So frickin’ sick of multicultural bullshit. What ever happened to the great melting pot? I’m not a hyphenated-American.
Also, hopefully not too off topic…
I’ve seen that first hand, and my best friend has experienced the opposite first hand.
I dated a woman who had been a practicing medical doctor in Russia, had received a doctorate from a university and had then gone to med school, all in Russia. She is currently working in a medical field, not as a doctor seeing patients but as a researcher and (crap, just blanked out on the other job title - it is medical, doctorish - not doing full autopsies, but examining tissue samples from people (live & dead)).
On the flip side, my best friend has a Masters from a US university, and when he has traveled to formerly soviet occupied eastern Europe (Georgia, around there), some folks have called him doctor and professor. (Which made him terribly uncomfortable, but it took a while to get his hosts to understand and convey the message to others.)
I don’t mind people coming here and maintaining their prior ways, really it has nothing to do with me and does add to the variety in life. I mind it when they expect society and the government to make allowances for it. Speak French at home? Fine. Expect the guy at the DMV to hand you a French language pamphlet? No. Want to do an honor killing of your wife/husband/son/daughter, again not so much. We prefer our murders to be spur of the moment drunken rages please, not socially mandated face saving rituals.
Of course, part of this is also the 5.6 million skilled workers, that can’t really be sent overseas, that we are missing in America. Plumbers, welders, HVAC workers, etc. It doesn’t make sense for everyone to get a humanities, or even STEM degree.
Partly this, except when they want to shove it down your throat, then not so much. When it is turned into an -ism and used to divide, such as multiculturalism, then it can breed contempt and lead down a negative path.
Sometimes, I wish I had become an electrician. A couple years ago, some of the highly skilled welders around here were pulling in six figures. Unfortunately, they were also among the first to feel the pain when oil prices started dropping.
Or there’s the total cockup that is the metrication of Britain that leads to roadsigns like this:
For those unfamiliar with European sign etiquette, that is a sign forbidding vehicles taller than 14’6.
Most roadsigns are definitely in Imperial Measure in England. Except for when they’re not. A weight limit sign (another red ring but this time with a pictogram lorry from 1950) which has a large capital T is giving a limit in long tons, whereas if the capital T is half-height and floating above the baseline, the limit is in metric tonnes. The signs won’t show both.
Height and width and length restrictions are given in Imperial, unless they’re given in both metric and Imperial, unless unless you’re on an island (say Lindisfarne, or Guernsey) in which case they’ll only be metric. Unless they’re old and still in Imperial. Oh, and all public footpath signs are in metric, or at least all the ones mounted after 1998. So you can see a roadsign that says “WC 200 yards” and underneath a footpath sign that says “WC 160 metres”. Because reasons.
Oh and just to confuse EVERYONE, we use m for miles, not mi. But we usually omit it from signs because an M before a number, or after it in brackets, means Motorway - M1, A1(M) (two different roads, don’t ask, no really, blame the 1960s) - otherwise you could end up with a sign that reads M1 1m. And that would be stupid.
My personal frustration with regards to measurements in the UK is the whole ‘stones’ thing. I know it’s kinda-sorta convenient as it’s somewhat friendly to eyeball, but it’s only used for a few specific instances, so you need a ‘useful’ measurement too for anything important, like elevator weight limits.
I.E. if I’ve got 200 pounds of equipment and weight 16 stone, I’ve got to convert the stone measurement to pounds to find out if I’ve exceeded the elevator’s 500 pound weight limit. I’d also be hesitant to trust a 500 pound weight limit elevator, but that’s another whole issue.
I had to look it up… so 1 stone is 14 pounds. Only slightly more retarded that 12 inches in a foot. There is probably some historical significance, but I don’t quite care enough to look it up, so it will remain a goofy mystery in my mind.
The oddity to me is it’s apparently only used for people, not things, in modern parlance.It looks like it used to be used for everything, but also had different pound values depending on what was being measured.
This was fairly common, unfortunately. There used to be a riddle/brain-teaser about which weighed more, a pound (I think) of feathers or a pound of lead. The answer was feathers, because they are measured differently.
Oh, you think stones are bad? How about long, short, wet, dry, hoisted, and moving tons. They all weigh different amounts, except moving tons, which is technically a measure of force (ie newton metres).
Does shower sex ever really work? Or is it just that I’m not Hercules, and that I’m a foot taller than my partner? That shit is slippery and dangerous, and there is just never enough room to do anything without laughing.
And in movies, mostly romcoms, it seems popular to hang out int he tub together, it seems to me that only works if your combined weight is about 180 pounds, and you are both under 5’6". I don’t fit in a tub by myself, 6’4" just doesn’t all fit, regardless of my weight.
And has anyone ever done more than the odd dab of paint on your partner while painting the house? Seriously, who comes and cleans that shit up? Especially if they fall asleep after.
[quote=“Woodman, post:1549, topic:478”]
Does shower sex ever really work?[/quote]
Yes, but only in communal showers. No I am not speaking from experience. Standard cubicle size in the UK is 1x1 metre which means fitting more than one person in even to just shower requires Tetrising. Which is now a verb because I say it is.
I know right! What’s with that? You either end up spooning awkwardly as the small amount of water that remains in the bath goes cold, or someone gets taps in their back and the plug chain in their crack. Not good. You could have one of those corner baths with the taps in the middle, but then you’re just sat facing each other in a tepid bath giggling because your spouse has made a large foam penis with the bubbles.
I’ve accidentally upended a can of paint over my father before. That was hilarious. He looked like angry fondue!
One of my goals in life is to get one of those big ass tubs with the claw feet so I can take a bath where both my upper and lower body can be under water at once.
[quote=“Woodman, post:1551, topic:478, full:true”]One of my goals in life is to get one of those big ass tubs with the claw feet so I can take a bath where both my upper and lower body can be under water at once.
[/quote]
Oh dude, trust me, we’ve had one of those and they are awful. Ours was an actual cast iron affair and it didn’t matter how hot the water was that you put into it, it would be cold within five minutes. Heck you could probably have dropped some Plutonium-238 in it and it would still have gone cold.
However if you somehow found a self-heating one, or just wrapped underfloor heating cables around it, it would probably be really nice.
We heard last week that Bombardier (apparently pronounced “bombard-ee-air”, because reasons) is closing its train manufacturing plant in England. This is sad, and also raises this question:
If we had a company making trains in the UK already, why the heck do we* keep buying expensive Siemens trains manufactured in Taiwan and brought here by boat!? Seriously!
(by “we” I mean the Government deciding which trains the British Public are going to buy and then give as presents to the railway operator companies because heaven forbid they have to spend any of their own precious money on trains to make them more money - yeah the privatised railway system here sucks)
