It doesn’t have really any direct effect on me, so it is kind of funny to marvel at how extremely prudish Gen Z is and how much they sound like the 70-year-old fundies I grew up listening to back in the 1980s and 1990s — just without the religious trappings (though they’ve managed to create a novel yet uninteresting religious apparatus themselves). In a way, it’s hard to wrap my head around as I keep expecting to hear God, Jesus and Satan et al. in their unhinged rants, but they manage to be complete prudes without any of that.

So many of them, as I’ve pointed out before, do sound exactly like Dana Carvey’s Church Lady character.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

What’s the weirdest thing a woman has told you means “you’re not a real man”?

Which incident you want? Women love this one.

A few times it was because I knew how to decorate and to cook. In each of these cases, I think it was because I did both better than they knew how to — which I am quite proud of. In life, I’ve found many supposed insults are actually compliments and I take them as such.

When a dumbass maligns you, it’s great praise.

Why don’t men (males) get more info?

Because we just do not care. I don’t listen to gossip (for the most part) and don’t care about it one way or the other. Most men are similar. Women are raised in a totally different social milieu where gossip is prized. Men are not, for the most part. It just means little to us therefore.

Relatedly, I had a couple of fairly close friends in the army and I didn’t even know their first names (everyone uses last names or army nicknames there). No idea if they had any siblings or much else about them. Not uncommon for men at all. Can’t even imagine that with a woman.

Which (non IT) department do you find has the least technical knowledge, and which one has the most?

HR and Accounting usually have the least knowledge. If you ask someone in HR what application they were using when an issue occurred, typically you’ll get a response like “Adobe Windows” or something nonsensical like that. I’ve had people in HR claim that their Windows has “never had a Start menu.” (Spoiler alert: it did and always had.)

Accounting people tend to be good at specific things in Excel, but nothing else. I’ve had a few who didn’t even really know how to log into their PCs. Which, you know, you’d think after 15+ years of doing so they’d get the hang of it. But you’d be wrong.

The most knowledgeable outside of IT tend to be business analysts, probably because like sysadmins (and related) in IT, they have to understand systems and they have to be good at many, many things. I’ve had a few BAs over the years teach me a thing or two I did not know (usually a keyboard shortcut or some reg hack). And that’s extremely rare, to say the least.

In Japan, vending machines are practically everywhere…Even at the summit of Mt. Fuji (12,389 ft above sea level), there are vending machines.

I didn’t see any vending machines, but there was a shop/snack stand near the top of Mt. Sinai in Egypt. I climbed that mountain in 1996, the route with the 3,750 “steps of penitence.” And that was a lot of steps. And when you finish, calves aflame, you see the inspiring sight of a bunch of other mountains that look just like it. That is, kinda tan and featureless.

Did it once, would not do it again.