habnds

do you use orgmode outside of emacs? I tried a port to vscode once and it was not usable.

something to consider is that certain todo's require the right location or context, for example if I'm at the office and it occurs to me to pay the utility bill, that would go on a "home" todo list.

Additionally, some todo's have different timeframes than others. I try to think of things as short term/immediate, medium term/this week, and long term/nextweek-before I die.

I'll occasionally pick things of the long term list and cut them down into an action I could do immediate or this week, for example, get Anna karenina from the library.

>> GitLab approves the use of Linux, and Apple's macOS. Microsoft Windows is prohibited for the following reasons:

    Due to Microsoft Windows' dominance in desktop operating systems, Windows is the platform most targetted by spyware, viruses, and ransomware.

    macOS is preinstalled on Apple computers and Linux is available free of charge. To approve the use of Windows, GitLab would have to purchase Windows Professional licenses, as Windows Home Edition does not satisfy GitLab's security guidelines.

    As many purchases of laptops have occurred with employees making the purchases and then being reimbursed by GitLab, a remote employee would typically be making a purchase of a laptop pre-loaded with Windows Home Edition.
    Windows Home Edition is notoriously hard to secure.

edit: after thinking about this for a bit, it occurs to me that their main competitor is github and that maybe they just aren't very excited to use MSFT products?

thus I say "might". idk why either of those companies deserve your time giving them the benefit of the doubt.

it kind of implies that google might have a kindle that amazon sent them to test the other app?

off the top of my head i'd say its a few things:

1, don't use mental capacity for remembering things, do that in a trusted document that stores things you need to remember

2, always be (mentally) knolling, staying organized and recording things you need to refer to later should be a reflex. Supplement this with weekly reviews of everything going on in your life.

3, categorize actions into long, medium and short term tasks. A short term task is something you can do immediately if you have the right context and opportunity.

4. if you're blocked on something, figure out the next immediate task, i.e. "email user group to ask if anyone else has seen this problem before" NOT "figure out problem with spatial join"

Emacs org-mode was a huge help in getting started on this. there's a vscode port of it thats semi-usable. I haven't been a fan of other organization software.

I found the book "get things done" helpful. i don't follow the system closely but it's a good mental model. It's especially helpful to have a list of medium and long term goals with associated next steps for when there's time.

I work as a consultant and have a similar ebb and flow to work. I try really hard to appreciate and enjoy slow downs instead of feeling guilty about them. check all the routine boxes for the day, make sure I've done what I need to and then do something enjoyable because other days I won't be able to.

I've always been disappointed by people's consistent refusal to voice opinions about my "career" decisions.

I'm perfectly comfortable dismissing feedback and advice when I feel that is the best course of action. I want other opinions.

It's very difficult to get anyone to give feedback in a meaningful way or opinionated career advice about what I might be well suited to.

This was particularly true of college professors.

Helpful sentences would start with "I think you would be good at..." or "While you might be able to improve, I think you should steer away from ..."

haven't read it. I generally don't think it's a good strategy to read one author exhaustively though.

> The Bowman case has come about after the 75-year-old farmer bought soybeans from a grain elevator near his farm in Indiana and used them to plant a late-season second crop. He then used some of the resulting seeds to replant such crops in subsequent years.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto...

Nice, thanks. Do you have a go to piece of work that lays out where Diamond goes wrong? I've only ever heard it in off hand comments from people in human geography.

I've read a couple of the LBJ books which are really amazing and plan on getting to power broker eventually.

Anatomy of a revolution is a good one to frame the French rev in the context of the other revolutions of that time.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/648063.The_Anatomy_of_Re...

I did eventually get through it. I found that thinking of the chapters as individual books (which in a lot of ways they are) was helpful to enjoy the reading and to get through it.

Read one, take a break digest it. It's enjoyable. There are good accompanying books to read alongside it.

A book to read immediately after Guns Germs and Steel is Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu.

It's also useful to know that Diamond does not have a degree in Geography and many geographers aren't particularly on board with his ideas.

I think of him the same way I do Malcom Gladwell, a good story teller but he does this by cherrypicking anecdotes more than by a robust assessment of reality.

curious which subreddits those are.

I don't know the exact situation you're talking about, but my guess is that this is exactly the type of formal "learning" I would argue does not work.

It's because when annual reviews happen they aren't talking about the books they read they're talking about a project that they contributed to.

In my experience formalizing "learning" in the work place doesn't work because it requires the performance of learning for management types rather than real learning which involves working through real new problems over an extended period of time.

The real way to get employees to learn is to hand them responsibilities they are not fully prepared for along with the pay that goes with them and see how it goes. Right or wrong managers are rarely comfortable doing that.

Employees need to be comfortable failing in front of you and few are because there are few good examples of that turning out well. When it does go well, all too often the raise they were promised doesn't come through.

this isn't to say you're a poor manager, just that it's unusual to have a healthy environment for on the job learning.

probably only "staged" at this point

whoa

no, it absolutely did not

> I may have read too deeply into the intent behind that comment though.

of course you can find a single example of a car robbery that isn't trivial.

Where did I say anything about it being someones fault? Of course in a perfect world there would be no theft but aggressive enforcement against car thefts isn't something I support in the real world.

I've always left nothing in the car and the doors unlocked in the hope that my windows won't be broken.

Not SF but I once had the cup holder/ashtray stolen from an old mini van I was driving, I assume because it had a few dollars in change in the ash tray.

More amusing than anything.

Cars are terrible for cities, doesn't bother me in the least that protecting tourist's cameras isn't an enforcement priority.

> Tourists are disproportionately targeted because they are more likely to have valuables in their cars

Interstellar?

most spy satellites aren't geostationary?

My experience has been that the divide in culture tends to coincide with union/non-union workplaces.

I saw something once that explained how the powerful magnification seems silly until you account for the angles that things are at.

The example they used was that license plates are vertical so to read them the satellite can't be directly above the car so it's actually a much further distance and greater magnification is necessary because of the atmosphere and the distortion of reading something at an angle.

Which are your favorites?

Yeah on the one hand it's cool possibility for historians and stuff, on the other it kind of ruins the adventurous scuba diver studying old maps and stuff searching for lost treasure.