...and this is why the terrorists are winning. If you're in 'murica, get some Jesus. If you aren't, stop takin' meh jobs!

This saves us from the terrorists how?

This sounds like the beginning of evil technology so that I can't use my DVR to skip commercials.

Wth is scientific racism? Do they refuse to research black body energy or something?

So it's a group of insecure people who are conceited, and you spend some amount of your waking hours constructing analogies for them.

And FYI? Chuck Norris is a certified bad-ass. That's who.

...and most of them are from China and India.

You should use a Hidden Markov model. It'll free up your time.

You make sure the test is in both metric and imperial units, to make sure dark poor people will answer the questions since they deal with kilos and grams often because...um....never mind.

...sup.

Said the man who is too stupid to operate a stairwell.

It's pronounced, "Menses". You've gone and made a bloody mess of it.

It isn't difficult to join. I mean, 50% of the population is below average intelligence and education. When you segment the rest up, you end up with a more focused test taker than the other handful of intelligent guys in the room. So unless you hang out regularly with the lower 50% in intelligence, you and most of your friends would probably be eligible.

Mensa was started right after WW2, October 1, 1946. Television, cinema, media, culture was not like it is now. There were no cool internet billionaires. There were no movies showing how cool the nerds were if you just gave them a chance. You couldn't Facebook to find friends with your interests. Intelligence wasn't really part of the social fabric of the general population compared to today.

A high school might have a few HNICs (Head Nerds In Charge) who were beaten up, mocked, made fun of, and had their chess boards tipped over. Everyone else had probably been to war and/or in combat, and I'm going to assume most nerds didn't get that experience. They were isolated and alone. College wasn't like it is now when anyone can run up $100k in debt and join on ever lowering entrance requirements; not everyone could go into higher education in those days regardless of how smart they were. How were they going to hang out with people with their interests? Go to the bar with all the army guys talking about their experiences? Read comic books where pretty much the smart guys were all evil and beaten by the football-quarterback looking superhero? Go to a football game they might not have had an interest in?

People that tested in a particular bracket could join a group where there were other people like them. I don't think they were being snooty and laughing at everyone around them in the 1950s feeling superior. They weren't being shallow cunts who were the silicon valley hipsters of their day.

Mensa's constitution lists three purposes: "to identify and to foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity; to encourage research into the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence; and to provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment for its members".

Clearly a bunch of dicks.

God forbid you want to spend time with someone you can talk to about things. This is why my primary measure of a partner is based on breast size and their understanding that a raised fist means to shut the hell up.

Or they're just some intelligent people who test well and get along fine with people and have learned how to handle social interactions?

It's you isn't it. You're the pot smoker fragging me in CoD.

Your measure of intelligence is based on how many Doritos crumbs are scattered around?

The first sign of intelligence is making immediate conclusions based on no relevant observations.

I just submitted my GRE. I think I had to use the post office at some point.

In my case, I stuck a "Federal Bikini Inspector" card on the back of my Mensa card. It's more amusing that way and decreases the punching.

Have you considered buying a television?

The really odd thing about this is I'm programming some hidden markov models right now.

Poorly.

This happens where I am all the time. It's always another case of "We'll need extended hours support tonight until 9pm because the developers just made a change to...." or some such nonsense. Pair that with complete lack of leadership. It used to be once or twice, now its pretty much 30% chance per day that someone will screw up, and instead of pushing it until the next day, it's us using what dregs of energy is left at the end of the day, from getting no sleep the night before.

My problem is I'm nocturnal, always have been. School was hard, work is hard, I just can't sleep until about 0400, then I have to coffee achieve the week until I can crash 15 hours on the weekend. Unfortunately I'm paid too much to go get some night job as a bartender where the hours would be acceptable

Second, there are health issues.First, weakened immune systems mean workers get sicker easier. And sick employees almost always come to work (a term we call "presenteeism", the opposite of absenteeism). Well, you have a sniffling, sneezing, coughing worker spreading their germs to everyone. What's THAT going to do for productivity?

I'm that guy. I come into the office no matter what trail of blood I'm leaving behind me. I simply can't blow the sick time, which is the only vacation you can get since vacations get cancelled because of deployment schedule changes. I actively spread contagion on management to punish them these days.

Of course, short term crunches do work. In the short term. Once they become chronic, well, the whole workplace suffers and you end up at some middling level of productivity caused by sick employees, tired less productive employees, and the lack of safety and quality in the final product.

What's interesting is that its now an indirect effect instead of a direct effect. Maybe it falls under the heading or "morale", but productivity suffers. But not because of lack of sleep directly. We're all tired and fed up, so we are actively sabotaging things. It's become more of a quiet revolution than just making coding errors, back check ins, inefficient coding, whatever. People intentionally lower their IQ. What I love about this job is that, to your average manager, they can't differentiate between Einstein, and someone ten times smarter than Einstein. Sure I could make an API call to do that, but why take 5 minutes when 5 days is a better option? Does fixing that bug take a day or a week? Maybe the lack of sleep just causes people to not care anymore and become dull, but it certainly has made a number of people I work with now actively become unproductive. On purpose. As punishment for piss poor management.

No one will read this, but that's ok.

Ironically, either people will ignore you, or offer some stupid counterpoint about how you can't do that.

I got out of college (where I didn't have loans, but went part time with a night job fo many years) and quickly made an exciting job at a call center for $8 an hour.

I live(d) within my means, and after taking pay cuts even more to try and get ahead in a career. I had roomates, split rent, car pooled, etc. I had and have nothing but shit cars my life. I shop and Walmart and mostly Goodwill or army surplus stores for clothes.

I didn't get a mortgage for a home. I got two full time jobs, one W2 and one 1099, and balanced between them. Within two years I bought a small home for cash. I then bought another small home, because I could rent out the existing one, and I live cheap. Now I have a free home, and one providing rental income, so I'm profiting on it as an additional income stream.

Now work doesn't matter. It was a lot of stress having two jobs, and I had to kiss a lot of ass to balance it, but now I can live on one. I take extra jobs now and then (above my full time one) to gravy a bit more on my assets. I have few bills, so I'm maxing out my savings. Since the beginning I maxed anything I could save and lived on the smallest amount I could. i never went the management track so I wasn't locked into one company.

Now I have hundreds of thousands in the bank and tax free investments and I lost plenty in the real-estate bust before that. However I have no debt, I have assets. My held liabiilities (real estate) is offest by rental income.

I've helped some coworkers in the philosophy of getting out of debt, and now, like a crazy cult, we meet at lunch and they're excited about how soon they'll pay off a second mortgage, or a car, and things like that. They actually LIKE the idea of doing math and setting budgets, and seeing how a $20 here and there in expenses can cause large changes to their debt levels.

As a counter point, people used to tell me that I'm living life not to its potential, not having fun, I might die any moment, or I'll retire early and not be healthy enough. I am constantly abused by friends telling me to spend money (above the triple minimum wage I've set myself at) because I'm...what...not keeping up with the Jones' or something?

I remember being mocked, because in 2007 I was talking to my boss about buying a home and I was looking at some double wides on an acre, or a cheap 2/1 outside of town, and being told I was "stupid" because I should get a mortgage for as much house as I could max out on my credit. I guess I disappointed him.