from outside

These are things pulled in here or pushed to here from other sources.

We are fucked

/ from outside / , , , ,

We briefly lived in an era in which the photograph was a shortcut to reality, to knowing things, to having a smoking gun. It was an extraordinarily useful tool for navigating the world around us. We are now leaping headfirst into a future in which reality is simply less knowable. The lost Library of Alexandria could have fit onto the microSD card in my Nintendo Switch, and yet the cutting edge of technology is a handheld telephone that spews lies as a fun little bonus feature.

Source: No one’s ready for this – The Verge

Years ago I remember reading a story about a technology that lets you remember everything as it truly happened, no as you remember it happening. The main character realized most of his adult life he had been the one to fuck up. Another one I remember is The Light of Other Days, by Stephen Baxter based on a synopsys by Arthur C. Clarke.

Until we develop a technology like it, any visual media cannot be granted any authoritative display of fact. In a few months (hopefully years) the same will happen to video.

Computer illiteracy is just another symptom of mass disability

/ from outside / , , , , ,

The unhappy truth is the complexity of our technological environment has exceeded the cognitive grasp of most humans. We now have an unsustainable mismatch between “middle-class” work and the cognitive talents of a large percentage of Americans.

Source: Gordon’s Notes: Mass disability measured: in 2016 40% of OECD workers could not manage basic technology tasks

This is something we experienced at helpdeskJerb (a school). Most of the upper management had worked there for decades and had seen the technological environment go from zero tech to full-on academic infrastructure.

… And the vast majority of them could not handle it. About the most they can do is interact via email. Instant messaging? CRM? ERP? Completely out of their abilities. Which meant they need assistants to translate and handle things coming from the system/environment into something they could manage via email… bypassing the system entirely. It’s fine for them, but then someone has to enter the information into the system. During my time there we found this usually doesn’t happen, so there’s a lot of institutional memory that is lost when people leave the school.

That’s the management. Noticed the same thing happening with new students: A fair number of them were completely unable to navigate the school’s intranet and course management systems, requiring extra attention from counselors and assistants to get them signed up for what they wanted to study.

For all that modernity provides, it doesn’t help when you’re disabled. And now with the incoming US administration, they would rather you just die.

it’s okay to just be a manager. It’s fine and we mean it

/ from outside / , , ,

But leadership, oh baby, that’s what everyone wants to do. Managing is mundane and leadership is exciting. A manager handles trivialities, like hiring and firing. A leader has the privilege of serving as a shining moral beacon, soothing the trouble, reading the psychodynamic eddies (read: vibes) in the organization. At its best, it is a genuinely noble endeavor, not carried out by whoever happens to be at the top of an organizational chart, but whoever has the capacity to encourage other people to be their best selves at a given moment. The most inspiring person in my life yesterday was not anyone that gives talks about how amazing their own skills are, but the seven year old in the house next door who was drilling table tennis so determinedly that I guiltily got some piano practice in.

Source: Leadership Is A Hell Of A Drug — Ludicity

We’ve worked for chefs and GMs who will say they’re not leaders. They’re just making sure the things that need doing are done and that they’re done properly and in a timely manner. And we’ve worked for leaders who will abuse and belittle everyone in the payroll because they’re inferior and unfit to even be considered for full-time work anymore; then they’re surprised when people leave or ragequit.

Looking at you, bistroBoss, you sack of shite.

Looking at you, KDE/Plasma

/ from outside / , , ,

The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and they’ve been fixed. There’s nothing wrong with it. It doesn’t acquire bugs just by sitting around on your hard drive. Au contraire, baby! Is software supposed to be like an old Dodge Dart, that rusts just sitting in the garage? Is software like a teddy bear that’s kind of gross if it’s not made out of all new material?

Source: Things You Should Never Do, Part I – Joel on Software

Joel’s post is almost 25 years old. Sonos learned this lesson this year cos their management was too stupid to realize what they were doing. Also, some people in the comments are wondering why CEO asked Lead Counsel to investigate the debacle.

That’s called fiduciary duty. CEO knows he fucked up hard enough by ignoring the growing issues that any number of shareholders could have sued the company and/or its officials (in a personal capacity), and those shareholders would have had a great shot at winning said suit.

Now if only FOSS developers would learn the lesson too.

No need for a wooden coffin even

/ from outside / , ,

If we all want to retire, how much do we need? How much does a person need? How much do they have, and how much money would government, or an employer or somebody else, need to fill the gap? Most people you know who are making minimum wages need about half a million dollars at age 62-63 to be able to retire. Say your annual salary is about $50,000. The rule of thumb is that you should have about eight to 10 times your annual salary at the time you want to retire in your mid-60s, in order to supplement Social Security, and you won’t see a big change in your living standard. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to travel around the world or walk the Great Wall with somebody carrying your suitcase, but you will be able to maintain your living standard.

Source: Why You Will Never Retire

We don’t know anyone that makes over 100K a year. Perhaps the owners of the businesses we’ve worked at, but that’s unlikely. Unless we migrate to some other country or become rich, we guess our retirement plan should be to go north as far as possible and then just walk until we can walk no more.

disease-danger-darkness-silence:defilerwyrm: cheeseanonioncrisps…

/ from outside, tumblr




disease-danger-darkness-silence:

defilerwyrm:

cheeseanonioncrisps:

mierac:

rowantheexplorer:

gorgonsach:

justgfy:

gorgonsach:

x

Unions are trash. Theyll Destroy a whole company for firing a shitty worker.

unions are the reason you aren’t paid 2.50 an hour with steel beams about to bust ya head open shut up lol

Unions are why you have 5 day, 40 hour full-time work weeks. Unions are why they have to pay you in actual dollars instead of “company credits” that you can only spend at the company-owned stores. Unions are why there are fucking fire exits at your place of work. Unions are why it’s not okay for your supermarket ground beef to be any percentage human.

You think your company pays you out of the goodness of their hearts? Or even out of “market pressure?” The “job market” is a myth perpetuated by the capitalists. Corporations would pay you nothing if they could get away with it. And you argue “oh, but if they paid me nothing I’d just go to another one.” Wrong. Because to maximize profits, they all want to pay you nothing. Corporations exist to maximize profits while reducing risk for investors. It’s part of their entire function to find ways to cut costs as much as possible, and that includes finding ways to pay you nothing.

Unions are your defense against that. You think all a union does is strike? If you pay union dues, a lot of that is spent on lobbyists in various governments reminding your lawmakers that you have rights as a living human being that a corporation should not be able to stomp all over. Unions hire lawyers so that if you’re fired for bullshit reasons, the union can stand up for you against your boss. They’re called unions because workers are uniting to pool resources so that they can stand up to these corporate overlords with more money than God. Unions exist because you might not have the words, resources, or time to fight workplace injustices all by yourself. That’s the whole fucking point.

And if a business shuts down because a union is striking, it’s because the business was abusing people and didn’t deserve to be in business anyway. Don’t make excuses for the corporations. They already have trillions of dollars and a couple million lawyers to do that for themselves. They don’t need your help.

The erasure of labor history from US history curriculum has caused so much fucking damage to this country. 

Bosses: If you don’t like how we do things, don’t work here.

Workers: *Go on strike*

Bosses: Wait no not like that

A lot of union folk very literally fought and died for the workers’ rights we have today. Like no joke, bosses would hire goons to straight-up murder unionizing and striking workers.

All the most basic workers’ rights we have today were all paid for in blood. And conservatives have never stopped trying to take them all away again.

NEVER FORGET THAT LABOR DAY IS ACTUALLY ABOUT. I know people who legitimately think it’s like a secondary mothers day - you know, for going into labor.

But it’s about workers rights and the people who campaigned for it to be a holiday knew this fucking day would come.

If you are in the US and about to celebrate a 3-day weekend, thank a goddamn union worker.

original post

Real jobs are the occult norm now

/ from outside / ,

Ghost jobs might just be a temporary symptom of an uncertain economy. But Erica Groshen, an economist at Cornell University and former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said the way companies hire and candidates job hunt is changing.

Source: “Ghost jobs” are on the rise – Marketplace

It is now August of 2024. I’ve have applied to a lot of IT jobs that aren’t in the tech sector. I’ve heard nothing from those HR departments. Ghost jobs aren’t a bug of the recruiting sector any longer, but a feature.

Scroll to Top