Interesting Links for 21-11-2025

[andrewducker]

1. 2% of people are just bastards

(tags:oxytocin psychology morality sharing business )

2. Preserving code that shaped generations: Zork I, II, and III go Open Source

(tags:games history Microsoft opensource )

3. Women Keep Ruining the Workplace!!

(tags:women work society satire funny USA )

4. "We Didn't Start The Fire" The Silmarillion Edition

(tags:lotr viaNancyLebov video music )

Comments

[nancylebov]

1. Leaves out the effects of bastards in government.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/

A complicated theory about how sociopaths promote other sociopaths so that eventually the company is victimizing all the employees who aren't sociopaths.

[juan_gandhi]

Good article #3 regarding women. I still remember the times when the majority of programmers were women (because it didn't pay much). Women produce a much more reliable code than men. Especially Indian women, who are just the best kind of programmers you encounter in the Bay Area. But well... #1 gives the answer why.

[channelpenguin]

Only 2%?

But as another commenter notes, the effects of even a small % can easily multiply...

I'm currently feeling like I actually won against my own workplace bastard and he will never even know it. :-). (I've ended up with a better job, a small bit of cash and nearly 4 months off...)

[andrewducker]

A victory worth celebrating!

[channelpenguin]

ooh! Thanks for that link! I'm a self-aware and quite deliberate "Loser".

"The Losers like to feel good about their lives. They are the happiness seekers, rather than will-to-power players, and enter and exit reactively, in response to the meta-Darwinian trends in the economy. But they have no more loyalty to the firm than the Sociopaths. They do have a loyalty to individual people, and a commitment to finding fulfillment through work when they can, and coasting when they cannot."

Precisely. It's why I'm still in software dev, at the codeface, 32 years and counting...

[calimac]

1) "When every offense has an associated penalty, transgressions cease to be moral violations, but are simply a way for wrongdoers to effectively “use the system” while facing some risk of getting caught and paying a fine." True across the spectrum. I read of a trivial case where a fine was imposed to limit problem behavior: I think it was parents picking up kids late from daycare. The fine only increased the behavior: people took it as a fee they were willing to pay.

3) I didn't expect this would be entirely satire. Petri is always good.

4) I don't know the original song, which probably limited my appreciation. The lyricist has clearly read the Silmarillion, but the presentation is off in several ways, particularly in frequently giving up on telling the story, it just tosses a lot of names in, and then getting really hasty towards the end. Tolkien did that too, but it's not a trait to be emulated.

[jducoeur]

4) I don't know the original song, which probably limited my appreciation. The lyricist has clearly read the Silmarillion, but the presentation is off in several ways, particularly in frequently giving up on telling the story, it just tosses a lot of names in, and then getting really hasty towards the end. Tolkien did that too, but it's not a trait to be emulated.

Suffice it to say, it's pretty faithfully emulating the original Billy Joel song that it's filking here, which summarizes several decades of world culture and history in a few minutes. So it also has sections that are basically just listing names, as a sort of historical shorthand.