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When you engage in the decision-making process, you learn. When you rely on something to make choices for you, you don't learn.

Here's one showing the mistakes of left-leaning media I found in 2 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=36&v=wVDPVBZF2Xg

It's just as easy to find supercuts of Pelosi, DeBlasio, and other prominent Democrats telling people that they didn't need to start social distancing or that the virus wasn't airborne contagious.

Bad judgement is a human failing that cuts across party lines. To think that this is a long-term credibility problem for only some people shows a lack of a healthy diversity of news sources. At the end of this, everyone will go back to their teams' dugouts and prepare for the next political battle. Nothing will have been learned about credibility.

Because the community is fragmented and that weakens language adoption, productivity, and enjoyment.

The 2-3 schism in Python has been a pain to deal with for years. I use Python casually here and there, but I'm so sick of trying to do something quickly in Python and finding out that I'm on a machine that only has 2 but the module I need is only for 3 or having the bulk of my app written in 3 but the only version of a module I need is for 2.

Same goes for examples you find on the Internet to do a particular thing. Ooops, it's 2.x syntax/modules so you have to fix it up for 3. Ooops, it's 3 syntax/modules so you have to fix it up for 2.

For the good of any computer language, old versions need to eventually die off.

I really don't have much of a github presence, but then again I'm not a day-to-day coder at work. The presence I do have I created in just a couple of hours and I could easily beef it up to something respectable by spending a couple of hours a month on it.

The person to whom you're responding explicitly drew a distinction between discussing a raise with your boss vs going to your boss with another offer that you have secured.

I can see the importance of that distinction. To put the relationship in a different context: Imagine the difference between a girlfriend who says, "Hey, we need to discuss the amount of time you spend playing video games. I'd like you to pay more attention to me." vs "Hey, I don't like the amount of time you spend playing video games, so I've been talking to this new guy about being my boyfriend. Your move."

The problem with psychiatry isn't that they aren't trying or that they're not going about it the best way that we know how. The problem is that the human mind is still too complex at the macro level to be easily testable. But Science has shown again and again that it's the best way to go about determining how reality works. We shouldn't abandon it now and prefer delusional thinking because it has a minor winner in making a patient feel better. That said, tell the patient whatever he may want to hear in the psychiatric ward. Just don't try to pass it off as legitimate outside of the mental institution.

Regarding capitalization: Sometimes I find it helpful capitalize schools of thought that embody more than just a casual set of principles. I can do some science in the lab, but not really have a lot of trust in Science as a way to live life, run society, and generally approach problem solving. I do the same thing when writing about being liberal vs being "a Liberal".

  * Which model is more likely to prevent someone with mental illness from harming himself or others because of incorrect diagnosis?
  * Which model is more likely to lead to scientifically sound treatments for his malady?
  * Which model is more likely to encourage people to generally think rationally about the real world around us?

There are simple methods to combat gross inaccuracies in the client specification. You document the requirements for what you'll be delivering in a carefully worded Statement of Work that the client signs off on, you ask to be paid in chunks as you go with a portion up front, and you implement a system of change control so that it's totally clear if the customer is sending you off in a completely new direction. At that point, you book what you've worked at your hourly rate and you submit new work and time estimates for the changes.

Developer estimates are regularly off because they seldom impact the developer directly. Experienced development managers will pad the hell out of the developers who give them the worst estimates. Most developers will explain all the complexity of what threw their estimate off without acknowledging the huge mistake of not anticipating extra complexity in the first place.

My estimates in my early career were no better than anyone else's, ie way off -- especially for more complex projects. I'd explain what happened to my managers and soldier on. The very next task that came up, I'd give my manager some best-case estimate of how long something would take and the cycle would begin again.

That all changed once I started to do consulting for myself using "not-to-exceed" pricing. The first multi-month project I did killed me. My effective hourly rate went down to sub McDonalds levels and took much longer to deliver than I had expected. After that project, I did a post-mortem on the project to figure out where I went wrong. I came up with several spreadsheet templates and checklists to run through before giving any more estimates.

Mostly I just concerned myself with getting a hell of a lot better at estimating project duration and difficulty. Like most things, when you really pay attention to it and practice it, you get better at it.

I'm sure we'd all be better people if instead of helping others, we spent time judging and bashing those who spend time helping others but don't have the proper frame of mind when doing so.

Then we could get into the whole philosophy 101 debate of "Does truly selfless behavior exist?"

You beat that drum all the time. I don't understand how anyone reasonably informed could ignore the weekly violations of the Constitution by the US Government.

The Constitution itself was intended to place very strict limits on the size and scope of the Federal Government. Its spirit as well as the letter of its rules have been almost totally breached. If the Constitution would be adhered to, we wouldn't have that monstrosity in Washington wrecking everything it touches.

or against the faith

Wrong answer.

When "against the faith" includes calling for the death or even censorship of cartoonists in other countries who draw disrespectful pictures of a religion's "prophet", the belligerent label is very justified.

And all Muslims are suicide bombers, right?

I didn't say "all". I believe the words I used were "large swathes", meaning enough of those societies to dictate policies that are indistinguishable from the nut job radicals that you claim don't represent everyone. For example, see the stories regarding the destruction of ancient monuments in Afghanistan. See the killing of Coptic Christians in Egypt. See the jailing/killing of Christian preachers in Iran.

Islam is fundamentally a religion of peace

That's a bumper sticker and something politicians have to say because they rarely speak simple truths. The Koran is pretty clear regarding the need to commit violence toward infidels. The Judeo/Christian texts (the Bible) aren't a whole lot better, although the mixed books and accounts in it are so imprecise, contradictory and watered down that there isn't a consistent call for domination of others in the world.

I've seen this speculation that this is just a phase that Islam is going through. When Christianity was going through a similar conflict with Science, there were no real fruits of Science to validate it as a system of learning about reality. Christianity came first and had its roots firmly planted before that upstart Science came along. The power struggle was understandable in that progression.

These days, the results of Science are all around us. We have computers, cell phones, nuclear power, and robots exploring other planets. There's really no excuse for the utter dismissal of reality exhibited by large swathes of the Islamic world.

Islam doesn't just demonstrate a different stage of maturity for a religion. Islam demonstrates a radically staunch level of belligerence for a religion. There's no real reason to believe that it's going to outgrow it.

Recently, work sprung for a Parallels license for me. Yikes, I pity my past self for putting up with all the VB issues because it was free. Just little things like playing nicely with the app/spaces switch key combos, lack of crashes, and performance make me really regret wasting all those mental cycles on VB. Don't get me wrong, having a free x86 VM is wonderful and the VB developers deserve kudos galore... but I reminded myself that my time and sanity are worth a few bucks here and there.