@mods -- could we link to the DoJ post linked to in the article? the article doesn't contribute anything new other than superfluous (at best) images and salacious descriptions.
congrats! regarding this particular post, you may want to revisit the primary source material, the secondary source tik tok, and ultimately the relevance of the post
EDIT: i don’t mean to take anything away from your blog, and thank you for posting these links! the theme is super interesting and 100% deserving of attention and analysis. thank you for putting it together, i’m enjoying reading through the posts :)
i think both OP and the motivating tiktok have misread, even inverted the narrative.
after rewatching the music video for Dilemma[1], i’m reading the nokia phone scene as: she’s received a message from her “boo” inquiring her whereabouts as she pines after nelly, and is not in fact attempting to send a message to nelly. that the green shirt and white pantsed clad figure outside her window is indeed nelly, and not her alleged boo, is supported by the prior scene in which nelly, clad in same clothes, is seen grinding with kelly in the street.
this changes the narrative of the linked blog post entirely. kelly was sold as a bimbo trying to send a text via a spreadsheet app without internet connectivity, when the facts better support a narrative of her being sent a needy message by this unsatisfactory “boo” in the form of a spreadsheet attachment (what a dork) while she further cements her infatuation with nelly and his unbelievable cheekbones (and inexplicable cheek sticker).
if she’s the recipient of a message, and not the sender, how could the HYPERLINK= VBA function be relevant at all?
the article is certainly "Articulate", and i'm sure its content and message is agreeable to many in the community (myself included). no doubt that it speaks to the day-to-day chafes of working engineers and other technical folks in a corporate environment.
taking a look at the author's startup[1] is interesting. it seems clear that he's trying to collapse employees' personal slack afforded by remote/async work. that makes sense in terms of boosting butts-in-seats accountability, and i guess by some draconian measure that could translate to "productivity" (read: answering random interruptions to deep work). but i worry that the very dynamic he's espousing would itself kill builder culture. you can't think deeply about a problem when you have people bombarding your attention based on their own whims. from the company's landing page:
> Actually talk with your coworkers. Walk over to your teammate for a quick question. 10x faster than sending a zoom link.
also, i guess this is more aesthetic, but the skeuomorphism is super weird. i would be super suspicious of a work environment that requires this sort of SIMS-like virtual environment. it seems like a half-assed, 2D version of VR workplaces that are crawling their way out of R&D departments at certain advertising companies (looking at you Meta(verse)).
> I dunno where I'm going with this. I don't have any big thesis. I just wanted to write it down.
the invectives of “what did you expect?” seem at best tangential to the author’s intent here. sounds like they’re just trying to express perspective, not mount an argument with a specific aim.
to the author’s point, wasn’t it great when the internet had convinced itself that “zero sum”/scarcity were an unnecessary constraint of a physically constrained world? that ideal may not have shaken out, but there’s no reason to disparage someone for lamenting it (especially when they’ve actually put sweat into that vision).
not everything is a pitch. speech isn’t always an an advertisement or a polemic.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/former-global-diversity...