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unproduciblesmackdown · 7 years

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sometimes the wild thing with depression is looking back and trying to figure out when it started and never really being able to draw a line for anything like "this was the earliest age it All Began(tm)," probably because there's not generally such an On-Off Switch type process to it. i know usually circa ten yrs old or later in the teens is usually what people point to but sometimes more of a period of exacerbation rather than origin, and who can say it's not also having the emotional and psychological capabilities and capacities that young children don't that bring a greater sense of perspective and awareness, idk anyways so i'm not sure if i was ever not-depressed or anything....i know i was always uncomfortable outside what was familiar and "shy" and i know that as soon as i was around other kids in a way more socially organized than running around together, namely preschool at 4 yrs old, i was aware of not feeling like i fit in and noticing i couldnt make friends like other people could. ive been good at bs-ing school from the start and happen to pick up things very quickly so even though i probably had the same habits as kids with the worst grades and had no particular ambitions re: academia (beyond avoiding parental wrath and later maintaining the identity that kinda protected me a bit in school) since i got really good grades and was quiet and pretty much just read in a corner when left to myself from kindergarten through middle school, i was probably considered a usually ideal student. i remember a couple of people who i felt i was genuinely friends with, a kid named michael who i think went to a different school after a couple of grades, and a kid named jacqueline in 2nd grade who was like me so quiet in retrospect i'm not sure if she knew much english but we played legos together and stuff but then we got in trouble for not paying attention during not even a lesson but i had to move seats b/c arbitrary Making An Example and since we were both so quiet we just didnt interact much anymore to avoid further attention. i made other friends technically but generally it took a long time to be comfortable with them and we were never close and in the meantime i dont think i ever much liked school. i remember one random sunday evening just getting upset about not wanting to go back the next day just because it was boring and meantime at home of course it sucked but i didnt quite realize it til i was older and it helped of course being young enough to be able to go outside for hours and be perfectly entertained playing in the dirt and trees and stuff. i read a lot at home too i remember having pretty skeptical thoughts about Life from earlyish on but, besides spending a crap ton of time just in my own head (reading, playing in dirt) i think i had ideas that life and the world was pretty amazing. like earlier on of course it was like "is magic real??" but then later its just stuff like reading in books about how kids had good friends and families and got to pursue their interests and do things and work out drama and have nice endings with a lot of hope for the future. for all i could tell the only thing keeping that from being my life was that i wasnt old enough, or probably i hoped that it was just a matter of time. it was less like i was extrapolating from my own limited observations of the worse aspects of life that life must be great and more like i was already noticing that my world was lacking and just hoping that it would grow out of it; not to mention being given the hint that stuff like abuse was my own fault and shortcomings i started getting more aware of being fed up with things / that they weren't inherently going to change around like late elementary school / middle school but it would take another year or two to really get the extent of it, and in the meantime by 14 or 15 at the latest i was consciously suicidal so like, moving fast there. i probably by that point had already caught on to the fact that my world had just been kind of shitty and that it wasnt going to change or seem better after a certain amount of time like i'd thought it would. and then add also having a better understanding of the rest of the world just by being older and getting more experience and realizing that its a lot more chaotic than initially taught to you and that being depressed and having developed few interests and zero ambitions and having antagonistic parents and very few friends doesnt do much to give you as much a cushion from that chaos as it could tangent: honestly i like programs that teach instructors how to recognize things that look like Behavior Issues as maybe more being signs of external issues. i wasnt the best at paying attention and i was often quiet in school whether in class or not and it mightve been a problem if i didnt get good grades but since i did i could just be in the background. i don't particularly resent this or anything because i know how teaching is and i myself didnt really understand i had serious problems at home until much later, but in retrospect i think i always had signs. i remember one particular incident when i was about 8 really shouldve been a bit of a warning sign. i know nobody can really do anything even if they know things are bad but considering i had to learn what abuse looked like by myself and i didnt feel supported by any adult and even when i knew what was going on when i was much older i still just didnt tell anyone in any position of authority because i had learned i had to protect myself by keeping personal things totally confidential and that if i exhibited any signs of struggling i would be blamed and chastised for it. wouldve been nice to at least be informed what was going on at an earlier time and maybe given some sense of confidence or at least a sense it wasn't completely my fault. turns out what gave me any ounce of confidence at all was being like 19 and being so blamed and maligned that it backfired and i started feeling like if i was as awful as i was made out to be then surely i didnt need to feel ashamed and responsible for everything that was being done to me. if i already deserved to be dead then what more could i bring on myself by daring to be so terrible as to feel i shouldnt be treated like i was! checkmate atheists anyhow, i feel like my Good Concepts About The World kind of evolved from "later on everyone has adventures" to "later on everyone goes to middle school / high school and makes friends and bonds with their family and follows their dreams" to something just more vaguely escapist with abstracted ideas about simply feeling comfortable and nice, with maybe general imagery, usually like summer sunsets or just some nice stars or something. i thought about it once and it made a lot of sense, thinking about stuff in terms of the concept of feeling ok and good things existing in the world and being able to sense it despite it also being at a distance or otherwise removed like dont get me wrong just because i wanna be dead i dont have some kind of notion that everyone else's experience of life is the same as mine i.e. that life and/or the world is inherently shit, i know its no more objectively bad than it is objectively good. i still like to think about the good side of all of it. i think its a total mistake to have the idea that if someone is suicidal or even just depressed that it necessarily has anything to do with what they think of the philosophy of the concept of Life, its more personal and immediate than that. honestly i hate all the advice about how you need to write a poem for your suicidal friend to teach them the magic of life or do some otherwise melodramatic bad y.a. novel shit that'll give them a New Perspective on the wonders of life literally overnight. not only is it always disgustingly patronizing and often counterproductively Tough Love-esque but also totally like unrelated to the root of the problem of "what if i'm worried about a friend making a suicide attempt." if you're personally wanting to do something i s2g literally just provide a distraction. talk about random shit or play online scrabble or go over and make midnight snacks, not like set a flower on fire while dropping a porcelain teapot on the floor and lecturing them about how this Doesnt Solve Any Problems or is a permanent solution to a temporary problem like no. just be a distraction jfc and dont insult anyone by generalizing their experience and guessing at what's probably an extremely complex and personal matter and turning it into empty clichés anyways: this was the longest way to get to the idea that isnt it wild when, like how you can Hear a sound in your head and despite recreating it decently its different from actually hearing it externally, you can sometimes remember what it was like to feel nice about the concept of life? i cant really summon earlier things but sometimes i can remember flashes of having those later sad-person-in-their-own-head moments of thinking of distant abstract concepts like seeing the sky as a medium for connection to the infinite experiences of humanity, and i can get like the equivalent of a visual image of a recreated feeling from back when i still had a few lingering overly-optimistic notions that things would be good soon. don't get me wrong, again im still aware of the good things in life and i still have good experiences and still feel good feelings. but i dont harbor expectations that the course of life must and will average itself out or lean towards improvement for any reason, like knowing that good things happening to you out of the blue is the same as how terrible things can happen for exactly the same reason—namely no reason at all. so i just dont have the same feelings i used to about my own personal life, and i dont feel the things i used to when i hoped it still could be Only A Matter Of Time. so its wild when for some reason i mentally stumble on the memory of having those feelings and theyre still recent enough that i get a moment of recreating the feeling like i do when i can picture something in my head, and its totally different and dissonant than what's currently true for me. it wasn't a more accurate perspective to think that life being bad meant it had to improve, but its obviously a nicer feeling. and it sounds like overused to the point of meaningless comparison but its like getting your head above water for a second in terms of the momentary contrast of sensation tldr its wild when you depressioning 24/7 and dead inside and have an instant of remembering What It Was Like To Feel Things

#long post ///////

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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5 Insanely Important Jobs (We’re Running Out Of People For)

Supply and demand should ensure that we never run out of people to do the really key jobs. If there was a dire shortage of, say, potato chip flavor developers (don’t panic, this is strictly theoretical), chip companies would make the salary and perks of the job more attractive, colleges would hype up the benefits of majoring in flavor science, and new blood would enter the field, bringing with them the caramel-and-Worcestershire-sauce-flavored Pringles we truly deserve. But reality is nowhere near that efficient, and we are running out of people for some especially vital jobs. For example …

Old Programmers Are Dying Off … And Taking Their Computer Languages With Them

As far as we’re concerned, computers are magic. We don’t know the technical details of what goes down when we order a book from Amazon or stream truly shocking amounts of pornography, and frankly, we don’t want to. That’s why we have computer programmers. They do all the important behind-the-scenes work that lets us take complicated technology for granted, and they give us someone to complain about when that technology fails and we can’t stream Gilmore Girls on our toaster at three in the morning.

But there’s a problem: An enormous amount of our financial data is stored on systems still running ancient programming. Roughly three trillion dollars a day runs through computers still operating on COBOL, a language that was developed in 1959. Everything from ATMs to credit card networks to mortgage payments rely on a system that makes calculator watches look like absurd science fiction. And the majority of people who know how to fix the many problems with COBOL are getting ready to meet their programmers.

Via Fossbytes.comSo sleep tight knowing that your paycheck could depend on a program that looks like it should be threatening Matthew Broderick with nuclear annihilation.

It’s not as simple as moving everything onto a more modern infrastructure. At this point, the financial system is so intertwined with its COBOL roots that it would be like trying to simultaneously replace all of your veins with fiber optics. A switchover is theoretically possible, but if something goes wrong, the financial data for millions of people could vanish.

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Since it would be impractical to make everyone temporarily withdraw all of their money until the problem is fixed, geriatric programmers are making good money running firms that specialize in COBOL. Meanwhile, the industry is rushing to train young programmers (and rehire the old guys they fired because they thought their skills were obsolete). Further compounding the problem is that programmers of the original COBOL systems rarely wrote handbooks, and deciphering someone else’s computer code 40 years later is like trying to communicate an elaborate sexual fantasy via slide whistles.

And it’s not only banking. NASA once desperately needed to find programmers who knew Fortran to communicate with their Voyager probes. These are by no means insurmountable problems, so don’t panic and put all of your money in Dogecoins tomorrow. But it’s kind of like suddenly discovering that we have to teach thousands of people Latin to prevent the English language book industry from collapsing.

The Demand For Oncologists Skyrockets While Supply Plummets

We’re living longer than ever, and while that’s mostly awesome, it does have some downsides. Now that we’re not frequently devoured by wolves, we have to deal with other, increasingly common causes of death, like heart disease or insisting that you could kick everyone’s ass in a hot dog eating contest. And then there’s cancer.

We need oncologists more than ever, and that’s a problem, since burnout is taking a serious toll on that profession. We’re estimated to be short 2,500 to 4,000 oncologists by 2020. The burnout can be physical — you’re constantly required to stay up to date on lab results, deal with sudden calls from patients at all hours of the day, and fight for settlements with insurance companies — but there’s also the emotional exhaustion of forming close bonds with suffering patients, having to break difficult news to them, and in some cases, watching them die.

Association of American Medical CollegesThe news isnt really great for other specialties, either.

We need to increase the number of America’s oncologists by an estimated 40 percent by 2025 merely to keep up with the need. Improving medical care is going to make us better at surviving other diseases, which means more people are going to be confronting nature’s final boss. To close the gap between the high retirement rates and new trainees entering the field, we’ll need hundreds more people to enter oncology programs each year. And we’re currently losing them hand over fist. So if you’re getting ready for med school and have no issues with emotionally crushing situations, we’ve found a promising career for you.

We’re Short On Farm Labor Because It’s Such A Terrible Job

85 percent of farm laborers are immigrants, and roughly 70 percent of those immigrants are undocumented. And between 2009 and 2016, that workforce decreased by three million people due to deportation. Those who do remain are growing older, and there might not be anyone to replace them.

OK, but isn’t that the whole point of deporting undocumented immigrants? To free up jobs for unemployed citizens? In theory, yes … but not enough Americans looking for work want to get into farming. It’s exhausting, physical labor with long hours in harsh weather. One farm started offering Americans $20 an hour, but still couldn’t retain workers. 401(k)s? Health insurance? Generous bonuses? None of it makes up for the fact that the work blows, despite what Stardew Valley told you about the appeal of quitting your office job to live in the country.

Norma FloresBut hey, free housing … assuming youre OK with living in dilapidated communal barracks.

With demand vastly exceeding supply, farmers have had to rethink what they can afford to grow and harvest. Nuts, for example, can be harvested by machines, but peaches require the delicate touch of a human. But replacing human labor with machines means that only a minuscule fraction of employees will be needed in the future. So an entire industry will up and vanish, and then we’ll have to think of some new problem to blame immigrants for.

Nobody Wants To Be A Skilled Manufacturer Anymore

While the United States undeniably has a shortage of skilled jobs that provide stability and security, there’s also a huge, undiscussed problem in the opposite direction. We don’t have enough people trained to do skilled manufacturing jobs.

MixabestShocking how no one wants a career that will obviously be done by humans forever.

That means factory work, machine maintenance, melting Terminators in giant vats of liquid metal, etc. Up to two million of those jobs will go unfilled over the next decade just because people aren’t trained for them. We’re literally running out of people who know how to make things that aren’t Minecraft videos and snarky Tweets. Do you remember Trump saying that he wanted to bring good jobs back from overseas? Factory CEOs turned around and told him that those jobs are already here, but vacant.

Why the shortage? Well, corporations cracked down on unions, which lowered wages and led to the perception that manufacturing jobs, even skilled ones, were boring, repetitive positions for lower-class bozos. So colleges started de-emphasizing manufacturing skill sets, and graduates in relevant fields, like mechanics and engineering, started dropping accordingly. The industry is turning to automation, but factories still need employees to install and maintain those machines, and even those employees are missing.

Mixabest*cough*

If you’re a cartoonish conservative stereotype loudly wondering why “America doesn’t build things anymore,” it’s not because of them lousy foreigners. It’s because corporations neglected those jobs, and now nobody wants to do them anymore.

We Don’t Have Nearly Enough Pilots To Meet Our Demand For Air Travel

Air travel is perhaps the modern luxury that we most take for granted. It is a damn wonder that we hurtle through the sky at will, but tell that to the tired, grumpy people in economy. Or wait, maybe you won’t have to, because we’re running out of people who know how to operate those magical flying machines, to the point where flights are getting cancelled due to a lack of pilots. Obviously there’s a lot of training required before you can be trusted with the controls of a jet-powered carrier of human lives. In fact, after the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 (a disaster partly attributed to insufficient pilot training), the people in charge got together and said, “Hey, maybe we should re-examine how much experience pilots need before we let them take off in these soaring hunks of metal and fire that actively defy God.”

Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives50 dead bodies do usually lead to some reevaluation.

The result was a whopping 500 percent increase in the amount of flight time required before you can pilot a passenger or cargo plane. That’s great from a safety standpoint. The more experienced the better, right? But the unfortunate side effect is that it’s turned people away from wanting to become pilots in the first place. Those new requirements, and the north of $100,000 price tag that comes along with all that education and training, make simply becoming an accountant and buying a flight simulator look a lot more appealing.

Boeing predicts that over 600,000 pilots are going to be needed over the next 20 years to fill a demand that’s already forced one regional airline into bankruptcy. The aviation industry is trying to respond by offering increased pay and sign-on bonuses, but that’s mucking things up for another industry that needs pilots: the military. In 2017, the Air Force announced a “national aircrew crisis” which left them 1,555 pilots short of what they need, and the best thing you can say about that is that Top Gun 2 might actually be topical.

Check out Dwayne’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, where you can see the famous musicians he interviews for Revue Magazine. T.W. would like you to consider checking out the International Committee of the Red Cross. They do pretty cool stuff. Nathan Kamal lives in Oregon and writes there. He co-founded Asymmetry Fiction for all your fiction needs.

It’s not, NOT worth your time to learn COBOL, here’s a beginner’s book.

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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5 Insanely Important Jobs (We’re Running Out Of People For)

Old Programmers Are Dying Off … And Taking Their Computer Languages With Them

Via Fossbytes.comSo sleep tight knowing that your paycheck could depend on a program that looks like it should be threatening Matthew Broderick with nuclear annihilation.