Web Excursions 2021-10-24
Language Log » Genetic Evidence for the Spread of Indo-Aryan Languages by languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu
以德报怨 - Return good for ill
It is often quoted, and also frequently criticized as an unattainable moral requirement.
However, Confucius was not in favor of this idea at all.
The sage’s full reply went: “If you return good for evil, what do you return for good? One should return injustice with justice, and repay good with good (以德报怨,何以报德? 以直报怨,以德报德).”
愚不可及 - Couldn’t be more foolish
Today, this term is used to criticize someone for their stupidity—it's even defined as such in modern dictionaries.
“It’s not difficult to fulfill one’s talent, but it’s difficult to pretend to be foolish as he does (其知可及也,其愚不可及也),” Confucius said, praising Ning for his political wisdom.
三思而后行 - Think thrice before acting
Confucius didn’t actually endorse this practice, and even felt it gratuitous.
According to The Analects, when Confucius heard that Ji Wenzi (季文子), an official of the State of Lu during the Spring and Autumn period, often “thought three times before taking any action,” the sage commented: “Thinking twice is enough (再,斯可矣).”
言必行,行必果 - Be trustworthy in word and resolute in action
Today, this phrase is a compliment used to describe someone who always keeps their word—but Confucius didn’t intend it this way.
The phrase comes from a conversation between Confucius and his student Zi Gong (子贡) on how to identify people of virtue.
Zi Gong asked: “What about those of even lower standing than them?”
The sage then replied: “They keep to their every word and are stubborn in every action. They are obstinate, and act like small men (言必信,行必果,硁硁然小人哉).”
Here, Confucius suggests that being dogmatic and inflexible, and keeping to one’s word without consideration for changes in circumstances, are undesirable traits.
唯女子与小人难养也 - Women and small men are hard to deal with
Many have accused Confucius of sexism because of this infamous quote, while it is still wielded by modern day misogynists to complain about women.
Zhu argued, Confucius was talking only of concubines housed by a ruler; while the term xiaoren referred to the servants and slaves of that ruler.
By this reading, Confucius meant to say that a ruler needs to deal with his concubines and servants in the proper manner.
Not everyone has bought this explanation, though.
Can We Trust Microsoft With Open Source? - Dusted Codes by dusted.codes
Hot reload wasn’t a fringe feature that might or might not have made it into the release of .NET 6.
It was literally one of the flagship features that was in the making for a long time,
and it was complete.
Someone at Microsoft who wields great power has made the decision that features such as hot reload cannot be given away for free as part of the open source .NET SDK anymore.
These features must be reserved to proprietary commercial products such as Visual Studio.
In fact, there is a bigger internal strategy being formed at Microsoft to make Visual Studio the main IDE for .NET again,
because some people at Microsoft are annoyed that Visual Studio Code and other third party tools have been undermining Visual Studio for way too long now.
As a result the hot reload feature was ripped out of the SDK in a last minute effort,
breaking all promises and conventions of Microsoft’s release candidate policies
and announcing that hot reload will be a Visual Studio only feature going forward.
This is exactly what is happening behind the scenes at Microsoft right now
and the .NET team wants you to know it even though they can't say it.
It’s not by accident that we’ve seen a fairly “coordinated” effort by Microsoft employees leaking a lot of internal infighting with the Verge and other media outlets
In fact Microsoft has already started to make such subtle moves in the past.
For example the Python extension for Visual Studio Code was never open sourced and released as a proprietary product to begin with.
The once open source cross platform IDE MonoDevelop was hard forked by Microsoft and rebranded as "Visual Studio for Mac".
All improvements and feature work since then have been proprietary and closed source.
So here is my simple question… Can we trust Microsoft with OSS?
How to Find and Work With Freelance Writers | Zapier
You can't just hire more freelance writers and call it a day. Someone needs to manage those people.
Source smartly
the best freelancers are recruited: not necessarily because they're better writers, but because you know they're right for your business.
My absolute favorite is asking other freelancer managers for recommendations
But if you're just starting out and don't have those kinds of connections, you can get great results from LinkedIn.
LinkedIn search leaves something to be desired, so I do my searches through Google. Type site:linkedin.com/in/ followed by a keyword into Google, and you'll get a bunch of results.
If someone looks like a good fit, you have two options:
Find their website.
Send them a message on LinkedIn.
Request a writing exercise first
writing samples can be very misleading. When people link to articles they've written previously, there's no way for you to know how much of the work is theirs and how much is the publication editor's.
The best way around this is to require freelancers to do a writing test for you before bringing them on board.
Some folks might be hesitant, but if you're transparent about your reasoning, you should get a solid response rate.
Agree on rates early—and have a standard rate
Make sure you have a set rate for each type of project you assign.
Another tip: don't pay by the word.
Because time is money for freelancers, it makes sense that they might not spend the extra time to make their work as concise as possible.
If you pay by the word, you'll almost always end up overpaying, even though the extra words are actually making the content worse.
Instead, determine an hourly rate you think is fair—and within your budget—
and then estimate how long it will take to write the content.
avoid paying wildly different rates for each of your freelancers. That's a recipe for unconscious bias and uneven quality.
Prioritize content knowledge over writing chops
If you don't have an editor on staff, hire one.
having an excellent editor is absolutely necessary for a successful freelancing program.
it allows you to get freelancers for their subject matter expertise more than their writing.
Yes, your freelancers need to be able to write well—but it's more important that they're trustworthy when it comes to the content area.
if someone were to submit to me an app roundup with excellent information, apps thoroughly tested, detailed analysis, and a clear understanding of the app category—even if it were a total mess, I could rewrite it in a matter of a couple hours.
Have templates for onboarding
The process.
Tell them how they should expect to work with you (email? project management app? Slack?) and what each step of the process (outline, revisions, stuff like that) looks like.
Examples of content.
Your brand voice guide.
The contract.
You want to be sure you own the content they're submitting (that's standard).
Invoicing.
Any info you need from them.
Do you need an author bio? Their social handles?
Kill fee.
Do you have a standard kill fee
(an amount you pay if you kill the project part-way through or decide not to publish it)?
Be nice, be prompt, be human
Automate
Whenever an article by a certain author is published on your site, automatically send an email to the author letting them know.
Whenever an invoice is submitted, automatically add it to your budget tracking spreadsheet.
Whenever you get confirmation of an assigned project in Gmail, automatically add it to your editorial calendar or tracking app.