16 DEC 2019 - 20 JAN
I'm almost certain than the semantic police are more annoying than the grammar police. (I, a policer of semantics...)
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Thinking about it a bit more, by definition, semantic activists are more concerned with linguistic correctness than with social impact, and social activists are more concerned with social impact than with linguistic correctness. So everybody wins. (I, a semantic activist, trying to morally justify correcting the semantics of social activists.)
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I just disembargoed a bunch of notes in blogposts about my work. If you're aware about my work over the past five years, you'll know where to look and what to look for. The embargoes were placed to protect the socio-political sensitivities of stakeholders in my project. I think, it has now been long enough a time for them to have a fair chance at getting over it. As usual, I have the worst of consequences in mind as a possibility, and I am standing by to accept the worst-case scenario.
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Wondering if I can launch a basic B2C website, built on a home brewed framework, by Dec 31, without compromising routine responsibilities.
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I don't think any CE should be required to take such uncertainty upon themselves. But I'm the kind of D who would prefer to do that, and since both D and CE are willing, I take this challenge upon myself. As I do many others...
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#gratuitousSelfAffirmation
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Dorm-style co-living: Totally looked forward to this when I was in college :P (the modes of living, not the jobs)... fifteen years ago. Not joking. Which is why I think most Malaysians would find my living conditions... weirdly lacking.
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Commented on a Lindsay C Gibbon meme:
I disagree with this author. Emotional engagement was so great in my parents, that I have come to believe it is a bad model for society - it made them easy to play, and that is not admirable. I no longer care if a counterparty likes me or not... as that is mostly out of my control. I believe that good relationships result from putting others' interests first, because it is just a more secure active gaming strategy :P. If someone likes you without being paid to do so, that just means you've lucked out.
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Whitehorse is the next Vancouver...
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I find the following pattern amusing. Among people, P, who become upset when their preferred norms are not practiced by others... P tend to believe that other people, OP, become upset when OP's preferred norms are not practiced by P.
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But generally it is the case the OP doesn't really care about P's practices. P may imagine that any reminder of OP's preferences are a reminder that OP are upset... but as OP are not actually upset, it turns out that P are frequently startled by imaginary antagonism.
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Of course, it may be the case that the reminder of OP's preferred norms are a form of antagonism to P... even if P do not imagine that OP are upset. Within designated safe-spaces, it is a good idea to avoid this form of antagonism to P. But outside of designated safe-spaces, I suppose P must unfortunately deal with reminders that OP are not P, whereas both OP and P exist in the same space.
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A friend of a friend, from a third-world country, joined a firm there. That firm is headquartered in a first-world country, and displays the characteristics of that first-world country even in its third-world office. My friend's friend said, it was like heaven, like no other firm she had worked in before in that third-world country. I too have been working in this third-world country for fifteen years, and I have lived in it for several years more than that. I think, perhaps, my tolerance for employers is lower, and I have simply not experienced the worst of employment in that third-world country, because I never worked in the worst of its firms. However, it could also be the case that people such as myself are the origin of hell for everyone else in these third-world countries. Who knows. More interviews must be conducted.
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Enforced waking. Enforced feeding. Enforced work out. Enforced work... hehe
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Current reason to hate JavaScript: empty anonymous functions take TWO SHIFTS to type... and still look like the language designers were going out of their way to make people draw genitals all over the code. (FWIW: Erlang, takes three shifts, but looks like an arrow... Haskell, looks like an arrow, take one shift...)
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/commented/ Keep up the good work, empower those you can, but don't stop others from delivering other forms of empowerment. If you really think that sugar-baby relationships are disempowering, then please do hire a neutral third-party to conduct thorough investigations and interviews with users of the application, to determine their frames of mind - then publish this for national reading. Values, by definition, are not universal - there are no such thing as universal values. That is why disagreements exist. :)
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Bottle of wine: RM25 if you live in the USA or Australia. I know how people bother to drink in Malaysia :P
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In light of this week's trending topic in Malaysian marketing, have fun polluting your thought processes with this one:
“It was economic need that led to the conception of many of these children,” Dr. Bartels said. “And that’s because poverty is extreme and pervasive in Haiti and education and employment opportunities are extremely limited and so the women were already living in poverty..."
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Half a work day gone, and no workout, but I suppose, once a week isn't a problem. Sloppy as hell. Need to be less sloppy. Gradual improvements expected. :)
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Going to PJ to deliver supplies. Does anyone wanna talk about JavaScript and Erlang? :P
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Truly, as they say, the death of the Empire is always down to undergraduate engineering failures. First their infantry marksmanship QA is a half-sigma program . Then they build star-system-GDP-sized projects with single points of ballistics failure. Lastly, after nine films we learn that Star Destroyers do not come with gyroscopes. And to top it off, their gun turrets have no mechanical safe-guard against being pointed at themselves. My word...
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Enforced waking. Remote coordination of audit report hardcopy draft. Remote coordination of cake sale and delivery. Remote counselling of four staff on upcoming decisions they must make regarding the termination of a fifth; reminder of origin, protocol, and opportunities to rehire fifth in a new role for special people. Next, enforced food and exercise. I am at least one business day late, in this four-business-day-week.
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I'm having a rather positive end of the, so I will have enough content to write a directional plan for #2020todos. (This is rarely the case.)
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'Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power' - Benito Mussolini
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And that's generally why I've thought CN and SG were better run than Malaysia around the 2010s.
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"Certainty is the Definition of Misapprehension."
- and a Happy New Year to You
(there, i beat hte crowd)
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Sympathy is not necessary for altruism. I hope we evolve out of sympathy, but keep the altruism.
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Need to move slower, to move faster.
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Today's practical focus: zero-ing the magnitude of signals, from generative imaginations, to conscious memory, in the haptic mode. Thereby increasing the ratio of, afferent haptic signal magnitude rendered in the imagination, to, generative haptic signal magnitude rendered in the imagination.
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What are the market rates for:
- pap test / pap smear
- colposcopy
?
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We need a RinggitPlus for common medical procedures...
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4am. I've been awake for a good fraction of the past hour. In the business day to come I hope to wrap up annual business licensing, and audit concerns. But until the city council opens for business, I shall busy myself documenting code for software which shall underpin developments in the coming year. I still find a good sleep precursor in [B12, creatine, fish oil] applied in addition to various macronutrients. But I need to watch out for neural overstimulation from this practice, as perhaps the rest of the body does not benefit as much. But I am uncertain - and as always, I wish I had greater access to a lab routine for more objective testing.
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2019: Petaling Jaya's city council still employs people to tell you that you have to photocopy forms you bring to them, and that you have to come back a day later for consideration. And this is when you are applying to pay them money for rental of space to place tables in public. :)
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Anyone from the Muslim community in TTDI / DU / BU / Kayu Ara area can recommend me to a trusted imam or pastoral counselour? Helping a staff to get some help with health concerns.
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Already have leads for secular counselors and therapists, but more are welcome.
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Iterating five minute reminder via robot voice is the best idea I've had all year. Thinking of installing it at the cafe.
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Thinking about things I categorise as:
(socially: right, wrong) x
(mistakes, intentions) x
(resulting in outcomes: positive, negative)
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... so that's a 2-cube, with eight classes? Hm. Of course, the social missteps, made unintentionally, with negative outcomes, are the areas to give most consideration to.
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New year, new rules, I guess.
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Thinking about how my attention has shifted from quick and narrow, to slow and broad, back and forth, based on requirements, over the years. Unfortunately, I can't be everything to all the people I love. Sometimes, I can't even be more than ordinary to a subset, for years, while I work on other stuff. Queer.
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It's the end of New Year's Day. I've just iterated on my living arrangements again. Basic infrastructure. That which enables work. I think of doing more software development today, but I anticipate that it will be stressful, and debate internally between doing that and resting before the preparation of monthly payroll and other monthly accounts, to be done tomorrow.
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I think it will now be useful to budget 30 minutes of time daily to collect my thoughts and to reason about timelines. One doesn't always need the quiet time ritual, but in the event of information overload, it serves its purpose. "Daily 30 minute recollection, review, reprioritisation, and documentation of unfinished business."
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Here's what I hope to see in 2020 - someone needs to figure out that the best way to wipe the low end of the co-working space market... is to run a lot of cafes with specific furniture and rules. :) I don't have the time to run around town pitching this, but I sure want to see it happen. After all, we've already done the research. It'll happen eventually - I just don't know who's going to do it.
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I mean, in 2015, it seemed like the best way to survive as a cafe would be to provide the value proposition of working space. In 2020 it feels like coworking spaces stocks are overbought, and the best way to survive as a coworking space is to sell food and other amenities :p
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Who will we meet today?
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In conclusion: gender is a trivial category, free of distinction from any other.
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I don't feel wise. I feel that I'm spending too much time outside of my profession, to the detriment of my professional work. I've gone from being an 17-year-old who figured out that sweeping floors is fun, to being a 36-year-old who cleans pool gunk at the local clubhouse for fun. I don't feel 'wise' - I feel like the sort of chap that society is going to take advantage of, most of the time. But then I suppose, if one is able to live such a life and be quite happy with it, it counts as a sort of wisdom. Albeit, a rather selfish sort.
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There are people to whom you say, 'I love you', not because you want to fuck them; and there are those to whom you say, 'I want to fuck you', not because you love them. Inadvertently, each may take it the wrong way... assuming what isn't said. And sometimes what isn't said is there, it's just not a high-enough priority to be spoken. But what is spoken, is typically the higher priority among those who speak plainly. :)
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Addendum: this note is really about API calls...
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The one thing on this planet that seems to take up most of my time and energy in a bothersome fashion, is the placation of other people who demand empathy. I remain fully cognizant that the trait is selected for in history, but I remain unconvinced that it is a trait which I should identify my work with - it's certainly a non-zero probability that society will be moulded to select against this trait, until it is extremely rare. (I don't see it as a zero-tolerance move, but I'm happy to adjust my expectations to allow for zero- and non-zero- tolerances on a tactical basis.) People who demand empathy may be in the majority, but that doesn't mean that we should blindly accept their preferences as a way of life. We can certainly tolerate them, but when push comes to shove, elementary patterns in identity politics demand that we resist, and sometimes rebel (sic, I am not sure which text I should quote, for how much irony, at this point in writing). So at the risk of sounding too snarky, or facist, or whatever annoyance it is trendy to oppose these days, I'll just conclude this brief meditation with the notion, that systematic recognition of cognitive impulses, emotional responses, and social norms, and their disassembly, and their reconstruction in forms which are not yet the norm... these should be encouraged as programs for mutative diversity, if not as entirely state-funded efforts to build better societies. Horror is not due cause for avoidance.
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Need to raise standards of comfort during office hours. Been slacking.
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I think it's healthy for people to comment on prettiness. In case of ambiguity, the company should write a policy manual.
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Back to work. One foot in front of the other, as is the norm for much of this career.
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/commented/ By definition, not everyone is equally competitive against specified constraints. The way to achieve a brilliant career regardless, is simply to redefine the constraints in your own image.
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Visioning statements, for self and society. Same every year. Changes are so very slow. It is a given. The days are for lying in prison cells, studying mathematics, filing invoices, and making coffee, depending on the scope of one's freedoms.
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On: "Transcript: Ashley Nicole Black
"The best way to abuse or oppress someone is to tell them they are not allowed to get/appear angry. Anger is what motivates you to leave or change your situation. That’s why we tell women and POC, especially Black women, that anger is specifically unacceptable for them."
This is precisely why one of the simplest rules for talent management (and customer service) is to encourage angry people to leave ASAP.
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On Kane Tanaka, 117, and her mathematics hobby.
This is indeed the proper age for mathematics; youth should be spent on more dangerous affairs, like cleaning sewers.
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On 'work gives you meaning and purpose, and life is empty without it'
But it's true! I wouldn't use emotionally loaded words like meaning and purpose, but it sure helps to pass the time before one dies!
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Good sleep. A better sleep than most in recent memory. Two segments. B12 before segment one, water before segment two. Also perhaps aided by new conversations with new people yesterday, and memory reclaimed after completion of a film survey (read through the summaries of Agents of Shield Seasons 5&6 episodes, to catch up). Does it strike you odd that in that cartoon, the generalists are called 'specialists', and the specialists are just called 'agents'?
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The theme of the day is language and social conditioning. Two stories.
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First, we finally got all the pieces together to help one staff meet with a professional sort of counselour. I think it's important for us to seek an awareness of the full gamut of therapies for mental health, before committing to any specific cost.
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Second, I was chatting with this self-identified narcissist from a dating app, and telling her about the first story. I generally do like the IxxJ types, and I get along well enough with some of them in corporeal interactions - however, some may prefer a rather low bandwidth of textual communication, and sometimes I'll stress-test that limit pretty early on. So I'm now wondering if I should never bother with the textual bandwidth stress-tests, since the rest of the relationship works fine as long as we hardly chat in text. I suppose there are other people to chat with, such as the best friend...
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Oh well, another day, another set of interactions with society.
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Looking forward to a reduction in distractions, and to get back into full-swing. Also need to date someone with an 'I don't take vacations' work ethic... send recommendations pls.
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The public life is a mildly strenuous one. Before any action is taken, one anticipates an uproar from friends, and customers, and shareholders, and strangers, and Tinder matches. But one must act with such foreknowledge, whether one actually manages to be above reproach, or otherwise. Foresight tells us what the risks are. Parsimony compels us to complete each task ASAP.
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The world is at war again. That typically bodes well for the Ringgit.
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2015, 2017, and 2019 were years of less urgent swatting. 2016 and 2018 were mostly non-stop fire-fights. I hope 2020 doesn't follow that pattern. But, I must ready myself as usual, for any eventuality.
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The five-minute looping reminder spoken by my computer is a good premise. It helps. But I need to practice more the meditations I developed in detail when I was younger: tactically zeroing the bandwidth from imagination to consciousness, in order to instead maximise conscious recognition of afferent data streams on a second to second basis.
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Every year I hope that it is time to monetise my talents, but I am well aware that the problems I have chosen are not likely to be so quickly resolved. Our project here is but 4.5 years old, and I am still alone in leading it.
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So I can only gently remind myself, that what needs to be done shall continue to be so. Otherwise, I would expect myself to go insane from the gap analysis. :)
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/Related comment on Malaysia's failure to achieve Vision2020/:
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I expected little of Malaysia, and so in my forecast we are on track. I wish we would go faster, but I do not think that is realistic given the structure of the 80s-90s.
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As for myself, I will continue to live here because it is the lazy option. And while I remain alive, I shall study true power, and do whatever needs to be done to pay for board and lodging. :)
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On we go. Just another year... like the 20 before it...
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Today I'm a bit tired of dealing with headcases, but that's just part of work (and broader life).
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Reorganising my allocation of resources for the emotional support of others. Mostly reductions, so that I can start saving up for anticipated future expenditure.
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Moving backwards into a more defensive conversational style for the time being. Need to monitor hit rates and adjust accordingly.
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Do we die this year? Only one way to find out...
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Next mantrabot should be for sleep accompaniment. And eating checks.
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As Facebook walls off its garden, I guess, we may have been a little ahead of the curve in getting off Facebook properties to publish on our own media.
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One day, if I ever need to monitor large Whatsapp groups, I will need a separate phone number to separate the inboxes. For now, nope, nope, nope...
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'The customer is usually wrong', typically applies in (a) technical fields such as medicine (b) when the business is trying to be precisely average, and to not suit any specific customer.
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I estimate I'm ingesting about 1200-1800 calories per day, but I should really put a floor of 1500 on that. Maybe starting with breakfast flooring at 300 Cal, since on the upside sometimes it's up in the 800s
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BakeWithYen just screwed up their CX with the worst incentive program for a high traffic season: you're incentivised to break your order into RM50 chunks, whereby each chunk gets you a cash rebate which you can use... on a subsequent purchase. Imagine how long it takes to process RM300 of goods... FOR ONE CUSTOMER.
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Sleep improved. Slightly crampy from swim practice. Enforcing 300 Cal breakfast... reminding myself to do less observation of tasks, and more observation of neurotransmitter phenomenology.
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Family meetups are always a reminder to pay more attention to professional work - they sort of bring into the present a consideration of the trade-off between spending personal time (a) on people you care little or nothing for and (b) self-improvement.
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There isn't a single person on Earth who I trust to infallibly do X at a future point in time, even if they swear to do X in the future. The reason is that new information is always admissable, so all sentences about future states are contingent upon the assumption that present information is reliable - and present information should never be assumed to be perfect. So here we see there are uncertainties in both space AND time.
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On leaders understanding that small gestures matter.
/comment/ Buried in gestures really. Wouldn't bother to make eye contact with customers if it wasn't essentially a brainwashing technique.
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/comment/ The cognitive precursors to good code are logical coherence, verbal memory, spatial-temporal imagination, and social intelligence... all of which are trainable... and deployable in broader arenas...
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OC: my short time as an entrepreneur (a cumbersome word) has been preoccupied with risk management,
- of shunting finances between personal and corporate operations,
- of moulding various forms of meat into various forms of production,
- of trading off health for business continuity,
- of watching my back, when it is turned only to internal parties,
- of discarding relationships which are not immediately usable, from salespeople, to customers,
- of trading my time in the construction of the intellectual assets that do matter: social relations are IP.
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Today I take another gamble with time that is not my own. A thousand miles is a long way to go for a date. Two days is a lot of shredded time. But the potential gains are firmer infrastructure, that will support future operations. What the hell, it could be a write-off. And that's the essence of work.
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500m breaststroke done. Need to upgrade to 750m.
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Have you ever gotten into a conversation with a waiter who tells you that you really want to order eggs, when you've ordered bread? To the point where an adjudicator needs to be summoned? Lol
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/commented on protecting abused partners from each other/ A brief reminder that rage (or apathy for that matter) often has systematic origins. There's a pathology for rage, revenge, resentment, etc. Something I generally have at the back of my mind as a customer-facing staff. :)
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Technicians: science is a method.
Plebes: science is knowledge.
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I tend to think of the latter as the religion of scientism. Science itself admits no certainty about the future. People who require at least one firm belief to look forward to should be considered 'religious'; people who require zero firm beliefs to look forward to should be considered 'scientific'. That was how I talked about uncertainty in relationships yesterday...
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