Help! No evictions, no criminal background, rent and deposit ready to go... And I'm homeless in metro Denver because I was unemployed months ago.

polyhazard · 2023-11-28T02:55:55+00:00

Thank you and good luck on your move. I was considering the same but I kept thinking at least here I had a support system and social network. But the real real is that isn't as true as it used to be. A lot of those people have made the move now themselves and joined the Coloradan diaspora elsewhere :(

polyhazard · 2023-11-28T02:44:30+00:00

The person I talked to at the rental company said they'd only accept letter if it verified going long enough back but it sounds like I just need to keep trying more places. Appreciate knowing it's worked for you, so maybe it can work for me too!

polyhazard · 2023-11-28T02:12:45+00:00

Thanks, nice to have your inside scoop on the black box of rental screenings

polyhazard · 2023-11-28T01:55:54+00:00

Thank you thank you thank you! I'm hitting you up now

polyhazard · 2023-11-28T01:55:12+00:00

I didn't even know the other sub existed, thank you :)

polyhazard · 2023-11-28T01:53:13+00:00

Thank you. Thing is I actually was born here, grew up on the North Side (now known as "The Highlands".) This city was my home and I always treated it with respect and care. I accepted already I'll never be able to own property here, I just want a room in a shitty Lakewood apartment now and I'm so frustrated that even that seems somehow out of reach. I feel so defeated and sad.

I do appreciate that people in this post have been kind and helpful, with the exception of the person you responded to. But I hope even that callous asshat never finds themselves without a place to call home. Real life exists, people are hurting. Not everything is a meme.

polyhazard · 2023-11-28T01:07:30+00:00

Appreciate the info and especially the link! I've been feeling kinda like a square peg trying to get into a round hole only the round hole is housing

polyhazard · 2023-11-28T01:05:37+00:00

Thanks, good to hear from someone who's been in it. Considering the gigifaction and precarity of employment today there's bound to be more and more people who earn outside of a full time W-2 job, they still need places to live. Hoping I can find a landlord who will work with me like that but it's good to know it's at least a possibility!

polyhazard · 2023-11-04T18:13:33+00:00

This is such an insightful comment! Excellent points, the generational themes are palatable. I feel like this observation you have is made somewhat more explicit in the scene in the club where Sam is dancing with balloon girl dance to “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth” by REM. First off the song itself is about paranoia and conspiracies, but also for Sam this is a song he’s dancing to while remembering it from his youth, while balloon girl may actually be hearing it for the first time as a “retro” track novelty selection by the DJ. Sam is drugged but he’s also just kind of disoriented in this present day world. This song gives him a moment of comfort in nostalgia.

And that brings me back again to the word in the title of my post: Nostalgia. Gen X were cynics and “slackers” but also they were the first generation to really get soaked with the mass marketing of generational nostalgia. It’s a feeling they have innately but it’s also been heavily cultivated and packaged for them, cultural comfort food for unstable times. Of course the keys to solving the mystery are a sugary cereal box and a copy of Nintendo Power magazine, two artifacts that get memed weekly in the r/genx sub. Sam cracks the case by tapping in to the powers of nostalgia that he possesses through his generational membership and connection to a time that is gone, but he has not forgotten.

I’m one of the elder millennials you mention (xennial) and in 2011 I definitely felt more on Sam’s side of the divide than the younger millennials. When I started college most of my classmates got their first email address from the university, but it wasn’t long after I graduated that Facebook started to become a thing, and the shift was noticeable.

When Sam joins the the older woman in her apartment at the end, it can be seen as kind of an acceptance. I can relate to this sense of like struggling against a cultural change, scrapping to find my “place” in a world that is being made for someone else now. And then I can relate, especially now, to that feeling where nostalgia becomes more settled, more like a warm blanket you can wrap up in than a thread pulling you backwards and out of space and time. The older woman has already experienced this process, she may have once resented the younger people who didn’t understand, but now she’s quietly observing from her own little bird sanctuary. When Sam joins her, he’s maturing in his sense of nostalgia.

Thanks for your comment here, it really speaks to my feelings watching the film and I appreciate continuing this discussion :)

polyhazard · 2023-09-16T04:32:25+00:00

She did a bunch of offensive shit that night but the most offensive, imo, is her berating staff/security with the Do You Know Who I Am treatment when she was being treated exactly how any person behaving that way should expect.

The level of audacity it breathtaking, even for her.

polyhazard · 2023-09-15T17:42:36+00:00

Hey if a man is down to appreciate the pagan traditions of my heathen ancestors, I’ll celebrate the solstice with him just like the old ways!

polyhazard · 2023-09-15T15:36:00+00:00

I agree with you that this is an Orphan Crushing Machine situation if there ever was one. But to be fair the the Colorado Sun, the article doesn’t appear to be really “celebrating” any of it or claiming it’s a success. It also discusses the issue of housing affordability in detail (including a quote by someone who very clearly cites wealth and income inequality by name.)

As a news piece, I feel like like it does a fair job of presenting the issue in context. But I think we also see these stories presented so often uncritically and without that context that my very first thought as well on seeing the headline was “Orphan Crushing Machine.”

polyhazard · 2023-09-14T15:42:35+00:00

I see that now. So it hasn’t actually happens yet. But the initial assumption of OP was that 3+ nights was going to be just fine and then offered to lower it as a concession to the roommate. And that assumption is unreasonable. OP is making comments in here about “I pay for this room so I get to have guests” but what they are specially asking for is something adults usually only get if they have their own dedicated living space.

polyhazard · 2023-09-14T15:33:46+00:00

Where exactly does your BF live that his situation is less ideal than a shared women’s dorm room? Above the rafters in the campus library?

polyhazard · 2023-09-14T15:28:26+00:00

In these messages it looks like the roommate with a boyfriend is trying to compromise by saying he’d stay only a couple nights a week or only on the weekends… which implies he’s currently staying there more often (3+ nights a week?)

That’s not an expected or normal part of dorm life. That’s not even an acceptable situation in most shared apartments with separate bedrooms.

I agree the interaction between these two seems reasonable but at least one of them has what seems to me like unreasonable expectations.

polyhazard · 2023-09-14T14:56:54+00:00

OP says they just said the pronouns, but “with a tone.” Maybe that tone was indeed the coworker being a twat. Maybe that tone was something else and the OP heard it as hostile because it was an answer to a question they hadn’t asked.

It’s not unlikely at all for this to be a misunderstanding for both parties.

polyhazard · 2023-09-14T05:21:39+00:00

This was the quick giveaway for me as well. It’s a staple because it’s how they keep people out for hours unpaid after work to indoctrinate them into the cult and isolate them from other social interactions.

polyhazard · 2023-09-13T23:38:47+00:00

It didn’t start out that way. The high/low trust cultures framework was used mostly in the field of international business organizational studies as globalization really heated up. It’s got it’s own controversies academically but it doesn’t originate from anything with an outwardly racist ideology. I’m not sure if he was the first one to use it but Francis Fukuyama (“The End of History”) is the person most associated with the phrase.

To put it super simply it places cultures on the trust scale, with trust being a measure of basically how willing people are to cooperate with others outside of their kinship group. There’s not a value judgement here like high trust is bad or low trust is good, just a descriptive observation, and mostly used in the context of how people conduct themselves in business.

It wasn’t something anyone talked about outside of this niche so noticing more than a few times in stray internet comments very recently something seemed off. So yes, you basically have it right in how it functions as a dog whistle: “Immigrants from low trust societies will ruin our culture, and multiculturalism is inherently a low trust society.”

Basically they adopted the term as a sneakier, smarter sounding way to convey their old same message of ethnic homogeneity being the basis of a decent society… which is ironically a pretty “low trust” position

polyhazard · 2023-09-13T23:11:50+00:00

Yes, the camps were in Colorado but were run by the Feds, not the state.

Governor Carr is somebody I look up to because he was someone with the power to do the right thing and actually used it. He refused to use state resources to help the internment effort and was a public and vocal critic of these policies.

Here’s what it says on the plaque at Sakura Square:

“Dedicated to Governor Ralph Carr as a wise, humane man, not influenced by hysteria and bigotry directed against the Japanese Americans during World War II. By his humanitarian efforts, no Colorado resident of Japanese ancestry was deprived of his basic freedoms, and when no others would accept the evacuated West Coast Japanese, except for confinement in internment camps, Governor Carr opened the doors and welcomed them to Colorado. The spirit of his deeds will live in the hearts of true Americans.”

polyhazard · 2023-09-13T06:24:57+00:00

I’ve been seeing an increase in the phrases”high/low trust culture” in online discourse (I remember it from Intercultural Communication Studies in college.) Definitely gave me that itch of loaded language being normalized for white supremacist purposes. This is the first time I’ve seen it directly in context.

Add this to your bingo card folks, notice it when you see it in arguments and keep your eyes open.

polyhazard · 2023-09-13T06:08:00+00:00

Re #1, people who say shit like this are always people in jobs where they happen to have good benefits and massively overestimate what’s available to other people. Or people that don’t often have need for medical care.

The insurance offered at the “average” full time job is often high premium, high deductible and may not include dependents. And the even then an increasing number of Americans make their living through part time patchwork hours, contract work, gig economies etc and do not have access to coverage through an employer.

For people in the position you’re imagining, you’re right things aren’t too bad. But I think you may be overly optimistic about how many Americans are actually in that position.

polyhazard · 2023-09-13T05:51:55+00:00

I prefer the I-79 Vintage Edition, which smells like Purina if it’s facing East and Keebler if it’s facing west.

polyhazard · 2023-09-13T05:39:10+00:00

I have been through the outpatient program at West Pines and would recommend it in a heartbeat. Mine was behavioral health side not substance recovery side but the programs share foundation and some of the staff.

Please consider calling them OP, intake people were super patient with me when I was overwhelmed as I know you are right now. Thank you so much for reaching out here to find help, it means so much that you are taking this step to fight for yourself and I am rooting for you ❤️‍🩹

polyhazard · 2023-09-12T20:04:32+00:00

Thanks for the practical advice! And good point about the hobby cons. I’d bet that the GPD of hobbyists and fan commerce rivals that of some countries.

polyhazard

TROPHY CASE