You realize how shoddy and two-bit a lot of CGI still looks when you watch a film like Mission Impossible with really great practical effects and bone-jarring non-CGI stuntwork. The stunt coordination, choreography and level of dedication of the actors and crew in the latest iteration of that franchise just deserves all the praise. It’s always great to see people who are just professionally competent to a staggering level do their thing.
Day: August 9, 2018, 4:27 PM
Battles
I really miss the days when I didn’t have to battle software for 10-30 minutes to get it to do something that I used to be able to do in 15 seconds.
Maybe if IQ above 120 were required to use a computer? I don’t know. But what it has become is miserable.
Google Craps
Was just thinking about how great a product Google Maps used to be and how atrocious it is now. Like, it used to actually find what you wanted, in the area you wanted, and not maniacally auto-scroll and zoom and find unrelated, far-away garbage.
And you could search for more than one thing at a time! And actually see the directions! And so much more that is now just impossible or so difficult it’s not worth trying.
It’s really dispiriting when you think about it just how much software has gotten so vastly worse in the last few years. Many things that I used to frequently use I either no longer use or use them much less.
The idiots have fully won.
Mark to Market
Some thoughts after reading “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.”
I never wrote about Theranos or Elizabeth Holmes here or on my other blog even when they were in their heyday because it seemed a little fishy to me. No, I had no idea that the company was a fraud. As with Jonah Lehrer, everything about it set off my “something is not quite right” detector without me having any direct evidence or thought on it fully formed. Its fraudulence, in other words, wasn’t known to me; just felt hinky, is all.
Glad that my bullshit detector is still functioning fairly well. I need that thing in working order for stuff I can actually trade on.
Write or Wrong
I’ve never been tempted to plagiarize as I can literally write my own material much faster than I can re-type someone else’s, and that output is usually better. Thus, there’s no incentive there for me. I still do think (the non-academic definition of) plagiarism is morally wrong, but the incentive would have to be present to even tempt me that direction.
Unclarity
I’m still unclear on what to do when a female co-worker makes sex jokes or sexual comments at work. As men, we’ve been taught repeatedly that even mentioning sex around women co-workers is absolutely verboten. Fine, whatever. I don’t need to talk about sex at work even care to. I honestly am not all broken up over the restriction.
That said, sex jokes don’t bother me or offend me. Sex is part of human life. That most people are deathly afraid of sexuality is not my problem. When a woman tells sex jokes and makes sexual comments at work, is it suddenly ok? There seems to be a bit of hypocrisy here. I guess it’s because women are perceived as non-threatening.
Anyway, should I laugh? Pretend like I didn’t hear it? Certainly I should add nothing because that would be unwise. I have no interest in correcting someone who is not offending me or hurting anyone else, so that’s not a real option. I feel like the best path is to just have no reaction at all, which I am extremely good at anyway. I’ve spent most of my life not reacting to things so I am a master at that.
I’ve been around more women who have made sex jokes at work than men, for the curious. Partially because I tend to hang around women more but also because they do it more because they can get away with it and most men know they can’t.
Rape Culture on the Left
Yesterday: "no means no"
Today: "your sexual preferences are discriminatory"https://t.co/5KBvLxa7Df— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) August 8, 2018
Been noticing this more and more lately. Even if I were single, there’s around 7 billion people I’d have no interest in dating at all. Or even talking with. Discrimination? Hell yes. And I’ve gotten more discriminatory as I’ve gotten older.
I guess the left/liberals had to spin up their own version of rape culture, and this is it. It’s interesting how the dominant culture gets echoed in pseudo-egalitarian ways by those claiming to oppose it.