Another Old Friend Needs to Be Abandoned

Perhaps I would prefer not to know too much about old friends.  About 1988, NAME REDACTED lent Brad and I a Mitchell Camera for our test for the Abyss.  This was the famous YFS camera.  He went off to work with Rene Daalder, blessed be his name, who was an incredibly talented and self-destructive director who somehow acquired the rights to a variety of Beatles songs and attempted to make a film called "Strawberry Fields".  Lots of time was wasted and no movie got made, and I lost track of my friend. He reappeared just recently because I wanted material to do a memorial web page about Rene.  

 

And that is the problem because now I learn that REDACTED is a supporter of RFK, JR and a believer in a variety of vaccine conspiracy theories.  On top of that he is in business with Steve Churchill of "The Minds Eye" fame.  Well, the Minds Eye stole the Symbolics work and rescored it and did all this without a shred of permission from the creators of that work. 

 

And so, I have blocked my former friend and it makes me sad to know that he has lost his mind and keeps bad company.   The irony is that my former friend made a living for 18 years doing science visualization and yet he is one of the anti-science nuts.

 

I am not sure what the point of this is, beyond the idea that we have all changed by the last 20 years of politics in this country and not all friends from the past make the cut.

Articles on Long Term Unemployment and Ageism: You Are Completely Fucked

[rewritten 4/24/2013]

Lets continue our little discussion of unemployment in America with two articles in the online media.

The first article discusses the discrimination against those who have been unemployed for a while and to that I would add to those who have chosen a non-traditional career track in any way.  Woe unto them because they are doomed. 

The second discusses ageism in the technical fields. I do not agree with everything that the author says about why companies do this, but I do agree with the general thrust of his article. I do not agree that there is nothing to be done about it, however. That I completely reject.  But I do agree with the fundamental premise, that being over 35 or so means you are a bad person and should be rejected and or destroyed.  Certainly all our employment law supports that principle.  

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/15/rand_ghayad_on_long_term_unemployment_the_long_term_unemployed_are_discriminated.html

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130422020049-8451-the-tech-industry-s-darkest-secret-it-s-all-about-age

Discrimination of any form is very hard to relate to unless you have experienced it.   And of course paranoia can play its role.  Did you not get the job because of your skin color, or because they just hate your face and want you to die?    This is even more true when dealing with very stupid people, such as people in the entertainment industry, where you often run into people who are anti-semitic but are not actually educated enough to realize that is what is going on.

One thing you do not have to worry about in most circumstances involving technology or the motion picture industry is the fear that you might intimidate them by using big words.  This is not as much of a problem as it used to be because in the current manifestation and economic climate they are not going to talk to you anyway, or take you seriously, or consider you for the position.  If they did consider you seriously then they might talk to you and then they might hate you because you used big words, but realistically that is not going to happen.

In fact, the whole job application process is not designed for experienced or intelligent people.  If you are one of those two categories, dont bother.  You are just wasting your time, and everyone knows it.  That is why when you tell people you are looking for work, and they tell you to look at the web site, what they are really saying is that you should go fuck yourself and die.

Long Term Unemployed:

Ageism:

We will discuss both of these in later posts.