Yep. Sometimes, I respond with, "Well, if your name is Paul, my name must be Mahatma Gandhi." I don't think this goes over very well, but I don't stick around long enough to find out.
I usually encounter this with pest cold-calls, preceded by a robotic greeting and query. Somebody comes on with a Hindi accent that could run from Mumbai to Calcutta. I just call them out on having an impenetrable accent and that I have no interest in talking to someone I can't understand. I think that offends them, but I have rung off by that point.
Another modern symptom is their habit of opening with "Hello, (my first name)." I usually take this as an opportunity to remind them that in English-speaking countries, it is proper manners of respect to address a stranger as "Mr. (surname)," as we are not on friendly acquaintance. Then I say, "Which (first name) do you wish to speak with?" They are usually servile enough to comply with the education.
But, honestly, there are plenty of native English-speakers that have terrible enunciation and do not speak up. Most annoying are the young women who speak in cozy, murmuring voices, trying to be demure or something. It is more like listening to winds on a distant seashore.
Just get rid of the H-1B visa. If foreigners want to come to America to live or become naturalized, we already have a process for that. It limits the supply in a way that does not unfairly disadvantage resident Americans or, actually, resident aliens. Then there will be price competition for skilled workers. Not so much for unskilled workers.
Corporations are legal creatures of state legislatures through chartering. They should not be persons unless the law stupidly so stipulates. If rights are endowed on individuals, they cannot be uniquely endowed on collective associations, since the association enjoys individual rights individually. As a collective, they can assign the exercise of their rights (under conditions specified) to their agents (corporate officers) in order to buy, sell, make goods or provide services, and pay wages.
Of more concern (to me) is the situation of the corporate shareholders, as they are presented as owners---but are denied the perquisites of owners. The major shareholders have the power of direction, so there is only pure democracy (i.e., tyranny) as its governing principle. There are seldom any shakeups resulting from a shareholders' meeting. I think it would be interesting for applicable law to say that any 10% of shareholders could compel a vote of confidence in the prevailing Board of Directors et al. The governing majority would probably vote it down easily. But it would be an interesting twist to require that if over 50% of the outvoted minority still voted for a loss of confidence on a second ballot, then it should prevail. On the principle that if the overwhelmed minority were not uniformly content to go along with the majority, then the majority does not get to rule. Then open ballots for new directors. (In other words, the evidence of proper stewardship of the majority shareholders would be in the relative acquiescence of the minority to the majority decision prevailing. This would be an inhibition of the temptation of the majority to run roughshod over the minority.)
You are stumbling over vocabulary. Obviously, it IS "normal," because that's the usual round that children go through. The question is "should it" be normal? The higher question would be 'is this beneficial"?
I only had the regime for those born ~1950 and it seemed to work out fine for me. I don't think there would be any harm in returning to that standard, for openers. I had the mumps and chicken pox without harm. No whooping cough, so maybe I was lucky about that.
In case I haven't made it clear, in no way did I take you to be slamming coal miners. I was pointing my critique at those who did, as explicated in the X posting. We are on the same page. I was suggesting that those who recommended "learning to code" probably had no appreciation of the skills required to do that effectively. In other words, it was a facetious remark, like "let them eat cake."
Can we shake hands on this?
They did with the Apollo astronauts. And took photos of the Earth. Don't you know these things? Actually, the Lunar Orbiter, an unmanned probe, took photos of the Earth from the orbit of the Moon. I have a poster print of the line-scan image.
You ask a snide question as though I would be stumped for an answer, and all that it shows is that you don't know a darned thing about what happened in those years.
These are "prospective applications." What would be the numbers of resulting naturalizations?
Sorry for the confusion. You had made a comment on coal miners---in the context of the Joe Lange post---but I took you as referring to the political denigration made against coal miners, to the effect that they should learn code. (Your challenged the denigraters to "learn how to mine coal.") My point is that the denigration of coal miners was totally off base, so that was truly in support of your comment. Does that clear things up?
Plenty of pictures. Now try to take a complete picture of your automobile, with the restriction that the camera is about 2 inches away from it. (The ISS is at ~420 km altitude. The Earth's radius is 6,378 km.) Maybe you will understand the impossibility of obtaining a picture of "the Earth" at such proximity, and why a greater distance (as between the Earth and the Moon) is required.
Those pictures exist and i think most of them are photographic, not digital. Recent probes to the Moon may have digital photos (not CGI).
But I charge you with making an impossible demand because you are not arguing in good faith. If you knew the subject at all, you would already understand why we cannot obtain a photo of the whole Earth from low altitude orbits, and why we must resort to combining partial photos into a whole. So, you don't care. You just want to make a sophistic point. Well, it is an empty point. All it shows is that you don't know the subject at all.
"Dashmoomoo"? I must make a point of remembering that handle.
Of what? Care to be more communicative than to throw aspersions?
There was no message. The audience of the movie, and even of the Truman Show within the movie, knew perfectly well the reality of the world. The point of the movie might have been that the truth will out, despite all attempts to prevent it. And that love is perhaps the most real thing of all.
I can't spell my first name without the letters C, I, and A, either, so what does that mean? (Hint: exactly nothing.)
I get the allegory, but---as I said---the movie would amount to debunkery, not propaganda. And if you don't understand that, it isn't my problem either.
Look, you re-posted an X post by Joe Lange. That was what I was responding to. I have no idea what you said.
What is all this controversy even about? I haven't heard anything from Vivek or Elon that I would find controversial, and these various pile-ons seem completely without purpose. Trust the extremely paranoid to be vicious toward their allies.
You didn't. I was referring to those idiot politicians who took the attitude that for all the coal-miners put out of work, they should learn to code. And I paraphrased it with Marie Antoinette's remark about the starving Frenchment, "They have no bread? Then let them eat cake."
This does go back to the referenced X post. Do you have any objection to what I said?
What on Earth is the controversy? It is PAINFULLY obvious that the American education system has degraded the knowledge of generation after generation in every subject. It used to be that mainstream movies were calculated to attract mature adults (and I don't mean X-rated) on the basis of a plot with serious issues at stake, requiring a modicum of intelligence to appreciate. Now, entertainment seems to have lapsed into glorifications of comic books and fairy tales.
It is also painfully obvious that the H-1B visa program has been used to hire cheapskate labor (just as with illegal alien yeoman laborers). The unions had been vocal about this when I was an active member.
Two true things are not in contradiction.
As for education, there isn't much that wouldn't be fixed if we adjusted the curricula back about 70 or so years, to when it was the expectation that a high school education was the most that could be guaranteed, and therefore the schools poured as much into the students' skulls as they could manage. Obviously, update the history and science texts to keep currency.
As for H-1B, just eliminate it. Nothing seriously stops a foreign national from coming to America, working hard, and becoming naturalized. I met plenty of expert engineers from Great Britain, France, Iran, Germany, Italy, China, Croatia, Japan, India, and wherever. And objection to land of origin is really indistinguishable from the most ignorant racism. I had a general practitioner who I think was from Pakistan, and was the most incisive, direct, and methodical doctor I have ever met.
But don't misunderstand the situation in medical care. When Obamacare was implemented, all the doctors took a serious look at what it would do to their practice and maybe about half of them decided it was time to retire while the getting was good. The result of so many doctors leaving the market was that it became really hard to schedule visits with them. I think it was also coincident with medical corporate systems taking over most medical employment, absorbing entire hospitals and attendant physician practices. It was no longer a great field to go into, and I surmise the medical school production of graduates slumped. Same thing with nursing care and non-agency home care. The home care industry was able to pay only foreigners what they were willing to live on. No one else wanted the job. Or the people who might be suitable had an atrocious education (back to problem 1).
My problem with the H-1B situation is, if these people are simply cheap, does it show up in the quality of the product? It should. Does it? How do you find the evidence? To me, that should be a stronger argument against it, because the presumption is that you can hire cheap labor and still offer a quality product or service. If that is true---I would regard it as a miracle (and I don't believe in miracles like that).
The "let them eat code" kind of comment is ipso facto not a serious position. I have three degrees in aeronautical science and have built my own programs in BASIC, FORTRAN, and Excel to do my work, but that is a far cry from major mainframe coding in languages I whose names I can't even pronounce. Not everyone can or will ever be a code maven, and it has nothing to do with a comparison to mining coal---which I also cannot do, 3 degrees notwithstanding. Never forget that it was code mavens responsible for killing 364 passengers and crew in two 737 MAX crashes. And it is code mavens who are responsible for the automatic-driving fatalities that are cropping up. Code mavens don't produce food. Code mavens do not populate the entire production chain from forests to houses, and to paper products. Or the production chain from raw materials to automobiles, airplanes, and electronics. They do busy themselves with things like A.I., which so far is an encyclopedia set masquerading as a fortune-teller.
It is an insult, to be sure, but we have to stand back and realize that it is the insult of an ignorant and arrogant asshole, who doesn't even understand coding.
Not proof at all. Just a fantasy. Any realistic interpretation along those lines would be for him to be paid off the books for a murder. If there was no murder, he wouldn't need a pardon. By "going public," he could easily mean exposing the extent to which the J6 event was concocted by the authorities.
But back to your objection. Not that I'm a fan of overseas force projection, but in the case of pirates, to the extent that they hurt international trade, they are hurting OUR international trade. And that would be motive enough to take them out of action. Ever since the Barbary Pirates needed to be quelled.
For the flat-earth people, an impervious solid firmament is part of their whole conception. In reality, it is not even an allegory (of what?). It is simply a word they used for what we call the sky.
He throws yourself into traffic and leaves strange messages behind. The evidence is suicide. The fantasy is something else. Unless you have other evidence to refute the existing evidence. So...do you?
The pre-landing attempts were crude (lasers weren't invented unitl 1961) and diffuse. The retro-refectors come back as at a point, not possible with a diffuse reflection. And from what other missions would they be placed?
Also, the landing stages are still there to be seen and photographed.
Why are you trying so hard to imagine away the visible truth? Why is it so important for you to deny the facts of history? Would it upset your whole world-view if it turned out that any account of history was actual truth?
Are we talking about Vivek's X post on the need to up our game with respect to excellence? I worked in an industry where excellence was the only thing that mattered, and it came without any racial strings. Do you disagree with any of my points?
A.I. is just an encyclopedia in the form of a pinball machine. The trick is to derail its script tree. Sometimes, I get robot calls for medical insurance pushers, and the robot asks me how old I am. I answer "Oh, four hundred and thirty seven years." There is a pause and a click as it disconnects.
There is another scam question where they try to get you to "confirm that you have Medicare part A and part B." I answer, "I can confirm I have a P***S. Do you want to talk about that?" Click.
It's a game. The robot asks, "Do you have any other medical problems?" I answer, "I have three heads." It responds, "Oh, that's interesting" and resumes the spiel.
The robot asks, "Do you have a moment to speak to one of our representatives?" I answer, "No, I'm being chased by flaming wombats." "Well, this won't take much time..." "You're darn right!" and I slam down the phone.
They try to get clever. Upon hearing an objection from the person being called that the caller is a robot, the script has some nonsense about "Oh, that may be because my microphone is processed through a computer, but..." At which point, I generally yell at them, "No, you are a robot because you fucking do not listen!" and hang up.
I mainly answer in a neutrally pleasant way---until I hear the telltale signs (like the "blip" that signals the call transfer from the automatic caller to the robot receptionist or sometimes directly to the boiler room). Being pleasant is totally wasted and actually unjust if extended toward persons who lie to you about who is calling you, and give you bullshit answers.
In the spirit of making lemonade out of lemons, take these opportunities to abuse the fools who intrude on your day.