Thoughts From Reading Ramblings 3

Thank you for sharing.

It is interesting to read another recommend having a crisis checklist. I had independently come to the same conclusion after an incident with a grandparent.

There was a situation where they were expressing stroke-like symptoms, which led to an ambulance trip. After the initial symptoms, before the EMTs arrived, the grandparent regained full functionality as if nothing had gone wrong. It was bizarre, and resulted in the EMTs arriving with us only being able to verbally explain what had happened.

On the car ride home, I quickly created an emergency checklist in my notes app and pinned it.

This list draws inspiration from standard first aid training and fiction literature.

When the symptoms disappeared, it was very concerning. What was the cause? Is it likely to happen again?

We didn't really expect the symptoms to go away quickly, so it makes sense that I didn't think to record things at the time to be analyzed later.

This brings to the forefront: what is it appropriate to record?

Whipping out my phone to record the symptoms and possible last moments of a loved one does not inspire good feelings about having to implement this in practice. However, what if the symptoms didn't go away? What if a recording of the episode could be used to assist in treatment? It would make sense to push past discomfort and gather the data that would supplement or discredit eye witness testimony of events.

I have lots I can say about the topic of privacy in our advancing digital age. This is not that article.

Everyone should also pick up a craft that they do for themselves. Creating something physical with the sweat of one's brow, creating from nothing, taking something raw and turning it into a work worth more than the sum of its parts.

It is an emotive statement. At the same time, I sometimes feel left out that my works are primarily programming rather than physical creation. A program I write will affect pixels on a screen which physically emit light, so it's not like I have zero claim to physical creation. I do not want to attribute intent that is not present, I just want to keep typing the stuff that comes to my mind.

Wokeness has adjusted the way I think. Language is fascinating, being able to shape the actions of others by a low damage audio spell rather than relying on might-makes-right fisticuffs. The right phrase could get another human to give you a loaf of bread, or make them punch you in the face. It is possible to say the wrong thing, and people have created guides on how to avoid doing so.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/bias-free-communication https://developers.google.com/style/inclusive-documentation

How far do I go?

I can't claim to have read these guides entirely, but I have better attention to these themes than most I'd say.

A coworker said today that “we could have a powwow later to look into this”. I noticed at the time but didn't “call them out on it” and mention that the term is considered an offensive appropriation of a cultural term.

Is it my place to police what others say? My coworker doesn't have malicious intent when they say they want to have a meeting later using a word that they been exposed to as normal for a majority of their life.

Is it too late to take corrective action? To restore balance, I obviously must schedule a reminder to send a message to the coworker on Monday, mentioning that they used the wrong word over 50 hours in the past.

It seems that the best course of action is “if they say it again, I'll mention it”. Failing to act/delaying is also something to be cautious of, but in this situation I thinking waiting is an acceptable response.

Consider these examples from the Google guide

👍Before launch, give everything a final check for completeness and clarity. 👎Before launch, give everything a final sanity-check.

👍There are some baffling outliers in the data. 👎There are some crazy outliers in the data.

👍It slows down the service, causing a poor user experience until the queue clears. 👎It cripples the service, causing a poor user experience until the queue clears.

👍Replace the placeholder in this example with the appropriate value. 👎Replace the dummy variable in this example with the appropriate value.

Software is filled with biased terms. Some people bring contention when the default name for a new git branch gets changed from master to main. Another one I notice a lot is whitelist/blacklist where allowlist and denylist should be preferred.

It takes time to adapt to such large changes, to tread a new path in our brains until it becomes the new default. Technology and wokeness to this degree has only risen recently, and old behaviours are hard to overwrite.

The emergency checklist also mentions performing an after action report. In a story I am reading, the protagonist is part of Ranger teams that go out and fight monsters and protect humanity and stuff. Part of the training and being a Ranger is paperwork and meetings, including discussions on how the fight with that hydra went and how to do better next time.

I don't have much to say beyond “this thing made me think of this other thing”. This started as me writing an article because I appreciate reading the articles of others. This is my contribution, then, until I can follow through on some ideas I've had for other articles.

I am reading a bunch of stuff right now. I should create a book list and mention that I, too, liked reading Wolf Brother and appreciate the cover art.

My existing notes say more on the subject than I can properly articulate.

# Teamy @ Teamy-Desktop in ~\OneDrive\Documents\Ideas [02:06:53]
$ rg -i "i should"
I should.md
1:I should make a tool to aggregate all my "I should" notes.
9:In most cases, things "I should" do are more aptly described as "Things I think would be cool to see, and I could build it myself if I took the time to do so.".
$ rg -i "i should" | Measure-Object

Count             : 71

I have ran out of thought things that spawned for the initial premise of this article, +time4bed, so goodnight.