Officiousness

Would you go from full remote to in office for twice your salary? but there is a 1 hour 10 minutes commute.

Fuck no. I would not go into an office for 10x my current salary. For that, I might consider once a month. Maybe. (Still probably not with a horrible commute.)

It’s so incredibly unproductive to be in an office. I will never, ever go back to the days of being constantly interrupted with trivial bullshit and then spending 5-10 hours at home every night getting my real work done. That was miserable and I did not realize how terrible it was until I was not doing it any longer.

Being in an office means nothing gets done by nearly anyone. Never again.

Slim Slow

“Slim doesn’t always mean healthy” and such claptrap is functionally equivalent to a lie, though it’s semi-true just often enough that it’s not quite a complete fabrication.

The truth of course is that being slim means someone is far more likely to be healthy and stay that way. Where the Fat Acceptance and related self-harm movements allow their nonsense to slide in is that some (a few) slim people are in fact unhealthy. Those such as anorexics, cancer patients and people with genetic defects can be svelte but on the edge of death.

This allows in the faulty logic that slim == bad. Which of course is heavily promoted by the obesity-benefting food industry in the US.

Fat Acceptance really did a number on us (with food industry financial and propaganda assistance).

Linguini

RIPE says we’re in Germany – so FireFox and Chrome says Guten Tag.

Sites and browsers seem to have no idea to get this right. Even though I am using English as my OS language and browser language, I guess because I’ve searched for enough junk in Spanish and French that Google shows me results in those languages even though I’d prefer English unless I specify otherwise.

And that’s despite not being logged into Google and blocking most things. So it means Google is using my IP to track me enough to toss French and Spanish results my way semi-randomly (I’m not usually behind VPN as it’s too slow for me).

Just give me results in English, please, unless I request something different.

Low Go

Damn, Noah, you didn’t have to go that low. But he’s right — though I don’t think Russia has much interest in conquering France. They will stop at Germany. And anyway, France has nukes and there is no doubt in my mind that France will nuke the shit out of Moscow if Russia sends any troops across that border. Putin is certainly aware of that too.

France in general should still be concerned with what happens to the rest of Europe, including Ukraine, than it is. What Russia is likely to do in the future will not be good for Macron’s country at all, even if there is no outright invasion.

The Bitter Aftertaste of โ€œTechnical Sweetness.โ€

More than half of students are now using generative AI, casting a shadow over campuses as tutors and students turn on each other and hardworking learners are caught in the flak.

I donโ€™t know what will happen on Bluesky from here. The userbase pushed incredibly hard for a ban, and theyโ€™re not taking its absence well.

In 1999, the end was coming for newspapers. But few were looking for the signs.

Chinese Amphibious Warfare: Taiwan Targeted, Scenarios Swirling.

Instead of a christmas bonus thus year, i got to train my replacement in India. And another (next) Trump voter was minted.

Housing Bubble & Bust #1 and #2 as Seen through Employment in Mortgage Lending.

For a new generation of kids, sports and gambling now go hand in glove. Not great.