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tl;dr Polish man fights cultural marxism, becomes regional embarrassment
As for Belarusian protesters, whether or not you have an idea what they're about depends on whether you believe people there would like democratic rule for a change, or that it surely must be some sort of plot by nefarious foreign agents. If you hold the latter opinion, then I can't help you, I can only give you a list of people or organizations you might want to accuse and from there you will have to figure it out on your own.
Yeah, I spent some time browsing Questions & Answers section on slate.com and looks like folks are going through some sitcom-level shit.
Also, some weird woke shit. You can always count on that.
I guess you've found the replacement?
I'd like to add a follow-up comment to this video:
Basically, "cities" have grown, geographically. By which I mean "cities" in the sense of "here's where the economic hub is", rather than just the population density. The "city", in this sense, is where the stuff happens, and now, a ton of the stuff that happens happens in smaller cities/towns with suburban settings, generally surrounding a traditional city center. Old transit plans were built with the idea of serving the economic hub. At first, things like streetcars got people around in the city itself. Later, things like bus and light rail lines were built to transport people from the suburbs outside the city into the city core, because the latter was where the jobs were. But now the jobs are more spread out geographically, which can be interpreted as the "hub" growing in geographic size.
Which brings me to a certain conclusion. Would you agree that authoritarianism comes with an obliviousness towards the concept of cringe? Like, conspiracy theorism, bullshit stories about deceased leaders visiting you as a bird, macho man posturing, or when you lack manliness, throwing a tantrum over a musical campfest.
There's also a certain celebrity-fication (celebrification?) of athletes, not just US athletes. Sometimes they'll seize on one high-profile athlete (easier since they often know the results beforehand) and make a big deal about her/him, even if he/she isn't US American, e.g. Usain Bolt.
FWIW, by "US media" here we basically just mean NBC, since they have an exclusive contract to broadcast the Olympics, if I recall correctly.
Also the event is pre-recorded and then rebroadcast at a time suitable to US audiences, which is I guess not as objectionable.
They then non-randomly get selected and/or select themselves off juries, though. So you're not supposed to be able to get out of jury duty, but when you get placed in a jury pool, the attorneys get to question you to see if you're biased and then object to you being on there. Some people speak of intentionally acting stupid and/or biased in order to get out jury duty, though I haven't done this.
I was called for jury duty once but they didn't pick me. So I spent a day sitting in a waiting area in the courthouse building.
Certainly less dull than regular job day(s) #5238+.
Mind you, it's kind of pity that you Americans started out all so invested in government process, and now it seems you need to be either a geek or sleazy corrupt politico/amoral attorney.
By the way, I was already vaguely aware that attorneys get to question the jury, because I remembered it was a minor plot point in Devil's Advocate. Yay for us all living in America, heh.
I haven't studied this but I think it is something of a common practice that people try to get out of having to do jury duty, presumably because it's disruptive of their schedule and takes them out of dealing with things in their lives.
American cynicism about government is a separate topic which I'll probably write about later. I have other comments on that lol.
I kind of have that mental image of you jumping in your seat like a kid invited to a dinosaur factory and the suits turning you down after having misunderstood that as suspicious. Sorry man. It'll pass in a while, what can I say.
On a more serious note, did you know what sort of case you would have been in, or is it a thing that you only learn on the spot? 'Cause I can imagine, like, a very opinionated fella who would not want to issue judgement in a case where the outcome might be a weight on conscience. (Like feeling responsible for sending someone to the gallows, or sending someone to jail for an otherwise harmless amount of a drug proven beyond doubt.)
I don't know what case I would have been involved in, and I think that's by design. This way I can't come into it with any biases.
This mental image is certainly more interesting than what happened.
Yeah, exactly, I just meant a situation where (in this example) the accused has a very real chance of ending up on the death row, and wondered whether jury would feel responsible if the guilty verdict that they gave led to that. A for the gallows, it was metaphorical, although I don't think it'd be actually worse than poison.
But my point was that the jury is only tasked with deciding whether the defendant is guilty of the charge(s) brought by the prosecution, even if it is something like murder in the first degree. Sentencing comes later, and generally has some range of legally-allowed options.
That said, I would guess jurors would have connected the dots well enough to see some degree of causation between the verdict and the potential sentences. I don't know and I have really never thought of what goes through jurors' minds with regards to this question.
Sounds interesting.
woot
TL;DR grants to support urban agriculture, and I like urban agriculture.
* To graduate with a bachelor's degree, you need to complete certain basic requirements that all students must complete, regardless of their major. Most of these are required classes -- for example, math, science, and language arts classes that provide a basic level of competency for adulthood and preparing a student for pretty much any career. At least, that's the intent.
* Generally speaking, you also need to complete a major course of study. This means picking a field of study and completing a list of requirements according to that specific course of study.
* Undergrad students (i.e. those going for a bachelor's degree) tend to not a declar their major until some time after they've matriculated -- typically, in their sophomore (second) year. And while it's typical for people to settle into their field, it's not that uncommon to change one's major during one's undergraduate career. In contrast, graduate students generally apply to a specific department and thus have a "major" immediately when they matriculate, and (particularly for doctoral students) are more likely to drop out of a program than switch out (which might involve very unusual circumstances and paperwork); their field of study is typically not called a "major" but is just appended to the title of the degree they're working toward (e.g. "I was a comp sci major in college" vs. "I was a comp sci grad student").
Doing a major pretty much always means taking a certain set of required classes. The number of classes required varies from major to major, and some will give you choices to some extent. Also, some majors require a major research paper, called a thesis, but not all do. For those that don't, you may be able to get away with just pretty much taking classes to check off boxes, provided you're able to pass those classes.
A single academic department may offer more than one major. For example, a chemical engineering department might offer both a traditional chemical engineering major and a version of the major that focuses more on biotech stuff (such as pharmaceuticals, as opposed to, say, petrochemicals).
It is common to regard certain majors as more or less "useful" or expected-to-be-lucrative -- for example, "English major" and "philosophy major" are commonly-mocked majors, while there's often a general meme (which may be true to varying extents) that tech-related majors may get people jobs easily. But ultimately, all departments want to find ways to prepare their students effectively to succeed by arming them with useful skillsets, and they're aided in this regard by careers offices at each school which do anything from resume and interview coaching to organizing career fairs.
And, of course, majors don't necessarily line up with actual jobs or industries.
Optional features:
* You may declare a second major, and even a third major and beyond. This works differently depending on the school, but in general this means that you need to do the requirements for both majors. If they overlap, this makes it more convenient.
* Some majors may be "interdiscplinary", meaning that they are meant to blend expertise from multiple fields of study. For example, "environmental science and public policy".
* You may declare a minor. It's basically like a major but with much fewer requirements, intended to give you a...minor amount of specialty expertise in that field.
Classes taken that are neither general requirements nor major requirements are called "electives". Schools generally offer some degree of choice even amongst general requirements, though, but major requirements are often specific courses.
Master's degrees are sorta freeform. I'm not sure how to explain this without explaining something else first: Bachelor's degrees generally presume that students will (1) go for them fresh out of high/secondary school (or maybe at most a few years after that) and (2) will take four years to complete. It's not common to get multiple bachelor's degrees one after another. Some places even say that they don't offer bachelor's degrees to people who already have bachelor's degrees. So a bachelor's degree is meant as the "college" in "I'm going off to college". In contrast, not as many people choose to take master's degrees, which generally require that applicants have (or will complete) a bachelor's degree first. Some master's students are people who've stuck around beyond their bachelor's degree, often to do more advanced research, or have applied to another school for this purpose. There's also been a recent rise in "professional" master's degree programs, ones that are often structured to be completed within a year or two, which are aimed less at people fresh out of college and more at people who want to gain some extra skills to boost their career. The Master's of Business Administration (MBA) is probably the poster-child of this but there are many others nowadays, and I suspect some schools offer them as a way to raise money for other stuff lol.
But, especially with these professional-style master's degree programs, you could potentially take as many of them as you want -- as long as you have the money, since I think they often don't provide financial aid -- as opposed to bachelor's programs which are seen as pretty much required for young people to be able to get jobs these days, and doctoral programs which often run on some combination of research grants and paying students to teach undergrads. If you're the more "traditional" sort of master's student, you could still take two master's degrees at the same time too, and I presume it'd probably work similarly to doing a double-major at the undergrad level. I know someone who was working on dual master's degrees, in civil and mechanical engineering, but then dropped out of both to take a job in industry.
The archetypal progression is bachelor's -> master's -> doctorate. A doctoral (i.e. PhD) is where you're expected to produce original research, at a level higher than that of a master's, and it's not uncommon for doctoral students to take "until you finish" long as opposed to a set amount of time. And also, a doctorate is considered a "terminal degree", i.e. you're not expected to go for another degree after that. (You can, but it's rare. Also "postdocs" are a thing where you might stick around to do research even beyond your doctorate, but aren't an actual degree.)
You can skip a master's and go straight into a doctorate. This is not uncommon, but depends on your field and your background (to be fair any doctoral application does). Some departments may have options for a smoother transition from undergrad to master's or doctorate in the same department. But the doctorate is still considered terminal.
Law school and med school are weird in this regard.
Law school is something you only "major in" after a bachelor's degree. It's a terminal degree, a Juris Doctor (JD, or doctor of laws), and there's no master's degree in this progression, and there's not really any bachelor's degree analogue to it. However, you can do a master's degree after it, which is the master of laws (or LLM) degree, which is only available after a JD. Also you apply to law schools separately, and law schools are more like specialized trade schools, with even their own standardized entrance and exit exams as well as (I think) commonly requiring students to gain practical experience (e.g. working for a law firm or clerking for a judge).
Med school is even funkier. Medical schools, which produce the
medical doctorMedicinae Doctor (or MD) degree, also don't have a bachelor's degree analogue, but tend to require a bunch of prerequisites, such as in the biological sciences. As a result, it's common for undergrads who want to do med school to already start tailoring their studies toward a med school program; these people are called "premeds", even though they also have an actual major. Med schools also have their own standardized entrance and exit exams, and also (I think) often require practical experience in the form of residency. So, again, they're like very specialized trade schools.Most terminal degrees are doctorates, but I've heard that a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) is a terminal degree. I don't know much about that field though.