Seconded, Conspirituality is one of my favorite podcasts! I always find the hosts to be extremely reasonable and thoughtful, and I think the topics they cover are unique and important.

“I’m doing my part!”

“bullshit jobs” by David Graeber

I read a book a while back about the real life of the author of little house on the prairie (it’s called “prairie fires”) - her books really sugarcoat how hard life was - even people who knew how to live off the land had a really hard time

They are so perfect 🥲

I agree - I loved art in high school and really wanted to be an illustrator. But I graduated in 08 (recession) and I didn’t have the confidence to try to make it as a freelancer or whatever.

I ended up choosing a really boring path in office work because I just wanted to make sure I was inside at a computer while I was working. At first it was so depressing - I had built my identity around my artwork. But I eventually found a new field that I loved and transitioned into that thanks to skills and resources from my boring office experience - I’m really happy with it all today and don’t regret anything.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve found happiness/success by disconnecting my identity from my occupation and focusing on the work environment I want instead of the content of the work.

I agree that the article is not the greatest but it does explain a bit:

Last week, the Clean Budget Coalition – a group of non-profits such as the League of Conservation Voters, Environmental Defense Fund and Public Citizen – identified at least 17 of these “climate poison pills” in appropriation bill drafts. Among them are amendments that would prevent the federal government from purchasing electric vehicles or building EV charging stations; block funding for the Green Climate Fund, which helps developing countries meet their climate goals under the Paris agreement; and prohibit funding for a Department of Energy initiative aiming to send 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments to flow to disadvantaged communities.

It sounds like they 1) don’t want to support funding anything that hurts the fossil fuel industry or makes us use less oil and 2) don’t want to give free climate change mitigation help that goes to communities (instead of business or at all? I don’t know). When you put yourself in the mind of someone who doesn’t believe humans cause climate change and gets huge amounts of lobbying money from the fossil fuel industry, it makes sense.

sickos_yes.jpg

Whoa 😳 genuine TIL for me!!

“Well there’s your problem”, about engineering disasters - it’s also a YouTube channel but there are podcast feeds and it works as audio (that’s how I listen). Also “Know your enemy” is a leftist look at the right.

Here are some from a text file I keep around for these purposes:

• What has your team been working on recently? What new changes have you shipped in the last six months?
• What is the biggest difficulty your team is facing right now?
• How long has the team existed and how long have you been managing it?
• Is the team all remote? Are you?
• How long does it take for code to be deployed after being committed?
• How often do team members move teams?
• What kinds of (soft or hard) skills do you need most on the team right now?
• Do you have a defined onboarding process?
• How long does it take for people to get up to speed as new hires? How much would a new hire be doing in six months?
• Does the team maintain deployment infrastructure? Production infrastructure? Is there an on-call rotation?
• What does your planning cycle look like? Scrum? Kanban? Meetings?
• What’s one thing you would change or improve on the team if you could snap your fingers?
• What would you like to be doing less and more of on your team?
• How does the product representative interact with the eng team?
• Do you have a career ladder, with levels, and expectations at each of the level defined?
• What is your performance review cycle like? 1:1s?

An underrated aspect of dresses (IMO) is that it’s all one garment - no deciding which shirt goes with which pants - it’s all one thing. Of course you still need to choose other things like shoes, but it feels refreshingly simple to just have one garment. I guess you get the same benefit with jumpsuits but people wear those less.