Wrote
- Subatomic tasks (2020-04-26).
- Automate and lose (2020-04-29).
Read
- Alina Selyukh, More Essential Than Ever, Low-Wage Workers Demand More, NPR (2020-04-28). (notes) "We are the same people that they didn't think we were worth $15 an hour, but now realize that we are worth way more than that," says Cynthia Murray, a long-time Walmart worker in Maryland. "I've been there 19 years and I don't even make $15 an hour. ... I have to work more than a week in order to get one hour of sick time."
- Laura Paskus, The Endless Search for Charles Bowden, High Country News (2020-03-25). (notes) “It’s easy to make a living telling the people in control they’re right,” he told Carrier, adding, “Look, you have a gift, life is precious. Eventually you die, and all you’re going to have to show for it is your work.”
- Alan Jacobs, the seductions of prediction, Snakes and Ladders (2020-04-28). (notes) This is an article that simply should not have been written. But everyone’s doing it, I guess. The seductions of prediction are irresistible.
- Hank Shaw, Wild Ginger, Edible and Toxic, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook (2012-05-22).
- Mark Arsenault, How the Biogen leadership conference in Boston spread the coronavirus, The Boston Globe (2020-03-11).
Listened
- Build a career in data science, Talk Python to Me (2020-05-01). (notes) [23:20] The reason we wrote this book was because we felt there's a lot of technical guidance out there but not on these other really important skills you need. And I do think that one of those skills, if you want to change the practice of a company, you can't necessarily just email it to them one day and have that be done. You need to talk to them, figure out what kind of scares them about this change, do change management. And I think to not underestimate the importance of things like communications and working with stakeholders when thinking of things like technological solutions even if to you it may seem really obvious that of course this is going to be 100% better.
- Moneyball's Michael Lewis: “The Trump Death Clock”, Danny in the Valley (2020-04-28). (notes) [17:34] You talk to anybody who has worked in pandemic response, and they'll say, the big problem is leadership at the top explaining to the people that you've got to distance before you know you have to distance. You have to do it before it's obvious. It's essentially a preventative thing, and it's unsatisfying because if it works you think, "Ah, we didn't need to do that, so few people died." And you don't really internalize that so few people died because you did this.
- #996: About that Hazard Pay, Planet Money (2020-05-01). (notes) [3:59] A lot of those jobs have always paid less, but now that they're "essentially" these workers are being asked to risk more. Their titles got fancier, but their jobs got way worse. And the market is supposed to solve this, to reward risk, so why aren't workers getting paid more? Today on the show, we spend a morning at a grocery store, and we ask, "How much is essential work worth?"
Watched
《空山鸟语》'Birdsong in hollow valley'——Beautiful Chinese court music style宫廷雅乐风 宋代装束 秦时明月, 自得琴社 Zi De Guqin Studio (2019-05-26).
Photo
taking down the mulberry tree

Upcoming
- 2020-05-06: COVID-19: Introductory Seminar, University of Illinois College of Engineering (online)
- 2020-05-08: COVID-19: Advanced Seminar, University of Illinois College of Engineering (online)
- 2020-05-12: Leading the Transformation of Model-Based Engineering with Al Hoheb, INCOSE Los Angeles (online).
- 2020-05-13: Leading with Humanity, MIT Sloan Management Review (online).
There might be additional links that didn't make the cut at notes.kirkkittell.com