new manager there, he's my age. Yes really. He got fast tracked through the company and became manager out of necessity. He treats the guidebook like gospel and not "a guide", which leads to obvious...problems in leadership, or so I've heard.

Heck, mum was able to walk into the office, passcode protected btw, sit down, have FOUR people walk past her in the office, and even the manager didn't notice her until his third trip, asked if she was here to see someone, to which she replied, yeah you, you wanted this meeting.

I have half a mind to walk in there, put the little b******* on his ass and tell him how to run a business. Terrible security, his own ethic is awful (Cancelled meetings with people because he wanted a day off for instance), and acts like he owns the place with continually dissatisfied staff.

In my few managerial roles, I see a problem, I deal with the problem. Just recently I had to enforce a new scheduling system to eliminate issues in organising tournaments, and its worked thus far, because the rifts were appearing and I had had enough. That's the kind of leadership somewhere dynamic needs, thats the kind that has your staff doing their best and gets results.

Not this demanding respect BS I keep seeing.

So yeah, in this interview tomorrow I'll be asking them questions. Its about two hours long estimated, so with any luck I can worm any information I want out of them really. (I'm good at that!). But of course, I will show them respect. If I get the job and the staff or manager isn't respectful, I will absolutely raise hell about it!

Anyway, what's this other message you mentioned? Ah, @HobbitGamer thanks for the encouraging words. It's nice to not be going into an interview feeling like the world hates me for once!

@ThanosReXXX btw, i agree with your dad on that point . See, some PDRC denizens aren't nuts!

@NEStalgia The founding fathers were definitely geniuses, but of their time. Important distinction. And you can bet your you-know-what that they NEVER saw the current out of control school and workplace shootings coming. For them, it was simply in an entirely different context.

But that's really all that I want to say about it, because I've already had this discussion with somebody else on here, a couple of months back, except he didn't have all his marbles in place, contrary to you, but the whole thing still left a bad taste in my mouth to this day.

That is also why I said I wanted out of the politics part of the discussion, because it doesn't interest me, it only angers me and that will only result in unnecessarily heated discussions, which I'm REALLY not in the mood for, and not just today...

EDIT:
Oh, and actual "right" is the right that stems from what is really good, and shouldn't, and doesn't have to be, colored by what a minority thinks or "feels" is right. Certain things simply ARE right, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to acknowledge that. In that respect, even a non-believer like me can muster up some appreciation for the simple clarity of the ten commandments...

@Knuckles-Fajita You're welcome. Now go get that job!

im sure you put some pineapple on them and everything worked out just fine for you

i found 3 pair of pants here...probably found because they were lost here for years.
@ReaderRagfish @Fooligan
ok im home and got rid of carl and jr.

The only one that ever needs to be voted for is Dave. Vote Dave!!
I did grab Both This is the Police and Human Resource Machine.

Because clearly I don’t do enough managing at work.