Notices by Liam :fnord: (liamvhogan@aus.social)

Why don’t you just use libre office. Why don’t you just choose your own working conditions. Why don’t you simply walk out of your office and never go back to your job

Put your hand in the hbox, Paul. The box contains badness 10,000. I hold at your neck the Gom Jabbar

Citizens, it is time to march toward the sound of the #tgif :tgif:

Bluesky is the Microsoft Word of social media, which I mean in the derogatory sense, as the fediverse is the LaTeX of social media, which I also mean in the derogatory sense

What you think archaeologists do: maintain a long-term view of human habitation and the challenges of our species, discovering revelations about past traumas and achievements, and unimaginably unfamiliar cultures

What an archaeologist actually does: look at near maps to tell you probably where the 1920s night soil toilet block went, and a bit too excitedly about it to be honest

The thing about Sydney and real estate is that you look at a price guide, you say, fucking hell that’s a lot of fucking money, and you haven’t even accounted for the standard Real Estate Lie that the real price is actually 15-20% higher.

If it goes beyond that it’s not underquoting, it’s ‘an extraordinary result for the market’

@zens what the hell how can they not have cream? Isn’t sour cream a huge thing

Send me more ludicrous American ‘I voted’ stickers I cannot get enough of them

The post-1940s were fascinated by the emergence of Organisational Man (and later, his female counterpart), the skilled worker whose skill was purely in being part of such a large system, understanding and working in it, rather than a profession or technical doing-skill, someone dedicated to the Department or company or firm or whatever. Implied in that is that the organisation is loyal in return; that’s not a notable feature of firms nowadays. To put it mildy.

The thing people observe around the world is that things aren’t working as well in common, even though our technology is advancing. Seems to me it’s not a tech problem, it’s a loyalty problem, and the emergence of the ideology of ‘hacking’ (improvising, making-do, overcoming) is our response

A half-formed thought: the common prevailing ideology of developed countries through the whole of the 20thC was that the energies of very large numbers of skilled people could be harnessed somehow (markets, central planning, some combination) to produce better and better things. And that had to be accompanied by better and better systems, and learning in common, which is why all spent so much on education, training, universities.

The modern emphasis on ‘hacking’ and individualised technical skill is almost the opposite of that dream. For better and worse

What’s emerged, in my adult lifetime, is the idea—across the political and cultural spectrum—that large groups of people cooperating together is a very difficult, maybe impossible, thing to achieve. You hear it in sad expressions about the past, nostalgia about things like the Apollo program. It’s an assumption so powerful people don’t even realise it’s there! It’s just this new totalising ideology of smallness of efforts.

That’s not to romanticise the 20thC. Being a salaryman or a Company Man might have been secure, but all reports were that it was boring as shit and often degrading, restrictive, and hypocritical, not to mention capital-p Patriarchal in every way that counted. We’re putting a higher value now on individual performance which is just another value. But to be a ‘hacker’ and to put social value on that hacking is a lonely way to be, for all of us.

The British custom of lining candidates up to hear the results in public, so that the loser has to eat shit in front of a crowd, and they all have to take Dark Lord Wheelie Bin or whatever seriously, is good and cool #ukpol

There are people who post their video to Dashcam Owners Australia even though they’re the ones driving terribly. Why do they do it? Is it some sense of shame? Boasting? Or some strange integrity?

I refuse to believe that the UK Telegraph has a military correspondent called Hamish de Bretton Gordon who has right wing views and supports conscription. This is a Mitchell and Webb bit. He’ll reveal himself as a Borat sketch. No fucking way is that real

Socialism is a form of liberalism and shares a deep 19thC history, philosophical outlook, and a set of basic moral standpoints about a person’s relationship with the State

[the crowd boos]

You know I’m right and so did the early socialists

I’ve said before that the most precious part of the Web are the pre-Facebook forums run by enthusiasts of specific domains (say, owners of a model of motorbike). There’ll be knowledge there from crusty old riders that means the difference between success and failure at doing what you want to do.

It’s exactly this kind of specific knowledge, like knowing the right steps and way to adjust the valve clearances on a bike, that is threatened by AI content mills, because an LLM doesn’t know if it’s 0.15mm or 15mm, and doesn’t care

Dapto Railway Station, last Saturday morning

People often ask me, how do I feel about working in the Bene Gesserit pain box factory, designing devices whose only purpose is to synthesise excruciating pain? Well I say I get to work on a product with best-in-field UX and an extraordinary recognition factor

🎺 :pickitup: