Anyone who denies that climate change had a role in the recent California fires does not understand how climate change works and also fails to comprehend that they too will be affected inevitably in the end — perhaps not so devastatingly, but the likelihood of negative outcomes increases greatly when the climate has been destabilized.

I know, it’s hard to change. It’s scary. Status quo bias is one of the strongest human tendencies. And the left has pushed some horrendously bad ideas that should be opposed, such as austerity and degrowth. But you should be opposing these ideas and not the obvious truth that the climate is changing, and not for the better for most of humanity.

In the end, like gravity, it simply does not matter if you believe in climate change or not. Because it believes in you.

How many jobs are really just One Job?

These days, none. All the executive assistants, secretaries, even the junior team members have been wiped out. I’ve had similar jobs all throughout my IT career ¹ and when I started more than 20 years ago, I had an assistant. That’d be unheard of now. I also only had 2-3 actual roles. The expectations were much smaller back then even at a similar career level.

Now I have somewhere between 20-30 roles. This seems to only getting worse. One of the reasons jobs are so much more cognitively demanding now is that most people can be ok to good at a few things, but it takes a whole different breed to be competent at 20+.

But that’s what the corporate types are demanding these days.

1. I was doing basically what I am doing now by the time I was 26.

Stripped the server rack this week as it’s simply not viable with UK’s electricity prices any more… [F] in chat. No idea what to do with all these besides scrap them.

Those are old and inefficient drives, but I don’t know how anyone lives in the UK with those sort of electricity prices. That is a preview of the future the degrowthers wish for us. And I want absolutely no part of that.

We should be aiming for absurd energy abundance, not austerity. In reality (as we’ve already seen in the UK) austerity does not work and cannot work. It is a philosophy of failure and ennui. It will not save the planet and in its extreme cases will lead billions into starvation.

Degrowth is another form of death wish, no different than the climate deniers. Both are clownish idiots.

I really dislike the social pressure to join a political tribe.

“Are you a racist, anti-science troglodyte? Or are you an economically-illiterate, political correctness Karen? Those are your only choices. It’s one or the other. PICK ONE.”

How about neither? How about you go fuck yourselves?

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— Kevin Gaughen 🇺🇸 (@gaughen.bsky.social) January 7, 2025 at 6:17 PM

I’m the same. It’s already hard enough not being an utter dumbass. Joining a tribe is a certain way to toss yourself right into Tardville. No thank you.

Laid off – systems broke 😆.

Why do people think anyone at work is a friend? That’s almost never true. The CIO here definitely is not and absolutely 100% did know about the layoff in advance. I guarantee it.

That said, I’d be charging them like crazy for repairing this mess they left themselves in. A few years ago, a company I’d worked for a decade prior contacted me about fixing some complex scripts they had moved around and attempted to change and could not get to function any longer. I’d created those as something temporary a developer was supposed to consolidate into an actual fully-thought-out reporting application later on but never did (of course).

They’d brought in several consultants who could not duplicate what I’d done as it involved (among quite a few other things) complex manipulations of obscure Windows permissions in a very specific way to achieve what they wanted.

Anyway, they requested that I fix these scripts and add some related new features for free. I said no way and quoted $250 an hour, 10 hours minimum¹, paid in advance. They wouldn’t agree to that so I told them good luck.

Fine. I heard it never got fixed.

1. This is probably pretty close to the actual time it would’ve taken me to do what they were asking for.