Traces

I sometimes work late and come home after my girlfriend falls asleep. When I got in the apartment tonight, the furniture was rearranged and her exercise equipment is front and center in the living room. The part that I enjoy is to try and piece together everything she's done during the evening. Tonight, it looks as though she was stretching her back and legs while watching exercise videos on the Playstation 4. The Playstation especially stands out because it is hardly ever used - she usually watches videos on Youtube instead.

My laptop was on the sofa with a bag of Skittles left on the side - she must have been surfing the web and snacking at the same time. Another explanation is that they were left on the sofa from the night before. Since we share the same laptop, sometimes I can inadvertently see what she's been doing. The UI for Squarespace shows which website was accessed last. Since we share the same account I can tell when she's been updating her blog.

I think it's fascinating to be able to piece together a story with traces of evidence. It's like reading a newspaper from its leftover ash. You try too hard and it'll be gone in a second. If you don't look hard enough, it'll pass you by before time moves on.

Compliance

Compliance training is quite possibly the biggest waste of time for employees to go through every few months. It's the HR team's way of checking the box for legal reasons without actually accomplishing anything for anyone. I don't remember any of the lessons they're trying to teach us and their ideal world is to make everyone soulless robots. Ideally, a company hires morally sound people to maintain its integrity. Yet, that impossible and somehow compliance is supposed to teach someone morals in 30 minutes - a noble goal. Asshats will be asshats and training basically tells people:

  1. How to be overly sensitive or 
  2. Inform people what the consequences are for being an idiot

I just did online compliance training and was able to answer all the questions without listening to one bit of the video. Does that make me more compliant than before? No. That just makes me either a decent human being or one who knows how to take tests. I'd like to believe I'm the former.

Writing

I really like this article of A VC because it provides a basis of why I'm setting aside time to write every day. I'm writing every day to help me collect and organize my thoughts better so that I can better convey my message to others.

Writing forces you to work out your views and articulate them clearly and concisely.

What's amazing to me is such an emphasis on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) education, which is great; however, studying this does not teach you what humanity is and how to provide a moral compass for the new technologies we create. How would we answer the importance of artificial intelligence to society? What laws would we have for internet privacy? Writing, being able to convey your thoughts enable you to empathize with others. This is what we lose when we are solely focused on technical achievement. 

Imperfect constructs

I listen to a bunch of podcasts to learn more about the little and overlooked things in the world around us. The ones I regularly listen to are Freakonomics, Planet Money, 99% Invisible, and Revisionist History. A lot of what makes these podcasts interesting is that they illuminate in more detail why things are the way they are. It is easy to read news articles and try to immediately draw a conclusion as the story is still unfolding; however, news is rarely so black and white.

 

Revisionist History recently had an episode about golf country clubs and how the public subsidizes them by exempting them from a land use tax, proposition 13, and transfers of ownership. The episode provided a great way to give us context on how certain laws work and how philosophy plays a role in shaping our laws. It is important to also take a step back and understand the motive of the episode, which is not unbiased. Proposition 13 for all its flaws does protect certain people. Retired persons on fixed income wouldn't be able to afford their property taxes as the value of their property increases. Ultimately, we have to understand that laws and civilizations are human constructs. They will be imperfect and we must work to constantly improve them.