The message is that process is there to extract value from people with average skills and motivation. When you find someone very skilled and self motivated doing the right thing, don't let process hamper their way.
I wish the article actually said that in plain words instead of trying to foist it into that peculiar "wolf" analogy (or whatever it's trying to do). I found the article kind of confusing. Thanks for spelling it out.
Apparently the weld that broke joined an old segment with a new one installed last year as the tracks are renovated piecemeal.
Still the media in question, "El Mundo", is a mouthpiece for the opposition parties, seeking to create indignation against the government and scoring the head of the Transport Minister in particular.
They also want to make a parallel with the situation of the former President of the Valencian Community, from their party, who had to finally resign one year after being unreachable for hours on a date while hundreds of valencians drowned as his administration waffled aimlessly.
Of course the government is ultimately responsible for the state of the infrastructure, so the Minister well might have to resign after all is said and done, but the innuendo in that piece is pure politicking, not serious journalism.
This has some crossover with ageism. In the last years in my org all the senior staff has been put to pasture doing either nothing or confined strictly to whatever they were already doing.
Some part of it is that we are perceived as lazy obstructionist naysayer dinosaurs when we point out any flaws in new projects as the article warns. But the rest is that because some of the elders were effectively semi-retired and doing little, anyone over 40 has been uncritically dumped with them.
So we keep the lights on while all the new shiny stuff is given to fresh juniors that don't ever push back and are happy to say yes, but also can't do it alone, and are lost at sea.
So they don't get anything shipped while we keep polishing our legacy turds and wince every time we accidentally get a glimpse of what they are doing.
I bought a expensive fancy pan for my wife's birthday a few years ago. We both cook, clean and do groceries and chores equally so it never occurred to me that it was inappropriate. We both like cooking. I'm more of a stewpot guy while she's better in general at "pan stuff" and had been complaining about the old pan. She chided me a bit for spending so much on a pan and there was that.
But when I mentioned it over coffee at work most of my female colleagues were aghast. I defended myself saying something like "It's the 21st century, we are way past the point that I can't gift a pan to my wife" and they said "Well that might be at YOUR home!", and I learned a thing.
Not as hugely generous as this story, but during his whole college professor career since the 70s, my father always took care that none of his students spent any major holidays alone and away from home, so we always ended up having 2 or 3 of them around for Christmas, the New Year, Easter...
They were from everywhere around the country and the world, and it was so very enriching for me and my siblings. I had a huge postage stamp collection from the ever increasing well wishing mail that arrived.
It's also kind of comforting to think that anywhere in the world you are not that far from someone that remembers you fondly.
That seems to be one of the things that some great professors do. I've heard of that convention from many colleges/universities.
At any university, look for the professors who act like benevolent citizens of the best of university ideals. They don't all do it in the same way, but they're some of the best.
I like to think of the university as a microcosm, and incubator, for how you'd like larger society to be.
You can do the same for work colleagues. This has happened to me throughout my career when time/money/circumstance kept me away from family/home during holidays.
That’s nice, I once ended up alone around New Year, a mix of being far away from family, busy with studies and not actively asking people around to join their events due to being shy.
One of my friends that lived nearby spotted me walking alone and invited me over. Another of her friends joined in. It was just the three of us, and it was much, much better than spending it alone.
When I was an exchange student at RIT and had just arrived from France a month before, one of the admin staff invited me and a friend in the same situation for thanksgiving because she didn't want to leave us by ourselves for a major holiday.
I have fond memories of that kindness.
The Colorado School of Mines had a "host family" program for foreign students. My father was a geologist, and we lived about five miles from the School of Mines, so we/they acted as host family for students from Italy, Nigeria, China, and no doubt countries I've forgotten. This included invitations to holiday meals, drives into the mountains, etc.
My dad said his grandfather always had a teenager or two at the dinner table who had no where else to go. Not just Christmas but all year. My parents did the same with a friend of mine and one of my sisters friends.
I think the cars reflect pretty well the intended ethos and "vibes" of both competitions. Indycar still feels a bit like "dudes racing cars" while F1 has become a corporate hi-tech extravaganza.
Both have their appeal, but I feel Indy produces better actual racing for the spectator despite being slower and less refined technically. I do watch both.
The best comparison I can think of is that in a Indycar race, it's every driver against each other, meanwhile in Formula 1 you can feel it's the whole team that's actually taking part in the race, and the car on track is just the tip of the iceberg of the process.
They put a few full NASCAR races recorded solely from a drivers perspective up on youtube every once in a while. I never appreciated that sport until I started watching those. It's far more brutal and compact than I ever had expected with the shift in perspective making all the difference. It's "dudes racing for their lives."
In general the driver's perspective has always seemed underused to me. In F1 at least (where the cars are insanely stiff), unless there are overtakes in progress, watching from the trackside cameras just looks like cars driving round a track. Whereas from the driver's view you can see the car reacting to the track and the driver reacting to the car.
People complain a lot that the TV coverage spends too long on the driver's girlfriends. For me I think it spends too long looking at the cars (from the outside)!
I guess part of this is just that the image quality from onboards is not so sleek. But if it was up to me I think like 60-70% of the airtime would be from onboard.
I once got free tickets to a race (DTM, German touring cars), and to be honest I don't know why people go to them. You saw a small section of the track, and occasionally cars whizzed by. No idea who was in the lead, who was behind, or what was happening in the race in general. Much better to watch on TV.
Yeah I've never had any urge to go in person at all! Also, F1 is EXTREMELY expensive to watch in person at most of the venues. (I assume most other motorsports are at least cheap to spectate).
Sounds like a killer app for VR- observing from the driver's perspective, being able to switch to whoever you want. How many cameras are in those cars I wonder?
They have a lot of cameras and they offer a paid service where you can stream from any driver's onboard. Unfortunately this is out of sync with the main broadcast which kinda kills its value for me...
I think VR would make most people sick as it's a very bumpy view.
They get fantastic exposure from the other onboard cameras though! The one by the air intake is the best view for spectating and probably one of the best for advertisers too.
Some of the most racing fun I've had in video games was actually NASCAR games.
The whole race was constant jostling for position. There was almost always someone within a car length/width, and zero room for error. From what I've seen on TV and YT, it seemed pretty spot on.
Unfortunately I was also bad at driving with a PS2 controller so I was the danger on the track.
the corporate hi-tech "extravaganza" has only come recently with its rise in US popularity. While you are not wrong I think thats just one part of the sport. Indycar is just racing and strategy. F1 is technical development, racing, strategy, and team performance. I like both but while I find the racing better in Indy, I follow F1 much more closely because I really enjoy the technical side of the sport. I also think 10 teams (soon to be 11) and 20 drivers (soon to be 22) that race in every race makes it easier to stay invested throughout the season.
I followed Indycar this past season, watched nearly every race and had planned on attending a race but then didn't make the trip. I'm not sure what Indycar is trying to be, tbh. The Indy 500 is a spectacle, the rest of the season is not nearly as interesting. There's some good racing, but F1 is more technically interesting and maybe better overall. NASCAR is boring as hell, just stage-managed bullshit like pro wrestling and I have not followed it in over 20 years.
Interesting.. I agree on the description but my experience was opposite. I enjoyed F1 much more, though I really enjoy all the technical stats and talks with the teams/engineers that develop the cars and find it to be an equal part of the whole thing as the actual racing itself.
Honestly after going down to the local circle track to watch the Legend cars, modified , Whelen and actual honest to God GM B-bodies from the 80s, along with other open wheel and general cool shit, it's not hard IMO to find (and be directly involved in) actual racing than watch "NASCAR" Cup series or F1. Legend cars on a road track in particular kind of takes me back to watching the super bike races (which were about as real and hardcore actual racing as you'll get) at Mid Ohio.
At the 2025 Indy 500 they had Tom Brady driving laps in an Indy car engaged in banter witb the broadcast team up before the race started. Then a US military propaganda moment flying Blackhawk helos over the track to titillate their target audience.
I think the GP poster was referring to the actual race, and not the peripheral parts of the event -- I don't know much about racing in general, but even with the extra "propaganda" you mention, they didn't seem disingenuous
I think they lost it when they started dictating what kind of engines teams can use. Just limit the max fuel flow, and then let the teams go wild. Want to use a gas turbine? Go for it!
The "kids" are on average a lot better at driving than most of the "adults" of 30 years ago. Pay drivers barely exist anymore, and even e.g. Stroll is not bad compared to the pay drivers of decades past, who were genuinely terrible.
V10s are overrated. They sound nice, yes, but ask the drivers who have actually driven them and they actually prefer the V6T hybrids in a lot of ways. It turns out that actually sitting inches away from the V10 with the associated noise and vibrations kinda sucks.
AKA the real world, a place where you have older appliances, legacy servers, contractual constraints and better things to do than watch a nasty yearly ritual become a nasty monthly ritual.
I need to make sure SSL is working in a bunch of very heterogeneous stuff but not in a position to replace it and/or pick an authority with better automation. I just suck it up and dread when a "cert day" looms closer.
Sometimes these kind of decisions seem to come from bodies that think the Internet exists solely for doing the thing they do.
Happens to me with the QA people at our org. They behave as if anything happens just for the purpose of having them measure it, creating a Heisenberg situation where their incessant narrow-minded meddling makes actually doing anything nearly imposible.
That tracks with how great it feels when you match the positions of the virtual and real wheels when simracing.
Peeking under the lenses you see your own arms seamlessly continue into the virtual ones and feels like you are grabbing the virtual wheel.
In many occasions, if there's a proposal for something very stupid or pointless I've found it's better to just say "yes", knowing full well the thing will never get done. The manager didn't really want the thing. He wanted a good happy meeting and to hear "yes".
reply