I used to be a huge Kliban fan back in the day. I’ve still got various t-shirts with his art on them.
From memory:
a cat wearing a Japanese headscarf presenting (/selling?) sushi
2 karate cats getting into it; one has the other by the tail
a cat dressed as a sumo wrestler
a cat playing the guitar and singing the blues: “Love to eat them mousies / Mousies what I love to eat / Bite they little heads off / Nibble on they tiny feet”
That last one is one of my all time faves. I would “sing” it to my friends whenever someone commented on my shirt, complete with the standard blues riff.
Another random one (not a t-shirt): 2 cats, one says “Mao”, the other points and says “Mousie dung”. It was a very oblique, random and context-free reference to Mao Zedong. So random, I think the only point of it was to illustrate the pun. If there was a clever political reference, it was lost on me.
But will their lives really be any different whether they win or lose? It’s not like they’re being invaded by a country with a different economic system.
Edit: Look at Crimea, how’d that go for the average Crimean? Any significant differences in their quality of life?
If you see no differences between the Ukrainian government, flawed as it has been, and the Russian government under Putin... you may need to look a little deeper.
I’m going to over to your place, take over the nicest room, lock a few people in the basement if they complain, and you’ll be going to work everyday to pay for this. Sound good?
Edit: the reason you should not use household finances as an analogy in this is because households do not control monetary policy and most people don’t really understand national and international financial policy (or their own finances half the time).
In this case, a neighbor making an unprovoked takeover of your house in order to take advantage of the people living there is exactly what happened. The invasion hinges on “might makes right” so it stands to reason that should be fine in the locale of your home if it’s ok for a Ukrainian’s home near the border.
So by that logic, Ukraine and in fact every country that Putin sets his eyes on should just roll over and surrender?
The mere threat of violence should allow a dictator to take over, as long as the country is moderately corrupt?
I hate to break it to you, that’s nearly every country in the world, so Putin (or any other dictator) could become the world’s emperor if they just made a credible threat?
Yet somehow almost every nation that’s neighboring Russia is ready to fight Russia just for the privilege of not being in Russia. We cannot all be just delusional.
Well yeah, it’s up to them, but I don’t think they’re monolithic. They’ll eventually negotiate once they run out of men or weapons. I don’t think they’d be slaves if Russia captured Kyiv either. Perhaps without political rights, but that wasn’t much different than before.
That depends where you live, what your cultural upbringing is. If you are from Russia, sure. There, it is a myth, and democracy is something to scare people by.
It’s our modern capitalist world that says you should spend every waking moment on productivity, regardless if it’s actually valuable. Be willing to spend your best moments making yourself happy, it’s how we are meant to live. We’re not machines.
Capitalism sees us more as consumers than workers. Capitalism doesn’t care who owns the means of production. We need as a society to stop hopping on the consumer bandwagon and realign the system towards what is really valuable. Family, health, happiness, etc.
“But you inspire 6 people to work at peak capacity so that the team is as effective as 9 people, and they all say you give a shit about them, their growth, and doing the work that actually matters with guidance and appropriate comp adjustment. Be a manager.”
If you work with incompetent middle management, move. When you work for a great manager in a great team, you feel bulletproof.
I’m a manager, and this strip nicely brought out my main insecurities about the role. Thanks for pointing out that there are other things one may contribute with, despite losing (or never having) abilities in the three mentioned aspects. It’s not easy to let go of depth, and exchange it for width and longer term thinking.
So one way of reading this is that you’re surrounded by incompetents. Early in my career I thought this. As a corollary to Chesterton’s Fence, it turns out I wasn’t so special and most weren’t so dumb. In a high-density area, being truly surrounded by bozos is just unlikely. So my advice here wouldn’t seem to be folly. If one tries several roles and every one is just full of bozos, it suggests that the one is in error.
Another way of reading this is that you are not in a high density area and perhaps the monopoly-oligopoly players who offer the work to which you are called are so few that the incompetent middle management is entrenched in these few spots and you’d love to leave but burning bridges / no proof the grass is greener suggest stay put. But with so few businesses, theoretically they have their pick of market and would not hire bozos. So, again, moving seems viable and not folly.
Lastly perhaps the factor is life/circumstances/education for you. Like if these desired roles require retraining or expensive certification. I feel for you if this is the case. But since you see those skills’ value, perhaps current-job learning/practice opportunities on-the-job could level you up to be able to hop to greener pastures. Most companies etc of even meager size have some tuition assistance program. Maybe that’s your way.
Regardless, this is your one precious life. I hope you’ll find access to your truest calling. It might be harder than what I said: “move” (such dismissive tone probably resultant from the ignorant perspective of the comic), but I’m confident your creativity and capability can point you in a path toward your flourishing.
I can respect a manager that can’t do these things, if they can delegate and choreograph people well. Sometimes being a good manager simply requires one to be able to corral and give support where needed. They can admit to not being capable of things and respect their reports that do those things well.
If they can’t do anything and just take a top down, demanding approach all the time, they’re useless.
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