Actually, thinking leads to writing and writing leads to thinking. It’s not a one-way causal relationship. There is a positive feedback loop, when all is well. Until the thinking and writing collectively leads to exhaustion, at which point it’s time for a break and come back at it another time - maybe another day, after a good sleep.

In a binary context True and Not False are the same. But most of the world is not binary.

I had a disagreement with my father when I was about 5 years old. I said “I don’t think so!” about something - I don’t recall what. Something fairly trivial like “Is your brother down there with you?” He corrected me “You should say ‘I think not’”, as he often did when I said “I don’t think so.”. His English English was different from my Canadian English. I thought about it briefly and replied: “You’re wrong. ‘I don’t think so’ and ‘I think not’ are different. I don’t think ‘not’ so it would be wrong for me to say ‘I think not’. I don’t have any opinion about it. I don’t know. I didn’t think about it at all until you asked me. And I still don’t know. I just don’t think so.”

He conceded to my 5 year old logic. And I stand by it to this day.

Of course, many people use phrases that literally mean one thing when they actually mean something else. If you’re familiar with them, you might know what they mean despite the literal meaning of what they say.

And you should read Le Ton Beau de Marot before you get too caught up in whether a translation conveys the same meaning as the original.

Yes, only if you actually use it. But the question was: How will they prove that I have any social media history? the premise being that one can deny the existence of any history while actually using social media. Age verification will make this increasingly difficult and risky. If you use social media and deny it and they can prove you lied about using it, there will be consequences.

Have you heard about ‘age verification’ to ‘protect the children’? You too will be age verified. They will know all your accounts. That’s the whole point of age verification. It is to eliminate anonymity.

There should be legislation to make it illegal for a car manufacturer to release software that has not had both its development process and the software itself independently audited with with an acceptable outcome.

I did a little more searching with similar conclusion: most of what’s available is pretty extremely biased and unreliable. But it does seem there may be a connection beyond the vaccine he created being manufactured by Merck.

This CBS News article from 2008 says:

Offit holds in a $1.5 million dollar research chair at Children’s Hospital, funded by Merck. He holds the patent on an anti-diarrhea vaccine he developed with Merck, Rotateq, which has prevented thousands of hospitalizations.

That appears to be a quote from a Couric & Co Blog entry but that is “the official blog of the CBS Evening News”, so I guess CBS is quoting themselves and the information is as reliable as CBS. Unfortunately the linked blog entry no longer exists.

Offit is the current Chairholder of the Maurice R. Hilleman Chair of Vaccinology according to UPENN website. I guess that’s a reliable source. CBS didn’t name the chair funded by Merck but the Maurice R. Hilleman Chair of Vaccinology was established by Merck, according to UPENN.

On the other hand this UPMC Center for Continuing Education in the Health Sciences CME Information Sheet, which lists Offit as a speaker, says:

No members of the planning committee, speakers, presenters, authors, content reviewers and/or anyone else in a position to control the content of this education activity have relevant financial relationships with any entity producing, marketing, re-selling, or distributing health care goods or services, used on, or consumed by, patients to disclose.

I don’t see anything about ongoing funding of the Maurice R. Hilleman Chair of Vaccinology by Merck. Only that Merck established it (presumably providing some endowment), and the possibly related report by CBS. Maybe $1.5million was the initial endowment.

B8B - Business ate business.

Is there any truth to the allegation that Dr Paul Offit received $1.5million from Merck? I don’t see any disclosure of such conflict of interest in the The Guardian article but it comes up when I search for information about him.

You know it’s only a matter of time until computers are ‘sold’ by subscription.

MEPs insist that age assurance systems must be accurate and preserve minors’ privacy

The EU, where War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength and Surveillance is Privacy.

What happened to ending the war within 24 hours? Didn’t Trump say it would be easy? Why is there concern that Ukraine will need weapons indefinitely?

Can they be made into finished lumber in Canada at a cost that would allow them to sell for a profit into export markets? What would it take to achieve this?

This makes me think of Don’t Talk to the Police

The article gets off to a bad start:

As I get older, I increasingly think about whether I’m spending my time the right way to advance my career and my life. This is also a question that your company asks about you every performance cycle: is this engineering manager spending their time effectively to advance the company or their organization?

An employee and their employer have conflicting objectives. The employee wants to maximise their benefit, including advancing their career and life while minimising their cost, including expenditure of time and energy. On the other hand, employer wants to maximise their benefit, including maximising the value they extract from the employee while minimising their cost, including wages and other compensation. To suggest that the two parties to a performance review are substantially asking themselves the same question is incorrect and misleading.

There are, of course, opportunities for mutual benefit. Interests and objectives of employees and employers are not entirely antagonistic and it is not necessarily a zero sum game. But interests are very much different and in many respects antagonistic.

An employer would like to reduce wages and have employees work longer hours. An employee would like to have more income so that they can afford food, housing, raise their children and have some security when they are unable to work including health insurance and pension, and at least occasionally get home to see and maybe even enjoy some time with their family, friends and belongings. An employer might provide a mobile phone for the benefit of the employee being effectively on-call and monitored 24/7 with no more cost than the phone and service themselves and the cost of accounting to recover any expenses related to personal use. By providing a mixed-use device, the employer has the benefit that it is on even when the employee is not compensated for being on-call, providing uncompensated on-call benefits to the employer. The employee would rather not be bothered during their personal time, at least without compensation. Training? There is some mutual benefit but the employee wants training that maximises their career development, including immediate and future employment opportunities, while the employer wants to minimise expenditure and minimise the risk that the employee will use their new skills to find better (for them) employment elsewhere, while developing enough skill to meet immediate needs. In some cases, the antagonism is explicit: the employee will be required to compensate the employer if they leave their position before some stipulated period. Non-compete ‘agreements’ are another way employers attempt to minimise the benefit of training to employees. There are myriad examples where the interests of employee and employer are significantly adversarial.

An employee and employer should negotiate in good faith, with the mutual understanding that they have some mutual interests but their interests are not completely aligned, and to recognise and resolve the conflicts as much as possible while maximising mutual benefit. This is not achieved by Kumbaya illusions of each having the same questions and interests.

Google can read your emails whether you opt out or not.

Canada’s next. Or maybe Greenland.

Is it disabled in hardware, firmware or software? Does Linux enable it?

It’s an interesting article but it seems to me that when it comes to opposing abuse of power, free communication is more fundamental than free software. Without sufficiently free communication, free software is practically unavailable and for many purposes (anything that involves communication with others) it is unusable. Without sufficiently free means of communication, the fediverse will cease to exist. Access to and use of the Internet is increasingly regulated.

It’s a little less disorienting than when all one had was telephone calls. And I guess that was less disorienting than when all one had was letters and rumours.

According to Are Song Lyrics Copyrighted? How the Law Works, unless their use is ‘fair use’ or they have a license, then they are violating copyright, if I understand the article correctly. I believe that site explains laws in the United States. It probably varies somewhat by jurisdiction, so I expect it would depend on who owns the website and where they are based.