Drama about carry on luggage allowances again. If checking in luggage was a more predictable lower cost I think people would check in more and carry on less and the boarding and disembarking experience would be smoother. But luggage also needs to arrive undamaged or be extravagantly compensated.

You won’t find a more succinct description of late stage capitalism.

I feel like there will be lots of submissions to inquiries that will be like this now. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

“That we know of”.

Reading The Mountain In The Sea by Ray Nayler. Short listed for the Arthur C. Clarke last year. What a remarkable book, a potent vision of the near future, cyberpunk as a slow apocalypse, but also a wonderfully melancholy piece of literature. Plus, octopus as alien is always intriguing.

New fibre to the premises has improved my internet speeds from good to really good. That goes on the positive side of the books today.

Such a great source photo! I feel every time I see a picture that uses it as model, it should be the start of a chain of pictures that also use it as a model.

Health Experts Recommend Standing Up At Desk, Leaving Office, Never Coming Back https://theonion.com/health-experts-recommend-standing-up-at-desk-leaving-o-1819577456/

A lesson many find hard to learn: It is good to follow leaders who are younger than you. But young leaders also need to value the support of older followers. Age and experience do not ensure wisdom or knowledge. Neither does age mean being out of date or inflexible.

My printer just gave up the ghost after 5 years and about 5000 pages. It should have lasted much longer. It did about 300 pages after an international move so maybe there were things shaken loose. Functionally I want to replace it with the same thing; it did what I wanted, well, and no more.

RIP to Jane Goodall, who opened the world's eyes to our closest relatives. (Photo by NatGeo's Hugo Van Lawick)

I've been doing some programming, and I watched an algorithm video, (fast voxel render), and now my YouTube feed is 50% algorithm videos. Some of them in Spanish, (the last time I did computing work in Spanish was 2008).

The South Korean Ministry of Defense has awarded medals of merit to 11 officers for disobeying direct orders of superiors during the martial law fiasco, orders that they deemed to be contrary to the constitution and endangerment to democracy. www.chosun.com/english/nati...

“Frog,” said Toad, “let us eat one very last cookie, and then we will stop.”

Frog tied some string around the box. “There,” he said. “Now we will not eat any more cookies.” “But we can cut the string and open the box,” said Toad. “That is true,” said Frog.

Work is consuming with rapid growth etc. Creative hobbies have suffered which makes stress worse. A simple way back in to art might be to find artists I like and calmly pass time making my versions of their work. Not even the pretence of "master studies", just relax into a process with few choices.

Single parent household 3x more likely to live in poverty, or nearly 1/3 such in poverty. Why is obvious: Aussies love to be moralistic and an easy fantasy stereotype is feckless or immoral women, plus Aussies imagine harsh benefit schemes save tax dollars. Greed and gossipy bitchiness.

ChatGPT Goes Completely Haywire If You Ask It to Show You a Seahorse Emoji Wait, there's no seahorse emoji, right? Right? futurism.com/chatgpt-hayw...

Overhearing a linguistic prescriptivist and the urge is overwhelming to fight the arrogance of calling whole communities wrong for speaking differently to his idea of right English.

Realised I’m dealing with a narcissist in part of my life. Can’t get out of the situation yet. Need to minimize my emotional exposure or investment in interactions with them. Never argue with them nor expect change but also don’t compromise myself to keep the peace. And prepare my path out of there.

In negotiations or debate, people can get stuck in minutia. Cycles of rejecting details because in isolation each doesn’t prove a point. Spending time on a detail while not progressing the big picture. How to get people to consider a whole position and keep their eyes on a larger goal?

New Instagram interface is annoying. View followers is now a separate icon, where it used to be is replaced by a friends list that shows me only strangers. And I can’t find a way to view the posts of starred favourites any more, it seems now to be only a bias to show new posts early.

Just putting this here for easy future reference, neat introduction to the energy demands of Generative AI technology: news.mit.edu/2025/explain...

Menschheit so:

Some days I listen to new music, following the rabbit holes and recommendations, and I’m overwhelmed and awestruck by how much more wonderful music is released than I could possibly listen to, and the tragedy of life is that it’s not nearly long enough for all the good that might fit in it.

Ads on Netflix this morning (it’s lunch time as I write): • Betting • Insurance • Booze • Fast food

#Klima #Umwelt #Nachhaltig

LOTR unreleased scene: Gandalf narrates the ORIGINAL prologue! 🧙‍♂️

The answer to homelessness is not persecution, it’s homes.

I see a discussion re: whether science fiction as a lit genre is dying. My thought about that is no BUT there are two important factors to consider: One, it was/is heavily cis-white-dude coded and that group buys fewer books now; Two, SF thrives with optimism about the future, and, well.

Tired but struggling to sleep is a horrible thing.

Does anyone believe that ceding territory to Putin will convince him to turn away from war and pursue peace instead?

I’ve read fairly convincing material that appreciation of musical complexity derives from more basic reward for decoding complex auditory environments. I wonder if musical anhedonia is interrupting higher order audio emotional connections or if it’s down at the level environmental engagement?

My mum tells me I arrived at school already knowing my letters thanks to Sesame Street, (not long after that quote was written). That good start feels like a lifelong advantage. To me it seems obvious that to preserve the advantages of wealth you’d take away Sesame Street and things like it.

“Small children from poor or middle-class families who watch ‘Sesame Street’ do better on cognitive tests and in first grade than children who do not watch it,” Renata Adler wrote, in 1972.

The algorithm is presenting me advertising in Spanish, for Australian stuff, (just now investment property). I think the accent was Colombian, in any case quite easy to understand. Even so, I don’t watch that much in Spanish so I don’t really know how it figured I speak it.

Over on Reddit someone is asking for science fiction for their precocious young reader and the people there are suggesting books that were old when that kid's grandparents were the same age as the kid, for fuck's sake if you didn't know any SF books from this millennium maybe sit this question out

Today, gently tapping a control on my laptop screen, wondering why nothing is happening. The week ahead looks long.

He didn't get to the moon but he got his crew home, and that was the more remarkable task. www.nbcnews.com/news/rcna223...

"Real Zero has one definition. You commit to phasing out fossil fuels and you do it without relying on offsets, carbon capture and storage, and any other technology that does not exist yet.” - Dr @shantabarley.bsky.social, Fortescue Chief Climate Scientist #auspol

Let’s bring this research to Melbourne. We have manufacturing capacity and current research facilities for this tech, why not earn a share? #VicPol #AusPol

My last few doctors, in Germany and now in Australia, have been lovely clever geeky Millennials who talk about health and my body as a technical puzzle but also with great sensitivity to my fears and my intelligence. I have been very lucky with them.

Good morning, folks. The sky says trans rights are human rights.

“Two colleagues argue for different options and can’t agree, how can you help them find a way forward?” Sadly, that neutral framing is rare. Emotional Int skills include noticing you’re in conflict, in a heightened state, and still being able to reach for good willed solution oriented negotiation.

What broke you? Listening to a negotiation focused TTRPG session. And then hearing about systems for negotiation in games. My goodness people are sweet and naive. My first thoughts: if I was actively disingenuous how would I approach a conflict?

Before Reagan, trickle-down economics was called the Horse & Sparrow Theory - if you feed the horse enough oats, the sparrows can then eat the stale oats with a side of manure. Bon appétit!

So many bot followers recently on IG. Gotten to the stage where notifications are a frustration rather than a sign of engagement.

YouTube algorithm seems to have changed again. I’m getting lots of very old videos in my feed, plenty of 10 years and older. But still not much of my actual subscriptions. I’d prefer to see my subscriptions and be able to unsubscribe in the feed than than to be shown random old stuff.