its_pizza
It’s especially noticable in cities where the storefronts close with rolling metal doors, and the windows close over with shutters. It is very apparent that the city is “closed.”
Of course these doors and shutters have very practical purposes. Just that if they’re not common in your home country, it can be jarring.
Depends on your country and employer. In some situations, your job description could be a big deal. For example if you’re in a union, you are probably required to only do the specific tasks as described in the job description.
Some countries may also have laws about your work contract. If that applies to you, then it’s probably important on your employer’s part to have the right description for your job.
But in many places, it really doesn’t matter: your job description vs what you actually do, as long as you aren’t being asked to do something that needs licensure or other regulations. Many job descriptions will have a catch-all like “… And other duties as directed” to fill in the gap.
This really hit me hard once I had a kid.
The degree to which those small early lessons will stick in their mind, much less something that’s ingrained in their heads every single day.
I think I get it now - if kids are hearing this stuff day in and out from the moment they can talk - that they absolutely could be convinced that Trump or Putin or Xi are some kind of divinity. Even when they later learn otherwise, there will be some kernel of that propaganda remaining in their head.
Some people reach a phase where they’re really ready to question these things, but I met plenty of people in college for whom that dissonance was just too unexpected and painful. They simply retreated into what they already identified with.
I’ve felt this way about twice in my life, and it’s when I had a really well crafted Jupyter notebook running in VSCode.
It’s definitely the kind of thing you want to pop open when boss is showing some new sponsors/customers around.
Not just East Germany. If you dig enough, you will find mental health abuse in every country on earth, whether historical or ongoing. Of course in the USSR as you mentioned, also in China, the USA, and elsewhere.
“Abusive” in this case can mean abusive treatments, or treatments against things that are not diseases, such as homosexuality, promiscuity, or unfavorable political ideas.
In the US, read about the published papers of the mkultra project, and look as well into the ongoing existence of centers such as Elan school (now closed) and the Judge Rottenberg center (still in practice).
In my experience, having friends go through mental crises, the modern US system is hard enough to navigate even when one desperately needs and wants care. Try finding yourself a therapist when in such a depression that you can hardly get out of bed, much less search out who takes your insurance, has openings in their availability, and is a good match for your personality. Meanwhile true inpatient care seems reserved for either the fully disabled, or those who have already attempted suicide. Can you imagine if a profession like dentistry made care this difficult to access?
But for people who are either marginalized or truly mentally disabled, this is a harsh system that can make one suspicious, especially when the history of lobotomies, electroshocks, hydrotherapy, and other abuses are within living memory.
That’s pretty normal for meh-tier kind of jobs in the US, though usually you “graduate” to two weeks sooner, like after a year.
In many workplaces there’s a culture of taking as little as possible of the allowed vacation time. Sometimes it can lead to a small bonus when those days get “paid out” at the year end. Other times, the only encouragement is just pressure from the boss or coworkers. Note that there is neither a legal minimum for vacation days, not a requirement that employees actually use the days they have.