That deserved to be modded up. A great deal of the university "experience" is a shuck, a narrative, a romantic notion, sold to unwitting children just entering adulthood by institutions all too happy to take their money. Blowing that kind of money, university is the absolute last place anyone should be motivated to do that sort of thing. Save it for after, if you were unlucky beforehand, or get all your drunken, pot-smoking orgies out of the way in high school like responsible teenagers, instead of pissing around by driving yourself into "crippling debt" for as long as you've already lived. The entire university (or college for the USians) narrative is a shuck. Add to that the sheer number of ridiculously unpractical majors, and a climate where students actively suppress actually hearing anything they don't agree with, and it makes me wonder why people of my generation are willing to encourage their kids in that direction. Become a plumber or a YouTube pop sensation seem far less damaging advice to their future. What kind of insane system even allows a 20 year old to assume $100000 or a quarter million dollar debt? That's fiscally irresponsible.

Well, fortunately we won't have to worry about that until 2140. By which time I am sure transaction fees will be more than enough to compensate.

I used to farm... A bit of information that's kind of interesting about atrazine. Locally, at least, it was only ever used on corn, and would pretty much wipe anything else out. It's residual effects are pretty striking, and if we sprayed it on a field of corn, then corn would be the only thing that would grow on the field the next year as well. Anecdotally, I've known some farmers who could only grow corn for *five years* on land that had been sprayed too heavily. It pretty much made the ground sterile for anything else.

I'm off to boycott... FUCK BETA

What gets my eyes rolling the most is this sort of thing:

It really indicates how stupid the writer thinks everyone else is, that despite an endless barrage of information about the deleterious effects of smoking from family, friends, doctors, news programs, newspapers, magazines, sitcoms, movies, cartoons, graffiti, puppet shows, and government literature that somehow the little indirect marketing (tenuously through movies and TV) somehow overrides our ability to make an actual informed decision.

"Denial" is used as a weaselly way to undermine any volitional behaviour which a writer personally disagrees with, and is then used as a justification for maintaining their belief regardless of claims to the contrary.

Personally, I quit and am happy as hell that I did. That doesn't mean I was unaware of the effects, or romanticized smoking, or didn't enjoy it. I did enjoy it, and immediate gratification seemed a fair trade off for the inevitable future outcome. It was a personal/philosophical value decision, and it was no worse than the position I hold now, it's just not the position I happen to hold any more.

FUCK BETA

The Master Cylinder

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130114200938/villains/images/1/14/Master_Cylinder.jpg

Lol, I logged in by accident with my gmail account, then with my slashdot account :D

LiVES supports it, so you could always use that instead.

The *orange* shag carpet. Right next to the purple velvet drapes and inscrutable chrome and avacado objects of indeterminate purpose.

See the book "Interior Desecrations" by James Lileks for the whole, horrific story.

From the articles about the Bizarro universe that seems to exist inside HR departments in the tech world, my not being very good at the whole people networking thing, and too many tales of rampant ageism, there has to be a better way to do this. Why is there not a better system for connecting employees to jobs other than happening to know someone somewhere?

I'm just keeping my head down and trying to retire as early as possible.

They have evolved 4D.

You just can't see them.

They can see you, though.

They watch.

A lot.

I feel that way all the time these days. I read the news, and I don't feel like I'm even the same species as anyone else anymore.

We much eliminate the patriarchal something rape culture of the something something semprini something check your privilege something ponies. Or something like that. It's hard to follow sometimes.

I think it boils down to staunchly fighting ageism, racism and sexism by hating old, white males.

Yeah, yeah... detect *this*, Kinect.

Those silly Americans and their prudish- wait, wat?

Ah, Slashdot, where molehills become mountains.

Literally in this case. Yosemite? El Capitan or Half Dome?