4 55 Casualsplaining
4 55 Casualsplaining "Rune Deformation" Artwork by 10Z (Liu Hao) Spoiler Alert I drew another line through a long list of names. Fourteen had been whittled to seven, then to four, and now to one. My questions were formulaic and terse; their answers were unabashedly byzantine. I debated the usefulness of the exercise, but pressed on, dialing the last number on the list, greeting the stranger on the other end of the phone, and walking the script. "Describe to me a Relational Model." Each answer came at an uncomfortable cadence. An awkward pause at the start, followed by a reading back of the original question. Then, a nervous yet surprisingly articulate response -- all delivered in a thick East Indian accent, pauses littered throughout. "So...eh...the thing that you wanted to know about...eh...was the Relational Model. It...eh...is an approach ...to managing data using...eh...using a structure and language... consistent ...with first-order predicate logic proces...