Recent events have been messy. The general thrust is that I’ve resigned from a rather awesome company to rejoin another company that feels like a strange kind of home. Some other thonks from this week:

• When you walk a cute dog, people tend to be much nicer to you; it’s much easier to get a “good morning” from someone when they’re appreciating your mutt.
• Getting out of the house every day, even just to help a dumb animal move its bowels so that you can pick it up, adds a surprising amount of positivity to the day.
• In his book “Bullshit Jobs“, David Graeber describes work as a sort of involuntary S&M relationship with your boss; the difference being that there is no safeword beyond “I quit”. Over the years I’ve noticed that there is an addictive quality to this safeword: be warned.
• The Cardiacs were one of the most extraordinary and wonderful bands that ever existed. RIP Tim.
• Amazon parrots are extremely good companions, and seem to share a great sense of humour.
• The cold is better than the heat, especially if you can snuggle up in a warm bed at night.
• The Internet has proven that access to information doesn’t guarantee global enlightenment.

The 40 minute cutoff for Zoom meetings should be the feature you pay for. The human concentration limit in a meeting/lecture scenario is around 40 minutes, so when you get booted out, it really is for everyone’s benefit. Another feature I’d like to see is a time limit based on how much of a twat you are. It could use AI to work, out on a scale, how irritating and worthless everyone is, and then boot them out one by one in order.