Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[Admiral Yi]

Or maybe your parents moved right before you were born, to a house with a little less lead paint?

[Eddie Teach]

I don't understand the German image enough to cast judgment.

[Syt]

I don't understand the German image enough to cast judgment.

It's about the Germans killed in the bomb attack in Istanbul.

[Syt]

Syt, were you adopted?

Sometimes I wonder. I'm the only one of my immediate family (parents and siblings, my in laws in Germany AFAIK, my niece+nephew in Germany ...) who has the school qualification to go to university. Everyone else did minimum diploma. Even so I was originally sent down this path because my parents found it inappropriate for a working class child to go to the Gymnasium (after elementary, children back in the day, and mostly today still, though there's other options, were sorted into Hauptschule (at the time a qualification for crafts jobs), Realschule (office jobs), Gymnasium (high qualification office jobs + university prep), and I had a strong recommendation for Gymnasium, because I had skipped otherwise mandatory pre-school and just breezed my way through elementary school. I was then thoroughly bored at Realschule where I came out with one of the best exams/final years of any student there to the point that my old head teacher apologized for having to teach me because I was clearly under-challenged and the school had no means of supporting me. I then went to a business school that gave me the Gymnasium-qualification.

Most of my class mates went on to university, but that was out of the question for me. 1, I had no idea what to study. I was kinda interested in macro-economics at the time, and programming, but I didn't have a PC. 2, even with state support it would have been really difficult for me to finance this in any way without working at least 20h/week. So I went with public administration (which was a college degree, probably equivalent roughly to a bachelor?) where I would receive payment during my studies (but where others had parents supporting them, the meager money I received was all I had to pay rent and utilities at home and  a room at where the college was.

So yeah, no idea how I fit into my otherwise not well educated family who often exhibit an interesting lack of critical thinking. OTOH they all have loving families while I have no interest in ever having a family, so I don't think we have a clear winner here.

[Liep]

Immigration minister (right) was caught lying about how day care institutions can no longer serve ham because of muslims, turns out they still do.

[Syt]

Immigration minister (right)

[Martinus]

So this has been the most popular pic on my Facebook feed for the last few days...

[Martinus]

Oh, c'mon, they aren't even trying to make it plausible.

I know. That math exercise is a way off. The right answer is two orange fish.

[Syt]

"Service guarantees citizenship!"

[11B4V]

[Razgovory]

I don't doubt Cruz's intellect.

[DGuller]

Yeah, that's a very strange line of attack.  Of all the entirely plausible and truthful attacks, that's what you're going to go for?

[Razgovory]

I never assume that people who disagree with me are idiots.  Unless they disagree with me on something fundamental like what my own name is, or that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, or whatever.  I can confidently say that Sarah Palin is an idiot.

[Liep]

How old does Ted Cruz think the earth is?

[Eddie Teach]

Not everyone who believes the earth is 6000 years old is an idiot. Intelligent people are just as vulnerable to cognitive dissonance as everybody else.

Though in the case of GOP politicians, I suspect cynical hypocrisy is more common than earnest belief.