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Swap published columns for 24 entries from random.md
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Retract the seven published columns into drafts/ and promote the 24 per-date
entries split out of Notes/random.md. Bodies are verbatim; titles, subjects
and slugs are new.

Make publication a matter of location. Notes/Notes.11tydata.js gives anything
under Notes/ permalink: false unless tagged `column`; drafts/drafts.11tydata.js
renders drafts at their real permalink under `yarn dev` and excludes them from
collections entirely in a build, so no template can surface one. Publishing is
now `git mv drafts/<file> columns/`, and moving it back retracts it.

Untagged notes were previously rendered into _site/ and deployed — including
Notes/random.md, which was live at /Notes/random/.
This commit is contained in:
Stephen Donahue
2026-08-02 22:45:19 +00:00
parent 6701876cb5
commit c6d7c8c211
38 changed files with 995 additions and 2 deletions
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17
columns/2026-05-21-manufactured-value.md Normal file
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---
title: Manufactured Value
date: 2026-05-21
layout: column.njk
tags: [column, society]
permalink: /columns/2026/manufactured-value/
---
This feels more like the same cautionary tale that I keep thinking: besides the fact that I've never heard of this company, or any of these engineers, it's that despite (probably) being capable at their jobs, their work was lost to obscurity, and not for lack of talent, but due to political pressures.
So anyone bitter that their talents aren't recognized, or seen by the world, unable to placate their egos, you invested too much on the wrong skills. You tinkered, you entertained yourself. You neglected the people. You see them as adversarial, failures for not recognizing your amazing talent. But at the end of the day, they had the influence to scuttle your work, so... are you just jerking yourself off, or are you actually building something valuable? Is something valued purely for its technical merit, or does it have to be bought (or sold) first? What's the intrinsic value of something that no one buys?
Value has to be manufactured. If we're just talking dollars, it's more impactful than the thing itself: marketing the thing, getting a buyer to agree to the terms and pay.
To be fair, a sales pitch might get your foot in the door, but securing the value (claimed) has to be supported by some of the intrinsic value of the thing itself. If the value was over-hyped, the thing will inevitably fall short and fail to deliver.
Try to make the other guys on your team look bad - what could go wrong? These guys have way too much to prove.