I've paid tuition twice abroad. Once it took days, multiple forex/bank accounts, and had several annoying surprise fees. The second was in BTC and was settled in five minutes, directly.
It's been said before but the experience is a lot like writing an email versus a letter.
Of course it's a chemical, but still, no. 2 has only 1% of that, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_word_in_English. Yes this has been shared before but I've never seen an actual reference to this word itself yet. I wonder if anyone's memorized it yet.
Dangerously for privacy, a friend's account keeps getting notifications of when my contacts join because the app must have automatically scraped my contacts from my account to theirs when I was setting up their Telegram a few years ago (it was a used phone so all I can think of is I might've used my SIM card to test things out during the process).
Since we can't access this "central" list there's no way to clear them up apart from as they join, one by one.
> (zeitgeists) don't really end up meaning much personally.
Similar story with friends and family who struggled against communism behind the Iron Curtain. Some wish they'd just gotten good careers set up instead.
"Yes, a foreign legionnaire may apply for French citizenship from three years of service.
"It is usually granted, subject to have a good way to serve and have proven its willingness to integrate the French Nation.
"The legionnaire who does not wish to opt for French nationality retains his foreign nationality and is just as much to stay in France at the end of his contract and once he is in possession of a residence permit.
"Obtaining a residence card is consecutive to obtaining a "certificate of good conduct" issued by the command of the Foreign Legion to each deserving legionnaire leaving active service.
Furthermore, the legionnaire wounded in operation may acquire, from right, French nationality (law called "the blood shed")."
This reminds me of a point my physiology instructor worked hard to hammer home in the senior year of my bio degree: do not assign agency to unconscious processes. I forget the rationale for this but find myself reflecting on it often.
Took the train from NY to Settle. Learned to not do it in coach ever again for anything more than a day's worth of traveling. The seats are comfortable (much better than VIA Rail, which I took from Vancouver-Toronto earlier), but the random people getting on a random times, including in the middle of the night, is what got to me (VIA didn't have this so much). Had a very sketchy homeless guy with clearly some mental affliction in front of me talking to himself for about 1.5 days, and two others quietly murmuring on their phones for 5h+, late into midnight or later. I'd also pack my own food because the restaurant car required appointments and the snack kiosk had nothing good or healthy. Both were severely overpriced.
It's unfortunate you can't seem to make too many stops along the way. The company will allow for one, I believe, but as you try to add more the tickets get more expensive. The timing of arrival and the small-town location of many of them just make the option not very interesting for general tourism. I did have a few hours in Chicago which was pretty cool, though I didn't see much and was very put off by the "if you're being shot at then throw your duffel bag at the attacker" videos at the main station. But it was also the middle of winter and like 7-9am or so, so that definitely coloured my experience. Great diner experience though. No one does breakfast quite like North Americans.
Talking with a nice man from California in the restaurant car when I did go the one time I learned he paid as much as me for one of the private room options, just he'd booked a few weeks in advance. I believe he also had access to a shower, which would have been a game changer for me. I booked the way I did though primarily to test out the "worst" option and compare it to better options as I'd make more trips. This was what I learned so far. I'd like to do more though, because this seems like a great way to travel the country.
I was wondering why no one mentioned this. I've bookmarked it to play with more but it seems to address lots of the issues here, at least at first blush.
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
"Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
"But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."
It's a feedback loop though, whatever comes next will draw the crowds, which will draw loud voices, which will draw capitalists to form a structure (and career) out of it. There was a great essay on this topic that shows up here from time to time, using slightly different words: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths.
You're right. In the case of a narcissist or someone looking to argue (or someone very emotionally invested and stirred up), the "broken pop machine" method is better. They try to press your buttons but you don't react, saying things like, "Gee, I can't help you with that," and they eventually disengage.
Applying Karpman's triangle assumes both parties genuinely want to (and can) move forward.
I should add that the tendency of adopting the hero role ("let bygones be bygones, but we need to get this done") isn't ideal since it leaves a power imbalance in its wake. A more effective response lies in Nonviolent Communication,[0] so saying, "When you say this I feel this because I value this. Would you be willing to do this?" This way emotions are managed and both parties begin exiting the dialogue understanding each other, and on equal footing.
Yes to the "defect" thought. Learning about Karpman's triangle[0] helped me understand this. In conflict, people flit between three identities: the villain who tries to force their way, the hero who tries to save the situation, and the victim who accepts loss and points out their difficulties. And everyone's trying to be the victim because that's who ultimately gets their way, through manipulating the "don't kick someone when they're down" mentality. Fascinating stuff, and now that I've seen it I just can't unsee it almost everywhere.
You're very welcome. They really helped me. Ayishat Akanbi had a follow-up talk at Sydney's annual "All About Women" conference shortly after,[0] where she added that "intersectionality is seeing the importance of other people’s suffering. Being active on social media can simplify and minimize issues for the sake of being retweetable." The whole talk built well on top of the original video (though the Q&A was not as useful).
In addition, she used two more quotes that I wrote down: "If you understood everything I said, you’d be me," (Miles Davis) and "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." (F. Scott Fitzgerald). This is just the first half of what he said though, the rest being: "One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise." I think that's nice too.