Infinite Quack

“Did you order this?” he called from the doorway. “I didn’t order anything. Did you?” “Can’t remember.” Alex brought the package to the kitchen table to open it, plopping the rest of the mail onto a pre-existing pile that would surely only grow. Ava let him handle the sorting, her focus fixed on her computer. “We’ve lost the scissors again,” Alex reported. Ava fished it out of a nearby drawer and tossed it to him, barely allowing her focus to waver from the screen. “It lives here now.” “Says you.” After a false start, he managed to pry open the cardboard box. Nestled in packing material was a small device, sized to fit in the palm of a hand. It was mostly gold, or at least made of a gold-colored metal, with a bright red button on top. Ava glanced over and this time, she paused her game to stand up. “Ooh, wait! I did order a new game controller. Is that it? No, that’s not it, it’s too small. What didja buy?” “Not this, I’m sure.” There was nothing else in the box: no manual, no Quick St...

Bagel, please. (Pronounce that in your head not like “Coffee, please”, but like “Bitch, please.”) The Multiverse has been in the zeitgeist lately. Notably in movies, it often happens that different films touching on similar topics will emerge around the same time. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is one. Everything Everywhere All At Once is another. Spoilers ahead, particularly for those two films, some Marvel Cinematic Universe backstory, and also – for physics. We all love a good story. Stories, as Sir Terry Pratchett was fond of pointing out, are a huge part of how we think about the world. “Fisherman catches fish. Poor man begs for fish. Fisherman refuses. Poor man turns out to be King pretending to be poor man. Fisherman begs forgiveness, learns lesson about being kind to strangers.” That sort of story sticks with us and is retold over centuries, because it encodes some basic truths. Kings are useful plot devices because they’re powerful. They allow things to happen t...

I don't speak for my employer, but I'm going to speak about them I may have mentioned in passing, here and there, that I work for Amazon. In fact, I've worked there longer than most software developers; I'll pass 16 years by this June. Amazon likes to measure its employees' career development according to its Leadership Principles . Note that this link, like everything I reference in this post, is to publicly available information. I'm not spillin' any secrets here. I signed an NDA like everyone else. In my own progress assessments, I've been told I'm excellent at "Diving Deep". This, you could probably guess from my writing. I'm a details guy. I analyze the crap out of stuff. It's just how my brain works. Where are my "opportunities for growth", as they like to positively frame "the stuff you're not-so-good at yet"? The clearest of these is "Think Big". I jump so naturally to the details, the singl...