Why, a hexvex of course!

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Microcosmic example. Take 3 people - a newborn (A), a professor of biology (B) and a professor in philosophy ©.

    You’re easily able to argue that both professors are more intelligent than the newborn (A<B and A<C). However, you’re unable to establish (in any meaningful way) whether B<C, or C<B; even B=C is out. This is because both professors have knowledge the other does not, so trying to meaningfully equate or order them in relation to one another is an act of futility.

    This is a fun example of a partial order that most of us see every day (in a less extreme form).




  • At the root it’s a very difficult topic to address, let me change my language a little to avoid the politics implied by the room.

    When you generalise a negative trait to a particular gender, you are making a sexist and hateful comment. The “emotional woman” and the “deceitful gold digger”, the “violent man” and the “potential rapist” - the former would lead to a talk with HR, the latter leads to open agreement and often accolade.

    The argument made for this discrepancy is that it is redressing the systemic sexism built into our society, but I think that it has ceased to do so and us now fuelling the misogyny more than it is addressing it.

    There is a need to redress societal imbalance that disadvantages women - however hatred only breeds more hatred. The path currently taken is wrong, and history will show that to be true.





  • Tricky one to weigh up there. It might not be that you’re lazy, you may well just be burned out, not working effectively (i.e. overworking yourself), or it could even be imposter syndrome. On the other hand, yes you could just be lazy, or you might just really hate your job. Hell, there have been times where I’ve felt unmotivated because our leadership team were just arseholes - sometimes a lack of motivation goes beyond just your own choices.

    There just isn’t enough data in a short post.

    Take some leave, go get checked out by a doctor, talk to a friend/partner, take a look at job ads to see if anything sounds better than where you are.




  • Worse - pulling data from a web page, then using the power of pure jank to parse this input, and then invoking a sheet of reference string builders to construct formulae and execute them using too damn many @indirects nested into vlookups before finally adding in date aware data reveals, because no excel abomination is complete without trying to parse dates.




  • That is not how you wake a sleeping student.

    You do it by putting a sheet of complex questions in front of them, and then loudly saying “you may now turn your papers over, you have 1 hour to complete the exam”.

    Jokes aside, if a student is sleeping in class, you probably want to have a word with the DSL to check up on them after class. Students only sleep if they’re exhausted or you’re really crap at teaching - get one of their mates to wake them quietly without drawing too much attention.