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forty x forty

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2008.04.14

Working for a gigantic bureaucracy is sometimes amusingly predictable (or vice versa). One of the things I keep seeing, year in and year out is the "forty by forty email thread". Forty people on the distribution list, and forty emails long.

It typically is a thread hashing out some technical issue, and it usually doesn't have forty participants (it can be as few as two) but it persists and drags people in like a net.

rand()m quote

If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

—Thomas Paine