New Shoes, Same Treadmill #4
Stuff I’m doing 👨🏻💻
I’m trying very hard to keep it all together. At any moment I could lose my shit. This is a result of the universe having a way of throwing you a ton of bullshit all at once.
The latest was our basement flooding due to a monumental fuck ton of rain last weekend. We’ve ripped out carpet, moved furniture and vacuumed us as much water as we can.
So now everyone is living upstairs and very grumpy as a result. Especially our teenage daughters.
Cool Stuff I’ve read This Week 👨🏻💻📚
🤐Self Censorship is Actually Good
If there’s one article you read this week let it be this one.
The idea that free speech is saying whatever you want whenever you want is wrong on a fundamental level.
I’m Canadian. We don’t have “Free Speech” we have Freedom of Expression. They’re very similar but also different in a few ways.
What I find many people get wrong about words spoken or written is the idea that you should be able to say whatever the fuck you want without consequence. That’s not how it works. Free Speech laws protect you from the government but not from your friends, coworkers, or the private company you work for. Why is this such a hard concept for people wrap their little minds around?
Instead of flooding the home or the workplace or your social gatherings with toxicity, you should monitor your inner dialogue and filter out the parts that will hurt people based entirely on their immutable traits. You should be nice. You should not be an asshole. It’s not a big ask.
My mother in law is very pro Trump and very, very right wing. Keep in mind I live in Canada. I know, it doesn’t make any sense to me either.
We have a decent relationship but she would always find a way to spin the conversation to politics. I was walking on egg shells because I never knew what might set her off this time. Imigrants, the election, cost of groceries, the colour of the sky? I finally had to set a firm boundary with her that I never want to discuss politics in her presence.
Anyone out there with MAGA family or friends will understand the exhaustion.
There is no downside whatsoever to stopping oneself from sharing such fucking awful thoughts and beliefs. And yes, there absolutely should be punishment for offending and demeaning people based on their immutable traits. Society can’t function without constant self censorship. Restraint is key to a society that works.
Read the whole thing.
🎓📈👨🎨How To Live Off the Rails
It’s worth noting that the web, at that point in time (early 90s) wasn’t that far off from just being a weird new medium to make art in. And if you look around at some of the old people who’ve been working on the web for a while, you’re gonna find almost as many people with an arts background as with an engineering background. The web was wild back then. People did weird stuff. Some of it was great, some of it was terrible, and our relationship to pixels and code wasn’t that different from our relationship with paint and brushes.
raises hand Hello! I’m one of those old people! I was in university when the web really started taking off. I also made the switch from a business degree to a wed development/design program.
Decisions were cheap. That’s no longer the case. It is much harder to take a week off from your shit job to go on a road trip to the airplane graveyard when your rent is $2000 a month and you’re sitting on a hundred grand in student debt.
This article is all about trying different things while you’re young. Making decisions, Good and bad. And yes, when I was young it was far cheaper to try new things. I left post secondary with about $6000 in student debt. I was able to pay for most of my education with my part time jobs.
Life requires a certain amount of curiosity and exploration. Life is an open world game. It rewards you for exploring. And capitalism cannot fucking stand that. It wants you on rails. Capitalism wants you to earn the living that life has already granted you.
I’m 49 and currently starting my own business and making a massive career shift. It’s terrifying but working for large and small tech companies nearly crushed me. Capitalism is a bug, not a feature. The line can’t constantly go up.