I'm trying to offload some shelves. I purchased them a decade ago when we first moved into my house because they were cheap and effective. We've subsequently replaced them with something sturdier and neater.
However I can assure you, they could soon do the work of midlevel engineers in any company, not just Meta.
what is a modern corporation but a legal spell for turning reasoning beings into temporarily vacant machines?
Just one of a dozen clarifying lines. Masnick's Impossibility Theorem gets trotted out a lot, disingenuously I think by a lot of people who aren't Mike Masnick. Kissing is essentially saying "Yes, but" in this piece. Both should be read together.
I was just reading a blog post an hour ago about how no, your phone is not spying on you. And then...
Today everyone is all het up because famous bullshit artist Donald Trump responded to a press conference question saying that he could not rule out using military force to annex the Panama Canal. From Panama. Which you would have to imagine would be something easily militarily defended and not all all prone to insurgent action, but anyways.
The fact that a journalist even asked the question is a real "paper bag labeled 'Dead Dove'" moment. Aside from the court case (https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-companies-accused-tax-evasion-panama) I'm curious what else Trump might have going on that he'd see this as useful leverage.
If only we had some sort of self-mythologising group of people with access to a kind of broad medium of communication who could question motivations and so forth and shine a light on them.
An ebook length screed from Joan Westenberg (not a blog post, SBF would be so disappointed but fuck him) basically calling for radically rethinking of what it means to be responsible for something. Not a full blown "Take the means of production" call to action, but definitely pushing for the devolution of ownership and responsibility to workers and away from middle managers.
As a middle manager I cannot help but fist pump and mutter "fuck yeah!"
I'd propose a framework: * The stakes must be high (in this case, literal life and death) * The intervention must be low-cost and low-risk * The evidence must be clear and immediately observable * The delay caused by seeking permission would result in significant harm
I appreciate how often Joan lays out where she thinks the guardrails on something like this should be. Also:
But - and this is crucial - they did this within carefully designed constraints. Workers can't make changes that would affect other processes without coordination. They can't violate safety protocols. They have to document their changes. But within these constraints, they don't need permission to optimize (sic) their own work.
Kris created an Apple shortcuts flow for posting images to her Wordpress blog. I had something similar at one stage but grew unresaobly angry that Shortcuts couldn't access the secure Passwords app so I had to hardcode the bearer token into the shortcut. Like a barbarian! You know, maybe I could just..you know...do that anyway.
The Slow Zones from Vernor Vinge’s books stuck very firmly in my brain. Striking how similar in concept to this Timescape Cosmology.
(Also happens to me favourite answer to the Fermi Paradox)
Yes, yes I think so, yes. If I might, a suggestion for 2025. Make media stop reporting on What Elon Said. Elon says things. That's all he ever fucking does. If you must report on his logorrhea, can you at least spend a couple paragraphs right after the lede asking why he said it?
Going in and on and on and on about how mediocrity has held sway in a country about to be run by the wagon one hitched oneself to, the human equivalent of Moccona coffee, of Crust Pizza, of Pandora jewellery is quite the self own. #premiummediocre
2024 has been a shit of a year. D wants to smudge the house with sage on New Year’s and I’ve been making fun because woo, but the starter on the air con shit itself today and I’m starting to see the merits.
Look, Sydney weather is almost never glorious. It is, like Sydney itself, mostly just self-aggrandising and under-delivering.
Now Brisbane? That’s some good weather. It never ever fails to deliver an experience.
Walking through the shopping centre car park and some twelve year olds are cruising around on their scooters and one says “What if everything shifted left?” and I thought fucking devops has even poisoned NSW high school curriculums.
Every notification ping holds the possibility we have merit. When we scroll, what are we looking for?
Yeah, I felt that one.
Again, you don't need to laud and celebrate the CEO Killer in order to understand and empathise with the anger for the health care racket. I sure don't, I've seen enough milkshake ducks, I my perceptions of motivations and character are often quite far astray from the reality. But as a symbol? He's something else.
The people who don't understand that, who keep characterising the social media phenomenon as a bloodthirsty mob? I hope their world crumbles around them, and I also kind of hope the worst they suffer is ostracism and contempt.
I get it. It’s a queasy feeling being anti-death penalty (and anti-carceral state) but still empathising with the (perceived) motivations behind the murder of a health care mobster.
But when I see Fairfax papers drawing parallels between sectarian-, racist-, and/or misogynist mass murder and the Brian Thompson killing, I am further radicalised.
Niche website that harvests executive identities from SEC filings and other sources in 5….4…3….
Niche website that harvests executive identities from SEC filings and other sources in 5….4…3….
Look…
I’ll allow that a guillotine is hard to carry on a bike. So ok.
If you, and by you I mean I, are going to say “What could possibligh go wrong?” right before kicking off a breaking change production release, you (and again, I mean I) deserve everything that occurs.
Fascinating that after all the years arguably pursuing war crimes, aiding and abetting war crimes, cheerleading a carceral state with policies he undoubtedly knew were racially slanted, this is what the liberals are going to tut tut Joe Biden for.