ThenElection
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User ID: 622
Someone submitting code that broke the Google search button would cost the company on the order of a million per minute; it's only natural that Google would pay a lot to minimize that risk. Of course, there are automated processes in place to prevent and mitigate those kinds of mistakes, but that makes the work more complicated than messing around with some CSS. And even that doesn't cover all the work involved in something as seemingly simple as maintaining a button--accessibility, brand consistency, i18n, framework migrations, etc. This work is very lame but also very necessary, and not something a random trucker could do or even (unfortunately) the average CS grad could do.
Also, just informationally, as others have pointed out it's pretty much impossible for any SWE (not even the head button changer, who's probably some L7 taking home a million per year) at Google to take a decade to accumulate a million. Maybe five years or so, depending on your career progression, especially with the bull market of the past decade.
ThenElection
2d ago
One plausible outcome is TACO, leaves the SoH under effective Iranian control, and loudly proclaims victory because he blew up a bunch of shit.
And sadly that is one of the better ways the current situation might develop.
ThenElection
3d ago
That is extremely compelling, if not what I would call reassuring. Thanks.
ThenElection
3d ago
That does shift my opinion toward the laundry explanation, thanks. That's a lot of lint.
ThenElection
3d ago
I'm agnostic on what happened, but knowing the base rate of laundry fires taking out carriers in the US military would be useful information.
ThenElection
3d ago
We've done the middle two very comprehensively.
Indeed, we've totally obliterated the Iranian military at least once a week since the war began.
ThenElection
5d ago
I've heard the quip than Don Quixote was the first postmodern novel.
ThenElection
5d ago
The first time I ever enjoyed Shakespeare was in a tavern that served food and booze while putting on the performance. Can't recommend highly enough (no tomatoes thrown, alas).
ThenElection
5d ago
Hoofprints in the snow might not tell you something is a horse. But then you see a tuft of shoulder-high fur caught in the brush, then a stirrup, and then, hey, it's Brunellus.
I suppose the broadness of the term "postmodernism" is one of its weaknesses, but reasons I'd argue for it:
- It's a meta story: the story itself is framed as being a lost manuscript.
- It's a pastiche: high literature, philosophy, theology meets genre detective fiction
- Intertextuality: abundant references to an expansive group of external texts
- Thematically, it's all about no one overarching institution or system (even rationality and empiricism) having a monopoly on truth.
- A major element is signs: we don't have direct access to the thing in itself, only references to the thing. Hence, the name of the rose, not the rose.
Keeping a notebook while reading Gravity's Rainbow is not how you should be reading it; you'll inevitably be bogged down. The jazz analogy is right, but perhaps not how you mean it: it's a kaleidoscope, and the fractured lack of a coherent narrative is itself what you're supposed to get out of it. It's an experience, not a textbook.
I'd also not overly index on Gravity's Rainbow as postmodern literature, just as it wouldn't make sense to overly index on Finnegan's Wake as modernist literature. You could just as well choose Pale Fire or the Name of the Rose as exemplars of postmodernism, and those are excellent and have a highly readable narrative.
As to their value, I enjoyed those two exemplars immensely; if they bring value to your life, then they have value. Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest have the unfortunate status of being i-am-very-smart books, and if read as that, you're not going to have a good time or get any value out of them.
You are entirely correct that Cormac McCarthy is unsurpassed in 20th century literature, though.
I think a strategy of keeping most of your investments in SPY, and then occasionally (every couple of years, but only when a real opportunity presents itself) making strong, reasonable bets during major events where you have high confidence can get you outsized returns (e.g. I almost doubled my net worth during the first couple months of COVID).
The issue is that psychologically, waiting around for those types of events is really boring. And success begets failure, as you really want to start looking for opportunities where your edge is smaller or realistically non-existent.
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