pls come back @tom we need you, even to just delegate the admin over to any one of us. we can sort it out somehow.
clara
joined 2 years ago
we haven't seen tom in 2 months :(
i hope he's ok
good question
most people want to jump and scream "brexit!" and yes, brexit isn't helpful, but it's a symptom of bigger problems.
the most recent problem is that, the UK embarked on the "government austerity program" since 2010. this means that, the government slashed spending on most government provided services, ostensibly to pay off the UK national debt. in practice, this meant sharply reducing spending on social security, cancelling school building projects and restorations, sharply reducing police and prison spending, reducing funding to local governments, and increasing national sales tax (VAT).
end result? take a look at this graph, showing the number of hunger charity/food bank users increase over time. note that it was basically nobody at the start of the austerity program, and now it's several cities worth of people.
it's almost as if, when you cut government services that people rely on... that... people start suffering?
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if you pull on the thread of history, there are reasons why austerity was done, and there were reasons that those reasons were done, and so on. i'm happy to talk about it at length but i'm also trying to catch and prevent myself from "longposting".
the short answer is that, successive UK governments over 50 years have sold everything in the proverbial house to pawnbrokers and vultures, to prop up an unsustainable drug addiction (winning general elections). the result is now there is nothing left to sell, they maxed out all the credit cards, and now the debt collectors are coming.
there's a nice line from this article that sums up my opinion on the issue:
...in today’s UK economy, whose underlying stagnation has been masked only by the release of excess liquidity on an oceanic scale, some deficit spending may be good – necessary, even.
"release of excess liquidity" is an understatement here. we sold everything to the highest bidder, and now we're fucked.
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here's some hot topic examples of some things that are fucked, for further reading:
the police are now in "murders only" mode, only 4% of crime is actually being prosecuted because they just don't have the resources to investigate anything anymore. even if you do the investigation yourself, and give the evidence over, they just shrug.
most sewage is now dumped directly into rivers and oceans, because we sold off the water utilities and now they have no real oversight. remember, the police are in murders-only mode? who's going to prosecute them? nobody, lol
a lot of schools and other buildings are at threat of literal collapse, because we cheaped out on the material to build them. each successive government wanted to win an election, so none of them thought to mention it to us.
the queue for healthcare is so long, that 120,000 people in the queue for surgeries and treatment are... just dying, because they don't get seen in time. (granted, some of these are oldies who were going to die anyway, but the figure has doubled in 5 years.)
lastly, here's some further watching on how tax works over here, it's pretty messed up
ahh that's unfortunate. thanks anyway!
i do have a question, sure
for the avoidance of doubt, you are saying that a matrix bridge can copy all previous messages over from a discord server, to a matrix server, even the messages made before the creation of the bridge? i.e, transfer the entire conversation log over to the matrix server, going back all the way to the first message in a channel?
actually, phrasing this another way, i just caught myself in the XY problem. what i need really, is a copy of a given discord server's content, onto a fresh matrix server. bridge or no bridge. is there any way to (broadly) copy and paste the content of a discord channel over to a matrix server, one time only. i know how to extract the discord content using the discord chat log tool, tokens etc. so, say i have one of those html files with the full chatlog and contents - how do i put that into a matrix server, and have it roughly readable? (if that's possible)
thank you for your patience, i have tried search engines for months with no clear answers
this might be a good place for me to reach out into the void
i'm interested in migrating two of my servers over to a matrix server, but i also want to back-copy all the old messages to the matrix client.
does a matrix bridge do all this copying? i.e, if i was to setup a discord-matrix bridge, allow messages to sync, and then disconnect the bridge, does the matrix server then have a copy of all the old messages? it doesn't have to match to the old users or anything, i'm just interested in having the content migrate over.
this is currently the biggest hurdle for me, because one of my servers is a private family discord, and i really don't want to have to explain to my mum that "all the content of the last 4 years is gone" 😅
The so-called “spy clause” in the UK’s Online Safety Bill, which experts argued would have made end-to-end encryption all but impossible in the country, will no longer be enforced...
oh okay. so they're still going to pass it into law anyway, and then pinky promise not to enforce it. right... 🤦
yep this is exactly the issue. NT people giving advice to brains that can't use it. it's all mostly-worthless advice! 😃 it's good for me to call it out, but better if i offer advice myself, right? practice what you preach
(apologies, this post got out of hand. tl;dr is at the bottom)
if you are someone reading this who is doing the job search, i want to offer some three-part advice around interviews, from an autistic brain who has been down this road before:
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first part: consider that most interviews are not an assessment of your actual job skills - they are an assessment of your social skills, and they use your level of social skill as a proxy to decide on your job skill. i know that claim sounds ridiculous, but once you think about it, it makes sense, meditate on it for a moment
we will consider the case of applying for a shelf-stacking job. i will be blunt, from a technical standpoint, this job is not hard at all. stock inventory machine says you need to put 3 loaves of bread out? you grab 3 loaves from out back, and put them on the shelf, preferably in reverse order of expiry. customer asks for something? you stop what you're doing, and go with the customer to their request, no matter what your current task is. one of your colleagues needs help on the cash register? you... get on the cash register. each action in this job has a definitve correct answer, and many wrong ones. you can study these correct answers beforehand
if you're prepared, it's not really a job you can fuck up, mostly (don't worry, he lived). however, here's the pickle - by the time you get to interview, nearly all candidates have the base technical skills required for that position, since (these days) weaker candidates are filtered out before the interview, for not knowing how the CV ATS keyword game works. only strong candidates who have done the prep work remain
it leaves little room for an interviewer to filter out who should be selected for the job. if we presume the interviewer is also barred from conducting work trials, it leaves the interviewer with nothing else to measure, other than the candidate's social skills. put simply, if you have two equal candidates, and one of them can talk to customers in a more "NT-style", then the candidate with the best social skills will be chosen. it's no wonder then, that at least 85% of adults that are autistic, are unemployed. most of these are also degree holders 👩🎓
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with that context, here's my second part: i learned this lesson years ago from an older acquaintance who has passed on now. she arrived in the UK after being expelled from her country. this was the second time she had to move to a new land, and her second time arriving in a place where you were judged by who you are
she discovered an environment of "social relegation", where some employers were quite happy to hire "different", so long as they were not visible. example: she could work in a kitchen, but not as a server. or she could work in the warehouse, but not the food counter (because people didn't want "someone like her" handling their food). she could work manufacturing textiles, but not as a sales rep pushing the finished clothes
this is how it was in the 60s/70s in the UK, and it can be boiled down to "no blacks, no dogs, no irish". i have an irish background myself, and i've heard enough stories like this
since she grew up in a less enlightened time, there was no easy fix for her predicament. social change would not come soon enough for her, and after years of being in and out of positions, realised this lesson:
"...you have to be so skilled, and so needed, for the job you are applying for, that they want you before they see you..."
years later, she would find herself a stable position in the NHS (UK healthcare system)
now, i want to be clear. i think that society should adapt to be more inclusive. however, in the context of getting a job, i am being pragmatic about it, and understand that the necessary change wont arrive in time for people like us take advantage of it. i am not defending the status quo, just contextualizing it. i would encourage you to take the lesson she gave me directly to heart
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with these two contexts, here's my last part (warning: opinion time): "you're gonna get clocked, sooner, or later"
if you try, and try, and try, to study how the social dance of interviews work, and wargame scenarios for all outcomes, you will burnout. the depth of social interaction is as vast as space, and you don't have a warp drive. if you disregard this, and try the path anyway, you may be clocked in your interview as "different", and will then be left with two outcomes, both are varying degrees of bad
- you discolse you are autistic. personally, i've had no luck with this, and in my opinion, you will give them a perfect reason to "no longer move forward with your application". illegal? sure. but remember, it's not the autism, it's because you're "just not a good fit" 🥴
- you do not disclose your autism. if you get clocked, then it's game over. you will be let go for "being unsociable", and it won't be discriminatory to do so because they reasonably didn't know about your autism
my recommendation? forget about trying to game the social dance of the interview. another analogy, would be if a wheelchair user is faced with a flight of stairs. that's how damning interviews are to autistic people. you need to find a ramp, lift, or other way to get around this obstacle. you're not going up those stairs, so you must go around. while interviews should be more inclusive, currently, they are not very inclusive at all. so, we have to work with the hand we are dealt
firstly, you need to reflect on your desired career choice. if it's a career that has high competition, and is saturated by graduates? honestly? you need to reconsider, because it's not gonna happen. at interview time, you will be competing against social butterflies and masters of the dance, and you will be trounced if you try to interview for these jobs. even worse, these positions sometimes use group interviews because there are so many candidates, and some candidates will actively step on you to succeed
secondly, research what jobs are in really high demand. we're talking really, really high demand. the sort of demand that wont go away easily in the next 10 years. you need to look for jobs that are so hot, that they need bodies in seats, and they need them now. if you want an indicator, you should be considering anything in healthcare, technology, or finance (in order of amorality). the demand in these sectors will not go away anytime soon. if you need something more physical to do for work, consider solar panel/wind turbine/AC installation - all of these are going to grow massively because of climate change
thirdly, you need to reflect whether you are the sort of person who could handle a full "in-person" job, or whether remote work is right for you. this is a personal decision, i can't help with this. each autistic person is different. some thrive by having a rich environment of sights and sounds to engage with, and others (i suspect most, lol) need a workplace that is a quiet box, preferably miles away from colleagues. i know i'm on the "remote" side of this dilemma
once you've picked remote or traditional, then take that knowledge back to the list of in-demand jobs, and shortlist some positions that look promising. your final task is to filter this shortlist for positions that you either have the qualifications for, or you can acquire qualifications cheaply for, or can be self-taught. personally, i think self-teaching is going to be your big weapon, and your key advantage over NT candidates. remember, you need to be so good, that the interviewer doesn't give a damn whether you fumble the social dance
daunting as it is to re-skill for a new career path, you should consider in 5 years time, would you rather be yourself right now (status quo), or be yourself + a bunch of newly learnt skills? you won't be getting any younger! it's never too late to re-spec. i think definitely, definitely re-spec for an in-demand job, and by doing so, your interview worries will lessen. the worries never goes away, but you can be reasonably confident that your new, in-demand skillset will carry you over the finish line
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in summary:
- it's no wonder we struggle with interviews, because interviews don't assess your job skills - they assess your social skills. it's a trap that they dont teach you! no wonder that 85% of adults that are autistic, are unemployed.
- to counter this, "...you have to be so skilled, and so needed, for the job you are applying for, that they want you before they see you...". this is how you can individually mitigate against a biased recruitment process
- with that in mind, research the highest demand jobs within your reach. find the job sectors that are in so high demand that they willingly look past the social skills, and then re-spec your skillset to match this demand. i'm not saying it's easy, no. it's necessary.
good luck, stranger ❤️
i have saved this matrix link as a backup, if things get bad here i will join
should we post this over to feddit.uk meta forum too? it might be good to have a "here's our lifeboat link, you should join now" post present on that forum, while we still can?