Do you prefer video on or video off for remote meetings?
I prefer video on but I would not demand it. And I don’t even tell colleagues I prefer video on because I don’t want to pressure anyone.
If most people’s videos are on, I turn mine on—and vice versa. It’s an etiquette dance I find mildly annoying, like when you see someone you haven’t seen in a long time and you have to choose between a handshake and a hug.
I’ve been WFH for literally decades. When I’m WFH, T-shirts and sweatshirts are appropriate attire for almost all meetings. Sometimes, when I’m introduced to a new client, I’ll throw on my “Zoom shirt,” a blue Oxford button-down otherwise thrown over a chair in my home office.
Early in the Zoom era, I wondered why many folks wore hats on meetings. And then I realized: They were working from home, didn’t comb their hair, and still had bedhead. This is not usually an issue for me—I’m half-bald and have my remaining hair in a Generic Middle-Aged White Dude Buzzcut.
The White Castle System of Eating Houses [99percentinvisible.org]. White Castle, founded more than a century ago in Wichita, Kansas, invented the American system of fast food.
Why Do So Many Coffee Shops Look the Same?
On the Decoder Ring podcast, host Willa Paskin interviews writer Kyle Chayka, author of “Filterworld: How Algorithms Are Flattening Culture.” He discusses how the Instagram algorithm has made public spaces more generic and we have come to prefer those spaces.
In today’s episode, Kyle’s going to walk us through the recent history of the cafe, to help us see how digital behavior is altering a physical space hundreds of years older than the internet itself, and how those changes are happening everywhere–it’s just easier to see them when they’re spelled out in latte art.
Adolfo Ochagavía is an “undercover generalist." [ochagavia.nl] To find work as a generalist, he says, you need to present yourself as a specialist.
I have found this to be true. Don’t tell people you can do anything. People don’t need “anything”—they have specific problems that need to be solved. Later, when they learn to trust you, you can branch out with more general work.
The Cult of AI. Writer Robert Evans returns from CES in January with a “sinking feeling” about the “unhinged messianic fervor” surrounding AI. [rollingstone.com]
I just got off the phone with AT&T customer service.
Years ago, I accidentally slammed a car door on my fingers.
The two experiences were extremely similar.
Sleep is weird and magic.
We sleep more than we do anything else.
We spend a third of our lives in a state of death, much of that time dreaming, wandering around in a spirit world. Much of that dreamtime we are not even ourselves.
Then we wake up and spend the rest of our lives pretending we live in a rational universe that makes sense.
I walk across the deck between my office and the kitchen a million times a day, and sometimes, when I leave the kitchen, Minnie is lying outside my office door. She clearly wants something, but I have never been able to figure out what it is.
Into my office with me? No. Pats? She’s fine with pats, but that’s not what she really wants.
I go inside and close the office door with her outside, and she clearly looks disappointed.
I finally figured it out just now: She wants me to go back to the kitchen and let her in. So I did.
I wish she’d give me a treat when she has successfully trained me in a behavior.
I cannot be arsed to keep up with culture wars bullshit now. Like, there is a young woman named Sydney Sweeney who is I guess famous for something and is super-attractive and hot and she wore a low-cut gown on TV and this killed wokeness?
Also, the Congresswoman who gave the Republican rebuttal to the State of the Union is a Stepford Wife and she made up a story about sex trafficking in the US under Biden that actually happened in Mexico 20+ years ago?
I’ve seen articles pointing out exactly where the Royal Family photos were clumsily edited, and I still don’t see the problems. I guess I just have a bad eye for that kind of thing.
Today I learned that if you spill a nearly full cup of fresh hot coffee on your lap, it doesn’t hurt a lot and doesn’t leave a stain but the pants take a surprisingly long time to dry.
Profile of Steve Nikoui, the Gold Star father arrested for protesting at the State of the Union last week. [timesofsandiego.com] — Nikoui’s son, “Camp Pendleton Marine Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, [was] one of the 13 service members killed near the airport in Kabul during the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
“He was born the same year [the war] started, and ended his life with the end of this war,” the elder Nikoui has said. Nikoui has said Biden used the slain Marine as a publicity pawn.
Heartbreaking what this man has gone through.
Cory Doctorow: Palantir is looting the UK’s National Health Service, under cover of the Big Lie: “There is no alternative.” [pluralistic.net]
Five ways Israelis have changed, after 5 months of war. [kpbs.org] — Israelis believe the world has turned its back on them. They have no sympathy for Palestinian suffering; they believe the Palestinians want to kill every Israeli, and that there is no potential partner for peace among the Palestinian people. Israelis are preparing for a longer and harder war with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Horrible as this war has been so far, I fear it’s just getting started.
I loved all five of Frank Herbert’s Dune books and enjoyed the first Villeneuve movie, but I can’t get motivated to see Dune 2 in theaters.
First, I would need to rewatch the first Villeneuve movie, which I am not particularly in the mood for. Then, I’d need to sit for nearly three hours for the second movie.
What happened to intermissions? Really long movies used to have intermissions. Bring back intermissions!
Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans kpbs.org
I like my windows the way I like them
Many people have multiple overlapping application windows open on their screens while working. But I’ve always maximized whatever window I’m working in.
When I need to have two windows open, I tile them vertically, with no overlapping pixels. I rarely need more than two windows open onscreen at the same time.
I use a 27” external display for my Macbook. The 27” display is my primary display. I keep the Macbook open next to it. Sometimes I’ll throw an application window over to the Macbook.
I use Cmd-Tab a million times a day to move between applications and windows. Sometimes, rather than tiling windows, I just Cmd-Tab rapidly between them.
I’m always interested in hearing how other people work.
(I’m fine with food touching on my plate, but I eat one course at a time, finish one course, then move on to the next. Main course, then veggie. If there’s a potato course, it’s main course, then potatoes, then veggie.)