This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Computer use is still pretty ass and I absolutely would not trust AI to navigate websites for you that aren't on the clearnet. I.e. if it requires a login tied to you, no good. If it's freely available via Google, go for it.
For your tasks, you can absolutely leverage AI to do the data processing steps required after you download the files.
I'm still in the process of figuring out how to use it for effective spreadsheet work. It's hit or miss, but the hits are fantastic. I find I need much more precise prompts for spreadsheet work, whereas for code/general tasks you can usually get away with saying "do X" whereas with spreadsheets I find I need to be a bit more precise "use X to accomplish Y, you'll probably want to Z first" .
It does sound like what you're doing involves some reconciliation/bridging. AI LOVES doing this. I've been using it to sift through shitty client accounting (my clients seem to deliberately hire the worst accountants) and it's fantastic. Just be warned, if the answer is there, it will find it eventually, but if the answer isn't there, it will come up with the most insane plugs to get there. So you have to understand the scope/problem, but it's saving me a LOT of headaches along the way. I haven't had to manually do a bridge between documents in a few months, thank god.
But I still have to do the downloading myself, and by that stage it's quicker for me to go "I need to sort out the 9 employees for centre 2 and sum up their gross wages in that period" with Excel rather than hand-hold an AI through all the steps about "no, don't include that staff member but do include this staff member" and so forth.
It may very well be
If this is a regular task and the various tacit rules wrt employees are stable, it's potentially worth codifying this so you can streamline the one step.
But that is a nonzero amount of work (frequently a lot of work) to set up a new workflow and it's your life!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link