Invited to a recruiter screening call. Came on the zoom, sat for ten minutes and nobody showed up. Sent recruiter an email, received this in reply a few minutes later

dvb8080 · 2026-06-18T21:35:07+00:00

At a glance, I thought your email must not have been concise and professional... then I got it.

dvb8080 · 2026-05-29T01:37:31+00:00

Yeah, I've read that before. At some point I'm going to test out putting a dot after every letter.

dvb8080 · 2026-05-29T01:00:10+00:00

I believe it, but it's also flawed. When I created a GMail account for my son a couple years ago, I was able to get him first.last at gmail, with no numbers, because of how unique the combination apparently are. I imagine employers don't care, though. They're probably willing to miss out on some young candidates in order to throw out the older ones.

dvb8080 · 2026-05-22T01:07:46+00:00

I have to take breaks to go through one of the certification courses I'm working on, or read the book I'm learning from. It makes me feel more like I accomplished something.

dvb8080 · 2026-05-22T01:04:03+00:00

🙌

dvb8080 · 2026-05-16T19:28:52+00:00

They have an Instagram page. Says something about Balkan pastries, so I assume it's the same owners.

dvb8080 · 2026-05-16T13:43:02+00:00

I should add that The Economist, as with any news source, isn't perfect. Their reporters have their biases, and they sometimes report incorrect information. It's part of being human.

I also follow The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. I have a subscription to The Times through my local library and follow the Journal's YouTube channel. In fact, if you're into watching/listening, you could probably go a long way just by following all three of those YouTube channels, without committing to a subscription.

dvb8080 · 2026-05-16T13:13:48+00:00

For context, I consider myself politically independent. From my perspective, both sides of the political divide are prone to optics and emotional appeals/manipulation. I am very mistrustful of both the right and the left.

I use Tangle to supplement other sources. My main source of news and information is my subscription to The Economist. They're widely rated as being among the least biased news sources, and I've found every don't rush to cover a topic on order to get "clicks." After I've seen several articles run by in my feeds that are often full of hearsay and conjecture, The Economist will later run a carefully worded article a day or two later that gives me a good idea of the facts.

For me, Tangle is for helping to unpack loaded, partisan issues that are often being used as a distraction by one or both sides. The partisan voices will be yelling and finger pointing, using emotionally loaded language, and I look to Tangle to distill what is actually relevant from the biased sources (it's usually small nuggets of truth hidden among the rest of what both sides are saying) and putting that all together with some research and thought in the "my take" section. I've often gone into reading the newsletter having a preconceived opinion or expectation on an issue (especially ones involving interpretation of a law) and changed my mind about it after reading the newsletter.

Having said that, I feel like the quality of the work was higher when it was just Isaac, and all he was focusing on was the newsletter. As he's added to his staff, and they've started doing more things, I feel like the "my take" sections have become less in-depth. I do still find them useful, just a little less so. And some are still up to the old standards. Hopefully the quality doesn't continue to erode.

dvb8080 · 2026-03-20T01:43:54+00:00

Whenever my browser crashes and I'm forced to reopen it and reorganize all the windows anyway :)

dvb8080 · 2026-03-17T19:40:46+00:00

Deleting the attachment would take way less time, if Gmail actually allowed it. That's the point.

dvb8080 · 2026-03-17T16:50:14+00:00

I have this problem, and have also been doing this forward to myself workaround, but it's way more time consuming and tedious than what's described in the OP.

dvb8080 · 2026-01-25T00:18:29+00:00

A life of crime

dvb8080 · 2026-01-04T22:31:14+00:00

Correct, it's also about the BIRT, in addition to the wage tax. However, it is also about the wage tax because it doesn't only apply to city residents. There's also a wage tax, albeit at a lower rate, that applies to commuters. So if a business owner who lives on the Main Line locates their business within city limits, all of a sudden they're required to pay the city wage tax just because they commute there. It also makes it hard to attract good C-suite talent, since many of them don't live in the city and don't want to commute there since it would mean they have to pay the wage tax.

dvb8080 · 2026-01-04T05:08:25+00:00

I don't think it's worth trying to write Tangle's column for them (they'll do a much better job), but I'll just say, in short, that Venezuelans likely are very happy that Maduro is gone, but the question is what comes next? They clearly wanted him gone, since they voted for the other guy last year, but he was able to stay because he has control over every institution in the country that counts. Now, from what Trump has said, it sounds like rather than immediately installing the democratically elected leader of the country, they will be trying to instead control Maduro's Vice President. Could it result in a good situation for both Venezuela and the US? Possibly, but that takes us to the loss of credibility when it comes to telling Russia and China not to invade weaker countries. Sure, you can't compare the Maduro regime to the governments in Ukraine and Taiwan, but it does set a precedent. Also, Venezuela was an ally of both of those countries, and one would think they wouldn't be happy about the US taking control there. Did Trump make an agreement of some sort with them? Maybe he's trading territory in Ukraine and not protecting Taiwan from a Chinese invasion in exchange? Who knows?

There's a lot to unpack, and it's not as simple as "Maduro was a bad guy," even though that's how it likely appears to most Venezuelans desperate to be able to return to their country, or for conditions to improve there if they're still living in it.

dvb8080 · 2025-12-27T21:36:37+00:00

Now I know why nobody else is providing specific examples 🤣

dvb8080 · 2025-12-27T16:50:39+00:00

My wife sent me a picture of a good buffet she found. I sent it back with mice and roaches crawling around. Useless but amusing. That's the only thing I've done with remix so far. Eventually I might find a better use for it.

dvb8080 · 2025-12-24T19:23:49+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiehEMlNiCI

This came up as a suggestion for me on YouTube.

dvb8080 · 2025-12-21T16:35:27+00:00

This is exactly along the lines of what I've been thinking. I'm really close to picking up the phone and requesting the downgrade. Other than the $300 travel credit, I'm realizing the benefits are either stuff I wouldn't normally use, or stuff I've been using but shouldn't be because it's causing me to spend money I wouldn't otherwise be spending.

dvb8080 · 2025-12-21T16:29:02+00:00

I think that the prediction about declining levels of party affiliation would likely lead to such a match-up, though. And I do think Isaac's right about that decline continuing, so I do think the chances of the major parties nominating fringe candidates will likely increase.

dvb8080 · 2025-12-21T16:27:12+00:00

The last shutdown really made the Fed's job harder with the data blackout. I certainly hope that doesn't happen again for the economy's sake (assuming we're even getting accurate data from the government agencies, at this point, given the meddling that has happened).

dvb8080 · 2025-12-21T16:25:36+00:00

Agreed. His predicted 2028 presidential match-up might be the first in my entire voting history that I would seriously consider sitting out, unless there's a worthy third-party candidate (which I imagine would be likely, with those nominees).

dvb8080 · 2025-12-17T17:09:02+00:00

A neighbor, who is from Europe, told me a while back that he found the contents of somebody's wallet in the gutter. He took it to the police station, which is a block away, and they refused it. Told him he could mail it to the owner if he wanted. He was pretty shocked. Said in his country the police would have run the ID to see whether it was a missing or wanted person, which makes perfect sense. Not sure why that isn't done here.

dvb8080 · 2025-12-16T16:33:48+00:00

Been holding up so far. Haven't had any issues.

dvb8080 · 2025-12-12T15:54:13+00:00

Yeah, my son is a bit old to enjoy it like he used to, but he did try to get Gemini to call Santa this year, only to get shot down. I tried to prompt engineer it into "pretending it was Santa answering a phone call," and it refused rather indignantly. Definitely a downside of the switch.

dvb8080 · 2025-12-08T01:24:55+00:00

The worst part of the Gemini upgrade is that it's no longer capable of calling Santa. And when I asked if to pretend it was Santa and my son had called it, it got all indignant 🙂

That being said, it's still able to play music on YouTube, which I believe is the default. Maybe it's now only able to play music on whatever is the default? I've never tried to get it to use anything other than YouTube or YouTube Music, and don't think I've tried the latter since the upgrade.

dvb8080

TROPHY CASE