Link Blog: April 29, 2019

Ctrl-Alt-Delete: The Planned Obsolescence of Old Coders. The author admits that he neglected to reach out to older coders to add to the diversity of PyGotham, and discusses the challenges faced by older coders. As a disabled Jewish woman over the age of 40 who has not received a single job offer by the tech industry, this article hits especially close to home.

Apologies for linking to Medium. If you’ve reached your limit of free articles and are hitting a paywall, you may be interested in this article instead:

Cutting ‘Old Heads’ at IBM: Propublica’s investigation of IBM’s massive layoffs of older workers (or strong-arming them into retirement) while hiring younger replacements.

And, relatedly:

Rich guys are most likely to have no idea what they’re talking about, study suggests. An admittedly small study (of teens no less) evaluates how people perceive their aptitude for 16 math-related skills, including 3 that don’t exist, and rich males were more likely than anyone else to boast about their skills in these areas.

Link Blog: April 26, 2019

Just two today:

An investigation by USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity about copycat legislation: At least 10,000 bills were almost entirely copied from “model legislation” (authored by corporate interests) over the past eight years, and more than 2,100 were signed into law. [CONTENT WARNING: animated graphic above the fold.]

What a Deleted Profile Tells Us About Wikipedia’s Diversity Problem: Clarice Phelps was the first Black woman to discover a chemical element (tennessine), but her Wikipedia page was deleted on February 11, 2019. That’s right in the middle of Black History Month and on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

April Fool’s Day

I hate this day. The vast majority of pranks aren’t funny, and almost always rely on social or cultural differences and naïveté in order to be considered “a good prank.”

Personally, I use this day as a way to make my inbox more manageable, but unsubscribing to every list that sends out an April Fool’s joke. It’s extremely effective, and I’ve never regretted any of my unsubscriptions.