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nazca

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As someone who was not born in the US, but went to university and works here, the college admissions process is just totally bonkers.

It seems to drive outcomes that are the opposite of the stated objective.

To think that you can admit a more well-rounded student body by getting them to write essays is ludicrous in the age of essay & admissions consultants.

Just eliminate any legacy preference. Use standardized tests that are worthwhile. If that doesn't give you an equitable mixture of students, then add pre-admission programs targeted at prepping underprivileged kids.

I have hunting dogs that will pickup hundreds of ticks if not protected. I use Bravcto (Fluralaner) on them now, which is extremely effective. Hopefully lotilaner is similar with humans.

Most of the older generation of anti-tick meds have pretty substantial side effects and poor efficacy.

I'm glad our century+ of gross mismanaging our forests is getting more press. But I think we're still fighting deeply entrenched mindsets that fire is always bad. Across the west, our forests are fire-adapted and need to burn to be healthy, but we're still suppressing most fire and not doing nearly enough prescribed burning.

We're also up against a century of planting trees at 2x natural density after logging. Logging can be a useful management tool, but if we plant 2 trees for everyone we cut we're not building healthy forests, and we're just increasing fuel loads.

Meanwhile, climate change gets most of the press. Yes it is a contributing issue, but it's unfortunately being used to absolve the forest managers of accountability.

A good read is "The Big Burn" by Timothy Egan. It details how at its founding, the Forest Service knew the fire suppression regime they were creating was unhealthy. But it was the only politically possible path for them at the time.

I do the same. In addition to the security and privacy benefits, the traceability have been helpful. Years ago my Netflix account was hacked, and they refused to believe it was on their end. They were sure someone had accessed my email. I was not able to convince them that netflix@myserver.com was not a thing you could log into. But having a unique email was one of the clues that led me to be confident that my email had not been hacked, and it must have been something purely on the netflix side.

David Marcus is perhaps the poster child for failing up. He started a mobile payments company that was acquired by PayPal. The product was later discontinued and generated no value for PayPal.

He ended up as the PayPal CEO. IMHO as a PP employee at the time, he was clearly out of his depth in that job. It was abundantly clear he did not have the toolkit to run a large complex business. He then left abruptly to join facebook.

At Facebook he started this thing that did nothing but burn money and generate negative headlines.

If there was a metric that was the value created for the companies you work for vs. the money you personally earned I think his would be an outlier.

There has been such a dramatic increase in comp in the tech industry recently. But it seems that is only realized through switching companies. I know for the company I'm at offers to external candidates have had to keep pace with the market, but we haven't had the budgets to increase the existing employee base. So new people typically make ~25%++ more than good tenured people.

This seems like the fundamentally don't understand the challenges of working remote & not being collocated with colleagues.

I don't need to see a 3D avatar of colleagues. I don't need to see that avatar stand up and walk around.

Mainly what I'm missing is being able to better see those subtle emotional cues & the ability to build deeper relationships. Both of which I think our brains & office norms are catching up to after 18 months of zoom meetings.

Damore was asked for his feedback on Google's diversity policies, and that's exactly what he provided.

Most of Damore's critics haven't actually read his memo[1], but rather formed an opinion based on the character assassination campaign against him, a campaign his employer publicly sided with.

I completely agree, but in a corporate setting one can be truthful, accurate, have good intent, and yet still be tone deaf and insensitive. The bar for insensitive is very low in this context.

I think with a fair and honest reading of his letter & the context that it came up in, its clear that he was trying to contribute in a positive way to the discussion & effort.

This is why the inconsistency between these two cases is so remarkable. Antisemitism, even if from years ago, and not related to company business, is pretty damning (esp for someone leading D&I efforts). Meanwhile, an attempt, albeit executed in a politically naive way, to positively contribute to a discussion led to a firing & character assassination.

Slightly shocking that he didn't get fired. (yet?)

They fired Damore for writing an email that was tone-deaf, insensitive, but largely supported by research. Bobb goes on a clearly antisemitic rant, and just gets reassigned.

Is Google inconsistent, or has their policy on how to deal with these things changed over the past few years?

Looks interesting. A few initial reactions: 1) I'm assuming I won't be able to use this with my enterprise email? Even if my admin doesn't block my calendar sharing, it seems like I'd be running afoul of our rules by sending notes to some unknown platform.

2) um, what's the name? Is it personal CRM? (that doesn't appear in big font anywhere). nat.app? (I only see that in the url and email addresses). something else?

I've given glucosamine to my dogs for years, and I can clearly notice a difference in their joint health and how stiff and sore they are after long runs ('long-run': 15-25 miles, measured on GPS collars). When I run out of glucosamine, or just drop off of giving it to them for whatever reason, I see them fall back pretty quickly. And when I restart them on it, I notice a response in a few days.

I also give give them fish oil pills, but I've never been able to notice a difference.

No love for the corporate stalwart waterfall chart. I'm not sure why, but it is often ignored or despised by people who geek out on data viz.

I agree, and Quora is also my top of mind reference for creepy personalization. Click on one click-baity article and then get spammed continually about related questions.

I cringe when I see lede's like this. It further reinforces the general perception of logging = evil.

The reality is that our forested ecosystems in north america need fire to be healthy. But we've built homes & towns in areas that need fire, effectively tying our hands. So, we actually need to be logging more rather than less in order to compensate for a natural amount of fire.

Sure, we could be doing less clear cutting and more shelterwood harvests & thinning. But generally logging is now an essential tool for us to manage forest & ecosystem health.

(Is she doing biology-specific work? or more general analytics? My response below is for the later. I know nothing about the life science industry, but I have employed several people with similar phds.)

I run a data science/analytics team at a large us-based tech company, so I'm on the buy-side of this. The bulk of contract work in the industry is run through staffing companies that market themselves as 'consulting' companies.

As a hiring manager, it's just too much of a hassle for me to individually source a good contractor. These staffing companies provide some level of screening & sourcing to make it easier for me.

However, if she really wants to try to contract directly... I would recommend searching linkedin for ~directors of analytics and data science at companies in the area/industry she's focused on. and then just ping them directly. I would guess the response rate would be in the 5-10% range, and then only a small fraction will convert to an actual contract.

Someone else mentioned it, but don't do this on an hourly basis. Daily or monthly.

The number of views on this video shows there is a market need for a solution to porch pirates.

Also, car prowling.

As the guy points out in the video, cops do. not. care.