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[Kagus]

I imagine he’s saying that because I don’t think anyone has a positive opinion on him secretly centralizing power.

I didn't know anyone had a positive opinion of ScoMo's doing anything. The man's an absolute clown.

I still don't get why people like that stuff, I mean avocados are nasty.

Whoah now, let's try and keep this civil... This is a politics discussion, we don't need to bring up contentious topics like avocados.

[brewer bob]

I mean avocados are nasty.

The Hipster has become enraged!

[None]

I mean avocados are nasty.

The Hipster has become enraged!

The Hipster has become depressed!

Avocados are as itchy as they are tasty. I can't even do my part as a millennial to buy avocados to fight the Great Avocado Surplus Because Millennials Stopped Buying Avocado Toast to save the avocado industry without my body doing a mutiny.

Don't do food allergies, kids.

[bloop_bleep]

I didn't know anyone had a positive opinion of ScoMo's doing anything. The man's an absolute clown.

Politicians with an O in both their names have their work cut out for them.

[TamerVirus]

What about JoJo? 

Oh wait there was Jo Jorgensen...

[EuchreJack]

Honestly, I'd much rather have a politician who openly parties and gets drunk than one who lies about partying and getting drunk.

The Brits already tried that with their last Prime Minister. It turns out we're better off with politicians that at least have the brains to hide how much drugs/booze they use.

[bloop_bleep]

I want a president who drinks dichloromethane by the gallon.

[JoshuaFH]

I've started watching a series on Netflix: Extraordinary Attorney Woo, about an autistic attorney set in South Korea. Spoilers for the show I guess. I'm not 100% sure about the depiction of autism in the show, given what I know from firsthand experience, but the writing and the drama is actually pretty decent. Our protagonist Woo Young-Woo is portrayed very sympathetically; she's not a genius, but she is a living encyclopedia of law with a photographic memory. She's not totally socially inept, but she has a hard time interacting with people and has to learn how to get along with her colleagues. She's fixated on whales and other mammalian sea life, flies into unsolicited monologues about random whale facts, has kind of a rigid and clumsy gait, and speaks in lightning fast way with almost no inflection or space between the words. It kind of comes across as being a very blunt stereotype, but she's a pretty likable character overall I'd say.

What makes it a little confusing however is how starkly different the South Korean legal system seems to be from the American System, and I don't know enough about South Korea to be able to differentiate what is based in reality and what is a dramatization for the sake of entertainment. For example, the different episodes all seem to center around different types of cases, first episode we have a case about homicide, then another episode we have a case about a specific type of patent on a device, and in another case we have a lawsuit against the ?government? to prevent a highway from being built through a rural town; and I'm thinking "How the utter fuck are these lawyers simultaneously specialized enough to be able to handle different cases like this?" cause atleast in America, from what I know, lawyers are HIGHLY specialized in different facets of the law. Though that may just be because America is so huge and aggressively overcomplicated, and South Korea has the divine benefit of just being a smaller country that, in global terms, became independent and modernized only pretty recently, like within the last hundred years or so, and therefore it's legal system and code of laws might actually be comprehensible to individual lawyers.

My only other concerns are things so specific to South Korea that I'd probably need to ask an actual Korean to explain them to me. One being that a character is in the running to become the Minister of Justice for the country, but is concerned over the fact that they had a child out of wedlock becoming known, which would apparently be a huge scandal if it were proven, and I can't help but think "...that's a scandal? Really?", but I guess, as an American, I'm just used to my politicians being debased, immoral pieces of shit; fuck if the person I was voting for ONLY had bastard children as their only sin, I'd be SO THANKFUL.

In the episode I'm watching right now, the major point of drama is that the main character was found to have been hired due to "Nepotism", but the exact definition of nepotism here seems to be a uniquely Korean one. The main character was hired into the law firm because the CEO knew the MC's dad back in University, and they were friends; and a side character figured this out and utterly lost his fucking mind. The way I understand nepotism, it's a way to for the elite to keep their wealth in the family, or just amongst themselves, and the relatively poor Woo Young-Woo and her single father completely fails this metric. The next is familiarity or connectivity, it would never occur to me that just being friends apparently qualifies as nepotism, as Woo's family and the CEO aren't financially linked together at all. The next is qualification, it'd obviously be nepotism if Woo were unqualified for her position... but she's eminently and completely qualified. It's also a private company, so it seems to me that the entire point is moot since private companies, atleast here in America, can hire whoever the fuck they want for any reason they want; if the CEO wants to waste money employing their friend's disabled daughter, they have the right to do that, as far as I know. It'd be different if it were a governmental position, but it's not. I might just be totally in the wrong on this one due to my ignorance on the subject matter, I'd honestly have to look into it more, but just from a google search it seems that South Korea is riddled with nepotism anyway, so that makes it even more bizarre that these characters are losing their shit over our main character catching a break for a position she's qualified for anyway.

So far I'm really liking this show, I'll probably stick with it to the end.

[Frumple]

news person on tv somehow sounding sad/disappointed about some retail chain having to cut prices due to reduced demand

like wow, how terrible, some chain store ripping people off less, such an unfortunate thing, sad, sad

...

To be vaguely fair, it did occur to me when I started typing this they might have stock in whatever the company was, or they were depressed over something else or whatever, so maybe there's some sort of reasonable cause to it, but... still. Still.

===

Anyway, yeah, you can eyeball the easy definition of nepotism to see it extends to friends as well as family, and extends to both power and influence -- it's not just a rich person thing by a country mile (pointedly, out here in the country it's wildly rampant even among folks operating below the poverty line). Corruption related to that is rooted fucking deep in the US hiring process, to the point I've regularly gotten just flat out incomprehension from folks when pointing out that, yes, favoring friends or family or even just acquaintances in the hiring process is, in fact, corruption and/or nepotism, even when the person being selected is largely or entirely qualified. Hire competence doesn't change that you're passing over people that may be just as, or more, qualified based on personal familiarity and whatnot. So on and so forth.

The extent that kind of behavior is tangled into everything (largely everywhere, it's not unique to the US even a little, just much worse than we like to admit over here) makes it a messy and complicated issue.

[TamerVirus]

concerned over the fact that they had a child out of wedlock becoming known, which would apparently be a huge scandal if it were proven, and I can't help but think "...that's a scandal? Really?", but I guess, as an American, I'm just used to my politicians being debased, immoral pieces of shit

This was famously used as fodder on the campaign trail against Grover Cleveland: “Ma, ma, where's my pa?” but he won, so “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”

Also Warren G Harding was proven via DNA testing to have fathered a child out of wedlock

[hector13]

Honestly, I'd much rather have a politician who openly parties and gets drunk than one who lies about partying and getting drunk.

The Brits already tried that with their last Prime Minister. It turns out we're better off with politicians that at least have the brains to hide how much drugs/booze they use.

Well… he lied about partying when his government put in restrictions on the number of people allowed to gather in any place, when people had to restrict the number of people that could attend funerals for the deadly disease doing the rounds those restrictions were supposedly going to reduce.

[MrRoboto75]

Phoenix Wright is similar, being something of a social commentary on the Japanese court system but that part goes over westerners heads.

[McTraveller]

Headlines saying "People are spending the money they don't have to spend on gasoline, on other things; it's now on average like a new $100 savings per month!"

That's not even wrong; this isn't $100 magically appearing out of nowhere that is "savings"; the article was highlighting people that can now spend that $100 they would spend anyway but on the things they want, rather than on gasoline.

It's only savings if you weren't already spending every penny you made and did indeed have to reduce savings to pay more for gasoline.

Such a baffling view on microeconomics.

[EuchreJack]

I want a president who's absolutely zoinked out of his mind from huffing paint thinners.

Awh, somebody misses Trump!

Honestly, I'd much rather have a politician who openly parties and gets drunk than one who lies about partying and getting drunk.

The Brits already tried that with their last Prime Minister. It turns out we're better off with politicians that at least have the brains to hide how much drugs/booze they use.

Well… he lied about partying when his government put in restrictions on the number of people allowed to gather in any place, when people had to restrict the number of people that could attend funerals for the deadly disease doing the rounds those restrictions were supposedly going to reduce.

Good point.

[EuchreJack]

I've started watching a series on Netflix: Extraordinary Attorney Woo, about an autistic attorney set in South Korea. Spoilers for the show I guess. I'm not 100% sure about the depiction of autism in the show, given what I know from firsthand experience, but the writing and the drama is actually pretty decent. Our protagonist Woo Young-Woo is portrayed very sympathetically; she's not a genius, but she is a living encyclopedia of law with a photographic memory. She's not totally socially inept, but she has a hard time interacting with people and has to learn how to get along with her colleagues. She's fixated on whales and other mammalian sea life, flies into unsolicited monologues about random whale facts, has kind of a rigid and clumsy gait, and speaks in lightning fast way with almost no inflection or space between the words. It kind of comes across as being a very blunt stereotype, but she's a pretty likable character overall I'd say.

What makes it a little confusing however is how starkly different the South Korean legal system seems to be from the American System, and I don't know enough about South Korea to be able to differentiate what is based in reality and what is a dramatization for the sake of entertainment. For example, the different episodes all seem to center around different types of cases, first episode we have a case about homicide, then another episode we have a case about a specific type of patent on a device, and in another case we have a lawsuit against the ?government? to prevent a highway from being built through a rural town; and I'm thinking "How the utter fuck are these lawyers simultaneously specialized enough to be able to handle different cases like this?" cause atleast in America, from what I know, lawyers are HIGHLY specialized in different facets of the law. Though that may just be because America is so huge and aggressively overcomplicated, and South Korea has the divine benefit of just being a smaller country that, in global terms, became independent and modernized only pretty recently, like within the last hundred years or so, and therefore it's legal system and code of laws might actually be comprehensible to individual lawyers.

My only other concerns are things so specific to South Korea that I'd probably need to ask an actual Korean to explain them to me. One being that a character is in the running to become the Minister of Justice for the country, but is concerned over the fact that they had a child out of wedlock becoming known, which would apparently be a huge scandal if it were proven, and I can't help but think "...that's a scandal? Really?", but I guess, as an American, I'm just used to my politicians being debased, immoral pieces of shit; fuck if the person I was voting for ONLY had bastard children as their only sin, I'd be SO THANKFUL.

In the episode I'm watching right now, the major point of drama is that the main character was found to have been hired due to "Nepotism", but the exact definition of nepotism here seems to be a uniquely Korean one. The main character was hired into the law firm because the CEO knew the MC's dad back in University, and they were friends; and a side character figured this out and utterly lost his fucking mind. The way I understand nepotism, it's a way to for the elite to keep their wealth in the family, or just amongst themselves, and the relatively poor Woo Young-Woo and her single father completely fails this metric. The next is familiarity or connectivity, it would never occur to me that just being friends apparently qualifies as nepotism, as Woo's family and the CEO aren't financially linked together at all. The next is qualification, it'd obviously be nepotism if Woo were unqualified for her position... but she's eminently and completely qualified. It's also a private company, so it seems to me that the entire point is moot since private companies, atleast here in America, can hire whoever the fuck they want for any reason they want; if the CEO wants to waste money employing their friend's disabled daughter, they have the right to do that, as far as I know. It'd be different if it were a governmental position, but it's not. I might just be totally in the wrong on this one due to my ignorance on the subject matter, I'd honestly have to look into it more, but just from a google search it seems that South Korea is riddled with nepotism anyway, so that makes it even more bizarre that these characters are losing their shit over our main character catching a break for a position she's qualified for anyway.

So far I'm really liking this show, I'll probably stick with it to the end.

Wow.  Where do I begin?
1) Lawyers have been on the Autistic Spectrum for years. I'm not talking just new-generation, recently graduated and outed Autistic. I'm talking guys in their 60s who CLEARLY are somewhere on the spectrum (Asperger's as one admitted and could explain the others, if you want to get technical).
2) Made for TV, for the most part.  Specialization is just as you described in the US, and probably the same in South Korea.  BUT, litigation is still litigation, and being able to argue something in a courtroom is a skill with some transferability.  In a larger law office, they can designate some attorneys to litigate all cases in Court, where the people that actually specialize in the particular areas prep the cases and give the litigation lawyers all the stuff they need for Court. And, hey, if the client thinks their attorney can handle it, and the attorney thinks they can handle it...eh it happens.
(there are also snake oil salesmen calling themselves attorneys, and polymath attorneys that can do it all)
3) As for that bullshit about people losing their shit over nepotism: See it for the hypocrisy it is, please.  The main character made the dual mistake of being related to authority and admitting weakness in the form of a diagnosis, and is getting attacked over it under the neoptism flag.  She'll figure it out eventually, and Netflix will probably hammer it later on (probably with a true nepotism story).