Do we Need Another Twitter?

Twitter was the social network I most enjoyed. It has helped my career as I met colleagues online, in fact my current job came from a connection made on Twitter. But with the doom-spiral that Musk has put Twitter into, I'm not there anymore. I decamped for Mastodon, and yet I wonder if I really should be spending the time I do on a text-based social network.

I don't get bad feelings from Mastodon. I don't doom-scroll it as it's not on my phone. I'm not worried that I should be "more productive" with my time because I should be working instead.

But maybe I should be doing nothing instead of the time I spend on Mastodon. Maybe I should be napping.

Saying goodbye to Mastodon would still leave me with needing some place to make sure I connected with colleagues because I don't go to conferences.

Maybe as Cal Newport suggests I should be looking for a more niche spot to talk to my colleagues about workish things? Does that mean Linkedin should make a comeback?

DHH on Remote Work

Yes DHH is sometimes a jerk, but I think he has it right when he talks about working remotely. When I lived in Chilliwack companies would come calling that wanted me to commute in/out of Vancouver and I always said no. Now that I live in Prince George BC, there are maybe 3 places in town I could work. None of them would take more than 10 minutes to get to by bike most of the year and they'd take about the same time in a car during the coldest winter months where the city doesn't maintain bike lanes.

Yet, I still don't want to go to the office. I want to take 10 minute breaks to throw the ball around for the dog. I want to share a cup of coffee with my wife between meetings.

As DHH says, there are many workers that won't entertain going into the office at all and if your company doesn't allow that, you're saying no to talented people.

The Purpose of Hazing

Holly shared a post of a local fraternity doing its hazing ritual with a comment about why they would do this as a "bonding" activity. Hazing isn't about bonding though, it's about humiliating you and breaking down your sense of self so that in the future when the group does terrible things you are so broken and full of PTSD from the rituals that you have no capacity to say no.

Canadaland did an excellent podcast series looking at Hockey in Canada and talked a bunch about how the hazing rituals lead to not feeling like you own your own body thus when hockey beats it down you assume this is how things should be since you don't have a say. The series has some disturbing commentary on the group sex that goes on as well, and when you've spent hazing time with your dick being abused by other players, abusing others doesn't seem like a huge stretch.

The adults cited in the series let these things go on with teenage boys on a bus. They deny being there, but when many players remember you being on the bus it seems that you're simply covering your ass.

Overall, this terrible abusive practice is what helps boys become abusive men1. Being a victim of abuse makes it so much easier to become an abuser and look the other way when you're an adult and see abuse happening. You turn a blind eye to it as "boys being boys" when it's really abusers abusing.

One interesting fact came out from a player that didn't get into hockey until they were a married adult. When the older teens and young twenty year olds attempted hazing the player just said no, he didn't participate in childish things like that so walk away. Ultimately, they knew what they were doing was terrible and they walked away when confronted. Unfortunately the culture around hazing and hockey only had them move onto another victim that didn't stand up for themselves.

Must Companies Maximize Shareholder Value?

No, but just saying that would be a short read.

This statement is trotted out when companies do things like avoid taxes, put out crappy products, and lay staff off...all in the name of maximizing profits and shareholder value2. Plus shareholders care about the air they breath and their jobs, so if a company makes decisions that harms those items, they're not maximizing value to their shareholder.

See value is not a single thing, cash. I value eating, and I value a street my kids can play in. I value time reading because I get paid well and don't have to work all the time. If I'm a shareholder of a company and that company harms the value I get out of those things, by say paying me less so I have to work every minute of the day to make ends meet, then they harmed shareholder value.

But really the board is supposed to make the best decisions for the company. That means private equity firms that buy, strip and flip companies so they're shells of their former selves aren't really operating in the best interest of the company. They just look at how much money they can extract and move on3.

Ultimately, the law makers in the US and Canada let companies get away with this stripping of assets for pure profit, and we're worse off for it. In Canada it's likely that your dentist, vet, and pharmacy is owned by a single corporation4. We spent a bunch of time on wait lists for vets in Prince George and rejected the first one because it was owned by a big corporation instead of a local.

I don't have any solutions for this, but I do have more reading to do.