oddlyaromatic

Normally I'd agree with this sentiment: language changes constantly, usage is king. However we're in an era where people (often in the course of marketing themselves or a product) intentionally move the goalposts of word meanings in a way that's generally unhelpful to users of that language. So we describe there is something called X that sounds very impressive and powerful. And there is something else kind of like the existing idea we called X, but it's more mundane ... it's close enough that salespeople can get away with calling it that, so they do, and the definition of X is now hopelessly muddled. I don't know what to do about it, but this does not strike me as being the same as the natural evolution of word meanings over time. I guess really it is still one form of that. But maybe it's one that as a society we should be more careful of - you can't, for example, call one medication by the name of another for marketing reasons.

Maybe AI is not the worst example. But with most buzzwords that are not legally protected, they just get marketed into meaninglessness in a way that harms non-expert consumers.

Wow I like your blog! The landing page is really nice. I did, though, get very distracted by the text-shadow on the headings and links. It makes me feel like I have something on my glasses or something. Everything else looks beautiful to me and the projects look awesome.

> which means Veterans can schedule a mental health appointment on their phone.

It all comes down to this. Well done. It's so easy to get stuck in the weeds and forget the real goal.

Google Apps Script is great for tools like this: I have used some at work for a while to manage gig listings for a musician... just the tiny bit of automation happening at midnight let's them add shows via a Google form and forget all about them, knowing that geocoding, and removing of old shows, and other funny business, will all happen without them needing to maintain it. BUT if they ever do need to modify a show, they are dealing with a google sheet, which they understand.

I used a fundraising tool recently with this kind of passwordless workflow. It's a tool that you only use once a year for about 30 days, and your authenticated session can last about that long. Which means you do the process once on each computer you use, and then you never have to remember the password the next year. It's great.

I would not have noticed that one chart in each set of 4 has a different scale, so things that are the same height aren't actually the same number. It certainly looks nice and tidy but it is indeed misleading.

They specifically referred to the "deterred subset" ... which is much smaller then "everyone".

In any case, the parent's point seemed pretty empty.

> Who's to say that the current deterred subset of the population won't begin to commit crimes if our style of punishment is changed?

This is what research is for. We may never know what is optimal in an absolute sense, but we can figure out some relative costs/benefits of different approaches to problems and choose our tradeoffs appropriately.

"It's your time, and if people are willing to pay, you can charge whatever you like."

Yep! It also helps, for those of us who feel bad charging "high" prices for work we like to do, to not think of ourselves as being paid for "the work". I know a lot of artists who are lovely people and could sometimes be persuaded to do an event for a low fee because they are doing something they love. Then one of them got the advice to think of what they are being paid for - it's not that you get paid to spend an hour on stage in Utah one Saturday. It's all the BS around doing that - traveling their, committing in advance no matter what comes up you will be there and do a good job, having to ignore your family and other responsibilities to get good at your craft. The general disruption and unevenness that it brings to your life to be a freelance anything. If people value your work enough to pay you what you will accept for ALL THAT BS just to have you there, great, you have a career now. But, as they say, the performance is free. It's all the other stuff they have to pay you for.

This is a big thing people don't always get at first with Grid. It only replaces Flexbox where Flexbox was being used in a convoluted way to imitate what Grid does. It doesn't replace the more "natural" use of Flexbox to control the direction, spacing, and sizing of what for want of a better term I'll call "things in lines that may wrap".

Not an app, but I have used ifttt recipes for this in the past, where I call the number and leave a message, then receive an email with transcription and link to audio in case the transcription was bad. Then I was automatically tagging those emails in Gmail to be able to go through my notes. The IFTTT number was saved in my contacts with an easily pronounced word. So when driving I could tell Siri "call Bender" and then not have to worry about any launch/navigation etc, just start talking

> I see so many great technical people who are unable to communicate effectively and suffer badly from this.

I learned a lot of my communication skills studying the arts, and staging plays, musical performances, etc. My best teachers about clearly communicating expectations and deadlines, and giving meaningful feedback in a respectful way, have been people in the arts.

At my first hackathon, I got the same vibe I often did in the last few days before a play or concert. Then when I started running a civic tech project, more and more patterns with working in the arts became apparent. Lots of volunteers, everybody has day jobs, you need to provide people with opportunities to do work they care about, but not pressure. And you need to provide leadership without being a dictator, and meet external milestones with a "show must go on" attitude when the time comes.

It is already much cheaper to import services and hire people who don't live in SV. But somehow companies continue to locate themselves there. Presumably the opportunities for profit outweigh the costs imposed by the high cost of living etc. Unions might reduce profits a little (or not, depending on the impact on worker productivity) but these companies have shown they will pay big premiums to attract the most capable workers.

But unions must of course think about these things and understand their ACTUAL bargaining power. Detroit sounds like that mark was missed.

I'm with you. The company who wants to exchange capital for labor benefits from being able to negotiate separately with each provider of that labor to get the lowest price possible from each person. SOME of the people providing the labor do well out of this too (the good negotiators) and would perceive a union as harmful to them. Employers can exploit this by, say, keeping salaries as close to secret as they can so that more people think they are doing better than average. But it's weird to me that this hoodwink works so well. I have been in both union and non-union roles. I'd go for union every time. All of the labor might as well negotiate with all of the capital, otherwise the power differential has an outsized effect.

MuseScore is great, I have used it to produce lead sheets professionally on several occasions and it does not disappoint. I grew up on Sibelius but prefer MuseScore for simpler tasks. They have done a great job.