The Fable of the ant and the grasshopper I’m referring to comes from Aesop’s fables, a work collected around between 500 and 600 BCE.

It’s been told and retold in many different languages around the world, and in virtually every example of the Fable being told, the story is basically the same: the ant works through the summer, and the grasshopper dances. Eventually the winter comes, and the ant survives and the grasshopper dies of starvation. For over 2,000 years the moral of the story has been but there’s a work time for work and there’s a time for play, that you need to work hard in the summer or you will starve in the winter.

It’s wonderful that somebody reinterpreted the Fable for a modern kid’s movie, but that does not change the original meaning of the fable. Aesop was a slave born in Greek society, a society that utilized slavery. It’s not likely that greek society would have been super into a slave teaching their kids that one day the slaves would overcome their Athenian masters.

Aristophanes wrote many plays criticizing greek society a few hundred years after Aesop. The following was from his play “Ekklesiazousai”, which was a comedy about what would happen if women took over the government. It’s a sort of hilarious example of the difference between greek society and modern society for many reasons, especially this exchange:

Praxagora: I want all to have a share of everything and all property to be in common; there will no longer be either rich or poor; […] I shall begin by making land, money, everything that is private property, common to all. […]

Blepyrus: But who will till the soil?

Praxagora: The slaves.

In Orwell’s 1984, the main character’s job was in the ministry of truth, ironically changing history to better suit the party. In this sense, replacing a 2500 year old fable with a 25 year old movie sounds more like that 1984 than simply citing the original fable.

In the fable of the and and the grasshopper the grasshopper needed food stored up more than ever when the winter came, but the time to be preparing for winter was the spring, summer, and fall when you plant, tend, and harvest. By the time winter comes it’s too late.

The best time for someone with a variable rate mortgage to refinance as fixed rate would have been 2020. You didn’t need a fixed rate back then because variable rate was in some cases less than 1%, but you need one now because mortgages are around 7%. If you refinance now it won’t help.

The time to unionize was when labor had power by being in demand. 2020 would have been a good time, but maybe even the mid 2010s.

Don’t many European countries have like 20% youth unemployment?

No offense, but it seems like a really dumb idea to unionize in the middle of mass industry layoffs.

Maybe you would do it when things are going good, but if everyone around you is getting laid off and you unionize, it almost seems self-evident who’s going to get laid off next.

Is it illegal? Probably. Are they going to get away with it? Probably.

Everyone should remember that big tech companies aren’t your friend.

Gotta admit, young me got a lot wrong about what my future held. I’m glad he was wrong, because life wouldn’t be that great if he was right about everything. :P

In an allegorical sense, start dressing for the job you want.

Part of that would be getting some project management training, but also start acting like a leader to Junior developers. Instead of just focusing on getting the job done, focus on helping them become better developers. Being in management is partially about being in meetings, but it’s also partially about growing your talent and building relationships with your team and your customers. That’s going to do one of two things, either it’s going to prepare you to move up in the company that you’re in right now or it will give you some ammunition to go for the job that you want in another company.

https://fortune.com/2022/04/01/citi-metaverse-economy-13-trillion-2030/

XD

I own a rift. Like many, mine is sitting in a box in my garage. If any of these people calling from multi trillion dollar valuations of the metaverse had ever actually bothered clamping one of these VR headsets to their head, they would have immediately realized how stupid they sounded.

The fundamental concept at work in making an electromagnet is Lenz’s law. Here’s a Khan academy video on the topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxZenoBs2Pg

You can determine the power of a magnet (very roughly) using the following equation:

B = μ₀ * n * I

Where:

B is the magnetic field strength in teslas (T) or gauss (G). μ₀ is the permeability of free space, approximately equal to 4π × 10^-7 T·m/A. n is the number of turns per unit length of the coil (turns per meter). I is the current flowing through the coil in amperes (A).

So the number of turns matters, and also the current matters.

But there’s a third thing, and I think that’s the problem you’re having: This piece of wire is conductive, and the nail is conductive, and there doesn’t seem to be any insulation on the wire. Because of that, the current flows through the wire on one side, into the nail and across it, then out the wire on the other side. The current needs to flow in loops without being able to take any other path, The coil of wire and the current flowing around in circles is what’s required.

What you want is a long piece of wire with insulation on it. Then you wrap it around the nail, and then apply a battery across the wire. A 1.5V battery probably won’t have much punch so you might not be able to get much of a magnet, but a 9V battery should do it quite well. What will happen is the current flowing through the wire will create a magnetic field, which will magnetize the nail, which will create a magnet you can use to pick up coins.

A lot of the time, people run demos using special wire for creating magnets that’s copper with a very thin clear insulating coating on it, so you might think you’re looking at someone just making a loop of regular wire, but the insulation is key to the whole thing working.