I can't believe GitHub broke copy/paste for files in a pull request. Now when I highlight a few rows in a file they are unselected and a feedback comment box appears. That used to happen when you click and dragged file line numbers. Breaking find/replace in this way is unacceptable and surprising coming from GitHub.
> good luck getting a chicken to voluntarily eat much of it (and they'd probably get sick pretty often if they tried)
I've had a cold compost as a part of my backyard chicken coop for many years. All kitchen scraps, as well as all yard waste, ends up there. Moldy fruit, veggies, breads, literally everything including things like turkey carcass after Thanksgiving. I've never had a chicken get sick off it and the food scraps are quickly either consumed or dug into the pile, no rotting mess. Every spring I dig it all out for the garden. It works out great.
I've been thinking about how relief from the impacts of climate change will not be available for all. I was wondering if access to climate relief should be limited for people who denied climate change or supported climate change deniers. With past voting records, social media posts, etc, we should be able to figure that out for a large number of people. I think this would be very unpopular but if relief is limited how else do you decide? The only reason I became politically active 20 years ago was because of my concern about climate change and recognizing we needed leaders in place that would take appropriate action. That didn't happen in large part because of the types of people I debated against. Maybe those people shouldn't have the same access to relief as things get worse.
No one person will decide. The “market” will decide. The strong will be relieved and the weak will suffer. To get relief the weak should become strong. Unfortunately, suffering will make them weaker.
Are the currently strong going to keep the weak down, will the weak destroy the strong, will power be distributed to minimize the number of weak at the expense of the strong, or will something else entirely happen? My bet is that the strong have quite a lot longer to go getting stronger before the weak can enact meaningful change.
Also worth noting are that there is a large gap between, for example, the American weak and the global weak. The global weak will suffer more and have less avenues to enact change. Americans have the luxury of climate “debate” while Indonesia (not even a super poor country) moves its capital and while others suffer.
EDIT: To be clear, I think this situation is absolutely horrible. Based on how countries have been acting for the last couple decades though, I'm not expecting things to get better before they get much worse.
I've been thinking the same. The fact that this issue is still not overwhelmingly recognized as legitimate seems to imply that a lot more suffering might be required before anything meaningful happens. Problem is the longer we wait the more pointless any action becomes.
You have a somewhat justifiable position, but you lost me when you started talking about social media posts. In your proposed rationing of "climate relief" it shouldn't be focused on people's thoughts. It should, instead, focus on specific actions people have taken or not taken that directly impact the client.
I could see something like a carbon credit for individuals based on their actions that impact the climate such as limiting their power use, not driving their car frequently, or not having pets. This type of rationing also has problems, though, as it starts to become effectively limiting things to wealthy people who can afford a lifestyle in which they can use a car less frequently or own an energy-efficient home for example.
I don't think there is a reasonable way of rationing climate relief in a morally justifiable way.
Aren't social media posts a large driver of actions? Weren't they used very intentionally to misinform people on this issue? I believe social media (along with traditional media) is a large part of why we ended up where we did, with a large number of people still claiming this issue is a hoax when it very clearly is not.
That also happened in CA but if you already had solar panels you continue with the same rate for a while. Doesn't seem right to switch it for those already installed.
Doesn't seem right to limit it at all, new or already installed. In fact they should be quadrupling down on incentives for solar considering climate change.
If what you care about is climate change, single home rooftop solar is a _terrible_ investment. It's dramatically harder and more expensive to install relative to large installations. For the same exact dollar, you get nearly twice the installed capacity with large scale installations vs. home scale.
Why not both? With rooftop, you further accelerate the growth of renewables, and you get the benefit of not being beholden to regulatory capture and corrupt central authorities when they decide to do something stupid with the central power supply, and you also build up resilience in the grid with less single points of failure.
I'm not against rooftop solar. My parents have, what was, at the time of installation, the largest residential install in the state of CA. But rooftop solar is not a good use of resources for fighting climate change, which is what I was responding to.
I don't follow. How does it not help in the fight against climate change? It may be less effecient than central power but it still reduces emissions compared to fossil fuels, and it's not a zero sum game as it does not take away capacity from central power.
There is a disconnect for sure here - I said I agree that it may be inferior efficiency-wise. I also said that, nevertheless, it's still far better than fossil fuels. Both statements are true, and are not contradictory. It moves the needle in a positive direction on climate change which was my original statement. I never said anything about it being the best possible of all solutions. If you want to be pedantic, not using any power at all, and going back to an agrarian lifestyle is more efficient that centralized solar.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. There's no way that our governments are going to put all possible resources into a centralized renewable grid, so we should also incentivize private individuals to invest while we are waiting for our politicians and power companies to get on board.
I mean, if you want to waste your money, fine. The question is whether encouraging residential PV is good policy. I don't think it is in most cases (maybe if it allows homes to be totally disconnected from the grid, saving the cost of running lines out to them?)
This is great. Maybe one day we'll see action on timeshares. I got one a long time ago that was impossible to get rid of. Fully paid for, Westgate told me it had a lot of value so I told them to just take it back, but they would't of course. I ended up just stopping all payments, went through a few years of harassing calls, and then done, nothing more. Still haunts me though, I'm afraid it could come back up with outstanding balance owed.
My dad got a Westgate timeshare back in the '90s. I was there when he was conned. And even at the young age I knew the salesman was the sleeziest guy on Earth. He drove us around in their limo to impress us, showing us their property. The way he talked just felt slimy.
My mom recently told me they tried to book their week at the timeshare and were told they would have to pay $1,000 to do so. Because it's a premium week or whatever bullshit. It's absolutely insane this predatory company is allowed to continue. I'm going to be forced to deal with this fucking thing when he dies. That's the truly insane thing. It's treated as property, but it's not. It's a fucking subscription that you can't cancel. Ever. You own nothing.
By the way, depending on your state, you may have to officially file to not receive the timeshare and its obligations in your father's estate. And whoever is next in line to inherit has to do the same, on down the line until the state, I suppose.
Would love to see Westgate tell the state of Massachusetts that they are the legal owners of this timeshare, and owe for annual repairs.
I think it can. More scary though, when you die unless they take active action to refuse it, your kids or whoever your inheritance goes to gets it by default. With all the financial obligations.
Yeah, John Oliver just did a Last Week Tonight on Timeshares. He goes over that in the video. Also there are scam companies that exist that promise to take your money to help you exit your timeshare agreement, then disappear. So you get double-scammed. And somehow this is technically legal?
I was contacted by those people and others, both threatening and claiming to want to help. I had a suspicion they were all affiliated with the parent scam company Westgate and so never considered dealing with any of them. Maybe they weren't related to Westgate but good to keep in mind anyone in this space is not to be trusted.
You'd need to be careful about how you setup and run the corporation such that the veil can't be pierced. If a court got involved, I think they'd be nonplussed if the corporation was organized, acquired the property, and filed for bankruptcy within a couple of months.
Could this work? It could potentially help a very large number of people get out of these scams. Seems so obvious now that you point it out I imagine someone must've thought of this before.
I imagine the timeshare company has right of first refusal for transfers, or will be adding that to their contracts as soon as this is a thing.
Now, is it legal? Maybe, maybe not. But they will pretend it is until you take them to court, and they'll quickly settle if you agree not to tell anyone else.
A right of first refusal just means that they have the opportunity to buy the timeshare before you can sell it to anyone else. That would be a-ok for the customer, since either way the timeshare's off their hands.
You can, but there is specific paperwork you have to file and you have something like 90 days to do it. And then the next person in line has to, and the next.
Unless everyone is on the ball and actively refuses it, someone gets stuck with it.
I didn't read this as expecting simple answers to questions, but as the question being simple and instead of the person being asked giving a direct answer to that question, instead they give an answer to a tangential question.
I've worked with people who do this consistently. Know this I would try to formulate as simple and direct a question as I could, but always the answer would be to a tangential, often more basic question.
At first I thought maybe the person was being condescending, answering basic questions that weren't asked, that anyone in my position should know. Maybe he was, I still don't know, but I refused to "believe" that. It's tricky suspecting something but forcing yourself not to believe that thing, but it was very helpful in that I was prepared to get past the initial phase of him not answering the actual question without it being contentious at all.
I agree with OP, it does seem like a lot of people make no effort to communicate clearly.
I’ve been on the receiving end of people who want their question asked exactly as worded, cross-examination style, and it is not fun. I wonder if it is that?
If the other person doesn’t answer how you expected, then expect that, persist, be kind and be calm. Assume the best intents.
They might actually be saying dumb things to help themselves make sense.
Here might be an example:
You: Why is the test suite taking 30 minutes now?
Them: Did you run it last night?
(Because they know something about the system state last night and want to check if the implied unhappiness about the test run length might be due to that)
It's never a cross examination or contentious from my end.
One recent edited example:
My question: "I'm trying to investigate why a request is failing, I found it in aws, the logs for [service] contain a stack trace up to where the [microservice] request is made, logs are very sparse. Is there a way to get [microservice] stack trace?" [I included links to logs and relevant info]
His response is "Do you want a stack trace on every log? I assume dumping a stack trace is somewhat expensive (though I don't actually know if this is the case) so I would be hesitant to attach one to every log entry"
Did I ask to attach a stack trace to every log? I guided him through the original ask and did receive some help.
If this happened one time it wouldn't register, but his initial response here was very typical, something I got used to.
You explained clearly and respectfully with the background info what you need.
They came back with a question. An odd question. I suspect:
* They are not experienced
* They have been “punished” before because someone asked for “X, and common sense implies X,Y” but the requestor wanted “X,Z”. So they ask
dumb questions to be sure.
* Not enough coffee, and realtime conversation they didn’t parse what you said properly.
I would take the question with a sense of calm and not worry. It is a good think they are asking questions. Encourage dumb questions. 1% of the time they are smart questions.
As a senior dev it could be your time to shine with some mentoring:
“It would be fantastic to have a stack trace on every log, but I suspect this would cause performance problems and increase our log storage costs. It is sufficient to only have stack traces when an exception occurs”
I guess you said something like this at the time.
By the way stack trace logs where there are no exceptions are something I have done, but not every log.
Aside: A stack trace for every log almost sounds like a cool startup idea or monitoring product differentiator, as long as the UX is good and it doesn’t add noise.
Stack trace usually means a full stack trace. I've rarely seen one in production - it's usually for unhandled errors.
Usually it'll be a one line log which will point you to the point in code where it's erroring out.
Sounds like you just want the logs for the [microservice] for a particular failing request, and not the stack trace?
I'm genuinely surprised that a question about a particular failed request could be interpreted as a request to start logging stack traces for all requests. One reason for the surprise is I also believe it would be unreasonable to log the stack trace for every request.
I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, if my interpretation of something seems unreasonable I like to make sure there's not a more generous interpretation, and give the benefit of the doubt when possible.
Again it's about a pattern over time, not just one instance. I realize I'm consistently not being given the benefit of doubt so I work on my communication. It continues and I start to wonder if it's intentional. To answer your question in the other thread, it seems similar for some but not others.
I think some people form an initial impression of others and that impacts the communication going forward, probably not always intentional. I think also some people try to diminish others through public communication. I don't know if that is what I was experiencing but it could be the case, something to be aware of.
Wanted to add for context, this question wasn't directed to him specifically, was posted in a general channel. I don't want to sound paranoid but based on his pattern of responses it seemed like this type of immediate response in a public channel was intended to influence other's perspectives. I'm not into the office politics games but I am aware that people play them.
There are no shortage of such people - I've encountered a bunch. And yes, it's always a pain in the workplace. In my experience, this strategy:
> Know this I would try to formulate as simple and direct a question as I could, but always the answer would be to a tangential, often more basic question.
Always fails with them. At some point, you have to become humble enough to realize that your approach is flawed and look for alternative approaches.
Or just keep hammering away with the same question until you get an answer.
"What's 2+2"?
In response, the person explains how addition is.
"Okay, thanks for that context, but I don't think we ever actually got to the original question - what's 2+2?"
The person tells you a story about something cute their kid did when learning addition.
"Again, I think we're getting off track - can you please tell me what 2+2 is?"
If they continue long enough, you need to start cutting them off or addressing the issue more directly.
"I've asked four times what 2+2 is, and you've told me several stories about addition but haven't answered the question. Is there some reason you're not able to tell me what 2+2 is?"
Repeat until you either get an answer to the question or an explanation of why the person you're asking can't answer the question.
It's a workplace situation, and I think it's appropriate to say:
"I've asked four times what 2+2 is, and you've told me several stories about addition but haven't answered the question. Is there some reason you're not able to tell me what 2+2 is?"
In a party, perhaps not.
I've often phrased it as:
"I've asked four times what 2+2 is, and I still don't have an answer to that question. I'm afraid I cannot proceed with X until I know the answer to that question."
Often, though, I've found that simply putting the burden on the other party unblocks them. It shifts their mindset from "I need to answer a question" (which they think they did) to "I need to solve this problem" (which they realize they haven't).
It's absolutely appropriate in the workplace. I'm not going to be mean or snide, but if I'm asking you a reasonable question and you're not answering it, I'm going to be increasingly direct. If I need information from you to do my job, and you're withholding it from me, then you're the one acting inappropriately.
> but if I'm asking you a reasonable question and you're not answering it, I'm going to be increasingly direct.
And herein lies the flaw in your approach. It's reasonable to be annoyed that you're not getting the answer, but it doesn't mean your approach is helping you get there. It's the equivalent of "If someone doesn't understand me, I'm going to shout even louder" or "I'm going to use the same words, but speak even slower".
There's no good reason to think that more directness is more effective.
I was going to say something similar, I feel very much like OP, and also didn't get married to combat that kind of feeling, but I now have my family to focus on and fill that kind of void. I love being alone but also realize it would be too much without family, especially with wfh now.
I've been gardening for a while but still try to do this. I plant more than I want in a variety of locations and conditions. I usually end up harvesting more than I need but still get upset when any one plant doesn't succeed.
I’ve been composing for years without turning and without the stinky issue. My compost is connected to the chicken coop, they always have full access to the compost, maybe that has something to do with it.
All year I add everything, yard and kitchen waste, without turning. I stop adding beginning of spring, towards end of spring I dig it out for the garden. Easiest method of composting I’ve come up with, no fuss, great soil.
Just wanted to put out there there’s an easier way to compost.
