Can't wait for this one. I'm a huge fan of the MI series. I guess I just have an issue with splitting movies into multiple parts, though. It’s rare for a film to have such a deep, intricate story that it actually requires two installments. MI doesn't really feel like that kind of movie, and honestly, most action films with relatively straightforward plots don't either. Maybe it's just a bit of a cash grab. But hey, Tom Cruise Scientology or not, Tom Cruise still absolutely kills it.
The first movie was a fun action flick featuring a massive sea creature. It’s just the right kind of thing to kill some time with a couple of beers. There's a terrifying beast, some solid special effects, a very thin plot—if you can even call it that—and characters that aren't too annoying. Based on the trailer, the sequel follows the same formula, just with more monsters. I guess I just really enjoy movies set underwater. I'll probably check this one out, and maybe it could actually do pretty well at the box office.
A fun movie to pass the time. Cage is just classic Cage. Fun. Totally wild. He basically devoured this one (pun intended). I actually dig how they didn't even try to make it some serious drama. It’s just a grotesque, gory horror comedy and it works pretty well. Not really a rewatchable, though—it isn't trying to push any deep messages. Just effects, action, laughs, and blood. That’s about it.
shadowtiger0 said:I can only speak from what I've seen firsthand—Sweden is seriously struggling right now when it comes to finding professors of any kind. The UK is fantastic if you’re looking at private schools, but those standard public institutions? They just aren't all that appealing to someone holding a Master's degree.
But let’s be real here—I haven't experienced a single place where being a professor is treated like some prestigious, highly respected profession, unfortunately.
Maybe it's different in Finland, but I can't really go by what I read in the news; I haven't actually been there myself.
It's a bit off-topic, but just to answer you. 🙂
In Asia, especially in China. Teachers and professors are actually quite highly valued there. They are among the only ones who receive a full 100% salary pension. Even above the military, since soldiers get 80%. But they truly value knowledge and education there. Granted, they haven't stripped professors of all their disciplinary authority either. But that's a whole different world. Also, for the first two grades, it's 4 hours of PE, then 3 hours after that. And now they're introducing mandatory daily PE for all 9 grades in compulsory school.
Back to the main point. Both parents and teachers would probably complain less if schools actually had decent infrastructure to start with, and if they were paid properly—or at least given total freedom once they finish their schoolwork at home. Right now, it just looks like everything is slapped together hastily just so they can spend federal funds and claim they're doing something.
I've seen them at all levels—projects, sales, key accounts, office roles, operations. Most people are pulling in around $1,600 to $2,200 a month after taxes. Honestly, calling someone a "manager" is often just semantics. Like, a sub-manager at a big retailer might be called a regional manager, which pays maybe $10k-$$4000 a year. At the end of the day, a team lead is basically just a junior management role. In most companies, you don't hit director-level status until you're well past level 20.
So, I guess Galactic is right. Making $2,000 a month in the private sector usually means you're in a pretty solid management spot (unless you're in tech, which is its own universe entirely). Salaries in the public sector are even lower, so to hit that $2,000 net mark at a place like HP, you’d probably need to be in a serious director position—for instance, the CEO might only be making around $3,000.
Teachers are definitely underpaid, especially considering they're responsible for shaping entire future generations.
Paul Davis2 said:It’s people like this—choosing a career solely based on how much free time they get—that prevent teachers from gaining any real professional respect in society. I want my kids being taught by true professionals, not just ladies who picked the job because their husbands make enough money to cover the bills.
I guess most of those women teach because they actually love the job, not just because it was the best option available. The semi-flexible schedule and guaranteed long vacations are nice bonuses, sure. But picking a career based on having more free time isn't weird; plenty of people do it. They’ll take a smaller paycheck if it means more downtime. Honestly, a lot of American companies balance out lower salaries with remote work, flexible shifts, or extra PTO anyway.
Teachers can't get respect because society basically doesn't give a damn about them. They're underpaid, stripped of all authority, kids laugh in their faces, and parents actually threaten them. It’s a pretty motivating environment, I suppose. If you take away the last remaining perk of the job, you'll see how fast the whole system falls apart. Right now, the only thing keeping things going is the sheer enthusiasm of the teachers themselves.
One of the few perks teachers actually get is the schedule and those long summer breaks. If they try to strip that away with these ridiculous ideas, well, good luck to them. You'll be left with the group that can't find anything better, the ones just counting down the years until retirement, and a handful of people who genuinely just love teaching.
I know someone who used to teach high school. She eventually started her own tutoring business, and honestly? Guess which one pays off more? 😁 After she covers all her taxes and business expenses, she’s clearing about $1,300 a month. Plus, she works from home, so there’s no commuting, no wasted time in traffic, and she just takes vacation whenever she feels like it. There's zero paperwork like at a public school, no pressure from parents, and none of the drama with principals or coworkers you don't get along with. People claim this model means kids won't need tutors anymore, but if you ask me, it just seems like they're going to need them more than ever.
I guess I might be overthinking this, maybe. Just some thoughts on the situation. Adam Diaz67 says: Computer science teachers are going to leave regardless; they don't need full-time classes for that. I mean, who would actually teach elementary school IT with a relevant degree when you consider what they could be making elsewhere?🤣 The whole day's practice is just going to be about watching people drift away from school, but they'll leave on their own terms. It won't be because some idiot bully makes them feel like they don't belong.
People like my cousin, who genuinely loves working with kids and isn't driven by the paycheck—her husband is a really successful real estate attorney out in California, after all. Beyond just loving the job, the schedule works perfectly for her, especially with all that summer break. And she’s not the only one, either. I know a few other people who could easily make way more money in the private sector, but they stick with teaching because they love being around the kids and value having so much free time.
I was scrolling through some old photos of my elementary school online. They still have those massive, old-fashioned windows that tilt open. It’s not a huge building—just a ground floor and one upper level. Honestly, if they just replaced all that window framing, a good chunk of that money would be gone right there. On top of that, they've got six student restrooms (two in the gym, two on the first floor, and two upstairs) plus two for the teachers. Naturally, there's no AC, and given how the building is positioned, they really should put some units in the gym at least. Just addressing those things would eat up a decent part of that $300k budget. With how much contractors charge these days, that money disappears fast. And since everything has to be done by the book with taxes included, you can't cut corners. Like, a tile guy isn't charging $2.00 a square foot anymore; it's more like $2.50 once you factor everything in.
zoks said:You don't necessarily need to be part of some elite club. Common sense, a solid work ethic, and actually caring about the subject matter are usually enough.
I guess there’s also a bit of natural talent involved for certain majors. I don't really believe everyone can breeze through any degree, especially not within a reasonable timeframe.
All this debating over which college is "harder" feels pretty pointless to me. Some programs just require more sheer hours of labor than others. A major becomes difficult if you have zero interest in the field and it feels like a chore. Plus, you have to factor in the professors who just enjoy making life miserable during exams. That can definitely make things harder if you run into a few of them.
@Lavore
Yeah, maybe grandparents help out occasionally. With my friends, most of their kids' grandparents are either still working or just barely retired. They have lives too. And honestly, some of them don't even live in the same state.
Back to the topic, $300,000 isn't actually as massive a sum as people think. It's probably just enough to install new windows and AC in a mid-sized high school, or maybe do some renovations on a gym or the bathrooms.
I wouldn't count the University of Wyoming in that list. I know people who crushed some seriously brutal majors, yet they never would have survived there. For instance, an acquaintance of mine finished engineering physics right on schedule with a great GPA. But that guy never touched a sport in his life; he’s got so little stamina he's basically dying by the time he hits the second floor, and his coordination? Questionable at best. He was always the goalie in gym class just because he stayed out of everyone's way, but he was a smoker with reflexes like a dead cat.
For me, the FBI academy felt relatively easy, but there's no way I could ever finish at Berklee College of Music or the Rhode Island School of Design. Zero talent there.
Anyway, required reading is actually a great thing if it's handled the right way. In my high school, we didn't have to write essays on books. Instead, we tackled them through discussions about the work. It teaches you how to read with actual comprehension, how to think critically, and how to debate. We could pretty much trash any book we read as long as we could back up our arguments. Honestly, the teacher even encouraged us to argue why we hated a book if it wasn't our cup of tea.
It’s pretty rare here to see kids head straight overseas right after finishing their associate degrees at a community college. Usually, they land a local job first to get some actual hands-on experience under their belts, and then once they have maybe three to five years of solid field work, they decide to move abroad. It’s not much different for our engineers who jump overseas immediately after graduation, either. Their peers—especially those who graduated from a German technical institute like an AAU—tend to come out with way more practical, hands-on expertise. Our graduates usually have a broader theoretical foundation, but they often struggle when it comes to real-world application. That’s why an American grad might get hired as an intern at 70% pay, while an AAU grad gets brought on as a junior at full salary. I guess they eventually level out somewhere around the two or three-year mark.
Regarding internships in high schools and colleges—our education system looks pretty similar to the German one on paper, but the catch is we don't have the massive industrial backbone that Germany has. I mean, how many companies are there actually capable of taking on a young mechanical technician for an internship and truly teaching them the ropes? Or a junior IT tech? When I was working at Siemens in Austria, we had kids from those vocational schools coming in for internships all the time. And they weren't just sitting around; they were doing actual technician work under the supervision of a senior pro who was specifically paid extra to mentor them. Once they graduated, a lot of them just stayed on in the same roles. Instead of an apprenticeship agreement—since yes, those internships are actually paid—they just transitioned straight into full employment contracts. Here, interns often just get treated like errand runners meant to fetch coffee or snacks, or even worse, places will just sign off on their internship hours and send them packing. It’s not uncommon for a student to have to hunt down their own mandatory internship because the school can't provide one. Take a vocational school for CNC operators, for example; a graduate should be ready to run a machine independently right away. But here, a kid is lucky if they're even allowed to touch the machine during their internship, let alone receive any real training.
What’s even the point of assigning homework if kids are just going to spend all their extra time at school doing more formal learning anyway?
I haven't seen anything mentioned about introducing new ways for teachers to actually maintain discipline, or even methods to handle students who cause disruptions and need to be removed from the classroom. Without those tools, you only need two or three troublemakers having fun being disruptive to completely wreck group lessons for everyone else.
shadowtiger0 said:Trying to deal with the FBI's training programs is an entire saga on its own. Honestly, the conditions are pretty brutal most of the time—it’s basically just constant improvisation at this point.
If our local schools actually had even a third of the equipment they have over at a major university's athletic department, we might actually be getting somewhere.
Some schools don't even have a decent gym. It’s not just elementary schools; I bet one of the biggest high schools in the US probably doesn't even have a proper gym for PE.
And the PE teachers... well, they're questionable. Especially the older ones. I recently saw my old elementary school teacher, who was also my homeroom teacher back then. He was a great guy, a handball coach too. When I was his student, he was in his early 40s. Now he's in his early 60s, just counting down the days until retirement. He hasn't let himself go, but age catches up with you. On the other hand, I remember my high school PE teacher—a woman also around 60, right on the edge of retirement—she was tiny. She couldn't demonstrate a single one of the moves she was supposed to grade us on 👎
Since a lot of schools rent out their gyms on weekends, I've checked out quite a few places around Washington, D.C. (finding a slot for small-sided soccer isn't always easy). It's a massive headache. And you can tell at some of them that they were great when they were first built, but there was never much investment in maintenance. 👎
David Jackson2 said:Actually, not even close. This school is in worse shape than my old elementary school back in San Francisco—and we live in a decent neighborhood, so I can only imagine the disaster zones elsewhere. Teachers end up paying out of their own pockets just to kit out their classrooms (last year, our school had to run a fundraiser just to buy a rug for the kids to sit on this year 😬). There’s no AC, so when summer hits, it’s absolutely brutal, and classes run straight through the end of June. No cafeteria either; kids just bring lunch from home and eat right at their desks. They don't even have lockers—that's apparently reserved for high schoolers . There’s this pathetic little nutrition program where kids get one snack a day—think an apple or a granola bar—and parents basically volunteer their money to help cover the cost for families who are struggling. There is a gym, sure, but it has no showers and the equipment looks like it hasn't been touched since the 80s 😬. The library is actually okay, though. We don't send toilet paper or soap to the school, but teachers will ask if they need supplies for art class; we were actually the ones on deck last week to send in paper towels and homemade playdough for an art project. Also, textbooks aren't really a thing here, by the way. If the school needs something, they organize a fundraiser—selling T-shirts with the school logo and stuff like that. A huge chunk of how things function just depends on the local community .
Okay, so it's pretty much like an American elementary school. From what I've heard through friends with kids in Canada, those schools seemed really well-equipped and modern. I guess there's probably a huge gap between private and public schools over there too, so you'd have better and worse public options depending on the province or city. But those places were basically full campuses with K-12 programs.
Anyway, I remember my old elementary school had built-in showers in the locker rooms, which probably worked way back when the school was new, maybe like the late 60s or early 70s. But by the mid-90s, they were totally run down.
Man, I can just imagine how brutal an all-day school would be in southern California. A building with no AC, nine months of school, the sun beating down outside... just a room full of sweating teenagers at 3:00 PM in 85-degree heat. 👎
David Jackson2 said:Exactly. My kid over in Canada is in school from 8:30 to 3. It isn't even an issue that she's there that long because the curriculum is built around projects rather than just sitting there listening to someone drone on—plus, they get two 15-minute snack breaks and an hour for lunch (they usually spend about 25 minutes eating and the rest of the time outside).
It honestly blows my mind that people are getting worked up about this reform based on how many hours they're in class, instead of actually looking at the changes to the curriculum and teaching methods we're supposed to be seeing in 2023 to keep up with a modern society. It's pretty terrifying that they're actually cutting back on computer science hours when the current program is already ancient. 🤦
I guess your kid's school in Canada is probably a total space shuttle compared to 99% of schools here in America. I’m just throwing out some guesses here, so tell me if I'm way off. The school probably has AC, a decent-sized cafeteria, lockers for every student that actually lock, a well-equipped gym with locker rooms that likely have showers, a library that functions as a study hall with computers for students to use. And, I bet the bathrooms always have soap and paper. How far off am I? 😁
Our schools just aren't designed or equipped for all-day programs. They're built for kids to show up, listen to a lecture, and go home. People are complaining because trying to introduce something without having the basic infrastructure in place is just... maybe a bit nonsensical.
Paul Davis2 said:No, it's absolutely brilliant here. You've got seven-year-olds left totally unsupervised in high-rise apartments on the seventh floor—just hanging out home alone for hours on end. Perfection. Oh, wait—I forgot. We're genetically gifted, aren't we? These kids spend their solo time being incredibly productive—drawing, reading, teaching themselves an instrument, maybe even brushing up on a second or third language.
A good chunk of us grew up being the ones holding the house key, so we all basically just survived it. Even in the US, it was a relatively common thing, which is why they have that whole "latchkey kid" term. Honestly, it’s kind of fascinating to me that the generation who were those latchkey kids back in elementary school, and are now parents themselves, seems shocked by the idea of kids walking to school alone or being home solo for a few hours. Either way, they just come home, grab a snack, sit in front of a screen, and zone out until the parents get back.
Sarah Hall53 said:Just don't forget—those aides are only really there for about five hours of sunlight. The rest of the day? It’s basically just the teacher and the kids left to fend for themselves. And no, they weren't talking about kids with special needs. They weren't thinking about kids with health issues, either. They weren't even considering children dealing with chronic illnesses. I mean, why would anyone bother to think about them?
That’s just how every reform goes, including this one. There’s zero actual thought behind it; they just push these fixed ideas through so they can tell the public they actually accomplished something.