Scree – Page 298 – Craig Constantine

Programming sucks →

Published December 20, 2014 · All posts on Dec 20 · Internet Tech

Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: “Bro,1 you don’t work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver.”

System administration sucks too:

… And if these people stop, the world burns. Most people don’t even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn’t make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants.
~ Peter Welch from, Programming Sucks

Elsewhere, this is 4usipo1. — slipbox

hear! hear!

The continuum of aggression →

Published December 18, 2014 · All posts on Dec 18

Men look at Elliot Rodger and say, “I would never do something like that.” Women look at his victims and say, “That could totally happen to me.”
~ Doug Muder from, #YesAllWomen and the Continuum of Aggression

Elsewhere, this is 4uweye1. — slipbox

The realization that men and women fundamentally think about, and understand, aggression differently, is probably the single most “wait wat?” moment that I had in 2014.

Seriously.

My brain — and that of every guy I’ve asked — has different categories of violence; Murder is a “no way, no how, would I murder a woman” category. But every woman I’ve asked has “aggression” organized into one big continuum. Rhetorical: Does that strike you as a huge difference in the way men and women view the world? Does is perhaps suggest something about how the male half of the species treats the female half?

Confirmation bias →

Published December 17, 2014 · All posts on Dec 17 · Thought and Philosophy

If you are thinking about buying a new car, you suddenly see people driving them all over the roads. If you just ended a long-time relationship, every song you hear seems to be written about love. If you are having a baby, you start to see them everywhere.
Confirmation bias is seeing the world through a filter, thinking selectively.
The examples above are a sort of passive version of the phenomenon. The real trouble begins when confirmation bias distorts your active pursuit of facts.
~ David McRaney from, Confirmation Bias

Elsewhere, this is 4uyoco2. — slipbox

Do you want to be someone or do something? →

Published December 16, 2014 · All posts on Dec 16

There comes a point in every man’s life where he must decide if he will strive to be somebody important, or if he will work to do something important. Sometimes these pursuits go hand-in-hand; often they do not.
Research has shown time and time again that kids of our modern age aspire for what’s perceived as a more glamorous life than one of service and lasting legacy. In fact, the top three career aspirations of today’s 5- to 11-year-olds are sports star, music star, and actor. Just 25 years ago, that same survey turned up teacher, doctor, and banker.
~ Brett McKay from, John Boyd’s Roll Call

Elsewhere, this is 4uaojo1. — slipbox

Preemptive: About the movie Tracers →

Published December 14, 2014 · All posts on Dec 14 · Parkour

Preemptive: To all my friends. Yes, I know about the movie “Tracers”. No, I have nothing nice to say about it. Imagine Hollywood used a generic formula to paste your favorite thing onto the big screen; Do you think you would enjoy it? Right. It pretty much highlights all the negative aspects of Parkour, and casts Parkour in a bad light. (That’s just my opinion of course.)

Selling Out →

Published December 14, 2014 · All posts on Dec 14 · Thought and Philosophy

If you think you can buy your way to individuality, well, you are not so smart.
Since the 1940s, when capitalism and marketing married psychology and public relations, the market has been getting much better and more efficient at offering you something to purchase no matter your taste.
~ David McRaney from, Selling Out

Elsewhere, this is 4uyose2. — slipbox

Infrastructure, suburbs, and the long descent to ferguson →

Published December 12, 2014 · All posts on Dec 12 · Thought and Philosophy, Books

The short version is that as the climate degrades and fossil fuels become simultaneously more expensive and less useable, each generation inherits from its more prosperous ancestors an infrastructure that it can’t afford to maintain. Society muddles through from year to year — sometimes even seeming to advance — until some part of that poorly maintained infrastructure snaps and causes major destruction. The destroyed area may get rebuilt, but not to its previous level. The resulting community has less infrastructure to maintain, but is also less prosperous, and so the cycle continues into the next generation.
~ Doug Muder from, Infrastructure, Suburbs, and the Long Descent to Ferguson

Elsewhere, this is 4uweia1. — slipbox

He draws heavily from John Michael Greer’s The Long Descent.

How To Live on 24 Hours a Day →

Published December 11, 2014 · All posts on Dec 11 · Books, Motivation, My Journey

This entry is part 9 of 72 in the series My Journey

As you look back on the year that has just past, do you feel as though you spent another 12 months merely existing instead of truly living? Do you often go to bed at night with an anxious, sinking feeling that you wasted away another precious day of your limited time here on earth? One of my all-time favorite old books addressed this very concern better than anything else I’ve ever read.
~ Brett McKay from, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

Elsewhere, this is 4uaoho3. — slipbox

104 years old, still readable, and totally apropos of our lives today.

DevOps →

Published December 10, 2014 · All posts on Dec 10

It’s been said by a number of smart people that DevOps is largely founded in an organization’s skillful collaboration and communication, and the culture that results. I agree with that idea, and I also think that it’s one of the reasons why the term DevOps is sometimes difficult to explain, because these are ‘soft’ skills we’re talking about. These aren’t things you can graph or alert on, they only manifest in the resulting product and environment.
~ John Allspaw from, DevOps

Elsewhere, this is 4uaide2. — slipbox

What is Character? →

Published December 8, 2014 · All posts on Dec 8

Character. Like honor, it’s a word we take for granted and probably have an affinity for, but likely have never really had to define and may struggle to do so when pressed. It’s a word most men desire to have ascribed to them, and yet the standards of its attainment remain rather vague in our modern age.
~ Brett McKay from, What Is Character? Its 3 True Qualities and How to Develop It

Elsewhere, this is 4uaowa3. — slipbox