I would say that everyone should watch and understand Office Space, but I did watch it and didn't really understand it until I lived it - I thought it was a comedy just because it's funny, but really it's a Gen X cautionary tale about burnout that I was too inexperienced to understand. The quote from the movie that you reminded me of was "I did nothing and it was everything I thought it could be."
But the creator, Mike Judge, (of Beavis and Butthead fame) worked in early-mid Silicon Valley - he understood the culture he was skewering.
I watched Office Space when I was younger and believed at the time that it was a gross over-caricaturization. It was a comedy movie, after all. No _real_ company could ever be that demoralizing to work for, there's no way you could put that much cluelessness, self-interest, and passive-agressive managerial evil into one building and not have it spontaneously combust, right? (Which I guess it did in the movie.)
Until I got a job in a mid-size financial services company. It was all that and a whole lot worse. It was literally forbidden to pin Dilbert comic strips to your cubicle wall. Not _any_ comic strips, only Dilbert ones weren't allowed. Up all night fixing an issue in prod caused by someone else? Tough, better be in your chair at 8:00 a.m. like any other day.
I lasted 10 months. It was horrible, but I don't actually regret it because it made me appreciate the value of a _good_ workplace run by and staffed by intelligent well-meaning people. Which still isn't as common as it should be, but definitely exist.
I won't be able to find the tweet but there was a woman that was watching children playing behind a fence from the sidewalk and was asked to leave. I forget the exact details of how it escalated.
It's so weird in America sometimes. In other countries no one even notices you.
Not true. Over here in Germany I was once out working out at my usual calisthenics ground where sometimes a lot of children and parents come by as well. So some of these kids started talking to me asking random questions and stuff and I chatted back and one of their mothers came up to me like I was some pedo harrassing her little ones and screamed at me to stop talking to them. And it was in broad daylight as well, with many people around!
My wife absolutely loves kids. Being with them and working with them is her career and passion. She will frequently say things about kids to which I respond "another thing I can't say, as a man." It's all in jest, but there's also truth to it. She says something inoccuous that really can't be misconstrued, but if I said the exact same thing, I would at least get interesting looks if not downright condescending glares of "stay away from my baby."
It doesn't bother me, but it is an amusing and also unfortunate double standard.
This is an extreme level of productivity from an advanced not-doing-much perspective. Consider my Dad's old cat. Dad used to complain about how lazy the cat was. It would curl up on Dad's lap, on the recliner in front of the TV, right after breakfast. Then it would stay there all day, for program after program, with few interruptions until bedtime, when the lap went away for a few hours. Damn lazy cat, Dad would say.
That was years ago, now both Dad and the cat have found a way to do even less, and it's too late arrange an award from the Institute.
Members are expected to take it easy and slowly ponder this and that, preferably on a sofa or in the bathtub.
One of the more unusual and interesting early 20th century physicists was Leo Szilard, whose daily 'work' routine involved soaking in the bathtub from perhaps 9am-noon, during which time he would think about nuclear physics among other things.
Likely as a result of all this pondering, he realized that nuclear chain reactions were possible, if an element could be found that released two or more neutrons when bombarded with one neutron... six years before the discovery of fission.
I just shared the above comment with my wife and we both agree that it is one of the wisest things we have heard today. Well done layer8 and may you be (voluntarily) slow on all your days!
Why do you want to inflict an annoyance and deliberately waste 0.1 seconds (or whatever amount you deem appropriate) of everybody's time? Slowness should be a deliberate, individual choice. I'd be happy if there was a global cfg variable in the OS or browser, where you indicate the amount of pointless, "feel-good" slowness you wish to have in your interactions with any UI element, then you can have your way while I have mine too. I want things as quick as possible so I can race to idle sooner!
* Put your phone away
* Read a silly book for pleasure
* Watch children playing, and play with them if you can
* Take a long walk, try not to retrace your steps
* Get some sun (maybe on a walk), and then take a nap
* Appreciate something mundane