As an active duty Soldier who went through BCT in 2002, I have no qualms with the concept of the "phase-based rewarding" scheme. I do, however, have a big issue with the concept of rewarding individualism.

We didn't get a "patch", we got upgraded from a red guidon to a white one. The guidon was symbolic of our group - one guidon for the platoon. The patches are symbolic of the individual - one patch per individual. If you, as an individual, screw up when your platoon is carrying the white guidon, you win "red" status back for your entire platoon real fast. It doesn't sound like much, but a unit carrying a white guidon gets treated far better than a unit carrying a red one.

I can see it now - Private Snuffy, You Screwed Up!!! Give Me Your Patch!!! It pisses me off because in combat, you don't win or lose as an individual. An individual's irresponsible or undisciplined actions can easily cost lives - and it's all too often that it costs the lives of those who are paying attention, making disciplined decisions, and maintaining vigilance.

Free Ottawa yoga class scrapped over 'cultural issues'

BY AEDAN HELMER, OTTAWA SUNStudent leaders have pulled the mat out from 60 University of Ottawa students, ending a free on-campus yoga class over fears the teachings could be seen as a form of "cultural appropriation."

Jennifer Scharf, who has been offering free weekly yoga instruction to students since 2008, says she was shocked when told in September the program would be suspended, and saddened when she learned of the reasoning.

Staff at the Centre for Students with Disabilities believe that "while yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students ... there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice," according to an email from the centre.

The centre is operated by the university's Student Federation, which first approached Scharf seven years ago about offering yoga instruction to students both with and without disabilities.

The centre goes on to say, "Yoga has been under a lot of controversy lately due to how it is being practiced," and which cultures those practices "are being taken from."

The centre official argues since many of those cultures "have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy ... we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practising yoga."

The concept of cultural appropriation is normally applied when a dominant culture borrows symbols of a marginalized culture for dubious reasons -- such as the fad of hipsters donning indigenous headdresses as a fashion statement, without any regard to cultural significance or stereotype.

But Scharf, a yoga teacher with the downtown Rama Lotus Centre, said the concept does not apply in this case, arguing the complaint that killed the program came instead from a "social justice warrior" with "fainting heart ideologies" in search of a cause celebre.

"People are just looking for a reason to be offended by anything they can find," said Scharf.

"There's a real divide between reasonable people and those people just looking to jump on a bandwagon. And unfortunately, it ends up with good people getting punished for doing good things."

There were about 60 students who participated in the free program.

Acting student federation president Romeo Ahimakin denied the decision resulted from a complaint.

Ahimakin said the student federation put the yoga session on hiatus while they consult with students "to make it better, more accessible and more inclusive to certain groups of people that feel left out in yoga-like spaces. ... We are trying to have those sessions done in a way in which students are aware of where the spiritual and cultural aspects come from, so that these sessions are done in a respectful manner."

Scharf offered a compromise, suggesting she change the name from yoga to "mindful stretching," since that would reflect the content of the program and would "literally change nothing about the course."

"I'm not pretending to be some enlightened yogi master, and the point (of the program) isn't to educate people on the finer points of the ancient yogi scripture," she told the Sun.

"The point is to get people to have higher physical awareness for their own physical health and enjoyment."

According to email correspondence between Scharf and the centre, student leaders debated rebranding the program, but stumbled over how the French translation for "mindful stretching" would appear on a promotional poster, and eventually decided to suspend the program.

Student federation official Julie Seguin sympathized with Scharf over e-mail, defending the use of the term "yoga," and saying, "I am also still of the opinion that a single complaint does not outweigh all of the good that these classes have done."

Seguin said "labeling the CSD's yoga lessons as cultural appropriation is questionable (and) debatable" and called on further discussion with the student executive.

Always a effing negative & something to bitch about.

I hope that these individuals of wuss decide NOT to breed due to their own ignorant thoughts and ideas.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1460122593

Gap apologizes for racially insensitive ad



But this one wasn't a problem:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1460125245




I guess this should go in the PC thread, but it's all the same -- bunch of babies.

In the first one I see kids modeling clothes.

In the second one I see a lazy black girl being held up by support from whitey, but that's only because I read the commentary between the first and second picture. Shortsightedness begets unintended consequences.

So, cultural appropriation...

I've got a good one.

Was back at the Trader Joe's wine store this evening. Seriously, this is the greatest store in the entire world. So much so that I've put down the whiskey of late and started educating my wine palate.

Anyway, there's a small section of Sake in the back of the store, right next to the ports and dessert wines. This one caught my eye:


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1460156950

Trader Joe-San? That's cultural appropriation on two levels! For starters, you are not allowed to enjoy the wine of another country whose history you have not experienced. (I mean, we did nuke Japan a total of five times, twice in 1945, and then three more times when the US-designed reactors at Fuku popped.)

But a US company adopting a Japanese naming convention for its own commercial gain? Unbereevabre! I'm offended, and I demand that Trader Joe's immediately cease the insensitive practice and give me a lifetime supply of free Syrah as compensation for the trauma which they have caused me. (It's ok to appropriate Syrah, since French and Australian people are mostly white*.)


* = Yes, yes... I know that Syrah wine is derived from Shirazi, which is originally of Iranian origin. But fuck Iran.

I'm really torn here. I'm of Spanish, Scots-Irish, Welsh, Polish-Jewish and Native American (North American and Central-South American) descent -- and that's just the stuff I know about.

But I like Grappa (Italian) and Chinese chili sauces. Plus, the imperialist U.S. Navy certified me as a nuclear-weapons delivery pilot.

I just can't live with myself anymore! I'll bet I'm not alone. We need a support group.

Why is it not cultural appropriation when Japanese play jazz or Chinese play classical music?

It's only appropriation when you are enjoying some element of a culture which your people have oppressed in the past.

So Chinese people, for instance, are allowed to eat sushi without causing any problems. But restaurants in Japan may not serve dim sum, because that would be cultural appropriation.

Got it?

Trader Joe's is owned by ALDI, which is a German company. That makes it ok.

I seriously can't quite figure out the sex/orientation of anyone in that video.

Nitrodann. Absolutely spot on.

Silly negro acts like no other group was ever enslaved. So educationally depraved. So indoctrinated.

wait, wasn't reparations how the jews got so rich?

I just can't remember if it was reparations from the Germans, Egyptians, or the Babylonians that killed and enslaved them.

Saw that video yesterday. Am I the only one who doesn't quite understand why it is so popular/considered humorous? I didn't find it funny in the least, and the person on the other end was responding about as well as I would expect anyone to in that situation. Maybe it's just me....

it's totally hilarious.

The manager handles it very well, but what the dude was saying was hysterical and was perfect satire.

No I turned it off halfway through.

I see now that it may have been intended as a satire, but to me it is more of a sad reminder that people like this do truly exist. Idiocracy may have been a hilarious movie, but it, and videos like this just make me cringe at the direction our society is heading.

It was obviously satire. But satire doesn't mean it's automatically funny.

it was funny. that automatically means it was funny.

There's just no other way for me to say this, and I do it will all the love and kindness in the world, but you're an idiot. :giggle:



Moving on...

This morning as I was walking to work, I came across a section of elevated walkway upon which someone had scrawled, in chalk, the phrase "Trump is an asshole."


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461338135

I feel incredibly violated / microaggressed by this. Whoever has done this has essentially raped me, and I require trauma counseling and a safe space.

What's wrong with being an asshole?

Nice printing, don't you think?

I don't agree with the random alternating upper and lower case lettering.
Clearly the "graffiti artist" / "left wing political party supporter" is uneducated.

The justification is moving leftward with each line, you can obviously see that the original artist scrawled out "TRUMP IS AN ASS" - it was a secondary artist art school grad, likely in conspiracy with the first, that decided she needed to write "hole" to complete her similar albeit independent thought.

I guess it was the little artistic flare on the "u" that "Trumped" it for me.

A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

By Max Ehrenfreund April 26 at 10:58 AM

In an apparent rejection of the basic principles of the U.S. economy, a new poll shows that most young people do not support capitalism.

The Harvard University survey, which polled young adults between ages 18 and 29, found that 51 percent of respondents do not support capitalism. Just 42 percent said they support it.

It isn't clear that the young people in the poll would prefer some alternative system, though. Just 33 percent said they supported socialism. The survey had a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

The results of the survey are difficult to interpret, pollsters noted. Capitalism can mean different things to different people, and the newest generation of voters is frustrated with the status quo, broadly speaking.

All the same, that a majority of respondents in Harvard University's survey of young adults said they do not support capitalism suggests that today's youngest voters are more focused on the flaws of free markets.

"The word 'capitalism' doesn't mean what it used to," said Zach Lustbader, a senior at Harvard involved in conducting the poll, which was published Monday. For those who grew up during the Cold War, capitalism meant freedom from the Soviet Union and other totalitarian regimes. For those who grew up more recently, capitalism has meant a financial crisis from which the global economy still hasn't completely recovered.

A subsequent survey that included people of all ages found that somewhat older Americans also are skeptical of capitalism. Only among respondents at least 50 years old was the majority in support of capitalism.

Although the results are startling, Harvard's questions accord with other recent research on how Americans think about capitalism and socialism. In 2011, for example, the Pew Research Center found that people ages 18 to 29 were frustrated with the free-market system.

In that survey, 46 percent had positive views of capitalism, and 47 percent had negative views — a broader question than what Harvard's pollsters asked, which was whether the respondent supported the system. With regard to socialism, by contrast, 49 percent of the young people in Pew's poll had positive views, and just 43 percent had negative views.

Lustbader, 22, said the darkening mood on capitalism is evident in the way politicians talk about the economy. When Republicans — long the champions of free enterprise — use the word "capitalism" these days, it's often to complain about "crony capitalism," he said.

"You don't hear people on the right defending their economic policies using that word anymore," Lustbader added.

It is an open question whether young people's attitudes on socialism and capitalism show that they are rejecting free markets as a matter of principle or whether those views are simply an expression of broader frustrations with an economy in which household incomes have been declining for 15 years.

On specific questions about how best to organize the economy, for example, young people's views seem conflicted. Just 27 percent believe government should play a large role in regulating the economy, the Harvard poll found, and just 30 percent think the government should play a large role in reducing income inequality. Only 26 percent said government spending is an effective way to increase economic growth

Yet 48 percent agreed that "basic health insurance is a right for all people." And 47 percent agreed with the statement that "Basic necessities, such as food and shelter, are a right that the government should provide to those unable to afford them."

"Young people could be saying that there are problems with capitalism, contradictions," Frank Newport, the editor in chief of Gallup, said when asked about the new data. "I certainly don't know what’s going through their heads."

John Della Volpe, the polling director at Harvard, went on to personally interview a small group of young people about their attitudes toward capitalism to try to learn more. They told him that capitalism was unfair and left people out despite their hard work.

"They're not rejecting the concept," Della Volpe said. "The way in which capitalism is practiced today, in the minds of young people — that's what they're rejecting."


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...sm-poll-shows/

who needs capitalism when they can't get a job, but are expected to pay for health care they dont need while living in their parents basement smoking weed?



today i ordered a Reagan Bsuh 84 shirt and plan to wear it to a punk rock show this weekend.

That's the result of decades of leftist propaganda in the universities.

The ignorance begins with not understanding the differences between free market capitalism and crony capitalism.

Hey dummy, how about *some* of us get really good at growing a lot of food, and the rest of us do whatever we're good at that others want, then we *trade*?
No, wait, that's what free markets are!!

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461772711

how about you all grow what the government tells you to grow, at the expensive of everything, and then i take it for free?

Or the ignorance that holds onto the idealistic view that true free market capitalism will ever be possible again?

I'm a true capitalist. It's what keeps me motivated and hungry day after day. The feeling of success gets sweeter as time goes on.

Nobody became rich by making "just enough".

I literally just opened another company because I seen another opportunity. Already started spending thousands and thousands more will be spent before making anything back, but that's how it goes.

Most people just want to be comfortable and I'm ok with that. Just don't stick your nose into my profits cause you know nothing about my losses.

again suggests it has happened before.

FWIW; Helicopter Parenting Has Given Birth To A Generation of Entitled Victims

Last paragraph;

Fair point. But only reinforces what I'm getting at.

Hey... wanna go get drunk?

Oklahoma court: oral sex is not rape if victim is unconscious from drinking | US news | The Guardian

I saw that earlier from a different source. The TLDR is that how Oklahoma law is written only Vaginal and ---- are considered rape. Oral sex falls under a different law. So while its a shitty outcome, it is the correct one as to how the actual law is written. I would expect that the law will now be updated to cover what it previously missed.

Gotta love being able to blame an application for your lack of common sense and poor decision making skills. wtf...

I use it for on track selfies on the back straight at PIR. How else will people know my miata goes faster than 100mph.

Lies

Truth.

https://www.miataturbo.net/general-m...-9/200k-72420/

I hope this guy is a former-member of this site.


I'd love to protest too, but i have to work the next day and give all the people in the above video a portion of my paycheck...

That was awesome. Fuck those people!

Hillary's ridiculous pants suits remind me of Kim Jong-Un.
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1461967962

There shall be an end to the discussion of politics unrelated to GenWu in this thread.

Oops wrong thread.
Ummm.. can you believe these young pussies that want either a facsimile of Linen's rotting corpse or a hermaphroditic Kim Jon-Un for president?

So back to Generation Wuss and the desire for a "Utopia" or whatever. I really think it boils down to jobs and wages. We constantly see stuff getting sent to China/India/SE Asia (especially manufacturing) and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it. Hell, China is getting so expensive, they are outsourcing our outsourced work to Vietnam and other countries in SE Asia. Do you like knowing most of the Boeing wing components are being produced in Malaysia by someone making a few bucks per day?

The amount of stress of constantly not knowing if your job is safe, etc, is soul crushing. And while I do have a bullshit degree, B.A. in Journalism, specialty Public Relations, my current career I have almost a decade of experience.

I graduated college in Dec 2005. I'm currently with my 6th different company since graduating.
- State Farm - ~1.5 years, made it through a large layoff, left to change career field (became a Technical Writer)
- Mercury Marine - 8 months, this was in 2007 when the economy shat the bed, I left the month before the started doing furloughs after laying off something like 50% of the people on the floor
- L3 Communications - ~4 years, work was slowing down immensely. To the point the last 7-8 months I was there I would typically have 5-7 hours of work per week and was paid to cruise the internet while we were trying to land other contracts. If I hadn't found another job, my buddy who is still the engineering manager there told me I would have been laid off at the end of the year..........I left in September. Production folks had already been laid off in a few different waves.
- TWG - ~4 years, heavily dependent on defense and oil/gas industries. Last year with oil/gas plummeting + other factors..........also some internal politics as well (I also think part of it was at this point I had become to good at negotiating salary increases when switching jobs so I was making more than some engineers), I was the only person in a $1xx,xxx,xxx company that did my job and still got shit canned. Now they are back to putting out the same shitty stuff as before I was there.
- Spirit Aerosystems - 6 months.....was told there was 3+ years of work on the contract (I was still looking the entire time, but getting paid is better than shit unemployment), laid off back in January. As they are sending more work to Malaysia.
- Ramsey Industries - Been there a few months. Got them to buy proper publishing software, and while they aren't giving performance raises to the employees this year, they are investing in 6 new positions to help with the increased billings and to help develop more new business.

Also nice as it is by far the smallest company I've ever worked for and it shows. Our power was out last month after a tornado blew through about .25 mile north of the shop, as I was chatting with the CEO of the company, he said, "Hey everyone since we can't get to work yet, I'm going to go buy us all donuts and coffee." I'm really hoping this company will be somewhere I can put down some roots and stay awhile........even though it was a pay cut vs what I was making.

this is so good, i urge everyone to watch.

see what i just posted in the regular random political thread. on topic.

There is a reason I laid out my experience. I'm incredibly skilled in publishing/manufacturing/technical writing. I'm not complaining that I don't have a job for Leisure Studies.

I'm saying the free trade agreements that have been pushed by the greedy corporate assholes, who are in bed with the Congress have dramatically fucked over the middle class.

But keep up the smug smile, your IT jobs are starting to get outsourced as well.