So: community. I'm reading a lot about how important community is: the charity sector was front and centre during Covid, for example. Local groups were pivotal in providing support during the bushfires. When things break down, you need people who like people, and you need them close.

I think they wussed out here. They should have just made it a really nice day in Chiba City.

Signs that you’re old: Apple TV has to contextualize the opening passage of Neuromancer for a 21st century audience.

Almost impossible to believe that Labor would champion an aged-care assessment system that operates without human oversight, that routinely underestimates peoples' needs. What an insane and reckless policy! www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

There's a necessary humility in coming into a new sector: the exciting and bubbling thoughts that I'm having are new to me, but not new to the world. ...but I must not forget that my own perspective is bringing some novelty with it - a new angle, a new lens, new thoughts.

Addressing the problem of space junk effectively requires work across three fronts: technology, policy and philosophy. 🧪 🔭

Thing about being in a new sector is that you learn new things - or look at old things a new way. I've come across the concept of a social enterprise, which is a for-profit organisation with a social purpose - i.e. it participates in the market to make a profit, but the profit isn't the point.

Happy new year to the finance folks!

"What's its vulnerability?" "It's a physics monster. Revoke its research grant." #gamequotes #monsteroftheweek

Talking about the upcoming Odyssey movie makes me realise: I yearn for a Ulysses31 remake.

Trying to work out if I would benefit from an undergrad unit in data analysis. I've been data-adjacent for much of my career, but I'm currently frustrated by a lack of literacy with the tools.

This is delightful. I know in Australia if I say I'm from Adelaide to someone from Adelaide there's a good chance they'll say "which part?" and follow with the winnowing questions - the difference being, I think, that it's fairly unusual to find a connection.

My job coach just told me I probably didn't have to go full-tilt total burnout mode in my new job, I could just turn up as my authentic self with my actual skills and that would be fine, and it was such an alien thought that I have to sit down for a bit.

Find myself thinking about the philosophical weapons of Indian mythology: the twin swords that inflict hope of gain and fear of loss in equal measure, and so paralyse the target.

Tabaxi PCs: "'Meow' means 'goodbye'." "'Meow' means so many things." "And one of them is goodbye." #rpgquotes

The Data Availability and Transparency Act (2022) is two separate acronym crimes, a position I've held since 2022.

Interesting to see such MASSIVE community support for electoral trust reforms, such as spending caps and truth-in-advertising rules. It's easy to slam the sitting government, so I will: Labor has pretended to be asleep at the wheel here, but knows exactly where it's going.

The formal title for the Commissioner of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission appears to be just that: the Commissioner of the Commission. I don't know why, but that offends me slightly. ... I'll keep with "the Charities Commissioner".

Explain your @ A friend made me an account in the hell-site when I was a project officer at a government agency; she felt it encapsulated my professional persona, including a tinge of self-deprecation. I've been a functionary (and/or dysfunctionary) in most roles since.

I have a real soft spot for Clash of the Titans, but in my head it comes from the sixties - not 1981! (Points to @maybeimalion.bsky.social for "Owl-2D2".)

Always a big surge of happiness when someone I've had in my dog training class bounces up to tell me all the fun things they're doing with their dog. "StuStuStu!! We're doing Agility! We're in competition! We're a therapy dog!" Purest of pure joy.

"I cling on like an angry koala." #gamequotes #oneshot

My landlord and the smoke detector company are having a terse conversation about when the latter can do their annual check of the smoke alarms. Both keep saying or implying I'm unresponsive, despite replying immediately to more than half of the emails. I feel very maligned right now.

Reading that Jane Yolen has passed. Jane wrote in one of my favourite genres, the modern fairy tale. If you haven't read Briar Rose you should.

Truly, science hath wrought wonders. theconversation.com/i-used-sound...

One of the most obvious and least useful policy proposals is summed up as "we need people to be better." But policy can't make people better. Where policy needs to work is in the systems space - making things better without relying on people magically *becoming* better.

I think I got pinged as "Young and naive." Felt patronising, anyway. www.pewresearch.org/politics/qui...

I am not one of nature's networkers but I'm having a lot of fun meeting new social policy nerds. These are as much my people as the science policy nerds.

That's interesting. Hope it stands up to appeal. The introduction of AI has been entirely irresponsible in its approach to truth, knowledge and expertise. LLM output is bullshit in the technical sense of being communication with no regard to truth value. Nice to see it called out, legally.

This was surprisingly uplifting - cultural circumstances leading to, effectively, a subsidised filmmaking program. (99pi is often uplifting, and *always* interesting.)

Looks like the Australian Centre for Disease Control has *almost* gone with the obvious acronym. www.cdc.gov.au Nevertheless, I do believe we're on a highway to health.

I didn't know there was a word for it. theconversation.com/why-sophrosy...

A small personal tragedy: the only material keepsakes from my first marriage were two mugs, souvenirs of my honeymoon in New Orleans in 1999, the logos long-faded and visible only to the eye of memory. Both broke in the past fortnight. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End made me cry. It was such a subtle thing. A half-written book, with empty pages standing for everything that happened but wasn't recorded or spoken about, that the protagonist knew but couldn't express. About fifteen seconds of screentime. Beautiful.

Traveller's Tales have been making Lego computer games since 2005, and the vehicle races are *still* arse. (I am enjoying Legacy of the Dark Knight a lot, otherwise.)

An enduring frustration: a government that ignores its own evidence and advice.

Weirdly, this is often why you find astrophysicists giving expert testimony in court cases. xkcd.com/3253

Under Hollow Hills is one of my favourite games ever - exquisitely designed in every way. "Gender is a game, play it how you like" is something to carry forward in Pride Month.

"Not as clumsy or random as a..." "...grenade!" #gamequote #oneshot

Yes. Using a computer now feels like this at all times.

"I'm putting my trust in Colonel Colt." "I'm putting my trust in Colonel Sanders." "What are you - chicken?" #gamequotes #goodshepherd

I liked this article. My TTRPG hobby is so valuable to me because it puts me around the table with folk who have things and friends in common with me, and sometimes there's alchemy there. (Also, you know, I get to be a giant space lizard.)

There's an ad on one of my podcasts that basically says: people like podcasts, and if you advertise on a podcast they will, by the transitive property of liking stuff, like your ads. And I feel with great feeling that there is a gap in that logic.

With one thing and another I have not been playing my guitar much recently. I was struck just now by the beauty of my machine's sound; a reminder that it is an essential part of my meditation and wellbeing practice.

Really struck just now by the idea of a "pure good" NFP that is constrained by requirements to deliver tangible, measurable goods - and the parallels with "pure research" constrained by a need to deliver readily applicable knowledge. The balance sheet is the enemy of the good?

My personal frame for this is "my thinking engine can't solve problems in my thinking engine." Learning how to separate my sense of self from my thoughts has been a long road. "Willpower" is not a useful construct for me.

"Squirrels gamely but unsuccessfully interfacing with birdfeeders" needs to be its own short film category at the Oscars

My summary of how I would give this speech were I Minister for Employment. Mutual obligations are bullshit. Privatized employment services are cruel. Jobseeker payments are cruel magnified.

Sometimes, there's a ray of hope. I was unemployed for six months, and "mutual obligation" did fuck all to help me find work. Government, in fact, did fuck all. Did heaps to make me feel like a burden on society, though. The outcome the government wanted was clear, and it wasn't "Stu gets a job."

Oh - this is *such* a fun book! Highly recommended.