Been dealing with a lot of people in my general field lately and have realized something rather startling. Most of them are very, very specialized. Capable, but limited in what they can just do without instruction.

For instance, I’ve asked some people to complete tasks that I do routinely, and they did not know how – these are things I just assumed every IT person knew.

The assumption of similarity bias in action, I guess.

I’ve always been a generalist, but it’s startling to find out that the average person in my career area is so restricted. Even in their specialty (and we are talking about a dozen people here), I can do 90% of their work and tasks, sometimes only 80%, but they can’t do any of the things that I do at all.

I really had no idea. I just assumed I was the baseline.

Unfortunately that leaves me running around doing everything, for the most part. Yes, I will configure that Solaris box, and write a Powershell script, and set up Exchange, and figure out how to automate printer installs by office while the other six people do…what? All they know is a small part of one product.

Training would be fine and good, but in a major deadline-constrained project, where is the time?

I don’t even think I am all that good, but I just have done nearly everything and it shows, but didn’t realize how much it showed until this past month or so.

Female students banned from speaking at Islam seminar at University of Leicester.

Yes, I realize it is The Daily Fail, but that nevertheless did occur.

Liberals for some reason are afraid to criticize Islam and its practices. But I have no respect at all for any culture or religion that does anything like this. Fuck Islam. Fuck Mohammed and his child-raping ways. Just because the US is wrong (very, very wrong) to go murder brown people doesn’t mean that if follows on logically to it being wrong to criticize a culture that harms millions and millions of women.

What, thought I was a milquetoast liberal? Think again. I’m a militant liberal, geared up for radical equality and I don’t really give a shit who I offend. I don’t care if I make things better or worse in the short term either, as some things are so wrong all you can do is raise your middle finger and spit in the face of those who oppose civilization.

This is a troublesome video in so many ways, but I love the song and the 80s feel of the whole thing, especially since it does not fall into any of the 80s bad song traps. And I like how Sky Ferreira has gone from pop princess to ever-disheveled isolato. I don’t care if it’s a manufactured image or not. It’s one I like.

Your Friends and Rapists.

Note that I do not agree with everything the writer states, but it’s important I think to listen to the stories of people who are actually experiencing the pain rather than telling them what they should be doing or feeling.

Someone – I don’t recall where — said that we somehow need to make rape as taboo as cannibalism. I like that idea. I don’t know how or if it is possible, but I like it a lot.