zjs

Evil Wordle: "caver". I won after 6 guesses

  Y____
  YY___
  _____
  _G_GG
  GG_GG
  GGGGG

I requested my report using the link in the OP. The only place Equifax could have gotten this information, with this granularity, is my employer. It's not just a ballpark number or anything like that; it's detailed salary information for the last 10 years, broken down by category (salary, bonus, equity). For the past year, they have granular information for each pay period, including both gross and net.

At least in my case, the number/email they were willing to send a one-time passcode to were the ones I gave to my employer, not the ones I had entered earlier in the form.

Related: the idea of income pooling schemes amongst baseball players.

"Income pooling is a concept for up and coming baseball players who would come together and contractually agree to contribute a small portion of their future earnings to the shared group. As their careers progress, even if only one person from that pool “makes it big,” everyone in that pool would receive a certain percentage of the income, thus creating a safety net for the rest of the players, ..." ([Forbes])

"Nobody has to pay a cent until they've made it to the majors and they've made $1.6 million. Then that guy has to kick 10% of his salary back to his pool mates." ([NPR])

[Forbes]:https://www.forbes.com/sites/igorbosilkovski/2020/06/26/meet...

[NPR]:https://www.npr.org/2019/10/25/773532516/some-baseball-playe...

As a data point: I pay Google $5/month to accomplish essentially the same thing.

I pay for Google Workspace, have a handful of domains configured, a single "real" user account and a catch-all rule that forward all mail to that real account.

Other than inertia and pricing (I have >10 domains, so I'd fall in the enterprise tier), there's one key feature that keeps me from switching: I can set up custom routing rules.

For example, when I RSVP'd for a wedding last year with a plus one, I set up a custom rule for that alias so that my plus one also got any updates.

I suspect you could build a significantly better UX around that, where someone could link additional recipients to an alias with some sort of special reply to the email, see that those other recipients are included when receiving messages (as a reminder they're "linked" to the alias), etc. I'm probably over thinking it, but I'd love to be able to somehow react to an email with "+friend@example.com for 2 hours". (Example use case: you place a food delivery order for a group of friends and want them all to get the rest of the confirmation emails until the meal is actually delivered.)

Random ideas:

It'd be interesting to have an easy way to "bind" aliases to a domain/sender. Most of the time when I invent a new alias, I only expect it to be used by whoever sends the first message to it.

It'd also be interesting to be able to have a "snooze" feature for an alias. I use this a lot on social media (e.g., Facebook makes it easy to say "don't show me anything from this person for 30 days") when I don't want to totally unfollow someone. I think I'd do that with some merchants' emails.

Maybe these could take the form of message headers that get added? That way, it's easy to configure a client-side skip-the-inbox rule (or mark it as low priority or whatever), so it's not in your face, while ensuring you can still search for stuff you think you might have missed.

I always appreciate alternatives to using an arithmetic mean.

I haven't had success with no meeting days because it just leads to cramming more meetings into the other days that week.

I suspect this would be less of a problem with a no meeting week.

I wonder though how broad it needs to be to work — can a single team do this successfully, or does it need to be coordinated across an entire organization?

The PDF linked from the post clarifies the rule for PA: "Wearing a t-shirt or button supporting a candidate, campaign, or political party (except voters in the act of voting)"

(Other jurisdictions may have other rules, of course)

One of my favorite benefits was the ability to take a 3 month paid pseudo-sabbatical.

You had to spend the time doing some sort of work, but it's flexible. It could helping another team out (intern style), focusing on a useful side project, taking a trial run at a new role (or just walking a mile in someone else's shoes), or volunteering with a non-profit ("technology pro bono").

You needed 5 years of tenure to qualify (it's not an annual thing). I think the bar is a little too high, but I understand the intent – looking forward to it was definitely a source of motivation and factor in retention during my fourth year.

Let's try this differently: what would you accept as evidence that they are extremists? What evidence can you cite that they are not?

That doesn't mean he's some secret conspiratorial white supremacist talking in code.

...

But it's equally reprehensible to have a crowd on the sidelines chomping at the bit to exaggerate, fabricate or concoct stories, simply because they don't like someone.

I'm confused. Where in this comment chain does what you describe seem to be happening? The closest I can find is the great-great-great-great grandparent, which states “The guy had armies of white supremacist supporters and advisers. He told right-wing extremists to “stand by” on national TV.”

From my perspective, the key here is that right-wing extremists interpreted his words as code — and he refused to correct that interpretation. From the point of view of the extremists, it was intentional, and that's enough to embolden them.

Even though it was likely the result of a mistake and stubbornness, it was damaging to the country and the impacts are worth acknowledging.

At this risk of taking a bit of a tangent: it's not as if this is the only time his carelessness with his words and stubbornness to correct the way they were interpreted caused problems. In those cases too, we need to acknowledge both the cause and the effect. Accidentally causing damage and intentionally causing damage are distinct problems, but they're both problems — especially when you're the leader of a country.

Very cool! Some simple feature ideas:

It'd be interesting to be able to use size or color to indicate additional dimension(s). I like to measure “return” in terms of impact/urgency and “investment” in terms of cost/complexity, and then maximize “ROI” instead of just maximizing “return”.

The ability to sequence things seems to be the biggest thing you lose with the no-list representation, but I think that's easy to fix: let the user add “edges” between “nodes” to indicate dependencies.

It’s the constant moving of the goal posts and redefinitions. > Is the argument that Trump is racist or right wing? They aren’t the same.

I see three points in the "grandparent" comment:

1. “The guy had armies of white supremacist supporters and advisers.”

2. “He told right-wing extremists to “stand by” on national TV.”

3. “Every time you gloss over this, you give a pass to it and to those who knew about it and supported him anyway.”

I would consider these the arguments being discussed in this comment tree, not "Trump is racist" or "Trump is ... right wing".

You can argue Proud Boys are right wing if viewing it in relation to Antifa for instance, but they aren’t racists. They are pretty diverse as a group, they just may not hold your values.

I don't think that even the proud boys would dispute a label of "right wing".

I don't really know how to respond to the claim that they aren't racists. Gavin McInnes is on the record with NBC in 2017 as saying "I’m not a fan of Islam. I think it’s fair to call me Islamophobic." and Islamophobia is anti-Muslim racism.

More recently, Enrique Tarrio has said they're not racist, but they've just gotten more careful with how they express their racism; they use dog whistles and veiled references.

If you look through archives of their early 2019-era merch store, you'll see things like multiple versions of the "Honkler" incarnation of Pepe the Frog — commonly used as a neo-nazi dog whistle, a picture of a black silhouette with the caption "Don't monkey this up, America!" — a reference to the racial slur that Ron DeSantis experienced backlash for using in late 2018, references to lynching, references to QAnon, and a joke about Muhammad being a Pedophile. (You'll also find a pile of sexist and transphobic content.)

KKK and Neo Nazis are not right wing, but they are very racist.

From the wikipedia page on Neo-Nazism: "Neo-Nazism is considered a particular form of far-right politics and right-wing extremism." (citing: https://www.verfassungsschutz.de/en/fields-of-work/right-win...)

The next day, he was asked point-blank by reporters what he meant and whether he misspoke. His response was to:

1. Say that he didn't know who the Proud Boys are. Even the most generous interpretation of this doesn't look good. He was asked to denounce them during the debate and either (a) attempted to do so (fumbling the response) without knowing who they were or (b) it was an intentional dodge — and either way, he didn't follow up with his staff to learn more.

2. Say that they need to "stand down" and "let law enforcement do their work", but not condemn them (i.e., still fall short of the ask during the debate, when given a chance to correct the fumbled response).

3. Dodge an explicit question about whether he misspoke when he said "stand by" (again, failing to fully correct the fumbled response).

4. Continue to shift away from criticism of right-wing groups to left-wing groups.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...

Painting it as some siren call for white supremacist supporters to rise up and take the nation by force is just as disingenuous and hypocritical as Trump himself.

When right-wing groups interpret it as a siren call and he fails to unequivocally correct that interpretation, it's not disingenuous to be concerned.

I'd be more willing to let is slide as a slip up if not for the surrounding context — both during the debate, and during the days following.

The whole premise of the question (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIHhB1ZMV_o) was his criticism of Biden for not specifically calling out antifa and other left-wing extremist groups, and whether he'd be willing to "condemn white supremacists and militia groups" and "say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence".

Mistake or not, he didn't condemn the proud boys during the debate. If it was his intent to do so, when it became clear that large portions of the country misunderstood his remarks — including the proud boys themselves — he should have clearly communicated his intended message, instead of dodging questions about his remarks for 2 days. (See, e.g., https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...)

Could you provide some sort of source or citation for this? The Southern Poverty Law Center, Anti-Defamation League, and FBI all seem to consider them extremist.

Progressives seem to believe that Western = white, and that is how they make the leap to white supremacy in this context.

I'll note that my comment did not directly link proud boys to "white supremacy". Instead, I (and the comment I replied to) used "right-wing extremists". I think that's an accurate description that does not require an assumption that "Western = white".

Please say more about the point you're making. On the surface, it's not clear how it relates to anything I said in the comment to which you've replied.

Those networks must limit themselves to neutrally reporting the news and let the people make up their minds.

Impartial coverage is important, but neutral reporting is dangerous. Good journalism requires analyzing evidence, not treating all opposing views as equal (false balance).

When evidence is clear (such as in the case of the safety of vaccinations, the role humans play in climate change, etc.), "neutral reporting" can be misleading or even damaging.

It's the responsibility of journalists to help their audience understand view points, but that doesn't require giving them equal weight.

For example, in the case of vaccinations it's important to acknowledge that vaccinations were at one point believed to be linked to developmental disorders, that the study which did so has been debunked, and that the consensus of the medical community is now clear: there is no link between vaccines and autism.

The same holds true in the context of an election. For example, journalists should be (and, in many case, are) explaining that while some believe that votes were cast or counted illegally, no evidence of this has been presented. While it appeared that Biden "took the lead" after election day, this was an illusion resulting from the way in which the Republican legislatures in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania caused votes to be counted: they did not allow counting of mail ballots to begin earlier, despite knowing that record numbers would be received this year, and despite knowing that mail ballots would favor Democrats. While convincing reasons were presented for these decisions, such as earlier counting posing problems for volunteer election inspectors, it had predictable effects on the time period over votes were tallied and it is disingenuous for Trump to refer to these as "surprise ballot dumps" and either willfully ignorant or intentionally misleading for him to attempt to claim victory on election night before these ballots had been counted.

It's been a constant stream of catastrophizing from them for the last four years.

I've looked at a few definitions, and I don't see how it's an accurate description of what's happening here.

For example: “Catastrophizing is a cognitive distortion that prompts people to jump to the worst possible conclusion, usually with very limited information or objective reason to despair. When a situation is upsetting, but not necessarily catastrophic, they still feel like they are in the midst of a crisis.” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/catastrophizing)

We have experienced “great damage or suffering” (i.e., catastrophes), not merely upsetting situations. The media hasn't been catastrophizing; they've been reporting about catastrophes.

Trump will challenge the election results in court and succeed or fail. It's as simple as that. Personally, I hope it's a failure because I don't want there to have been any impropriety. If that's the case, Trump is done. There is no fascism. There is no dictator.

It's not “as simple as that.”

He's made baseless claims about the security of mail-based voting, suggested that shifts in tallies are the results of illegal votes — instead of a predictable effect of preventing counties from tallying ballots until election day, and clearly and unequivocally claimed that he has won the election and that any other outcome must be a result of fraud.

Working to create the appearance of fraud and then pointing to the situation as evidence is problematic, even if it is not ultimately successful.

Which part of the statement are you disputing? That he didn't say "stand by"? That the proud boys aren't right-wing extremists? That the meaning of "stand by" was somehow misconstrued?

For what it's worth, here's how the proud boys interpreted the comment: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/us/trump-proud-boys-biden...

From my perspective, the two things that people mix up are: A. Russia interfering with the election. B. Trump welcoming Russia's interference.

For me, (B) is significant regardless of whether the interference was impactful — and bringing up (B) in response to (A) does not seem disingenuous.

The other is that the fsb was so wildly successful at it they changes the result of the 2016 election.

Do you have examples of people believing this?

There's some thoughtful analysis of the proposition from SPUR: https://www.spur.org/voter-guide/san-francisco-2020-11/prop-...

I suspect this varies widely from person-to-person, but I'll share things that I find effective.

1. Create space for thinking.

Block off chunks of time. Snooze notifications. Close sources of distraction.

Set a timer/alarm so that I don't need to watch the clock. Leave a buffer between that alarm and whatever my next commitment is to wrap up/conclude.

Create a place where I capture my thinking. This could be a whiteboard, a piece of paper, a text editor, etc. I avoid nice notebooks because thinking involves writing down lots of unpolished things, starting over occasionally, etc. and I just can't bring myself to do that with a nice notebook.

2. Focus.

Pick a topic/question/hypothesis/whatever. Set up a "parking lot" for interesting things that occur to me that I don't want to get distracted with.

Sometimes it's hard to articulate what the topic is. In that case, I do some basic mind mapping of related terms/topics/whatever and then draw a box around the area I'm focus on.

Occasionally look back at the topic and make sure that's what I'm actually thinking about.

3. Work in order.

Think about the problem first, in detail, before thinking about solutions. Similar to the above, stick any inklings of potential solutions in a parking lot. This includes considering the characteristics/qualities of a good solution; this helps me avoid getting attached to any initial seemingly-elegant solutions that don't actually have the qualities I think are important (anchoring is a real thing, even if you're aware of it).

When considering the problem or solution, I try to brainstorm ideas, then organize those ideas into a "space" (either problem space or a solution space), and then figure out the key "dimensions" of that space.

Identify the key questions that narrow (e.g., bisect) that space. Focus on those, versus getting bogged down in details of an option that may turn out not to be relevant. Often, these become "next steps".

4. Separate thinking from producing.

Separate writing-as-a-way-to-think from writing-as-a-way-to-communicate. I can't do both at the same time effectively; I end prioritizing clarity over substance. Similarly, I struggle to rapidly produce useful proof-of-concept code unless I promise myself it's going to get thrown away. Readability, maintainability, accuracy, etc. are all hugely important, but not for the first stages of thinking.

Once I've finished thinking, then I can write an actual document for others to consume.

only a certain stance on controversial issues is acceptable, and implying (or stating outright) that divergence from this orthodoxy amounts to an affront to human dignity

There are a variety of controversial issues where one position is a literal affront to human dignity (i.e., a deliberate act of disrespect).

This kind of rhetoric creates a hostile and toxic work environment

This is a privileged view of the situation.

As a simple example, imagine you have three coworkers: Alex, Blake, and Taylor.

Alex believes that Taylor should not have been allowed to have married their current spouse, and posts on their personal Twitter account advocating that the decisions which allowed that to be possible be repealed.

Alex hasn't shared their beliefs in a work setting, but did tweet something about the company and as a result Taylor saw the other tweets and learned how Alex felt.

Taylor believes that Alex's position is a deliberate act of disrespect. Taylor fears a decision that would result in no longer being married to their spouse, which would lead to problems with medical insurance, child custody, finances, etc. Taylor doesn't feel safe working with someone who actively wishes to destroy a meaningful part of their life.

Taylor asks the company to make a statement supporting their right to have married their partner.

Blake says that Taylor is creating a hostile and toxic work environment.

Is Blake right? Or is Taylor acting in self defensive, in response to an already-hostile and already-toxic work environment? Is the discomfort felt by Blake acceptable "collateral damage"?

Do your answers change if the hypothetical scenario is not about a same-sex couple in 2020 following Obergefell, but an interracial couple in California in 1950 following the ruling of anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional?

I'm sure a lot has changed since I worked in a mailroom ~15 years ago, but I think there's at least two important factors here:

1. Bulk mail is slow. First class mail takes a few days to be delivered. Bulk mail may take a couple weeks.

2. Bulk mail must be sorted and grouped. Depending on volume, you're sorting by either zip or zip+4. This is easy to do when you can just sort your mail merge file so that you print in the sorted order. For presorted mail, sorting machines aren't needed.

Basically, completed ballots are going to be flowing in the direction the mail system isn't optimized for. I'm sure they'll all get there eventually, but ensuring they all arrive at the right place in time to be counted is the hard part.

It’s also on the public suffix list

A bit of a tangent, but: how and why?

Do you have a more complete write up of matrix accounting anywhere?

Constructive feedback can be positive.

"Hey GEBBL, you did a really good job on that project. It was great that you focused on the end-to-end problem, and not just the main part that PM asked for. This is something you're better at than some other members on your team -- do you think you could help me keep an eye out during design reviews for gaps along these lines?"

It can also be useful to use a related positive to explain a negative.

"Hey GEBBL, you're usually a good speaker, so I thought you'd want to know that I found your presentation this week a little hard to follow. I think it would have been easier to follow with a high-level overview like the one you included at the beginning of last week's."

You can, of course, look at people's weaknesses to find opportunities for improvement, but you can also look at people's strengths. I think think the best feedback is not only constructive, but also motivating and actionable.

For more difficult feedback to navigate, you should be able to funnel it through a manager. "Hey GEBBL's manager, I noticed that GEBBL checked in a change yesterday without testing it properly. It's not a major thing, but I know you're looking for opportunities to give GEBBL constructive feedback." (If you're going to do this, I suggest trying to do it in a balanced way; share positive feedback too so that it's clear you're not complaining all the time.)