Having worked with people whose commit messages are along the lines of "update function", my experience has been that when you're trying to find where a bug was introduced, it's quite helpful to review (good) commit messages to quickly get a sense of what concerns a commit was addressing, and what code it's likely to have touched.
Speaking for myself, I also find that writing a good commit message is useful in helping me think about what work I've just completed and whether the changes I'm committing form a logical group.
Granted, there are all kinds of workflows and I can vaguely imagine some in which commit messages are redundant, but still, I don't think it makes sense to generalize the statement.
A design detail I appreciate about this website is that it's server is solar powered and displays a two-tone overlay representing the server's battery life. It's nice that they extend their scrutiny of resource usage and sustainability to their own infrastructure.
Side note: usually when I've visited the site, the battery is up around 80% or higher. The "hacker-news effect", while not causing a 502 or other server error in this case, at least at for the time being, does have the battery down around 35%.
>> Healing as a society would mean inventing a new community beyond the identity and border politics with which we have produced sovereignty until now, but also beyond the reduction of life to cybernetic biosurveillance.
While I agree that paying people for their work is good, and that it would be cool if NYC Mesh grew into something that could provide workers with a good living, I see no need for it to become a for-profit company in order to do so.
I think the main problem with the article is that its modest scientific content about the benefits of DHA is buried in a pile of overblown conclusions, assertions that consuming meat products is essential to good mental health, and innuendo that vegetable oils are unhealthy, none of which claims are adequately supported here.
Questions that might clarify the facts surrounding these claims are left conspicuously unanswered and unasked. Likely because the purpose of the article is not to to present the available evidence and carefully draw conclusions, but to support a diet based on animal fats by cherry picking from the science where convenient.
This article appears to have a clear agenda and does a poor job of hiding it. The conclusions, which might be summarized "animal fats are good and plant fats are bad" also seem pretty feebly supported by the evidence offered. I am not a scientist, but to my eye this shows the marks of industry supported junks science.
Snark aside, I really believe this is terrible advice for an artist. I'd argue that most worthwhile art does not have a message, and if it does, the work is not a "reduction of that message into the simplest clearest, easiest to understand form."
What enduring work of art fits this description? I think that most great artworks are great because they are complex; because their "message" is something elusive that unfolds over time with deeper engagement.
This entire tough-love-self-help attitude of "nobody wants to read your shit" also seems completely counterproductive. I much prefer the advice making your work to satisfy yourself, emotionally and intellectually without worrying too much about who wants it, and to find a community where you're interested in what they're doing - so they will probably be interested in what you're doing at least in the general outlines - which can serve a place to test and develop your ideas and craft.
What New York City do you live in? I have never been offered, nor do I know anybody who's been offered a month's free rent on signing a lease. Places that do this are overcharging and driving up rents. Your comment may just be emphasizing the fact that there are multiple "New Yorks." And I suspect the New York that Amazon HQ2 would benefit would be the New York that pays too much to live in a glass tower and gets offered a month's free rent.
Not a landlord, but I imagine there are oodles of benefits to it from their perspective. If I can rent you an apartment for $4000.00 a month but tell you "$3666.67 (net rent w/ first month free)", then:
- Come next year, the default position is "you get a 10% rent hike by just paying the number on the lease."
- if you leave after a year, I've got price history at $4000 a month and can use that as an anchor for negotiations with the next tenant
There's nothing that says I have to start from fair market value and take a month off either. Say I call the apartment price 12/11ths of market value, but then advertise the net number and each month your great deal lets you pay only 11/11ths of FMV.
Bloomberg had something about this today[1] - something like 45% of leases in NYC have similar concessions.
I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn which is obviously a significantly gentrified area. Not just the "glass towers" but most of the older brownstones I looked at over the past month while searching for a new place also offer one month's free rent. I can't argue with the fact that Amazon would contribute to gentrification because that is true. But I can also say that Amazon pulling out of the plans isn't going to stop gentrification.
What is the point of this comment? It combines some smug self-satisfaction about "Your New York" with your ridiculously insulated anecdata about the first month discount many apartments give.
A 5 second Google search shows hundreds of results for 1 month free rent in apartment listings.
What exactly are you contributing to the discussion?
@andosteinmetz I'll offer anecdata also as a born-and-raised New Yorker (FYI - I finally moved out because the job market did not support the living costs given personal constraints.)
NY is a shell of what it was in 2005/2006. Yes, there are more tech firms, but the 500,000 or so jobs lost after the financial collapse in 2008 have not been made up for. I welcome Amazon bringing in well-paid positions, because as a New Yorker, I'd like the city to support a middle class, not just wealthy foreigners parking money into LLCd condos staying empty.
Much of the gentrification could be due to the free money and ZIRP policy in the US -- it is cheap to borrow and thus people, especially wealthy people/corps, borrow heavily and raise prices and rents. There is little correlation between actual income and rents in NYC because of this external booster.
Wouldn't it be better if the source of rent increases in NYC be the presence of lots of well paying jobs?
@TuringNYC I agree that the role real estate investment is playing in driving rent increases is important to address - through regulation - and I’m all for bringing good jobs to the city.
However, I think we can do better than giving massive tax breaks to megacorporations with bad records on labor relations and what has seemed to be an adversarial relationship to government and public services. I have no interest in seeing a replay of what’s happened to SF in NYC.
I think it’s important for cities to stand up for the interests of all their citizens, not just software developers and product managers (etc) in negotiations with increasingly powerful tech companies.
That's a fair criticism, and I regret my tone and making the discussion personal. But as a life-long New Yorker, I do feel a personal stake in all this.
I believe OP is right that the month's free rent offered on an apartment is recouped by the landlord: in the form higher rents, which have become a real problem for many people born and raised in the city and which would likely only be exacerbated by Amazon's setting up shop here, especially under the conditions offered by the city.
Over the past 20 years New York has experienced an influx of wealth without commensurate investment in public services. The MTA is dying, urban blight is spreading and many of the new professional class moving here don't seem bothered by it.
Another piece of "anecdata": walking down Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg a few years back, I heard one wealthy newcomer say to another that she couldn't wait for the local pharmacy across the street from the new Duane Reade to close. Maybe this anecdote doesn't have the force of a "real data" but it may help some people on here understand why New Yorkers aren't thrilled by the prospect of a building a big Amazon campus and welcoming them with a handout.
I agree with you. Just in the last five years of living in Williamsburg I've seen the neighborhood change a lot. I remember that local pharmacy you are referring to before it got turned into an Apple store, and before the Whole Foods got built on the same block.
I'm not gonna lie, I'm part of the gentrification problem over the last five years, but to be fair New York gentrified me at the same time that I helped gentrify the neighborhood. I only made about 30k a year before I moved to New York and I lived in a trailer home back then. After moving to New York I got a few different tech jobs and now I live in one of those over-priced one month free buildings.
I share my story just to say that in my perspective gentrification is a complicated system, and like you I also have a personal stake in all this. In my experience working in tech in New York has been a huge opportunity to improve my life. Amazon would have offered roughly another 25k people such an opportunity, some of them would have been newcomers, and some hopefully long term NYC residents. I can't lie, some people might not have benefited as much as others, but at least those 25k would have been able to get the same opportunity I did when I moved here.
The point is pretty clear: there are people out there who don’t even know what 1-month free rent is. The contribution to the conversation is an illumination of the divide between some generalized types of people in New York. The relevance to the OP is that there may be some wildly different opinions on Amazon’s perceived actions based on which generalized type of New Yorker you are.
The part where it's mostly overpaid software devs living in a bubble.
I live in that part of Seattle. It's the same part where people want to ban all cars because they never have to go anywhere that isn't walking distance, and their dog loves walking.
Speaking for myself, I also find that writing a good commit message is useful in helping me think about what work I've just completed and whether the changes I'm committing form a logical group.
Granted, there are all kinds of workflows and I can vaguely imagine some in which commit messages are redundant, but still, I don't think it makes sense to generalize the statement.