• ryathal@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    3 hours ago

    If you make yourself irreplaceable you can’t get promoted.
    Everyone always has a plan until they get punched in the face.

  • tankplanker@lemmy.world
    14·
    3 days ago

    This has influenced my entire idea of spending money:

    “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

    Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

    But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

    This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

  • uxia@midwest.socialEnglish
    17·
    4 days ago

    If the penalty for breaking a law is a fine, that law only exists for poor people.

  • Canopyflyer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    3 days ago

    Not my circus, not my monkeys.

    Used this against my controlling mother, who liked to lay BS at my feet and make me think it was my responsibility to fix. When it was HER that caused the whole thing. The look on her face when I hit her with that phrase and just turned around and left was priceless.

    There a LOT of things that are just flat not your problem, even if someone else tries to make it yours.

  • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
    161·
    4 days ago

    I used to think of myself as a complete pacifist, but these words haven’t left my mind since I heard them:

    You think you’re better than everyone else, but there you stand: the good man doing nothing. And while evil triumphs and your rigid pacifism crumbles into bloodstained dust, the only victory afforded to you is that you stuck true to your guns.

    Of course this only applies to defense, never to offense (especially “preemptive defense”), but I can’t really argue against it.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
    5·
    3 days ago

    Making fun of the weak (poor, minorities, etc) is easy because they can’t fight back, that’s why the best comedy is the one that upsets the powerful.

    • Jonathan@lemmy.world
      8·
      5 days ago

      If more people on this planet would make these considerations we would all be so much better for it.

    • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
      8·
      5 days ago

      I’ve found that every time, the less I speak, the wiser I sound. And I don’t mean that in the “better to stay silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt” sense—though that’s true too.

      I’ve gotten far more mileage and respect by letting others dominate conversations, then dropping one or two sharp questions or comments that show I’ve been paying close attention and actually understand what’s going on. That says more than any deep dive into minutiae ever could—especially when those tangents usually reveal more about what I don’t know than what I do.

      I just started a new job, and the kickoff meeting was today. I put that strategy to use—barely said a word for 45 minutes. I probably looked like a dud hire. But by the end I think I came off as the smartest motherfucker in the room. I doubt I actually was—I’m probably the only person there without a four-year degree—but perception is a hell of a thing.

      • eatsumbum@lemmy.world
        5·
        5 days ago

        Having had to work with people, manage people, hire and fire people. I would say that having a higher education does not equate to a persons level of smartness, knowledge, or intelligence in any reasonable way.

        • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2·
          5 days ago

          Maybe, but I figure if every single one of them has a degree, the odds have to be in their favor that at least one of them is smarter than me. And if not, well I just proved how dumb I am by thinking that. QED.

          That said, you’re right, too many places hold that degree in too high esteem. It wasn’t important for the first twenty to twenty-five years of my career, but now I’m finding it really puts a ceiling on how far I can go. I’m working under tech leads who have fifteen years less experience than I do. Have to see if I can get hired internal from my contract (which takes special waivers for non-degreed folks) and then advance internally.

          It was so bad, when my last contract ended, I had two managers invite me to apply for openings with them and my resume was auto-rejected by their hiring system.

    • HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      5 days ago

      I come to ask myself these questions more and more. However, people thinking I’m dull and uninteresting is a downside… or is it?

  • showmeyourkizinti@startrek.website
    61·
    4 days ago

    It a saying from Ubuntu (the philosophy not the operating system) “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” in English it’s “I am because you are” It’s a simple and concrete way of saying how we’re not judged by how we treat others but we are who we are through our interactions with others.

    Honestly I’ve only browsed through a bit of philosophy and I’m sure I missing a heap but it really struck me.