alabastervlog

You're weirdly concerned about how much I'm reacting, which is pretty minimally. Like, I can't imagine how I could have raised this while reacting any less. But yes, I also saw your other post and got your message that you're bothered I brought this up at all. [EDIT] Ah, ninja-edited this paragraph into irrelevance! :-)

Maybe you need a chicken. [EDIT] But perhaps we all need chickens?

But thank you for helping me understand this. The framing is 100% serious, I guess.

The name they've decided to give these, "emergency" chickens, knitting them for hurricane survivors. It's all a step up from just "we like these and they're nice" and into "these are Helpful with a capital H".

My point is exactly that that kind of thing reads like a joking exaggeration, but this sort of approach to things is really common now and I truly have trouble telling when people are joking or being serious about it. Most of it reads like joking to me, but I don't know. It's also been going on long enough that it's making me wonder even more, since, judged as a joke, it was played out and over-done years ago.

Huh, I'd liken school in those grades to a series of meetings basically all day, that are mostly presentations, every day of the week, with a lot of restrictions and harsh conduct & expectations from the people leading the meetings, which'd never fly in an office. Often with terrible lighting and long stretches without seeing the outdoors, even though a window. And crazy-early start times that may have you not seeing the sun until 3PM or so, for months. And, especially toward the end, a couple more hours of work at home every day. Mostly of math problems.

Also, all that, plus you're not getting paid for it.

I'm more stressed out than like... during Summer, when I was a kid.

I've never, ever been as stressed out as during school, grades 7-12. If the rest of life had been that stressful or worse, I'd have checked out a long time ago.

Framing everything in terms of mental health is one of those things were I can't tell if people are participating in some kind of mass social joke, or are serious.

I'll still bust this out if it's some quick page that's not going to last long (like some kind of "service down for maintenance" page that's only going to be visible for a few minutes, or something)

It's "bad" but you know what? It fucking works, it's concise, and I can remember it no matter how long I go between writing HTML/CSS.

Hell I wouldn't be surprised if the paths it takes through a typical browser engine also makes it burn 5% or fewer as many cycles as CSS centering methods.

I learned way more on most topics on my own than in school. Reading was the main skill that unlocked that, though things like PBS and (when somewhere with cable, and before these channels went to shit) Discovery & TLC played a role too.

Reading earlier means getting to start on that stuff sooner. Young kids have shitloads of free time.

It's funny how Nixon definitely was a crook, and a loon, and should have gone to prison, and his paranoia and shenanigans set the pattern for and gave license to things to come, up to and including the current crisis... but he's still probably the best postwar Republican president, in terms of good things done or attempted.

Too much of that should, but probably won't, set off every alarm and siren with the conservative justices, for stepping way over the line, after their reasoning on Chevron.

God. The WTO penalties are gonna be epic (if much of this stuff ever actually goes into effect).

I think the 3rd or so time that all the work I'd been doing for months or years just got thrown in the garbage, having never provided more benefit than it cost, or even without ever providing any benefit whatsoever due to never having been released, through no fault of my own, was when I decided giving a shit was for suckers.

We're just human parts of some weird business-metaphysical Plinko board—and we ain't the ones dropping the chip or winning the prizes. Truly, who could possibly maintain any amount of giving-a-shit after years and years of that? All that's left is pretending, which is, transparently, the same thing "leadership" does.

> Even companies don't really talk about the future anymore, just vague AI thoughts (and often crazy negative ones, witness the CEOs talking about the white collar bloodbath coming).

The currently-ascendant business and political leaders pushing some mix of millenarian wankery and a conspiratorial mindset with all the finesse of 3rd-rate carnival barkers while stealing everything in sight definitely has me pretty down on, like, anything mattering.

I think a lot of harm has been caused by "automation" actually meaning "distributing parts of the same tasks among a bunch of people". As far as I can tell that's one of the main outcomes of "efficiencies" from computerization of offices, among other places: they mostly just made it feasible to carve up the job of e.g. secretary among everybody, adding to the number of things and processes each worker has to understand and deal with.

We must still not think cushioned chairs are that important, or we wouldn't make kids spend 13 years straight sitting 5+ hours a day in hard chairs.

It’s really just interviews, and even those are nothing like any exam I’ve ever taken. They’re closest, in terms of the kind of stress and the skills required to look good, to some kind of solo public speaking performance.

… which most people come out of 17+ years of school having done very little of, with basically a phobia of it, and being awful at it.

They are probably something like oral exams that a few universities use heavily, or the teaching practices of many elite prep schools.

[edit] oh and interviews in most industries aren’t like that. Tech is especially grueling in the interview phase.