Viewing profile — ianmcgowan

Now I'm watching this thread for the consultant hired by the film to show up and explain why each of those goofs was caused by the director explicitly asking for them...

It's fascinating the extent to which all the models rely on text - it's like they have severe (but not total) aphantasia: "We hypothesize that this phenomenon emerges predominantly…

Surely "Player Piano" is more relevant?

Or Roko's Basilisk

Probably the burning man essay, which is one of the best things I've ever read online. https://open.substack.com/pub/samkriss/p/numb-at-burning-man

A protest demonstrates a level of unhappiness with a group or policy. People may not believe what they see on the news, facebook, or youtube, but hopefully we have not reached a po…

Sounds like the plot of "Big Brother" by Cory Doctorow

Try "No agenda, no attenda" - see if a touch of levity helps.

Lovely essay, tone reminds me this book which has a similar vibe. https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/truck-on-rebuilding-a-worn-out...

Kernighan!

That's exactly what the Lizard overlords are doing! /s - wouldn't be surprised there's a few conspiracy theorists who believe this...

Parent comment is working from The Gervais Principle[1] of office politics. There are companies where that's an accurate description of reality, unpleasant though it might be. [1] …

This is where defensively blocking off your calendar comes in!

I don’t get why municipal investment isn’t more of a thing - why can’t cities and counties be their own PE, buy a small fire truck company and turn it into a non-profit? If they ca…

A tangent - sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Koli - a key plot component is a chatty Sony AI music player. A little YA, but a fun read..

Popper and "the paradox of tolerance" to the rescue. You can, and should, tolerate anything but intolerance.

A chromebox mounted behind the monitor did the trick for me. Haven't had an emergency wipe/reinstall in years. Also, a tablet with keyboard takes some of the pressure off having a …

I moved from IC to manager to director. Meetings in general are a huge time suck, and by the end of my tenure, I was basically triple-booked for the entire day every day. Every eve…

In California, as a non-exempt employee (basically not a manager if you're at a big company), you'd have to be paid for that on-call time with those requirements. The key term is "…

I moved to "the city" in 1989 from England, and people were complaining then about yuppies and it wasn't the same as the good ol' days of the 60's. SF seems to be a lot more in-flu…

That doesn't explain why math is so amazingly effective at describing reality - all the pure mathematical results seem to eventually end up being useful at describing some new aspe…

I love the mental picture from Greg Egan's Diaspora of the truth mines, literally hacking the math like chunks of coal: "If ve ever wanted to be a miner in vis own right -- making …

A subsidiary of Lumon? Do you have to be severed to work in MDR?

Let's hope they don't want to paint the bike shed!

I always start with "SELECT COUNT( ) FROM ..." for this reason, and then go back and replace the COUNT( ) when I get a handle on the tables/filters/groups involved..