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People leaving work
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Jun 16, 2023
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At my previous job, one of the younger employees left after about seven years. That always seemed odd to me. Like, I get that you don't feel fulfilled by your job or whatever, but how did it take that long for you to figure it out? And the weirder thing was that this guy (actually two different guys, same exact story) left the field entirely. He went to a specific college to get a specific degree, was employed in the industry for not a few months but a few years, then left the job and the industry abruptly to do something entirely different or nothing at all. Not to boil it down to simple economics, but you completely wasted a good education and the training you received on the job. Sorry not sorry.
At my new job, it seems the same situation occurred which led to me getting hired. A guy worked at this place for summer internships, got a specific degree to work in this specific field, worked for a few years, then took a completely different job in a different industry. I heard it might've had something to do with sort of disillusionment at the industry and the whims of management, which I fully understand, but still. This is nothing new. Work comes and goes, projects begin and they end. I get that you're unhappy with the situation, but you knew that going in. So to throw away your time in the job, plus the time and money and effort you spent getting there, is kinda bonkers. #business
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Convergent evolution revisited
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Jun 2, 2023
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Two things to add to my post about convergent evolution:
- Crabs have independently evolved so many times throughout history that there's a word for it: Carcinisation (via Radiolab). Put another way, Evolution Only Thinks About One Thing, and It's Crabs.
- New World vultures and Old World vultures aren't even really related, which means a flying animal that eats virus- and bacteria-laden decaying corpses has evolved on more than one occasion (again via Radiolab).
#nature
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Excarnation
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Jun 2, 2023
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This Radiolab episode sort of blew my mind:
Zoroastrians put their dead on top of a structure called The Tower of Silence where vultures devour the body in a matter of hours. It's clean, efficient, eco-friendly. It's how it's been for thousands of years.
I've been to one in Mumbai. It's this hill in the middle of this big bustling city, but when you get there it's like just this super forested quiet area. It almost feels like a jungle, it's so dense. And at the top of it there's a flat, like, cement slab in a circle that's open to the sky.
And there's walls around it but there's no roof on it. And there's different layers to it. The adult men go on the outer edge of this cement slab, women will go in the middle, and children, if they die, will go near the center.
And there's thousands of vultures surrounding this place, just waiting. And yeah, the vultures just devour the body, and within a few hours all that's left is just a few bones.
We call it a sky burial. And I don't know, I just think it's incredible. Like, in the religion the idea is that the second someone dies there's a corpse demon called Nasu. And they believe that that demon is what starts to cause the decay of the body. And so, you know, when the vultures eat the body, they're essentially protecting us from this demon.
The official term is excarnation -- "the practice of removing the flesh and organs of the dead before burial. Excarnation may be achieved through natural means, such as leaving a dead body exposed to the elements or for animals to scavenge; or by butchering the corpse by hand."
I've mentioned before my preference for resomation after I die, but this is an even more all-natural method. #nature
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