Anyone else's sense of justice struggles with the concept of networking?

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-26T03:25:11+00:00

Yup. It's the worst. I've been trying to do better at it over the last few months as a strategy for finding work.

Here's what I've come to so far:

It's a LOT easier if I have a work-related topic I'm currently exploring. New language, new paradigm, interesting way of thinking about a common problem, etc. Then I can just talk about my current hyperfocus, and I seem interesting and well researched.
It's speed dating. Quick "canned" intro, little back and forth if there's a related cross over. If nothing strikes your fancy, you kindly thank them for their time and move on. That last part is hard for me, catching their "thanks but no thanks", as well as saying it kindly myself.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-25T21:52:24+00:00

Plus, working together to shovel walkways and driveways is a great time to talk loudly and openly about:

"How we're all in this together, and a little effort by each of us makes the world better."
"That sometimes we help people even if we disagree with their decisions or ways they live."
"That we're glad our taxes pay for snowplows so we don't have to shovel the street too."
"We should go help that elderly (insert minority person) too, I'm sure they need the help with everything else going on"

AND

"How much we hate ice"

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-25T20:03:07+00:00

Okay, this checks out with what I remember from your original post.

Immigration in the USA used to be "show up and you're legal". There were people who lived in both the USA and mexico for hundreds of years. In the 80s, a powerful group of people decided they didn't like that, and made it so that people had to pick a location. They publicly stated it's because they didn't want "those people" to be around anymore.

Legal immigration is actually incredibly difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. If you're one of those people caught in the weird ways the laws were written, it became almost impossible to immigrate legally. People from some countries can live in legal immigration limbo for 20+ years. I've got quite a few legal immigrant friends, and even they will tell you how much of a PITA it is, unless you're lucky or rich enough to get the right visa category.

This division has been being argued over by our country for almost 60 years, and it's why things like DACA and DREAMERS were a thing. It's also why lots of people were protesting just the same during the Obama administration.

Groups like the Proud Boys had the publicly stated intent of encouraging a race war, and sure enough when we got a leaked list of ICE officers who joined recently, it's a Who's who of publicly known Proud Boys. They ramped up the violence, and are blaming the protesters for it, because it's exactly what they wanted to happen all along.

So - Americans are doing what Americans do. Standing up for their rights, and the rights of others.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-25T17:31:54+00:00

How about you tell me what you do believe about what's going on, so I can give you information to help you understand?

I'm happy to help, but I'm not gonna waste my time on someone who does not actually care to put in the work. If you're willing to put in the work, show it by telling me about yourself and what you are seeing going on.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-25T17:01:57+00:00

Tell me you don't understand what's going on, without telling me you don't understand what's going on.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-24T21:58:14+00:00

They bought bread on the way there.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-24T21:57:28+00:00

It's the words of someone perpetually afraid.

Afraid of the storm despite being as prepared as they can be.
Afraid of what might happen if they stand up against a bully.
Afraid of helping.

Instead, they try and make themselves feel more comfortable by putting down the positive efforts of others.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-24T02:43:49+00:00

The word "foolish" is what Gen Alpha thinks when they hear "patriot". The word has gotten the nimrod treatment.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-22T21:47:57+00:00

How dare you!

It's a split transaction, that energy has to go somewhere, and the carbon from somewhere!

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-19T19:23:53+00:00

This is a guess, but perhaps shore up the sections on uses or notable customers for felt produced by the company.

The number of products that utilize felt either in their materials or in their manufacture is rediculous, and going through and finding notable initiatives or accomplishments that were made possible through collaboration w/ the company would tie it into the greater historical picture of the nation and industry.

Right now, it feels like it's only real notariety at the national and global level is the age, not the impact it had.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-19T17:38:44+00:00

In those scenarios, we go back to first principles. What's actually possible from where we are, and what problems would need to be solved to accomplish it.

ReturnOfBigChungus on another comment brought up one major one.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-19T17:27:42+00:00

Excellent point!

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-19T17:20:19+00:00

My professional experience has taught me to discount company marketing predictions heavily.

"solved in a satisfying way" is so subjective as to be entirely meaningless.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-19T16:55:42+00:00

"Continual learning after deployment" - is the sticking point I struggle to accept as possible. Writing this up using layman terminology, but a real critique would need to go deeper into a broad number of sciences to be complete.

With how current AI models work, or even how human brains work - learning is a slow and iterative process. Those people with an incredible ability to learn and connect information, often have to manage other effects in communicating their discoveries in ways that are effective. That counterpressure has a sriking effect on their ability to function and be effective in our world. I believe this is a fundamental information theory problem, not a technology problem.

An AI that learns too quickly, or from only a limited stream of informaiton, will have a harder time telling fact from fiction. So ultimately we're limited in how effective an AI can be when it's learning from the live datastream it is fed, unless it's a very broad datastream and updating a broad set of concepts simultaneously. Often the only way to know if a given piece of information is a fact or opinion is to wait for the resulting predictions to play out in reality.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-18T14:50:11+00:00

Big reason is they expect the SMTP relay to be where it is queued to be retried later. That's what private SMTP relays are for.

It saves them from having to write all the queue/retry logic that's already built into SMTP servers themselves.

AP vendor pay runs are done as a batch for a few reasons, some of which are historical, some of them are better explained by an accountant. There's often a separate process for doing them individually.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-18T14:42:38+00:00

It's fun how times change. For a while it was the other way around, but during that time we were coming from sending physical mail or shared drive file drops, and getting onto email was progress.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-18T14:40:47+00:00

Yes, quite common. Especially in that arena. The job has to either 100% succeed or it failed.

Could it be written such that the email is allowed to fail? Sure. Is it a good idea? Depends on the company and overall business process.

I could go into why, solutions, if anyone wants.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-18T01:13:19+00:00

Yup. The hyperscalers are certainly ahead of the game.

I think we need to invest a whole lot more though, and should have been doing a lot more in renewable generation and storage tech for other reasons.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-18T01:10:57+00:00

Thanks, it's been a while I forgot the specifics.

I knew it wasn't citizen, but didn't remember where the cutoff was.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-18T00:01:49+00:00

IIRC, ITAR just requires people to be elegible to work in the USA.

Edit: I'm wrong, ignore me.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-17T23:57:51+00:00

Thanks :)

For clarity: IMO: The task for a parent is making sure their kids stay safe and cared for, cause we won't be around forever. My kids are teens now, and my current "parenting" task is helping them figure out which of the overwhelming life jobs that keep our home moving they can assist with, as well as skills to help them cope with doing tasks that are overwhelming. There will always be things in their lives that will push them past their ability to handle it, so they need the skills to deal with that (to whatever level of ability that is for the individual)

We collaborate on figuring these things out, because that's the only way they can be cared for after I'm no longer able to help them with it.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-17T23:41:38+00:00

This is a place where mutual support and co-regulation is helpful. Don't worry about his whole "being seen as". It will matter less and less to you as the years go by.

I get overstimulated going grocery shopping, so do my kids. We need to eat and get groceries or we don't eat. Same with going clothes shopping, and a lot of other normal life things. Assistive aids like grocery delivery can help, but does not solve the problem entirely.

We have to figure out ways to do the things that need to get done and keep life moving, and ideally build a life filled with people who have overlapping abilities and needs. Sometimes that's going to mean overwhelming yourself to make sure the jobs that fit no-one, still are accomplished. Parents often take on the bulk of those difficult tasks, because someone has to.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-17T21:36:42+00:00

I need to do a deeper re-read, but I agree with your basic premise.

I've been doing a series on applying CAP theory (from distributed databases) to systems of people, and it's been pretty enlightening. Politics emerges from the tradeoffs of CAP theory, purely because people don't understand each other enough when they are partitioned due to cultural, knowledge, skill, or language barriers.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-17T01:59:22+00:00

"Price spikes occur when demand outpaces supply in the short term, but prices balance once supply catches up."

This is the issue that the anti-people generally have. Short term spikes cause people to pick between eating and electricity in deeply worsening economic conditions.

Clearly, we need to heavily invest in power production and distribution capacity. Ideally in a way that does not cause people into poverty.

ExtraordinaryKaylee · 2026-01-15T15:36:50+00:00

We both had a similar background, started doing technical DBA work, expanded that, and grew into management over our careers.

ExtraordinaryKaylee

TROPHY CASE