officemonkey

OTOH, one party can effectively conspire with the President to subvert the constitutional limits to that power (SCOTUS in Bush v. Gore; McConnell refusing to try an impeached president.)

When you spend some time at the playground with your kids, you need to keep track. Otherwise you're telling your spouse "That lady with the shoulder length black hair said 'hi.'"

To be honest, I learned this tip when I worked at a large international organization, and I needed to familiarize myself with a large number of new people quickly.

I have a real lo-tech solution for that. I carry a bound memorandum book (field notes or the like) in my pocket and write down the everything I know about each kid. One kid per page.

Example: Julian, blonde, in same class, 3rd and 4th grade Sister: Kiera, two years younger, big hello kitty fan Mother: Monica, red hair, glasses. Dad: ??, looks like Ron Swanson.

I just fill in the blanks when I learn them. By the time I'm exchanging phone numbers, I usually have the names down.

Families move and friendships change, so I don't invest a lot of time memorizing details.

If I recall correctly, Reddit benefited significantly from some minor mishap that caused people to leave Slashdot back in 2006. I recall checking out Digg and Reddit and deciding that Reddit was superior.

Welcoming new members from other sites is always a good move.

I'm insulting Elon Musk for being a rude jerk. And according to his own argument, I'm getting away with it. I mean, no one could possibly equate Elon Musk with something that noxious waste spews from, could they?

They're mostly optimized for my specific meetings. Since the meetings are weekly, I do a fair bit of optimization from week to week.

The biggest tip I can suggest is to create the template with a pen, instead of making a formal template on the computer and printing it out. Iteration is your friend in this case.

I've designed specific "note-taking" sheets for regular meetings I attend. There are separate places for me to write down "Things I want to say" and "Things I need to take action on" and "Things I need to to pass to other people."

As time goes on, I refined the page. We all travel a bit, so I added a section for "where's the staff this week."

I liked this idea so much that I've created similar templates for each of my regular meetings. A project control meeting has a different format than a staff meeting.

Your thumbnail of the Iliad is of the Robert Fagles translation, which is not in the public domain.

I'm not sure that many people would want MORE email.

Years ago, I did something like this with Samuel Pepys' diary. I didn't get more than a week in and then I forgot. It was easy to get overwhelmed with the backlog and then I unsubscribed from the RSS feed.

I'm not sure that people have "no time for books." There's plenty of time for books. People are just not in the habit. There are ways to get into the habit, but I don't know that one page at a time is the easiest way.

There is always a relevant XKCD. In this case, I've had this blog post rattling around my head for over 9 years.

https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/

Absolutely.

"I, Claudius" was one of the most amusing and interesting books I've read.

Yes, the nerd conjunction of Apple Card, DHH, and twitter made this story go viral, but it illustrates a real problem.

The other day I saw a headline on HN saying "top 1% now has more wealth than the middle class."

Basically, the system is rigged. I'm for any story that brings this to light, short of one involving a guillotine.

I thought the film was good, but it simplified the story considerably. In particular, the dramatic bits about racism were a lot more nuanced in the book.

I recommend reading the book for the more accurate and complex reality these women faced regarding race and sexism.

Software Engineer Margaret Hamilton received the Congressional Medal of Freedom in 2016.

Hooray for women in STEM.

I checked that this article wasn't posted on 1 April.

Can we all agree that Musk is a twat.

He talks shit about someone to a reporter and then simultaneously is cowardly enough to delete the tweets and investigate the guy he insulted.

I really wish he would take a one-way ride to a comet or something. (Seveneves readers know what I'm talking about.)

The recommendation system is broken, however the social networking features can surmount it.

For example, my Goodreads "friends" are people who like the books I like. There's no social obligation. FFS, I unfriended my sister. My high-school friend who only reads YA fiction: he was unfriended years ago.

My favorite goodreads friends are a half-dozen people I've never even met, but I agree with their reviews. When they give a book 5 stars, I check it out.

That's the key to Goodreads. If Amazon can't figure out how to make better recommendations, they should look long and hard at how the social graph beats the star-ratings.

Lawmakers have had plenty of time to clarify their intent. The reason they haven't added smartphones is it is politically difficult to add them to the law. Because to the average Australian, that seems like overreach. People's perception of their phones as more personal/private than most devices.

The judge could argue that the intent of the law was to avoid including smartphones, because that is clearly what they did.

Could it be dogs or could it be people?

What economic factors could lead people to stop picking up dog poop? Have poop bags gone so far up in price that it's impossible for the average person to purchase poop bags?

I've been listening to a couple of Podcast interviews Bob Caro has done with Preet Bhara and Conan O'Brien. Both are recommended.

So you're saying that every "Boogie Woogie" piano song is infringing if they play more than two bars of a boogie woogie riff.

The North remembers.

TBH, if you're a real influencer, you're not going to trade a mention for a free $4 ice cream cone.

The original MacWrite fit on a 400 kb floppy.

As a government bureaucrat, I'm constantly amazed at the number of systems bought and paid for that essentially recreate functionality that is already built into the enterprise sharepoint.

We can't find money for an in-house sharepoint programmer but we have seven figures to build something in salesforce from scratch.

Then get better at serving the entire spectrum, not just the profitable parts.

Also, to add some more counterpoint...

>I have projects that I am interested in, that I would like to work on, that I would be happier for having completed, that I am unable to complete.

That sounds a lot like how depression treats me. I have these "impossible tasks" that sit there undone. And the "lazy procrastinator" in me (thanks, mom) does them at the last possible second.

I think a lot of the "time management" self-help books out there is an honest effort at casting around at ANY way that can help a person become more productive. Whether it's values-based, or workflow-based, or something that just reduces the friction. Sadly, like most of the self-help genre, if you don't "become more productive," you're a bad person.

Asking Neurodivergent people to compensate for executive functioning skills that don't come easy is bound to fail.

Executive Functioning seems to be the key "worker bee" trait that is valued in school and the workplace.

To be honest, in a different society (one that isn't focused on on-line communication, extreme productivity, and always on connections), executive functioning becomes a much less valued trait.

Well, "To Kill a Mockingbird" has never been out of print (since 1960) and Capote isn't known for his novels. "In Cold Blood" (1966) was his most successful work. One could argue that she was the more successful novelist.

Capote's fame is mostly due to his "jet set" social life, not the quantity or quality of his work.

If you want to read a real Harper Lee True Crime book, read Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood." She helped him with the research, and some people feel she may have ghosted much of it.

Regardless, it's an iconic true crime book you could (and should) read.