Anyone who has ever visited a student residence knows that is merely wishful thinking.
The person who invents cat litter for students will make a fortune. (It will need to absorb pizza, beer cans, and other stuff not suitable for discussion on a family oriented website along with emotional outbursts, anomie and existential dread.)
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Who said this was a family website? 
In one of my first student sharehouses, I had a room with a balcony and a built-in wardrobe.
The previous tenant had spent the last year throwing his old condoms onto the balcony and his old syringes into the wardrobe. It was not a fun cleaning job.
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I didnāt say this one was. I am usually very careful about my syntax.
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And thatās exactly what I hated about university. Iād been responsible for housecleaning and cooking at home since I was 13. Having to explain to second-years how they could tell when water was boiling (to make Kraft Dinner) wasā¦ unsettling. Hearing people whine about cleaning their one tiny room was worse.
NB: Iām actually a terrible housecleaner now, but in my defence thatās because I was burnt out on it by my early twenties ā not least because I was always in charge of cleaning up after other people. I still think of cleaning as something thatās done for other people.
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http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_martha.htm
The nearest thing my atheistic and communist grandfather had to a religious text.
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FWIW, Iām seeing a lot more teachers, especially by the high school level, telling students and their parents at least general guidelines like: I prefer being contacted by X method but never after 8:00pm, am available for meetings from 6:30-7:45am or from 3:30-4:30pm every school day except Wednesdays, etc. etc.
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Twinsies!
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Engineer, was he?
āIt is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.ā
"They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to leave their job when they damn-well choose."
(And ādamn-wellā was strong talk in Kiplingās day, probably the equivalent of āfucking-wellā today.)
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In railway signalling.
Edit - but the poem is more generally applicable. Unlike many people who became very rich indeed, Kipling did not forget, or underrate, the people who made his lifestyle possible.
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First, someone left a dog near my apartment door earlier today. It was out of view, but the walked around a corner, and gave me quite a shock as I was trying to put the key in the door.
Second, the Guardian temp-banned me again. They do this every few days. Iāve asked, and one of the moderators explained that itās because (a) Iāve posted replies objecting to ableist slurs, sometimes explaining why I think they add to ableism, and sometimes explaining how they were used to legitimize forced sterilization campaigns, and the Guardian regards this as āspam,ā and (b) because they donāt want replies, Iāve flagged posts for ableist slurs, and the Guardian regards this as āhigh volume mis-reporting.ā If they donāt want people to flag posts which violate their stated community standards, maybe they should revise their community standards to say for example, ā5. We will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate-speech, or contributions that could be interpreted as such, except against immigrants, disabled people, [and whomever else they want to tolerate hate speech against].ā
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You were temp-banned? I was perma-banned for, very specifically, saying that Netanyahu was extremely bad PR for Israel and that Lieberman had no place in the government of any civilised country.
But itās OK, Iām not nearly rich enough to read The Guardian these days, itās very obviously aimed at the Ā£150k plus per year demographic.
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???
I get it free. I sometimes get a nag to disable my ad-blockers, but having tried that, I need my ad-blockers. I donāt need more migraines. I find it better than most American papers, and more compatible with my accessibility tools than many others.
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Iāve had several students this semester literally just not show up after saying they were going to come see me about one issue or another. Then they get annoyed that I can figure out the solution to their problem literally right there either before or after class.
the ones who make appointments and come by when they say they are going to do so are great, though.
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Just about all the adverts in the print version are aimed at the top 2% or so of the population. In the US you get targeted ads so itās different. I lost patience with the Guardian when in one section it had āglobal warming weāre all going to dieā and in another it had adverts for long haul holidays and month long cruises.
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Not really.
Edit - thinking about it, the Suddeutsche Zeitung, though my German isnāt really up it these days. And LibĆ©ration.
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I am going to have to fire a client for non payment. They are a relative, so there is no contract or anything, and thatās why I havenāt been more forceful. The reason I havenāt done it already is that Iām hoping the $550 in past due invoices actually gets paid.
I 100% WILL NEVER do this, but there is a petty person inside me who wants to replace their websites with notices that they donāt pay their bills.
At some point, though, Iām going to have to decide whether this stress is worth the dollars. If I tell them that they are running their business like preznit turnip, not paying vendors, it will mightily offend them, but thatās where my head is right now.
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Whut?
Were they blind, and therefore unable to see the roiling bubbles and steam?
I mean, I can totally relate to having to deal with young peeps with severely underdeveloped domestic skills; I used to live in a college co-op for some years during which time I held a few positions of authority - president, house manager, kitchen manager, you name it.
Sadly, our particular house had a really high turnover rate; every semester a huge swath of residents would transfer to other houses, and weād get a whole new crop of housemates, many of whom had never lived away from their parents beforeā¦ and it showed.
Hell, we used to tease this one guy mercilessly that āheād dieā without a super-dedicated girlfriend, wife or maid, because he literally didnāt know how to cook, or clean, or do pretty much anything useful for himself.
But even the dimmest of those bulbs (and there were several) still knew how to boil freakinā waterā¦ including the aforementioned guy with zero home training.
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The woman in question complained the packaging just said add pasta when the water was boiling, not how to tell when the water is boiling. So I guess she missed that part both and her domestic skills education and in chemistry class.
I remember she demanded, āhow the hell should I know when the waterās boiling?ā like it was some arcane secret she hasnāt been initiated to.
Iād just love to know what her parents were thinking, sending her out into the world like that.
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Funny thing. I know how to cook some things and can generally follow a cookbook. But I have this problem with determining EXACTLY when water is actually boiling. It seems like there is a sort of continuum between the time bubbles start to form on the bottom, and the time itās a full rolling boil. With the corn on the cob recipe I use (1960s Betty Crocker), you cover the corn with cold water, then put it on the burner and let it come to a boil. You cook for 2 minutes, then take the pot off the heat and let sit for 10 minutes.
But when do you start timing the 2 minutes??? The uncertainty is a large percentage of the total time. I have to guess, but then I feel uneasy.
Only an OCDish STEM-type person would have this problem I think . . . . but itās quite different from not knowing what a boil looks like.
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Holy fucksocksā¦
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