For a script I’m writing, given the strictures and prudery of the modern workplace I probably shouldn’t have called my test batch file YouAreSuch_a_Batch.txt, but given that it’s funny I couldn’t resist.
I regret nothing.
Month: June 2019
TB Infection
We could have a safe, transit-based system. Instead we have a literal arms race where everyone's jockeying to have the vehicle that will best crush someone else.
— Angie Schmitt 🚶♀️🚴♀️ 🚌 (@schmangee) June 20, 2019
American obsession with enormous vehicles is a symptom of the sickness of the society at large. It’s inseparable from this. The US is an extremely hierarchical culture that pretends not to be so. This cognitive dissonance leads to mania and this mania leads to societal-level sociopathy which further leads to buying 5,000 pound terror-boxes.
Yes, it is wrapped up in inequality as well, but that’s not the only cause or explanation. It’s an entire mindset, a Weltanschauung, that is expressed in various pathological ways. That we find mass killing acceptable emerges from this in various forms: SUVs the size of houses in lieu of mass transit; lack of gun regulations as we meekly accept that elementary school kids will be routinely slaughtered; invasions of foreign countries where we murder civilians by the score.
All of these are not isolated events but are connected by the malady that has no name but that pervades our civilization down to its marrow and converts us all into people we would not want to be if we could see ourselves from the outside.
Extreme Whiteboarding
Accepted at Stanford after I carved the Cartesian Tree Sorting algorithm into my chest with a screwdriver.
Age Disc
Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think. Here’s how to make the most of it.
I am very lucky to look significantly younger than I actually am, because in my field (IT) I’d already be not a candidate at many companies if I looked my age. In IT, 35 is old and 40 is professionally dead.
Very fortunate to have this option, but I plan to retire before I start looking too old to hire. Terrible we have to think about things like this but it’s the society we seem to have structured, against all sense and reason.
How To Know
when the greatest investors or traders hear everyone talking about something (internet, housing) they think this is a sector or business that they might want to AVOID, rather than jump in.
— James Marsh (@JamesMarsh79) June 19, 2019
I don’t know if I am a greatest investor, but back in 2000, six months before the complete crash of the NASDAQ I cashed out all my holdings. The main reason was I heard everyone giving stock advice — postal service workers, graphic designers, janitors. You name it, they all had “tips.”
Everyone told me I was foolish as the market kept going up a bit, that I was missing out on all the amazing gains. Right until the day it crashed and they lost their money (some with nasty margin calls) and I kept all mine.
Especially in the market, if everyone knows something, almost invariably what they know is wrong. Run the other way; don’t look back.
Dropping I
The book drop in the front of the library.
He put the books in the Thomas Friedman book drop accidentally.
Ever
Everything is something that looks like something else.
Can Carry
If we go to war with Iran, I am moving Canada to the US.
Harv
Harvard acceptance rescinded because I thought Spike Lee and Mars Blackmon were the same person.
Journyesism
Every media person who writes pensive articles like 'Is poor just a state of mind?' thinks it's a hate crime when people on twitter yell at them because it's the only time they face even the slightest accountability and it's so foreign to them
— Disagreeing with me is divisive (@InternetHippo) May 24, 2019
This is largely because as opposed to times past, many journalists are Ivy Leaguers or at least aspirational to that and are trust funders, too, so they have no idea at all what the average American life is like.
Used to you could go into journalism with some decent writing skills and hustle. These days, good luck without a degree from a top 10 program and the resources to undertake unpaid internships. That’s responsible for a lot of the articles like, “Poor People: Human or Gutter Crud?” that you see out there.
LTC
Is “learn to code” the stupidest dictum of late or what? I can’t think of one any more tuneless and out of touch with what’s actually occurring in the world. It’s the most vacuous misunderstanding of the complexities of modern capitalism’s failures that I am aware of, and anyone who says this has a permanently-flawed mind.
Surprisingly Key
It’s surpassingly difficult to get people to press three keys at the same time on a computer keyboard. Is it that hard?
It must be, because some people it takes them minutes to get it. I understand — I grew up with computers and I also have been trained on piano. But still, press and hold three keys at once doesn’t seem that puzzlingly complex, does it?
Gan
In a way, I have a lot of respect for vegans. It takes deep commitment to actively harm yourself and your children (if you have any) for an ahistorical and scientifically-unsupported mode of living.
Of course, the pseudo-monasticism and deprivation is part of the appeal. Seems to satisfy some deep human need.
That’s Nuts
Beware of the “Halo Effect” – when a food has “perceived healthfulness”, but in reality, is a calorie bomb.
Such as:
Salads loaded with dressings and croutons
Anything with avocados
Nuts and nut butters
Trail mix
Etc etc etc
— Jason Helmes (@anymanfitness) June 17, 2019
Yeah. I see Fat Acceptance types say things like, “I only eat a handful of nuts a few times a day as a snack, and my regular meals.”
An adult-size handful of nuts, depending on the nut and the hand, is 200-500 calories! So, eating a few handfuls a day means that you’ve met your daily calorie limit already without any other meal. Nuts are highly caloric, as are “salads” loaded with bacon, dressing, hard-boiled eggs, etc. A lot of people eat supposed healthy food to complete excess and then claim they have no idea why they can’t lose weight, and claim to only be eating a few hundred calories a day because they have no idea the energy density of the food they eat.
Sometimes, I eat a few ounces of nuts and a piece of cheese or two for lunch. I’ve had people comment incredulously, “That’s all you’re eating?”
Indeed, that’s all I am eating, because that’s 600 damn calories right there. That’s enough for anyone’s lunch.
Absurd portion sizes and lack of knowledge (and lack of wanting to possess knowledge) of energy density in foods dooms many people to eating 3,000 calories a day when they think they are eating 1,000.
Unlike
Unlike what scientists claim, there is an easy proof that there are and can be marked and longstanding differences between generations.
For instance, those who experienced the Great Depression. My grandparents lived through that era and their approach to food and waste in general was markedly different than that of their children or my generation (despite my parents being a lot poorer than they were). My grandfather absolutely refused to let any food that was possibly edible be thrown away — either you’d eat it, or he would. It did not matter how unappetizing it was, or how foul-tasting, or if it was just the rind. They’d both do things like wash aluminum foil and re-use items that I don’t really consider reusable.
Now, scientists claim there are no differences but even a cursory glance at that generation finds remarkable and persistent divergences in thought, approach to life problems, and general attitudes.
Science is valuable and useful and I don’t intend to besmirch it too much. But it leads to a lot of people (including me) to distrust it when ridiculously obvious real world phenomena are claimed to not exist, and we are told that we are complete fools for believing in them.