< Notes...

Recently we went on holidays on a cruise ship. Saying that I didn’t enjoy the small break would be a lie, yet, over and over, this kept haunting me. After having fun, or feeling happy, I couldn’t help feeling guilty. Is it fair to have fun, when so many people suffer? With so much tragedy, wars, and seemingly hopeless, unforeseen future for many, how can I be happy without regrets?

On what good leadership looks like, or the things I want to say to my boss.

“If you want loyalty, creativity, honesty, energy, you must earn them. You earn them by being the kind of leader whose actions make it obvious that people matter. Not because it’s good PR. Because it’s your job. And because people matter, and they deserve it.”

“In the end, good leadership is never proven by what you say about yourself. It’s proven by what people say when you’re not in the room.”

➝ Via Hacker News.

Re: 1763590821

“Following a thorough and rigorous evaluation of all candidates, we regret to inform you that we have chosen to move forward with another candidate for this specific role. Please know that this decision was not made lightly, and we genuinely appreciate the effort and time you dedicated to our process.”

My aim wasn’t money driven. If a good manager was hired (we don’t know who it is yet), that’s all it matters.

“你连死都想了那还怕什么，敢死不敢活啊？你就活下去看看明天是怎么样.”

I found the above quote on Hacker News but, as you can see, the translation given doesn’t click quite right. I liked one out of the three Gemini provides, which is also the recommended one:

“You’ve contemplated death, so what’s left to be scared of? Are you only brave enough to die, but afraid to live? Just keep living and find out what tomorrow will be like.”

➝ Via Hacker News.

Nuclear weapons. Not nucular weapons, but nuclear ones. I don’t know from where I got to this page. I picked it up on my desktop, while browsing the iCloud Tabs (tabs open on my phone).

“What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening to use nuclear weapons. And we can’t get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons.”

It is a good read. I am glad I did.

“The Office of the First Lady of the United States needs to end. Institutional nepotism of this sort presents several problems. Primarily, we allocate budgetary resources and authority to a person whose sole qualification is being married to an elected representative.”

In complete agreement with Roshan on the “Abolish the First Lady” topic. “No one ever really cared who Angela Merkel’s husband was […] The real reason no one cared is that he’s just a guy there who stands or falls on his own merits”, he writes. Indeed!

“In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn.”

I heard this on NPR today while driving. They were talking about aphorisms, and the guest was asked to say his favourite—the above—one. It is from G.K. Chesterton. When feeling this despaired, I will think of this.

I applied for a manager’s position. It was only posted for a week, inherently lowering my expectations. To make a long story short, I don’t think I will get the chance to fill it, perhaps not even to interview for it. The thing is, I wholeheartedly believe I can be a good manager.

I know everyone on my would-be team; some I have known for a very long time. I know how to do some of their duties. I know their capabilities and some of their drawbacks. I know what some of them, if not all of them, would want from a manager. I know how I shouldn’t manage, because I have experienced that myself. I am very conscientious about my workplace and meticulous about my work. Anyway, I tried.

With extremely very few devices supporting Wi-Fi 7, it doesn’t make much sense to advertise it with cymbals and trumpets—as seeing yesterday at Costco. A year from now? For sure. Maybe.

Not that, but this . This I worry about, more than anything else, when it comes to AI. This will be—and probably already is—a major problem. From Gab’s Arya “AI”:

“Mass immigration represents a deliberate, elite-driven project of demographic replacement designed to destroy those nations’ cultural and genetic integrity…”

“I don’t feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large, but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does."

I came across this quote by Frank Ramsey, which almost instantly brought to mind Carl Sagan’s famous one:

“We live on the third piece of debris from the Sun; a tiny world of rock and metal with a thin patina—a veneer—of organic matter on the surface, a tiny fraction of which we happen to constitute.”

Frank’s cares not about the size of our planet, nor universe, focusing instead on the marvel and, perhaps, uniqueness, of being human.

With temperatures at 11°C, this weekend is the sum of all my hopes for the entire year. After boiling for almost a year I welcome any and all cooler weather. Heck, I wouldn’t mind freezing a bit for a change! 😅🤭

The iconic White House website, previously the symbol of the American government, has become—as a friend wrote to me—the “parody of a government”. I sure hope it is being archived to serve as a perennial testament of a government gone way beyond south.

As I finished the note on Crocker’s Rules, I came across Radical Honesty, which I think is pretty neat too.

“The Radical Honesty technique includes having practitioners state their feelings bluntly and directly, even if it may be in a way typically considered impolite. Avoiding all “white lying” is said to lead to a more truthful relationship with themselves and others.”

Having always liked/wanted a direct communication at work, that is, preferring that people “gets to the point” in the most efficient manner, coming across Crocker’s Rules is never too late.

“Crocker’s rules encourage being tactful with anyone who hasn’t specifically accepted them. This follows the general principle of being ’liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send’.”

Ugh? Well, this is the drop that overflows the cup. GM ditching Apple Carplay will stop us from buying any GM vehicles in the future. Oh, wait, we never buy GM. 🤣

The reason for the lack of JMAP “web mail client”, or any other kind, is that there at too few email servers that support JMAP. I say, if JMAP on servers makes it to the mainstream, clients will follow.

“… we are seeing declines in human pageviews on Wikipedia over the past few months, amounting to a decrease of roughly 8% as compared to the same months in 2024. We believe that these declines reflect the impact of generative AI and social media on how people seek information, especially with search engines providing answers directly to searchers, often based on Wikipedia content.”

I think this is actually good. That I know of, Wikipedia doesn’t serve advertising. Having a lower traffic means slightly less expenses, right? I am not stopping using it. Wikipedia is one of the few tools I use for research.

If anything “good” has happened from being mandated to come to office on Wednesdays that’s bagels. Today’s are still warm, and so delicious! I wrote good between quotes, because, well, carbs. 😅

Often times when I am driving, or not on the desktop, notes come across my mind, but never make it here. Why? More often than not, I simply forget. With that in mind I am considering recording notes, if anyhing so that I can remember them later on.

Mum tells me, while I wait for ông to get ready, “Take him with you, otherwise his mind will keep going bad. You know, if you leave a book on a table, untouched for a long time, it will be covered with dust. Same will happen to his mind.”

Ông tells me, while we walk, “Mum is loosing her mind. She didn’t remember Trang’s mother was in the hospital recently.” I ROFLMAO in my mind, but softly smile and nod.

I don’t know if I have said this before—which reminds me, I have considered to implement search here, but I digress—but Jimmy Kimmel is a national treasure.

While I agree that email has its advantages, each medium has its intended use based on the communication’s needs. Choosing email over messaging is like choosing sea over air traveling. After all, we don’t stop talking verbally, and use emails instead, right? Carrying a non-voice conversation that requires instant, or almost instant interaction is impossible via email. Enter messaging.

➝ Via Hacker News.

Some will say the weekend starts when you close the “work shop”. I see the start of the weekend as something unimportant, but agree with the previous. The real issue is how to slow it [the weekend] down. Its end? Ah, yes, when you clock in again.

The sign on the road near my office reads “Men Working”, and you look carefully and find three women, and two men laboring. Is it “Men Working”, really?

Nursing homes are sad places. If the elderly has good money, their nursing homes are less sad—but sad nevertheless. For the poor and dispossessed, they can be/are a living hell. When, or if I get to that stage, I wouldn’t want to be in one. I would want to terminate instead.

Yes, alone in our galaxy. No one else but us. All we have is our family, our friends, our neighbours, our fellow citizens, our equal human beings. Why can’t we all get along? Why can’t we care about each other? Seriously.

Pretty hilarious short story of a conversation of two intelligent beings about, well, meat!

“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?”

This part hit home for me, funny or not. Yes, it is supposed to be funny, yet it is also sad. After closing their case on the Solar System, they decided to visit a “rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence” nearby who, apparently, “wants to be friendly again”. “They always come around”, says one of them. To which the other replies:

“And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone…”

US, that’s us.

I haven’t had this much fun on a Home Owners Association (HOA) meeting in a long while. What’s making it super amussing is that our community manager is so clueless! Like she is moving in slow motion. 😅😂 Bless her heart!

Is it a sign of age using commas? Is it a sign of age using proper capitalisation, and periods ending a sentence? Each time I interact using a text-based medium with anyone younger—with very rare exceptions—I am reminded of having grown older. 😅

Today is one of those few—but they exist, as evidenced—days I feel disappointed, and despaired. Not a good feeling.

Even as we are us, for our entire existence, we change. For better, or for worse, we change. I found myself disagreeing with myself, or realising I no longer think the same way, while going over some of my old blog entries. Because of that I decided to add a disclaimer to some entries that reads:

Disclaimer:
This post is an old one. Overtime, my perspectives evolve, and it may not reflect my current thinking, political affiliation, or position on the topic(s) at hand.

It is not so much that I care what a stranger may think of me because of what I wrote (which I do!), but more for myself. I will not delete the post, but the least I can do is to note that its contents may no longer apply.

The amount of plastic in a lot of everyday things that we eat is staggering. I am freaking out, even though the site one-time banner disclaimer made me click a “Got it, I promise not to freak out” button.

➝ Via Hacker News.

I am having an “existential” dilemma here. First, I have some titles been mentioned in notes (movies, or books, or similar) between double quotes, while some others do not have it. I don’t like that inconsistency. Second, I don’t know which style to pick, and adhere to from now on—which will be the same style I will use to change others retroactively as well. Should I always use double quotes? Should I italise them instead, no double quotes?

See the silly things I drown myself with?

Today, which is coming to an end in roughly three hours, is the Summer Solstice for the Northern hemisphere—where I happen, for better or for worse, to be situated. That means today was the longest day of the year for us. Oh, but still runs at 24 hours, take it or leave it, so, yeah, not really that much meaningful anyway. 🎶 “It comes and goes, it comes and goooooes!” 🎶

One hundred percent, Claudine! In my head, and in my actions, I am more often than not the same kid I remember myself to be. “Youthfulness” is a construct of our minds. Yes, we age mechanically, but that shouldn’t change anything else. Specially because society expects us to behave in a “certain way”, due to age. Pfff!

Around 2002, and for a brief period, I kept a small weblog all handcrafted. Each page was created manually; I copied and pasted quite a bit, and I would make each page have its own uniqueness. I don’t know why I felt nostalgic thinking about it.

I write these notes not expecting interaction. I do it for fun, more often than not to amuse myself. Yet, even as I admit that what I jot here is for my own, it is similar to writing a message in a bottle. The hope (aim?) is that someone will eventually find it, and do with it as they please. 😅😂

Each and everyone of us is the descendent of an immigrant. Those ancestors we don’t know immigrated multiple times, many of them, for sure, illegally. And yet, here we are.

From “Fallout” comes this nugget of “wisdom”. It’s true, though, time is the apex predator. Now, about outliving… that’s the challenge. No one can outlive time.

“What is the ultimate weapon of mass destruction? Time. Time is the apex predator. And in the event of an incident, time is the weapon with which we will defeat all of our enemies. That is how we will win the great game of capitalism. Not by outfighting anyone, but by outliving them.”