And There Goes The First Week

I had originally wanted to write something about how the focus on stopping the objectification of women is misplaced because the reality of the matter has moved on to actually objectifying all human beings through the consistent slicing and dicing of the human experience in the form of various clustering/categorisation in a bid to attach attributes to the person in order to ``make sense'' of where this person ``stands'' on a variety of issues that relate to either politics or commerce, and that this particular denigration of human dignity is wide spread, under-reported, and seemingly tacitly accepted as part of the ``new'' social contract for existing these days.

But it felt like too much effort, because there was just so much that I need to deconstruct and explain just to ensure that I don't sound as though I am trivialising the also real issue of objectification of women through whataboutism.

So instead, let's just talk a little about the week that just passed.

It was an interesting start of my new tenure. Reporting to an office with a less-than-skeleton crew is a new-ish experience. The last place I worked at had a similar initial day, though for completely different reasons---instead of staff working from home due to a pandemic, it was due to how most people were stuck on-site to work in a tiny room due to contractual obligations.

While most people/places have a ``honeymoon period'' of a few days to get used to the new environment, I did not have much of that luxury. Lots of things were happening very quickly, and I had to start running as hard as I can just to keep up. Even at today, I'm not sure if I have actually caught up with everything that is needed for me to start working meaningfully at my responsibilities---but I'll just try to do what I can.

Mainly though, I'm doing my best to avoid unnecessary anxiety-causing situations. I am sincerely going to enforce the ``your lack of planning is not my emergency'' policy just to keep my sanity in check. Is this a case of insubordination then? I argue that it is not---seriously, if boundaries are not drawn clearly from the get-go, trying to set them again in the future is going to prove rather tough.

Talking about boundaries, I really dislike the mandatory installation of some app on my phone together with the installation of the TraceForever app when there is a perfectly working and acceptable alternative from the government involving the use of a token. The only good thing from it is that I have an alternate phone number that I can use with an associated ``burner'' phone for such intrusive requirements without compromising on the integrity/privacy of my own personal data on my personal phone.

For the confused, the reason for this is that depending on the policies of the IT department, devices that are linked in some way to the ``bring your own device'' policies may be subjected to destructive processes by the said IT department. The details of these policies are usually hidden deep within the security/use policies from the IT department, and even if the policies do not prescribe such remote destruction, all it takes is an incompetent operator from the IT department to nuke one's device from orbit. And the best part is that they can often take on indemnity using the guise of corporate data protection as their aegis. Sure one can always find some way to fight back, but it really is too late---one's personal stuff on one's personal phone is nuked already.

Thus, it's better to have a ``burner'' phone for such gray areas. Yes it set me back by nearly one hundred and fifty dollars, but I sleep well knowing that if they decide to nuke it, they can not overstep their authority.

Speaking of the ``burner'' phone, it's a Redmi 9A, not the A9 as initially indicated. I've managed to tune it to the point that it runs as well as the old Android One based Mi A2-lite that I was using before as the prior ``burner'' phone.

Also, for future reference, this is an important formula (from this documentation page):

px = dp * (dpi / 160)
⇒
smallest_width = (160 * screen_width) / screen_dpi

That's all I think.

I'll spend the rest of the day reading, I suppose.

Till the next update, the date of which I don't know. Ciao.