I can see valid reasons for why someone might want to use Apple Macbooks

I use one because I write apps for iOS and you can only do that on a Macbook. It doesn’t make me a fanboi.

I never once had a manager who even pretended to be a coder, and I’ve worked for a wide variety of companies ranging in size from a few people to tens of thousands. The only technical manager I’ve ever witnessed was myself when I managed teams of developers (and that only happened by accident when I wasn’t really paying attention). Even then I was less of a technical manager and more of a lead developer who also took on management functions because there was nobody else around to do it.

It certainly seems like a manager with actual technical skills would make the best manager of a team of developers, as long as they also have the people skills to do it. And didn’t harbor the desire to fire everybody and just do everything themselves - like I did.

or was it that they hired “career managers” whose only skill was to organise things?

My best manager was a former dentist who quit the profession after just two months because he couldn’t stand the idea of sticking his hands in peoples’ mouths all day long. I don’t think he had anything resembling formal qualifications for management.

I’m mostly a technical unblocker that jumps into the hardest or slowest moving technical challenges

In thirty years as a programmer, I never had a manager who was capable of jumping into any technical challenges at all. For me, the best managers were the ones who kept out of my way and insulated me from their managers.

But at the same time nothing is really expected of you - by the people above or below you. And you make more money than the people doing the actual work.

Especially amazing because it was pretty damn rare to still be alive to receive a Victoria Cross.

Ironically, the modern Middle East is almost entirely a creation of WWI and its immediate aftermath when the Ottoman Empire was carved up by the victorious Allies.

During WWII in Britain, about 10% of the men drafted were sent down into the coal mines instead of being sent off to war. In addition to enduring the horrific conditions of the mines, they had to endure abuse for not fighting. For bonus points, the old-time miners would often haze these draftees by letting their elevator cages free-fall for a bit during their first trips down.

For me, working from home meant eating endangered species for lunch seven days a week instead of just two. Checkmate, liberals.

I kinda like it better since it makes the same criticism of people who think their works will last forever, but then goes a step further and exposes the same fallacy in modern peoples.

Fun fact: Shelley wrote that poem in a friendly competition with Horace Smith. Here is Smith’s version:

In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
“I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone,
“The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
The wonders of my hand.”— The City’s gone,—
Naught but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder — and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

— Horace Smith, “Ozymandias”

Used to be, you got one comic with the sunday paper. There was no bingeing your favorite comics you just waited until they came out.

I mean, this is true if “used to be” means “prior to WWII” (or maybe even earlier). Publishers have been putting out collections of comic strips in book form for a very long time - I grew up in the '70s reading Pogo compendiums published in the 1960s.

I once used the word twat around my then-girlfriend and she “corrected” me, insisting it was pronounced “twah”. Turns out she thought people saying it were trying to use the French word toit and mispronouncing it. No idea why she thought anybody would want to call somebody else a French roof.

I always claimed in job interviews to be good at debugging, but there are no certifications for debugging and there’s really no way for an interviewer to verify such a claim. So even though it is an incredibly important skill, companies just do not look for it. There is also the hilariously misguided belief that good coders do not produce bugs so there’s no need for debugging.

He bought twitter because he was trying to do a pump and dump with the stock.

Maybe, but the fact of Saudi and Russian backing of his takeover and his turning twitting into (more of) a nazi propaganda shithole suggests that was the main purpose behind the acquisition - especially when the cost was an absolutely trivial fraction of his overall wealth.

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk… These dragons

The only sense in which they’re dragons is “dragon deez nuts across our faces”.

If you ever figure out a way to break the system like this, you should never act in a way that draws attention to yourself.

There was a guy who robbed banks and he wasn’t caught for decades because he just lived an ordinary working-class lifestyle. Cheap little apartment, no fancy car etc. etc.

If Musk isn’t a Russian asset, it’s only because he’s a Saudi asset. And there’s no reason he can’t be both.

Next up: somebody installs unauthorized Starlink on warship so they can play War Thunder on deployment.

You can’t just find a signal in the middle of the ocean.

Uh, this was the primary way the Allies defeated the U-Boats in WWII.

when officers on the ship heard rumors

Lol not only is this an incredible violation of security, they couldn’t even keep their fucking mouths shut about it.