571 karma · joined April 2, 2016
Besides which, the noise levels would drive me nuts. I have difficulty working with any kind of unstructured noise.
This, a thousand times this!
In my last job, we had a media license that was set to expire after some months. My employer, thinking I was a fool, told me that we could just keep using it for a few months after the expiry and when we got caught we would just call it an "accounting error."
All along, the plan was to hold me responsible and fire me when we got caught. It's not the first time he's pulled that, so I wrote it down. He's the sort to take credit for your ideas, but blame you for his failures.
Because of him, I never trust someone who has skin in the game. They'll sell me out in a cold second ("nothing personal, it's just business.") if it'll help their bottom line or career prospects.
In short: get everything in writing, take photos of the computer clock and calender when you finish after working overtime, write down the details of any meetings or discussions. If you're in a place where health and safety issues aren't ever dealt with then photograph everything, with as much dating evidence as you can (front page of the day's paper, perhaps). Don't attend disciplinary meetings alone, have a lawyer with you.
Most importantly, know your rights and assert them. All the time. Don't let something slide just once, because "You worked one hour overtime last week, so it's now part of your job..."
Don't trust them.
What really got me was back when the Battlestar Galactica pilot screened on TV. I was very keen to see it, and heard the pilot was three hours three minutes long.
It was split up, on TV3 I think, into two 180 minute slots, which means there were almost as many minutes of ads as there were of the show. I had to turn it off after one scene was interrupted in the middle for an ad-break that was longer than the scene, then we came back for a single line (now out-of-context) and one camera change, then cut to another break. (For reference, it was a scene with the nuke hitting the Galactica, then six minutes of ads interrupted by about 25 seconds of show.)
I turned off my TV, found an email address, and explained to them just why I was going to buy the DVD and not watch another second of their broadcast.
TV advertising is so intrusive these days that I haven't watched broadcast TV in years.
Maybe there's an autocoffee model, which makes your coffee to your preferences, and you get it to pre-boil while you're heading for home. Using the GPS on your phone with your average walking speed, it calculates when you'll be home so your coffee (or tea or hot chocolate) are just cooling to the perfect temperature when you walk in the door.
You may think it won't happen, but how many would use an autokettle? I wouldn't, as I don't often drink hot drinks, but my mother might because she won't have to hobble around. A blind person might, too, for a similar reason. People who prefer consistent drinks would - I have one particular friend who hates Starbucks but drinks there anyway, because it's always exactly the same.
For example, the kettle boiled this amount of water this many times a day. The kettle isn't boiled between 6am and 6pm so we can deduce that nobody is home during those hours, but the autoboil function initiates at 5.30am on weekdays so we know the owner gets up early. On some Fridays it's later, so they either work more hours or they're off socializing. The quantities boiled suggest that only one person is drinking a hot drink most days. More water is boiled on Saturday mornings, suggesting that someone else spends the night on Friday. External access from the smartphone app comes from $provider but two different phones, suggesting that the drinker has access to two phones.
Now add in a name, phone number, and credit card usage data obtained from a third party, and suddenly you have something that someone will want. If it proves valuable enough, other manufacturers make a similar product, and suddenly a "dumb" kettle becomes much harder to get.
I have experimented with various volumes and types of music while I'm studying, but overall, silence works for me.
For me, the best option is quite ridiculous: I wear a good set of (class 5) earmuffs. Even traffic just a few yards from me is almost silent. I'm wearing a pair right now, actually.
It's just so peaceful. If I could wear these things to bed, I would.
Something that can help is introspection: write down your ideas on a piece of loose leaf paper, one idea per sheet. Put them in one of those binders with the plastic pockets in, keeping the ideas separate. As the reasons to not work on it come to you, write them down on another sheet of paper, and put that in the same pocket. Do the same with the reasons for your idea.
Be completely honest and blunt while writing. Once you've done that, put the folder away and don't think about it for a few days or weeks. When you've forgotten most of the specifics, with no emotional investment in either list of your reasons, pull out the folder re-read the description of the idea, and the reasons for and against it.
Evaluate each one, always being honest with yourself, and decide whether each is a technical, rational, personal, or emotional reason, and proceed from that analysis. (Technical, "My skills aren't there yet." Rational: "I need funding in this field." Personal: "I have a kid and can't commit the necessary time." Emotional: "I'm no good and can't do this.")
Understanding why you thought what might be a good place to start.
I was quite disappointed when the launch was aborted because of that "rogue vessel." I've read a suggestion that it was an angry local doing their best to disrupt things. I really hope it wasn't the case, but I don't imagine we'll find out either way.
Had to laugh at the live feed, all I could think of was "Rocket Labs, brought to you by Acer" any time we cut to the control center.
I can't, because I won't have the money to purchase them, but they are "in business to make money," and I'm clearly only here for the opportunity to buy the products that I make.
OK, sarcasm isn't especially productive, but I hope my point is clear: if my employer takes all the money and pays only subsistence wages, which the huge power imbalance enables, then he's doomed because nobody can afford his products.
At the very least, mine would be if he hadn't managed to get massive tax breaks for being a "job creator" who's also persuaded the government to subsidize those jobs with public funding, and then decided that he's not topping those wages up with the money his business earned. Basically, running costs are funded by the public while he pockets all the profits and pays me with my own tax dollars.
The working class needs more than just the benefit of stuff being offered for sale. We need to be able to spend and save, the ability to shape the economy and keep it running, otherwise it all breaks down.
She remembers the V1 bombs, the Doodlebugs, and explained that you were alright as long as you could hear the engine but if the noise stopped, you were in trouble.
My history teacher at high school also lived through the Blitz, being just a little older. I remember him telling the class about the bomb that fell near his house, and when he ran out looking for his parents he accidentally kicked a helmet which, he discovered, contained a head. He still had nightmares about it 40 years later, understandably.
I find personal histories fascinating, I wish I was able to hear them all, and visualize them to a degree. (Maybe not that last one.)
I just made the decision to do things that I knew I could do, and it happened. I think I eventually even visited a Star Trek set. (Nerrrrrrd.)
Didn't really try to fly, I just changed the situation I was in from "I'm in a room," but I imagine that I could change it to "I'm in the air, and there's no gravity," without a shock sufficient to wake me up.
I've only managed it twice, myself, the first time I woke up because I was so surprised that I was aware in a dream. I want to try it again, so I can see what limits I have before I wake myself.
My father used to work with some Nigerian engineers who said that the sun stings a lot more in Australia and New Zealand than at home. I long thought that was the UV but I've since read that it's actually the infrared that causes the burning senstation.
When he started there, as bottom level IT support, he had access to everything. Admin passwords, doctor's passwords, he could write prescriptions and put a doctor's name on it. He could order anything and everything, and send it anywhere. He could read your medical files, if you were a patient there at any time. There were no restrictions, only some logging.
The place is only >>this week<< securing the network, because the last security guy quit and a new guy started.
I don't know what it's like in the US, but where he is there should be regular audits and criminal negligence charges for this kind of thing.
* steal from their employees by not paying them when they quit * intimidating employees into not reporting wages under the minimum * refusing to pay legally mandated overtime * refusing to allow legally required breaks
I'm owed between $20,000 and $40,000 by two (New Zealand) employers in particular, who refused to pay for or record my extra hours worked, and one of them threatened me with physical harm if I went to the government watchdog.
One of them was a small business, the other a multimillionaire. It was the latter who paid less than the minimum every day I worked, and demanded I work as many free hours as he could force me to. It's not just physical harm with him, because he also promised to destroy my reputation around town if I so much as stepped out of line.
Yeah, I'm a sucker for not resigning on the spot. I know.
If I'd had a baseball bat or wooden sword, I'd have smashed that thing free like a piñata!
A male friend-of-a-friend was raped by a woman, when he was in his late teens (he was older than the age of consent) more than 20 years ago. He went to the police station to complain. Walked in, said to the officer behind the desk that he wanted to make a complaint, he'd been raped by a woman.
The cop held his hand up for a high five, and said "Score!"
He reiterated that he wanted to lay a complaint, and the cop seemed surprised that he would want to. Eventually, after trying a few more times the complainant just left without having his complaint taken.
Rape doesn't just involve physical force, it can also be just pressuring the unwilling into sex, or coercing them into a sexual situation they're unwilling to be in - for example, outdoors, anal or period sex. You can see how easily a female could apply emotional pressure to get what she wants when the male is unwilling. Have you ever heard a woman accuse a male of being homosexual simply because he didn't want to do something she did?
I have.
As a kid, I would do something in a virtual environment (although at that time, that meant "programming the ZX Spectrum") and the others would say "does not!" or "prove it" and then any evidence they couldn't touch was not real, it was just something I made the computer do.
On completion of my CS degree, some former friends of mine would read something at an appropriately undergrad level that they thought was interesting and tell me about it. When asked "Can you not do that?" the response would typically be "No. And neither can you."
There's something quite satisfying about building something that you can throw at the head of another person.
You don't need someone to complete you, only to complement you.
There are factors that influence your memory, such as stress and anxiety, injury, distraction, fatigue, and so forth. Those that we can reduce, such as anxiety, will allow your memory to return closer to your baseline. Techniques we use, such as association (anybody else remember "1 lamp post, 2 light switch, 3 stool?") aren't actually improvements to your abilities, because if you had poor ability to recall you would have trouble recalling the initial subject for association.
Verbalizing the information is one technique that I've found is extremely effective. "The red car just drove by me. He didn't indicate when he changed lanes." I used to read my notes out loud, and record them to tape so I could listen to them when I was on the bus, but now I just go to a private space and read the entire text I'm studying out loud. It does get rather difficult with abstractions such as paintings, particularly because I'm unable to form mental pictures, but there are ways I can work within those limitations. Occasionally, people do tend to take the mindset of "Didn't you learn to read without moving your lips?"
Another technique I use is progressive summarizing, which takes quite a while. I would write out sheet after sheet of my notes until I could get it down to a single word or point per topic, and then expand back from that to basically the initial page of my notes again. (This particular technique simply makes use of my wrote learning skills.) It's only really useful for exams where understanding isn't tested.
To me, The Orville is more like the better "light" TNG episodes, and happily it doesn't put much work into looking at the ethics of a situation unlike some TNG episodes. My prime example is the doctor's actions against her captor in episode 8 - I thought they were going to court martial her and remove what I feel to be the most 2D character from the show.