I agree with applewood on the downsides of referral concept. And wish the idea of mailing in proof of your not-bot status didn't have to be a joke, but it probably is. Surely hubski doesn’t have to be the inventor of this wheel; what do other little sites do to combat bot invasions? Is there anything pleb users like me can do to help?

I really appreciate sewing, whether by machine or by hand. My grandmother taught me the basics when I was young, and boy did it save my butt when I ripped my tent in the Rockies. But ultimately I still suck at it. A couple years ago I tried to sew an ultralight backpacking quilt, and it was a total disaster. Silnylon is from hell. But I digress..

Your creation is adorable and cheerful if you ask me. Gave me a good smile after a long day. Good job having patience and figuring out all the technical stuff. Looking forward to your next project.

I too have some art from one of our local creative minds. I once asked him how he would display the prints I was purchasing.. He actually recommended frameless displays. I don’t think he saw frames as a part of his work at all. I guess it depends on the intention of the artist.

Most of the pieces I like to see framed are pictures I have taken, but one of my favorites exists as a border-less canvas on a hidden frame.

My thought is use sturdy fabric strips (like 1/4” or 1/2” wide) folded and sewn about the edges. Obviously you’d have to snip a bit for the strips to make the curves. Maybe sandwich in some glue too? Might give a good sturdy edge, but I’m not sure.

You make good points, and make me realize I have opinions on the matter too. Full disclosure, dropped out of college in my junior year of undergrad.

I feel that the current philosophy is “send them all to college and let god sort ‘em out.”

I agree that college can enhance personal growth. Being a common path to professionalism, I think it’s also sort of our great integrator in this country. So that’s a really valuable side of college. We learn how to interact with our coworkers and employers, who went through the same system as we did. But it doesn’t necessarily make us produce quality work. There is so much getting by, cheating the system, etc in college.

I won’t get into the technical side of higher education, where you learn how to do FEAs or how to submit a proper scientific paper. Another story.

On the personal development side though, I think there are other (sometimes better) paths than college. A well-structured work environment, military service, or my personal favorite- good ol’ life experience.

From a workforce standpoint, I’ve now worked as a small time employer for about 2 years. In that shortish time, I’ve paid a lot of attention to character differences in people and wondered about the causes of such distinctions. I feel that, even after 4 years in college, many people are vastly unprepared to really excel in their professional lives. Too many excuses, poor schedule management, etc. But then there are young adults in there first or second year of college who really have their shit together. I guess long story short, I see college as something that can improve some, hurt some, or just be a silly badge. But never a silver bullet for success.

It will indeed be interesting to watch college education evolve, and also to see how society decides to approach college down the road.

The blue collar sector is aging out big time, so lots of demand emerging there. And I can’t help but fantasize of an America where it’s ok just to work as a store clerk or a bike mechanic. Perhaps we will find better balance, and stop shoving the wrong people into the debt-inducing rat race that college can sometimes be.

Good craftsmanship isn’t cheap, nor should it be. We’ve got to be mindful of things like overhead too when we’re debating the costs of these services. Here’s what I don’t like about stock frames: they dictate the dimensions of the image and are harder to integrate into existing displays. I want to start making my own frames for pictures when things slow down a bit, but in the meanwhile I will pay the professionals.

Useless input perhaps, but I think this is fantastic.

Well, I’ve enjoyed your posts for what it’s worth.

I have no feelings about college. It’s just one of the many bridges between youth and whatever follows.

Do you have opinions on it?

Sorry, I haven’t logged on for a while.

Unless I am severely misinterpreting something, this article is focusing on the recruiting process- not college attendance or distance learning.

The article does mention that existing rural recruiters sometimes encounter unwillingness to move away for those they are attempting to recruit, but again I think the real focus of the article is the difficulty and lack of effort to go out and recruit rural students in the first place.

I think the hub to make this happen has got to be the high schools. They did this at my school. Even in BFE type places, students are usually bussed to a central location daily. They could easily be paraded into a library to hear a recruiter for some state college talk about why their school is rad and all. Maybe their recruiter is speaking via skype or hologram, but it’s all the same.

And yeah, rural internet has its challenges, but satellite internet solves a lot of them. It has issues in heavy rain, but otherwise it can connect you from nearly anywhere so long as you have electricity.

Step 1: Show Chimpanzee wonders of mobile internet.

Step 2: Eventually need phone back; attempt to retrieve.

Step 3: Get face eaten.

edit: jokes aside, this is super cool.

Very insightful article. Great to read that some colleges are placing more emphasis on rural recruiting. I think that trend will continue. Skype, FaceTime, etc. are game changers. No doubt rural outreach programs will embrace these technologies.

If a person is living cash-only, they probably aren't using Uber or a bike share program to begin with.

Again, if a person doesn’t have some sort of credit card, then they can’t use these services to begin with. I think it’s a bit unfair to assume they wouldn’t like to, however.

You don't have to take an Uber or buy things through paypal. You can still go to a store to buy things or take a bus or a train.

The place where I live, like many places in the US, doesn’t have a fully functioning bus system, and definitely no train. Imagine needing to travel several miles to a job interview and you have no car. There’s no bus to take, no bike lanes. Oh, and it’s pissing rain. I’m not making this story up, this was the explanation I got when offering a ride to a guy walking on the side of the road. He said thanks, but that he was almost there.

But we do have ride hailing services here, and they are very beneficial to people who can use them.

What digital currency system would you suggest is absolutely something you can't live without?

I don’t think there’s any digital currency a person absolutely can’t live without. But not having some form of electronic currency in today’s society can be a serious disadvantage, and is one of the many compounding effects of poverty.

My personal opinion in all this, for what little it is worth, is not that business should be required to accept cash. It is that it should be easier to have electronic currency in the first place. Which is a whole other discussion.

The idea of Bird scooters having to also be rolling money vaults is pretty comical.

This article seems to want to point at cashless retail establishments.. which I agree with you are rare, and moreover, unimportant. What about cashless businesses like Uber and app-based bike share programs where you have to have some form digital currency to sign up? Also consider services like PayPal, etc. It is incredibly difficult to live cash-only, but not because of a few boutique shops that don’t take paper money.

Sounds like Adams has a lot to answer for. A good song is a good song, though. Can we appreciate the art while dissaproving of the artist and sympathizing for victims? Maybe that isn’t possible. But I believe we will find ourselves encountering more and more public figures who are hard to define as all good or all bad.

I don’t have an exact date on when customers started being notified, but known-affected vehicles go back as far as early 2000s. My guess is this will be just be more old vehicles not included in the original recall. But we shall see.

Apologies for the double-tag.

It’s not the main point of the article but..

“You’re roaming like a wolf pack,” Werhahn says, adding that the team ventures to altitudes above 18,500 feet. Like the wolves, they read the landscape from vantage points, walk for days to get to promising locations, and follow the routes that wolves tend to favor in hopes of spotting the animals.

Where do I sign up for this? It’s intriguing to think about how wolves decide where to go.

18, I think I was the only kid in high school with an apartment. Did not move back. Finally spent the night on Christmas eve 10 years later.

I moslty agree with you.

To sum up this article:

"Sales reps in the OR sounds bad, so it probably is. Good article material. OK actually doctors probably need them because they do way more than just sling product "

Calling these people only "sales reps" seemed disingenuous to me. I would rather call them "product reps."

But then the article does go on to mention times where a new, less-proven product is pushed over the old standby. I'm not really sure what to make of that, I think its a separate issue. Either way, I don't see reason to make villains of reps on hand to provide technical assistance.

Haven't read the USA article, but I read the NPR one. Ford did something similar recently by moving its focus (no pun intended) to its truck/ SUV line. I'm trying to figure out the true logic here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but fuel prices have a strong impact on what types of cars (American) consumers purchase. I've always found this batshit insane, because in my lifetime I've only ever seen gas prices go up and up and up. I admit, fuel prices have stayed impressively low for a while now. But that still doesn't give me the confidence to go buy a gas-guzzling Canyonaro (Simpsons reference). After all, I survived $4/gal fuel prices a few years ago and it stuck with me. I feel it could come back at any moment. But maybe the auto manufacturers predict something different- that oil prices will never significantly rebound and that they have a safe bet marketing less efficient vehicles for years to come. Probably I just don't see the big picture, but if it was up to me I'd be cautious putting all my eggs in the back of a pickup truck.

I can't look at the calendar on my phone because I don't have a Google account. I have to download .PDF calendars to my photo album each month instead. Also most webpages crash on my phone because I can't update chrome without a Google account. Hubski is one of the few webpages I can visit reliably, hence why I lurk here a lot. I tried to download Firefox, but that requires a Google account as well. I can usually see webpages for a few seconds though, so if I really need to read something I can screenshot it real quick before I get the "oh snap" alert. So it's not so bad I guess.

I don't think I can get on the anti-DG train. Sure it cuts into Kroger's profits when I go buy my soap or catfood from Doller General, but it saves me 20 minutes worth of driving and is a faster shopping experience. I live in a semi-well populated area though, so my DG isn't the best example.

Take the stores in <1000 person towns though.. We have a lot of those in the southeast. Name me anything else that can hang on there.. Like tacocat's video said, 90% of all Americans are within 10 miles to the nearest Walmart. It's not DG that put the local grocery out of business in BFE, Mississippi; it was the Walmart 10-20 minutes away. But 10 miles is a long ass way when you don't have much gas, or maybe don't have a car at all. Or maybe you do, but all you need is the soap or cat food that you forgot earlier. Therein lies a challenging but viable business opportunity, and Dollar General has been the only company streamlined and we'll organized enough to capitalize on it. They're like a fucking desert shrub, and one of the few business models able to exist in the wake of giants like Walmart and Kroger. I can't help but admire that a little.

Could we get some clarity on what grades define "middle school" for this discussion?

Just get outdoors and start developing a relationship with nature. It's a great motivator to help protect her.

That's good insight from Graeber and I think it's spot on. I've lived my life around this mentality. There is a sign above the assistance center in my town that says "a request for assistance in (my state) is a request for help finding a job." This all relates well, I think, to the NPR discussion about parents being gardeners vs carpenters. It was a whole thing based off a book by Alison Gopnik, for those interested. But basically it's about molding people vs letting them choose to grow on their own. I think states like KY and my own have a perpencity to be carpenters rather than gardeners. I think it's a well-meaning but ultimately short-sighted approach that leaves people suffering and accomplishes none of its goals.