After visiting Europe I am now in full support of the Singaporean government's approach to vaping enforcement

The European restaurant thing of offering you water and, if you're too hungry to have the presence of mind to say the right magic words, coming back with a bottle of water that costs €7, makes me feel way more scammed than Americans adding a service charge or having to add a tip tbh

what's with European online credit card fraud detection and being the most painful e-commerce experiences I've ever had on the internet

@drdrehistorian.bsky.social please explain your city's heritage to me

They told me Parisians liked higher-density living, it's true in the downtown bit but I've just gone out to the western suburbs and run into the biggest single family home I've seen in my life

Can someone explain what's with cities having ridiculous PT ticketing systems that aren't just stored value or credit/debit cards? If I install enough apps, I can use my credit card to buy Paris PT tickets a single trip at a time, or various passes, but not just tap my credit card at the gate

Wandering the streets of Paris imagining how many fines the Quebec language cops would be able to hand out to local businesses

Today I walked from one end of a shire to the other

Heading to Europe/UK for a month later this week, and I still haven't decided what countries I'm going to

The proliferation of American right wing free speech advocacy motivated primarily by the worst possible reasons is making me reflexively pro-eSafety Commissioner, which I'm not sure is the best way for me to be thinking about this but anyway

Please

problems with being unemployed: managing your bank accounts to get the maximum online savings interest rate gets harder when you can't consistently grow the account balance by $1 at the end of the month

this will be a fascinating experiment to watch

this is very funny

one day the scanner on my HP DeskJet 1510 that I purchased from Dick Smith Electronics (peace be upon them) for $28 over a decade ago will finally give in just like the printer component did but today is not that day. $28 well spent

I found it hard enough adapting to Turkey's insistence on being called Türkiye; now I have to adapt to the Republic of Trükiye

Better things are possible

tfw you think "hmm maybe I should try that food I brought home from that trip last year" and you pick it up to find you're 1 day before its best before date. glad I can still consume this overpriced chocolate that I bought at Changi Airport while it's still Best

I'll be at the Assembly tomorrow to help make the case for Missing Middle in front of the Environment and Planning Committee (chaired by @joclaygreens.bsky.social and featuring Peter Cain, Caitlin Tough and Fiona Carrick). Let's get this done!

Sadly I'll be travelling rather than going to this, but I'm very interested to hear what Bertaud thinks of Canberra after he sees a city that's planned... rather differently from his principles, let's just say

my twitter feed has too much AI chat, my bluesky feed has far too little AI chat

‘If only the party had catered to my policy preferences it would have won’ is something that is maybe true and maybe false, but never testable. On the other hand: if my policy preferences were taken up, and put to the test, and they won, we can definitely say there’d be lots more trams. Fact.

getting marketing emails about how a platform can be used to deploy something which only started development on 24 November last year and here I am still complaining that the JavaScript ecosystem moves too fast

ughhhhh I am waiting for ~3 emails that I need to plan the next month of my life, and I am *impatient*

old work has now taken me off the group subscription to Linux Weekly News :'(

the Australian mind cannot comprehend British rail fares

The everything app

Cities are the vital engines of the Australian economy, and how we build them matters. This is a vital evening for those passionate about solving the housing crisis, and building more affordable, liveable, and sustainable Australian cities. events.humanitix.com/order-withou...

we're living in the dumbest timeline. all the predictions about how AI X-risk would come about thanks to the superintelligence breaking itself out of containment, and here we are demonstrating well ahead of time that there won't be any containment to start with

St Andrew's Cathedral provides free parking for Sunday worshippers, which as an exception to my normal views on parking I support on the principle that churches should never impose a charge to attend a service But I have questions for anyone driving to a church that's next door to Town Hall Station

I'm torn between wanting better mobile coverage on the rail line so I can do more work on my laptop, versus celebrating the rare opportunity to be outside of mobile coverage and away from the internet

it's always a great day to be riding the new south wales government railways

Dear friends, you are on notice that if I ever find out that you are unironically using AI chat summarisation in our DMs, it's over

presently wishing my multiple minor but long term life problems didn't compound such that each of them makes it harder to take action on the others

pleased to report I went to an unfamiliar country in Asia this month and did not have significant gastrointestinal distress

hmm where should I go and what should I do in Europe

I need to get good at food for the sake of being able to care about any of my friends' food discussions

filling out a JobSeeker application for lulz and getting even more @davidsligar.bsky.social pilled than I was before

I have, thanks to life circumstances, fallen out of the habit of going to the gym over the last 2 months, and now that I'm finally at the point where I can bring myself to pick it back up again, it's a heatwave week

tfw someone includes their membership of the Golden Key International Honour Society on their citation for an Order of Australia award

prediction: Trump will use his lifetime position as Board of Peace Chairman + the billion dollar permanent membership contributions to fund a post-presidency Chairman's Office slush fund and/or a Board of Peace Peace Prize to be awarded to himself

On my way to #EverythingOpen #EO2026, come say hi

has anyone started work on porting the newly released X For You recommender algorithm to Bluesky? no-one wants this but it'd be mildly funny

The nostalgic part of me sometimes wishes we weren't abolishing cheques completely in 2029 - there's something about the principle of being able to handwrite a negotiable instrument that I like. Back when my bank still issued cheque books, I got one purely so I could pay a few bills that way...

The Aus/UK dual citizen passport rules discourse is hilarious with most participants being just so incredibly amazingly entitled

This is all crazy but I just want to once again reiterate what a tragedy expanded character limits have been to enjoying Trump posts on a purely technical level. You used to get gold like “I’ll still keep drinking that garbage” and now it’s like damn this old man won’t shut up

Friday was my last day at IBM, and the final end of the 2001-2026 IBM era of the ragtag group of hackers we call OzLabs. We had a good run! Now to enjoy being funemployed and looking for a job...

I spent a week and a half in Sri Lanka post-Christmas, and my biggest takeaway is that even as a Christmas decorations hater I can't help but be impressed by the slightly weird vibes of going all out on the lights