Get Off Yer Damn Phone When Yer Talkin' With Me, You Cretin!

The last day of the year in this time zone---let's write some thing, and no, it will not be a retrospective, as retrospectives are usually reserved for the quick summary posts that I do some time on/after the first day of the new year.

It'll be a good old fashioned rant.

So there's a group of people that I really dislike---the ``I am stuck to a phone'' type of people. They may be articulate, they may be pleasant, but when they aren't talking, they seem to plaster their faces onto the screens of their smartphones, doing God knows what ``important'' thing.

Friend, whatever's on the phone can usually wait. I am here, I am now, and I am here, now. Talk to me, communicate with me damnit, not stare at your God-damned phone for Christ's sake.

If the phone rings, sure it is urgent; go for it, with an apologetic grin---this I understand. When the phone buzzes, maybe a quick check; not a faux pas if it occurs infrequently in our encounter.

Flipping through the phone when it was doing absolutely nothing, that disrespects the me who has come out to meet up with you. Seriously.

``Don't worry, I can multi-task'' doesn't cut it because while you think you can multi-task, the reality of it all is that we are generally conditioned to handle active thinking in a serial manner. Perhaps if we did not think in words in our heads that such multi-tasking is possible, but I sincerely do not believe this to be true for the vast majority of people.

It angers me a great deal because of the blatant disrespect of the other party who took the time to come out. Recall once more that time is the most expensive resource that one can make use of, for once that second is gone, it is gone, and no amount of conversion to and fro money can replace it. If there were any substitution used, it would at best be an imperfect one, since time is not exactly fungible---that day you missed when you were five years old means something significantly different from the day that you just missed some thirty years later.

``MT, why are you so butthurt about all these? Live with the times man!''

No, fuck you. An advancement in technology (i.e. improving/providing the ability to do something) is not equivalent to an advancement in our social behaviours (i.e. deciding if an action/ability ought to be used given a context). Just because it can be done doesn't imply that it ought to be done [given a context].

Recast into our current terms, it means that just because the smartphone makes it easy to connect to external information sources does not mean that one should be doing that all the time.

As for why I am ``butthurt'', it's because I have seen one too many of such behaviours just within this year alone. It makes me sad; me, a misanthrope, realising that somehow I was the least misanthropic person among those who claim to be more of a ``people-person'', all because of this anti-social behaviour of frequently digging into one's smartphone while still being in the presence of others.

Anyway, that's the rant for now. Till the next update.

Slow Entry

Okay, we're in the end stretch for 2022. What better thing to do than to write something here now?

It's been one interesting ride for the past two weeks. My team had been a cosy small number of full-timers until our numbers suddenly swelled up by fifty percent due to the new staff finally coming in.

I'm excited at what we can achieve. I'm fearful of the mis-steps I might take being their leader.

Moving on, I've been reading The Science of Nutrition (4th Edition) by Janice L. Thompson, Melinda M. Manore, & Linda A. Vaughan, and a thought came to me.

Just what is the power rating of an ``average'' human?

Using the 2000 kcal per day requirement, that's about 8.368 MJ (1 kcal being equivalent to 4.184 kJ). A day has 86.4 ks, so the average power of a human (assuming no nett change in mass) is around... 96.9 W. Combining this terrible estimate against the around 20% of energy use of brain (as seen from the table in this Wikipedia entry), we're looking at a crude estimate of 19.4 W for thinking, on average.

What does it mean? No idea. Just a random thought.

I have been mulling over getting a Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition (32 GB) for the next iteration of the Eirian series of e-ink readers, mostly because Eirian-IV has been with me since January 2016, nearly seven years. But Eirian-IV is still generally in good operating form, battery-wise. I'm still running close to the 4 GB space limit, but it is not that big a problem for the most part.

Ah well.

Anyway, it's a short entry. I lost a lot of momentum while writing this---it is getting a bit late, and I really ought to go turn in earlier.

Till the next update then.