If Every Job Interview Was Like Tech Jobs
JOB CANDIDATE: Hi, I'd like to work at your company
MCDONALD'S MANAGER: Nice. Do you have any line cook experience?
CANDIDATE: Yep I can line cook in hamburger, hamburger plus, hamburger plus plus, and cheeseburger.
MANAGER: Great we would love for you to work at our company.
CANDIDATE: Awesome! I can start Monday...
MANAGER: Please first solve these hamburger riddles.
CANDIDATE: Wait what?
MANAGER: You need to solve two riddles over the phone and then five more riddles in the actual store to get the job.
CANDIDATE: Is... solving riddles part of the job?
MANAGER: No we just think they're cute.
CANDIDATE: Well that feels kinda pointless and stup-
MANAGER: You only have nine minutes left to solve your first hamburger riddle. Do you wish to give up?
CANDIDATE: Whoa whoa whoa no no sorry I do need this job I just... you know what, nevermind what's the first riddle?
MANAGER: Your mother is a hashbrown and your father is a filet-o-fish. How many pickles go on the
... Show more...If Every Job Interview Was Like Tech Jobs
JOB CANDIDATE: Hi, I'd like to work at your company
MCDONALD'S MANAGER: Nice. Do you have any line cook experience?
CANDIDATE: Yep I can line cook in hamburger, hamburger plus, hamburger plus plus, and cheeseburger.
MANAGER: Great we would love for you to work at our company.
CANDIDATE: Awesome! I can start Monday...
MANAGER: Please first solve these hamburger riddles.
CANDIDATE: Wait what?
MANAGER: You need to solve two riddles over the phone and then five more riddles in the actual store to get the job.
CANDIDATE: Is... solving riddles part of the job?
MANAGER: No we just think they're cute.
CANDIDATE: Well that feels kinda pointless and stup-
MANAGER: You only have nine minutes left to solve your first hamburger riddle. Do you wish to give up?
CANDIDATE: Whoa whoa whoa no no sorry I do need this job I just... you know what, nevermind what's the first riddle?
MANAGER: Your mother is a hashbrown and your father is a filet-o-fish. How many pickles go on the bun?
CANDIDATE: wut
MANAGER: Please make sure your solution is in pickles per femtosecond.
CANDIDATE: Uhhh no pickles. Right? Because you don't put pickle slices on hashbrowns or fish.
MANAGER: Hmmm you gave your answer in discrete units of pickles. I'll have to mark you down for that.
CANDIDATE: But I-
MANAGER: Moving on to the next riddle!
CANDIDATE: How many of these do I have to answer right to get the job??
MANAGER: All of them.
CANDIDATE: So why are we even moving on after I got one wrong??
MANAGER: Oh we found that it hurts candidate's egos if we send them home early.
CANDIDATE: You know what I'm not even sure I even want this job anymore.
MANAGER: Whoops looks like the position has just been eliminated and replaced with AI anyway.
CANDIDATE: ...
AI: I can hamburger in 15 pickles per femtosecond.
MANAGER: waow
Sean Eric Fagan
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Toni Aittoniemi reshared this.
Dubious Blur
in reply to Sean Eric Fagan • • •Jürgen Hubert
in reply to Dubious Blur • • •@dubiousblur @kithrup
They have been saying that for years.
The #AfD are basically Putin's sock puppets, except for those parts who are MAGA sock puppets.
reshared this
Toni Aittoniemi and Gurre Vildskägg reshared this.
Dubious Blur
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •Netraven
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •Jürgen Hubert
in reply to Netraven • • •@Netraven
Not quite. Their goals are overlapping, but not identical.
Toni Aittoniemi reshared this.
AnnieBuddy
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •Much of MAGA are Putin's sock puppets too.
Toni Aittoniemi reshared this.
Markus Dobler
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •To be fair, not all are Putin or MAGA sock puppets. Some of them are rather Chinese sock puppets.
@dubiousblur @kithrup @cstross
Petr Skála
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •MidgePhoto
in reply to Sean Eric Fagan • • •@kithrup that restarted ages ago.
An act of war can be a justification for war, but does not compel it.
It might also be followed by shipments of arms, adverse releases of sequestered funds, security activity around sympathetic parties and groups, an ambassador being invited to meet for a chat at the airport, bring his toothbrush.
Toni Aittoniemi
in reply to MidgePhoto • • •MidgePhoto
in reply to Toni Aittoniemi • • •@gimulnautti @kithrup
For a range of meanings of "us" which starts as every other nation, and tends towards "every other person".
I suspect the core is unsalvageable, and likely to take the penumbra with it.
Which is a large and perhaps intractable problem.
Toni Aittoniemi
in reply to MidgePhoto • • •@Photo55 @kithrup They are saying it. They want the war to expand, so nobody could send weapons to Ukraine any more.
Russia will very probably mobilise about half a million soldiers after Duma elections in September.
And I'm confident they wouldn't shy off letting even these half-a-million just die attacking the Baltics, thus hoping to deprive Ukraine of support as NATO is kept busy on the eastern flank.
Sean Eric Fagan
in reply to Toni Aittoniemi • • •Toni Aittoniemi
in reply to Sean Eric Fagan • • •MidgePhoto
in reply to Toni Aittoniemi • • •Perhaps less than that.
The lives being expended are those who would be soldiers of the next revolution.
Putin does not want a next revolution.
Toni Aittoniemi
in reply to MidgePhoto • • •Petr Skála
in reply to Toni Aittoniemi • • •Peter Brown
in reply to Toni Aittoniemi • • •Toni Aittoniemi
in reply to Peter Brown • • •They can always mobilise Moscow and St Petersburg. Plenty of rich Russians left to throw into the meat grinder.
And nukes...
The administration has no plans of ending it, and the people are weak and cowardly.
Claire McNab
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •These are not "defense companies". They are arms manufacturers.
Please don't use propaganda terms..
Charlie Stross
in reply to Claire McNab • • •Toni Aittoniemi reshared this.
Claire McNab
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •My point is not complicated, but you miss it entirely.
My point is not about the merits of the war or its parties. It is about terminology.
Those companies make weapons which may be used for defence or for attack. Describing them as "defence companies" falsely describes a purely defensive role.
Charlie Stross
in reply to Claire McNab • • •MarjorieR
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •At least Imperial Japan tried, if failed, to declare war before attacking Pearl Harbour.
Claire McNab
in reply to MarjorieR • • •Trump's renaming of the US DoD as the "Department of War" was one of the few honest things he has ever done.
The USA has been at war throughout most of its 250 years, but it has never fought a defensive war in its life. The "Defense" label was a big lie.
(And no, the US role in WWII was not defence. It was started by a Japanese attack on an iileggaly colonised remote island, thousands of miles from North America )
@cstross
mic
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •@2legged
Claire McNab
in reply to mic • • •@mic The EU and NATO are in a #proxyWar with Russia.
This is a conflict which many wanted for decades, and some actively worked to provoke.
Poor Ukraine is the pawn in a bigger game.
@cstross
mic
in reply to Claire McNab • • •That's not accurate. Russia started the war for its own reasons, as mentioned by @cstross . EU and NATO didn't pay Putin or Dugin. And the theory that the west encroached on Russia's legitimate sphere of interest and understandably "forced" Russia to act ignores the self-determination of the people in that sphere, who did want out. You are right that support for Ukraine is often quite cynical, but that doesn't absolve Russia of the blame for its actions.
el Celio 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 reshared this.
Charlie Stross
in reply to mic • • •If anyone is responsible for the war Russia is waging on the west, then first on the list is Putin, and second on the list is the USA, specifically the George H. W. Bush and Clinton presidencies that tried to apply the Shock Doctrine (aggressive neoliberal reforms) to Russia after 1991—causing immense pain and resentment—rather than a new Marshall Plan.
The EU was focussed on the former Warsaw Pact members, especially Germany (preoccupied with reunification after 1989).
MidgePhoto
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •@mic @2legged@mastodon.ie
I thought for a while that it was a pity we had crapped on the rump of the USSR - the association of republics or whatever Russia called itself briefly - quite so hard, and perhaps we could have been more helpful.
Currently my view has shifted toward ploughing and salting and Russia delenda est!
They have a long history and some of them like it.
StPetroLeningrad was an interesting place to visit though.
Claire McNab
in reply to mic • • •@mic I am not absolving anyone. Russia is a shitty imperialist country with shitty regime. The USA is a shitty imperialist country with shitty regime, and the other NATO states are its poodles.
But Russia has been traumatically invaded from the west 3 times in 2 centuries, the last with millions dead within living memory.
First it had NATO pushing right up to its border,.Then even Ukraine, its closest historical ally, being dragged onto enemy orbit. No surprise it snapped.
@cstross
Charlie Stross
in reply to Claire McNab • • •Claire McNab
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •That's a wildly slanted history, omitting the long history of Prussian / German aggression.
There have been 4 British invasions of Afghanistan. 4. All hostile.
The Soviet Union was invited into Afghanistan by the Afghan govt to help defend against Pakistan-supported islamists,.indirectly American-funded and armed.
I don't support any of the foreign forces in Afghanistan, but it's blatantly dishonest to try to condemn the USSR without that context.
@mic
Claire McNab
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •@mic also, the USSR waa never "Hitler's loyal ally". That's a blatant lie of which you should be thoroughly ashamed.
The Nazi-Soviet pact was on both sides a cynical act of realpolitik berween enemies who despised each other. They carved up Poland in brutal invasions, but there was no loyalty between them.
Whatever case you are trying to make, it is deeply discredited by such a mendacious inversion of historical reality.
NormanDunbar
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
in reply to NormanDunbar • • •NormanDunbar
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •@mic It appears that she's not happy with facts!
PS. What's a tankie?
Claire McNab
in reply to NormanDunbar • • •@NormanDunbar @mic They did. But what's your point?
If you think you are making some great stand against a tankie or a Russophile, you are mistaken. I am neither.
The USSR had a legitimate fear of the Weat. It committed some terrible crimes.
Both things are true. There is no conflict between them.
My point is solely that the EU/NATO's stance against Russia is rightly seen as aggressive, and has unsurprisingly generated a hostile response. Russia repeatediy warned NATO to back off.
daskeit
in reply to Claire McNab • • •it’s not very anti-imperialist to prioritise the hurt feelings and trauma of empires and not the trauma and insecurity of the small states who are afraid of their big and historically imperialist neighbour.
Ask the Finns and the Poles how they feel about Russia and NATO.
SpeakerToManagers
in reply to Claire McNab • • •@2legged @mic
“Then even Ukraine, its closest historical ally,”
A lot of Ukrainians don’t see it that way. Too many remember the Holodomor in which systematic starvation by Russian control killed somewhere beteeen 4 and 7 million people. And those who are Jewish remember the pogroms. No, it wasn’t Putin who ordered them, but the history makes it very hard to consider Ukraine and Russia to ever have been “allies”.
Claire McNab
in reply to SpeakerToManagers • • •@SpeakerToManagers There were of course huge crimes in the Soviet era. But Ukraine's history is as closely linked with Russia.
Whatever label you put on a thousand years of Russia-Ukraine relationship, it remains deeply aggressive to Russia for NATO & EU to try to pull Ukraine into a hostile military bloc.
@mic @cstross
SpeakerToManagers
in reply to Claire McNab • • •And it’s not deeply aggressive for Russia to want to get back by force of arms the territory it took by force of arms and nuclear threat? This is geopolitical imperial maneuvering, in which Russia was the first one to escalate to shooting war. They invaded Crimes and then tried to invade western Ukraine and got stuck but were more interested in blowing up apartment buildings than backing out.
Claire McNab
in reply to SpeakerToManagers • • •Liar, @older. I am not a tankie. I deplore all these big military powers. I am just noting that piling up a military alliance on Russia's borders was threatening and provocative, and destabilising.
As to "denying Ukraine's agency", that's another of your lies. At no point have I denied Ukraine's share of responsibility for the idiotic goading the Russian bear.
Yall goaded the big monster, and you got mauled. Now pls stop whining.
@SpeakerToManagers @mic @cstross
older
in reply to SpeakerToManagers • • •@SpeakerToManagers
Tankies, like this one, deny us Ukrainians any agency. We cannot act on free will, only as puppets of evil US (or NATO).
Just block and forget.
@2legged @mic @cstross
txtx 🇪🇺
in reply to Claire McNab • • •@2legged Russia started WW2 alongside Adolf Hitler. "Invaded from the West" is sugarcoating Russia's complicity and Stalin's inability to keep his good friend Hitler on his team.
@mic @cstross
Claire McNab
in reply to txtx 🇪🇺 • • •@txtx Stalin a "good friend" of Hitler? Fantasy history. No serious historian takes that view if the nazi-Soviet pact.
There are plenty of real reasons to criticise the USSR. No need to incent them.
@mic @cstross
txtx 🇪🇺
in reply to Claire McNab • • •Claire McNab
in reply to txtx 🇪🇺 • • •@txtx And you know "every Ukrainian", do you? 😅🙄
Yiur claim thaa Stalin was a "good friend" of Hitler is pure fantasy.
txtx 🇪🇺
in reply to Claire McNab • • •Claire McNab
in reply to txtx 🇪🇺 • • •I have found thst am talking to a fantasist or a liar, so their disconnect with reality is the only issue.
txtx 🇪🇺
in reply to txtx 🇪🇺 • • •@2legged I'd say Russia (and their colonies in the USSR) were poodles to Hitler. Moscow really tried hard to keep that friendship going, in the end without success. But they still succeeded at carving out Europe, so it wasn't for nothing.
Russia still worships WW2-era Nazi Germany, to this day. They built their main military cathedral out of melted down German tanks. That's no accident. It's a bizarre and sick obsession that comes from decades of mental corruption via false history.
Claire McNab
in reply to txtx 🇪🇺 • • •@txtx I'll ask again. How you know what "evey Ukrainians" thinks?
Have you asked them?
Are you absolutely sure that not one person thinks differently?
peachfront
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Ian Turton
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Ox1de
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •this is significant
I’m extremely concerned
Jonathan Kamens 86 47
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈
in reply to Jonathan Kamens 86 47 • • •Charlie Stross
in reply to Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈 • • •Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Toni Aittoniemi
in reply to Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈 • • •@Lazarou @jik Fascists love the boot that’s stepping on them.
And that’s because the boot gives them the permission to step on others.
They have no skills, and in more egalitarian times they remain at the bottom rungs of society.
But the boot gives them a chance to rise, by authorising violence!
Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈
in reply to Toni Aittoniemi • • •Toni Aittoniemi
in reply to Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈 • • •Fascist times are the times of losers.
It's also kind of the oldest trick in the book.
Charlie Stross
in reply to Jonathan Kamens 86 47 • • •mic
in reply to Jonathan Kamens 86 47 • • •@cstross
Jonathan Kamens 86 47
in reply to mic • • •We are already in a world war whether Germany and the rest of NATO choose to acknowledge that or not.
I understand the political expediences, but political expediences are different from reality.
@cstross
mic
in reply to Jonathan Kamens 86 47 • • •Jonathan Kamens 86 47
in reply to Jonathan Kamens 86 47 • • •Here's a taste:
blog.kamens.us/tag/doge/
mic
in reply to Jonathan Kamens 86 47 • • •nickapos
in reply to Jonathan Kamens 86 47 • • •Jonathan Kamens 86 47
in reply to nickapos • • •2) Would you say that the U.K. failing to take any decisive action against Russia regarding those targeted assassinations has turned out to be a good strategy for world peace?
@mic @cstross
Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •European Governments don't want to admit this openly, not on this stupid island at least. I don't think the new guy will stand up to Washington.
#Geopolitics #Europe #USA #Russia #UKPol #UKpolitics #WWIII
Toni Aittoniemi reshared this.
Charlie Stross
in reply to Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈 • • •reshared this
Jürgen Hubert, gwendolenau, Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🌈 and Su_G reshared this.
Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •It would be nice not to have to rearm at all but it doesn't seem to be going that way and just crying for Peace is nice but a waste of time with Fascists.
SpeakerToManagers
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •@Lazarou
Especially if the one who’s been supplying you with pointy sticks is not-so-secretly working with the warmongering dictatorship to undermine your defense systems and your economies.
Charlie Stross
in reply to SpeakerToManagers • • •SpeakerToManagers
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Someone in German intelligence ought to leak a memo claiming the US left a couple of backpack nukes behind for use on Russian tank assaults, just in case. The resulting furor in Russian intelligence would be worth watching,
Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈
in reply to SpeakerToManagers • • •@SpeakerToManagers I hope European intelligence agencies are all playing their A game and not wasting time investigating people who are concerned about the Climate Crisis and the Rich getting away with it all.
I'd like to believe that.
At least I hope they understand how grave the situation is.
Toni Aittoniemi
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Unfortunately seems that someone does have to die before any of the cozy politicians we have does anything. 🤦♂️
And a policy of inaction and downplaying the threat is not helping their re-election either.
People are going to cry for a strong leader that at least promises to do something about Russia, the more they keep shussing this up!
However, that rightwing politician is exactly the type Russia wants. They’ll buy him and corrupt him in no-time. Even before elected.
Su_G reshared this.
The Sleight Doctor 🃏🍉
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Claire McNab
Unknown parent • • •I had just had a wave of keyboard heroes playing their part in the glorious whatever by slinging shit at me for daring to point out that Russian impetialists were heavily provoked.
Your post read like another one of those. I struggle to believe that you joined in without being aware if that context. But I'll keep on trying.
@cstross @mic
Claire McNab
Unknown parent • • •@NormanDunbar So you did actually have an agenda. #Bye, troll.
@cstross @mic
Fazal Majid
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •they literally blew up a Czech ammunition factory:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb…
and they assassinated people on sovereign UK soil, and attempted to assassinate the CEO of Rheinmetall several times. Of course their paid tankies like Nigel Farage will claim this was provoked, but the Russians have been acting wantonly and recklessly for a long time, and only encouraged by the milquetoast response of Europe and NATO.
2014 Vrbětice ammunition warehouse explosions - Wikipedia
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Tea time.
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •(They tried to assassinate the CEO of Rheinmetall last time...)
Probably won't be the last, either.
Jürgen Hubert
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Elyse M Grasso reshared this.
Petr Skála
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Alper Çuğun-Gscheidel
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Christof Damian 💙💛
in reply to Alper Çuğun-Gscheidel • • •"If we just put down our weapons, then Russia will do so too!"
@cstross
Alper Çuğun-Gscheidel
in reply to Christof Damian 💙💛 • • •