"The Pen:" Live NLHE Chat Thread
It's been about 9.5 years and 350K posts of epicness, but "It Lives, It Lives" can live no more. The OG LLSNL Chat Thre
The intro is pretty dense, but the rest of it is a pretty easy read, imo. I'm going to recommend that non-historian friends skip over the intro, and either read it last or just skip it entirely if you're just interested in the story and not in the "situating it within the literature" part.
oh man, you'll be doing the lords work with the "feel free to skip this section" included in front of certain passages
so much of non-fiction i can read through and afterwards realize i didn't process a single word of it
been listening to Said's Orientalism at the gym lately and honestly can't tell you single thing that i've learned from it because it just drifts about in ramblings that don't seem to have any specific points - i feel like it's horribly formatted with no message and feel like if i turned in sections of it as a college paper i would have flunked and yet it's a deeply respected work
listened to about 8+ hours of it and honestly couldn't tell you a single thing about it other than he doesn't think westerners properly understand the east - i genuinely couldn't even tell you if he believes it is intentional or not
Said's Orientalism is such a poorly written book. And his evidence cherry-picking is egregious. It would be generally laughed at if he weren't the first one to come up with the idea that exoticising other cultures helps makes it OK to dominate them, imo.
He is a believer in Foucalt, who is similarly based on argument from assertion, and thinks that narratives have their own agency, which is ridiculous. The whole thing reminds me of this:
Here's my 250 word review, to save you some listening:
Orientalism by Edward Said
Said’s seminal work is, despite his denials, a polemic against French, British and American “Orientalism,” which he defines as a discourse (in the Foucaultian meaning) of thought on the Near East. His thesis is that this discourse, which he defines as “academic study, imaginative literature, commerce, and attempts at geo-political domination” sees “Orientals” as caricatures who are inherently cruel, despotic, sensual, dominated by Islam, and unchanging.
Said was not an historian, but a Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and it shows. Said notes that he is using the Foucauldian notion of discourse (p.3) but doesn’t explain it. To understand Said’s argument, one must understand what Foucault meant by discourse and his concept of discourse analysis. Foucault viewed discourse as “ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations which inhere in such knowledges and relations between them. Discourses are more than ways of thinking and producing meaning. They constitute the 'nature' of the body, unconscious and conscious mind and emotional life of the subjects they seek to govern.” In this notion, discourses are not simply dominant patterns of thought, but actually act as agents of those in power.
Said develops his argument through analysis of a series of writings on “Orientals,” predominately academic, but also literary, showing these dynamics of stereotype and caricature. He explains how these writings reflect an Orientalist discourse, and thus illustrate how Orientalism “unilaterally determines what can and cannot be said about the Orient” and shows “that European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient” (p.3). This is largely a fair argument for the 19th and early 20th century, though claiming “it is therefore correct to say that every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric” (p.204) is a bit much. The argument suffers in the “Orientalism Now” chapter, however, as Said cherry-picks sources to show Orientalism as remaining the dominant discourse. In fact, by the time he was writing many Western scholars of the Near East whom Said never mentions were producing more nuanced work, and of those discussed (e.g. Gibb) there seems to be significant bias in which writings Said discusses. It seems that he avoids certain sources to protect the notion of the discourse determining what cannot be said.
This book raised very important points, but it sometimes raised them poorly. In addition to the polemics, it was odd to see the entirety of the Orient reduced to a discussion of Arabs throughout most of the book. That it was so well received despite its shortcomings and polemics says a lot about the value of Said’s primary observation that Orientals are heavily stereotyped and caricatured, as well as the notion of cultural “othering” in general.
lololololol i love that comic 😀
Hey guys any advice on this situation would be amazing and deeply appreciated. I respect your opinion and thoughts.
I recently transitioned from HSNL to working as a BI for special needs children. I have autism and not a mild case. My coworkers and supervisors like me, but HR is being difficult with the reasonable accommodations I have requested. I understand that is not uncommon. It is my first real job but I have been working since high school. I am 25 now.
I have provided a letter from my primary care physician as well as documentation from my psychiatrist. I understand the primary suggestion will be to leave the company but I have developed rapport with my learners and do not want to do that unless necessary.
I live near LA and if anyone has opportunities for me in a similar or related field I would be open to hearing them. I do not need the money.
Thank you!
I don't have any exact info to assist you RTP, but if you haven't I would look into ADA's website and discuss particulars of ADA with your doctors (who may have relevant experience to best assist you). With this approach it may very well get HR to stop being difficult.
As always I wish you the very best and hope for a speedy and efficient resolution with your work issue.
Hey guys any advice on this situation would be amazing and deeply appreciated. I respect your opinion and thoughts.
I recently transitioned from HSNL to working as a BI for special needs children. I have autism and not a mild case. My coworkers and supervisors like me, but HR is being difficult with the reasonable accommodations I have requested. I understand that is not uncommon. It is my first real job but I have been working since high school. I am 25 now.
I have provided a letter from my prima
Without knowing your exact situation and what you are looking for your employer to do, it is hard to advise you.
I would take a look at this publication from the government if you haven't already.
https://www.eeoc.gov/publications/ada-yo...
The theme seems to be that the accommodation needs to a one time solution. For example, if someone only has a left arm providing a left handed mouse would be a reasonable accommodation. If someone needs to be out Tuesdays for treatment, rearranging their schedule is reasonable. At my employer, light sensitive people have a low light room to work in.
What would be unreasonable is a situation where someone needed irregular time off without warning continually.
My first step if your employer told you absolutely no would be to go to the EEOC with a complaint. Let them give advice on whether your employer is being unreasonable. Your co-workers are going to be biased. Good luck.
Hey guys any advice on this situation would be amazing and deeply appreciated. I respect your opinion and thoughts.
I recently transitioned from HSNL to working as a BI for special needs children. I have autism and not a mild case. My coworkers and supervisors like me, but HR is being difficult with the reasonable accommodations I have requested. I understand that is not uncommon. It is my first real job but I have been working since high school. I am 25 now.
I have provided a letter from my prima
I don’t know specifically how to assist but I would suggest to go on Reddit onto r/autism or various different subs for working and post the question.
I’m sure you have a similar situation to many people who have gone through it previously and could give some solid advice.
rtp, i would pause to consider the very real possibility that:
A) whatever it is that is making you feel like you need these accomodations, you can overcome this with time and perseverance
B) there's a non-zero chance your requests are not as reasonable to others as it appears to you
C) being liked by your peers is both subjective & prone to error as well as irrelevant to the needs of HR
- not saying i don't think they like you, i'm sure they do, but people are far kinder outwardly out of politeness and don't forget that no matter how much they like you, it's a near impossibility they'll ever go to bat for you in the event you run afoul of management - time and time again you see incredibly well liked people get fired by management and not a single person says a peep in response, if anything they'll bandwagon it because that person is already fired and a lost cause and they don't want to be associated with that person and possibly face the same fate
as someone who is far, far less on the spectrum than yourself, i struggled mightily in a lot of work environments in my 20s
when i look back at how i carried myself back then i cringe and understand why so many things happened the way they did - i was quite entitled and downright insufferable
at one company i would do things like send the ceo lenghty emails with my thoughts over why certain things they were doing were wrong and would backfire and to make matters worse i'd cc all the other top executives
despite that while history has shown i was indeed correct (those practices i advocated against literally led to their downfall within a year of me leaving & i wasn't alone as many stock analysts agreed as it was the most shorted stock on the NYSE that year), my behavior wasn't making me any allies there, i soon found myself marginalized with reduced roles and promised bonuses/stock/raises/promotions all disapeared under the corporate jargon of "we're on a hold until next quarter"
it got to the point where i was told i could accept a salary reduction of 66% or leave and so i left and none of those c level execs with whom i'd been working along and would have been a great network going forward were ever going to want to work with me again nor recommend me to others
none of them cared that i was right and they were wrong, what they cared about was that:
A) I was going beyond the scope of tasks asked of me
B) Nobody likes negativity, especially from an outsider popping in to tell them what they are doing wrong
i had previously played a very large role in the company and had been incredibly successful in my job where i had played a pivotal role in building a suite of apps that were used by hundreds of millions and turned us from a lowly startup to one which IPO'd, i was in fact a big part of the public face of it, whenever there were media interviews I was the one sent in, if you google my name and products i worked on, you'll find dozens of media articles about me and these apps
i'm saying this not to point out that i am awesome (i mean that goes without saying ldo) but despite that i was an allstar at this company, simply becoming a debbie downer with a "hey we need to change this or we'll implode" just made everyone hate working with me
i was obviously right, they soon met their downfall
but i would have been 10x better off just taking the hint after i was ignored the 1st time and going about my job while looking for new opportunities rather than going on a quixotic quest to "make them understand the error of their ways"
years back an american read some news articles about me and found me on linkedin and reached out for mentorship, we had a bunch of online conversations back and forth over several months - he's a recent college grad doing some very entry level work in the same field and wants to "be like me"
eventually we had a new opening at my current company and i encouraged him to apply - i basically fast tracked him, we flew him out from the US and put him up in a hotel with a per diem for the interview, we give him an offer
i even advocate to hr that we bump up the offer a bit even though i knew he'd accept anything so long as it could cover the bills
the week before he joins, my immediate superior with whom i had a bad relationship was hoping she could now fire me (i was essential and she had no grounds, she was just upset i wouldn't be her boyfriend)
she thought this guy could fill my role and thus it would be an easier sell to hr/ceo to let me go now that they had a "viable replacement"
I explain to her that she's nuts to pursue this, that I'm happy to continue working side by side without making any fuss out of this but if she tries to fire me i'll show hr the texts she sent me saying she loves me and needs me to be with her and if she can't be with me then she can't deal with seeing me every day etc etc - so basically if she goes through with this, everyone is nuked, including her
she goes ahead with it anyway (she too was autistic and severely underestimated how poorly this would reflect upon her)
things obviously going crazy, both the girl and I are given paid time off until they can sort it out, I feel terrible about the situation I've pulled this guy into and he's already relocated over here and will start work on monday (it's friday when she does this) and text him to meet for coffee so i can explain to him what's going on and how everything is about to explode
i had a very good network at that time and i knew of several companies in town who'd happily hire an entry level product manage based on my rec so it was my intention to give this guy a heads up that things were going sideways and to help him find alternatives ASAP - because again, I felt absolutely terrible about this and whatever happened from this would at best be very messy for him (the woman was the one who wanted to hire another american in the first place so now that her plans were nuked it was very likely he'd get his offer pulled etc etc because it was clear she didn't want to expand operations but rather just get a replacement for me ahead of time)
despite that we'd been talking for months, that i went out of my way to give him this major opportunity, that i was his only connection in this company and that i was now giving him a headsup of what was possibly coming to him on monday when he shows up and neither of us are there and that i was going to help him land on his feet by introducing him to other employers if he wanted to leave (or was going to be let go) - he instead shut things down immediately and left the coffee shop abruptly once he learned my future was in limbo
he instead took this as an opportunity to fast track himself to fill in for my role and distanced himself from me
within a month, the company decided the best way out of this messy situation was to just shut down my entire department - so we were both fired but now instead of opening them up to sexual harassment suits, it was now a coincidence and our layoffs came as a business decision, all 12 people were fired, including that guy, who obviously never received any help from me ever again - a few years back i checked in on him on linkedin to see where he was and what he was doing and he never again worked in the tech industry
Gotta love story time with rickroll !
TLDR. Cliffs?
1) autism makes it hard to fit in naturally at the office where you're prone to misread the room
2) don't ever think anyone, no matter how much you've done for them or how well you get along, will have your back if you run afoul of management - their career>your friendship 100% of the time
rtp - i once got a performance review where hr gave me feedback that the team of people who worked under me all thought i didn't like any of them, was planning on firing them, and that none of them enjoyed working with me
this came as a shock to me since i thought we all got along really well, we regularly ate meals together etc and while none of them were friends, i liked most of them personally and the others i believed i was able to conceal that i didn't like them personally (and i thought they did a fine job at work anyway so it didn't matter)
so instead of saying "nuh uh, you're wrong" i instead asked hr to show me evidence of this so I could learn from this and correct my behavior
hr said, "sure, just open up one of your work chats"
we look at this morning, everyone is saying good morning, talking about the weather, traffic, what they did on the weekend etc - it's not a big conversation, just a 5 minute back and forth exchanging pleasantries
i don't participate in any of that, what i do is show up to the chat with a "we're pushing our 11 am meeting up to 10:30 today because of a lunch meeting"
she highlights this, and points out this is exactly what they are talking about
instead of congratulating me for not "wasting company time on idle chatter" she points out that my skipping of these pleasantries just sets a bad tone and simply opening with a "good morning everyone, we're pushing our 11 am meeting up to 10:30 today because of a lunch meeting" would have been 10x better
she also noted that i never use any emojis and that makes me seem really cold and i should start using smiley faces at the end of positive statements
how there's a massive gap between "good job everyone" and "good job everyone 😀" and especially so with more touchy stuff like "I like your proposal, it was really great and I think it has a lot of merits and we'll consider it in the future, but we're going to go in a different direction and see how the other proposal works first because the other proposal will require a lower budget" and "I like your proposal, it was really great 😀 I think it has a lot of merits that we'll consider in the future. But we're going to go in a different direction and see how the other proposal works first because it requires a lower budget $$$"
to me those are still the same sentences, only one is dumbed down and patronizing, I would personally much rather prefer the first one, but apparently the second one is a much better way to communicate because normies think the first one is too robotic and robotic means i despise them whereas the idiot who freely tosses around emojis obviously likes the person
i took this feedback to heart and began using more emojis and throwing in more "how are you?" and "good mornings" as prefaces and it worked wonders
i even took it the second step of actually learning what all those emojis mean, not the eggplant one etc but the various versions of smileys and i did this not by looking at them (because they were all just childish images for rtards with no meaning as far as i was concerned) but by reading their descriptions
ie i had no idea that was "kissing" or the what on earth "relieved" or "pensive" were meant to signify previously
lo and behold after taking in this feedback, i got much better reviews in the next quarter and got a raise as a result, also found i had much better results in dating apps just throwing in smiley faces at the end of a sentence - because normies are stupid children
i often wonder if i would have thrived in a military career where they probably don't care too much about your emoji game, i could be mistaken, but i don't think gman ever needs to worry about whether or not he comes across as friendly to his subordinates
RTP, sorry Rick felt the need high jack your question. Let us know if we were helpful.
Gl RtP with the work situation. Don't have much to add aside from +1ing the advice to check out Reddit autism subforums, I imagine you'll get quite a lot of good feedback
rtp - i once got a performance review where hr gave me feedback that the team of people who worked under me all thought i didn't like any of them, was planning on firing them, and that none of them enjoyed working with me
this came as a shock to me since i thought we all got along really well, we regularly ate meals together etc and while none of them were friends, i liked most of them personally and the others i believed i was able to conceal that i didn't like them personally (and i thought the
This poast, esp the emoji discussion, strongly reminds me of this novel's protagonist and I suspect you might find it interesting:
hard disagree on following advice on reddit, it's mostly a bunch of misregs who complain about everything
it's an echo chamber of nonsense where the most toxic and extreme response garners the most upvotes from the miserable basement dwellers
No worries at all about making my question about his experiences—I really appreciate the wealth of knowledge that was shared! In fact, I found his insights to be among the most helpful. Navigating workplace situations and life can be incredibly challenging, especially when it has often felt like I’m exerting 10x the effort just to be judged or ostracized anyway (in the past especially), so his perspective was truly invaluable.
I sincerely thank everyone for their advice and feedback—I’ll take it all into account as I explore my next steps. I can keep you all updated as things progress as well. For now, I know that I enjoy finance and believe I could excel in non-technical roles or trading positions that allow me to stay in Southern California, where I’m currently based.
Additionally, I’m qualified to do work in autism services as a board certified autism technician, and for many learners and their caregivers, this type of support can even be covered by insurance.
If anyone knows of opportunities that might be a good fit, please feel free to reach out! While I may need some accommodations, I’m confident that with my unique mind and skill set, I can thrive as a top performer—even in high-salary roles like trading at a hedge fund.
That being said making a deeper impact and something fulfilling will also continue to be important to me moving forward and I would like to live a lifestyle that will allow this kind of contribution to society also.
If anyone has any other insight you think I may not have considered feel free to share. PM or discord is fine also I do not want too hijack the thread. My discord is .buttonclickr. If you PM me I can give you my phone number also.
Thank you all again for your support and encouragement!
i often wonder if i would have thrived in a military career where they probably don't care too much about your emoji game, i could be mistaken, but i don't think gman ever needs to worry about whether or not he comes across as friendly to his subordinates
It depends on your service and on your career field. We tend to be direct compared to civilian companies, but morale still matters, so I still have to work on my soft skills. I don't have an emoji game at all, but I think that marks me as an old more than it signals that I'm uncaring.
hard disagree on following advice on reddit, it's mostly a bunch of misregs who complain about everything
it's an echo chamber of nonsense where the most toxic and extreme response garners the most upvotes from the miserable basement dwellers
fake news. i downvote this poast.
to be fair, I hear you about all the snark and misanthropy. But there's a trove of info to be found on all sorts of topics--especially travel and local subcultures, in my experience. When I'm road-tripping and need good local eats/coffee/dog park in places I've never been, it's the best.
