Here's an article scolding you for not being better about your email. (Just yesterday I saw a related tweet, and her feed is cracking me up.)

BUT the part I want to acknowledge is this:

When researchers compiled a huge database of the digital habits of teams at Microsoft, they found that the clearest warning sign of an ineffective manager was being slow to answer emails. Responding in a timely manner shows that you are conscientious -- organized, dependable and hardworking. And that matters. In a comprehensive analysis of people in hundreds of occupations, conscientiousness was the single best personality predictor of job performance. (It turns out that people who are rude online tend to be rude offline, too.)

(Caveat: studying the digital habits of teams at Microsoft is cousin to studying the 18 year olds taking Psych 1 at large research institutions.)

But anyway: this kind of thing is vastly better than how well someone interviews, as a predictor of job competence. When you're hiring, you're trying to determine if this total stranger is competent, and the interview process selects for people who are good at the interview process.

Do I have any idea how to implement such a measure? Of course not.

Moschi writes: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Big Pharma company in possession of a profit motive must be in want of a chronic medication for a disease of the rich; and conversely that it can have no interest in the afflictions of the poor, these being left to the philanthropies of the enlightened wealthy. Imagine then my surprise to find, with nary a disruptor in sight, Takeda developing a vaccine for WHO-designated neglected tropical disease dengue fever, hot on the heels of a failed trial by Sanofi, developing its own vaccine in pursuit not merely of a product but a "$1 billion-a-year blockbuster product". It being irresponsible not to speculate, I shall venture that the dismal decades of neoliberalism have so inured left-liberals to the conventions of consumerism that only the demand signals of atomized individuals are ever entered into consideration, while those of the health ministries of dozens of nation states have been discounted entirely.

Heebie's take: Interesting! (Mostly irrelevant but: one thing that I've found shocking is how little outrage there has been over the extortion of insulin for diabetics.)

Minivet writes: I'm vacationing in London next month - March 4-17, before the Thing happens. Anyone available for a meetup there during?

Heebie's take: plan away, you crazy kids.

Here's my question about it. If they must run these tacky, unenlightening diaries which may or may not be some kind of put-on, couldn't they at least consider limiting those whom they engage to jot them down to people with at least one (1) single solitary tittle of writing ability? Or, if that is not possible (perhaps because anyone capable of attending to their prose enough to give it some style would also realize that what they're writing is stupid and not worth publishing), could these joyless expectorations not be given some quantum of vim under the attentions of an editor? Even corpses are made up before being put on public view.