What Is Your Life Worth?

 

I saw at the supermarket they were selling whole roasted chickens for six dollars. You get the whole chicken in one piece — six dollars.

Imagine if your life was only worth six dollars. I wouldn’t know how to explain this to a chicken.

A roasted chicken on its back still looks very much like a chicken, like it gave up its life for you, just like Jesus. For six dollars.

Supercut on the Hunter Biden Pardon

 

Anti-Trump pundits and cable news talking heads singing Biden’s praises for his no-pardon pledge and using it to rip Trump to shreds, pointing out the “stark contrast” with Trump’s complaints that the Justice Department was weaponized against him.

Did not age well.

I Know Why You’re Not Getting Hired

 

I can tell you why you’re not being hired but you know already.

People like to hire people who look like themselves and fit in with the group. My experience with that was when I moved into the “white, male, over 40” group. I didn’t look like a typical software engineer anymore (a young person’s profession), I didn’t fit in with the group, and I wasn’t adding any diversity points. (Age doesn’t count as diversity, it’s just age.)

The saving grace is that my profession is performance oriented so if you know things that others don’t know and you can solve problems that others can’t solve, which is demonstrable at interviews, you can get hired.

I do not have a solution to your problem but I wish you the best.

Love Will Return in Another Way

 

A story I read in a Facebook post:

At 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, was walking through a park one day in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her favourite doll. She and Kafka searched for the doll unsuccessfully.

Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would come back to look for her.

The next day, when they had not yet found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter “written” by the doll saying “please don’t cry. I took a trip to see the world. I will write to you about my adventures.”

Thus began a story which continued until the end of Kafka’s life.

During their meetings, Kafka read the letters of the doll carefully written with adventures and conversations that the girl found adorable.

Finally, Kafka brought back the doll (he bought one) that had returned to Berlin.

“It doesn’t look like my doll at all,” said the girl.

Kafka handed her another letter in which the doll wrote: “my travels have changed me.” The little girl hugged the new doll and brought the doll with her to her happy home.

A year later Kafka died.

Many years later, the now-adult girl found a letter inside the doll. In the tiny letter signed by Kafka it was written:

“Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.”

Working Remote is Not All Good or All Bad

 

The posts I read on remote work are too black and white: remote work is good or remote work is bad.

I’ve worked from home. I liked it and I understand why people like it. But it’s not without problems.

Off the top of my head: decrease in corporate culture, cybersecurity issues, isolation, distractions, slower work, difficulties in onboarding and training, communication, work-life balance, people are burning out on Zoom calls.

IMO, anyone writing a post on how great remote work is should be required to address the obvious problems.

Thus spoke The Programmer

Employee Loyalty

 

This is deplorable conduct obviously, but I see a lot of “if companies continue to act this way, there will be no employee loyalty” posts and I always wonder if employee loyalty is a real thing.

I have to admit here that while I’ve always tried to do my best work as a matter of personal pride, I’ve never made a decision in life based on my loyalty to a company, e.g., I’ve never said, nor can I imagine myself saying, something like “What you’re proposing would improve my financial situation, but I can’t do it because it would be disloyal to my employer.”

Does anyone really do things like that?

Don’t Alienate Family and Friends Over Politics

 

Does this only go in one political direction? I don’t feel insufferable hate toward people who disagree with me and I don’t understand people who do.

Don’t Alienate Family and Friends Over Politics by Ana Kasparian

It’s a blueprint for losers, by losers.

Read on Substack

Money for Nothing

 

Sharpton has been doing this for decades — giving his blessing to people, companies and organizations in exchange for money.

Given his history, why anyone would want to tout his blessing is a mystery.

The payments to Sharpton’s organization came as part of a $5.4 million fund the Harris campaign dished out to black and Hispanic advocacy groups to help bolster her candidacy among minority voters.

Given that minority group voters migrated en masse to Trump, I think Harris should be entitled to a refund.

I’m not sure about this, but I don’t think Trump paid anyone to endorse him or give him a softball interview.

Democratic Governors Launch Pro-Democracy Group Four Years Too Late

 

Democratic governors J. B. Pritzker (Illinois) and Jared Polis (Colorado) revealed on Wednesday that they will spearhead a national gubernatorial initiative to protect against threats to democracy.

Governors

These guys are a little late to the party. If they really cared about threats to democracy, the time to take action would have been the last four years, in which the government was censoring political dissent, censoring “misinformation” (i.e., facts that would expose government lies), criminalizing, prosecuting and imprisoning political enemies, trying to put the Republican presidential candidate in prison before the election, trying to remove his name from the ballot so no one could vote for him.

The electorate has already solved these problems by voting out the dictatorial regime that was causing them.

Women’s Rights Are More Than That One Thing