Avocadia

7th March 2024

πŸ”– How To Be A Good Listener

Advice on how to listen to people. I don't want to say "effectively" because that sounds reductive and transactional. But how to listen with purpose to actually make connections with people . In summary:

  1. Don't negate what they are saying
  2. Don't make it about yourself
  3. Don't walk down, particularly to children
  4. Ask questions

Some of what she says I summarised a bit; a couple of the points were basically "Don't make it abut yourself" but from different angles.

πŸ”– Behind F1's Velvet Curtain

Kate Wagner, author of McMansion Hell, is sent by Road and Track, to do a piece on F1. Wagner has positive impressions of a driver, Lewis Hamilton, neutral impressions of the sport, and negative views of the rich, high-status people in the same audience areas as herself. Road and Track actually took the article off their website an hour after publishing it and at time of bookmarking there is very little context as for why. The explanations given by the editor in chief don't make much sense even to me, a non-media person.

2nd March 2024

Every time I encounter a seppo payment system that refuses to accept my four digit postcode I stop to wonder if banks just accept 90210 as a wildcard.

24th February 2024

πŸ”– Preserved Figs

13th February 2024

Nothing highlights the pure theatre of ISO 27001 quite like correctly answering all of the questions in the mandatory security training but being chased personally eight months later for not watching each second of the videos from which one was supposed to discover the answers to the questions.

11th February 2024

I somehow seem to each year pick a side I kinda want to see win in the Super Bowl despite normally believing it is a very silly, boring sport.

NGL this year it’s the team whose victory will piss off the most Americans.

πŸ”– A unified theory of fucks

I had a similar theory, about not caring about things more than the people who are intrinsically motivated to care. Mandy's make so much more sense.

10th February 2024

πŸ”– Gin, Television, and Social Surplus, or, β€œLooking for the Mouse”

Clay Shirky (inorite) yammers on about finding ways to divert surplus brain cycles into something he considers productive. Feels like there is some morsels in it despite...you know...Shirky.

πŸ”– Why Don't We Just Kill The Kid In The Omelas Hole

2nd February 2024

πŸ”– Balancing Engineering Cultures - Debate Everything vs. Just Tell Me What To Build

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