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a dropout subscription is fun bc it comes with a free crush on ally beardsley

Internet's been spotty b/c of a big fiber fault in the city today. Played Bloodborne for a bit today, died in a silly way, then put the controller down again. Can't bring myself yet to regrind back to the DLC again after losing my save.

Been watching Dimension20: A Crown of Candy, and it's fucking good. Brennan is SUCH a good fucking dungeon master. And not in a Matt Mercer 'oh but his table are all also professionals engaged in attempting to make a cohesive and good story as well' kinda way - no no, Brennan's table might be filled with improv professionals, but they're about as real as real players get, stupid fuckin' ideas and all, and it's a joy to watch.

No spoilers, but we just finished ep 9, Safe Harbour, and boy howdy can these fucks make silly candy people dramatic as all hell. I haven't been this gripped on Actual Plays since I first saw Critical Role, and given the unedited nature of CritRole, I'm gonna have a hard time not watching it on like 2-3x speed now.

The fact that Dimension20 episodes are edited into their most succinct forms without losing any of the good bits is so good. Ugh. Loving it. So glad to have all this great content to enjoy right now.

drew this when neverafter was still airing

I've spent my career working at startups, and now that I've started this new job as an engineering manager, I've realized that most of my team and my fellow managers have a serious martyrdom problem. They're excited about what they do, so they keep working through meals, while sick, constantly letting management push down more and more tasks on them. They say they love their jobs but then are confused why they feel so stressed and otherwise have symptoms of burnout.

Now my fellow anti-capitalists, you know what I'm talking about here. They are being exploited in a way that, if they read an article about Amazon workers doing the same things, instead of their healthcare startup, they would be upset about. Where Amazon would be doing it on purpose, the execs at this startup are stressed out but largely well-meaning despite being capitalists. Instead of not caring whether their employees are sick, they simply could never imagine doing something like skipping a doctor appointment to work. It's not like their employees are telling them that they are skipping doctor appointments, so how could they guess that it's happening? They give their employees plenty of PTO hours, but nobody ever takes them!

Our behavioral goals in this situation are to 1) only work the number of hours that you are paid for, 2) take required breaks and regular sick/PTO, and 3) clearly communicate boundaries about how much work you can get done in a certain amount of time. So I've been getting my materials ready to go over with my direct reports, and I thought I would share my big list of reasons here, because different strategies work for different people.