Mostly due to young kids, I haven't been to a movie theater in 3 years. Haven't stopped watching movies in that time though.

So while I can totally appreciate that they aren't necessary, they do change the experience. Others have already mentioned things like bigger screen and better sound, or even (shudder) 3D. A movie like Avatar or LOTR is definitely better in the cinema.

One topic not mentioned is also about the communal experience. I saw Avengers Endgame by myself. I enjoyed it. However, I've heard from folks who were in the theater that (SPOILER ALERT) the scene where Captain America is standing alone against Thanos and then everyone else joins him got HUGE reactions. It was a payoff of over a decade's worth of movies in one scene. People were cheering and excited, like being at a sporting event.

I'm kind of sorry I missed that. Not at all needed to enjoy the movie which I did watching it alone, but kind of the difference of watching a winning game in a stadium or alone at home.

I am a little conflicted about this. Seems like the author is trying to justify time spent in meetings which serve little purpose at first glance. I would say that is besides the purpose, and justifies busy work. They do not have enough real work to do, so need the meetings to feel useful and not bored.

I have very little respect for this. Maybe that is because I pretty much spend all my day (more than 8 hours) in a continuous block of meetings, and every bit of time is precious. Now sure some of them are inefficient and could be better managed, and yes a 20 minute discussion often expands to fill the fully scheduled 30 min block of time (more and more however we are saying letâ(TM)s end early and get some time back). But I would say the totally useless meetings where I go âoewhy the hell am I hereâ are pretty infrequent, and even there I can just fire up my laptop and tune things out, keeping an ear open.

Some context: The title does not matter, but I am a manager-of-managers and do virtually no hands-on work anymore; I have about 50 people plus 10 to 15 contractors rolling up to me. It takes a lot of coordination and planning to keep our projects aligned together with interdependencies figured out and tracked, and with activities outside of my area but within my larger group, etc. A lot of time is spent in mundane but critical activities like budget planning, resource allocation, HR matters (people conflicts, etc), 1:1 check-ins with my directs (who themselves are line managers).

A lot of time is spent managing sideways and upwards, handling the politics and shielding my team from the corporate sh*t. Someone has to deal with it, otherwise it will flow down. Our (very large 70,000 employee multi-national) company has a very consensus driven culture (given the different countries, cultures and people who work here), and often coordination with a lot of stakeholders is required to get things moving, or on track.

I also make time to do (periodic but not frequent) skip level meetings and check in either 1:1 or in groups with people in my team. Could be a chat, discussion about career progression, or once a quarter a particular project team might present an update on their work to me, and do a deep dive allowing me to poke and prod, and learn. Not only does it keep me plugged in with my team, but they appreciate the opportunity to present, and get time with their bosses boss, or higher. I really enjoy these.

Also there is the regular hiring activity, particularly in a growth phase, and OMG does hiring take time. Interviewing, as well as job requisition negotiations, budgets, time with HR, etc. Sometimes with regular attrition, a team might end up reporting directly to me while I search for their new leader, and that increases my workload and meetings.

Often times new, large multi-million dollar initiatives, do not just get kicked off in one meeting, a bunch of meetings, or even half/full/multi-day workshops are required to figure things out, align different groups, plan, etc, and then get it really moving.

And then, while I do not normally micromanage and instead delegate to the team leads who report into me, there is sometimes a crisis, or a project is very behind schedule, or someone else in the company is pissed with one of my teams, or something, and for a few days or weeks I have to dive deeper and engage with a particular project team on a more intense and frequent level until the problem gets sorted out. That adds meetings.

For all these reasons, and more, I spend all my working day in meetings. My situation may be very different from the one presented, but I have no patience for truly useless or waste-of-time meetings. If I find myself in one, I try to excuse myself after some time. I do not entertain future meeting requests from those people. If I found out someone in my org was spending time in meetings like this, that would get focused on pretty quickly, and I would ask their line manager if the person was using their time effectively. We have a lot of work to do with a backlog of tasks, and do not have a lot of bandwidth that is just free.

My (completely uneducated) impression is that Police (and other) emergency vehicles use up a lot of electric power for lights, sirens, computer, radio equipment, etc.

Does anyone know if that's the case. Sometimes a police car is parked at the scene of an accident, or construction zone with just lights running.

How would that affect battery performance?

Given the political and public spotlight on climate science, researchers need to be extra careful and make sure their work is rigorous.

Why was this mistake made? Was there a rush to publish and people worked quickly?

Since this is such a (incorrectly) controversial area, instances like this linger in the zeitgeist.

Years from now, internet trolls and conspiracy theorists will point back to this one instance as an example of how climate science is wrong, benignly mistaken, or at worst, maliciously disingenuous.

It won't matter that this was a mistake, in one study amongst many, and that the error was in the magnitude of ocean warming; the overall conclusion that the oceans are warming is not in question.

I pretty much just use the core LinkedIn features. I don't post blogs there, don't really post anything at all on their stream, neither do I take their trainings, or participate at all in any of the many groups I joined years ago.

However:
1) In my career I have had many offers, and actually taken 3 jobs (including my current one and the one right before that) because recruiters found me on LinkedIn. Whether it was my profile, connections through my network, I don't know, but they found me.

I've found many headhunters rely very heavily on LinkedIn.

2) It's a good way to stay in touch with people, if you have the discipline to do so. Professional contacts will stay in touch via LinkedIn, whereas they would be reluctant to connect on Facebook, or to share personal phone #s or email addresses. They'll share business phone numbers and email addresses, but if they leave that job, you can't get in touch with them anymore. LinkedIn connections provide a way to do that.

About once a year I set aside one day on a weekend, and just drop notes to all my contacts who I'd like to stay in touch with. I write up a core letter which gets customized a bit, but it summarizes what I've been up to, and inquires after the recipient. It's a good way to keep the network alive by sending out a ping and just staying in touch with folks.

I've also in recent years developed a general rule that for the most part, I don't accept invites unless I know the person somewhat substantially ie we worked together, or spent a few days together in some training etc and had meaningful interactions there. I rarely accept "cold call" invites, and am quite selfish about accepting invites from bare acquaintances, that guy I spent 5 minutes talking to at that conference, unless I think there may be something in it for me (he's at a high/senior position at a company I may want to be at someday).

Finally, when applying to jobs, I do like being able to just click on a job on LinkedIn and apply with my profile. Upload resume and done. When they take me to the company's website and I have to register and create a profile or remember the login info from the last time I did that, it's painful. I do like that near one-click experience for the few companies which allow doing so on their LinkedIn postings.

So long story short, I think LinkedIn has some value to me, but not to the extent that they'd like to think they do. All the expansion in features they're doing, I don't use them.

I've seen a few comments that say just lie, or inflate the number etc.

Almost all companies do background checks for white collar jobs. One disturbing trend I've noticed recently is for them to require IRS income statements as part of the background check. They can pull that or have you pull from the IRS website.

Sucks, but it's part of the background check, and if you're at that stage, there's already an offer that you've accepted with all that entails (better than current job, want to take it, etc).

Not quite sure what happens if the discrepancy between what you said and what's there is too large. Technically it's a lie, but the hiring manager does want you, and is comfortable with the offer they've made, so would they really pull it? I don't know.

I once worked at a medical diagnostics startup where I got a really interesting view into the world of sales. I was the technical individual responsible for training the sales team ( I knew the tech and was good at explaining it in laymans terms). I also went out with them on sales calls. Very different from what my real job was, but I learned a lot about a different world.

In any case, these observations are obviously limited to that particular experience, but I think can generalize.

The sales people had territories. There was also always fighting about what was in which territory, if you had a major cancer center in your area, you had more chance to be successful.

Now a "sale" was when a doctor ordered our medical test. The sales people had commissions on those sales, and the plans changed over the years, but usually there were tiers, 0-X tests, commission is one number, X-Y tests sold, different (I think higher but forget) commission, etc.

Now what does it mean for a test to be sold. Is it simply that the doctor ordered the test and their staff sent in the form to our lab?

We were trying to get reimbursement with insurance companies worked out. What if we didn't get reimbursed on that test? It's a loss for the company, but the sales person sold it, their job is done, reimbursement is a separate departement. What if though the reason we couldn't get reimbursed is because the test is not very useful clinically for the patient, but the doctor ordered anyway because they were friends with the sales person, or she was very pretty? Now it's a potentially bogus sale.

What if it's a legit sale, and clinically valid, but the patient's sample due to some wetlab processing issues can't have our assay run on it, so we don't make money?

What if we get the order form for a "sale" but never the actual specimen? Is it still a sale?

We spent months and years dealing with these and other issues. It was always very complicated, especially since we were a startup in a somewhat new area, so all the rules or "industry standards" were defined.

Again, very specific to our situation, but provides an example of how a "sale" has different definitions, and sales people want their commissions.

For another, say software product, a sales person may sell, but there is a 3 month evaluation window. They could argue hey I got the foot in the door, I did my job. You make a sucky product and the client won't keep it, or our customer reps can't improve service. For the company, that's not a true "sold" product bringing in revenue, but the sales person did the job they had.

At the end, our startup went out of the business, partially due to the fact we spent A LOT of money on sales commissions for orders, some which were invalid or our reimbursement team couldn't get insurance to pay for.

That's interesting. Poses a question I'm wondering about, how has someone who is blind reacted/felt to taking drugs like LSD?

There is no simple factor that can explain this; I'm sure it's a confluence of a variety or reasons.

One that I've noticed is that my feed is just noisier now with Ads, other "of interest" stories that FB feels like shoving in there. The nice friends and family updates I want to see are still there, but I have to scroll through a lot of noise to see them.

Eventually I get tired of scrolling and stop. Then I visit less often, then I post less often, and the cycle perpetuates itself.

FB made changes to their feed sometime back, a year or two ago, and it's definitely affected things.

And then there are all the other issues people mention. Many of the people and their updates which prompted me to join FB are now on WhatsApp and other platforms.

This article is about 1 year too early at least. Considering that one of the most highly anticipated smart watches, the Apple Watch, isn't even commercially available yet, it's too premature to comment.

I know, I know there are other watches out there. However, given how Apple revolutionized portable MP3 players, and phones, and pretty much jump started the whole mobile apps thing, I anticipate that if anyone was going to be able to do any thing with it, it would be them. Note, not that it's guaranteed they will, but they have the best odds.

So ask again once the Apple Watch has been out for 6 months.