link round-up

[cellio]

I have some things collecting in tabs, so here's a hodge-podge:

• First, border-crossing. You've probably heard by now that border control in the US has gotten aggressive, including demanding passwords for encrypted devices and then taking them out of view for an extended time. You don't have to give up your password, but if you don't, they can confiscate your device for weeks or months for "review". The rights you have against unreasonable search and seizure in the US are not the same as those you have at the border. While they can't deny entry to US citizens, they can to others.

• It's important to know what you don't know. David Director Friedman has an interesting idea about applying economics to teaching -- specifically, grading exams.

• A lot of the Rands article The New Manager Death-Spiral sounds very familiar.

• We all know one of the Internet rules: don't read the comments. The parts of the net I frequent tend to be better than, say, a random sample of YouTube, which is due to a mix of conscientious participants and comment moderation. A while back I came across a comment-moderation policy described as "Victorian Sufi Buddha Lite": they require a comment to be at least two of true, necessary, and kind.

• I'm not sure that philosophy applies to windshield notes, but they sure are funny.

• How do we know Humpty Dumpty is an egg? The rhyme doesn't say so. Huh, I never thought about that.

• Speaking of things I hadn't thought about, have you ever noticed the similarities between fantasy-adventurer settings and westerns?

Comments

[siderea]

A lot of the Rands article The New Manager Death-Spiral sounds very familiar.

There's so much about Scadian culture that makes me want to throw up my hands in disgust and never think about it again, and then I read something like this and am reminded of why there's so much to love about it. I still have no idea how Carolingia, if not the entire Knowne World, got the "leadership means delegation" thing so very deeply and even militantly; I wish I did so I could spread it around.

[cellio]

Yeah. I learned things in the SCA that I then turned around and applied to the work world, while wondering if it shouldn't be the other way around.

[siderea]

Well, if one thinks of the Society as "just" a hobby or game, then it's perhaps surprising – though even games are educational. But if one thinks of the Society as countercultural, which it deeply is, one can think of it as a kind of laboratory for alternative ways to get things done – and in that sense, it's not surprising at all. It's almost the point.

[metahacker]

The idea of leadership as delegation is sharply countercultural--it's the antithesis of "leadership" in the macho CEO stereotype style of leadership that corporate life pretends to like.

This despite delegation being a key skill taught in other similarly hierarchical organizations--notably the military, where being able to delegate, and assess the ability of your delegatees to carry out the task, are both considered crucial parts of the job as you move up the command chain.

I have to think it is because of the rotating cadre of supremely unqualified CEOs and middle managers who persist only because they claim what they're doing is effective despite all evidence to the contrary, while depending on lower-status folks to invisibly pick up the slack and make things actually work.

(Application to the current administration is left as an exercise for the reader.)

[siderea]

Interesting point.

[metahacker]

Oh FFS, there's a _movie_ about this now?

[jducoeur]

Fascinating. It never occurred to me, but now that you bring up clubs, I wonder if this is intentionally built into Freemasonry.

It's quite plausible: Masonry is all about teaching lessons through ritual, and one of the most deeply-set rituals is the way the Lodge runs. You achieve Leadership (being Master of the Lodge) only by passing through most of the Chairs under the Master, over a period (in a healthy Lodge) of 7-11 years. Each of those Chairs has specific responsibilities, and it is *not* cool to micro-manage. Delegation is more or less explicitly one of the key jobs of the Master of the Lodge, and by that point you have a good deal of experience with delegation up, down and sideways.

All far more formalized (and, amusingly, hierarchical) than the SCA, of course, but that's the nature of the clubs...