Found out I’m being paid significantly less than the new grad hires.

In general, with rare exception, the only way to get a large raise is to jump jobs. Most companies budget very little for raises, but do budget at market for new hires. It’s moronic but that’s the way it is.

With one exception which I negotiated hard for (and they realized they’d’ve had to hire 3-4 people to replace me), the only time I’ve gotten really large raise is going to work somewhere else. By going elsewhere every 3-4 years, I’ve often gotten 30%-80% raises. If I’d stayed, I would’ve gotten 3%-5% raises. Loyalty is worth absolutely fucking nothing.

I like where I work now, but if I were to leave I could easily make 20%-40% more. Yes, even in this relatively bad market. That’s because I have an unusual combination of skills, certs, and I interview extremely well. Also, I don’t actually need to work. I keep that all in my back pocket at all times if I need it. If I get too frustrated, I go. You’re lucky to have me, not the other way around.

If that sounds arrogant…well, that’s why I get paid big $$ and others tend not to (even in my same field). But you have to be able to walk the walk. And I don’t just walk — I strut.

Sometimes, the best way to clarify things is to put them in economic terms. I was thinking again today about how much someone would have to pay me to actively use Facebook.

I think I’d do it for $20,000 a month. That’s enough where I could hold my nose and get it done.

I spent 4 months making a video about the crazy scale of Black Holes using VFX.

Too bad half the science and contentions are either wrong or dubious — in a large black hole, for instance, spaghettification would not occur nearly instantly. In fact, in a large enough black hole it might occur so far in the future that it’s meaningless to even discuss.

The event horizon of a black hole is not a physical barrier. It’s a real thing in the sense that it’s the limit of where light can escape, and where space becomes time-like and conversely, time becomes space-like. That, in layman’s terms, means that once you pass the EH the only direction you can move is toward the singularity no matter how fast you go. However, from the perspective of someone falling into a very large black hole, nothing changes. It’s only for the external observer — the one not falling in — that something changes.

In fact, it’s theoretically possible to enter an extremely large black hole and not realize it — that is, until you attempt to leave and the more energy you expend, the more quickly your course diverts to the singularity at the center as all space is curved toward it. Or to put in a very casual terms, in a black hole, all roads lead to the singularity.

Should’ve done more research. This stuff actually is not that hard.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

That bass! Jesus Christ.