I didn't appreciate the severity of the condition. My apologies if I come across as insensitive, I should have paid more attention to the original post.
I certainly don't think "the disabled just aren't trying hard enough", I think you are extrapolating quite wildly there and I find the implication quite offensive.
The point I was trying to make is that having supportive parents can really help, and the poster is obviously very supportive of his son.
Every situation is different though.
I went to a school where a number of friends were not academic in the slightest. They left as soon as they could often with no qualifications but gradually learnt trades.
Many now have their own businesses (one is a plasterer, another a builder) and they earn good money, own their own homes, and have no student debt.
The reason? They had supportive parents. Many of the people who are falling into despair tragically come from very broken families.
I think NZ could become a major tech hub over the next 15 years. The geographical isolation will be alleviated by the internet and the development of faster air travel.
For anyone interested in tech, wanting to start up or grow in NZ, check out the Edmund Hilary fellowship.
In the seventeenth century, media shifted from manuscripts to print.
Now print has shifted to digital, but with the rise of Social some of the earlier dynamics of manuscript circulation are coming back into play, e.g "scribal communities" can be compared with "social media communities".
What this means, I've no idea, but it could lead to a further polarising of political opinion as social media communities solidify and cross-community dialogue disappears.
Good point. I think it's a combination of zealot-like intensity and humble open-mindedness which wins the day.
Most people are one or the other (or somewhere in between) but to combine both in one human personality is quite rare. This may be a reason why people find it hard to work around and for such people.
The article goes too far but there is something to be said about its core argument.
I don't think the Like button or emojis are good at recognising Value. A popular extrovert with 1000 fb friends uploads a selfie and gets 100 Likes.
Meanwhile a quiet but conscientious person uploads a before and after picture of a litter-pick they have undertaken and they get 2 Likes from their 50 friends.
There has to be a better way of recognising and incentivising the latter activity across social networks.
At the risk of the grossest generalisation, the Bay Area has worked because it's combined two very different types of people. On the one hand, the engineers/techies (with roots in the defence industry and conservative midwest backgrounds) and on the other, the idealists/utopians (with roots in the counter-culture movement).
Strange bedfellows, but a world-changing combination back then.
I don't live in the Valley now, so can't comment on the situation, but I hear it is far more of a mono-culture now.