shads

When gay marriage was being debated here in Australia my sister (who is gay) was super upset the whole time. She talked about how much the fight affected her and wished that people who were against would just understand.

I told her I was a complete supporter of gay marriage for a whole bunch of reasons including:

• human decency
• equality
• people who don't like gay marriage can just... Not get married to another person of the same gender.
• people should just mind their own fucking business

However I did also point out that a lot of the loudest voices against gay marriage literally did not give a flying fuck about the issue, it was a convenient wedge and distraction for them, the people who need a group to vilify for political reasons would have to find another target for persecution as soon as they lost this particular convenient red rag to a bull.

Today in Australia, I believe, the usual suspects who use fear and hatred as the bedrock of their politics have been able to tap into a deeper vein of ignorance to make Trans people that target.

Used to work in mobile phone sales at a 100% telco owned store, so when things went tits up for customers the licensed stores in our area would tell customers to come to our store as we had employee access that exceeded partner access. I had SO many variations of the apologetic conversation with an elderly person whose family assured them that the iPhone is the easiest thing ever to use. They were happy with a feature phone but had an iDevice shoved down their throat by family members because "they are so easy". Oh and arranging a change of mind return on an iPhone is a fucking nightmare in Australian Telco land.

They are not the easiest most straightforward choice, unless you use your devices in the constrained manner Apple has decided you will use them. The multiple times I have been forced to use a Mac or an iPhone or IPad, I have found them slow, obtuse and they have an annoying habit of hiding information I want to see. Windows is not really any better, just different.

I kind of see it like any other preference, people assume that because they find something the best then everyone must agree with that take.

Oh yeah that's what I mean, the trail of wreckage they leave as they get promoted out of the positions they ruin is astounding.

Yeah, just wait until the Australian electorate has a brain fart and let's Sky News convince them to vote in spud head. He will get right on to climate change by "nuclear-ifying"* our power grid.

^ * "nuclear-ifying" is a term of art that should not be interpreted to mean any actual progress will be made towards nuclear power generation. Expect to see increased demand placed on coal and gas power plant, all hail Gina. Spoken and authorised by the Liberuhal Party... Oh and /s so it's not elecgion interference ^

Oh it's tragic. The kid is headed for a life of middle management, like I said he may or may not have been being honest. But he goes to the expensive private school that I couldn't afford to send one of my kids to, let alone both. He will make the right connections and be part of the right social circles that details like not understanding his achievements won't really matter.

I've worked for that sort of guy across industries and business, they do fine.

Or if he absolutely has to have a 1 hour response time sounds like a hiring someone to do admin might be the best way to stay competitive.

Had a chat with my kids friends while dropping them at home, they were talking about a kid who got busted using ChatGPT for some schoolwork. When I jokingly asked one of them how he avoids getting caught he admitted he uses it for "first drafts" then rewrites the whole thing in "his own words". A bit of drilling down and he admitted it takes him longer to write a short paper with ChatGPT but it's easier because he doesn't have to think of what to say, just how to change the words.

If he was being honest the irony of the dumb kid rewriting the idiot boxes responses so he doesn't get caught is just... Getting the article off Wikipedia and doing the same thing would have a similar result... Only with less faffing around and environmental impact.

I like it, however are you concerned about having something made out of hard plastic, glass and metal at roughly head height in the event of a crash?

Having seen a few improvised claymore mines in cars (rhinestones or diamontes on steering wheels or dashes) it's always something I consider.

They are already complaining about the hole in the budget illegal tobacco products are leaving, how on earth would our economy stand up to losing the addiction tax?

I get a really slimy vibe from this RFI group. Kinda reminds me of the NIMBY groups that go around blocking mobile phone sites.

I remember talking to a planner once about the mobile phone blocking efforts and he was pretty scathing about what he had seen, some of it genuinely people who had an axe to grind based upon Facebook radicalisation, but a lot of it seemed to have deeper financial motivations from some of the organisers.

He told a vague story about a guy who kicked up a big stink with a proposed tower for highway coverage in a rural area, that is until the site was relocated and he found out afterwards that the secondary site selected was owned by a relative of the guy kicking up the stink who made bag off the bush block that was suddenly worth more than 15 times its previous value.

I fully endorse research and feasibility studies with an eye towards minimising environmental impacts, but if the alternative to these projects is continued reliance on coal and gas I suspect that the long term impacts are far more likely to be worse by not going ahead with the OSW.

Of course I would prefer that the development were done by a domestic company rather than foreign investors, but it seems we don't really do massive infrastructure domestically any more.

Is it too late to set up a bunch of forks on github of AI counter measure software, change the descriptions of each to rambling diatribes about the Musk Rat, explaining how you aim to take him down personally, and then forward it to them as an example of your current work?

I wonder how negative you have to be about AI and Musk to get the offer withdrawn?

I guess what I was trying to say with my rambling 1am slightly drunken screed, is that all of us swim in a sea of ignorance. I sure as hell do, I know little to nothing about mining, a lot of farming practices are completely unknown to me and the logistics used to coordinate the delivery of healthcare at a national level are frankly mind boggling (I live in a country with a somewhat functional healthcare system, ignore this example if you live in the US).

The biggest thing, IMHO, that seperates me from a lot of the younger (and older) people I meet and interact with, is that I am happy to say "I don't know." And if it's important I can and will go and find out how it works, at least well enough to approach the cliffs of competency and decide if it's worth the effort to scale them.

I cannot tell you how many topics I have learnt enough about to decide to eat the steak and declare that "Ignorance is bliss." Thankfully I haven't had to do so while betraying my colleagues to the agents yet.

Maybe the writers at Games Workshop pulled a bit of prescience out when they did their exercise in hyperbolic projection of trends across 38,000 years.

Or maybe it was influence of the warp and Tzeentch...