#Work Ethic vs. Laziness

[darrenwalleyconsultancy]

What is Work Ethic

Photo by Bruce Mars I have looked at lousy management practices and what makes a good leader in previous articles. Also, I covered the issue in today’s society where meritocracy has died in the liberal West. My last article, “How to motivate unmotivated employees.” I went over why we need to motivate our teams. There are a few areas that directly affect motivation. Several more that get…

[wirlibirb]

hey moot after tfa i only consume tf media thru fandom, so in other words id never really heard of tarantulas till u mentioned them. can u explain who they are/your headcanons/ramble pls

i don't really know much about tarantulas other than fandom tbh lmaoo

he's a science guy that turns into one (1) spider. not multiple tarantulas. only one. what a scam. and yeah idk that much about canon events lmao i just have to guess from fic what actually happened vs what the author made up for story purposes

his whole thing from what i've seen is like. questionably ethical(?) science and methods, and being obsessed with working with prowl or something lol (at least. in idw1 which is what taraprowl came from afaik)

rambles on that recent post below cut because i love text cut:

my limited knowledge thoughts were just like. bill : ford = tarantulas : prowl to me if you really try and write this narrative about them but seeing as I know basically nothing about either of the pairings, I have no idea if I'm correct. my knowledge comes from tumblr posts under the search "idw tarantulas" and a fic on ao3 (the judge by silenceofthellamas) and maybe like. some other fic but idk specifically because i am a mess that loses my tabs

i think the "leave me alone" vs "i'll follow you and haunt your life until you address me" vibes can definitely be there if you try to see it that way (keep in mind: haven't read canon about them yet though), with tarantulas just being. a whole shadow to prowl's life like "we can be great together!! you can help me!! i'll be friends with you" and prowl is just. "stop. get out"

anyway i'm too lazy to write properly on phone so autocorrect save me and send post :>

[dross-the-fish]

Thoughts on AI I was talking to some people about AI and generally I've been pretty neutral on AI as a tool. I've seen people bring up that it could be used as a good way for disabled people or people who generally aren't good at art to bring their ideas to life and honestly I'm pretty ok with that on principle. I am pretty firmly against AI being allowed to indiscriminately scrape the work of artists without their input or say so and I'm against Ai being used by the entertainment industry as a replacement for actual artists and writers. However what I really want to talk about is the use of AI as a tool, assuming it can be used ethically. I really hate the argument of "It's soulless," or "It's cheating" (used ethically it's just anther medium like photography or collages. Art is not measured by the amount of effort or the tools used. I am really tired of that take) and a particular scaremongering argument I've had directed at myself "It will replace you."

Because I do draw that's the one I get leveled at me the most. That AI will do what I do and do it better so there will be no point to me or what I make. They like to paint artists vs AI as John Henry vs The Machine and I just do not care for it. I think it's reductive to art and to artists to frame the value of art as a matter of effort vs quality of product. AI cannot make what I make because it's not me. It won't create my characters, it can only output what it's fed. The work it creates may be of better quality, more complex in texture and composition, more precise or more detailed but it can never build my characters because it doesn't know my characters like I do. I got curious and tried to use an AI image generator to see if I could make art with it and I could not. I have no idea how to input the fucking prompts in a way that makes something worth looking at and I lost the motivation to learn how to do so very quickly. As a creative outlet there was something so joyless about it. I felt like I was doing paperwork or coding and that's the shit I regularly get paid to do at my soul killing day job. I don't want to do it for fun. Also the intimacy was gone? I didn't feel like I was spending time with my creation and there was no sense of bringing something to life. None of the pleasure of watching a face take shape line by line and filling in the details until my character was looking back at me, imperfect due to the limitations of my skills but still fully realized and in some strange way "alive". Working with an AI generator felt so tedious. Even if I could learn how to use this tool and do it properly so that I get "better" looking results I don't want to. I feel so disconnected from the end product that I can't envision it ever bringing me any kind of fulfillment to make use of this tool. But I think, again, assuming it can be used ethically, as just another tool for making art it deserves to exist and be accessible to people who might enjoy using it to be creative. It's not the process or the software that's the issue, it's the way it's being abused and no amount of people trying to scare me with "AI could do it better than you" is going to frighten me away from preferring to draw by hand.

The point of art is not to be good, it's to create, it's to make something and to bring ideas to life. As much as I have my criticisms about AI I feel like a lot of the language used to condemn it presents a narrow view of what makes art "worthy" and it sets a goal post where none should exist.

Everyone should be allowed to create, and they should have access to whatever tools they are comfortable using and when we talk about AI vs Artists we should focus less on the quality and ease of use and more on the dilemma of using other people's work without consent and the potential for mass production of cheap and lazy products for profit from the entertainment industry at the expense of employing writers and artists.

[mistype360]

retyping(?) @ten-of-imps

looper isfp (or alternatively and unlikely, infj)

I genuinely can't tell if the reason I am typing more people as loopers is because I am biased or because most people follow the iiee/eeii stack...

I mostly approached your typing question by question. towards the end I make my final judgement, but I tried to collect as much inference and deduction from your answers as I could before I made a typing.

viewing beauty as subjective is definitely high introverted function. it could be interpreted as high fi, especially with the "judgement" aspect of both the question as answer, but I didn't want to make assumptions too early. what I looked more for was where your subjectivity was coming from. you acknowledged the fact that different observers hold different perceptions of beauty - which is very much fi. even later in the question, you seem to assert your own fi judgement - which seems to me to be very healthy. the combination of acknowledging subjectivity but also having your own values/judgement.

something I found very interesting was your use of the word "convenient" towards how you describe you can "switch" your love for something depending on how much you care about it. when I read it, it seemed as if you didn't really feel it objectively, as a fe user would. applying a sense of love with no requisites. instead, it was something very personal, very subjective to the situation (fi).

for your personal values - I don't type on what the value is, but rather how you experience it. I also don't believe that just because it doesn't come immediately to you doesn't mean that you're not a fi user (because values are not usually consciously thought about).

if I did type based on your values I infer that you hold a sense of duty towards the things you do, which may/may not be fi.

you want to have integrity, but from the way you view yourself you are seemingly 'all over the place.' i wasn't entirely sure how to interpret what you meant by 'integrity' - is it that you want to be true to yourself or true to others? how do I even type someone who wants to be vs. someone who actually is?

I spent a bit of time thinking about this, and I decided that

for your question on power and military - I actually saw a lot of ni. you seem to look at the past to synthesize and spot patterns, which is part of how you make predictions/judgements about topics.

towards the end of it, however, you mentioned something about how you interpret power. you stated how you believe it's "having enough money to make free decisions and have plenty of possibilities to choose from, so you would never have to be stuck in a bad situation."

...this is very, very much isfp. there isn't much isfp info online, but from the one's there are, they are practically known for wanting freedom (even more then every other type 👀).

(um so this is the part of my typing where I get a little lazy but this is just more evidence of fi>fe)

not being very connected to surroundings or outside situation -> low sensory

searching things up to find objective source or facts, looks towards outside sources -> te?

valuing authenticity (mostly within self and expressing it towards others) in relationships -> fi

the entire answer related to society was so ixxp it's actually wild...

critiquing societal structures from an ethical standpoint ("society does not work for everyone", "rent is a crime", "a sign that a society is failing") is very very very much fi

the labyrinth dream is NI NI NI NI:

unsure about the future, questioning the path to take and possibilities, then afraid of choosing a safe path and hated being taken no where. you cared more about what was safe, rather than what you loved internally, which ultimately brought you comfort. but through feeling safe, you felt you could explore more.

now here is the problem - I can't type you as an isfp, since you are very low in se. there is a way for me to do this, but there is not much information online for a fi-ni-se-te infp. you can try searching it up and doing research, but I doubt there is enough (yet), since the iiee or eeii structure is not as popular (even though carl jung confirmed it could work).

in the end, I decided that ne just didn't work, not matter how much I tried to reason an infp typing. I simply cannot see you as an infp, no matter how much I tried to twist your answers or interpret it in different ways.

this left me with the 2nd possibility, that you are an infj. the problem here is that again, your fi is stronger than your fe. ultimately though, I am able to see how some of your feeling answers could (key work - could) be a way that your fe manifests. imo, it is much more likely that i mistyped your fe rather than your ni, since your ni just seems to be a lot more concrete.

in the end, I will end up typing you as an infj. but I will leave the option open for that fi-ni-se-te infp. I know that you probably submitted another typing since isfp may have not identified with being an isfp. however, consider searching up looper isfp (although most results will talk about more negative stuff since looping is considered unhealthy).

[thessalian]

Thess vs The Usual Aggravations

Well, we're getting more or less back to normal. Temp's back on a phased return, so she's doing fewer hours for a bit, but otherwise we've got everybody in. Well. In theory. I mean, except for when The Other Part-Timer has an appointment that apparently she didn't bother to tell anyone about until it was, "Oh, I have to leave for the entire afternon". And Goblin having an appointment that meant she was out in the morning. And Temp coming in an hour later than she originally said she would. You know - poor communication bullshit that Scruffman lets slide because he dislikes confrontation.

Now, it's nice that we're back to at most low three figures in the typing queue. Like, a little over a hundred. The problem is that the girls are back to the same old bullshit when it comes to the typing. One of the girls, and I have no idea which one, took a bunch of typing out of the queue yesterday morning and put it all back in in the mid-afternoon, which meant that I had to bust my ass if I wanted to have all of the previous day's typing done by close of play (which is our basic target). And today ... well, we didn't quite manage that, but that's only because I got fed up. Only four cases were dumped back int the queue in the mid-afternoon when by timestamp they should have been finished that morning. Just they were Annoyances, one and all. Worse - training Annoyances; ones taking their cues from other producers of Annoyances (and Monstrosities, worse yet) on top of the kinds of mistakes and tripping-over-words you get from a trainee.

I did three out of the four. I refused to get stuck with all four. I absolutely fucking refused. Goblin's in until half-five; she can handle the bullshit. Because, seriously, I am exhausted and in pain and really not feeling well, but I am getting through it because I have next week off and the workload will look bad enough as it is when I get back without being off. Because ... well, seriously. I give the others the consideration of trying to keep things at least a little manageable when they're away - more for the patients than for them, but still. Do they do me the same courtesy? Absolutely not. I wish I knew why the hell I alway seem to end up with colleagues who take ridiculous advantage of my work ethic and basic consideration. There have to be good secretaries out there, right? I can't be the only one. It's not that all my contemporaries in the field are lazy mares with no understanding of what our job means, is it? Because that would depress the hell out of me.

Scruffman sent me an email thanking me for all my hard work the last six weeks. "We'd have been lost without you" is what he said. I swear, though, if the rest of his team don't stop dumping the worst of everything on me, I'm going to end up the one on the sick leave, and I would bet serious money that we won't fare nearly as well if I end up on sick leave. Apparently they can survive losing any number of people for awhile ... as long as that person's not me.

I'd bring up the issues to Scruffman again, but seriously, nothing ever happens, and frankly he shouldn't have to be hovering over his typists to ensure they distribute the workload evenly and don't cherrypick only the easiest and least annoying bits of typing to the exclusion of all else. And that's what he'd have to do, because they might improve for a week but then right back to the laziness when the dust settles. It may not be a reflection on my value to the department, but it's still depressing as fuck when I bring up a complaint and nothing happens. It's not like it's Scruffman's fault that my colleagues are lazy, and there's not much he can do about it. He's spoken to them, but they've just gone back to base lazy soon after. Scruffman can't police them - he has other duties, so all he can really look at is if the typing's getting done, and it is, so ... sucks to be me.

At least there's no overtime.

[aerypear]

What Ai program do you use for your art?

Pinterest for inspo, reference pose photography, lots of redrawing lines because hands we've been over this the legs aren't twice as long as the body!!!, and if I'm feeling fruity; streaming to my friends to watch my suffering.

Okay, I'll admit, I have no idea if you're asking because you're trolling or genuinely curious.

So I personally do not use AI to aid my art creation. I have, probably, an ounce too much pride for that. I'm personally not fond of AI for the whole progress of the piece but I can acknowledge that it would be a useful tool for figuring out wips for an idea to help build off of.

Afterall, using 3d models, using the auto generated color based on reference and suggestion layers, etc have been useful under layer processes for other artists. (Tools I barely touch but see other artists use quite often)

However, making the AI do ALL of the hard work for you is laughable and extremely lazy. And you might say "But it's great for those with disability!" to which it shows me you haven't done research on artists at all. Chuck Close has a muscle weakness of some sort (preventing the use of his finer mobile functions and pincer grasp muscles) and Prosopagnosia (inability to recognize or differentiate between human faces) yet paints BEUTIFUL portraits with his wrist.

If you have the want, you'll do it yourself. I have a plethora of sport related injuries that impede my ability to draw, drive, do massive amounts of movements- yet I'm doing all of that anyway. I have days that hurt more than others but that's apart of disability.

So... if you're trolling, Top answer. If you aren't, well hopefully I make sense in the longer read. But truly, you won't get better at certain processes of art making by relying on AI, so I couldn't ever recommend it. (and that's not saying anything about the ethics of not telling your clients about the use of AI vs telling...)

[blessphemy]

✨ Fic Writing Review 2023 ✨

thanks for the tag @non-plutonian-druid!

the actual format of this game is this post but i rearranged it a bit so that i could hide my extremely long list of fics under a cut

Fandom fic events 2023

Murderbot Diaries New Year Gift Exchange

Yuletide Draft Dodgers

Murderbot AUpril Collection (open and accepts submissions)

2023 Aspec Murderbot Diaries

2023 PresAugust

We Were It // It Will Be Us: A TMBD Art Exhibition (open and accepts submissions)

Botober 2023

Upcoming 2024

Events:

i'm doing the Murderbot Diaries New Year Gift Exchange (2024) :3

Perhaps i'll post something for the annual 3/3 for Three collection idk (this collection is open and accepts submissions, and it spikes on March 3rd of each year)

WIPs:

Gift exchange fic

Absolute monster of a nullverse!network effect AU fic. i'm trying so hard to get draft 1 of this beast finished it's been beating my ass for over a year but i'm gonna Get It

Continue Via Solitude updates.

a 5+1 ASR bad ends fic that explores some meta shit. namely trust, forgiveness, and sci-fi horror genre vs canon.

Words and fics 2023

let's find out just how cringe (fun) i've been on ao3. i'm like. jeebus creebus i've posted a lot this year huh.

105,486 words of fan fiction. all of it murderbot. let's look at them going right down the statistics page (default sorted by hits, tho it gets kind of messy at the end with and i got lazy):

30,336 words of Via Solitude, an All Systems Red AU where murderbot has to do wilderness survival.

~5k words that's just a repost of Threat As Greeting, except with fresh interactive CSS effects.

3,346 words top 3 SURPRISING things you didn't know about the SECUNIT who pulled you out of an INCINERATOR (2023 gift exchange) outsider POV from the characters featured in Wells' pre-canon short story

1,502 words Aspec Drabbles (for the Aspec Murderbot Diaries event) it lot of fun to work with strict 100-word drabbles.

13,837 words References NULL: Logs From Project Murderbot [nullverse] the most purely concentrated angst/whump from the nullverse series yet. handle with care or skip it.

6,552 words How To Go On A Camping Trip - a guide for anxious SecUnits who are bad at vacationing (2023 gift exchange) i really liked this one tbh. fun standalone.

2,488 words Improve Your Baby AI With This One Weird Trick! (2023 gift exchange) my personal fic-titling theme for the gift exchange was "clickbait."

7,875 Alien Refuge (AUpril inspired) This is a Homestuck crossover, and reportedly the first time multiple people willingly interacted with homestuck-affiliated content, and they liked it. gottem. it's also pretty good, i did a nice job injecting homestuckism tone into the murderbot narrative style If I Do Say So Myself.

911 words No Comment: Shut Up And Dance [nullverse] fluff and humor. tfw your secunit friend (murderbot) is crashing in your living room and you (dr. ratthi) have insomnia.

2,922 words MetaMorphoSys (AUpril inspired) listen i NEED the next big fandom trend to be an AU world where people metamorphose inside cocoons. hear me out. HEAR ME OUT. in this fic we take the fridge horror of canon murderbot diaries and make it visceral, wet, biological, and ethically Even Worse. get yr Amena emotions also.

0 words SecUnit Technician Bingo Card it's funny. idk.

3,438 words nullverse reference sheet [nullverse bonus content] self indulgent AU notes

2,290 words Systems: Splorch [nullverse bonus content] a friend of mine said "how long until we get a fic with #oviposition in the murderbot diaries ao3?" i took the answer to that question into my own two capable hands at 7.5 hours. you're welcome.

2,562 words Artifacts NULL: Fire Festival [nullverse] slice-of-life friend times with nostalgia vibes. how far we've come.jpg.

388 words Entries shared by the Society for Conservation of Feed Artifacts (SCFA) (created for TMBD in-universe robot art gallery, which is an open collection that accepts any submissions!) wait this reminds me i have one more to post. i'll get to it.

9,314 words in 31 fics written for (Botober 2023) daily prompts. turned out to be a fun exercise and exploration of bot culture tho it took me longer than the month of october to finish.

4 fanarts of fics that i liked.

26 fanbindings where i printed out and made booklets out of fics that i liked.

2 translations.

3,080 words Refrain [nullverse bonus content] if you're unfamiliar with my Brand this will sound unhinged. if you are familiar with my Brand you know by now that i have a knack for taking literally Anything and treating it with tender loving care and unexpected deft so this doesn't even surprise you. tl;dr it's porn of two bots having a deeply OSHA-unapproved Fuck Session, there's no genitals involved, and it's tagged #Vivisection. it's pretty good if you're into robots and perhaps mild gore.

Rules & Tags for this game

Rules: Feel free to show whatever stats you have. Only want to show Ao3 stats? Rock on. Want to include some quantitative info instead of stats? Please do this. Want to change how yours is presented? Absolutely do that. Would rather eat glass than do this? Please don’t eat glass, just keep on scrolling.

@fishdetective @beatrice-otter @snugglyeldritchjellyfish @ilovedthestars and anyone who feels like it

[grfn-btbtas]

I was talking to my dad about work ethic and we hit on a couple of things.

First, the rewards for working in general have gone down - average/median dollar earned per working person vs average/median expenses like rent, housing, groceries etc., have all gotten worse. There are (in mathematical approximation) a set of relationships among the distributions of housing prices, grocery prices, and income which have all gotten "worse." This is an inherently depressing thing, and for a number of people - people who are prone to being neurotic, who are less motivated generally, etc., this psychological distress is enough to push them into malaise.

Second, the relative rewards for work ethic by itself have gone down - "work smarter, not harder" is the prevailing mantra. More than "work smarter, not harder," there are too many borderline scam artists getting rich and being praised for it. You look at NFT guys and cryptocurrency stuff or Theranos or SVB, and you think about the b(m?)illions of dollars tied up in those industries, and anybody who's sufficiently sharp and ambitious is going to realize that if you're not in that game you're basically a sucker. This is to say nothing of the discussions regarding talent being hoovered up by large tech companies where positions are often explicitly parasitical sinecures, bizarre set-asides and write-offs of companies attempting to get insurance vs a potential future entrepreneur or competitor. This is a reasonably well-trod point, so I won't touch further on it.

Those two previous points (which I'm sure could be connected if you tried hard enough) are primary causes of a secondary set of dysfunctions. I have, in the course of my life, met people who would discuss how hard they worked in spite of explicit rewards. These people had odd personality ticks, they had neglected personal relationships, they had flat affects. They had become - in spite of possessing what I insist is the admirable quality of being hard-working - difficult to admire. If the hard-working people - the hardest working people - cease to be admirable, or society is set up in such a way that they can't even command respect - what reason is there to aspire to be hardworking? I have (I admit) never been prone to being particularly effective or hardworking or ambitious. I made moves away from laziness on the basis of disliking the kinds of people who were lazy. But I'm coming up on not being able to see the benefits of being like this far end of the spectrum - these people who are overworked with less rewards than if they had taken it easy and secured "work smarter, not harder" attitudes to life. This is all to say I'm conflicted about it. I want to admire them, but I can't.

[navabharathnationalschoolsstuff]

Striking the Right Balance: Discipline vs. Encouragement in Your Child’s Education

Introduction

As parents, we all want our children to excel in their studies, but finding the right approach can be challenging. Some parents lean towards strict discipline, while others focus primarily on encouragement. However, the key to academic success and emotional well-being lies in striking a balance between discipline and encouragement.

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Too much discipline can make a child feel pressured and anxious, while excessive encouragement without structure may lead to a lack of focus and responsibility. So, how do you find the perfect middle ground? Let’s explore effective strategies to create a balanced approach that fosters both motivation and accountability in your child’s education.

Understanding Discipline in Education

What is Discipline?

Discipline in education refers to setting clear expectations, boundaries, and routines that help children develop good study habits, time management, and self-control. It’s not about being overly strict but about teaching responsibility and the value of consistency.

Why Discipline is Important?

✅ Helps children develop strong work ethics ✅ Encourages time management and organization ✅ Teaches accountability for their learning ✅ Reduces procrastination and distractions

However, excessive discipline can lead to fear, stress, and resentment, making children feel pressured rather than inspired to learn. That’s why discipline should be complemented with encouragement.

The Role of Encouragement in Learning

What is Encouragement?

Encouragement involves positive reinforcement, motivation, and support to help children believe in their abilities. It builds confidence and fosters a love for learning rather than making it feel like a burden.

Why Encouragement is Essential?

✅ Boosts self-esteem and confidence ✅ Increases interest and enthusiasm for learning ✅ Encourages creative thinking and problem-solving ✅ Helps children overcome academic challenges

However, too much encouragement without discipline can lead to laziness, dependency, and a lack of responsibility. This is why a balanced approach is key.

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How to Balance Discipline and Encouragement?

Finding the right mix between rules and motivation requires thoughtful strategies. Here’s how you can foster a positive and effective learning environment for your child:

1. Set Clear Expectations with Flexibility

Children perform best when they have clear expectations and understand what is required of them. Set realistic study goals, deadlines, and daily routines, but allow room for breaks, creativity, and flexibility to reduce stress.

🔹 Example: Instead of saying, “You must study for 3 hours every day,” say, “Let’s create a study plan that includes focused learning time and breaks.”

2. Use Positive Reinforcement Instead of Punishment

Instead of scolding for poor performance, acknowledge effort and guide them towards improvement. Praise their hard work, even if the results aren’t perfect.

🔹 Example: If your child struggles with math, instead of saying, “You’re not trying hard enough,” say, “I see you’re making an effort. Let’s find a different way to understand this concept together.”

3. Encourage Independence & Responsibility

Give children the freedom to make their own study decisions, but hold them accountable for their choices.

🔹 Example: Instead of forcing them to study at a specific time, let them choose their own schedule, but ensure they stick to it. This teaches them responsibility and time management.

4. Create a Supportive Learning Environment

Ensure your child has a quiet, comfortable, and distraction-free study space. Support their learning by showing interest in their studies, providing resources, and being available for help.

🔹 Example: Instead of simply asking, “Did you finish your homework?” say, “What topic are you working on today? Can I help you in any way?”

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5. Teach Resilience & Growth Mindset

Encourage children to view challenges as opportunities to learn rather than failures. Teach them that making mistakes is a part of growth.

🔹 Example: If your child scores low on a test, instead of criticizing, say, “What do you think went wrong? Let’s work together to improve next time.”

6. Lead by Example

Children learn by observing. If you demonstrate self-discipline and a love for learning, they will naturally adopt these values.

🔹 Example: Show them that you also value education by reading books, learning new skills, or managing your work efficiently.

Real-Life Example: A Balanced Approach in Action

Meet Rahul, a 10-year-old student who struggled with consistency in his studies. His parents initially imposed strict study rules, making him feel overwhelmed and demotivated. After recognizing this, they shifted their approach:

✔ They allowed Rahul to choose his own study schedule. ✔ They started using praise and encouragement instead of punishment. ✔ They introduced small rewards for completing tasks. ✔ They provided emotional support when he faced difficulties.

The result? Rahul became more independent, motivated, and performed better in school without feeling pressured!

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Conclusion

Balancing discipline and encouragement is not about choosing one over the other—it’s about integrating both in a way that fosters confidence, responsibility, and a love for learning.

✔ Set structured yet flexible study routines. ✔ Motivate through positive reinforcement. ✔ Encourage independence and accountability. ✔ Create a stress-free, supportive learning environment. ✔ Lead by example.

By striking the right balance, you help your child develop a strong work ethic, resilience, and a positive attitude toward education—preparing them not just for academic success, but for life!

What strategies do you use to balance discipline and encouragement in your child’s education? Share your thoughts in the comments! 👇

[peiorestbonitasmea]

There absolutely is a difference between how adults with children vs. adults without children are treated. In the workplace, those without children are often expected to work later or come in on days off because they don't have children occupying their time. And if they don't come in or work late they can be viewed as lazy or selfish. Or people view those without kids as immature because they don't bear the same responsibilities. It's ridiculous. Having children is a choice, not an indicator of moral values, work ethic, or maturity.

Disclaimer: I don't hate children or those with children, I am simply pointing out that there is a disparity between the treatment of the two groups, and I recognize it is not a hard and fast rule.

[sam-dugesian]

lol

it is a criminal

he's like the inverse of the stig but in real life

he thinks that text to speech is super advanced artificial intelligence that will steal his job

he does not know what the mario franchise is despite being born in the 80's and owning both a snes and n64

he can't shotgun a beer because his credit card is too stiff to fold into a point and his pocket knife is for opening bottles

he thinks watermelon are funny because in his own words water is it's own word and melon is not

he once got lost inside a lampshade and had to be rescued by concerned pedestrians

he made a video game detailing the security of his house enticing people to rob him and had the land his house was built on bought instead therefore losing his entire house and contents

he once lost a winning lottery ticket when he fed it to a pelican and couldn't get it back

he is so lazy that when he needs to go to the toilet he would rather do it on the person on the bunk below his bed than go to the toilet

he wrote a story about a man contemplating whether he should kill people and forgot that the character was already dead and in his own canon completely unable to affect the living world

he wants his entire house to be tiled including the furniture simply because it would be easier to clean that way.

he was banned from Reddit after paying people to spam r/place with an advertisement for his video game project

he once mansplained a one word meme for 4 hours

he wrote a story about the ethical quandary of rescuing a person trapped under a heavy rock in zero gravity

he doesn't understand the joke of McBane in the simpsons

he thinks watching Rush Hour 2 counts as supporting BLM

he got hold of a pre-release of the Stanley Parable and attempted to release it before the official release just so he could claim ownership not realising that computer files carry meta data.

he plagiarized charlie the unicorn in 2022

he was sued by Morgan Freeman but settled out of court

he once tried to copyright water

the movie batman vs superman contains dialogue he wrote

he competed in a game jam and copied another person's entry

in his own words his favorite english word is 'ame' from when people talk in a japanese accent and use other words like texans

he thinks all stairs should be ramps instead

he says music is the blood of horror like columbo he meant action and rambo

he thinks glass is a conspiracy

he can't spell the c word

he works exclusive in sci-fi space dramas by choice but he hates outer space

[curtiscroachblog]

Your Boaz season

Word for Today written by Bob and Debby Gass

Sunday 19th May 2024

'She has been working...without a moment's rest.' Ruth 2:7 CEV

After ten years of sorrow and hardship, in which she lost her husband and her support system, God introduced Ruth to her new husband, Boaz. Where? In the field where she worked each day. Who was Boaz? The owner of the field. One of the things that attracted Boaz to Ruth was her work ethic. The servant in charge of his reapers told him, 'She came and has continued from morning until now' (Ruth 2:7 NKJV). As a result, she ended up married to the boss.

The Bible says a lot about laziness vs. hard work, sloppiness vs. excellence, lateness vs. punctuality, honesty vs. dishonesty, a positive attitude vs. a negative one. Someone who can bless you is always observing you. With this in mind, read these three Scriptures: (1) 'Do you see a person who is efficient in his work? He will serve kings...not serve unknown people' (Proverbs 22:29 GWT). (2) 'Lazy people want much but get little, while the diligent are prospering' (Proverbs 13:4 TLB). (3) 'He who has a slack hand becomes poor, but the hand of the diligent makes rich' (Proverbs 10:4 NKJV). Notice the phrases 'lazy people' and 'a slack hand'. By expecting much and giving as little as possible in return, you don't just short-change the person or company you work for, you short-change yourself.

God promises to honour you when you give your best. His word says, 'For promotion and power come from nowhere on earth, but only from God. He promotes one and deposes another' (Psalm 75:6-7 TLB).

[walkonthelightside]

I really enjoyed this. As a sketch of what's possible, it really does a good job of presenting what the future could feel like.

It doesn't answer every problem to be a good sketch for picturing the world, but here's a issue that jumped out at me.

One of the underlying reasons time spent working has gone up alongside productivity instead of increasing leisure time is that money isn't just access to sustainance. Money is access to relative influence, power and decision making authority.

This is a more complex problem than greed being an underlying vice. Some people's hobby as made possibly by all the free time they have in an 8 hr work week is to work more. This is more like the virtue of the protestant work ethic than the vice of greed. I don't think ambition in this kind of form can be put away.

The deepest problem in economic systems, be they capitalist or communist or something entirely different aren't this kind of person, but a version of this kind of person. Someone who will work flat out to not create more value than other people, but to capture value. This, I think, is greed. Rent Seeking.

Trouble is, it's easier to identify the people who work flat out, and stop them, despite them genuinely being oriented around creating value for other people, something fundamentally good. The Rent Seekers will find ways to make working flat out to capture value, look like not working.

The last piece is that this split in work vs greed plays out through from people who work 100hrs a week down to people who never work. There are people who will refuse to work, but never the less adamantly ensure their actions add value to the world, just as there are people who will find any way to make or take a dollar as long as it isn't, well, work.

I don't have an answer to this out of hand. But greed is often seen as wanting more. I think the problem space is more involved. Their is wanting more in an honorable way. Wanting more in a dishonorable way. This can play out both at the top of society and at the bottom. Freeloading and greed are two ends of the same spectrum, two ends of Rent Seeking. Theft by wiles and slick systems rather than by hand and crook.

The economy of the future will have to deal with this problem space properly. Most solutions only speak to a small slice of it. Ensuring an economy that works for everyone who does work to make value for others is important.

This needs to be done such that everyone in society has the base support they need. But also I'm such a way that people who want to make as much value as humanly possible for others are rewarded justly. This also needs to ensure that people who are Rent Seekers, both high effort and lazy, cannot capture value outside of what they earn from value created as fair to others.

We need to solve a problem deeper deeper than greed, but I definitely see it as possible. I see this whole vision as possible.

it's time now. it's time to imagine the brightest future you can, and talk about it.

a future where people only work 8 hours a week and everyone's basic needs are met. a future where we are more connected to nature and eat seasonal, local produce. a future where you look out for your neighbours and they look out for you. a future where you actually know who your neighbours are. a future where everyone is just a lot more relaxed and able to do whatever they want to do - this 8 hour working week has given people their lives back and now they're able to make community events, work in community gardens, sing and dance and spend time with their kids, play whatever sport they want, travel, read, create art and music.

People are interacting with each other in good faith again because money as an ulterior motive has all but disappeared. Cus you see a few decades ago they made profits illegal. All money has to be put back into the company and CEOs can take home a salary only, no bonuses and it can't be more than 3x what the lowest paid employee makes. You can go to jail if your company is found to make profits, advertise on a large scale or pay its high ranking members more than what's allowed.

Jail still exists but mostly people go in for financial crimes (greed still exists); drugs are decriminalised and available to use safely. people are not as desperate now so there's been a massive reduction of violent and petty crime and most of the people who still do this are teenagers who get away with a slap on the wrist. police are not armed anymore and are heavily penalised if they abuse their power or hurt a civilian, and their role is more that of mediator, signposter (to community services, social services, and free and accessible healthcare including for mental health) and security. together with the former military they make up an "emergency task force" which are called upon in times of need and crisis, for floods, fires, other such disasters.

the stock market completely collapsed after profits were made illegal and people had to find other ways to figure out what a company was worth: such as how they treat their staff or how accessible their processes are. as a result of this, as well as more widespread disability thanks to Covid and an ageing population, accessibility is fucking incredible now. most places are accessible to the vast majority of disabled people even without them having to ask for a single thing. If they have to ask, accommodations are made quickly and without fuss and this is completely normal now. disabled people are more visible than ever in public life and this has led to a generally kinder, more tolerant public life.

Everything is slower now. Social media as we know it died decades ago and Internet 4.0 is efficient, will find you accurate answers and the websites you're looking for very easily and fast. there's monopoly laws restricting how large companies operate online. online ads are all but illegal - there's "phone book" esque pages where you can promote your business or service and that's allowed but not anywhere else. Lots of people are still annoying and some of them are still cruel but overall living together as humans has gotten so much more chill. We've tackled climate change and reversed much of it, now it's a global day of mourning whenever a species is found to be extinct through human intervention. these days used to happen much more frequently but it's very rare these days. Most everyone gets the day off and is encouraged to read about the lost species or hold themed funerals. Globally everything has gotten better - there's much more global equality now after a bunch of western/formerly colonising countries almost self destructed and then instead decided to own up for colonialism, pay reparations to a lot of countries in Africa Asia and Latin America, as well as indigenous nations of North America, Oceania, even in Europe. The USA doesn't exist anymore instead its a whole host of separate nations all managed by the native people whose land it is. The UK doesn't exist anymore. England is still sad about it but Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall are called Cymru, Alba, Eire and Kernow again and they've formed a Celtic Union for better collective bargaining power in the EU (which still exists, somehow. Its better now. England may still be out of the EU I'm not sure). Migration is common and foreigners are welcomed into any country with open arms.

I may try to write something about this. I have a vision for a future and it's so lovely. Here, on earth, with the starting point being now. We have a lot to work with and only a few changes could make such a difference. Demilitarisation, UBI and maximum working hours, greedy financial practices made illegal. Conservation and education on local plants and nature and food. Community building on every level. Giving people their lives back.

This is all extremely possible. If it were up to me, very little in society would be left unchanged but it would all be people friendly changes. changes that aim to support the poorest and most marginalised, changes that aim to punish greed and exploitation. It's a work in progress of course. But I have a vision for a better world and dammit if I'm not going to share it with you.

[zaratargaryen1]

i have mixed feelings about book 4 of the Dragon Prince 😔 about to go over it here

(no hate to the people working on the show)

i actually like alot of the stuff on the season, and i definitely see how it’s mostly just setup for the whole “Mystery of Aaravos” arc. however, i had a few issues.

Janai / Amaya subplot. i was fully into this subplot… until the ending. it was so anticlimactic?? i feel like it shouldnt have been resolved by the end at all. Janai’s brother (sorry forgot his name) should’ve gotten some kind of big win over her and we shouldve left it there. hell, anything else wouldve sufficed. instead we’re left right back where we started. i just found the ending unsatisfying.

Rayla/Callum subplot… oh brother. i don’t think they should’ve had any animosity/ hurt feelings at all this season. imo it should’ve just been “Rayla and Callum miss each other because Rayla/Soren/Corvus went off to hunt down Claudia” and that could’ve been that. i feel that would’ve improved all 4 characters’ roles in this season.

Claudia x Terry. this has potential to be a very interesting plotline if Claudia is only using him. however, i kinda just found his role in the season annoying… he was just there to make fart jokes. his ethical dilemma felt cool, but it didnt seem to go anywhere (unless it’s build up for a future heelturn on his part). im hoping he gets better in the future because his role in this season wasn’t my favorite.

Viren’s “arc”. Viren goes from “maybe i should just appreciate life as it is” to reclaiming his staff in a way that was completely unsatisfying to me. his return to villainy really needed more attention from the writers - it felt lackluster imo.

Ezran. I feel like his character is.. too one-dimensional at times? He feels like he has no flaws other than his optimism causing him to be naive on occasion. Is this Abbott Elementary?? I think Ezran needs to struggle more as king. He really hasn’t had to face a serious issue that can’t be solved via kindness and love. Id like to see his views be more challenged by the narrative. Ruling is about alot more than inspirational speeches.

Map to Aaravos. I don’t understand why the Earth Dragon (forgot his name) straight up has the map on his tooth. i thought they each had a “clue” to his location? a straight up map feels extreme. now im wondering what each of the others has, cause wow! seems like alot. i figured they’d have to get the clue from each dragon. idk it seemed off to me.

Finale - The Knockout. Why was it so anticlimactic? Especially with the awesome Claudia vs Ibis fight earlier in the season, i thought we might get Callum (and rest of the team) vs Claudia (and rest of her team). the sleeping spell felt lazy, especially with how Rayla has outsmarted it before.

Finale - The Debate. The main group arguing w the Earth Dragon (forgot his name) SUCKED SO BAD. it took them forever to just get to the point. why wouldn’t they say what they said to convince him at the beginning?? i hated that part of it. too many stupid communication issues.

Soren sees Viren. Bruh. So anticlimactic. He screamed and then nothing else? Ugh.

New Looks. Rayla looks great. Ezran looks fine. Callum, Soren, and Corvus………. hm.

There’s probably more but now i’m tired of thinking about it. Did anybody else dislike these parts or was it just me?

[3liza]

talking about flters and real beauty vs fake beauty and cultural standards etc always makes me think about all the victorian and edwardian novels i read, where the things that people thought about beauty were recorded at length. recently ive been reading a lot of Thomas Hardy (best known for Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure) and there’s so much discussion of the beauty of people, particularly love interests, both men and women. and these writers, and their eras, and the culture of the eras, was of course obsessed with beauty and youth and also artificial beauty (being the eras of the really transformative corsets, not to mention some of the earliest industrialized or modernized beauty products or processes), as all human societies are to a greater or lesser extent in their own ways, but the thing that sticks out to me in reading these books is how beauty is not the singular or even the most important aspect of a person’s overall attraction. if someone has a beautiful face or figure, it is mentioned, but never to the obsessive, fixated extent that physical beauty is isolated from and elevated over all other features in modern american/western culture. there are plenty of protagonists or love interests in these books who are described as not young, or not remarkable, or not pretty, or even ugly or frightening, but nevertheless compellingly sexy and attractive, or simply interesting, or worthy in some way. 

its weird that the cultural consciousness has become seemingly ignorant of non-physical attraction. like that anon that was in my inbox talking about how they were “normal looking’ and therefore “needed” filters in order to “compete” with attractive people. it’s a weirdly mercenary and capitalist view of the social economy, first of all, which absolutely is not zero-sum no matter how badly the social networks want to convince us that it is. but there was never a single mention from that person about their ability to charm or entertain or attract using anything except a fake photo of themselves. wild. im fuckin worried about them! im worried about every young person how has brain worms

when i was about 4 and starting to become aware of how much adults were obsessed with my appearance because i was dainty and blonde and could do a passable shirley temple imitation, my parents gave me a very serious lecture about what physical beauty actually meant: i didn’t work for it (yet, i mean i do a lot of work now as an adult), it was given to me genetically. and someday, maybe sooner or more suddenly than anyone could predict, it would be gone. if accident, illness, or hardship didnt get me, old age eventually would. so with that being a certainty, i had better build a life and a personality on something other than my looks. and i said, ok. every day i get older im more grateful for that advice and the fact i decided to take it to heart instead of trying to gamble on Being Hot for long enough to get job security. which is also a valid career choice but it’s a risky one. always better to have a fallback just in case.

im of an age rn where a lot of women in my peer group are starting to get a very hunted vibe about the impending end of their youth, which is valid. theres nothing foolish about it, its not their fault, theyre not stupid or somehow lacking because this is an issue in their lives. but im noticing that i am significantly less freaked out by, idk, how long ago the 90s were or whatever, because i have been expecting to get old since i was in kindergarten. and i had adults around me who were just like “hey this is what old people look like and what bodies do over time. its not a big deal. everything on tv is fake btw”. i didnt get out unscathed, ive had eating disorders and all sort of weird brain-body problems. 

my advice i guess if i have any is to go outside and really look around you. notice how almost every single woman, and most men, has at least some cellulite, even if its just when theyre sitting down or whatever. notice how everyone has blemishes and zits. most people have some dandruff. if someone is wearing makeup, it’ll be cakey or balled up or smeared or uneven or clumpy even if it’s just a bit. everyone over the age of about 20 will have stretch marks somewhere, even if they aren’t visible except in certain light. i was under the impression i didnt have many until one time seeing a picture of my butt in FULL natural light and finally saw the entire surface of both cheeks was covered in straitions, they just were hard to see most of the time because im the color of drywall and scars tend to be light. it’s really easy to spot hair extensions and wigs and fake nails and fake tans and shapewear once you figure out how to see it. and none of these things take away from someone’s character. 

there’s a strong argument to be made that when corsetry was the norm, no woman was expected to simply be the shape of the corset unless she was actually wearing it. photographs and drawings of women in the 19th and early 20th century were retouched a bit as all photos have been, yes, but they were not retouched to make naked women appear to be corset-shaped. THAT is new. people are now getting surgery to be corset-shaped. and like, i dont think anyone should not be able to look however they want if they want to have that surgery. that is one meaning of cyborg feminism, probably. what i dont want, is for anyone to ever think that’s a normal way to look (except for veryvery tiny mathematical outliers, the Barbie Hips Georg of instagram) WITHOUT surgery or shapewear. which i see a lot now. i saw an instagram fashion designer with a very obviously surgically-altered body answer a question in her inbox about how she maintained her figure with some nonsense about diet and exercise. so now some (probably young) person out there is thinking that if they just do intermittent fasting enough, theyll look like a woman with butt and boob implants, a BBL, fillers, etc. that person probably thinks that if they arent able to diet and exercise good enough, they will fail at looking that way through their own laziness and lack of work ethic or whatever. i see that mindset constantly, especially in young women.

the surgery isnt the issue. the look itself isnt the issue. the filters themselves arent the issue. the issue is that on none of these images, is there an indication of what has been changed or how. the brain damage effect of filters would be lessened, i think, if everyone KNEW which images had been altered and how. so maybe thats the answer? mandatory labeling? i dont know. what’s terrifying is that the average adult human in america cant tell from a glance what has been altered in a photograph, no matter how clumsily, because they simply dont have a template for what a real human looks like anymore. the false images have supplanted the real images, the actual memories of alive humans that you know and have met or lived with. 

if you go into any of the shittier men’s spaces online you will find threads for posting pictures of “beautiful girls”, and it is page after page after page of teenagers in full makeup, hair extensions or wigs, circle lenses, facetuned, bodytuned, surgery, etc, and then hundreds of men yearning and fanning themselves over her “natural beauty”. dont go looking for this stuff, it will permanently fuck you up to know what a basic guy on the bus is thinking about women every day. dont do it

but i also seriously predict a backlash into “natural” looks after this current madness, similarly to how the 1960s saw the rise of the hippie girl with swingin titties, pit hair and no high heels after the consumer beauty madness of the 50s. of course the 60s beauty ideals were in some ways just as fake, but there was some authentic yearning towards a freedom from capitalist bodies as well. so when that happens send me $20: paypal.me/3liza. should be in like the next 4 years or so. thanks

[cainightfics]

tyrelliot is abusive. you are actively shipping a man with his abuser.

confused as to who you think was abusing who lol. i dont think canon provides a clear cut account of this as an abusive situation. but, like i said, im pretty uninterested in this sort of analysis of a text. i think its lazy, and moralizing in general is a weak lens to discuss art through. its not that i dislike the pro vs anti shipping discourse because i disagree with it, but rather, its irrelevant to me. i dont view art as a qualitative substance beyond the creativity and effectiveness of the work. the whole argument is uninteresting, and as someone who pointedly doesnt read or write smut, im even further removed from the ethics of pornography as a topic of discussion, which is, i understand, the issue in this debate most often argued over.

to reiterate, i 1) don't care about your opinion, 2) find "toxicity" more compelling in fictional romance (come on, dude, look at my ao3, i wrote romantic cannibalism fic earlier this year lol) and 3) dont find the "ethics of shipping" discussion interesting or worthwhile to me, like, at all. its just not something i care about and i dont think its as important as you probably think it is. fiction doesnt influence the real world so much as it reproduces real world problems and then perpetuates them in ongoing discourse. the argument of the responsibility of the writer in producing "ethical" fiction has been ongoing for thousands of years. its old shit at this point, and as someone with an english lit degree, ive had to do this whole debate so many times its honestly boring to me.