I think the algorithm shit is why we have this right wing surge.

Yep. Billionaires have always had their thumb on the scale, but they’ve now found a particularly effective scale to tip.

Yeah. As Dave Ramsey says “If they’ve wiped your butt, you’re probably not going to change their mind.” Lol.

As a hiring manager who receives these kinds of introductions, here’s my thoughts (largely confirming what you’ve already read here.):

• These introductions are great. Keep it up.
• Bob is probably more sensitive about it than Bob’s boss. To Bob, this was uncomfortable. To Bob’s boss, it was just a normal Monday.
• It’s a good idea to buy Bob lunch or dinner to say thanks, and get a tip or two on refining your approach.

But don’t take any of it too seriously. As hiring manager, I see this a lot, and I enjoy it.

It feels great that people want my time.

And I’ve been the job searcher myself plenty of times.

You did a good thing. You can probably refine your technique, but don’t sweat it.

Unless someone is vocally racist during the intro, making any connection at all is a better impression than not doing so.

I let them know and will hunt down the hiring manager once my friend applies.

As a hiring manager who has experienced this kind of introduction or “name drop”, I want to add my perspective:

It’s great. Keep it up.

I got introduced to one of my best team leads that way. (To be very clear, I didn’t know the colleague making the introduction. We worked together but had never quite crossed paths. I still buy them a thank-you lunch occasionally as a thank you for their bravery, and selfishly in case they or another peer of theirs is job searching.)

Disclaimer: As a manager, it’s my job to apply fair hiring practices, and I’m committed to that. I don’t have many great answers, but I know today’s computerized HR filters aren’t fair to anyone, anyway. We need to do better, and personal references are probably the best tool for candidates, right now.

That’s the correlation.

For the parents, their world turned upside down, and Andrew Wakefield gave them someone/thing to (incorrectly) blame.

A thousand deaths aren’t enough for Andrew Wakefield. (Paraphrase quote from Frank Herbert’s Dune.)

Disclaimer: l’ll never illegally harm Andrew Wakefield. But if some authorized entity convicted him to execution and raffled off the right to throw the switch, I would buy one ticket for each person I’ve lost.

It makes me sad that the piece of shit Andrew Wakefield is still alive while so many better people than him have died for his bullshit.

Therefore the advice of the CDC can’t be trusted.

I trust the CDC. I wish others would too.

I lost people I love to all of this anti-vax bullshit.

As part of my grief journey, I tried to understand.

And now I’m not inclined to mock those who mistrust the CDC.

Mocking them won’t bring my loved ones back, and it won’t save anyone else’s loved ones.

Their experience is different than mine, but it’s real to them.

We either talk about ways to rebuild that trust, or we accept that we’re going to keep losing loved ones. I choose not to accept it. It’s not easy, and it requires trying to understand their world and their hurts. But I’ve lost enough people, it’s worth it to me.

Yeah. We only betrayed 400 of our citizens. Why don’t the rest trust us?! (This is sarcasm.)

Joking aside, that’s just how trust works.

I agree with you that rampant capitalism is the true primary source of distrust, but we’re not going to fix the full distrust without addressing the history as well.

all participants were given long term medical care thanks to funding from the government.

There’s a lot more than my cherry picked example in our history.

We have a history of treating our least privileged society members as lab rats.

Now we’re acting shocked that folks aren’t lining up for a poke in the arm.

Trust must be built, and we clearly don’t have it anymore.

Getting rid of our billionaires is step one, but it won’t magically change hearts and minds and create the missing trust.

My point is that they government itself doesn’t have a spotless history, and so cannot simply say trust me bro. It’s not just privatized healthcare that lost the missing trust.

Getting rid of our billionaires and un-privatizing healthcare is step one. After that, we still need an accountability overhaul, and a ton of patience to rebuild the lost trust.

United States citizens have reasons not to trust their government with their health. Trust takes a lot time to build, and recent administrations haven’t been building it.

I’m just going to leave a link here to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study for the folks arguing against your point.

Im in disguise now

“I picked a bad day to give up cigarettes.”

Nice. This is for me, if it runs on SteamDeck. I cannot be arsed to buy the latest great game system, but once a remake runs on the thing I already have, I’ll try it and enjoy it.

I think we will see this continue, but with federated product search, soon.

Small business vendors cannot afford to continue to leave their search results to Google and Amazon to control.

It’s like voting on an official state imaginary friend.

Coming soon!

Voice of Ron Howard: There were too many to choose..

Edit: This reminded me of another favorite running gag:

The Hacker in Leverage names everything after references to other shows. The fake IDs he creates are frequently less known Doctor Who or Star Trek actors.

And the Hacker’s van is named Lucille. Which I thought might be a nod to Arrested Development, until…