jbrains
@jbrains@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Is anyone else having a hard time sympathizing with Americans? 5 days ago:
I have compassion for them. I don’t even blame them. I don’t know how to fix what’s broken, but I know that blaming and ridiculing them doesn’t work. If it did, then the situation would have improved by now.
- Comment on Freezing soup in glass mason jars? 1 week ago:
I had a jar crack, because I don’t know what I’m doing. I infer it’s best to cool the soup completely first in the fridge, then allow it to freeze.
And now all the people who can’t resist correcting me will chime in. Go for it!
- Comment on I'm about to get fired. How do I make sure my next job is a better place to work? 1 week ago:
It has its moments, but it also led to significant terror every year, wondering whether this would be the last year people would hire me.
I started accidentally. I stockpiled cash from my IBM job, then I wrote some things about a topic that was becoming popular. Then people noticed me. Since I didn’t have to settle for another scrappy job, I could take a chance on doing a few gigs that paid good money.
Two years later, somebody identified me as The Person to write The Next Book on that topic. And then a few influential people amplified me.
And then a few more.
That was the luck I needed.
- Comment on I'm about to get fired. How do I make sure my next job is a better place to work? 1 week ago:
My first Adult Job (not a teenager job) lasted 4 years and ended in 2001. After that I became a freelancer. Since then, the longest gig I’ve had is 11 weeks or 1-2 weeks every 4-6 weeks for about 4 years.
I got away with that for 25 years and now I’m struggling to figure out what happens next.
- Comment on I'm about to get fired. How do I make sure my next job is a better place to work? 1 week ago:
Make sure? Impossible.
All jobs are an experiment and a guess. Interviewers are often on their best behavior, just like candidates are. There is no way to know. Hope for the best and be ready to leave, to the best of your ability.
Good luck. Peace.
- Comment on How I imagine mathematicians... 1 month ago:
Surely you mean 5318008.
- Comment on How I imagine mathematicians... 1 month ago:
Za.
- Comment on So...I feel like there are a lot of elephants in the room, could i get some help? 2 months ago:
I was going to lead with “Don’t assume that other people have it right and you don’t” combined with “Most people are sleepwalking through life, so be careful about asking random strangers for advice”; however, I like this list and hope more people will upvote it.
- Comment on How Long is Too Long for a Reply? 3 months ago:
For answering a question, no limit on elapsed time, as long as you answer can actually be helpful.
- Comment on Why do companies always need to grow? 3 months ago:
Idiots began to demand perpetual growth and other idiots began trying to make it happen. And then it became institutionalized. And then the idiots forgot they were idiots.
- Comment on Why does information want to be free 3 months ago:
It doesn’t.
Humans want information to be free. Hoarding information is like hoarding any other resources. It causes power imbalances. Free information means that power is more evenly distributed.
- Comment on On Jeopardy, does getting the Who/What/Where/When/Why part of the response necessary? 3 months ago:
Some contestants phrase every question with “What is…?” Matt Amodio is well known for doing this. He won many times.
- Comment on Not to get all religiony but why in the old testament God was all fire and brimstone and fatal consequences? But the new testament God is all about forgiveness and such?? 3 months ago:
It made sense to scare people into being reasonable. That was the Old Testament.
Once they acted less stupidly, it became safer to let people be as they are. That was the New Testament.
- Comment on I'm burnt out, already changed jobs, what else can I do to go back to my normal self? 4 months ago:
Burnout has lasting effects. The only effective antidote is rest until rest actually leads to recovery once again. I have struggled with actually resting, as opposed to merely pausing, but feeling anxious about the next batch of commitments to try to live up to.
The quality of your rest is likely to determine what happens next. Rest the best and deepest you can.
Peace.
- Comment on do you use non violent communication at the workplace? 4 months ago:
Yes. I focus on making direct requests and on trying to understand the unmet needs of others. A large part of what I do is train people to believe that they can say “no” to me without arbitrary repercussions.
- Comment on Well then 4 months ago:
So… Just like general-purpose software development? I hope you get to work without LLMs.
- Comment on do you apologize, even if it's not your fault just to make the other person feel validated? 4 months ago:
I teach programmers to say “Oops” when they make a mistake, rather than apologize. It’s epidemic.
- Comment on How to relax and most importantly stop thinking about the things i could be doing? 4 months ago:
You’ve already had several good suggestions here.
I learned that when rest no longer leads to recovery, that is burnout and maybe even depression. Pay attention to this feeling and take it seriously. Good luck.
If you’re thinking about what you could be doing, you might have some unhelpful conditioning related to “being productive” and other such myths of how to live “correctly”. You might be able to think your way out of that way of being and you might need to talk to someone to do this, such as a therapist.
If you’re worried about forgetting something that you need to do later or about some deadline sneaking up on you, then writing things down and setting reminders could help. I did a lot of this and it trained me to literally forget things that I didn’t yet need to start working on without risking missing deadlines. I found it very freeing. Something like that might help you.
I hope you find some peace from something in these replies.
- Comment on Finally a washing machine that understands me 5 months ago:
Äntligen! Ett tvättmaskin som förstår mig!
- Comment on How did you decide what you generally wanted to do with your life? 5 months ago:
You don’t have to commit to any one thing in this life. I’m doing very little at age 51 that I was doing at age 27.
- Comment on When will we have reached enough productivity? 6 months ago:
- Comment on Why do females got to be so hard to talk or flirt with? 6 months ago:
If you have social anxiety, then why are you blaming women for being difficult to talk to or flirt with?
- Comment on Who discovered/"invented" fire? 6 months ago:
Les Oulhamr fuyaient dans la nuit épouvantable. Fous de souffrance et de fatigue, tout leur semblait vain devant la calamité suprême: le Feu était mort.
- Comment on What are the differences between 1) probabillities, 2) possibillities, and 3) plausabillities? 6 months ago:
Plausible is more like conceivable.
It’s possible that when I slam my hand on the table, it will go through the table, but it’s not plausible. We can’t imagine it actually happening, even though we know it can.
- Comment on Hell yeah bröther 6 months ago:
You don’t mess with the Zohran.
- Comment on Is there something like a spreadsheet for hierarchical data structures? 7 months ago:
Visidata, maybe.
- Comment on Is there a medieval equivalent of the youtube channel "Primative Technology" 7 months ago:
Watching the fire in the hearth, no?
- Comment on [deleted] 7 months ago:
The whole notion of “deserve” here is nothing more than a silly story we tell ourselves because other people teach us to believe it. It’s real, but you can change it. So maybe try changing it.
Instead of “I deserve a boyfriend” or “I don’t deserve a boyfriend”, try thinking “This is just a dumb story. It doesn’t mean anything. I either have a boyfriend or I don’t. That’s it.” Maybe it changes something in you. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it takes time and many repetitions. It doesn’t cost much to try.
Peace.
- Comment on "Can i ask you for a favor?" Is it rude to say no? 7 months ago:
“Sorry, I can’t help you.” Why? Because sometimes I hand out random favors, but not today to you.
- Comment on “Production” to describe multiplication? 7 months ago:
“summation” is also related to summary. All these words are related to reducing a collection of things to a single thing. A sum reduces a collection of numbers to its total. A summary reduces a collection of thoughts to its essence. A summation is effectively a synonym for a summary.
The word multiplication describes the operation applied to each pair of numbers. The word production would refer to the act of multiplying an arbitrary collection of numbers. Just as it would be for addition and summation.
It would fit the pattern.