So I get a piece of spam,

Doesn't this make you wonder "where did the script get its sentence" ?

I confess that I'm keeping an eye out. I have absolutely no doubt that should AI eventually emerge, it will emerge out of the efforts of one million mentally infantile adults working 16 hour days to "make money while they sleep" at the rate of a dollar or two an hour, rather than out of the efforts of one million mentally infantile adults "working" 7 hour days so the US Government can justify spending a trillion dollars' worth of largesse on them without going through that entire psychiatry circus it normally needs.

Google was able to trace it, 4 results proposed out of which the first was golden (and the second was about McCain, har har) :

At this point you may be tempted to observe, along with Alf and yours truly, that... but allow me to quote :

mircea_popescu TBH, I don't know there exists material more intellectually objectionable than the shit pouring out of the USG. Reminds me of the damned Soviets. "USG - Army Of One, And They're All Retarded"

asciilifeform They didn't have cut&paste. Modern USG has many advantages in bullshit production over predecessors. (The Soviets also didn't have microshit 'word', which helps illiterates to play-pretend by turning them into a kind of cyborg meat-assisted shannonizer).

Right ? But no, let's not stop at merely observing that the principal utility of "social media", be it implemented as reddit or facebook or anything else consists in preparing text for spammers - be they the blog comment spam kind or the "marketing department" kind or any other "kind".ⁱ

And let's not stop at merely observing that hey, clearly the Cult of Bayesianismⁱⁱ works! What do you mean you can't filter spam by "filtering for words"! It has scores and everything! It's all very scientific - it has numbers in it even! Numbers, you realise ?!?! Of course it works!ⁱⁱⁱ It has numbers in it!

No, let's not stop at any of that. Instead, let's go into full detail. I promise, it's worth it.

My wife has a useless degree and a history of mall jobs. Any advice to de-rutify her? (self.careerguidance)

submitted 8 months ago by biscuitjedi

Hi Reddit,

I'm looking for help for my wife, who is stuck in a mall job rut. She "likes retail", and has a very difficult time envisioning anything outside of it... but I know that is a function of her belief that she isn't qualified to do anything else, and a lack of awareness of any alternatives.

She has a bachelor's degree in hotel management, which may have had some use if she had actually entered that industry. As it stands, she didn't, and her degree seems fairly useless beyond the "has a bachelors" check mark at this point.

For several years she followed me from post to post during my stint in the army... her education was not utilized and she worked various AAFES jobs at or near minimum wage (fast food, convenience store clerk, etc). Getting anything better was difficult due to the lack of stability. For the past 6 years she has worked department store retail (stability returned once I left the servive), the last 3 as a counter manager for a cosmetic line. She has some marginal supervisory experience, with an on again off again part time employee working under her supervision.

She does reasonably well, is liked by her cosmetics executives, and is well paid for a non-managerial mall job (~$17/hour) but does not have that killer sales instinct and will likely never be a top performer. The likelihood of her promoting beyond counter manager is very low. Although she pretends to like her job, I know she doesn't... every now and again she admits it's slowly killing her and that she feels stuck.

Thing is, she hesitates to consider alternatives because she doesn't feel qualified to do anything else. Despite having a degree, her working life (she is now 39) has been spent in low/no-skill, entry level mall/cashier type jobs. She thinks she's locked in, and to a degree she is (I'm the primary bread-winner but we definitely depend on her additional income), but I can't help but think there must be some way for her to be exposed to types of more professional, higher income work she would be qualified for.

Can anyone point me in a direction that I could in turn point her? I'm thinking perhaps some kind of career counseling that would be capable of evaluating her background and offering suggestions she may not have thought of? Something that provided a professional ladder would be ideal. I think she would consider going back to school for a certificate (either undergrad or grad) or something equally short-term if necessary.

Anyone else have a spouse that was stuck in a rut and you were able to help them out of it?

I should also add, English is her second language (Thai is her first) and she considers her written English to be an obstacle. I'd say it is not nearly as much of an issue as she fears... she has some normal ESL issues with grammar (particularly tense) but her text is always understandable and fluid. She seems to think that professional careers require flawless writing ability, which I don't feel is the case.

Anyhow, thanks a million for any pointers, tips, guidance, or stories. =)

-BiscuitJedi

Where does one even start ? But no, let's not give up in disgust. Let's stick with it.

1. This man believes that a 39 yo woman can be "de-rutified". Think about this for a second : just as her biology is settling down for the end of days, preparing to render her skeleton under the hormonal imbalance of the final, endless lactation^iv he's going to... right ? By the power of the Internets invested through reddits, he's going to transhumanize the singularishit out of her.
2. This man believes that a woman that spent two decades (≈ her life ; === her youth) following him around, content to work lousy / entry level jobs for the entire interval is, and I quote, "set for grandeur and ready to take over the world". Yes, it's an exact quote. He actually says this, verbatim. It comes out of his fumbling attempts to avoid saying "I've picked up this Thai slavegirl when I was over there - was fun while it lasted but now she's kinda old and really I'm sick and tired of her". Yes, you and me both would like to read this as "he just believes in her and would like to help her get more". More of what ? What does she want ? It's at no point considered, is it ? On what is his professed belief that "she could more" predicated ? No actual examples are provided, at all. Yes, if he badgers her enough she occasionally breaks down. Such win, clearly.
3. This man actually says, nevermind what he believes, he actually says the words "She seems to think that professional careers require flawless writing ability, which I don't feel is the case." He doesn't feeeeeeeel it's the case, right ? Based on what, you might inquire ? Based on this :
   

   [–]biscuitjedi[S] 2 points 8 months ago
   I should add, don't let your experience - and fear - hold you back. I've been gently pushing my wife in the direction of something she'd be happier with in part due to my own experiences. I went from pointless jobs, to the army, to a very interesting but relatively useless degree (history) thanks to the GI bill (best thing to ever happen to me education-wise)... and ended up in a very nice white collar federal job that is completely incongruous with my background. It just takes sticking your neck out and taking chances... something I wish my wife would get the courage up to do. =)

   [–]Phoenix_Fatechanger 1 point 8 months ago
   I'd say fear is part of it, but also having no clue what I'd like to do with my life (career-wise). I lack direction just as much as I lack confidence.

   I think it's great that you're supporting her, pushing her to reach her potential. But maybe ask what she'd like to do if all possibilities were open and nothing held her back. If she could do anything, be anything, and had all of the skills and knowledge necessary for whatever she wants to do, what would she do? Go from there, maybe it would help! (I tried this and hit a wall, because I just don't know what I want out of life, but I'm also 24 and have little real-life experience to draw from)

   [–]biscuitjedi[S] 2 points 8 months ago
   I definitely agree she needs to come up with those answers. She's built a wall against doing so, but hopefully in time she can climb it. =)

   I think your experience, like hers, is more common than we'd think. I felt the same way for much of my adult life. I applied to my current job rather randomly on the usajobs.gov website and managed to survive the gladiator-style deathmatch that was the hiring process. I never thought I'd be where I am (I work in securities law compliance with the SEC... 9 years ago I was an army private boarding a plane to Iraq... completely different worlds). From one day to the next your direction can change. =)

   "Your direction can change", you see ? The USG gave him a lucrative job irrespective of his intellectual capacity or general worth and utility.^v This does not translate into his head as the obvious "I hung out with some gangsters for a while, and because of all the dirty jobs I did for them they allowed me to draw this paycheck without even doing anything" it actually is, but instead it's some sort of performance of his. It's almost like reading 1001 nights, random windfalls being reinterpreted as merit and identity left and right. G. I. Blockhead has "progressed in life", he thinks, and doesn't understand why the derpopotamus doesn't follow suit. How come she's not a successful business woman running her multi-million dollar empire from home, sitting on that ass ? Clearly, you must agree, he's been shortchanged.^vi He progressed, she hasn't. Why doesn't the Thai government go around starting wars in Connecticut and printing bahts to give her a "direction charge" ?

So now, let's get back for a second to that "why is pseudoscience taking over" thing.

Well... there's an outpouring, a flood, a purely cataclysmic deluge of these schmucks. Nobodies on a stick, which their government irresponsibly endowed with a false sense of self worth, a completely baseless set of expectations and so on and so forth. This man actually thinks his lot - having enough to eat and a woman that worships him - is not fit for the likes of him! He does. Who do you think is filling in the jobs, who do you think are the lawyers, the spies, the engineers, the experts of this inept regime ? BiscuitJedis, the lot of them. What else ? Whence ?

And the government that spawned all this scum is collapsing under the weight of the costs involved in cloning fucking Kim Kardashian, making up businesses for the clones to run and then throwing the package in the lap of ex Army privates like so many iron rats. Army privates, mind. Because obviously higher pay grades expect so much better than that - and then don't get it and so they become pissy.

What can is say ? What's there to say ?

I would like to close with a traditional

Can we have everything louder than everything else ?

1. Not like there's "kinds" of rapists, right ? They're just rapists. [↩]
2. The stupidity of this thing should probably get its own article sometime, obviosuly indirect approaches do not really work, as the readers enjoy such massive memory hole effects they read something like that and go right on to "applying statistics to science and everything!" as before.

   The "lesswrong" not even wrong community isn't even the worst offender, the shit's really pervasive in the Anglo world. Why, do you wish to know ? Read on an' you'll find out. [↩]

3. You know, just like Perl works.

   That's a very important essay, by the way, especially the part that goes

   Most people, when faced with a problem, will not investigate the cause of the problem, but will instead want to solve it because the problem is actually in the way of something more important than figuring out why something suddenly got in their way out of nowhere.

   It boils down to an issue of control of the environment. Consider : a landlord, who owns the real estate involved, would be doing nothing but boring tasks : stuff where the process and the output is known in advance, and with precision, like collecting rent. Should this landlord be confronted with something "come out of nowhere" he would immediately desist from whatever boring task and call forth the artillery. To shoot it!

   Meanwhile a rat of the common sewer variety, which owns nothing, would be doing nothing but interesting tasks : stuff where the output is known in advance, and with precision (rat will eat) but the process is not known in the slightest. Should this rat be confronted with something "come out of nowhere", it would avoid and escape, then start over from its new position, at the original task.

   That a large swath of bipedal life forms, such as pan troglodytes in all coat presentations - from fully furred to almost bare - would spend most of its time doing the rat is not surprising or undesirable, but necessary. That chimps would be programming computers, or write, or involve themselves in any of a number of specifically human tasks is however nothing short of scandalous. [↩]

4. This is what happens to women in menopause, if you were curious. Their body, like anything else that nature wrought, is a jewel of minimalism. Consequently, because calcium is essential for bone formation, a woman's skeleton will simply melt whenever she's given birth, so she can feed bone matter to the infant through her tits. Which is why a woman can't mineralize while nursing, it simply can't be done anymore that you can lose weight while building muscle.

   This is a very workable, effectual scheme : it provides a good boost for the young. Oh, not so great for the parents ? Fuck you. Its unforeseen consequence (unforeseen because the author did not give a shit about what happens "after" the woman can no longer conceive) is that once her hormonal output drops off (and in this respect menopause and postpartum share a very similar profile) her body loses control over the skeletal calcium balance, resulting in the very frail bones of postmenopausal women - that's how they manage to break a hip from a two foot fall. It's called "osteoporosis", because medicine doesn't believe in calling things anything like "achristiasis". [↩]

5. Apparently that's how they use the SEC these days - provide cover for paying armed forces veterans social security benefits, a few pay grades above what Congress authorised. [↩]
6. And I agree - he has. He went to school, where he was shortchanged into an unwarranted belief that he's literate. He joined the Army, where he was shortchanged into an unwarranted belief that he's a human being. Now in this sad posture as an illiterate subhuman with delusions of grandeur as to his literacy or appartenence to the human species, he finds himself stuck : why is it that people got the fire an' he doesn't ?

   All along now, sing along now!

   "I wanna be a man, mancub and stroll right into town, and be just like the other men - I'm tired of monkeyin' around!"

   [↩]