Responses to News

[jsburbidge]

1. Observed as a headline on Google News: "I Was Rejected After a Manager Looked at my LinkedIn Profile" - unlike many other things online, your LinkedIn profile is entirely under your own control. It does not track history. It is meant to be for selling yourself. If you post things which might drive off potential employers, it's your own fault.

2. A CBC article on the movie "The Green Knight" does not inspire confidence in the research skills of its author when, after a reasonable amount about the poem at second hand (interviews with academics) it references The Lord of The Rings in its last paragraph without noting that the standard edition of the poem is co-edited by Tolkien and that he did a translation of the poem into modern English.

3. Multiple stories (notably from Alberta and Ontario, but also refracted from other locations) suggest that politicians (and some people) are focussed with tunnel vision on "returning to normal" (Alberta in general, schools in Ontario). They seem not to have realized that there will be no return, but rather the establishment of a new normal; or, more likely, they are in active denial. (One way of illustrating this is to look at the UK, where opening discotheques became legal a few weeks ago but where the venues are floundering in uprofitability because not enough people are coming out to them. The fact that something becomes legal does not necessarily mean that enough people will start to behave as though it is 2019 for a "return to normal".) I attribute this in part to bias (governments which are conservative/mammonite will be less likely to accept change constraining economic activity), partly to geography (conservative governments have a disproportionate number of rural members, who overwhelmingly want to see the end of restrictions of any sort), and partly to a general propensity for governments of any stripe to want to push a "good news" narrative even when it means getting out in front of the facts.

(Masks are not going away for many people, even if others enthusiastically ditch them. I expect heavy vaccine mandates in the private sector, both for employees and (in places such as indoor restaurants, gyms, and the like) customers. I expect the profitability of running a cinema to become very iffy. I expect workplaces where coming in to work while sick in any way becomes a major social blunder and possible disciplinary issue rather than a signal of dedication to the job. I am sure there are consequences I do not foresee; the current labour market suggests other changes.)

Comments

[dewline]

1. I am wary of LinkedIn for a few reasons, which will likely be discussed anew on my own account. However, I agree with you on this point.

3. The people currently running the provincial governments of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario are giving every appearance of being Hell-bent on getting we who live in these provinces back to their concept of "normal" as quickly as they think they can make the change happen.

Again, we are in agreement: at least some of the changes we've had this past year and a half are going to be permanent. What worries me is that the best changes will be fought the hardest.

[jsburbidge]

I use LinkedIn to keep track of former co-workers. I put up with the rest of its inconveniences and post only stuff I am willing to have entirely public. Occasionally it has thrown up some really weird things (one person it suggested as a contact once had two mutual contacts - one through previous professional contacts and one through SFF fandom, completely unrelated).

It's becoming clear that populations as a whole are showing themselves to be more cautious than their leaders (with small minorities who are less cautious than their leaders). How strong that effect is going to be I have no idea, but the effect is certainly out there.

I'm unfortunately suspicious that the best chance for substantive change is going to come out of a quasi-Weatherman dynamic of governments screwing up so badly that they make their names a hissing in the dark for the near future, providing a window for more thoroughgoing change as an immediate reaction. Living through that will not be pleasant.