thatjsguy

I like the part where they silently remove shows, but very publicly announce all of the wonderful additions they’ve made to their selection in the past month.

“Turn your key, sir.”

Is that why nobody speeds in the US even with speed traps? Oh wait..

How would you prevent new housing stock from being similarly bought up?

If you take Psychology 101 you’ll learn that punishment very rarely dissuades people from doing things society doesn’t want them to do, especially basic bodily functions. Maybe we should design cities such that people don’t feel the need to pee in public.

I’ll add a little anecdote to this too. I was drunk at 4 AM in Hamburg, Germany once (as you do), but because Germans love absolute change and using cash, I happened to not have enough coins to use one of the plentiful pay-to-pee bathrooms. So what do I do? I find the nearest secluded doorway and narrowly avoid pissing myself.

For all of the problems of American cities, free restrooms is something they got right. If you don’t make it difficult to use a bathroom, people won’t be forced to pee in public like I was.

Pretty sure being able to afford food, a home, and healthcare is much more beneficial to society as a whole than having a poor underclass of laborers. But hey, maybe it’s the stuff you said too.

Do you live in a city or a suburb?

Good lord, just park and walk. Or use that bike lane. Cities have an overabundance of expensive parking [1], which does nothing but waste space and act as giant thermal batteries. Everyone loves complaining about traffic, but we don’t seem to have the political will to do something about it (namely: reduce our dependence on cars). Cities should work to reduce their dependence on cars, not increase it at the expense of cyclists and pedestrians, who are actually the life blood of cities (think about how many pedestrians stop into small business compared to drivers speeding by at 35 mi/h).

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/more-evidence-that-we-ha...

Because the people who should be working hard to change government simply aren’t. In the US, city governments ARE “the people”. If you have a city council, start going to meetings. It’s a great way to see how your local government actually works (or doesn’t work), and you might even meet some interesting people in the process. Otherwise, run for local office or try to get on a board or a commission. It’s not sexy, but this stuff, especially things like transportation and zoning, have the most impact at the municipal level, and it’s remarkably easy to get involved.

“Food and drink companies knew all along that sugar was making you obese and diabetic.”

> Engineers are not philosophers and should not be placed in this role.

Which is how we wind up with companies hell-bent on vacuuming up as much data as possible and selling it to anyone who asks. Perhaps if some software developers (or, at this point, some legislators) stopped to think about the ethical considerations of the tech industry’s actions, we all wouldn’t have to have conversations about how other countries can buy elections on the same platform where you share pictures of your food.

> If anything, that shows a lack of proper hiring decision on you and your team's part.

Hey, friend! I had no control over hiring for that gig.

> How clueless can you be?

I mean, if you’re junior and you’ve just learned JavaScript, it’s not difficult. I’ve met a lot of monied people who seem to think a junior dev with a few weeks of JavaScript training is equivalent to a senior engineer with a degree. It never works out, at least not for the smart people.

I mean this in the nicest possible way: I see this all the time with the JavaScript set and I am absolutely not the least bit surprised. I used to work on a team that was TypeScript top to bottom, with people who didn’t really even understand how to debug (they were mostly bootcamp juniors). Whenever something would break, if restating it didn’t work, you know what they’d try? Yup, upgrading random dependencies. Refactoring was also pretty popular, although it usually just ended up making things more complicated.

It’s silly to suggest that JavaScript itself is somehow responsible for this. It’s obvioisly just a tool. But I have to say, the most professional cluelessness I’ve ever encountered was in the JS ecosystem.