Joanna and I have personal convictions. One of them is this: we care about you for the simple fact that you are a person, our neighbor on planet earth. […] We are not about to get in the nasty business of throwing stones at each other, don’t ask us to cause we won’t play that way.
I think we are all here for a reason. […] Jo and I feel called to be bridge builders. We want to help initiate conversations between people that don’t think alike. Listen to me, we do not all have to agree with each other. Disagreement is not the same thing as hate, don’t believe that lie.
Disagreement is not the same thing as hate. One of the most revolutionary statements today. We can agree to disagree. I can think that you are wrong. That doesn’t have to involve any hate from either side. We can respectfully disagree. Right?
If I misjudge people and am wrong, I want to be wrong having assumed the best about them. The bottom line is, I would rather be loving than be right.
This line here, Chip Gaines’s bottom line, is where I’ll leave this. I would rather be loving than be right. I don’t get into arguments to win them. I used to. It damaged many things in my life. I get into arguments to win souls to Jesus. I would rather lose an argument than lose a soul. Let’s readjust our point-of-views this year and fight for Jesus.
If you look at this like a sport. If you look at this like a battle against your neighbor, you’ll choose anything as a knife against the other side. And that itself is a—what’s the opposite of a virtue? … That’s a vice. Political divisiveness is a vice. But like a lot of vices, it’s super seductive. So you indulge in it, until it bites you. And then you go, oh, darn, the wages of sin is death. And it makes you question having indulged in a vice … Picking sides is a vice rather than picking ideas.
I have to say that Stephen Colbert has been a guilty pleasure of mine for some time. As a conservative, I have often been in the sights of his jokes. But, his humility and willingness to quote Scripture and scriptural concepts rank him highly in my book. This interview, all of it, is a great way to spend your Friday morning. I could share a half dozen quotes from this, but instead, I’ll tell you to watch it too, as his delivery of those quotes is just as important.
I’ll start with the hard part: As of today, we are reducing our team by about one third — eliminating 50 jobs, mostly in sales, support, and other business functions. We are also changing our business model to more directly drive the mission we set out on originally.
I prefer to control my content for many reasons. Medium has seen some great content published on their platform, but apparently, they have also seen issues monetizing it in a way they find suitable. So time to pivot. Hopefully, they survive.
For many, “it’s crazy at work” has become their normal. But why so crazy?
At the root is an onslaught of physical and virtual real-time distractions slicing work days into a series of fleeting work moments.
Tie that together with a trend of over-collaboration, plus an unhealthy obsession with growth at any cost, and you’ve got the building blocks for an anxious, crazy mess.
It’s no wonder people are working longer, earlier, later, on weekends, and whenever they have a spare moment. People can’t get work done at work anymore.
I love 37signals, now Basecamp, and still reference Rework frequently. Now they are back to address the insanity that has become the American workplace in The Calm Company.
Sometime in November, as things now stand, the "Christmas season" begins. The streets are hung with lights, the stores are decorated with red and green, and you can't turn on the radio without hearing songs about the spirit of the season and the glories of Santa Claus. The excitement builds to a climax on the morning of December 25, and then it stops, abruptly. Christmas is over, the New Year begins, and people go back to their normal lives.
The traditional Christian celebration of Christmas is exactly the opposite. The season of Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, and for nearly a month Christians await the coming of Christ in a spirit of expectation, singing hymns of longing. Then, on December 25, Christmas Day itself ushers in 12 days of celebration, ending only on January 6 with the feast of the Epiphany.
Many think it begins twelve days before Christmas? Nope, the time before Christmas is called Advent. The 12 Days start on Christmas day and continue until Epiphany. That is why my desk is still decorated.
The codebase on big sites isn’t impenetrable because developers slavishly followed arbitrary best practices. The codebase is broken because developers don’t talk to each other and don’t make style guides or pattern libraries. And they don’t do those things because the people who hire them force them to work faster instead of better. It starts at the top.
Must read for front-end developers. No, seriously. Don’t, please don’t let the speed at which you write code influence the future maintainability of your code.
“The leather-bound Bible owned by local man Kurt Ryder for over ten years reported Sunday that it was “super pumped” to participate in Ryder’s resolution to read his Bible every day, until he inevitably shelves it in the latter half of the first week of January, sources confirmed.”
Don’t be Kurt Ryder. Read your Bible this year. As I said on Christmas, I have not been as consistent as I want with this. Let’s work on this together.
Haven’t heard it put this way. I will need to internalize it and to use this.
Why are we hated? Why is it that we should be not surprised when the world turns against us?
Because Cain hated Abel. Just one verse earlier John has spoken of these two brothers and asked why one murdered the other. Cain murdered Abel “because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.” Abel’s goodness exposed Cain’s badness. Abel’s righteousness convicted Cain of his unrighteousness. Abel’s love for God silently declared Cain’s disregard. Cain responded with the ultimate manifestation of hatred—he murdered his own brother.
Those darn Russian hackers. We need to increase our security. Or increase our employee’s awareness of security issues such as phishing. One link click opened up the email account of a Hillary election employee.
The email was a fake warning from hackers that appeared to be from Google, telling Podesta to change his password through a link they provided. The “phishing” scam is a popular one that depends on the gullibility of the victim.
Or a typo:
“This is a legitimate email,” Charles Delavan, a Clinton campaign aide, replied to another of Mr. Podesta’s aides, who had noticed the alert. “John needs to change his password immediately.”
Having read the message, Podesta must have thought it was OK to click the link and reset his password — exactly the opposite of what Delavan intended.
Mr. Delavan, in an interview, said that his bad advice was a result of a typo: He knew this was a phishing attack, as the campaign was getting dozens of them. He said he had meant to type that it was an “illegitimate” email, an error that he said has plagued him ever since.
And that’s how more than 60,000 emails of Hillary’s top aides fell into the hands of allegedly Russian state-sponsored hackers.
