This happened several summers ago, on a fairly typical summer early afternoon. About 1-2PM in that quiet period where everyone has left but not many people have arrived. My manager, the housekeeping director, and I were shooting the shit at the desk when an older Irate Lady (IL) marches in front outside and immediately rips into us:
IL: What is WRONG with you people!?! This is absolutely DISGUSTING!!
Me: ...I'm sorry..um..how can I help you?
IL: This is HANDS DOWN the grossest thing I have EVER SEEN!
Me: I'm so sorry ma'am, I still don't understand what you mean?
IL: I've never seen so much goose poop in my LIFE! You ought to be ASHAMED of yourselves!!
Me: ..........goose poop? I'll have someone check it out.
IL: This is a public health hazard! This is insane! You should be SHUT DOWN! I will NOT be staying here, now or EVER AGAIN, and I will be telling EVERYBODY how DISGUSTING this place is!
At this point she turns around and storms out, gone as suddenly as she appeared. We all stand there for a few seconds trying to process what just happened, and then walk outside.
And then it dawns on us: Our lawn service had just aerated the soil in all of our grassy areas that morning.
If anybody isn't familiar with that, they have a machine that basically pokes into the ground and pulls out little tubes of dirt, leaving holes behind to aerate the soil. This leaves behind a ton of little brown cylinders that look kinda like small dog poop. So this lady gets to the hotel, sees our resident pair of Canada Geese, and hundreds if not thousands of what looks like pieces of goose poop covering every inch of green space and some of the bordering sidewalks and parking lot, and assumes that we've just been letting geese shit all over the parking lot for god knows how long without cleaning it.
I recently came across a short documentary film called Breaking the Cycle, which I can't recommend highly enough. It follows the warden of Halden Prison, a maximum security facility in Norway with an innovative approach to incarceration that focuses on recreating as much of the outside world as possible in an environment where you're deprived of your freedom. He travels to the United States to take a tour of Attica Correctional Facility and discuss with both the inmates and staff the differences between the outcomes of our prison system and the those of their facility. The stark contrast between the philosophy that governs both environments is crystal clear from moment one and remains poignant until the end where it touches on an example of American prison reform in North Dakota.
Halden Prison provides inmates with a quality of life that is noted on their Wikipedia entry as "better than in many nursing and retirement homes" according to Norway's right-wing populist Progress Party. Again, from the same entry:
With a focus on rehabilitation, it was designed to simulate a village so that the prisoners can consider themselves part of society. The government believes that "the smaller the difference between life inside and outside the prison, the easier the transition from prison to freedom." Interiors are painted and designed to demarcate the differences between home, school, and the workplace. In designing the prison's interiors, the architects tried to separate the internal buildings to have prisoners walking, to strengthen their bond with the outside world. The hallways are tiled with Moroccan tiles or have large-scale photographs, such as daffodils or Parisian streets.
All aspects of the prison's design aim to avoid psychological pressures, conflicts, and interpersonal friction. Despite this, the prison wall was designed for security. As the wall is visible everywhere, it was seen as a "symbol and an instrument" of "[the prisoners'] punishment, taking away their freedom", according to Gudrun Molden, one of its architects.
The documentary impressed upon me most the difference between the relationship that's fostered between the inmates and the staff by the two environments. Prison systems like Attica thrive on the perpetuation of implied violence at every turn. Prisoners are intimidated and degraded everywhere. In Halden it appears quite possible for the
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I was reading the Introduction to Stars Without Number core rulebook and came upon the following passage:
> In actual play, your character should be motivated to act, and to act as part of a group. Te game does not deal well with hostile loners, apathetic brooders, or other characters that have to be coaxed into engaging with the world and cooperating with the rest of the group. The world of Stars Without Number is dangerous, and a character that cringes from peril or insists on facing it alone will find only boredom or an early grave.
Obviously there's a place for inter-party conflict in some games of D&D, but generally speaking, cooperation is almost always the optimal choice. I think the 5e player's handbook does discuss this, but I think it's worth repeating at the start of campaigns. That and "don't be the dick that robs his or her's party's shit, all the time."
What do you think ought be explicitly said?
I don't see why not. Most of these are much more engaging and captivating than a lot of the tripe you can find in "normal" books.
Like, when somebody asks you what you're reading right now, you could go all hipster on them and be like "Oh, it's a Wild West book, you probably haven't heard about it".
P. S. I have to admit I made this post because I want to fuck with the people at r/explainabookplotbadly.
Yes, virtual learning can be great for people in remote villages where there aren't other teachers. Yes, for college and graduate school it can be a nice way to make schedules work for working people.
But, this notion that we're just going to video someone and have kids sit in their seats while we're tutors or any of the other scams out there to replace teachers and teaching?
LMAO good luck with that now.
We're running a mass experiment with that right now and parents hate it.
I made a post a few weeks ago asking what people thought was a reasonable amount for the wealthy to give to charity. I was very surprised by the hostile responses I received. They typically fell into two categories:
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Nothing, because it's their money so fuck you.
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Charity is broken. There's no such thing as an obligation to give because any charitable cause worth funding should have been funded by taxation.
People didn't seem to buy the idea that there is such a thing as a having a limited moral obligation over and above what taxation requires you to pay, and I didn't understand why.
So can there be such a thing as a moral obligation that can't be forced upon you by law? What about moral obligations that people have no right to force on you by other means (e.g. socal pressure, blackmail, etc.)?
I'm deep-Green, so not endorsing the KMT at all, but their logical candidate for 2024 ought to be Chiang Wan-An, the great-grandson of Chiang Kai-Shek who just won his legislative race in Taipei.
The KMT is suffering a severe youth crisis and knows that its elderly vote is dying out and that Taiwan's youth are overwhelmingly Green (or, at least, not KMT). If the Blues continue to run an elderly, uninspiring or non-photogenic candidate in 2024, they are toast yet again.
So Chiang is the only KMT candidate who could ever attain rock-star status or has the "interesting" factor going for him; he'd also only be 45 by then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Wan-an
As for the DPP, I think they ought to run William Lai for president in 2024; not only is he the heir apparent but the deep Greens may want someone more pro-independence than Tsai. Of course, perhaps some young DPP star will have risen in the ranks by then and Lai will be perceived as yet another old guy (he'd be 64 by then.)
