I got in trouble for reading books in class. Did not stop me though.
Day: October 2, 2024, 11:37 PM
Furtata
When I tell people how much I work out and what I do, most think it’s a bit crazy. But to be completely honest, it doesn’t seem that hard to me. I could work out a lot more (for decreasing gains). No, I’m not addicted, I’m not injuring myself, and no I don’t have an eating disorder or body dysmorphia. It’s just working out for an hour or so a day ~six days a week alternating arms/back and legs/abs doesn’t seem like all that much?
Most people waste vastly more time scrolling through their damn phones. You could spend 1/8 less time doing that and get totally fucking jacked. So do it and quit whining.
Pentagon Is Not On the ISS
Well that’s a huge bit of dumbassery. Military and intelligence HQs are a very, very different thing from Hamas holding non-combatant hostages in civilian homes and caching weapons in the basements of hospitals. Can these absolute clowns not see how that is completely different?
And just wait till they find out where the Pentagon is, LOL:
Probably 99% of intelligence and military HQs in the world are in “civilian areas.” This is sophistry of the most shit-for-brains degree.
Corns
I am a unicorn, as they put it in corporate terms; I can do everything from level 1 help desk to very complex network design to compliance under multiple national and international frameworks to security to contract negotiation meetings with difficult customers. And far too many more to list here.
In my field, maybe 0.0001% of people at my level have a comparable skillset. This is not (just) to toot my own horn. It’s in the service of expressing something else and that is: no matter how glorious and resplendent a unicorn you happen to be, it most often works against as you as the more you can do, the more you are expected to do.
There was an earlier post where I said I had 14 different job titles. That’s actually now (and even was then) incorrect. It’s expanded to about 22-25 and still growing.
It’s become clear that I am going to have to do something about this as it’s not sustainable, but not sure what yet.
Live a Little
I know I embedded this one on the old iteration of my blog, but I think this music video is one of the best of the last 20 years. It’s a masterclass of compositing and using CGI invisibly to achieve a thematic goal (not just for being flashy). It’s perfectly lit, it’s fun, and it never gets boring despite being extremely (by design) repetitive. It’s just great film-making all around.
And importantly for me, it shows a lot of Florrie playing drums. She is the real deal there; she was a professional session drummer for years. (And if you don’t know what that means, you have to be really fucking good to be a studio session drummer.)
Waxahatchee – Much Ado About Nothing
Damn, Katie Crutchfield is such a great songwriter.
Ashes
I’m so sad about Asheville; that is a cool place. Many moons ago I even considered moving there, but at the time remote jobs weren’t really a thing and the market for IT people in the area was not great. Like many things Asheville was better during the 90s, but it never lost its charm even after experiencing massive growth.
Not sure what year it was, but sometime around 1999-2002 I was driving near downtown Asheville. It was days before Halloween and many revelers were out on the street, enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. There were dozens and dozens of people in ornate costumes just having the best time in a really congenial way — unlike how a lot of Americans party, which usually seems hostile and threatening. The costumes were so perfect and put-together it felt like a movie. As I drove slowly through, a few of the celebrants even motioned me to get out my car to join them. I’m not that social, though, so I gave a friendly wave in return and kept on driving.
But it felt nice. And that’s how Asheville is sometimes.
RTO No Go
The company I work for is going anti-RTO; we’re prepping to sub-lease our main office and have 0 employees reporting to it. No mandatory office attendance for anyone, no office space at all.
And that’s how you do it.
The Last Hominin Standing. A new theory argues humans evolved through competition.
How a California county got PFAS out of its drinking water.
Bad Climate Socialism. The opening salvos of the interstate insurance wars.
CEOs who insist workers return to the office are living in an ‘echo chamber,’ a future-of-work expert says. It’s mostly about stealth layoffs anyway, especially for large companies.
By many metrics, working-class men are worse off today than they were 50 years ago.