I suspect that tech management & executive culture has learned & become accustomed to exploit the mental health of their employees. Software and tech are stereotypically jobs well suited to neurodiversity and ADHD, and those people are prone to hyperfocus & long hours and may benefit from tight timelines. If management just gets used to recruiting for autism/adhd, then develops management strategies that work well with that population, it’s going to be difficult as the field matures and attracts more neurotypical people.

I used to tell my mentees that no one was going to explicitly tell them that 10, 12, 14 hour days were mandatory. That long hours were not a metric for success. It was that they would be competing for jobs with people who really did want their life to be their job and would happily spend that much time working, because that’s all they want to do. It’s only when the pool of available jobs grows beyond the number of those obsessive workaholics that they have to start hiring people who have any interest in work-life balance or collective bargaining.

Everyone wants more than they have. Labor wants to be paid more this year than last, producers want to get paid more this year than last. In the money treadmill of the economy, that means everyone raises prices to pay for the rising prices.

It comes from excess production or profits. Labor creates more value than it gets paid; businesses charge more than their products cost; banks loan more money than they hold. There’s just extra money floating around competing to buy finite resources. The extra money accumulates over time, which makes money itself less valuable.

Leather? You want to kill a cow just so you can walk around? A few days barefoot and you’ll grow your own self-replenishing leather. If you really must waste resources on your feet, I recommend cutting up an old, used tire. Same techniques as leather footwear, but re-use rather than murder.

People will accept either intelligence or stupidity. They will pay for a flattering sycophant.

Room temperature above 24°C, no blanket. Above 26°C, I don’t even need a sheet, but I’ll usually keep it, because cold air from the A/C sometimes disturbs me.

I know plenty of people who insist on cooling their room at night so that they can be comfortable under a blanket.

I think they mean Navy SEALs, not pinnipeds.

That penetration is super exaggerated. Ever cut through a stained (i.e. pigment-stained) board? Board painted with a water-based paint? Those paint pigment particles are same scale as microbes, so you should expect them to penetrate to similar depth. Surface cleaning and routine abrasion get rid of most of it. Go over the surface with a scraper - take off 20-50 microns - and you’re pretty much down to virgin wood.