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Cake day: August 4th, 2024

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  • I am visiting Boston. I am looking forward to using their transit, but their biking has not left a good impression so far. In one spot, they had a bike lane symbol, but it was just on a busy street between parking and traffic with no actual lane. In another spot, there was an actual lane, but people were parking on it. And just in general, there aren’t a lot of obvious places to bike around. People are making it work, but it just looks dangerous.










  • At the place that I interned in software development, there was a period of time before I was there where the hours were starting to creep to long enough that the workers (salaried) were effectively being paid less than minimum wage. Legend has it that there was a mention of a lawsuit if the company didn’t shape up. One coworker who had been there at that point described it as a dark point in the company’s history. In response, they temporarily switched to hourly and 40 hours a week.

    Later, some people apparently started working over 40 hours a week of their own volition. Workaholics, I guess. At the behest of one of the people on my team, the CIO talked to them about sticking to normal hours. Part of it was that people just aren’t great developers after already working a long day. The other part was that no one else wanted to slide back into those long working hours. A few people also had had kids in the intervening years, so I don’t think they wanted to see their hours eaten by work.


  • I work in IT at a university. There is a state parental leave program, but above that the union bargained for additional parental leave.

    The US has a significant separation between the federal and state levels. For a policy like this, you usually would find some of the more progressive states trying out different programs. Some more backward states will take a long time to come round. It really is more like a bunch of small to medium sized countries in that respect.

    Russia is also working under very different demographics, which is probably driving at least the maternity leave. Birth rates are low and net migration, while positive, is not enough to keep up. The US has a birth rate that is closer to replacement and much higher net migration. That would mean lagging states would have less pressure to reform.