Being of moderate technical enthusiasm, I was enjoyed a Twitter thread by a guy who disassembled a "digital pregnancy test," a single-use device probably available at a drug store near you. Two for seven dollars! He took a casual look at a now-mundane piece of technology and offered a few ironic asides... Maybe worth a chuckle or two, but not a searing investigation into the meaning of human reproduction. Just a giggle, right? I especially enjoyed this line from his Twitter thread, because the arrival of the personal computer changed my life in the earliest days after college:

This thing is probably faster at number crunching and basic I/O than the CPU used in the original IBM PC, and this one is in something you pee on and throw away.

Within a day, he was apologizing for the tone of his tweets. People were challenging him (some playfully, some quite seriously) regarding his presumptions about the accuracy, economics, and even the emotional attunement of what he said. Truth is, those criticisms are almost equally fascinating to read, and I'd encourage you to follow the first link in this comment if you care about such things.

But if you don't, I'd ask you to consider that perhaps he shouldn't have apologized. He was describing a nearly-trivial home health care gadget to other gadget enthusiasts, not writing a textbook on medical ethics, or advising young couples regarding their desperation to get pregnant. Or to not.

Kaus made this point several years ago about chatter at Washington cocktail parties: We have to have a space where we can say things out loud to other people to see what they sound like without committing to them for the rest of our lives. Not everything we say is going to sooth the emotions, or sate the curiosity, or affirm the dignity of every other person in every context until the end of time. We're not all writing textbooks to shape the flow of young minds who aren't even in the room.

Typo off the top... I feel bad. Ira Darth Agee will make it up to you later.

Meanwhile——

• The singer Shakira is in trouble, and her devoted fans aren't helping. This kind of amuses.

• New York State has had it's problems with the pandemic, but they're pulling it all together in Buffalo.

I never understood why celebrities dont incorporate a foreign business in a tax haven, have the studios, record labels, what ever - hire that over seas company have that company sub contact them at a dollar a day or what ever fee, so the majority of their money sits off shore where it cant be taxed until moved on shore

Let California have their 80% tax rate on that one dollar while the million never come into the jurisdiction of the state or county in which you reside

This is a fun HR thread. Read the reeeeeeeeplies coming from those who have pronouns in their Twitter bios.

https://mobile.twitter.com/PandasAndVidya/status/1300065463121121280

This is cute but NSFW.

https://mobile.twitter.com/TEAMH1KAR1/status/1301920317430849536

• Quite the kicker here. I bet they relent.

• Fatherhood, Uncle Cridmo—style.

Hmmm? Yeah, childless… Why do you ask?

This is the best way to advertise Microsoft's Excel software:

Aella, OnlyFans content creator (nudes pics/videos) who makes $100,000 a month off.

https://mobile.twitter.com/theSamParr/status/1301613151381860357

That one compartment looks like Debra Winger and then Sean Young… But only on every successive loop.

"This thing is probably faster at number crunching and basic I/O than the CPU used in the original IBM PC, and this one is in something you pee on and throw away."

And that IBM PC was massively more powerful than the small mainframe that was the first computer I worked with, back in 1971 - it's clock speed was measured in KHz, and it had 32K-bytes of core memory, with room to install as much more.

What was the make?

Moar nicknames for Shaun King:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Vision365/status/1275204663512576002

Stop worshipping politicians.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/05/technology/parents-time-off-backlash.html

"Parents Got More Time Off. Then the Backlash Started."

The tension between parents and nonparents has been most vividly displayed at Facebook. In March, Facebook offered up to 10 weeks of paid time off for employees if they had to care for a child whose school or day care facility had closed or for an older relative whose nursing home was not open. Google and Microsoft extended similar paid leave to employees dealing with children at home or a sick relative.

Yeah, I think I'd be a bit miffed if a coworker of equal status got 10 paid weeks off more than I did because he had a kid.

Wrote sixclaws:

This is a fun HR thread. Read the reeeeeeeeplies coming from those who have pronouns in their Twitter bios.

That is hilarious, particularly those who are saying including their pronouns on their resumés means they're in a "protected class."

A fun game to play when you get old is to calculate numeric values for seemingly obscure emotional variables, e.g., What is grace period after which an illusion of irresistible sexual allure for a fertile young woman collapses in pathetic ignominy?

The answer to that one turns out to be 2.4733 seconds.

On Friday, President Trump took the long overdue step of stopping all federal agencies from indoctrinating their employees in the racist nonsense called Critical Race Theory. But that's only a first step.

I've created a petition to finish the job by making it illegal for an employer or school to require CRT indoctrination of its employees or students. Please sign it!

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-employers-and-schools-requiring-their-employees-or-students-undergo-critical-race-theory-indoctrination

Do the non-parents need 10 weeks of leave during the pandemic? If there's some reason they need it and they aren't getting it, then yeah. If they just want a 10 week vacation, I'm less sympathetic.

"If they just want a 10 week vacation, I'm less sympathetic."

I get that, on the other hand if you choose to have kids why should those who chose not to have to work harder for less pay/perks to subsidize your choices?

What if an employer treated everyone the exact same and let people sort out their personal lives on their own?

Having people sort out their own lives does make more sense, Lujlp. Of course that then raises the question if the schools aren't willing to reopen should they continue to be funded? If you are willing to show up at work and do your job then you are fired. Why should the rules be any different for government workers?

Pelosi . . . paging Speaker Pelosi . . .

'aren't' Where is that bloody edit button.