modernista

That little 15 minute meeting forces a slacker to stand up in front of the rest of the team and clearly indicate that they either are or are not pulling their weight.

Which again assumes -- using the article's language -- that your team is overladen with idiot teenagers. And that management is so out of touch that it wouldn't have any other way of sussing these people out.

It took me a while to place my finger on why I never really loved everything about it, but I eventually decided that it felt like it was a façade to a management power grab.

Yup that's exactly it. Or to put it more delicately (than simply a "power grab"): a façade that servers various ulterior purposes -- from making their company seem hip and modern (to the uninformed) to simply being able to say "finally we have some structure!" even though it's very debatable whether new "structure" really brings the benefits that it claims to (and evidently brings many negatives on board with it).

But ultimately - a façade.

The article is about merchant and fishing ships.

Actually it was primarily about these ships as primary sources of plastic dumping in the ocean.

Not about the "ships" per se.

I wish it was easier for regular programmers to use advanced SQL features...

It's a fundamentally different way of thinking.

With imperative programming, the mindset is: "I have this certain outcome in mind. What is the sequence of steps I need to take to make it happen?"

In a relational database, the mindset you need to be in is: "How can I define the relational structure of my world (i.e. my data) so that I can get the outcomes I want - and end up saving a great deal of imperative programming effort in the longer run?"

Quite different. And yes, it takes a while to get used to.

Except that’s not improving the planet even a bit.

Arguably it raises awareness and the shard belief in at least the principle of individual responsibility. Against the overwhelming tide of the "Fuck it, I'll be dead before this shit starts to really come down on our heads anyway" which would otherwise be the reigning default.

Can you please reconcile this statement:

Dorian was technically a normal hurricane.

with the following

[The Labor Day Hurricane] was tied with Hurricane Dorian for the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane by maximum sustained winds, with winds of 185 mph (295 km/h) at landfall

Or if not, at lease please stop calling people "stupid" for bringing up Dorian as an indication that perhaps we should be concerned about increasing frequency of severe tropical storms?