The Letting Off Steam Thread - Page 179

Not really a rant, but I just had a rare "crazy white boy night" with my new "crazy white boy friends." I'm white, but usually don't do stupid shit; it's pretty stereotypical of white kids to do dumb stuff.

I'm just thankful everyone walked away unscathed. All things considered, one of the best nights of my life.

I'll make this quick. My little brother was a good kid with a learning disability. He met some shitty friends, and by age 16 he was wearing stupid hats like the flat brim caps with the sticker still on it.

Now he's 24 and still wears them. He nets CDN$35k a year, has for about 4 years. He doesn't pay rent, he doesn't own anything, yet he has no savings. He spends, and I'm not kidding, about $30,000 a year on cigarettes, weed, immense quantities of booze at the most ridiculous prices, and restaurant meals (he probably eats at the restaurant 15+ times a week).

Ever since he was 16, he started disliking the little "suburban middle class" culture that my family has (often to a fault), and started intentionally wearing worn and dirty clothes, started using a rather dirty vocabulary that my mother doesn't like and whatnot.

To make it worse, it's impossible to criticize him, or to ask him to do things differently. He gets angry. If he leaves his boots in such a way that they block the door to anyone who wants to get in, he sighs and nearly tells us to fuck off. Any small thing like that, we have to let him do it or it's drama.

I love the kid to death but at this point he's just a mess who knows he's a mess but won't do anything about it. Whenever I'm home (and I hope he's not always like this but I think he is), he intentionally harasses my old mom. Yesterday he told her about how one of his friends came on a girl's back, took a photo with his phone and was surprised that the flash was on. Not something you tell your mother. He thought it was funny.

And I know that many mothers out there are all good with these kind of stories but my mother isn't. He does that all the time. He once told her about how he has one night stands with girls (whom he describes in the most sexist of terms). He's also racist and a conspiracy theorist. And when he borrows our cars he smokes in them even though we explicitly tell him not to.

GG

Well he could beat me up easily, not that fighting would solve anything. He's way overdue to leave the family house, he definitely should be kicked out and maybe it would force him to grow up, but yeah.

Is there not a lot of internships there offered or is it just the level of competition? The number of internships offered here this year is less than half of last year and there are way more people in 3rd year CS compared to previous years so the competition for those internships is quite intense. Though where I live is reliant on commodities, and since those have either trended downward, or in the case of oil, just completely tanked in price, a lot of companies are going into "keep stable and not spend too much" mode because the economy is in such an uncertain state (if oil goes back up, things will return to normal. If oil continues to go down, things could get pretty grim).

It's even more bleak for those of us graduating. There's been 4 postings for dev jobs in the last two months. Usually right now is the hottest time for this type of thing for people who will be graduating. Last year when I was watching the job board there were more and in most cases they were looking for 2-3 people per posting. Now it is the odd posting once every couple weeks looking for one person.

It seems like if I want to stay where I am or even just stay in the province, I'm gonna have to be patient finding something. Or move to Ontario, but I don't want to do that unless I absolutely have to. A few companies from there have approached me but the pay they offered wasn't worth moving that far for and after the cost of living, wouldn't be any better than staying here where all my family is.

Talk him into signing up for something (some sort of savings program) that just takes money straight from his check. As a family member I I morally (though not legally) condone you tricking him into signing up for it (possibly while drunk) With his bad money management, he might not even notice the money being gone if you start one of those escalating programs that starts with $25-$50 per month for the first year or so.

If he discovers the money missing, do the math for him showing how soon he could have his own place where he could walk around naked, party late at night, invite as many whoever's over whenever he wants, etc...

Don't talk about it like "growing up" with a bunch of new "responsibilities" and how hard it is to do stuff on our own, talk about it like gaining control, freedom, etc..

Talking about it as "growing up" just makes it sound like something shitty that people do by force not by choice. And that really, people are jealous that they can't be happy not "growing up" the way they had too. Regardless of whether that's actually the situation.

There's really nothing you can do. He has to figure it out on his own. My older brother, in his 30s, works for a brokerage firm. He makes more money, has his own place, but other than that, he lives in an empty box. He has no real possessions because his money also goes toward bullshit. Apparently, he doesn't need a laptop for when he goes to see clients, but he needs a $600 suit and to drop $100 on liquor for himself in one day. He doesn't have a credit card, probably for the same reason (he either fears he's a deadbeat debtor or he actually is one). While he managed to retain his job after being arrested and charged with DWI, he's blown through all of his savings. Bear in mind, he works in the money management business and still doesn't know his asshole from his eyehole. There's literally nothing you can do for someone who takes what they have for granted. Life literally has to shit all over them multiple times before they realize the good fortune they've had.

EDIT: I'm not wishing anything bad on either your brother or mine, but bad things seem to be the only things that make people step outside of their daily grind (mentally) and actually try to evaluate themselves and how they can improve their quality of life over the long term. It's really strange to me how people whom I perceive to be quite vain care so little about how others perceive them other than their physical appearance. The curse of the extrovert I suppose.

In 1869, theism is the belief in a deity, and atheism is the belief that there is no deity. Huxley recognizes himself in none of those definitions, so he coins the term agnosticism to describe the absence of belief regarding the existence or not of a deity.

Today, everyone realizes that this is obviously the correct stance on this issue, but people still want to be called atheists, so they expand and change the meaning of that word to everything that's not theism. And if you somehow use atheism and agnosticism on internet in the way that they were originally designed to be used, everyone tries to slowly explain to you how you're wrong like you're a 4-year-old foreigner who barely speaks english.

Had this discussion a while back on these forums. Totally agree with the sentiment.

I just don't understand why there can't be linguistic distinction between different beliefs. Why does everything have to be lumped into atheism? For instance my brand of agnosticism is probably closer to pantheism than it is atheism? Though I haven't really based my beliefs on any particular structure or system related to religion.