Looking at this article realistically, yes, you do need to play the game to succeed in your career.

However, this attitude bothers me on a deep level. I believe there is a systematic issue here with how corporations recognise the work that their employees put in.

We discussed why some great developers don’t get their deserved recognition or financial benefits, and sometimes, some mediocre devs achieve more than the good ones.

This situation should not be occuring. Encouraging developers to be "less humble" is a bandaid solution. There are many skilled developers who are unable to just be "less humble", especially developers who are neuroatypical and suffer from, say, a generalized anxiety disorder. Or anyone who suffers with regular feelings of imposter syndrome no matter their successes. Why should these employees be punished for their managers not being able to appropriately evaluate the performance of their team?

I know it's not easy for managers to assess the performance alongside their other responsibilities. I do not know what the correct answer to this issue is. But certainly the correct answer is not this. It does work, but it will not solve the underlying issue that corporations have with appropriately evaluating the performance of their employees in a way that is not systematically ableist and otherwise unfairly punishing.

You clearly never worked in a corporate environment.

What on earth are you talking about? There's the concept of a Spike in agile software development which is used in corporate environments for exploring potential solutions, including my own. I recently completed one to judge the feasibility of a project and to help us estimate the time the project would take to complete before we ended up wasting resources pursuing something that would only lead to a dead end.

I'm a vegetarian.

I was, and still am, surprised by how often people will go into a long rant justifying why they eat meat to me as soon as they find out I'm vegetarian. All the while I'm just sat there, not saying anything, because I literally do not care whether or not they eat meat.

Me being a vegetarian is a personal choice for me and myself only. You do you. I don't care. You don't need to explain yourself to me. It makes me feel so awkward.

People will often ask me why I'm a vegetarian too. But it feels like a very personal and heavy question to ask someone immediately after finding out they're vegetarian... I don't especially want to talk about animals dying all the time and how it makes me sad especially to strangers.

Edit/Addition: It feels like a lot of focus is brought on how vegetarians/vegans force their views onto other people but my experience personally is non-vegetarians/vegans trying to force me into conversations about this topic.

For some additional context as someone who studied Of Mice and Men myself at GCSE which I don't think this article covers. Do take this as a grain of salt as I completed my GCSEs over a decade ago and therefore the way this book is taught today will probably be different from my experiences.

GCSEs are the first meaningful qualification that students in the UK get, so, the level of study and understanding at this stage is comparatively basic. For English Literature it boils down to "the author states that the curtains in the room are blue, this is a reflection of how the character is sad in this scene".

For this kind of level of education and for the subject that is being taught, I do not think it is necessary to use a book with racial slurs. What's the benefit of forcing students to be exposed to racial slurs if the focus of the subject being taught isn't even racism beyond "they call Crooks [insert slur here], this shows how he is isolated for being different and this plays into the themes of loneliness in this book".

Just for clarity, I don't disagree with what I believe your argument ultimately boils down to. I think avoiding all uncomfortable topics in all educational settings and across all subjects is not a good idea. However I think the debate to be had here is more nuanced than that.

As you say, a lot of history is uncomfortable and acknowledging it and learning it is essential to progress. But debates need to be had about how we teach these topics.

We cannot assume that the way we tackle the subject of racism in schools is perfect as it is now. From studying Of Mice and Men during GCSEs myself I certainly think it lacked in terms of tackling the subject of racism in a way that does it justice. Though I am making the assumption that the way it is taught now is the same as it was a decade ago which might be a load of rubbish.

Thank you for your civil reply to my confrontation and I hope this clarifies my thoughts better than my initial reply.

I use Nebula too. It's pretty good. There is a good handful of creators I watched on YouTube on there for me to have enough to put on easily whilst cooking dinner for example but not endless amounts where I can waste an entire evening mindlessly watching nonsense.

My main gripe with it at the moment is that there doesn't seem to be a way to "hide" or "block" certain creators and I would quite like to hide TLDR News from my feed. I'm sure they make great content but I know I won't watch it since I personally try to avoid news as much as I can.

Good on you for taking the steps to try and remove the sources of your anxiety from your life. Social media is certainly addicting and it's a hard cycle to break free from.

I've been slowly deleting my social media and other internet accounts for a few years now. Facebook was the first to go probably half a decade ago now. I bailed Twitter around a year before Musk took over. I stopped using my Twitch account but I still need to delete it. I am in the process of weaning myself off of YouTube.

I started this process mostly due to privacy concerns and me feeling out of control of my personal information. Algorithms served to further push me away because I struggle not to engage with depressing topics which results in controversial and depressing content being pushed on me by the algorithm which severely affected my mental health. The final straw is all these platforms becoming almost completely unusable due to their need to feed the illusion of constantly growing profits by adding unnecessary new features that bloat the platform, adding ever more intrusive adverts, and locking features behind paid subscriptions.

These days I only use Mastodon and Lemmy. I also have a subscription to Nebula through CuriosityStream which has been scratching my YouTube itch so I'm aiming to delete my Google account completely soon. I also use Discord, just for keeping in contact with friends, but ultimately I'd like to bail from that platform too.

Ultimately this decision has freed up a lot more personal time for myself to pursue my existing hobbies and new ones. Overall I am much happier.

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I've always seen a lot of debate about whether to play FES or Portable which always made me dream for a proper remake in the future which combined the best of both games. Instead the debates will now be between three different games.

I was very excited when I saw Persona 3 Reload but am disappointed they are not including content from either FES or Portable. Personally I don't think I will buy it just because I would just be sad that I wasn't playing as the female protagonist.

I do not trust Niantic as a developer and will not try out this game despite being a big fan of Monster Hunter.

I played Pokémon GO for years as well as Pikmin Bloom for a little bit. Both games are buggy messes and I find them to be more disruptive to me going out on walks and exploring than helpful.

Pokémon GO for years has been a mismanaged mess and I finally decided to uninstall after their recent remote raid changes. I haven't looked back. I have found myself enjoying my walks more without it.

the games themselves can be very good, but it's always despite its gacha mechanics, not because of it

Exactly! I couldn't have said it better myself.

I am neuroatypical and don't have a healthy relationship with gambling mechanics in video games. I struggle to exert the self-control required to engage with these kinds of mechanics in a healthy way and end up gambling way too much. These days I am forced to just flat out avoid games with gambling mechanics in them (which feels like most games these days). I consider them inaccessible to me otherwise I end up spending money I shouldn't.

I played Genshin a lot when it first launched. I did enjoy it but ultimately stopped playing altogether after I whaled on two different banners only to lose the 50/50 (for Venti and a Vortex Vanquisher for anyone wondering).

I've been playing Slay the Spire recently for the first time and I've been having a lot of fun with it!

Within the last month or so a load of juvenile Starlings fledged their nests nearby to my house. I have been putting out mealworms for them and also putting out lots of water for them to drink during this warmer than usual summer we are having here in the UK.

They are a red listed species here so I've been really enjoying helping and watching these lovely birds navigate their first few weeks of life.

I was sharing an account with a family member. This family member cancelled their subscription following this change.

I don't feel as though Netflix is worth the cost and I've felt no need to buy my own subscription following losing access to Netflix. I think there are too many streaming services and the actual worthwhile content is just spread too thin between them. I'd rather just miss out and watch something else than pay for any of these subscription streaming services.