Communal living concept with wellness vibe coming to San Diego

Haven Coliving houses mostly people who work in the wellness industry. There are activities like yoga and vegan cooking classes. The housing is comprised of four multi-million dollar homes that are connected to one another. “In Los Angeles, where a one bedroom in Venice would be about $3,000, our membership dues are $995,” says founder and CEO Ben Katz. Katz says that about $1,000 a month will get you a bed in a private pod in a shared room. Sheets and towels are provided and changed weekly.

Source: Communal living concept with wellness vibe coming to San Diego

This week, in “grim meathook future” news: An apartment in LA is $3,000/mo. A bunk in a flop house in San Diego is $1,000/mo, and being marketed as a “health and wellness” option.

Nibble Stew – a gathering of development thoughts: How about not stabbing ourselves in the leg with a rusty fork?

When faced with this kind of pointless and harmful routine, one might suggest not doing it any more or replacing it with some other, more useful procedure. This does not succeed, of course, but that is not the point. The reasons you get back are the interesting thing, because they will tell you what kind of manager and coworkers you are dealing with. Here are some possible options, can you think of more?

Source: Nibble Stew – a gathering of development thoughts: How about not stabbing ourselves in the leg with a rusty fork?

I can think of another…

The Sock Puppet of the Auditor
“We hired auditors at great expense of time and money, and we’re going to do what they told us that ‘all’ companies do, no matter how inappropriate it is for us and our particular workflows.”

New evidence shows that the key assumption made in the discovery of dark energy is in error

Taken at face values, the luminosity evolution of SN is significant enough to question the very existence of . When the luminosity evolution of SN is properly taken into account, the team found that the evidence for the existence of dark simply goes away (see Figure 1).

Source: New evidence shows that the key assumption made in the discovery of dark energy is in error

I don’t know what the graph is supposed to represent, but… no “dark energy.” You know, the bedrock idea that has undergirded all astronomical research for the past couple decades. You know, the thing that has never been observed or measured; only assumed, in order to make the math work. All just chucked out the window, based on some new observations.

Like whether eggs are good for you, or going to be the grisly death of you, depending on the year, maybe this will go back and forth for awhile.

Please don’t wonder why I have a hard time taking what’s reported in the news about biology (evolution), cosmology (Big Bang), or climate (death of the planet by “change”) to be gospel. Excuse me while I give such things a couple hundred years to be proven out.

My problem isn’t with the research, or the invalidation of previous results. My problem in all of this is there’s no objectivity in the papers or the reporting. So as we try to answer a fundamental question like: “Is the universe going to eventually collapse onto itself, and start the Big Bang all over again, or did it happen in a way that can never be repeated?” I wish, instead of stating, “Yes, and it will happen 13.72343 billion years from now,” papers would summarize their findings like, “We think so, and perhaps a dozen billion years from now, given these critical assumptions, and within this confidence interval.” Then I could start taking it all much more seriously.

Until then, all I can see in our current system are shocking headlines in a bid for page views, and preposterous statements in a grab for more grant money for the next study.

Statements: Office of the Provost & Executive Vice President: Indiana University Bloomington

Professor Eric Rasmusen has, for many years, used his private social media accounts to disseminate his racist, sexist, and homophobic views. When I label his views in this way, let me note that the labels are not a close call, nor do his posts require careful parsing to reach these conclusions.

Source: Statements: Office of the Provost & Executive Vice President: Indiana University Bloomington

Indiana University has a professor who is apparently so self-documentingly racist and sexist that they feel they have to address it publicly. In this admission, they promise to make accommodations for students who do not want to take classes from him, and declare that he will be subject to double-blind grading procedures so that his views can’t affect grades.

Here’s a crazy thought: FIRE HIM!

This is what you get with the equally-archaic-as-racism-and-sexism system that is academic tenure. How ridiculous is it that universities have the audacity to foist this unmeritorious system on students and parents, as they purport to be the gatekeepers of justice, equity, and wisdom, all while they continue their downward spiral of value and relevance on a young person’s future?

Truly, this is a case of dying by the same sword you lived by. What other job in the entirety of our capitalistic society has a mechanism whereby one can be immune from the repercussions of being a misanthrope, and still be guaranteed a job for life? This is just one example, but, for many reasons, I think it’s time to get rid of this system, and not just in post-secondary schools, but at all levels.

Linux in 2020: 27.8 million lines of code in the kernel, 1.3 million in systemd • The Register

Another point of interest is that systemd, a replacement for init that is the first process to run when Linux starts, is now approaching 1.3 million lines of code thanks to nearly 43,000 commits in 2019.

“Everybody who has ever worked at that level in the operating system has agreed that systemd is the proper solution. It solves a problem that people have. Distros have adopted it because it solves a problem for them. If you don’t want to use it, you don’t have to use it. There’s other init replacements out there. Android doesn’t use it because they use other things,” he (Greg Kroah-Hartman) said.

Source: Linux in 2020: 27.8 million lines of code in the kernel, 1.3 million in systemd • The Register

A Linux distribution is the kernel, the userspace programs, a service management system, and a package manager. I’m still not clear on everything systemd does, and that bothers me. As it continues to grow, it’s a learning process, and I’m not down in the weeds with Linux every day like I used to be. But I appreciate what they’re doing. It always bothered me that init was just a cobbled together bunch of scripts. This feels like the proper, modern approach.

Treatment of Others Policy: Strictly Confidential

Just before the holiday break, I got 3 company-wide email missives. I didn’t know any of the people referenced, nor the people who had sent them, nor the people who they were sent on behalf of. Nothing they addressed affected me in any meaningful way, and I have literally no influence on anything they were referring to. I surmise that the vast majority of people who got those emails were in precisely the same situation as I was. I’ve already forgotten everything about them.

It occurs to me that these things might be important for a couple handfuls of people, and it would be better handled in their staff meetings. The company-wide email, talking about the moves of people you’ve never heard of, responsible for ineffable things, mired in our 5-dimensional cross-functional reporting matrix, just seems to me to be a way for senior execs at a big company to flex their muscles, and remind everyone just how terribly, terribly important they are.

At the same time, I got a notice that I had not completed some mandatory training, which was due before the end of the year. One of the modules was about The Company’s classification system, where the classification level determines who can view what documents. It’s very stringent. It reads like a governmental classification system, and I’m sure it was cribbed from one. Because it’s so formal and strict, I have a hard time taking it seriously. Oh, look, our internal memos are classified as confidential. But, really, who cares if a competitor gets one of our planning PowerPoints from the meeting last week. They’re going to be even more bored and unhelped by it than the people who were at the meeting.

As I’m working through the remaining modules, I notice that The Company’s policy on Treatment of Others is marked “Confidential,” and limited to people with a need to know, and who are under a non-disclosure agreement.

Hold the phone.

Isn’t this topic, like, one of the things they work most hard at, and are most proud of? What about it could be considered sensitive at all? Isn’t the point to brag about just how open and welcoming we are? Why would the policy on sensitivity be considered sensitive? Further, why would it be classified as most-sensitive, AND need-to-know, AND under NDA? I would expect them to put it on their public web portal, and point everyone in the world at it.

Is it just me, or does this situation make absolutely no sense whatsoever?

I suspect that The Policies have been created under the direction of The Managers who read some white papers, hired a consulting firm, and were told that they were supposed to do X, Y, and Z with regards to corporate policies. However, they were subsequently written with no critical thought given to the precedence, applicability, or consistency of X, Y, or Z. Nor were any of the procedures or policies tied in any way to actual benefits or protections specific to our company or its businesses. But these managers are very important people, and the decisions were made, and the policies are now Controlled Documents. And now, if I were to reprint the company’s corporate policy on the treatment of others — no matter how much they talk about it to the investing public — I could be subject to immediate dismissal, and possible criminal penalties.

And that’s just Human Resources. Don’t even get me started on the IT policies.

So, I hope people responsible for this forgive me for having a really hard time taking any of their classification seriously. It just seems to me that if you’re going to go to the expense and hassle of making a comprehensive set of policies, you could at least make some people read the stupid things, and make sure that they’re consistent, helpful, and appropriate.

This is a long-standing gripe with me. I’ve seen this in another Fortune 250 before. I complained about it to the right person, and managed to kickstart an effort to fix some of the conflicts, and relax some of the rules that were counterproductive. Unfortunately, the institutionalization runs deeper at my current place, and I’m not in a position to do anything about it this time.

California Wanted to Protect Uber Drivers. Now It May Hurt Freelancers. – The New York Times

Steve Smith, a spokesman for the California Labor Federation, which advised lawmakers on A.B. 5, conceded that the law was somewhat ambiguous in this area and that the State Legislature should clarify issues like this in the coming years. “There are going to be unintended consequences with a law like this,” he said. “We want to do everything we can to make sure we’re addressing the right problems and not having any adverse effects on workers.”

Source: California Wanted to Protect Uber Drivers. Now It May Hurt Freelancers. – The New York Times

It seems to me that there should be a probationary period for new policies like this. These kinds of big-shift laws need to have a statement of the actual, boots-on-the-ground effect the change is intended to have, and a timeframe for when we should be able to judge whether or not it is succeeding by that measure. At the end of this period, there should be an automatic default: either the law becomes permanent, or it gets scrapped, depending. If it’s succeeding, and not burdened by excessive unintended consequences, then let it stand. But if it’s hurting more people than it’s helping, then let it automatically lapse, and allow things go back to the way they were. This just seems sensible to me. Why is this not a thing?

Biden on Programming

So apparently throwing coal in a furnace is the same thing as actually mining coal, and the only difference between this and programming is a little bit of training. Biden has been in Congress for FORTY-SIX years, since before the Atari 2600 was created, and the home-computer revolution started. The last computer he was familiar with was probably a mainframe sitting alone in a big, cold room. This is the kind of policy thinking we get when we elect people to federal office for so long that they become institutionalized by the system, isolated in the Beltway bubble, completely losing touch with reality, except for what their handlers tell them.