joelegner

Is that really how these layoffs go? The HR person is belittling ("I need you to focus") and the employee passively takes the belittling. Here's a script the employee could have used.

"Excuse me, I need to pause. I have never met you before this call. We are strangers. You demand my attention because you say you need it. To be fair, your needs are no more important than mine. One of my needs is to be treated with respect. Frankly, since I am no longer an employee, I fail to see why you make any demands of me. But because I am polite and want to hear the details about the severance, I will stay on this call for now. However if you continue to treat me disrespectfully, I will drop from the call, and you can email me the details of the severance."

I realize the bravado of the above, but I was in fact laid off one time, and I did assert myself to the owner who at least had the guts to do it himself. A few months later he calls me and asks me to me to return to work to finish the project (not a software project, a building construction project), and I declined and instead told him I would do it on a contract for twice what he was previously paying me. He had no choice, took the offer begrudgingly, and I finished the project, designed another big project the same way, and then moved on with my life.

The human body seems to be designed to talk. Talking is generally learned automatically. Reading and writing are not automatic. Talking also has nuances that are lost in transcription. Maybe the more a recording act resembles talking, the better.

My vague hypothesis then is this: the body has finite energy. Energy that goes into one thing has an opportunity cost. If handwriting takes more energy than typing, it is taking away from something else.

And as we consider which recording method to use, it might make sense to use the one that lights up not the motor areas controlling the hand but instead the regions of the brain where discursive knowledge lives. We want stronger connections between ideas, not between ideas and hand motions.

Incidentally for the past year or so I’ve been recording many voice memos to myself. It’s kind of fun even. I can just talk while I’m walking. The trouble with recordings is consuming them is not as easy.

Each incident also likely boosts their numbers, justifying why they need budget for their SWAT program.

Or as Upton Sinclair put it, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

I started on version 10 on DOS around 1991 or 1992. I think version 12 was the last one on DOS, and it was so snappy! Never been the same since.

I think the brain is designed to free up memory holding information that is not useful. Memory associated with a technical term like phrasal verb seems to be something it would garbage collect.

The brain will remember the term while it’s useful — to get a good grade on a test. After that, for most (almost all?) people it is useless to remember.

I prefer "to go" over "takeaway" for two essentially meaningless reasons:

First, _go_ is older than _away_. According to Etymology Online, go dates back to Old English ("gan"), while away in sense of "at a distance" is from 1712. Second, I get to save a syllable.

So "to go" is older and less effortful than "takeaway". Also, both work.

Alternative reinforcement is an area of ongoing research. There are issues with cost and stiffness of the more exotic types. Research is probably slower because of the need to at all times be confident our structures are safe. We cannot freely experiment with exotic reinforcement in the built environment. It needs to be proven, first analytically then in the laboratory, then in pilot projects, and then in the legal and political forum before adoption in life safety critical applications like bridges and buildings.

Where did you hear that reinforced concrete has a lifespan of 100 years?

As a structural engineer, I can tell you this is not correct as a general rule, but is true for structures subject to chlorides, especially marine structures like bridge piers.

One of my now-retired professors at the University of South Florida studied concrete durability for FDOT. He told me FDOT is now using a 100-year design basis for bridges. The concrete materials and additives have gotten quite good over the past 2 decades. We are learning a lot and still improving our concrete.

The key is to make a tortuous path for the chloride ions so it takes them decades to build up enough to overcome the passive film at the steel-concrete interface. The high pH of the concrete matrix causes this passive film, and it takes either acidification or chlorides to defeat it. Concrete bridge decks and roads in cold regions that use deicing salts are also damaged by chlorides.

Reinforced concrete protected from the weather in buildings would not have a 100-year lifespan forecast. If the building is properly maintained, the concrete should last much, much longer than that. I say "properly maintained", because of the Surfside Condo collapse in Florida. There a leaking plaza deck, lack of maintenance, and design flaws (columns too skinny) led to a tragic collapse of a building.

What do you use in its place? Are your alternatives meeting your needs?

Even if you never intend to attempt a project like this, there is something valuable to be gained by reading narratives like this: humility. Not many folks could pull this off. I sure could not. It’s a good reality check.

Do you have any citations that support your claim, which seems to be that “resilience,” is unhelpful or harmful?

Let there be some ants. Let each individual ant act according to local rules.

None of the individual ant’s rules say “build an anthill,” yet after a few days there is an anthill.

I predict there are many anthills that have never been observed. So we have a fact of nature (anthill exists) that “emerges” from local interactions of ants — without an observer.

Where does the above go wrong in your view?

Edit: fixed grammar.

High childcare costs universally generates outrage. But should it?

Perhaps this is how the population eventually flattens. Maybe it is okay that the marginal cost of another human being keeps increasing.

If adding a child to the planet is expensive, people will have fewer. The population will plateau. An even worse overpopulation problem may be averted or mitigated.

I think this is the right view of success. Great success requires both talent and hard work.

It’s most obvious in domains like sports and music. I noticed that in my teens by watching Michael Jordan. He was great because he had a body seemingly made for basketball and spent the most time practicing.

How is it any different in medicine, tech, investing, engineering, business, etc.?

The talents are mental, so they are harder to see. The required combination of luck and hard work are the same.

A better world would be one where the successful recognize this and are grateful to be the recipients of life’s lottery winnings. They would try to help the unlucky rather than lord their success over them.