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Lord Farquaad

 Discussion on answer by Xander: My co…

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Lord Farquaad
Mar 21, 2019 07:31
@sofia838 This is really malicious behavior, and you've got a witness corroborating that it's happening. You've also said a few times now that "he is not a bad guy" or that it's just a mid-life crisis. Also that you don't want to "ruin his life". These don't line up. Your first instincts are right, this really isn't ok, and it has to stop. Good guys don't make their coworkers uncomfortable. Good guys don't take hidden photos. This is wrong, and if HR decides to punish him for this behavior, he's ruined his own life by doing this, not you. All you've done is taken care of your own life.
Lord Farquaad
Mar 21, 2019 07:31
@sofia838 I just want to point out that you've said "I am devastated and don’t know what to do." and "this is really inappropriate and wrong in so many ways and I really don’t feel anywhere near comfortable at my workplace anymore." It's tragic to hear how uncomfortable he's making you, and everything you've described in your question implies he knows he shouldn't be doing this, but it's getting worse anyway. ("he began to take them more and more frequently. Now it is happening every day.", "I really thought that he will stop – but he is just coming closer to me every day.")
 

 Discussion on answer by Sourav Ghosh:…

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Lord Farquaad
Mar 8, 2019 10:06
@feynman errr... I mean, I can't go unget my degree, but I can tell you I've got a degree from a college you've never heard of, and I got a job with Google on my third try, so.... 33%? I'm not sure why you won't accept that your abilities at present are the main hiring factor when everyone here is telling you that.
Lord Farquaad
Mar 8, 2019 10:06
It might be worth mentioning that several top tier companies (including Google and Apple) no longer require applicants to even have degrees. Enough experience can get them an interview, at which point they're simply judged by their abilities.
 

 Discussion on question by Cloud: How …

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Lord Farquaad
Feb 14, 2019 21:03
Based on your previous questions, you're very much at risk of suffering from Impostor Syndrome. You've been a developer for 5 years and it's warranted a promotion to a senior position; you're a real developer.
Lord Farquaad
Feb 14, 2019 21:03
If your manager actually believes this, then by their own metrics they're not a "real" manager...
 

 Discussion on answer by jpatokal: Bes…

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Lord Farquaad
Feb 9, 2019 13:35
@WGroleau I chose my pronouns poorly, I meant more of a general "you". My point is that sentences like "Kind of hard for security to notice what happens in a toilet stall in most airports" still imply OP would be trying to keep their behavior unnoticed by security, which is just a bad idea in an airport when OP's not doing anything wrong.
Lord Farquaad
Feb 9, 2019 13:35
@WGroleau I think you're missing the point that the correct approach here is to be absolutely transparent. Security personnel has no idea what your intentions are, so any effort to be sneaky or to hide something are going to be seen as malicious until shown otherwise. If you really think this is the right answer, why try to hide what you're doing?
 

 Discussion on answer by elliot svenss…

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Lord Farquaad
Feb 6, 2019 21:41
@aroth Isn't that the point of this exchange though? Someone asks a "unreferenced notable claim" and the answerers' prerogative is to definitively answer it (or say it can't be definitively answered)? I think it's fair to say that this answer, to a skeptic, isn't definitive. Having said that, this theory has Russell's teapot written all over it, but I was under the impression our response to burden of proof claims was to simply produce an irrefutable answer.
 

 Discussion on question by John Gopher…

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Lord Farquaad
Feb 4, 2019 16:47
I just feel like this could be relevant: cnn.com/2013/01/17/business/us-outsource-job-china/index.htm‌​l
 

 Discussion on answer by Mawg: Potenti…

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Lord Farquaad
Jan 17, 2019 05:00
@Mawg as the most minor of notes, your footnote starts "IANA" so we aren't certain what you're not.
 

 Discussion on answer by Sklivvz: Did …

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Lord Farquaad
Jan 7, 2019 21:54
@elliotsvensson rock paintings aren't a good argument because prehistoric nations were not particularly well known for providing accurate accounts of what they experienced. Even as recently as Greek culture, you can find at countless works depicting the Chimera, the Hydra, or Cerberus. Nobody accepts that as a reasonable argument those animals existed, because our overwhelming, diametrically opposed evidence suggests those works of art aren't historically accurate.
Lord Farquaad
Jan 7, 2019 21:54
@elliotsvensson any more and we should chat, but the reason I asked "what additional evidence would you need..." is because your position is that this question can never be answered. Regardless of the evidence we gather, one could always claim "well maybe there's more evidence that proves this wrong." That's why I brought up Descarte's demon: because someone could make that argument about anything, but at some point we're certain enough about something to take that stance off the table, and we're certain enough about this.
Lord Farquaad
Jan 7, 2019 21:54
@elliotsvensson from a purely epistemological stance, there's not enough evidence to conclusively prove any assertion beyond your own existence (See Descarte's evil demon)). However, as a species, we acknowledge no progress could be made if we required absolute certainty for every observation. As such, we've commonly agreed that a high enough level of confidence is adequate to declare something definitively true, like the fact that I've written a comment here. The evidence in this answer surpasses that threshold, so a strict "no" is correct.
Lord Farquaad
Jan 7, 2019 21:54
@elliotsvensson This seems like a clear-cut answer to me, what additional evidence would you need to warrant Sklivvz being this insistent?
 

 Discussion between Lord Farquaad and …

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Lord Farquaad
Jan 3, 2019 21:34
Lastly, I find it a little ironic that your article meant to definitively demonstrate bias is an opinion piece with links to editorial cartoons of Obama and Benghazi. It weakens the claim that you actually care if your information comes from a biased source.
Lord Farquaad
Jan 3, 2019 21:31
This also comes about as a result of the balance fallacy, which claims both sides must be equal. So if a study comes back claiming one side lies more often than the other, it must be biased.
Lord Farquaad
Jan 3, 2019 21:29
Nobody asserts that either party consistently tells the truth, but your article builds a strawman that the left contends they never lie, then tears down that strawman and declares victory.
Lord Farquaad
Jan 3, 2019 21:28
In addition, your link cites two studies. Both of them assert Republicans have been less honest (Let me begin by stating I am only making this claim about Trump). From there, it claims that this proves a bias. After all, look at all those examples of Obama lying. However, every one of the cited studies concludes it happens on both sides.
Lord Farquaad
Jan 3, 2019 21:18
Yes, a majority of Trump's base does want the wall. And a majority of Bernie's base wants to break up the banks, and a majority of the Liberatarian base wants to abolish drivers licenses. But none of these are going to be passed into law because a majority of the country doesn't want them. It's irrelevant if a majority of Trump's base is in support, because he is the president of the united states, not the Republicans.
Lord Farquaad
Jan 3, 2019 21:15
@WernerCD Russell's Teapot.
Lord Farquaad
Jan 3, 2019 21:15
@WernerCD Further Clinton won a plurality, and in this midterm the left won a majority in both chambers (52.5% in the house and a whopping 59.3% in the Senate). Lastly most people don't want the wall. I don't know why you insist this is a minority opinion.
Lord Farquaad
Jan 3, 2019 21:15
@WernerCD Spygate has in no way been confirmed link 1, link2, link 3. 15 alleged lies a day is over 5,000 in a year. I'll concede it's unlikely that every one is strictly true, but to cherry-pick a few wrong ones so you discount the number as a whole is very disingenuous and misleading.
 

 Discussion on question by Magic-Mouse…

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Lord Farquaad
Dec 20, 2018 12:09
@Magic-Mouse Just how helpful are these gods? Because there's a direct relationship between the help they provide and just how bad it gets when they leave. If the god of the harvest could grow crops out of the desert, well then your people won't know the first thing about agriculture (they never needed to learn), and when an entire city loses their immediate food income, people die. If he just helps through droughts though, that's probably survivable.
 

 Discussion on question by some guy: H…

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Lord Farquaad
Dec 19, 2018 22:04
@WesleyLong you got any more of those hints for us denser folk?
 

 Discussion on answer by Parrotmaster:…

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Lord Farquaad
Nov 27, 2018 22:09
And the Beast isn't necessarily supernatural; there's no reason to assume he is. His origin, identity, and purpose are all told to us simply through him. Why trust alleged Satan's word? Sure, he knows some things he shouldn't be able to know, but that's not too crazy for a Whovian creature. He can control people, but a perception filter can prevent you noticing a whole building. The Silence can erase memories. Are any of those so different? Heck, the thing in Midnight even influences the Doctor
Lord Farquaad
Nov 27, 2018 22:04
Claiming the Beast must be Satan because it's likely what inspired the myths is like finding driftwood in Loch Ness and saying you found the Loch Ness monster. Even if that driftwood is what everyone saw and what they described, it doesn't make their personification or lore around it fact. In fact, you'd find the driftwood and say "aha! This is evidence that the Loch Ness Monster probably doesn't exist! People probably saw this natural thing and gave it a supernatural element!"
Lord Farquaad
Nov 27, 2018 22:02
@Adamant Do you believe in the sun? Do you believe in Helios? If you said "yes" to the first and "no" to the second, I'd have to ask: If any of us found an enormous celestial body capable of sustaining life, and which imparts tremendous energy, wouldn't it be Helios? It's not even unreasonable in the Whovian universe that our sun is alive. Now does that make it Helios?
 

 Discussion on answer by Tim B II: A…

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Lord Farquaad
Nov 21, 2018 20:10
@Agent_L the "blood in the legs issue" is separate from the one Tim's talking about. Weird segue, but check out how the Pistol Shrimp hunts. It snaps a bubble into the ocean, and when pressure from all that water collapses on that one spot, it produces enough energy to reach 5000K. Now imagine you were in that bubble. I'll admit it's not a perfect comparison, but I think it demonstrates just how devastating rapid acceleration can be for deformable matter in a non-compressible fluid.
 

 Discussion on answer by B. Goddard: H…

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Lord Farquaad
Nov 21, 2018 06:42
For completion's sake (and I guess mine too), would you mind fleshing out a little more how a FERPA complaint would play out? Namely, the possible outcomes and maybe how likely each is? For example, if you said "he'll probably know it was you and it's likely little more would come of it than a write-up on his record," well that's probably not worth one smug grin.
 

 Discussion on question by Robert Paul…

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Lord Farquaad
Oct 23, 2018 03:12
@pojo-guy Ok. So what? I still don't understand the point you're trying to make.
Lord Farquaad
Oct 23, 2018 03:12
@pojo-guy What point are you trying to make here? I get the whole "nukes aren't the most cost-efficient option" direction you're taking this, but..... why?
 

 Discussion on answer by UnhandledExce…

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Lord Farquaad
Oct 2, 2018 16:14
@mathreadler "why are manholes round" and "how many golf balls fit in a school bus" are two questions I've heard of Google asking. I don't think they've ever asked any of the questions OP got. Regardless, even the manhole and golf ball-type questions have been abandoned by Google as useless. Perhaps I'm being close-minded, but I have a difficult time imaging the questions OP got being any more effective at identifying latent personality traits. Except maybe the racism one; that could expose some racist traits.
Lord Farquaad
Oct 2, 2018 16:14
@mathreadler I thought you disagreed with Davor contrasting these questions against the Google and MS ones. Sorry if I was wrong. I still think the Buzz question isn't a helpful "out of the box" question though. The two I offered involve using relevant knowledge to answer, or at least exposing how you think about it. At best, the Buzz question probes how someone thinks about behavior, specifically when you don't agree with the norm, but there's a million better questions which ask the same thing: "you find out your coworkers all do <inefficient task> and want you to also. What do you do?"
Lord Farquaad
Oct 2, 2018 16:14
@mathreadler the "brain teaser" questions Google used to ask were things like "why are manholes round" or "how many golf balls could fit on a school bus". Neither are programming questions. However, the answer to the first is "so they don't fall in" and required you to realize that a disc's "width" will always be the circumference of the circle regardless of its orientation. The golf ball question was meant to be answered out loud and probe the interviewee for things like approximating large numbers and factoring in packing efficiency and stuff. The Buzz Lightyear question is useless.
 

 Discussion on answer by nvoigt: Offen…

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Lord Farquaad
Sep 26, 2018 16:31
Nobody is trying to argue that bigotry is the standard reaction. They are arguing that taking an extreme response to continued, unabated harassment isn't indicative of that same person's character otherwise.
Lord Farquaad
Sep 26, 2018 16:28
I'm certain OP's coworker didn't jump immediately into offensive ones, since "Each time, he [got] more visibly mad." Instead, the tried getting the harasser to stop until being provoked into doing something offensive. Just like we don't hold the street performer to perfect conduct after facing continuous harassment, why would we hold OP's coworker to that?
Lord Farquaad
Sep 26, 2018 16:28
Would you hold the street performer at fault? I agree you wouldn't say "most people wouldn't turn to violence," but would you denounce the ones that do in that situation? Likewise, when someone does the same through an internet platform, words are the only tools you have to defend yourself.
Lord Farquaad
Sep 26, 2018 16:28
@DoritoStyle Lets consider a similar example. Lets pretend there's a street performer. Now, lets say this street performer's coworker found a random picture of them performing on social media. They track down their location, then proceed to harass the performer and destroy their act. Repeatedly. The performer is visibly upset, asks the harasser to stop, but that's literally the reaction the harasser is looking for, so they keep going, until eventually the street performer strikes the harasser.
Lord Farquaad
Sep 25, 2018 13:07
There's no way, really, to accidentally do it. And as Erik said, being able to see your opponent's screen gives you an enormous advantage, to the point that it's not fun to play against. If OP knew they were better than the coworker (which they would if they were watching them), then they had to have deliberately taken time and effort to manipulate the game-matching system so they could demolish their coworker
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Lord Farquaad
Sep 25, 2018 13:05
For the non-gamers: to join someone else's match take a fair amount of deliberate effort. When you try to join a game, you're typically thrown into a random one. Since OP can watch his coworker playing live though, they can wait until the instant their coworker clicks to join a new game, and only then try to join one themselves. This increases the odds of being put in the same game, and if you still don't get put in the same game you just try again until you do.
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 Discussion on question by Pillip F: O…

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Lord Farquaad
Sep 25, 2018 20:31
@BradC That's a perfectly fair opinion to have, just thought I'd shed some light in case you weren't familiar with some matchmaking systems (although it sounds like you are). I agree that "it would be extremely hard/impossible" to deliberately match with a specific person without an invite, but that's also why I think it's so creepy. To me that necessitates a ton of work to specifically target one person.
Lord Farquaad
Sep 25, 2018 20:01
Just because it happened through a digital screen instead in person doesn't really make it any less creepy.
Lord Farquaad
Sep 25, 2018 19:59
What OP did is literally stare at their coworker, watching and listening until they click to join a new game, then clicked to join a new game as well; manipulating the matchmaking system. Since it's still difficult to join the same game when you do this, there's a good chance they tried it multiple times. This means OP watched their coworker, observed what they were doing, then took real world actions to harass them. If this had happened at a Starbucks, for example, you might call it stalking.
Lord Farquaad
Sep 25, 2018 19:55
@BradC I think your Minecraft example is more benign that what this is. Most games don't have public servers like that, they use a random matchmaking service. When you join a new game, they create a new room (or add you to an existing one), wait until the room is full, then start the game with those people. There's a rough queueing aspect, so if you try to join a new game at the exact same time as someone else, you've got a better chance of joining the same new room.
 

 Discussion on answer by KRyan: What's…

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Lord Farquaad
Sep 20, 2018 14:26
By the book, you could technically say "I'm carrying all 400 lbs of my max carry weight under my left arm, leaving my right arm open to wield a sword," and the book doesn't actually have a problem with that. However, the "real life" rules sure do. If the DM doesn't care to enforce it, then you can carry as much as the book says you can, but if they do, then you can only carry what makes sense. The book mainly exists to convert arbitrary concepts like carrying capacity into numbers.
Lord Farquaad
Sep 20, 2018 14:25
The thing is, these are enforced kind of like they are in cartoons: they only apply when someone notices them. When you ask "how much can I carry without a backpack" the first set of rules say "anything less than your max weight". However, if the DM asks you "how are you carrying all that?" now you need to give them them a reasonable answer based on the second set of rules (the "real life" rules).
Lord Farquaad
Sep 20, 2018 14:25
@NathanSantee D&D's a little tricky in that there are two sets of rules. The first is those in the book. These are hard and fast rules, which the DM can change at their discretion, but otherwise they're clearly and rigidly defined. The second set of rules is everything else, anything that's not written in the book. For these rules, we assume they function the same as the rules of physics or nature in the real world.
 

 Discussion on answer by Aaron: What i…

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Lord Farquaad
Jul 19, 2018 19:24
The best prevention for a car accident is safe driving, and I always drive safely. However, I always put on my seatbelt when I get in the car. Even though I drive responsibly and have never caused an accident, irresponsible drivers on the road have hit me before. My safe driving practices helped reduce the likelihood of an accident, but the behavior of others makes it impossible to completely avoid. It is exactly the same for vaccinations (you said even the Amish aren't completely protected). The only difference is car crashes aren't contagious.
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 Discussion on answer by Edgar Bonet: …

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Lord Farquaad
Jul 15, 2018 13:25
@mathreadler Edgar sets a good standard in his answer: "Write it for the human being who is going to read it." In the case of scientific work, he specifies a bit further: "You want your colleagues to read it and find the arguments crystal clear." Typically, programmers have a good idea of who's going to be trying to read their code; their level of understanding is the standard. If I don't know who might read my code though, I typically assume my reader has a medium-level understanding of the language I've chosen. They don't need to understand it's application, only what it does.