Category Archives: I84D

An emoticon smile of a post

Length ≠ Depth

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I’ve never liked Twitter threads.

If one wants to write a longer piece, there are better ways than to make readers either navigate around interstitial comments or use a 3rd party service — old school web posts immediately leap to mind.

Also, reading longer pieces on Twitter was never good. They were in a narrow space meant for 140 characters. The expansion to 280 characters felt wedged in when read in Twitter’s tools.

If EMu is genuine in taking Twitter to 4000 characters, then welcome to a web product you likely abandoned. I will not join you.

Status

Via Dave Pell:

I’m very, very bored of Musk’s time in charge of Twitter so far. Every week feels as long as a Covid year.

Cannot agree more.

The Muppets remind us that amidst deep disagreement and chaos, the United States was born | Boing Boing

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This fantastic celebration of the birth of democracy in the United States of America seems particularly appropriate today. Today could be your last chance to participate in it! Go vote! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAVpj_Vo7zk …and come on, Kermit, there is always a part for Miss Piggy. Image: screenshot
— Read on boingboing.net/2022/11/08/the-muppets-remind-us-that-amidst-deep-disagreement-and-chaos-the-united-states-was-born.html

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There are banks you can’t trust to hold your money for you and places where you can’t trust the rule of law to regulate them. There are governments you can’t trust not to seize your money from the banks, or falsify election results, or change the property registry and take your house. There are social media companies you can’t trust not to freeze your account arbitrarily. Most people in the US, most days, live in a high-trust world, where it’s easy and reasonable to trust that the intermediaries who run the databases that shape our lives will behave properly. But not everyone everywhere lives like that.

Amen

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Unnecessary meetings are a $100 million mistake ($) at big companies, according to a new survey that shows workers probably don’t need to be in nearly a third of the appointments they attend.

Via Bloomberg

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I want Stanly Tucci to write and narrate the audiobook of a science fiction book where he describes alien elements like he describes food.

Scenarios

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Let’s do a thought experiment!

Albert is in a car accident. Albert might die. Albert has an advance directive that states his doctors must not be vaccinated for COVID-19, must advocate for the horse dewormer Invermectin (sp?) as a treatment for COVID-19, and all medical treatment options must go through Mehmet Oz’s team first. Let’s say Albert’s family agrees.

How does that play out?

In another scenario, Albert sets up tests to ensure such a doctor as described above does not treat him while he’s out of it. Let’s say Albert’s family agrees.

How does that play out?

What happens if the directive and the family don’t agree?

What happens if the directive and the family agree but the assigned doctor doesn’t?

To be clear about me, my organs should be donated. I want all of my health care staff fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and everything else appropriate for where I’m getting treatment. No celebrities should be involved in my case. All of my medication must have scientific backing for use in people and none of it should include horse de-wormers.

If my organs become tainted because someone deviated from my wishes I will terror haunt them brutally until they have no choice but to shuffle off their mortal coil. And then I will hire a demon to haunt them in purgatory because I’ll be that pissed off.

I’ll find a lawyer to put that into actionable language.

Airport refugee

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Delta’s change in lounge policy will move me further from using them as my preferred airline. While the lounges are crowded, limiting the duration to 3 hours before departure (not boarding) will do little to alleviate the problem.

Often I occupy a spot in a lounge for a long time. Here’s a list of some of the reasons why:

  • On standby for an earlier flight
  • Traveling to the airport with others (co-workers, family, etc.) where my flight leaves after theirs
  • Bad weather inbound
  • Holiday crush
  • Delayed or canceled flight
  • Hotel checkout time
  • International travel
  • Something about my work calendar that needs me in a place with power, good wifi, and relatively low noise at a specific time unrelated to boarding
  • When I arrive, needing to wait for co-workers, family, etc. so we can carpool to the destination

The list goes on. Other business travelers and those frequently taking to the air may have others.

I have ideas for Delta (and AMEX) on how to address lounge overcrowding, at least a little bit:

  • Expand the Priority Pass access to include airport restaurant access and/or gate delivery food service
  • Have a service desk for things like standby flights, rebooking, etc. near the check-in desk
  • Staff the toll-free service numbers, social media response, and in-app chat so flyers can get fast help
  • Have separate policies for domestic and international lounge access
  • In international gateway airports, partner on a separate international lounge (like in Atlanta) and offer arrival lounge access
  • Take reservations

The list goes on. Mostly my ideas revolve around people. So far, that seems to be one area outside of investment.

It’s easier to blame customers, in the short term. How dare they use our product!

※ The librarian’s service

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The librarian’s service:

I saw a great story in James Clear’s “3-2-1” today.

Lillian Moore shares a quick story that reveals what really motivates people:

“A few months after my husband and I moved to a small Massachusetts town I grumbled to a resident about the poor service at the library, hoping she would repeat my complaints to the librarian. The next time I went to the library, the librarian had set aside two bestsellers for me and a new biography for my husband. What’s more, she appeared to be genuinely glad to see me.

Later I reported the miraculous change to my friend. “I suppose you told her how poor we thought the service was?” I asked.

“No,” she confessed. “In fact—I hope you don’t mind—I told her your husband was amazed at the way she had built up this small town library, and that you thought she showed unusually good taste in the new books she ordered.”

This reminded me of the parable of the wind and the sun. It is an idea I don’t implement often enough.

What?

I also subscribe to James Clear’s newsletter and read the same bit.

When I read this story I immediately thought, this is not repeatable. Even if it is, how is going to a third party with an issue and hoping they’ll accurately convey your issues only to have the third party change it going to necessarily benefit the original person? There are any number of points in this story where things could have gone poorly and, as far as I can tell, exactly one that ends in this sunny outcome.

This is a passive-aggressive’s dream result. It’s impractical in practice.