More Italian gelati. Mine is mixed berry and raw chocolate, Miles’ is hazelnut and salted caramel. Molto delizioso!
Your Grrl Friday
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The other other Dr. Percival. Paid to do economics, not paid for other miscellaneous IT geekery. Will also geek out about triathlon stuff as well. [She/her]
My son got to listen as I rediscovered 2 of 24 Italian operas in Napoli. I was tempted to open the window to share, but I’m not that certain in my pronunciation.
Related. I am one of those that gets on the table and sings after a couple of drinks.
Miles and I went to a Michelin-guide listed (no star) restaurant for a food and wine tasting. Pictures to follow.
The couple next to me have pulled down the window shade and I am really wrestling with my desire to avoid being possibly rude to strangers and my desire to see the beautiful countryside.
And looking out the other side is problematic with a sporadically nursing toddler. I’m a woman, so less so, but I don’t want to give the appearance of staring at them.
On the train to Napoli with youngest child process. Very excited to visit Mt. Vesuvius.
I’ve spent the last few days wishing I’d restarted my Duolingo account earlier because I’m having fun relearning German outside a classroom setting.
In Berlin!!
I had an interesting conversation at work today. I don’t know to what extent this is true for other people, but sometimes, seemingly at random, a thought hits you that feels like a real truth, a thing that you had wondered about but now, it’s your truth.
Today’s version of this came about, discussing, of all things, why we avoid using the word “significant” in news releases for my job, except when we are referring to statistical significance.
Coworker: Well, that’s weird. I don’t understand, if it’s just a synonym for “large”, I don’t see the issue.
Me: Well, it’s not a random rule. Most likely what happened is that it bit us in the ass in an embarrassing or frequent enough way when someone read “significant” and reported it as statistically significant when it wasn’t, and then they had to make a rule.
Me, continuing: A lot of institutional knowledge is like this. You don’t always understand it, and part of your job is learning these things that don’t always make sense.
The big challenge, in any new job, is that some percent of this random crap you need to learn is useless hangovers. Learning to discern the difference between hard-fought lessons and cargo-culting drek is an important life skill. Every person you learn from, even the best, most cutting edge people, have a certain percent of knowledge that is based on cargo culting. (If you are unfamiliar with the term, my friend, you are in for a real treat when you google it).
Me, continuing full adhd-glory to my son when he walks into the room at the end of this: And this is why people do stupid shit, even when you tell them not to. It’s that they can’t know that the things you’re telling them really are hard worn truths about not sticking the fork in the electric socket. It’s not that they think you’re lying to them. They just think your drek:experience ratio is high.