Interesting Links for 28-07-2017

[andrewducker]

Perfectionism as a risk factor for suicide

(tags: perfectionism suicide psychology )

The Twitter Joke Trial, as remembered by one of the lawyers

(tags: law freespeech twitter uk )

Why IBM has special permission to use software for evil

(tags: evil ibm software funny video )

European commission to crack down on offshore tax avoidance

(tags: tax europe )

How to Make a Clichéd High Fantasy Cover

(tags: fantasy funny art viaJamesNicoll )

The theocratic democracies of Iran and the UK

(tags: religion politics uk iran )

On The 50th Anniversary Of The Sexual Offences Act 1967, Look How Far We've Come

(tags: lgbt history )

Capitol Police Forced Journos to Delete Footage of AHCA Protesters.

(tags: police freespeech journalism usa )

Genetic evidence suggests the Canaanites weren’t destroyed after all

(tags: history middle_east )

Scotland receive £4,000 fine from Fifa for booing God Save the Queen

(tags: Scotland UK politics royalty )

Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat

(tags: advice chat im viaSwampers )

Religious people believe because emotional resonance overrides logic

Which doesn't surprise me. Most people at least start off believing things because they lead to a conclusion that they like. Starting at axioms and working your way forward to whatever they lead to is distinctly uncomfortable at times
(tags: belief logic religion psychology )

'Eureka' moment pinpointed in the brain

(tags: brain learning psychology )

Regret improves children's decision-making

I've had a few. And sometimes they've helped me avoid doing the stupid thing again.
(tags: psychology learning behaviour )

Ketamine for depression encouraging, but questions remain around long-term use

(tags: depression psychology )

Comments

The theocratic democracies of Iran and the UK

[doug]

Thanks for the link love!

Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat

[jack]

I'm definitely a big fan of being asynchronous when you can, for many reasons.

But I admit, I also often hesitate to dump a complicated question on someone without checking its ok: I try to work round it with a "Hi, can I ask you about X", and following on with the details, so they can feel the courtesies were observed but also see the details if they want to reply.

Because many people are not really ok with people *assuming* they'll answer a question, and even if it's clear in the recipients mind which questions are relevant and which aren't, it's not necessarily clear to the questioner.

"It's ok if you ask me irrelevant questions, I'll just ignore them" may be more helpful than "don't be hesitant when asking questions".

Re: Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat

[theweaselking]

People who say "can I ask you a question?" or "I don't want to interrupt you..." drive me crazy.

You've already asked me a question, and you've already interrupted me. Clearly you felt that whatever you wanted to talk about was important enough to be worth interrupting me and you thought I might be able to answer, so *get to the fucking point*.

I mean, shit, walking up to someone and demanding their attention is RUDE. It's not as rude as telephoning them (NOTHING is quite as rude in modern life as calling someone on the telephone. "Look! No matter what you COULD possibly be doing, it's less important than MY desire to speak to you. Drop what you're doing and prioritise MEEEEEEE"), but it's rude, and an inconvenience, and an annoyance, and you would only do that *if you had a good reason* and you thought it was important enough to be worth being rude, right? So don't compound the rudeness by wasting both of our fucking time!

Re: Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat

[jack]

So, firstly, you understand this is IRC, right? If someone says, "Hey, I'm really sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to ask someone about X and Y. If you're able to help, the details are P Q R S T", then that's not appreciably slower than without the first dozen words.

Secondly, for a lot of my life, I've really struggled with asking for help. It's always felt like I've failed, and that I'm being an arse for bothering someone. But I also feel like, there's often no choice.

If a company hires someone to sit in a booth marked customer enquiries, but their job is NOT to answer questions... someone could try to make that clear in some way? Not just get really angry at everyone who doesn't know that?

If you're working in a team of programmers, ideally there would be some indication who had responsibility for what, so questions could be directed to an appropriate person. If you emailed people asynchronous questions, they would ANSWER THEM (even if just to say, "don't know" or "ask David"). Code would be commented, at least at a very vague level of "this code is widely used" and "this code is super legacy, don't trust it". People would set aside some time for information sharing. Someone would establish relative priorities of different projects.

But it seems like, that all rarely happens. So you have a choice between (a) sitting on your thumbs for ten years until you overhear the relevant information you need to do your job or (b) interrupting people. But yes, I always hate myself for interrupting people because interrupting is bad! It ruins concentration. It drags attention to urgent tasks not important ones. And yes, I always force myself to be as direct and to the point as possible, because that's necessary. But I'm still angry that it's necessary :(

Re: Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat

[theweaselking]

FWIW, I didn't think you were "in the be obnoxious camp" and I totally get that sometimes interruptions are required.

And I get that most people, understanding that interruptions are rude, restrict their interruptions to when it's important *and* want to apologise for interrupting. But what *I* really want is to get directly to the important part of the conversation. And I wasn't just talking about IMs and emails, I was also talking about phone calls and in-person walkups.

Re: Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat

[jack]

Thank you. Sorry, I think I was feeling too ranty when I wrote replies.

Re: Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat

[skington]

Background: I work remotely as part of a team of developers / QA people, and we use IRC, email and various online tools at work.

The problem isn't so much "Hey, can I ask you something?"; it's the delay between the two parts of the question. It's fine if you're not actually around; then the "hey, are you about?" question is reasonable and is (tacitly) answered in the negative. It's if the person is around. Because then you haven't given them anything to work on.

So it's fine not to dump the whole problem in one go. But at least give a quick summary of the problem: e.g. "nickname: are you about? I'm having a problem with the Foo system, specifically the bit where we call Bar with a dingus and boojum".

Re: Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat

[jack]

I see I didn't explicitly say, "have the details written out so they follow 500ms after the greeting." I thought it was obvious that I agreed with the problem and tried to avoid it, even if I thought there was more to say than "people who are hesitant interrupting are wrong". But apparently not, I didn't emphasise that enough so everyone assumed I was in the "be obnoxious" camp, sorry :(

[casimirian]

Hi Andrew!

[andrewducker]

And how are you today?

[casimirian]

So I'm working on figuring out how to make a joke. The punchline relies on reading a link of yours in the above post. While writing this response, my browser redirected me to a different page. And I cannot see your post. Do you know the URL of the blog post about not saying hello in a chat? Thank you!

[andrewducker]

Of course. I am happy to help.
http://www.nohello.com/2013/01/please-dont-say-just-hello-in-chat.html?m=1

Let me know if that didn't solve your problem. Your satisfaction is our priority!

(Also, you can totally edit the url to show the whole page)

[theweaselking]

The Twitter Joke Trial guy protected his account so I can't read it, just as it was getting interesting.

(Like, literally, I read the first dozen tweets, clicked "load more", got an error, clicked "refresh", and boom, he's locked his account.)

[andrewducker]

Twitter glitch I suspect.

Working ok for me - try again in a few minutes?

[theweaselking]

You don't see his account as protected? No little padlock next to his name?

He *wasn't protected* 15 minutes ago. If you followed him before that, you're one of the 112K people on his Approved list and you can see his statuses even though he's Protected. But new followers can't until he approves them, and nonfollowers can't see them at all.

[andrewducker]

Ahhh, that explains it.

Yeah, I can see the padlock.

How annoying. He's not posted an explanation either.

[theweaselking]

I ran a search of tweets to him (and repeated it while logged out to avoid my own blocklist) to see if he was getting dogpiled or something, and didn't see anything.

[hutchingsmusic]

His bio does say "account sometimes locked" - no idea if that's new. It may be that he's on holiday at the moment.

[theweaselking]

I can't see that - he's locked. :)

[hutchingsmusic]

I can see his bio on a desktop (and he doesn't follow me). Are you on a mobile/tablet?

[matgb]

He sometimes locks down, sometimes because of work, sometimes because of obnoxious journalists and sometimes because he just wants some peace.

It's annoying to link to but been following him for years so I don't notice as much: he's one of the UKs top legal tweeters/bloggers, and is covering Brexit closely, something he's cautiously in favour of in principle. You won't be surprised to know an impartial coverage of the legal aspects winds up hardcore brexit types enough to attack him a LOT.

[andrewducker]

Aaaand he's back.

(Working my way through my email backlog)

[theweaselking]

Sweet, TY.