Yeah! Yeah! If you actually asked the Black Lives Matter activists whether all lives matter, they would agree. But the “All Lives Matter” slogan is just a way of hiding the message that the Black Lives Matter activists want to put across: “We have noticed that no matter how much it does protest, this society treats Black people inferior to others in matters up to and including lethal force”.
You can criticise the slogan “black lives matter” for not saying “black lives matter is much as white lives” (or similar). But it’s a slogan not a manifesto, and slogans are never as accurate as they could be – it’s in the nature of using few enough words to be catchy.
Personally I think that the BLM campaigners over-estimate the problems of racism and under-estimate the problems of economic disadvantage (which applies to all ethnic groups). People with poor parents are less likely to do well than those with rich parents; and yes exceptional people will do well regardless.
Working from home (henceforth “WfH”) has cropped up in my Twitter feed lately and this is my “response” to some of the issues raised.
Now don’t get me wrong – there are all sorts of issues related to WfH – some people can’t, some people don’t like it, companies are getting offices for “free”, some companies not realising that they need to provide equipment, and that health and safety requirements apply to the home worker too.
And probably a whole lot more.
But some of the complaints seem to be coming from people who have never even looked at WfH advice, or who have ignored that advice.
If your work life and your home life seem to be merging, do something about it. Clearly distinguish between work time and home time with a “going to work ritual” and a “coming home ritual”. It doesn’t matter what they are as long as they clearly mark the start and end of the working day.
For example, I always take a morning walk to start the working day, and make a ceremonial cup of coffee at the end (I don’t usually drink coffee whilst working or I end up fizzing).
Find yourself slogging away at the computer non-stop? Well don’t do that then. You’re supposed to take a break away from the computer regularly anyway, so do so. Get up and wander around a bit – make a coffee, look out the front window to see if it’s raining, check the postbox, do some stretching, etc.
Stuck in non-stop meetings? Call a comfort break every hour then – even if you don’t need a pee. Do you really care if your co-workers think you have a weak bladder? Especially when they’re more likely to think you’re a hero for giving them an excuse for a comfort break.
Missing out on the social life of the office? Set up social meetings then – perhaps for lunchtimes when you can eat your meals “together”.
Lastly, ergonomics. That laptop you took back home with you in the spring isn’t the right equipment for a long-term workstation. Get yourself a decent desk, chair, monitor, external keyboard and mouse. That sounds expensive, and yes your employer should (at the very least) be helping out, but it needn’t be that expensive.
You do realise that most of you come across like particularly annoying toddlers throwing a tantrum because they let go of the balloon and it went away?
The scientific evidence for the efficacy of wearing masks is conclusive – simple cloth masks help stop the spread of droplets released when coughing (a common Covid-19 symptom), sneezing (Covid-19 hasn’t stopped hay-fever), or even breathing.
No, they’re not as effective as N95 masks, neither are they capable of stopping a virus running around on its own. But they don’t commonly do that. Viruses are commonly clumped into ‘water’ droplets and even the most basic cloth mask will stop most of those getting through – and it doesn’t have to be 100% effective (or ‘certified’) to be a good defense against the virus.
Masks are probably most effective at stopping the already infected from releasing huge clouds of Covid-19 infested water droplets wherever they go.
And even if you don’t believe in the masks, going to a place (a shop, public transport, etc.) where masks are required and refusing to wear a mask is the sign of a self-important little idiot. Either wear the mask or don’t use the relevant services.
So I am currently messing around with a tiling window manager on my laptop – I prefer tiling window managers in general (I use Awesome on my main desktops). These are (in general) not “desktop environments” but just manage windows (and sometimes a “status bar”).
As it happens the window manager I’m messing with doesn’t come as part of a distribution package with a pre-prepared file for GDM3 to use. So I created a ~/.xsession file – something that has worked since display managers first arrived.
Didn’t work.
Turns out that I need to “hack” GDM3 to make a long standard bit of functionality functional again. As an aside (and especially to the GNOME people), all you had to do to keep this functional was detect if someone had a ~/.xsession file and then offer that up as a menu option. Not that difficult to do and even if it isn’t your preferred way of doing things, it’s a nice thing to do for us old-timers.
Anyway, to restore this functionality all it took was to create a file in //usr/share/xsessions/ called xsession.desktop with the following contents :-
I use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. I do this to improve browsing experience and to show (non-) personalised ads. Consenting to these technologies will allow me to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
