nameandnature | Entries tagged with work

Cancel Culture and the Problem of Woke Capitalism – The Atlantic: No evidence diversity training works but capitalists will always do the minimum to make it like they’re doing something, including firing low paid employees to stop the Twitstorm.
(tags: twitter politics work woke)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there (where there are currently comments) or here.

Your smartphone is making you stupid, antisocial and unhealthy. So why can’t you put it down? – The Globe and Mail: We’re doomed! Interesting for this bit: “It takes office workers an average of 25 minutes to get back on task after an interruption, he notes, while workers who are habitually interrupted by e-mail become likelier to “self-interrupt” with little procrastination breaks”. That’s true of me: if I’m constantly getting interrupted I give up and procastinate in anticipation of the next interruption.
(tags: technology culture psychology smartphones facebook work)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

How work changed to make us all passionate quitters | Aeon Essays: Alleges that neoliberalism encourages employees to see themselves as the CEO of “Me, Inc”, always looking for tasks that’ll help them get their next job. Interesting final section about the modern obsession with “passion”.
(tags: capitalism business work economics career)
Troy Hunt: Introducing 306 Million Freely Downloadable Pwned Passwords: A service where you can check the clear text (if you trust the site owner) or hash of passwords to see whether they’ve leaked in any of the site hacks over the years.
(tags: security passwords api)
Operation Luigi: How I hacked my friend without her noticing: Funny stream of consciousness thing about hacking a friend (with permission). Time to enable 2FA on your stuff, people.
(tags: hacking phishing funny email authentication passwords)
Steve Dutch: Conservative Cranks and Liberal Meta-Cranks: What are the differences between cranks on both sides? Conservative ones are generally stupid, liberal ones are clever rationalisers.
(tags: politics cranks conservative liberal)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

Who Will Command The Robot Armies?: Funny and worrying talk. Pinboard is always good for “Internet of shit” stories, but has a wider point here.
(tags: robots facebook twitter amazon work po politics surveillance technology automation iot)
Ur-Fascism | by Umberto Eco | The New York Review of Books: What are the common features of anything worth calling Fascism?
(tags: history politics fascism italy world-war-II)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

The Human Cost of Tech Debt – DaedTech
BPS Research Digest: 10 of The Most Widely Believed Myths in Psychology
Surprises of the Faraday Cage: Something Feynman got wrong, apparently (and which was repeated in the electro-magnetism lectures at university, as I recall).
(tags: physics science feynman electromagnetism)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

Twitter’s missing manual / fuzzy notepad: Things I didn’t know, as I rarely actually write to Twitter because my impression is that it’s useless for discussion.
(tags: twitter manual)
What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team – The New York Times: It’s all about psychological safety.
(tags: collaboration team work employment management google)
Which God Do Atheists Reject?: David Hume on Straw Gods: The theist will say that there is Something or Other that Created the universe, but they cannot tell us what this Something or Other was (other than that they call it ‘God’) nor can they say what it means for the Something or Other to Create. At most, as Anthony Kenny argues, they can say that ‘Create’ specifies some unknown and incomprehensible relationship between the Something or Other and the universe.
The atheist can agree to this much. There is some explanation for the universe’s origins. Perhaps future inquiry will reveal the explanation and we’ll be able to fill in the details.
(tags: hume david-hume philosophy theology god atheism)
Genesis chapter 1 through 1500 years of English – YouTube: via livredor, a reading of Genesis 1 through 1500 years of English.
(tags: language english bible)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

What We Can Learn from the Paris Attacks (Without Ignoring the Elephant in the Room): Yep, this is more or less what I think.
(tags: paris terrorism islam islamism religion politics)
What is emotional labor?: A term that once described jobs where being friendly and cheerful was seen as part of the job has apparently been co-opted to mean “someone expects me to do something”.
(tags: emotion labour work relationships)
Guide to software developer job advertisements: andrewducker: Seems legit.
(tags: software software-engineering jobs adverts careers)
My first 10 day Vipassana retreat: Not *my* retreat. Some bloke’s. It’s an interesting article about the experience though.
(tags: meditation buddhism mindfulness retreat)
An alias for when you really need it done…: I’m totally setting this up.
(tags: funny computers unix sudo)
The Deadlock Empire: A nice little web game where you try to break a threaded program by executing a critical section in two threads at once. It’s pretty neat.
(tags: programming threads concurrency locks game)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace. – The Washington Post: Open plan offices are still terrible. Is there anyone in Cambridge (UK) who isn’t using them, I wonder?
(tags: work office noise concentration)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

Don’t Feed the Beast – the Great Tech Recruiter Infestation | mockyblog: A fun rant against tech recruiters in the UK, who are apparently a bunch of wide-boys (or spivs, to use the old fashioned term). I haven’t used one for over ten years, so I don’t know how accurate it is, but HN’s discussion on it had some people saying it rings true.
(tags: recruiters jobs technology work)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs | Strike! Magazine: Whatever happened to our promised leisure time, and why do so many people get paid to do nothing useful?
(tags: capitalism politics work jobs economics)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

Cheeky Nando’s, or, what went wrong? | Idiot Joy Showland: Top bants of the apocalypse.
(tags: nandos apocalypse post-apocalyptic bants funny)
Real Life First Person Shooter (Chatroulette version) – YouTube: British film company put together a live action first person shooter and invited people on Chatroulette to play. The “making of” video linked at the end explains how they did it.
(tags: chatroulette shooter first-person live games)
Work Hard, Live Well — Life Learning — Medium: “So it is with deep sadness that I observe the current culture of intensity in the tech industry. My intellectual conclusion is that these companies are both destroying the personal lives of their employees and getting nothing in return. A candidate recently deciding between Asana and another fast growing company told me that the other team starts their dinners at 830pm to encourage people to stay late (he’s starting here in a few weeks). I also hear young developers frequently brag about “48 hour” coding sprints. This kind of attitude not only hurts young workers who are willing to “step up” to the expectation, but facilitates ageism and sexism by indirectly discriminating against people who cannot maintain that kind of schedule.”
(tags: work productivity rest crunch overtime)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

Imaginary Positions – Less Wrong: One I’d missed: Yudkowsky’s post on rounding to the “nearest cliche”.
(tags: cliche nearest eliezer-yudkowsky rationality)
The world is not falling apart: The trend lines reveal an increasingly peaceful period in history.: Steven Pinker argues we should look at trend lines rather than headlines.
(tags: statistics war politics violence world steven-pinker)
A Pasta Sea: Elijah and the Apologist of Baal: 1 Kings 18 re-imagined as if Baal had a William Lane Craig on his side. Fun times. “A Pasta Sea” is a good name for an ex-Christian blog, too.
(tags: bible apologetics ahab baal elijah funny parody)
A&E in crisis: a special report – Telegraph: “As the NHS faces its worst winter in years, Robert Colvile provides an in-depth, first-hand account of the pressures facing the health service.” Interesting: combination of people unable to see a GP quickly enough and hospitals unable to turf old people to social care quickly enough. Targets sometimes provide perverse incentives.
(tags: nhs health healthcare medicine hospital)
Free exchange: Nice work if you can get out | The Economist: Why the rich now have less leisure than the poor. Via WMC on FB.
(tags: leisure work economist)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

Stewart Lee: The Imaginary Liberal Comedy Cabal will crush the Ukips into dust | Stage | The Guardian: There is now a cabal.
(tags: ukip stewart-lee comedy humour funny politics cabal)
The Sixth Stage of Grief Is Retro-computing: Emulation of old computers and grief over the death of a friend who used them. Via Mefi.
(tags: emulation technology grief nostalgia)
When Women Stopped Coding : Planet Money : NPR: I remember seeing a photo of an old-ish computer surrounded by its programming team in the computing museum at Bletchley Park. Most of the team were women. This blog/podcast looks at what happened in the USA.
(tags: women coding computers feminism sexism technology)
Loyalty and Layoffs | Heart, Mind and Code: The corporation is not your friend.
(tags: employment loyalty career redundancy layoffs)
Loyalty and Trust | Heart, Mind and Code: A more temperate follow up to the “don’t be loyal to the corporation” one, distinguishing loyalty, trust and vulnerability.
(tags: employment layoffs trust vulnerability work loyalty)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

Are you paid to look busy?: Do people with useless jobs secretly resent those with useful ones?
(tags: jobs money management work employment)
Interview with the Game of Thrones linguist: There are a few Easter eggs in the Valyrian stuff. Fun.
(tags: television game-of-thrones language)
What’s the evidence on using rational argument to change people’s minds? : May 2014 : Contributoria – community funded, collaborative journalism: Are we rational or rationalising? Depends on the context.
(tags: psychology bias rationality argument persuasion logic)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

The Open-Office Trap : The New Yorker: Open offices are horrible. Shame I work in one at the moment.
(tags: office productivity work space)
Goodnight. Sleep Clean. – NYTimes.com: Sleep is for your cerebral fluid to clear away the accumulated junk. Maybe.
(tags: sleep insomnia brain neuroscience)
What is frame?: “My best definition is that its a social convention for how we hold our bodies so our partner knows where we are in space.” I like 619shepard’s comment because it’s less about modelling people as springs and more about how there are conventions which are taught (some of which will involve behaving like a mass on a spring some of the time, to be sure).
(tags: frame dancing lindy lindyhop reddit swing)
Bill Nye tests the benefits of swing dancing – latimes.com: Bill Nye the Science Guy is a swing dancer. He extols the virtues of dancing in a short interview.
(tags: bill-nye science lindy lindyhop dancing swing fitness)
RDFRS: Secular VIP of the Week: God on Facebook: The man who plays God on Facebook. I’ve already Liked the page: it’s funny to see him responding to religious people who get offended, usually with much more grace than they show him.
(tags: god facebook funny comedy)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

What Long Hours Really Mean | We Are Mammoth: Via Hacker News, where there’s the usual debate about all this. Previously I’ve read research which says you can get gains out of doing it for short bursts but must then rest: longer periods of overtime end up producing less, not more. This article is more about the cultural impact, though.
(tags: work programming hours overtime business productivity)
Questions to ask your potential employer | Hacker News: Linked to the Hacker News thread rather than the original post as the commenters at HN came up with some good additional ones.
(tags: work software jobs interview interviewing)
Lies, Damned Lies, And Facebook (Part 4 of ∞) | Slate Star Codex: Scott at Slate Start Codex points out that there’s no good evidence that those “Don’t be that guy” posters have reduced the incidence of rape.
(tags: society crime advertising posters rape statistics)

Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there. There are currently comments.

6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person | Cracked.com: The antitode to Nice Guy-ism, among other stuff. Via andrewducker.
(tags: psychology advice nice guy)
Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued | Kalzumeus Software: (tags: work jobs money negotiation salary)

Originally published at Name and Nature. Please leave any comments there.

deconversion | Black, White and Gray: Some Christian sociologists did some research into why people leave, by looking at 50 de-conversion "testimonies". Results: intellectual problems (hell, suffering, reliability of the Bible); God's failure to answer prayer; other Christians responding to doubt in trite or unhelpful ways. Contact with unbelievers wasn't often cited as a cause of de-conversion.
(tags: psychology de-conversion christianity religion sociology)
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave | Mother Jones: "My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine."
(tags: economics work warehouse poverty shopping shipping online amazon)
Why Richard Dawkins is still an atheist - Guest Voices - The Washington Post: Paula Kirby on the recent "Dawkins admits he's an agnostic!" stories following his debate with Cuddly Rowan Bear. "Religious commentators have become so excited at the thought of his conversion that I almost don’t have the heart to break it to them that he said nothing in Thursday’s discussion that he hadn’t already said six years ago in "The God Delusion""
(tags: the god delusion religion agnosticism paula-kirby richard-dawkins dawkins atheism)

When people ask why I have a problem with religion, it's hard to come up with a single answer... - Imgur: (tags: christianity islam religion)
Worrying developments for freedom of expression in the UK - Various - Various - RichardDawkins.net: "This thread combines a number of examples where atheists, humanists and/or secularists have been threatened or coerced into silence, both by Muslims and by institutions or other groups apparently subscribing to the view that 'If someone believes it, you must respect it'. All these examples have happened in the UK in the course of the last week or so. ... But the key thing to note in all these cases is that it is no longer just the religious who would inhibit our freedom of expression: increasingly, secular bodies are buying into this invidious idea too, all in the name of 'tolerance' or 'community relations' or 'respect'."

Fuck it, I'm joining the EDL.

Just kidding, I don't have the beer belly or the conviction for football hooliganism and I've never seen a "Muslamic raygun". Still, it is alarming to see these things happening in Britain. Who are the reasonable opposition? Can't leave something that important to the Nazis.
(tags: sharia speech freedom islamism uk islam)
Atheism isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship … with reality | Unreasonable Faith: A summary of blogged responses to that "I hate religion but love Jesus" video that's been doing the rounds. I made a comment at the bottom. Also good for the comment thread on Atheismo, the diety for atheists.
(tags: relationship with god video atheism religion)
Driscoll & Brierley on Women in Leadership « Cognitive Discopants: Well known complementarian and fan of big strong manly men, Mark Driscoll, recently did an interview with Justin Brierley of Premier Christian Radio. Driscoll came out with a few choice quotes about Christians in the UK (“guys in dresses preaching to grandmas”).

He then had a go at Brierley for going to a church run by a woman (Brierley's wife!) and not believing in penal substitutionary atonement and eternal conscious torment in Hell (Brierley is an annihilationist: we unsaved will be told off and then vapourised rather then being tortured forever). Fun times.
(tags: homosexuality premier christian radio complementarianism mark-driscoll religion church mark driscoll christianity women sexism markdriscoll)
The Rise of the New Groupthink - NYTimes.com: "Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.

But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption."
(tags: flow solitude groupthink team office work creativity)

A. J. Ayer to the rescue! « Measure of Doubt: Ayer vs Mike Tyson, apparently really happened. "A. J. Ayer is known for writing "Language, Truth, and Logic." Lesser known is his sequel, "Language, Truth, and Being a Friggin' Badass.""
(tags: philosophy a.j.-ayer positivism funny biography)
TSA Agent Threatens Woman With Defamation, Demands $500k For Calling Intrusive Search 'Rape' | Techdirt: A woman sexually assaulted by a Transport Security Agency employee is then threatened with a libel suit when she blogs about it. Thugs Standing Around, indeed. Her own lawyer writes an excellent letter in response. Note: contains a description of the assault.
(tags: privacy surveillance rape defamation tsa security transport)
What People Don't Get About My Job: From A(rmy Soldier) to Z(ookeeper) - Derek Thompson - Business - The Atlantic: "Tell us what people don't get or appreciate about your job. The response was so eloquent and overwhelming, it was practically encyclopedic.
So we made an encyclopedia. From A to Z, we went through your responses to find the best vocational essays for each letter."
(tags: work jobs)