77 karma · joined January 11, 2014
I've thought of trying a schedule of working a 5 day week, a 5 day week, taking a week off, working a 5 day week, and taking a week off, and repeating that pattern.
Everybody knows how 5 day work weeks are. You get back to work Monday and it may take a little while to pick up where you left off Friday but surely by midday you are back in the groove.
Your two days off for the weekend seem like barely time to get your own stuff done.
When we went to 4 day weeks it was a great boon to my weekends. If I wanted I could take a day to completely goof off and unwind from my work week and still have two weekend days for my own projects.
Monday though took more effort to remember where I'd broken off on Thursday. It might take all day to get my mojo going especially if I had been working on something trick like hunting a difficult big.
At 3 day work weeks and 4 day weekends I've got more "me" days than "work" days. It no longer feels like work is the main thing I do and my personal projects have to be fitted in the cracks. Now my projects are the main things and work feels like the side project.
When I get in Monday I will have completely forgotten what I was working on Wednesday. I have to end Wednesday by writing a detailed note to my future Monday self explaining exactly what I was working on. If I don't write that note it might take until sometime mid Tuesday before I'm caught up to where I was last Wednesday and making progress.
This apparently put it beyond the reading comprehension level of the reporters at Vice and Daily Beast, and of Selam G., and so his point was completely misunderstood/misrepresented.
He didn't really say women were less capable, though (biologically or otherwise).
He said that there are differences not related to capability, and that the current environment in tech is such that the work environment is more acceptable to people on the "male" side of those differences, which makes capable women less likely to go into or stay in tech. To increase diversity he suggested that we need to make the tech environment more friendly to women.
For example, he said that men on average are more competitive, and women more cooperative, and that women tend to value work-life balance more then men, and men tend to value status more. There's a fair bit of scientific literature supporting those claims. (To what extent these differences are biological rather than learned is less clear--but does it actually matter?)
Currently tech tends to favor competitive status seekers who will make their career the focus of their life (especially for management and leadership positions). Cooperative people who want a good work-life balance get left behind. He suggested Google move toward more pair programming and other cooperative ways of doing things, and make it so that it is easier for employees to balance their outside life with work. That should get more women coming into tech and increase the retention rate.
It is worth reading the actual memo if you have not. A very large amount of the discussion of it has been based on what people imagined it said, not what it actually said.
I don't see why that would make people from those groups feel unwelcome. If anything I would expect people from the groups that he says were genetically not as good as slaves to be the ones who would feel unwelcome. The implication is that they are weaker or less resilient.
Some examples. Your annotation to Article 20.2 section 3: "TPP prohibits environmental laws that create a “restriction on trade.”
What TPP actually says in that section is "disguised restriction on trade". Either you missed the word "disguised", or did not recognize that the phrase "disguised restriction on trade" is almost a term of art in international trade agreements and so should be taken in TPP with the same interpretation and effect it has been given in the numerous other treaties in which it appears.
Article 18.2, which says:
A Party may provide limited exceptions to the rights
conferred by a trademark, such as fair use of
descriptive terms, provided that those exceptions
take account of the legitimate interest of the owner
of the trademark and of third parties.
For example, if someone posts a YouTube video
criticizing McDonald's® for making terrible food
and destroying the environment, this would
ordinarily be protected under the U.S. Constitution.
But, under the TPP, any public use of the
McDonald's® brand would only be allowable if it is
in the legitimate interest of McDonald's®, the
trademark holder. Since a video criticizing them
would never be in their “legitimate interest,”
McDonald's® could be able to bring an ISDS
complaint against the U.S. government and force the
video to be taken down.
Article 18.37 section 2 says:
Subject to paragraphs 3 and 4 and consistent with
paragraph 1, each Party confirms that patents are
available for inventions claimed as at least one of
the following: new uses of a known product, new
methods of using a known product, or new processes
of using a known product. A Party may limit those
new processes to those that do not claim the use of
the product as such.
18.37 section 2 is just requiring that being just a new use of a known product does not automatically exclude something from patentability. It does not get rid of each country's general requirements for patentability, such as the US requirement for novelty, non-obviousness, and usefulness.
He means it in the same way Jonathan Swift meant that cannibalism should be legalized and the Irish should be allowed to sell their children as food in "A Modest Proposal" [1].
You mentioned fraternity only in this way: "Imagine something like a mini-fraternity (in only the good ways) with dinners, retreats, bonfires, product jam sessions, meditation, improv, basketball, whatever people want to do socially & professionally".
It should be clear you are not describing an attempt to make Silicon Valley "Animal House," except to those who are going out of their way to find problems. In my opinion you have nothing that needs apologizing for.
Distance from the car is not relevant. Distance from Wilson is what is relevant. All shots were fired when Wilson was near Brown.
There were two shots fired at or near the car (shown by two spent casings near the car), and there is blood there showing Brown was hit. Hence Wilson was near Brown when these shots were fired.
The remaining 10 shots were all taken near were Brown's body ended up, a smidgen over 150 feet from the car. The spent casings for those 10 shots are all within 20 feet of the body. The pattern of the casings, and the location of blood stains that are not with the body, show that Brown was moving toward Wilson at this time. There is not enough evidence to ascertain his velocity.
> These deaths are wholly related to the racism of police practice in the United States
Do you really think that if a white man hits an officer in the face and tries to take the officer's gun, and then gets shot, and then runs away with the officer in pursuit, and then turns and runs toward the officer, he would not get shot several more times?
> Presenting disputed testimony as the truth is extremely misleading.
I presented no disputed testimony. Witness testimony in this case is contradictory. That's why I stuck with things that are strongly supported by the physical evidence.
We can look at Garner, and see that a great injustice happened to him.
Compare to Brown. The police had a very good reason to stop him (walking in the middle of the street, matches description of person who had just robbed a nearby store and assaulted the shop keeper), and he attacked the police officer and tried to take the officer's gun. The only thing it appears that the police officer did wrong was letting Brown approach the car while the officer was inside with his gun still holstered, which allowed Brown into a position to attack.
Looking at Brown, we see a man who did something really stupid, and suffered pretty much the same outcome that we'd expect for anyone in that situation.
Lumping Garner and Brown together, like these protestors are doing, seems to me to be an insult to the memory of Eric Garner.
Your business was based on ruining games for ordinary players by exploiting bugs (in violation of your contract with the game operator) to duplicate items for sale for real-world currency. This messes up the game economy and it messes up the game balance.
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An adult (Aaron) who was NOT affiliated with the University, broke the law using MIT's network. MIT suffered damages because of his actions (temporary loss of access to JSTOR), and moved to stop his activity. Because his activity was criminal, he was arrested.
Now his father blames MIT and the prosecuting attorney apparently almost entirely for the death of his son. How about when he, as a father, understood the fragility of his son's condition and didn't do more to encourage him to perform his activism without breaking as many laws? You know, so as not to put himself in a position where he might be faced with jail time? How about the father getting him serious psych help so that he could understand that 3 months in jail wouldn't be the end of the world, even for someone with Crohn's disease, and if anything, serving time would add to his status as a hacker activist?
NOPE, never a mention of that, only slinging hate and blame at MIT for not assuming the position of legal defender of someone who was never a student. I genuinely wish that MIT had done more for Aaron, but blaming the University for Aaron's suicide is ludicrous. Absolutely ridiculous.
One final thought. The dad says "Bob reasons that MIT chose not to cross Heymann so as not to alienate the New England Electronic Crimes Task Force—or endanger its federal grants". WELL! How dare MIT not endanger it's lifeblood of federal grants by intervening on an unaffiliated adult's behalf!
[end quote]
MIT's behavior was fine in foresight. In hindsight they may have had better options. The DOJ charges were not ridiculous. Again, in hindsight, had they known they were dealing with an unusually fragile person with a defective personal support network, they should have toned things down a little.