Bay 12 Games Forum

We always have a ton of stray cats around work. I've befriended several over the years. Even rescued one.

I've seen them come, and go. Seen some get rescued, seen some get hit by cars.

Today I just met a juvenile who clearly was someone's lost cat. I summoned them from across the street and they came running straight over and face bumped me. Clean, friendly, smelled like perfume. Clearly someone's lost pet.

I went to go get some cat food for them and when I came back out, they were gone.

Best of luck little guy <sadface>

200%. Their objective is not to serve you exactly what you want. Their objective is to keep you scrolling and watching on their platform. Outrage keeps you scrolling. Smut keeps you scrolling. Blocking keeps you scrolling. Making 40% to 60% of the content you see something you're not interested in keeps you scrolling for the next thing you are interested in. And if you explicitly say you don't like something, maybe you'll like the exact opposite if it gets shown to you. All at the end of the day so they can say the platform is active based on user#s and time spent, and advertisers are getting their stuff seen so the ad dollars keep flowing.

I just saw something on this the other day. The metrics work out that the best way to keep people scrolling constantly is to keep the density of content they DO want to see below a certain threshold. Users are subconsciously chasing the dopamine release of a thing they like, but almost as important is the anticipation of that dopamine release. It's the exact same methodology casinos use. Most gambling addicts don't keep coming back for the win, that's not what compels them. It's the anticipation and excitement of the win that keeps them addicted. It's analogous to shopping addiction. Shopping addicts aren't addicted to actually acquiring things; most of the stuff they buy remains in boxes once it's delivered. It's the anticipation of acquisition they're addicted to, the pursuit and choice of buying things despite not actually needing or wanting them.

Social media has just adopted that same method to their platforms.

I've been in some pain for the last few weeks.

A couple of weeks ago I went and got a massage as part of a "self care day." Initially the massage was "fine" and felt good. She warned me I'd be sore afterward because my muscles are so tight. I was sore alright, for a day or two. But for the next 4 or 5 days, my MIDDLE back, the part she worked the least on, was hella sore.

That's not even the source of it though. On the same day, I went and bought two new pillows. And because they're crazy overstuffed, it threw off my sleeping position and between that and my back pain, basically everything on the left side of my back from traps to rotator cuff was in real pain.

That was two weeks ago. Meanwhile, the pain hasn't stopped. It's intermittently gone away and come back between nights. Some nights I find a position that doesn't end up leaving me in pain in the morning, other nights not so much. My sleep has been disrupted pretty severely.

Today it's about as bad has it has been. My shoulder blade hurts. My rhombus muscles hurt. My deltoids hurt. Fuck, even my triceps are now hurting as the tension works its way down through my arm.

I'm not usually one to take pain meds for minor aches and stuff. But it's gotten bad enough I'm taking ibprofen just to get some relief. I dunno how to solve this problem other than become a back sleeper until it clears up, which I simply can't do. But I'm royally sick of being in low grade pain all day every day.

Like I said. Surprised at the lack of Russian brutality in their response, unsurprised that their ineptitude shows once again.

Surprising no one.

As someone who has been going through the hiring process with my CEO and Director of Operations present for all interviews....(I'm the manager for the position they're hiring for.)

I'd say it's a good sign the CEO is warm and human? My boss laughed constantly during interviews as I (and we) acknowledged some of our own shortcomings to potential hires. We do everything by the seat of our pants here, we're a small company and we are pretty transparent about who we are: we figure it out as we go. He actually kind of resents the fact I don't have a good poker face. I'm a "lay all my cards on the table" kind of person.

You can never really know a company's culture until you get there. That your actual direct supervisor stuck to the script could mean a lot of things; I know I feel a little undercut by my own CEO when he takes over half the conversation during the interview. Maybe she was feeling some of that.

But I can tell you from my perspective....someone who is genuinely earnest AND has specific answers to technical questions gets my approval. I saw everything from randos who had almost no tech experience trying to get their foot in the door, to people with 10+ years experience, to one guy who showed up to his interview hung over.

The ones we went with were the ones that had actual technical experience and could speak to specifics, and who were relaxed and nerdy enough we felt they would fit with our company culture.

So it reads like you're doing ok. Don't overthink it. And don't put all your eggs in one basket. Hiring is like dating; both sides can be flakey and it's important not to stake too much emotional wellbeing on outcomes because things are unpredictable.

I think you'll know if you're a strong candidate in their eyes if they call you back for an in-person interview. That's how we're doing it. But we're also not coming up with a battery of technical questions people have to get through in a set amount of time. I hate that shit in tech. It has its place if you're hiring for a programmer, for sure. But I don't like and wouldn't appreciate the whole hotseat thing: interviews can be stressful enough.

Good luck!

I mean, there's plenty of reasons. Trust in the mass media has been falling for years. Pretty sure its at rock bottom these days. (Myself included. I quit reading CNN the day Trump got elected and have since never looked back, except when something massive has just happened.)

And the mainstream media has been attacked from the top as well, by consolidation, budget cuts and sell offs, shallower, cheaper reporting, more inflammatory, partisan, biased reporting. Getting the news via Social Media has the immediacy as well, that isn't 24-hour "cable news cycle" immediacy. But real people reacting, rather than reporting. It's bite-sized and perfectly tailored to our shortened attention spans and heightened reactivity. Bold claims, not enough facts because facts take time and fucks to give to process and test. Time that no one wants to spend, nor pay for. People can find the flavor and bias they prefer as well. There's an infinity of personalities to give you a take across Social Media than there is in traditional mainstream news, and their lack of training, rigor or ethics is seen as a virtue.

I feel fucking old, but I remember when there were like, 3 major nightly news programs across the US. That you had to watch live or you didn't get to see it.

There is such a vast gulf between the way we "think" this shit should work based on the past, and the way it actually works in practice with the average American. A massive disparity between how some generations got information and how that shaped them, versus others who grew up with the rate at which we can communicate now.

I have my bachelors in Journalism, truth be told. And you know what I didn't do after graduation? Become a journalist. As I was coming through my program all I heard from my professors at the end of the day was "you're going to be doing 5 people's jobs as a modern reporter" "You try to balance what matters versus what gets ad dollars, but at the end of the day ad dollars are what matter." "John Q Public generally has contempt for you." "Budgets are tight and newspapers are shutting down everywhere." And those things have all only gotten worse. I could go on but it's pretty goddamn depressing. And it's hard not to feel like it's part of the Master Plan that we see this country headed toward, that I've been watching happen on the media side for the last 20 years. The first thing you need to do in order to take control is to discredit, defund and liquidate the people whose job it is to pay attention to and tell others what you say and do.

It's honestly an attempt to clamp down on media, with a side of data security. It's popular, information gets passed around there, social movements can start there and Conservatives hate that.

Consider that's what Twitter used to be, before the Arch-Douchebag made it information and accountability poor, and monetized it.