jason_pomerleau

I’ve found that the larger the company, the less this is a problem. At smaller orgs, it’s common for the owner or leader to have their personal identity tied up in the brand, sometimes a bit too much, which leads to hyper-involvement.

As you move up the food chain, the distance between the people you answer to and the source of the money they are spending grows, personal attachment to the outcome diminishes, and you get a lot less meddling. It’s one of the main reasons our team turns away very small customers.

> A man paced in front of the advertisement, chanting to himself. “This . . . is . . . necessary! This . . . is . . . necessary!” On each “necessary” he swung his arms up in exaltation.

Tangential, but this sounds an awful lot like Disgustipated (‘The Cries of the Carrots’) a ‘hidden’ song on the Tool album Undertow, including the exaltation part: the narrator of the song is a preacher.

This was a deeply moving comment, and has changed my perspective in a way that I will never forget. Thank you.

What is it like to read fiction? Tolkien’s writing comes to mind as a good example: many passages of Lord of the Rings are detailed descriptions of the surrounding landscape. Are these types of works just not enjoyable?

Yes, though they have other types too. We’ve been thrilled with ours. I’ve never done Christmas lights because I don’t do ladders, so having a permanent fixture is attractive. Plus we can use them on big holidays too.

I have big reservations about ‘smart home’ stuff, and it’s only the second such device in our house. But I’m clearly losing that battle, and will be looking into some ways to mitigate the privacy concerns. But gosh, it sure is nice to pick from a gazillion light patterns.

Genuine question from someone on the outside watching all of this: then who are these things for? Apparently not me, nor GP, nor my mum and dad. Are we waiting until the Smart People sort out all of these complex details to make this stuff accessible for regular people?

When I was 16 years old I took a job at a travelling carnival that was in town for a long weekend. My job was to run a helicopter ride for little kids. The green button started the ride, the red button stopped it. And if it didn’t start, I was instructed to give the control unit a moderate smack. It worked.

This was in Canada, ~1990. Awhile ago admittedly, but I haven’t looked at travelling fair rides the same way since.

Funny side story about this publication. I worked at a company that sold a network monitoring appliance that was ‘reviewed’ by them. We found the review… surprising, prompting us to inspect the demo appliance that they’d sent back to us.

They hadn’t even fired it up. The review was, as far as we could tell, entirely fabricated. We brought this to the editorial team’s attention. They responded by adding a few points to our scores.

Some people will respond well to this - I'm one of them - but many (most?) won't.

> tact is simply a form of dishonesty

Maybe it is, but our primate brains tend to get very attached to our ideas and opinions. People aren't rational. Tactfulness is one way to get the other side to see your argument without making them feel threatened. Is it manipulative? Sure. But in many cases it's the only path that will get results.

This sounds like an instance of the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. At the end of the day, it’s still journalism.

I didn't know about this, thanks. I wonder if the origins of this version of the site go back to 9/11 - I remember specifically that CNN had to switch to a text-only website because they were getting hammered with traffic that day. Maybe they kept this around in case another similar event takes place.

I’ve often used this phenomenon to illustrate that activity is not the same as accomplishment. Movement doesn’t necessarily mean achievement.

BMI of 19 with severe sleep apnea checking in. Never woke up gasping, never struggled staying awake, but I did feel like I enjoyed the occasional afternoon nap, and my partner reported snoring.

It’s worth getting checked out. I ended up going the dental appliance route because CPAP machines feel like a torture device to me. Anecdotally it’s made a noticeable difference. Haven’t had a nap in ages.