How to "Hack" your Gen-X colleagues and bosses
4: Focus with Gen X on mission and results. Not seniority, effort, or hours worked. You’ll often hear Gen X say, “If someone gets the job done in half the time, that’s fine.”
UH...... ALLL OF THISSSS
Also, as Calvin and our wives know, one of my favorite pasttimes is freaking out Millenials and Zoomers by replying to their long text messages with just "k". Gen-X sees that as efficient and sufficient. Those below us perceive it as "literal violence" and often need therapy to recover. It's amazing.... -B
I've now been asked multiple times for my take on Elon's offer for Twitter. So fine, this is what I think about that. I will assume the takeover succeeds, and he takes Twitter private. (I have little knowledge/insight into how actual takeover battles work or play out.
A great breakdown of Web 1, 2 and 3 and why the Elon / Twitter thing is all about Web 1/2(-ish) rebelling against Web 3. And to be fair, Web 3 does objectively stink. It's genuinely awful and we should shut it down and start over. Starting with Twitter (assuming Elon at the end of all this actually ends up owning it....). -B
OK I was dissing threads earlier, and I'm right, but @yishan is pretty good at them. To be clear, he needs a blog and not billion-tweet-long threads but the guy ran Reddit so what do I know. -C
I'm only 85% this negative on crypto.
But the idea of digging up dead dinosaurs, burning them, releasing carbon into the air, generating electricity at some efficiency <100%, then using that electricity to run megawatts of computing to solve math problems that don't actually generate any productive value for humanity as a whole so some people can claim to own a website that has a link to a jpg of a bad andy warhol knockoff of a primate seems like a bad deal man. Why would we do that? I guess I just don't love using multiple slurp juices on a single space ape enough. -B
Stan Van Gundy and the Boomer Doomer Phenomenon as Case of Trust
Some of the older NBA coaches are now publicly commenting (preaching? pontificating?) about politics and such like. The smugness of some of these types of things is one of a multitude of reasons I don't follow sports nearly as much as I did in years past even if I often don't disagree with the message. Maybe it is a Gen X thing but smugly telling me what to think almost guarantees I'll tune you out.
Smug. Smugly. Smugish. The Smuginator if you aren't into the whole brevity thing.
This is a great blog post dissecting some of these dynamics and trying to explain why amongst other things Joe Rogan is so polarizing. Rogan is extremely not smug or preachy and seems to have a genuinely open and truth seeking brain even if he often gets it wrong. We all often get it wrong. Probably we should all be a lot less smug. -B
This post is definitely worth the read, so do that, but I have to link out to the little gold nugget buried halfway through. This is a stand-up comic I'd never heard riffing on the "Fox News Dad" and it's v funny. -C
The last 2 years have caused many people to think differently about many things. An obvious example is priorities. You don’t realize how important kids being in school and having a sense of normalcy is….until they don’t have it.
One of the biggest priority and perception changes for me over the past 2 years has been related to mental health. It’s not really a priority….until you don’t have it.
Anecdotally, I think lots of people have gone “Covid crazy”. I’m not sure exactly why in each case but there’s obviously been massive changes in many peoples lives that they don’t really have control over. I think most people in their normal daily life have some level of stress that they can cope with for the most part. The past 2 years pushed many of us over that arbitrary line…
If you’d asked me 5 years ago about mental health, or feeling down, or how to “get over” something, I would have likely said something like “get some exercise and keep your mind busy on other stuff”. That’s not really how it works. Like at all.
Related to mental health, in the background, I suspect most people are pretty good at hiding depression because they feel a pretty big stigma attached to feeling that way. They feel bad because they can’t make themselves feel ok and they don’t feel like they should feel bad anyway- but they do feel bad.
My experience kind of manifest itself in 2 different ways that I think are pretty common. First, a lot of the time I did not want to feel better- I wanted to feel worse- which in and of itself made me feel worse. “Why would I exercise? I don’t want to feel better.” I’ve learned that this is very common. It’s a vicious cycle. Second, I found myself doing and thinking about doing destructive things to my life to make my physical real world life match the mental image I had and aloneness I felt. I did not realize this is what’s going on at the time really so it was hard to sort of rationalize my way back to normalcy- and as an aside, a lot of the time you’re not even sure you want normalcy anyway. Again, it’s a vicious cycle. It’s not a great place to be.
I’m not really sure what righted the ship to be honest. I do know that it was many things working together. At the core was belief in me and unwavering support from my wife. Counseling helped in that I felt less crazy and alone and also helped identify real issues to think about. Friends helped in that regard also. A doctor helped me realize what was going on (and gave me a depression questionnaire) and view the situation rationally and take baby steps in the right direction. I started talking about it more and making healthier choices. Eventually inertia and positive reinforcement were helping instead of working against me.
Anyway, this was a lot more than the 500 words I was allotted. If you’re thinking you might need help, take the test at the link below. It helped pull me back to the rationale world and yes, step 1 is identifying you have a problem. And find a way to talk to someone. I suspect you’re going to find support when you’re worried about being judged.
Peace
-Joe
What Is ‘Cheugy’? You Know It When You See It
One of my greatest joys in life is using as much slang as possible in the presence of my 13 year old daughter and as many of her friends as possible. Having an embarrassing dad builds character, no cap. -B
I totally agree, but due to my aforementioned lack of free articles I am still unsure what a cheugy is but am working up the confidence to type it into Google in a private browsing window.
OK I did it. I think I am 53% cheugy at least 42% of the time, depending on who is applying that label to me. Makes sense. -C
Caitlin Flanagan on Turning 60
An extremely thoughtful and touching reflection on life, meaning and mortality. I'd guess that is something we all do a little during the holiday season. -B
H/T Joe D.
Regardless of whether you think it was a good idea or a bad idea you have to acknowledge that we basically elected the president of twitter-town to be the president of the country... so that's a thing we did....
-B
We could probably spend an entire issue trying to figure out why we both still use Twitter. I probably tweet at least as often as I read content about how Twitter is awful. Also worth a click is the link in the article to a Pew Research study of Twitterers. May Web 3.0 will usher in the sunset of Twitter... -C
I hate the name. As far as the meta-multi-matrix-verse thing or whatever... OK? I don't personally think such a thing will take over society in any meaningful way until you can plug your brain directly into it to simulate a sensorial experience. Also the early VR stuff gave me all the vertigos so maybe I'm just cynical. -B
Something else kind of meta about Meta is that this was a big interview, and a newsletterer got it instead of, say, a CNN or NYT. -C