OT: A possible solution to California's homeless problem?

Michael Terrell wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Another dumbshit too stupid to know that the low spot on the Totem pole is where the Shaman sits. You know... the top dog in the tribe.

-funded research reactor which does all sorts of useful scientific work, bu t the politicians who control it's funding have their own priorities.

The ad was for an engineer with analog skills. It wasn't very specific abou t the work that needed to be done. The work isn't on the nuclear reactor it self but a neutron diffraction set up which relies on a beam of neutrons co ming from the reactor - the beam is defined by hole in the neutron shieldin g around the reactor, so the experiment isn't all that close to the reactor itself.

There was no political content in the ad. The "Marxist proclivities" exist only in Cursitor Doom's fertile imagination - he seems to be unaware that I was cleared to "most secret" in my first job (in Australia) and had to be cleared again before I started work at EMI Central Research in 1978.

Michael Terrell's imagination is unrestricted by any grasp of reality.

Cursitor Doom is just as ignorant of the mechanics of nuclear reactor maintenance as Michael Terrell.

And it takes Cursitor Doom's bizarre mindset to find one there.

Presumably something there resonates with his own problems.

Michael Terrell seems to be generalising from his experiences as a technician, and imagining that a consulting engineer with specialised skills would get the kind of treatment that he had to put up with.

Yeah? Well I dare say a similar level of accreditation was granted to Julius & Ethel Rosenberg.

st only in Cursitor Doom's fertile imagination - he seems to be unaware tha t I was cleared to "most secret" in my first job (in Australia) and had to be cleared again before I started work at EMI Central Research in 1978.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were accredited in the USA rather before the US security services got paranoid about the political left.

I was cleared at a time when the Australian security services were decidedl y anxious about left-wing political affiliations - which I don't really hav e, since the only overt political activity I've indulged in was for the loc al branch of the Labour Party in my suburb in Cambridge around 1990. My nei ghbours formed most of the branch organising committee - James Dyson's brot her was the chair (though none of us knew of the connection at the time) an d I got roped in because my I could use my dot matrix printer to print out the 100-odd address labels every month for the branch newsletter. Making me membership secretary meant that I could get the program to do it for free from Labour Party central office.

Cursitor Doom seems to think that anybody more left-wing than him - which i s to say anybody more or less sane - is a Marxist. It's one more bit of evi dence that suggests that he is totally deranged, not that we need any more than he posts here.

My girlfriend and I wore novelty "2020" glasses out for New Years celebration so I guess I'm one to talk. Someone had to produce that design and unfortunately it wasn't even the best design they make her look cross-eyed!

I make exceptions for the holidays naturally, can't be a total stick-in-the-mud who never buys (IMO) silly stuff in the culture as it is or you end up with no girlfriend and nobody who likes ya living in a cabin like the Unabomber with a mountain-man beard which isn't a pleasant life to contemplate.

The silly part of the premise of the original post was the idea that San Francisco and its tech industry are some kind of socialist leftist paradise, it ain't.

San Francisco is a ruthless dog-eat-dog technocratic money-grubbing anarcho-capitalist paradise where social darwinism is the rule that slathers a thin shellac of "liberal values" over itself to help prevent everyone who's been ripped off by some startup that took a bunch of data they were never entitled to and hawked to scammers and criminals from going there with pitchforks and tossing every Tesla-driving startup bro in the ocean.

Rather like Hunter S. Thompson's quote on the music business: "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

Well, it's a different perspective, I'll grant you that.

"And you know what? They?re right. We should be better; much better than what we so often see around us. We?re the ones building tomorrow, and setting its standards. No one else is going to improve things for us. It is literally our job."

Might sound like a nice sentiment until you recall this guy writes Javascript for a living or something. What in the world gives a bunch of coders the right to "set the standards" for any damn thing other than their login-page development? You write apps, you're not the secretary general of the UN!

Talk about delusions of grandeur.

You have to spend time around some of 'em in the real world to see what it's about.

There are no shortage of "leftists" in wealthy areas like San Fran and Boston who wouldn't ever do or say something that might be considered racist, but have no problem with being openly age-ist and class-ist. Google's diversity initiatives leave out anything about improving hiring practices with respect to older workers it's like they never even considered having a work force with an average age of 31 to be somehow discriminatory.

That is to say they have their ideas about how to make life better for the poor, but tend not to respond very well if you say "Well I was born poor and I think the ideas you have about how it is to be that are not much more reality-grounded than any of the Conservatives in government you like to bitch about."

and tries to veneer it as rational.

so much for rational.

Since I give 'em all a very wide berth I'm happy to go by your assessment, which has the ring of truth about it.

Yes, and it's rarely even remarked upon.

Absolutely. A terrific amount of hypocrisy and double standards which don't stand up to scrutiny. You may detest those of us on the right of centre, but we're not hearless; just realistic. Some folks you just can't help and if you do, a year down the line they're usually back where they started again anyway.

NT doesn't do rational, and can't recognise it when he runs into it.

NT is has decided that someone else's malicious speculations about my state of mind are a guide to whether I'm rational or not. And he imagines that he's some kind of judge about of might be rational.

Mostly because if you are hiring people to do jobs that didn't exist a few years ago, the hirees tend to be younger than the population as a whole.

People who have put time into getting skilled in a particular area tend not to switch jobs into new areas where they don't have as much experience.

As if Cursitor Doom could do scrutiny. The best he can manage is to work ou t whether Russian Today and the Daily Mail like it.

Merely brainless.

But you do have rather strange ideas about reality - asin thinking that Rus sia Today and the Daily Mail report news about the world as it is, as oppos ed to feeding the right wing fantasies of gullible twits like Cursitor Doom .

e usually back where they started again anyway.

I've been working on Cursitor Doom for years, and he's just as deluded as h e ever was.

He still believes obvious nonsense like that. Since he doesn't seem to live in the UK he isn't going to suffer as much as the residents if Boris gets stuck with that situation, but since a chunk of my pension income comes as UK pounds, I'd be marginally less well off if there was a no deal Brexit, a nd Cursitor Doom might have the same kind of problem.

As opposed to what, not trying at all?

He IS making something of his time. As opposed to senseless backbiting, he's inserting logic and data where it is needed. It needn't be appreciated by everyone, but it sure eclipses the nattering nabobs of negativism who deem themselves his opponents.

Being gratuitously rude to other contributors here is not how I personally would like to spend my sunset years on the Earth, Bill. That clock is running down fast. Think about it...

Clock's ticking, Bill. Get out and play some golf or something. Railing at the world isn't good for your health. Think about making the most of the time you have left. Tick tock, tick tock....